Chapter 5
December 21
World Headquarters of Belschnikel International
5 miles south of the Geographic North Pole along longitude 110.8°
As luck would have it, by the time the vehicle had progressed over a gigantic field of snow lit apparently by star and moonlight, Hattie had managed to keep all her stomach contents inside. Josh was beginning to suspect the LCD views in place of the windows were amplifying the light outside to make the scenery visible, and he was correct. Still, the scenery had been absolutely amazing. Once they’d traveled for a couple hours or more at breakneck speeds, Peter had slowed the truck and lowered its elevation even more until they came upon a facility rising out of the snow and nestled in some surrounding hills.
The buildings featured all the wondrous shapes and colors that Josh had come to expect from what could only be called Santa’s Workshop in his earlier youth. A spire rose out of quaint Scandinavian style buildings, lights warming windows, shapes bustling about in the narrow alleys and walkways between. But upon closer inspection as they approached Josh noticed rubbish strewn about around the outskirts of the diminutive community and the shadows themselves all appeared to be the little bodies of the Yeti. Peter had cloaked the CCV just in time, but it may have gone un-noticed in all the commotion below.
Pulling away somewhat from the village Josh noticed another, extremely large construction beginning just a couple hundred yards away, and mostly buried by snow. It looked like a giant industrial building or airplane hangar, but it seemed to stretch on for a mile. Its breadth was not nearly that of its length but it was wide. On the end facing Santa’s village there were multiple doors leading into the structure, guarded by hundreds of little Yeti moving back and forth from the building to the village and back. But along the side there did not appear to be any other access, nor windows, or any means of access, except for one impressive method. At three points, spaced evenly along the run of the building stretching out into the distance, there were gigantic steel doors atop the arched metal roof. The middle one was opening, swinging two doors outwards, opposed to each other and spreading apart down the length-wise of the building.
Peter guided the ship slowly and lowered it still until they were likely only a couple hundred feet above the building. The doors had reached their apparent maximum opening and then began closing again. The crew held the CCV in a slow pass by the central doors and each occupant waited, watching what would happen next. Within two seconds of closing the doors opened again. Josh muttered under his breath, but Qanik simply watched, patiently.
“What on Earth are those little twerps doing down there?” Bartholomew said with a gesture of his right hand. He started bringing up some tools on the display screens, some of which seemed to produce false colors as well as an odd fuzzy nearly see-through view of the building.
The CCV bobbled a bit mid-air with Peter’s surprise when Home came online on the speaker. “Agent Samuel? We have a priority one patch from the North Pole for you.”
Clearing his throat, Peter quickly replied, “Put it through.”
Immediately a gruff voice with a slightly Germanic accent shouted, “Halo? Is this the IPMA ship to the south of my facility?”
Agents Samuel and Bartholomew looked at each other with a quick flash of surprise. Qanik simply caught Peter’s eye after the look and gave a knowing nod.
“Yes, sir. Is this Mr. Belschnikel?” Peter said nervously.
“Bah!” the voice responded. “Of course it is! You don’t think anyone else up here speaks English do you?”
“Pleasure to me…” he began, but Peter was cut off again.
“Enough of that!” The gruff voice replied. “And just call me Santa, while you’re at it. Now, here! Follow my tag and get down here. I’m sending you the RF code now. We’ve got to stop these little devils before they break my hangar doors!”
With a couple switches flipped and some things moved on the touch display screen an overlay dot appeared on the screens just below where they were hovering. Peter lowered the giant CCV to the beacon and the jet engines started calming down.
“Why didn’t we just fly here the whole time?” Joshua asked.
Bartholomew answered first, “Well, it takes a lot of fuel to fly and we’ve probably only got just enough to get back to the northern points of Canada.”
Josh nodded an understanding and Hattie flapped her hands into a folded rest before her impatiently as though the boy should have known. The CCV descended the last few feet quite slowly until finally it tapped the ground with a small thud, probably softened somewhat by the snow and ice. The chassis reverberated with the odd clicks and hollow sounds like a jet airplane again and then the engine wound down to a stop and the regular land motor started up.
