with Dave (Homestar) Prozellor
One terrible winter, dead tree limbs strained in frozen agony with icicles that threatened to drop like knives on mere passersby. The wind was so frigid, it licked one’s eyeballs like the rough, fast-freeze from a splash. That winter, not a bird could be found in the sky–although one elf swore she saw a flying caribou. No beaver, marmot, arctic fox or hare could be found, and all the farm animals that had lived around the tiny magical elf settlements had disappeared. Indeed, even the elves were nearly gone, and this is where our story begins.
In those dark days of long ago, the wolves of the region grew ravenous and attacked even the mighty polar bears, who were no match for the superior numbers of the wolves. Nearly everything had been eaten up by wolves except for two elves, Chrissy Cringle and Nikolai Klaus. Those two lonely souls were on the eve of spending their Christmases alone, unaware of one another on opposite sides of the tiny region now called the North Pole.
Now Nikolai was the sort of elf who easily lost himself in his work and spent long, long, long-long, long hours at his workbench. He had no neighbors nearby, and his kin had long since moved from the region. He spotted wolves out the window more often lately, but to anyone watching, as the wolves were, Nikolai appeared to be unaware of most things outside his workshop, including how sparse the elf population had become at the North Pole.
The wolf pack standing guard eagerly leaped to attention when the man reached the workshop door, about to head outside, but then Nikolai’s mind was so full of wonderful toy ideas that he quickly forgot his mission and headed back to his bench with a jolly good laugh. Newly dejected, the wolves grumbled that his workshop was always freshly loaded with food and wood. He seemed to stock up at the oddest moments, so the wolves never caught him outside.
Wolves fogging up the windows of the shop, half-crazed with hunger, watched as he tore a strip of some kind of jerky down from a rack and ate it one-handed, mind clearly fixed on the toy before him. His hair was a mess of curly fluff, and his workshop was an overwhelming display of delights for children: Jacob’s ladders, dreidels, carts and cart horses that really moved and clippetty-clopped their hooves, wooden balls and cudgels, Lincoln logs, wheeled wonders, and all manner of moving machinations. Just now, he was concentrating on how to get his toy dog sled to operate on the power of a pinwheel.
The alpha wolf of the Barking Avalanche pack, Mange, let a bit of drool dribble and crack frozen in the cold air. He jerked his head in surprise and furtively looked to see whether the pudgy man inside had heard the pop. The elf was still focused on his work table. Clear, Mange soothed himself. He pushed himself off the wall and sank his front paws back in the snow, lapping at his lip to melt the icicle until it fell off. The rest of the pack understood and looked away as he composed himself. He felt their instinctive desperation. They needed their alpha now more than ever. If their plan was going to work, not only to get into this workshop but to provide meals for their wolflings’ future, he had to pull it together.
That’s when the youngest wolf among them, just a whelp really, reared up for a peak through the window. Seeing the jerky in Nikolai’s pudgy hand, the pup lost his senses and ran to scratch madly at the door. Nikolai looked up in confusion, then bounced from his stool to answer the door. “Ho ho ho! Who’s that at my door?” he cried.
Before the bouncing elf reached the door, Mange swatted the pup away and faced off with him, preventing him from attacking Nikolai as the door swung open. Mange’s second in command, Bristlefur, rushed forward to handle the elf. Bristlefur barked and backed away from Nikolai, trying to draw him out. The juicy, delicious-looking man stared with dumb, wide eyes, not deciphering the movement. The man appeared to be as clogged in the head as his arteries were likely to be.
Judging that they were friendly wolves, Nikolai, lover of all games and play, eventually nodded, then quickly donned his coat and followed. Then he decided to go back for his gloves. One last time, he rushed back in to douse the fire with the bucket of water he had standing by. “Ho, ho, ho! Hooooooo, ho-ho!” There was nothing to lock on the log cabin door, just a latch. With long, bounding steps, he appeared to dance along with the yapping, underfed wolves, who did not eat the elf but instead, led him deep into the woods.
Chrissy Cringle, on the other hand, was a harder bone to snap. The wolves of her neighboring pack, Frosty Fang, could see her silhouette through the curtain, drawn to keep what little heat she had inside the tiny cabin. Her glowing body kept her magically warm from within and lit her way around the cabin during the near constant dark of the northern winter. Because of this ability, she only needed a little fire, for which she was grateful. It was hard for her to gather her own wood, a task usually reserved for the he-elves, who boasted more upper body strength for the axe and carrying. Her wispy form appeared as fragile as the porcelain dolls surrounding her.
