Peppermint and I both lived in the same building designed for singles, so it just made sense to walk home together, but the walk was a somber one. Finding out that Father Christmas was ill had really knocked the cinnamon out of my hot cocoa, so to speak.
As we crunched through the inch of snow that had accumulated since the plow last cleared the sidewalk, Peppermint offered her thoughts. “It’s like the ledgerkin want to control people’s behavior, the same way Father Christmas has so much control.”
“Not the same way,” I said, scandalized but not sure why I thought it was so different.
“Sure it is. Father Christmas has decided that either you’re nice, or else you’re naughty. The ledgerkin don’t agree with that exactly. They think you either follow the rules or you’re naughty. Still, the amount of control is the same. Some people get presents, and other people don’t,” Peppermint reasoned.
“Which rules, and who makes them up?” I asked. From what I’d observed, Beetle just liked rules and might continue making them up in order to have more and more control. Meanwhile, Father Christmas allowed for millions of ways to be Nice, and he rewarded them all.
Peppermint shrugged. “I’m just saying, I understand the need to feel some sense of control.”
And I understood, too. If I wasn’t afraid of losing control and being punished, I’d turn over what we already knew to the security office. I acknowledged her point silently and then thought aloud, “We need to know how the poison was delivered. Then we can narrow down our suspects. We’ve really just discovered how suspicious all ledgerkin appear to be, but what we need is hard evidence. Once we have that, hopefully, we can distract security from the fact that we briefly withheld evidence and ran tests on a patient without authorization.”
“Not a bad thought,” Peppermint said, evidently trying to find fault with my logic. She tilted her head, causing her hair stripes to fall out of their neat lines. “Now that I know what I’m looking for, I can do at home tests, much less expensive, in my kitchen.”
“OK, sounds good. What do you want to test? I’ll fetch some samples.”
In response, Peppermint stopped at the entrance to our building and gave a sly grin. When she unzipped her bag, what I saw made my mouth pop into an O shape. This was why her bag had seemed heavier as the day went on. Tapping a container with small snack compartments, she said, “This one is samples from the galley.” Gesturing at some individually wrapped items, “These are from a vending machine.” A short thermos held, “A sample from the snow conversion facility.” She finished with a resounding note of triumph.
“When did you collect all that?” I asked, wondering how I could have missed it.
Peppermint swiped her card and led the way into our building. “Eggnog, you’re sweet like powdered sugar, but I put the pepper in Peppermint.” She gave a feral smile and swivelled her hips like a dancer up the stairs.
“Spice Girl, huh? Well, I sure am glad you’re on my side.” And I meant it. I was seeing Peppermint in a whole new light.
“What do you mean, Spice Girl? You’re a hot thing, too, girl! You had Rudolph eating out of your hand. Are you going to go out with him?” Peppermint seemed to expect a response to that ambush of a question, but I was too embarrassed. I thought the answer was probably no, but I couldn’t say why.
“Maybe?”
Peppermint must have picked up on my discomfort. “Anyway, girl, it’s going to take so long to run all these tests. Would you help me run some of them?”
“Sure, and I’ll bring some of Mrs. Klaus’s cookies for testing as well,” I said with a wink.
“Are we testing that they still taste as good?” Peppermint guessed, laughing. “Stuff some snow in this thermos while you’re out,” she ordered, rummaging in her cupboard to pull out the one she wanted.
Part of me wanted to just assume that ledgium wasn’t in the snow, but then what if it was? Peppermint was right to at least test it, since we had no idea what the source of contamination was. She faced me, and I indicated that I was open from the doorway. Peppermint playfully passed the container like a football. I held it in a forearm carry, hunched over it, and grinned as I toed her door shut behind me.
***
Fortified by Mrs. Klaus’s cookies, I survived the mini-explosions that indicated a positive test result for a heavy metal. Then I ate the snack items from the vending machine, because those resulted negative with no explosive light show. Mostly, I did everything Peppermint told me to do, and thank the Ghosts of Christmas she had me wear a lab coat and goggles, designed in a peppermint stripe of course. But I was never prepared for blasts with green flashes of light, which, by the way, all looked exactly the same.