Qanik was the first to exit, though she did so much more gracefully than either of the children or the agents. Ahead of them was a barely detectable doorway made white like the snow on the hill all around it. A strange, round looking man wrapped in red winter clothing and with nothing exposed to the weather but a long flowing white beard gestured to them to hurry.
“Keep that thing cloaked, Agent, and get in here,” he gruffed once they were close enough to hear.
Stepping inside the doorway was significantly more comfortable than outside, but it was still rather cold. Hattie and Joshua bundled up in their warmer coats, but the two agents didn’t seem phased at all in their black suits. Qanik stood, ever quiet and calm, hands at her sides.
“Well then,” Santa greeted them. “I understand you’re here to help me get rid of this stupid little fuzzballs, eh?”
Bartholomew and Peter looked at each other, cocking eyebrows almost simultaneously. Peter was the one to reply.
“Well, we can certainly do that, if that’s what needs to be done. But I’m not sure the six of us are enough resources, considering…”
“Bah!” Santa replied again. “We just need a little different magic, like what you’ve brought. Thank goodness you’ve got a Sprite!”
The round man in front of them bounded through a corridor ahead of them that featured a grated steel mesh floor and fluorescent lights frequent enough the hall was rather bright.
“Qanik!” the female sprite said loudly as she too stepped quickly to keep up.
Josh and the others chased after them after they realized the party was moving on, and listened to the conversation.
Peter hollered as loudly as he could, “She’s a water sprite, from the Northwest Passages area.”
“Yes, I can see that!” Santa yelled back. “Only question is why she chose to look like a human Inuit! Complete waste of energy, in my book.”
Josh was getting the distinct impression that Santa Claus was not entirely the jovial figure he was made out to be in film and songs. It seemed the round man before him, despite being surprisingly athletic for his build, was all around cynical and negative.
“The children,” Qanik answered.
“Oh, right!” Santa replied, as though he’d forgotten himself a bit. “Well, I have the feeling we’re going to need you to change your look a bit here in a minute.”
Finally, the man in the red suit stopped at small door, not much bigger around or taller than he was. Josh thought perhaps Peter would have to duck to get into it. He turned and looked at the group bunched up behind him in the corridor.
“Here’s the situation,” he took a second to catch his breath. “These little twits have decided to take over the whole North Pole. They’ve got my manufacturing and shipping facility entirely under their control, but they’re playing with some of the equipment and are probably breaking some of it down. One of the last of my elves coming out of here told me they’re starting to unwrap some of the packages we’ve had ready to ship too. I’m pretty sure by this point they’ve noticed the sleigh, and with them playing with the center aerial doors it won’t be long before they do something really ridiculous like try t
he sleigh out!”
“So, I want you come in there with me, guns blazing, and clear a path to the entrance on the village side. We’re going to jam that door shut somehow and lock out any more of them from getting in here. Then next, we’ve got to make almost a half-mile rush to the controls for the central doors and force them closed too. We’ll deal with these beasties in this complex first. Then we’ll take care of the village.”
“Wait, wait!” Hattie stammered. “Can’t you tell us a little more than that? I mean…why are they trying to take over?”
“Girl, if we delay any further, Christmas deliveries are going to be ruined!” Santa replied.
“My name’s Hattie!” she said a little more sheepishly.
Santa puffed his cheeks and blew out his lips a few times and then settled on a real conversation. “Blast, I know that Ms. Mejaki. Dash it all! Don’t you know who I am?!”
Hattie was sincerely humbled by the question. “You do know me, then?”
“Of course!” Santa stammered and flexed his hands, swinging his arms around haphazardly trying to calm himself down. “You very nearly made it on the naughty list last year. It’s not like I’m going to forget that so easily, you know!”
Hattie blushed and backed down a bit.