Coy was the one assigned to scratch at her door. He had earned the begrudging respect of even the competing pack, Barking Avalanche, by sharing his technique of soaking tree bark in their mouths for smoother digestion. Never before had wolves been so desperate that opposing packs had to work together. The pressure urged him to be reckless, but he resisted, using a polite click-and-drag technique by way of knocking at the she-elf’s door. Chrissy, crossbow in hand, lifted the bar and let the door swing to just a slit, stopping it with her foot. When she glimpsed a few of the wolves, she immediately kicked the door to shut it.
Before the latch could fall, Coy pushed hard enough to get his muzzle caught. Chrissy’s full body blow to the door broke his snout, but, quick though she was, her slender frame didn’t carry enough momentum to prevent Coy from following through with his powerful shoulder. Her slight build resembled that of the crossbow she carried: powerful for its speed and precision, not for its bulk. Coy knocked Chrissy and the door back, allowing the others to flood the room.
Porcelain doll heads struck the floor, shattering. Her tiny wood pile scattered. Someone’s tail sizzled in the dying embers of her fireplace. Fabric, straw, wool, and fur-clothed heaps of dolls hit the floor. The crossbow fired into the ceiling as Chrissy flew backwards, and, to her amazement, she was not already dead or bleeding. The wolves had had ample opportunity to take her by the throat. Instead, their yellow eyes tracked her every shift and side step with hungry, grumpy expressions.
Chrissy had no time to reload. She put her back to the wall and took a stance, ready to defend herself by hand now, but there were so many wolves. She flailed a little, shifting her stance to interpret the small movements of wolves in her peripheral vision. She wanted to face all of them head-on, but it was impossible, even in these close quarters.
All around, yellow eyes patiently tracked her movements. The wolves stood in relaxed postures, not crouching to jump. She could not catch one of them daring to be the first to attack. They were going to take their time, Chrissy realized. She waited, turning unnaturally cold.
It occurred to her that these might be the very same wolves that had killed her parents and siblings, one at a time. Thinking of her family made her angry enough to stop waiting. She made a move to kick at the nearest wolf, but he nimbly shied out of the way and then returned exactly to his spot with a whine. She really didn’t want to be bitten, but if it was going to happen, better sooner than later, she thought! She glowed the bright red of a peppermint stick with her anger. After a few more senseless air-kicks, she melted to the floor shaking, hands over her eyes as she waited. Chrissy’s body was tense like a bow fully drawn back, ready to fire an arrow. She thought of her family members, pulled apart by wolves, and she felt a scream building up inside her as she waited for the first bite to land.
Just as Chrissy realized she was holding her breath and needed to breathe, something nudged her arm. Stunned, Chrissy risked raising her face above the level of her arms. The wolf whimpered and then looked at the door as if wanting to be let out. The door was still wide open.
He wanted her to follow, Chrissy realized. If he wasn’t planning to bite her, then how did he intend to make her follow? Chrissy crossed her arms and set her jaw. The wolf growled this time and looked to the door. She glanced around and weighed her options. Some of the wolves started out the door, but most of them stood still waiting for something. They were waiting for a sign of capitulation, it seemed.
Chrissy didn’t think they were going to attack her if she resisted, but she didn’t know how to make them leave either. They had destroyed her dolls, which she wanted to start repairing now, but that was useless, as long as the wolves were still here to knock everything over again. Perhaps these weren’t exactly the same wolves who had killed her family, she didn’t know. But Chrissy knew she wanted to be left alone. Maybe these wolves would let her work out some kind of deal? So Chrissy layered up her clothing, and walked away from everything that was familiar into the dark and cold unknown.
Remus’s Glade, as the wolves called it, was well-lit by the full moon when Chrissy and Nikolai first beheld one another. The two elves were surrounded by a sea of wolves, definitely more than one pack. This effectively prevented Nikolai from frolicking ridiculously, and it also saved Chrissy from fleeing in abject terror, glowing as she went.
Before them was a great, dark maw in the earth, like the mouth of some primordial beast opening to swallow them whole. Chrissy looked about trying to get control of the situation. The elf next to her was the first she had seen in weeks or months, she had lost track, and her first impression was that he was entirely too happy under the circumstances.
The style of his clothes told Chrissy they didn’t speak the same language: the boots, the coat, the hair cut (where was his hat?)—he was some kind of Slavic. He had a gleam in his eye that suggested he knew more than everyone else. He winked at her. Chrissy thought maybe if she spent too much time by herself, she would start to look like that, too. She had seen madness before in the isolated parts of the wild.
Chrissy looked away, trying to ignore his stare and imagine a way to help him get through this painlessly, even though she had left her crossbow at home. Suddenly, a pair of red dots appeared in the gaping hole before her. “This is it,” she muttered to herself. “This is how it ends… being torn apart next to a mad wood elf.”