I wasn’t sure what the point was, testing all of these things when basically everything–lettuce from the Galley, coffee, and even Mrs. Klaus’s cookies–flagged positive for containing the toxic metal. So far, the vending machine snacks and the raw, fresh snow from the quad had been our only negative results. And I’d already eaten so many of those possibly magical cookies. I sipped at the peppermint-flavored hot cocoa–a fresh batch made using the snow–and steadied myself on the pervasive, not unpleasant scent of peppermint in the apartment. It was nice to focus on that, rather than dwelling on Graham’s seizure, which had been caused by ledgium built up in his brain. Ledgium that all of us were consuming without knowing it. And how had ledgium come to contaminate so much of NP?
Maybe I was impaired by lack of sleep. I’d been staying up to read the books Graham last checked out of the library, trying to find connections and to guess what he saw in them. If it was true that ledgerkin were trying to punish the naughty and control what is considered “nice,” I got a whiff of that abusive flavor from The Little Match Girl. The story about the grinch was obvious enough, in that I suspected the ledgerkin of attempting to steal Christmas. Most confusing of all, the murder mystery suggested that our seeming-to-be-accidental murder was for financial gain, and I couldn’t figure out how the ledgerkin would profit from this scheme no matter how I looked at it. They would gain power over the Naught and Nice List, but then what? Maybe Graham really wasn’t all there in the end, and no answers were to be found in his final reads. Duh.
“Alright, last one,” Peppermint said, turning to the sample she’d been boiling from her tap water.
“What for? Are we going to learn something new?” I couldn’t help the despondent tone.
Peppermint tipped the remaining water out and swabbed the bottom of the pan with a clean wire loop, and then lit it over the gas burner. POP! I instinctively ducked below counter height to shield myself. That was a bigger, brighter burst than all the others.
“We sure did,” Peppermint answered, watching me recover myself. She looked as perfectly poised and powdered now as she did before we began. “Did you see that?”
I checked myself out for scorch marks from flying embers. “I sure did, and the lesson I took from it – was never to do that again.”
“Wrong!” she shouted, bouncing on her toes. “We learned that the concentration is the highest in the water. I can’t get exact figures like this–I would need an ion-selective electrode for that–, but we tested for ledgium in similar sized volumes of samples for exactly this purpose. The Galley food was contaminated, yes, and Mrs. Klaus’s cookies, sure. But with this test, we can safely conclude that the source of contamination is inside Snow Conversion. The bigger pop indicated a greater amount of the metal was present and therefore a higher concentration.”
“Why don’t we just get an ion-what-did-you-say-thing?” I asked. “It would be nice to go to security with numbers rather than theories.”
“They’re too expensive, but look! So pretty!!” She pulled up a picture on her phone, and I saw the price below it. She was right about it being expensive.
“So we need to take a closer look at everyone who works at Snow Conversion, the whole process,” I mused. Since the snow was negative for ledgium and water appeared to be the source of contamination, the next logical step would be checking out the scooping machines that bring snow to the hatches, where it gets pulled inside for melting, adding fluoride and so on at Snow Conversion. For all we knew, the scoopers were made of an alloy that included ledgium. Or the hatches in our wall could be contaminated somehow. We were women on a mission, and we would pinpoint the source of the contamination! Somehow. Without raising suspicion and getting ourselves killed if this was actually happening on purpose, as Graham suspected.
Most conveniently, I held a collateral duty as one of the community health nurses, tasked with ensuring a safe, healthy environment for all residents of NP. I was sure there was a way to spin this as belonging to my purview, if I just left out the part of the story where Graham’s illicitly run labs led to the whole investigation. I was going to come out of this without any dings on my record after all. In NP, any semblance of wrongdoing on the part of a healthcare provider held the potential to cause a ‘loss of confidence’ in our small community, so I’d lose my license to practice here. Effectively, I’d have to choose a new career or move to the human world–think ear surgery and liquidating most of my belongings for gold to exchange as currency–and painstakingly earning a human nursing license. Offenses were costly.
“We need someone working inside of the facility,” Peppermint concluded, mentally leaping ahead of me while she tapped her little felt shoe. “Nutmeg.”
I guessed that she wasn’t talking about the spice. “Who?”
“My cousin. He drifts some, and he’d be easy to convince. Either he’ll pick it up as a second job, or we’ll get lucky and find him between jobs. Nutmeg can do this. This will work,” Peppermint nodded for emphasis. “I’ll have him meet me here before work tomorrow,” she decided. “Meanwhile, I’ll see what jobs are open.”
“Well, why can’t I just inspect the snow conversion facility and find it myself?” I asked. It felt almost like Peppermint was slowing down the investigation on purpose.
“Our best bet at finding something is not while inspecting or searching but just being part of the fabric of the place. Anything more aggressive could cause a cover up and loss of evidence. I really think Nutmeg is our best bet at solving this. It’s the best shot for everyone here in NP,” she added. Sadly, I was also thinking of myself first, so I could hardly fault her.
I sighed, hoping I wouldn’t regret this. “See you tomorrow?” I asked, meaning that I wanted to meet Nutmeg.
“See you then.” Peppermint beamed a smile at me. I interpreted that exaggerated smile as gratitude for not making her deal with the problem of her cousin all by herself. The smile made me wonder what sort of person Nutmeg was.
***
He turned out to be a real playboy. Nutmeg met with us in Peppermint’s kitchen the following morning with two full Santa-style brown bags–all of his worldly possessions, no doubt. He had been squatting at a girlfriend’s house with no intention of marrying her. She was either independently wealthy or she had serious issues to be putting up with him for a boyfriend. “I think Marshmallow was about to kick me out anyway. Can I stay with you for a while?” Nutmeg asked without directing himself to either me or Peppermint. It was unclear who he thought was going to let him crash indefinitely, but we were standing in Peppermint’s kitchen. Plus, it was her cousin and her idea.
“I saw this coming,” Peppermint said, “But there’s an easy solution.” She turned her laptop to show the NP Job Opening’s page.
“What’s that?” He looked skeptical, furrowing a handsome brow at the screen. He was used to getting his way with females. This was complicated, his brow seemed to mutter.
“The job comes with a room. You sleep at the Snow Conversion facility–earning extra money for it.” She rubbed her fingers against her thumb in the universal gesture for cash. “You listen for the klaxon that indicates trouble with snow conversion overnight. If it goes off, you get overtime!” At this, she stopped to give him a jaw-dropped, wide-eyed look. “And best of all, you get guy friends to share your space with. It’s been a while since you got a break from having to make some she-elf happy,” Peppermint tried to sell it. But in my head, I was thinking that Nutmeg never actually tried to make a she-elf happy. Either the lady was happy for her own reasons – or not. It didn’t affect his behavior at all, and it barely scratched his mood. It did, however, relocate him on a regular basis.
Nutmeg seemed lost in thought, as if trying to imagine it. “I guess,” he consented. He could see it was the best offer he’d be getting right now, and there was always quitting once he found another gullible she-elf in a bar. Maybe he just needed the cash influx. Whatever the reason, he shrugged and said, “I’m in.”
Then Peppermint told him why he was really going to the Snow Conversion facility.
I couldn’t tell you what I expected. Questions, maybe? But all Nutmeg did was shrug again. “Okay?”
“So you’ll help us?” I squinted my eyes at him, as if to read his mind.
“Honestly, you two sound like you belong on a psych ward.” Well, that smarted for a number of reasons beginning with the fact that I don’t condone intolerance towards mental illness. He continued, “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, but I don’t expect to find anything. Still, it sounds like it might be an okay job.” And Peppermint had saved him from having to search for one on his own. He left his bags in Peppermint’s kitchen and tried to leave for an interview with the foreman wearing tousled hair, a peasant shirt, and stretchy flannel leggings.