The eyes in the cave grew larger as an ancient form emerged. Its oily black fur matted flat in the chilly wind of the night. With a snarl, it approached the elves. Chrissy could almost hear a cadence, as if there were grammatical structure to growls. Nikolai, in response, took off his glove and offered his hand to shake. The elder wolf slowly leaned in as if to sniff it, but with a quick jerk of his massive neck, clenched down on the hand. When the blood met the wolf’s tongue, ancient eyelids drooped indulgently for several moments before the wolf released the hand.
Nikolai was mouth-breathing, pale, and giving a worried look to Chrissy’s hand. He recovered quickly, though, and gave her another thoroughly mad wink. Something, probably a nose, nudged her elbow from behind. It was her turn.
She hesitated, not sure how to get out of this. The ancient wolf growled continuously until the situation became quite uncomfortable. Finally, the strange wood elf yanked her glove off and proffered her hand, using the arm and clenched fist of his injured hand to anchor her body to his own. She gasped when the teeth clamped down, but she had the presence of mind not to pull back and make it worse. Through the pain, she felt a tickling sensation. That greedy tongue was licking at her palm for more blood, and the wolf took what felt like minutes to finally release her.
Then, all around her, howls and yelps fired off into the air like corks from champagne bottles. She turned to face her new companion. He had switched arms to support her with his left arm, while his right hand bled. Chrissy noticed a curious thing then. He had thought to offer her left hand after forgetting to save his own dominant hand.
Somehow, he managed to pull together the same clueless, happy expression he’d had before, and he winked again. There was intelligence in his expression for just a moment, but it was gone now. Chrissy wondered what he had been like before he went mad.
The ancient wolf stepped back and stood on his hind legs, drawing Chrissy’s worried attention. Holding that posture, he barked emphatically, addressing all the wolves in the glade. For a moment, the wolves quieted so that only the whistling wind and the ancient wolf could be heard.
Both elves tried to use their gloves to staunch the blood, and they had some, if pitiful, success. But Nikolai seemed to be listening closely. The river elves, Chrissy’s kin, knew some wood elves could hear animals speak, but this was the first wood elf Chrissy had ever met.
After a short speech, the ancient wolf resumed a stance on all fours, stepped closer to the elves, and growled again. Nikolai took off his glove and nodded, reassuring Chrissy. Hesitantly, she imitated him. His right hand clasped her left one gently, blood mixing together. It sounded to Chrissy as though he were reciting a line of poetry after each growl of the wolf.
When he was done, she became acutely aware that the wolf was glaring at her, but she wasn’t sure what she had done to upset him. Nikolai tapped a gloved finger on her mouth and repeated his poem, line by line, nodding, waiting for her to repeat after him. She did her best, and it was good enough. The wolves bayed their victory at the moon in electrifying chorus.
Nikolai and Chrissy put their gloves on and pressed firmly to stop the bleeding. Then the elves ate some river-soaked tree bark offered by the wolves. Unsatisfied by their meal, cold, and confused, they elves then followed the wolves to a cave where they were apparently intended to share by themselves for the night. Chrissy discerned a few wolves keeping watch, however, at a respectful distance. Exhausted, Chrissy thought she would get sleep while she could.
But Chrissy couldn’t sleep. Aside from the occasional telltale sounds that there were wolves outside, the events of the day kept playing through her head: The wolves coming to get her and then not eating her; leaving home; the strange ceremony that took place, which, she had an odd feeling might have been a wedding; the damp tree bark feast that followed. The emotional rollercoaster kept projecting little replays onto the big screen of Chrissy’s mind, startling her awake with another turn of mood and shake of her head. After a few hours of this torture, she had to escape.
While she meditated, seated with her long, slender limbs planted in a lotus position to craft her escape plan, her odd new companion fiddled with what looked like a pinwheel. It had fallen from his pocket along with some wire. Chrissy had no idea what the wire was for, but Nikolai seemed overjoyed at the sight of it. When the wood elf saw her confusion, he tried to explain, but it was useless. He put up his good hand in a “stop” gesture, then started over.
He pointed to himself and said, “Nikolai.”
She patted her collarbone and said, “Chrissy.”
He smiled and nodded, gave her another secretive wink, and then went back to his pinwheel. He must have decided that ending that conversation so abruptly was rude, because he then turned back to her, pointed to the pinwheel and prattled on, trying to show her something. “Great,” she thought. “Maybe he was an engineer, probably a nice one too, before he went mad. What a pain.” She continued with her plotting while the wood elf blathered on.