“Whoa!” Peppermint said. “Let’s make sure you get this okay job.” And she set to work on his appearance, while I cooked breakfast for us all using snow I’d collected myself.
***
Everything we heard from Nutmeg was boring and uneventful for days. The time stretched on, and I kept thinking about Father Christmas sick. Who knew what other health damage was incurred by all the elves of NP? I couldn’t keep sitting on this. I knew why Graham died, and I knew others could die, too.
Peppermint kept reminding me that we didn’t have enough to convict the ledgerkin on our own yet, and if security handled it badly, the ledgerkin would only destroy any other evidence we might have found. Peppermint was really becoming irritating. Her whole plan to get insider information through Nutmeg had sounded better in the beginning. It was taking too long.
One day, I felt I couldn’t wait any longer, and I wasn’t going to ask Peppermint’s permission, either. I felt a little bad about that, but how long could we wait? So I got ready for work while mentally planning to invoke my collateral duty, and it just happened that instead, before I left my flat, an order arrived tasking me with a surprise inspection on the very unit I had planned to visit, the Snow Conversion facility.
The stocking over my electric fireplace waved like a draft had moved it, and then a yellow piece of scroll popped out the top and floated to me. This level of magic used to be routine, especially for elves closer to the top echelons, but I hadn’t seen the stocking work in a while. It was mostly a decoration. I clutched the glittery parchment in my hands, reading it twice to ensure that it was intended for me, and then I stuffed it into my pocket. It was comforting to know that someone out there was healthy enough to keep to the old ways, though. I wondered who had sent the missive. It wasn’t signed, but the stocking knew, and there was enough magic–I could sense it–for a reply to go out on the residual energy. Very thoughtful of them.
The time appointed on my orders was in the middle of my shift on the inpatient ward. When I showed up and asked for the foreman, he greeted me briskly and proceeded to some meeting that he decided not to reschedule. And that’s how I found out I’d be inspecting his facility without him. I thought it was typical of an elf-man to be so over-confident. Since he would be unavailable for a debrief, the debrief would come as an email with his supervisors carbon copied, and we’d see whether he liked that natural consequence of his own choices. He would probably blame me, as if he had given me a choice.
So there I was in my scrubs with Nutmeg, the lowest man on the totem pole, who had been tasked with unlocking doors and guiding me through the Snow Conversion facility. He smiled his sugar cube whites at me and nearly distracted me from my task, making small talk about what he’d been doing and how surprised he was to like the work. There were some dirty areas along the way, some cluttered areas that created obstacles to safety items like the fire extinguisher, some expired materials, the typical stuff you find on any surprise inspection. I noted it all and the rooms where I’d found the infractions. At the tour’s end, Nutmeg and I stood on the catwalk over the facility, when I realized that below us, there was still one more door Nutmeg hadn’t opened.
“What’s in there?” I asked, pointing.
“Not sure, let’s find out,” Nutmeg said, flashing me that smile again and sounding happy for the excuse to snoop around. I was offering Nutmeg the excitement of opening a locked door free of consequences, which I suppose was a nice break in his routine. He led the way in denim coveralls and knee-high waterproof boots. Both of us were wearing hard hats. I knew we were breaking into someone’s office, but at least later I could answer absolutely that I had checked out every space, even if I only checked this one out from the doorway. I had no intention of rifling through someone’s things.
Nutmeg held the door open, and I popped my head in to do a quick visual scan of the room. It was indeed some kind of small workroom for one person or maybe two. There was some lab equipment on a long work table. The floor looked clean enough. I didn’t care whether it was perfect. But then something I’d seen snagged my attention, tripped a red flag in my head, and forced my eyes to swivel back. Something wasn’t right. There were several shorter aprons that looked to be the right size for children perhaps, or, I realized belatedly, ledgerkin, and then a normal, adult-sized apron striped in like a candy cane with a matching set of striped goggles on a wall post.
“Huh,” Nutmeg said. “Why would Peppermint bother getting me a job here, if she was already an insider herself?”
Hearing those words grounded me, gave me the impetus to cross the room and hold the apron in my hands. When I caught a whiff of peppermint from the clothing, I knew I was holding my friend’s apron. She had a lab here in the Snow Conversion facility. It looked like she was set up to test ledgium levels. The piece of equipment I saw on the long work table looked a lot like an Ion-Selective Electrode–maybe it was the one Peppermint had shown me on a store website–to measure concentration levels exactly. Was this new in the past couple of days? Maybe this was one of her collateral duties. Maybe there was a good explanation. After all, she had acted like she didn’t know what ledgium was, when I first texted her about it.
“We might want to leave,” Nutmeg said, at once upgrading my estimation of his intelligence and causing me to raise an eyebrow with my unasked question. I was still clutching the apron that was causing me a stomachache, but Nutmeg, he looked antsy. “I–just have a bad feeling about this. If Peppermint is up to something, we’d better go,” he repeated.
At that, I did toss the apron on the work table and tap my foot in imitation, I realized, of my best friend. That stopped my toe cold. “Has Peppermint done things … underhanded, mean, sneaky… before?” I struggled to ask.
I hardly registered the nosy little ledgerkin who popped her head in to scowl at us. The door snicked shut just then, and the lock bolt heavily slammed home. Nutmeg and I were trapped.
Nutmeg tested the latch and threw his bulky shoulder into the door a few times. I remained frozen in disbelief until he thumped on the door and yelled for help. Somehow, his reaction made this whole scenario real to me. My mind returned to my body, and I started to deal with the situation.
If Nutmeg couldn’t get through the door, neither could I. So it was time to sort out what Peppermint was doing, why, and what she would likely try to do with us. “Nutmeg, what is it you’re not telling me? Has Peppermint done something like this before?”
Nutmeg sighed. “Peppermint just seems to get her way. I can’t say I know she did something wrong before. My sister Holly had a hunch, noticed a pattern, but there was no proof to be found. What she did with my sister, though, it gives you an idea of what Peppermint can be like. OK, so,” he sighed again, gathering his thoughts apparently. “At the turn of the century, when Santa reviews candies for the WinterFest Award and makes the winning candy the Christmas Candy for that century?”
I nodded for him to go on.
“Peppermint volunteered to help organize the event, like most of the contestants. They all pitch in. But Peppermint nosed her way into things that weren’t her job. She berated people for the way they did things until they gave up and tweaked their plan to suit her. For example, they switched up the order of presentation, so that my sister’s Peanut Butter Bark fell in between tropical Skittles candy bars and Reindeer Corn Muffins.”
I wrinkled my nose. That didn’t sound nice, when you put it all in a row like that.
“Peppermint’s candy canes stayed in the top three–a classic, they said–, and Holly was foiled again. She loves peanut butter bark.” He sighed again, and I couldn’t help but wonder whether there was more to the story.
“Is there more?”
Nutmeg grimaced. “It’s stupid.” I raised my eyebrows and shrugged as if to remind him that we weren’t busy. “Holly tried to point out what Peppermint had done, and it mainly backfired. Holly lost some friends. I don’t know whether there were any consequences for Peppermint. But my sister… she stopped making candy. It was too sad for her. Who can spread joy, when the world is full of bullies? And nothing we do can convince her that she’s surrounded by people who love her. It really got to her, changed her personality.”
“Wait a second! Your sister did manage something! I think this is why Peppermint still works in the lab doing a routine job,” I realized aloud. And that was why Peppermint harbored resentment. Family! Always complicated! I wondered whether some family heartbreak had anything to do with why Nutmeg was such a drifter.
My head whipped toward the door, when the loud lock tumbled. Peppermint stepped into view first. “So, you found me out. Sorry for the wild penguin chase.” She gave a rueful smile, and it reminded me so much of the friend I was losing. It was hard to recognize my friend in this strange she-elf.