After losing hours distracted by jabber, Chrissy was relieved to see Nikolai get up and walk to the back of the cave. Several minutes later, he returned, yammered for just a few painful minutes longer, then curled up on the floor and finally went to sleep. And with her biggest distraction out of the way, Chrissy devised a few sneaky slips that she thought would put them past the wolves and on their way back to her home before their absence was noticed. By the time the moon was just peaking over the distant mountains, Chrissy was ready to escape and take her … new … complicated relation with her before the main light source of a northern winter was lost again. But she was having trouble waking him. She knew she couldn’t carry him that far. But she couldn’t leave him here either. He was simply too innocent and joyful, precious like her dolls, and she couldn’t leave him to be broken by the wolves.
At the mouth of the cave and backlit by the moon, Mange reappeared. He was the same wolf who had led the party that collected Nikolai, and he had taken over guard around the third watch, Chrissy had noticed and then lost sight of him for a time. He seemed to have some purpose for reappearing now, which Chrissy was sure to dislike, unless he meant for them to leave this place. Snowball’s chance on a hot coal, she groused to herself.
It was time to get moving, Mange thought, regretful at what a character he would be stranding Chrissy to live with. Strolling in at a leisurely pace, he whined once to get the female elf’s attention. It worked and she backed further into the cave. Mange had to chuckle at the fact that she seemed to think having her hands up in front of her would stop him if he really wanted to get her. Which he really did, except that Nob the Ancient One had commanded him not to lick or even to sniff…
Mange stopped that thought right in its tracks. “To the task at hand,” he muttered in wolfish, which sounded like a growl to Chrissy. She took a fighting stance to defend Nikolai. Mange halted and bayed as loudly as he could. He and Chrissy froze, watching Nikolai. No reaction? Mange tried again. Still nothing. “What are you deaf?” Mange roared. He decided a different approach was necessary. Getting right up against Nikolai’s ear, Mange darted out his tongue and teased, deeply and furiously. Nikolai shot upright, but the astonished posture instantly gave way to laughter.
“Hoooooo, ho ho!”
At least he was a happy man, Chrissy thought. There was something to be said for that.
The wolf led them away from the glade. Chrissy begrudgingly realized that she was too turned around to know what direction they were heading in or which way they ought to go. She hadn’t even realized they were being watched last night. Glowing scarlet, perhaps from embarrassment, she was lit more than enough to see where her feet were going, and as the couple followed the wolf, Chrissy spotted just the sort of herbs she would need to clean and heal their wounds. She made a daring delay to pick some, while the wolf waited none too patiently. He circled her and barked. She hid her face and was about to abandon the herbs when Nikolai growled from where he stood, eyes goofily widened, then pranced on all fours in a circle around her too. It seemed to scare the enormous, mangy wolf away. Chrissy could only laugh.
She collected plenty of leaves, a heaping portion just in case of infection, wrapped them carefully in a handkerchief, and then stuffed them under her coat. The wolf, humiliated by her laughter as much as anything else, barked authoritatively and led on. His yellow eyes were bright with anger. His nostrils flared, his tail was stiff as if he were holding himself rigidly in check. To Chrissy, the wolf seemed to be sulking. Nikolai stood up, chuckled another ho-ho-ho, and threw a snowball. It barely missed Mange. When he caught back up with Chrissy, his smile suggested a joke that only he was getting. For some reason, Chrissy laughed with him and took his arm the rest of the way.
Mange led the couple to a very sturdy cabin in a wide clearing, stocked with elf food such as flour, oil, magically preserved jars of vegetables, and other foods the wolves couldn’t make use of for one reason or another. Mange reluctantly bowed and left. This, indeed, would do nicely. Chrissy set about reinforcing the place immediately. The wolves were obviously up to something, and, though she was fairly sure her companion could tell her something about it, she was equally sure that miming wouldn’t get this story across. Besides, he was intent on his pinwheel again.
She took him by the hand outside, pointed to the axe at the chopping block, and hoped for the best. Nikolai leapt for the axe and then bounded to the woods with it. Pleased with herself, Chrissy went inside to crush the herb leaves and boil them. When most of the water had boiled off, the poultice was ready.
It surprised her to find Nikolai still chopping wood. He was pretty handy with the axe, too, as Chrissy supposed you could expect from a wood elf. All wood elves had long limbs, bear-like agility and strength. They were expert climbers. Not all of them had a belly and a jolly laugh, though. Hers was the special one, that was for certain. Surprised at her own turn of thoughts, she wondered how he had become “hers” so quickly. Perhaps she was just lonely, she thought.