“Who’s your friend?” I pointed at the ledgerkin, locking the door behind her, the same ledgerkin who had locked up Nutmeg and me, presumably at Peppermint’s request.
“Pear.” And that just figured, because no one likes pears. They’re the cheap part of a Christmas fruit basket. The texture is weird. The pits are poisonous. And … yes, just like that human saying about disasters, things had gone pear-shaped when this ledgerkin showed up. It’s possible I wrinkled my nose at Pear, which was, in hindsight, kind of shallow of me.
The ledgerkin noticed, unfortunately. “We don’t have to make you an offer at all,” the unpleasant creature snarled.
“She’s my friend,” Peppermint said firmly. But the ledgerkin was staring at me the way a lion eyes a gazelle it intends to chase. I tore my eyes from the ledgerkin, so I could focus on what Peppermint was saying. “Eggnog, I’ve given our differences some thought. Your main concern is the sick people, right? You’re a nurse, and you want to help.”
“Well, yes, since there’s so little I can do for Graham now, not to mention his grieving family. If I can heal the living, it’s what I do.” I couldn’t see where she was going with this. She was the one making everyone sick, including me. I was having a hard time understanding her concept of friendship.
“So you’ll monitor them. When they need cheloglycan–that’s the binding agent to remove excess ledgium from the body–you can sneakily administer it, pretending that it’s something else. Maybe you can start a business selling a tonic that restores elves’ magic,” Peppermint offered. She wasn’t paying enough attention to Pear, who was shaking his head. The ledgerkin wouldn’t allow elves to get our magic back. The ledgerkin would be watching, too.
But that wasn’t really the point. The ledgerkin had no conscience. A Security elf was already dead, because they were covering their tracks. Father Christmas was very sick and might die, too. I had already gone deeper into this than I intended. My resolve was strengthening in a direction that wasn’t going to do me any personal favors.
“They’ll lose faith in your goodwill. They’ll take your nursing license. You’ll be ruined.” Peppermint’s voice was cold like a falling icicle. She was right. I was through. But it was either now or after I was even more guilty and more deserving of ruin.
“Fine. But I’m not helping these creatures on purpose. I’ve already helped them by accident, and it stops here, no matter what they do to me.” My gaze settled on Pear to discover his plan, and it occurred to me that Nutmeg hadn’t made a sound in some time. Without moving my head and drawing attention to him, I just listened, and I couldn’t sense where he was.
The short ledgerkin drew a questioning look from me, and then Peppermint’s eyes followed. Pear had pulled something from her pocket that looked like a pixie stick, the kind with neon sugar inside. I liked to savor mine, but most elves twisted off one end of the paper and tilted it back like a shot. Pear stalked towards me as if to attack, but I couldn’t identify the threat. All she had was a pixie stick in her mouth. Then she ripped the paper off the other end, too, and she blew the stuff in my face. Unafraid, I didn’t flinch fast enough, but I should have shielded my eyes.
It burned! It seemed to burn all the way to my brain. When it felt like my whole body was on fire, I hit the floor, too far gone to realize my hardhat cushioned me, but still cognizant enough to be grateful that Nutmeg would be spared, wherever he’d run off to. In my mind, I saw an early memory of myself knee-high to my parents, throwing a tantrum about candy in the grocery store. The memories dashed headlong in chronological order, and somewhat in order of my guilt.
The beginning memories paled in comparison to the burning. Somewhere that seemed far away, I could hear screaming and crashing, but I couldn’t associate the sound with a source in my physical surroundings. I was entranced by this replay of all the willful mistakes I had ever made in my entire life: Sneaking a smear of icing from my birthday cake before it was time to eat it, cheating on a spelling test; lying to my parents about how the lamp had broken; on and on and on. I had only made it to early elementary school, and I was so ready for this to be over.
My elf ears registered something besides my screams: An explosion went off. I thought something like splinters rained down on me. And I heard shouting protests, Pear and Peppermint, I thought. “Don’t you touch me,” Peppermint said, and a part of me still wanted to make sure she was alright. I couldn’t open my tearing eyes, though.
The teen years, I thought, had to be the worst. These were memories I’d tucked safely away and never apologized for. I’ll let you imagine, but suffice it to say that I resolved to ask for my parents’ forgiveness, if I survived this. My wonderful sprint down Guilty Memories Lane continued steadily downhill. It ended with all the mistakes I’d made since Graham passed away: Illicit labs; hiding information about a suspicious death that Security should have been investigating; holding off on reporting information about contaminated water. What was wrong with me? How passive could a person be? How callous? What made it even worse was my profession and the trust my fellow elves placed in me to work toward their health. Aware that I was sobbing now, I was sure I felt a hand pat my head to console me. But I was so ashamed, I knew that even if someone didn’t take my license, I was giving it up anyway.
When I opened my eyes, I imagined that I looked like a person who had been pepper sprayed. My eyes still burned and had to be puffy. My nose had run, and there was drool on the floor under my face. Someone rolled me over. Nutmeg. He seemed to search my eyes and smeared face for injuries. His hand was under my head now, and my hardhat had flung a few feet away. Nutmeg was handsome in a distracting way, even though he had a crease across his forehead from where he’d taken off his headgear.
His look was full of worry. “You okay?”
“Where did you go?” I hadn’t seen him since Pear and Peppermint found us.
“I ducked and went to the back of the place,” Nutmeg admitted. “I’m sorry. I’m unarmed, and I didn’t know how many were coming in. The protocol on these small rooms is that they all have an emergency phone. I took a chance–did a little searching to find it hidden on a storage shelf–and dialed 9-9-9. They traced the call and overheard plenty. Next thing I knew, you were screaming, and Father Christmas–” Nutmeg gestured.
Father Christmas was here. I sucked in a breath and gave him a full once-over by accident. In my defense, my brain was still recovering from a few shocks. But Father Christmas, despite all his power and the legends, appeared so normal. He wore a thick flannel shirt and heavyweight denim pants, a black beanie, and kneehigh mud boots not unlike the ones Nutmeg and I wore. His face, normally so jolly on TV, was faded and sunken like an old leather couch, reminding me that he must have recently recovered from being quite ill.
Peppermint and Pear were tied up in what looked like candy necklaces, but they were Father Christmas’ trademark magical handcuffs. Which meant that his magic was working!
“How – ?” I shut my eyes, still trying to get my brain to reboot and get in the present moment. Scenes of shame kept playing out on my eyelids, so I opened them and found a sympathetic smile from Father Christmas waiting for me.
“Peppermint let the ledgerkin convince her that she was the best chemist around, but no. She’s just the one chemist discontented enough to help the ledgerkin.” Father Christmas began his tale. “Rudolph, the galley chef, is a better chemist, even though cooking is his joy. He noticed the taste of his food was off–more sensitive, I suppose, than the rest of us. He ran the tests, and used cheloglycan to restore me to health. Once I had my full magic, I was able to follow your investigation. Well done.”
Father Christmas sounded exactly like a pleased parent, but I wasn’t having any of it. “I should have told Security what I knew and let them run the investigation quicker. I had no business bending all those rules–”
“You were one of the few willing to believe that all was not as it seemed. You investigated. And that curiosity is worth a great deal. You’ve shown persistence, bravery in the face of Peppermint’s threats–”
“Passivity in letting Peppermint dictate the speed of our investigation,” I finished for him. I just wasn’t letting myself off the hook. My eyes still burned, despite the tears that kept coming. I was cold from the concrete floor of the lab room, and I felt miserable. “I don’t think I can still be a nurse after all the rules I’ve broken,” I said, rubbing at my eyes. Even to my own ears, I sounded so passive, not willing to just say that I was quitting. In the face of Father Christmas, I couldn’t muster the courage to demand that I be released from nursing, even though my heart was resolved.