It had been more than an hour since she sent him out, so she had fully expected him to be making snow angels or chasing snowflakes with his tongue. Instead, he was dragging a sizable limb back to the chopping block. She hailed him with her good hand, brought him in, applied the hot poultice and bandaged it properly. Nikolai was very still for all of this.
She sent him back out when she was finished, merely pointing to the door and nodding. He gave her another wink, this time with much intelligence in his eyes. While she bandaged her own hand, she watched him through the window. He sang jolly tunes and pranced from the woods to the chopping block and back again. In time, she would discover he was like that about everything she asked him to do.
A month went by, and Chrissy found it comforting to know, without having to look or worry, that someone was there and happy. Chrissy even found herself smiling like an idiot the day he brought her a new bucket. He must have noticed how hard she was trying to get the old one really clean, so he just … made her a new one like that and brought it in with a proud smile.
Once, she cried because it had been so long since she thought of her lost family members. It was as though she had forgotten them. If only she could talk to Nikolai or someone about them, it would be different. Oh, she often talked to Nikolai, but he didn’t respond with anything more than a smile. For his part, Nikolai seemed as perfectly happy here as he was anywhere else.
He also lacked Chrissy’s desire to talk, though on a couple of occasions, he opened his mouth and started to say something, then stopped and just smiled at her. Chrissy supposed it didn’t matter much, since they didn’t speak the same language. She kind of wished he’d say something though.
Chrissy often went into the forest to look for herbs, both for cooking and for medicine, and also for paints for the dolls she’d make to keep her mind occupied. On her way back from one such trip, she spotted Nikolai just inside the tree line. “What is that strange he-elf doing now?” she muttered through an easy smile. Her happiness surprised her still, but she decided she didn’t care why she was happy. She put her haul down on the cabin porch and skipped lightly toward him.
As she got closer, she saw that he was petting something. “Is that… is that a reindeer? Papa thought they’d all been eaten by the wolves!” She advanced towards them too quietly, it appeared, for she overheard something she was not supposed to. “Is he talking to it?” she muttered too loudly. “Not only can this elf understand wolfish, but he can talk to reindeer, too?” She felt left out, jealous, … abused… and a mess of other things on her way to confront Nikolai with the reindeer. Her renewed footsteps were determined, and Nikolai must have sensed the danger now, for he turned with a guilty expression.
“I can explain,” he said plainly in her own language.
Chrissy stopped.
Both Nikolai and the reindeer winced. Nikolai hadn’t even spoken with an accent that Chrissy could detect. The reindeer snorted and turned back toward the pines. Nikolai nodded in apparent agreement with that snort and patted the shoulder of the animal with reassurance.
“So, go on. Explain,” Chrissy dared.
“I didn’t speak your language when I first met you.”
“Explain.”
“I—” he sighed deeply, “I read minds.” He gazed into her eyes at first, but his eyes drifted up to her forehead.
Chrissy realized that his eyes had done that before, and she’d disregarded it as a further sign of madness. No wonder he hadn’t told her before. She couldn’t think around him without … Ugh. This was not okay.
The reindeer, a good lumbering distance away now, broke into a run and was airborne without apparent explanation. Chrissy’s eyes darted, involuntarily searching for wings in the starlight.
“Ghost of Christmas Past!” Chrissy shouted.
“No, it’s a reindeer. I taught them all to fly. The ones that are still alive.”
“You taught the reindeer to fly?” Chrissy derided.
“Yeah, I felt sorry for them. There are so many wolves around. Now the reindeer can graze from the canopy.”
Chrissy closed her eyes. “So, to sum up, you teach animals to fly, read minds, learn languages while reading minds, hide from me that you are both reading my mind and able to speak my language, make me think you’re an idiot by leaping around like a madman,” she paused having ticked through all the fingers on one hand, but warned him with raised eyebrows that if she wasn’t so rabid, she’d remember more things to accuse him of for sure.
“It’s easier to pretend I don’t know anything at all.” He offered out both arms, as if they were holding a large gift box with a fragile bow on top. “It’s hard trying to remember what I’m supposed to know and not react to what I accidentally heard. In this case, it was definitely the safest thing to do for a while. The wolves think I’m an idiot, that you’re weighed down by me and unable to leave here. They want to wait until spring, when they think we’ll have a litter to eat.”
Chrissy contorted her face as waves of unpleasant images appeared, but she forcefully blocked out images of her own family members.
“I’m sorry. I agree, the wolves are despicable. But the truth is, we can fly away whenever you’d like. And if you want to be rid of me, you can be, just like that,” he promised.