“You were sprayed with what they call a piffed arm,” or that’s what it sounded to me like Father Christmas was saying. “Personal Insight Facilitation Device for Accelerated Remembrance of Misconduct. P-I-F-D-A-R-M,” he spelled out for me.
“Cute.” My nose wrinkled, betraying how I really felt.
“Obviously something the ledgerkin invented and imported.” He patted my shoulder paternally, settling onto the floor next to me. I followed his lead and turned my back to rest against the work counter, mirroring him. Nutmeg settled on my other side. Peppermint and Pear were led away by Security elves, who each visually scanned me and Nutmeg for injuries, then nodded in deference to Father Christmas before exiting the room with their prisoners.
Father Christmas drew a handful of eggnog-flavored candies from his pocket and offered them. Nutmeg and I thanked him, and all three of us took a moment to savor the sweetness. Nutmeg’s shoulder brushed mine, and he didn’t lean away. I found the warmth reassuring, since we had just been through something terrible. I leaned into him, and we exchanged the smile of survivors.
“You’ll learn from this and speak up next time. We were all young once. We’ve all needed second chances.” Father Christmas’ eyes glistened with a memory he wasn’t planning to share. “Nutmeg, would you be willing to come off intelligence work and do something more permanent? I sense that Eggnog could use a partner.”
My eyebrows popped one more time for the day, and I glanced at Nutmeg. He shrugged and gave that charming, sugar cube smile. “I think I can do that,” he said. And he was looking at me.
“Partner in what?” I asked.
“Final approval of the Naughty and Nice Lists. It’s time that I trained up a few good elves to take over. The world population has overgrown even my magical abilities. The answer sure isn’t going to be ledgerkin, all bent on having control and using it to coerce people into following a standard higher than the one they hold for themselves,” Father Christmas huffed. “In the course of my own parallel investigation, I discovered the ledgerkin wanted to pay bonuses to snitches and fault-finders who get humans removed from the Nice list. The smaller our generosity, the more we save for ourselves,” he summarized. It smacked hard against the hallmark generosity we’re known for at NP.
What I really wanted to know was why Father Christmas allowed the ledgerkin to join us, but I avoided the awkwardness and actually asked, “What will you do with them?”
“They had no plan but survival, when they first joined us,” Father Christmas offered, reminding me of the rumor that he could read minds. My swift intake of breath and Nutmeg’s shoulder leaning into me steadied me enough to hear the rest of Father Christmas’s answer. “I can hardly release them into the world. The ledgerkin who took over Ledgerland already did that. Look how it turned out.” Father Christmas shook his head. “No, they immigrated here and will be held to our laws. They will each receive a fair trial and be held accountable for their own part in this tragedy.”
Meanwhile, I had a new friend, Nutmeg–who was not a playboy or a drifter, just a guy who didn’t tell his treacherous cousin what he did for a living–and a new career handed to me by a legend, who could read minds and probably knew how it would all turn out. It didn’t seem fair. It seemed too generous to both me and the ledgerkin.
And maybe that was ok. It’s just what NP is known for, I realized with a sniff at my runny nose.
Father Christmas stood and brushed off his clothes and hands as if to give space for Nutmeg and I to speak quietly.
“So,” Nutmeg took my small hand in his callused one, “I’m game if you are.” That charming, definitely bleached smile blinded me to all my doubts about this plan, and I decided to just … try. Why not? Why not try to be the difference in this world? Not because we were perfect but because we had been shown mercy. That made us perfect for this job.
“I might have some ideas,” I smiled back and squeezed his hand in return. Father Christmas returned carrying paper towels, which I gratefully accepted. I let go of Nutmeg’s hand unwillingly, wiping my face and thinking. When felt more or less composed, I realized that Father Christmas was peering down at us, and Nutmeg wanted my hand again. My best guess is that Father Christmas knew the answer already, so I merely spoke it aloud to make it official. “On behalf of both of us, we gratefully accept, sir.” Laughing in relief, we sealed the deal with another round of eggnog-flavored candies.
THE END