“I’ve been so lonely,” she moaned, putting aside the question of whether she wanted Nikolai around or not. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Nikolai partially restrained himself from moving towards her, shuffling his feet instead. “I know. I wanted to… At first, it seemed like you wanted a little distance between us, and … after a while, it was just hard to find a way to start the conversation.” Hands offered up that explanation too, as though to granny-toss a dusty snowball. Chrissy imagined it was the kind of snowball that collapses midair into tiny particles that completely, nastily soak the recipient.
Chrissy, always warm-blooded enough to melt a snowball of any variety, glowed a little rosier with her indignation. She was too mad to accept. Without a word, she turned on heel, took what she needed from the house, accidentally abandoned her bundle on the porch, and marched towards her home. She had gotten reoriented and had been debating whether to bring Nikolai on a trip to gather some of her old belongings for over a week now. This saved some effort.
She stormed away on what, a few stomps later, she realized was the darkest day of the year, winter solstice. At least the moon was close to full again. She only had another three days with it, so getting lost could be fatal. Magical lighting and warmth would only last her so long. Her thoughts reverberated, and it seemed that something else was echoing as well.
She stopped. The footsteps behind her stopped on surprised half-steps. He could read minds, but the jolly goofball couldn’t react as quickly as she acted. Nikolai was back there, trying to synchronize steps with Chrissy so she wouldn’t notice him. The she-elf turned, searching the darkness for him. It was the magical gleam in his eye that made him so irritating. “GO BACK!” she shouted.
“I can’t let you go alone,” he said.
She began rummaging through her load, which he took as a sign that she needed help carrying it, until he processed the picture-thought he was seeing in her head. She was looking for something to throw at him. Something hard.
“Ok, ok. Ok.” He let her go. It wouldn’t help anything if he cost her the few supplies she had remembered to take. But really, what did she think this whole thing was about? As soon as he found out from the wolves that there was a female elf living alone because they’d eaten her whole family, he went to go help her. He could only glean a few details about her from the wolves thoughts, but it had been enough to make him compassionate.
No, if he was really being honest, what he had understood from the wolves’ thoughts had already made him curious about her. And then he had gotten in way over his head. This was a sad way for the story to end. Nikolai didn’t just feel sad, though. There was a weight on his chest as though he had lost something precious. What a stubborn, difficult female elf she was.
Two and a half days later, when Chrissy made it to her cabin, she set her things on the floor where everything else was scattered and broken thanks to the wolves, barred the door, and allowed herself a long overdue cry. As she slid down the door, she pointed out to herself that this time of year was good for sleeping. And she completely lost track of the hours that passed.
When she decided she was fine again, the first thing on her mind was repairing the shattered dolls’ faces. That meant she would have to find her papa’s glue. She hoped there was enough. Dyes, paints, finish … Glue! She didn’t know how Papa made the glue, so this was the last she would have, unless she found instructions somewhere around the house, which wasn’t likely.
She glowed a little brighter to get a good look at the glue lid, chipped it off with a knife and stuck a carefully pointed stick down into it. The stick stopped at the shiny surface. She jabbed again and again, disbelieving as the stick pranced and cavorted, mocking her rather than submerging itself in gunk. The glue had hardened into something roughly resembling the hoof it had come from. She couldn’t repair her dolls.
Her heart sank as if this was the final blow she couldn’t handle. There was no more porcelain either. This was all she had to keep her occupied during the winter months. A resolute spirit checked her weary thoughts. She set her stick and glue down and put her head on a pillow to wait for spring. She still had plenty of food. So she didn’t have anything to do. Would it kill her?
She was not going back. Besides, it wouldn’t be safe to travel far until the next two weeks of moonlight cycled around, she hedged, reasoning with herself. Two weeks of this wouldn’t kill her, but she was already beginning to realize that she would miss Nikolai every day of those two weeks. Would he still be there? Why would he still be there—he probably went back to his own home, and she didn’t know where that was. Of course, he could fly wherever he wanted to! He could be on the moon already.
Chrissy curled herself into a ball on the bed. “Yellow snow,” she cursed as she cried into her pillow.
Three taps at the door. “Chrissy, it’s me. Let me fix the glue, ok? Please?” He sounded harassed and tired.
Chrissy wanted to move faster, but she was stiff and cold, because she hadn’t moved much after her long trek. Everything seemed to happen in slow motion. Even so, she could feel herself springing back to life. She checked her hair first. “Where would we go?” she asked, whipping the door out of the way. “To get away from the wolves, I mean. Are there more people up here somewhere?” Chrissy saw two reindeer at a wary distance eyeing her.
Nikolai stepped inside and replaced the bar. “No. My family moved south. My parents were too old and wanted to live somewhere easier, where they wouldn’t have to outwit wolves to get by. My siblings are powerful elves, too, and they decided to move to the warmer, more populous forests, where they could be more useful. I stayed here because… I’m the only one in my family who reads minds. It’s too…invasive and irritating. It doesn’t belong around people. And it tired me out, if I’m being honest. So, perhaps the best thing for me to do is move you south. And once I’ve seen you to safety, I’ll go back to the way things were for me here.”
“Hey, I live up here too, you know. The materials I use for making my dolls are all up here. Now that I know the reindeer can fly, I can restock my supplies and live in peace. I’m perfectly content to stay where I know how to live. My family is buried here—” her voice broke. Nikolai dropped his eyes in a gesture to give her space. But it was just that, a gesture, since he was seeing inside her mind. Surprisingly, Chrissy didn’t mind. And when she realized that, Nikolai also took her hand, nodding. Chrissy liked that far too much. Her jaw set, and she withdrew her hand to cross her arms, declaring, “The North Pole is my home, too.”
Nikolai strode past her to the smooth, gray stone of the fireplace and examined the glue. Satisfied, he set it down and stoked the fire. Chrissy joined him—only for the warmth and to learn more about glue, she told herself. She would never have stoked the fire this high, because she couldn’t keep up with collecting the wood. Feeling guilty, she realized he had been outside this whole time, and he wasn’t the elf who could glow himself warm again. Nikolai said nothing, not even giving away that he could hear these thoughts churning.
He held the glue a short distance over the fire, turning it to heat evenly until he could stir it up for her with some added snow. Then, he helped hand her pieces of a doll head to glue back together. When they had one doll’s head whole again and carefully propped to dry, they both sat back to observe it peacefully. Chrissy was happy. And she was unhappy that she was happy. She shouldn’t be happy with Nikolai.
Nikolai shrugged his shoulders and said, “Well, technically, we are married,” as if that explained everything.
Both of them burst with laughter. Playfully, she tapped his arm with her fist, and a sharp pang reminded her that her hand was still not completely healed from the bite. His ho-ho-hoing was infectious, though. It was hard to stay mad at him.
“You want to take a trip and get out of the North Pole for a night?” He sounded doubtful. “It’s Christmas tomorrow, so I thought we should do something special. There’s this thing I do every year—my way of connecting with the world—I’d like to show you.”
“Sure, as long as it’s nothing illegal,” Chrissy joked.
Nikolai looked uncomfortable. “We won’t get caught,” he evaded. Chrissy’s next reaction prompted him to explain further, “I’m a very good climber. I use the chimney to break in and get out. You’ll be on my back. It’s fine!”
Chrissy decided to give Nikolai the benefit of a doubt and just let him show her what he meant. Now that he was talking, she wanted to keep him from feeling defensive and attacked, so she let it go. In fact, since she had him talking now, it occurred to Chrissy that she had been wondering, “Hey, what did the black wolf say—do you know when I mean?—” she tried to picture the moment from her viewpoint in hopes that it would help.
Nikolai started to speak–.
“When he was up on his hindlegs?” she clarified. “What was that?”
“He—are you sure you want to know this?”
She nodded.
“Well, it’s hard to translate, but it’s sort of—he was describing how our blood tasted, and—”
“Oh, nevermind!”
“No, this actually is important, now that I think of it. It’s just hard to translate right. He said that together we tasted like kabobs, but that’s not really what he meant.”
“Cracked ice!” Chrissy exclaimed.
“No, what he meant was that somehow, he knows we’re going to have short elflings.” He widened his eyes to make Chrissy believe he wasn’t joking. “Always. Every one of our elflings, if we … have elflings… will be about waist-high and pudgy, and they will never grow tall. It’s something in our blood combined. He was warning the other wolves that there would be a lot of them, but they’ll all be snack-sized.” Nikolai winced. “I mean, to the wolves, they will seem snack-sized. You know they brought us together with hopes that we would produce food for them, right?”
“Are you kidding?”
“I wish I was, Chrissy. I wish I was.”
“I love little elflings,” she said simply.
“Me too,” Nikolai said with a shrug.
Chrissy couldn’t believe she’d just—maybe—agreed to have elflings with this strange wood elf. “Never call our children snack-sized again,” she ordered.
“Understood,” Nikolai agreed.
Nikolai showed Chrissy how to steer a flying reindeer sleigh on their first date and then, gradually, Nikolai moved Chrissy and everything they found useful to his family’s home. There was some equipment at his home that would be hard to move, and he used the workshop daily. They could always take a flight to visit her family’s graves, but Chrissy found that it didn’t need to be every day.
Chrissy assumed firm authority over the main house, while Nikolai spent longer and longer hours in his workshop. He popped into the house to show her a new toy or to have lunch together. The reindeer stopped in to see her, too, since she discovered they had a sweet tooth. They plainly understood what she said, so, while she couldn’t have a philosophical debate with them, she could voice a concern and expect results within hours. If she told them she was lonely, Nikolai would stay after lunch all the way until dinner without fail. Some days, she just needed to see more of him.
Today, he appeared for lunch with several new toys, prepared for just such a long afternoon away from the workshop. There was a dollhouse for some of her dolls. It went without saying that she wanted to paint it herself, so he put the dollhouse to the left of the fireplace, where she kept her paint and brushes. Chrissy had never seen a ring-toss game before, so, while lunch was still warming in the pot, Nikolai set up an indoor ring-toss with penguin targets. The low points were for landing the beaks of penguins that were looking up at the sky. Next higher points were for the beaks facing forward. The highest points were for landing a wing flapped out to the side.
Around Chrissy’s pregnant belly, Nikolai tried to show her how to throw, but they both realized quickly that this was not going to be one of her special skills. She could paint a penguin, and it appeared she would be painting several soon, but she would never land a ring on one, unless Nikolai did it himself around her hands. He accidentally pushed her forward along with the ring, and the two of them staggered laughing. He caught her easily, but he was in no hurry to let go, so they staggered a few more steps and ended up in front of a window. That hideous lawn ornament of a laughing wolf outside made Chrissy roll her eyes involuntarily. She was going to have to talk him out of that thing somehow.
“Look!” Nikolai pointed, and, to Chrissy’s horror, there was a wolf approaching the lawn ornament.
“That’s not a good thing, Nikolai. Are you joking?” It was impossible to stay mad at him. He just held her closer.
“Just watch,” he urged with a smile in his voice. She smiled too, rolling her eyes at herself this time. The wolf sniffed the air and cowered. Still determined to approach, he flexed his back for a long, threatening bristle and stepped up like a cowboy, legs bowed from a long day in the saddle. It was going to be a shootout. Him or the lawn ornament. They could not both reside on the North Pole.
The lawn ornament blithely sat on his haunches with a pinwheel dangling from his front paw, mouth agape in laughter. When the wind picked up, spinning the pinwheel and the wire leading up to the faux-wolf’s paw, Nikolai snickered. “Watch!”
All of a sudden, the lawn ornament’s eyes lit up, and it fired a little lightning bolt from its mouth. The wolf yelped despite the fact that the bolt landed nowhere near him, and he fled, tail between his legs, never to return. Chrissy was trying to process what she had just seen and where the lightning bolt had come from, when the spinning pinwheel caught her eye. She would always associate pinwheels with the first time she met Nikolai and assumed he was mentally incompetent. He had not turned out to be incompetent, but he had been studying that pinwheel on their first night as a “married” couple in the cave. It appeared that Nikolai was powering toys with a pinwheel. All he needed help with was aim, and Chrissy thought she could help with that. A few reindeer landed to offer nods of congratulations before ambling on about their business. They had more than enough reason to maintain proximity to the Klaus residence.
“Good job, honey.” Chrissy rotated within the hold of Nikolai’s arms to kiss him. There would be plenty of time to work on aim some other day, she thought loudly, not wanting Nikolai to read the thought and put her to work today. “Taught him a thing or two, huh?” She looked back out the window at the beautiful summer landscape. The view from this house was extravagant. There were mountains in the distance, a glistening lake, the woods, and, at this time of year, unyielding sunshine. A new, sadder thought occurred to her. “You know, they’re not the only ones we should be afraid of,” Chrissy said.
“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about how to keep humans from wandering up this way. The winter is one thing, but summers, everyone would want to be here, if they found it. I can’t see how to stop them from making their way up here eventually.”
Chrissy thought about it for a moment. Snorting, she said, “What if you could spell it to look like a barren wasteland of nothing but snow and miles-thick ice year-round? In the winter, it’s just a dark barren wasteland, and the summer would only be a little better.” She laughed out loud. “Elves would see through it, but humans couldn’t.”
She was still laughing when Nikolai chuckled, “Yeah, maybe.” Then his eyes widened on a gasp, as if a lightbulb had turned itself on in his genius brain. Nikolai nodded more deeply and said it again, “Maybe.”
THE END
Many thanks to Dave for his awesome contributions to this stand-alone story. I had a blast writing it, and I hope you all enjoyed it, too!
Merry Christmas and a Happy 2025 to all!