Agent Bartholomew spoke, in a low and calm voice. “Mr. Belschnikel, we understand you’re in a hurry. But we in the IPMA have had enough experience that we’ve learned we typically like to know what we’re getting into before we rush into a gigantic room full of faerie folk. Let alone ones that are exhibiting violent tendencies.”
“Oi!” Santa said, slouching back against the little door he had been trying to prep them to enter. “These little devils are not really violent. At least, they tend not to be. Listen…”
For a moment Santa paused as though he were pondering something before continuing. When he did he seemed a soul on his last breath of desperation.
“Kids… You’ve got to understand, I’m the reason they’re here.”
With no one else responding, Qanik stepped forward and took Santa’s hand in hers. Josh thought he saw the electric flash in her eyes again and for just a moment he thought Santa had been mesmerized. “Please Mr. Belschnikel. Explain. So we can know how to help.”
“Oh…alright,” Santa replied, his eyes regaining focus. “You see, there’s not too many elves left in the world, and there’s more and more children every year that I would like to get to, somehow, you know?”
All five of the IPMA group nodded in acknowledgement whether they fully understood or not. Qanik released Santa’s hand and allowed him to continue.
“Well, a few years back I started employing the Yetis, see? You know…just to fill in so to speak during the holidays in the packing and shipping departments.”
“Mr. Belschnikel,” Peter interrupted. “We happen to know you’ve been using robotic aides for delivery for some time now. Why not just develop some for packing and departure too?”
Santa waved a finger in front of him but his face remained more friendly than the first few minutes of their first meeting.
“No, won’t work, see?” He was shaking his head as well. “You’ve got to have a touch of magic to make sure the packages are addressed to the right child…and um…you know, in the right colors, matching what the parents give, and what not.”
“Mmmm,” Agent Bartholomew replied thoughtfully, placing an index finger on his lip and glancing at Joshua.
Santa continued, “Anyway. I employed them here starting about October to help finalize things. But that was my mistake, wasn’t it? I mean, they’re fairly simple-minded fairy folk…”
“There’s some question as to whether they really are faerie folk too,” Peter said, but noticing a frown on Santa’s face at the interruption he went back to holding his tongue.
“So anyway, they can’t really help themselves. I showed them where the motherload of magic is and they want to get it for themselves now! Should’ve realized it actually…each year I hired them, twice as many as the year before would show up in the village looking for work. …And they took their sweet time heading back south again too every January!”
“And this year?” Qanik prodded.
“Well, so a couple days ago, here comes this mass swarm of the little buggers, eh? I mean, they just swarmed the village. They were in my own home pushing me out, blooming themselves up to full Yeti height trying to scare me. And there we were, me and all my elves, sitting on the outside of the village borders before we could even raise any alarms or defenses. You know…we’ve really never planned for a full on ground assault before. All our defenses are meant to cloak us from the sky!”
“You keep saying ‘elves’,” Qanik questioned with one upturned eyebrow. “You know there isn’t really such a thing as an elf, do you not?”
Santa waved his finger again and this time there was a little spark of the anger again. “Oh yes there is! There’s not many, but there are real, for-goodness-sake Elves still left in the world.”
Qanik was shaking her head while looking at Agent Bartholomew.
“But your right,” Santa sighed again. “These in my employ are really just pixies. They like to dress up. …and they’re cute. So…I let them call themselves Santa’s Elves.”
Qanik looked at Josh and Hattie and though smiling, continued to shake her head, more in commiseration than denying what Santa was saying.
“Well, Mr. Belschnikel,” Peter spoke up again. “We’ve got a few pieces of equipment and of course Qanik here. But how do you suppose we’re going to fight our way through all those Yeti, exactly?”
“We rush ‘em!” Santa pounded his right fist into his left palm to demonstrate. “They won’t know what hit them. And they’re really pretty much push-overs…if you catch them off guard instead of the other way around.”
“Alright then, let’s get at it,” Agent Bartholomew said, drawing something from his inside coat pocket that looked a lot like the stone Peter had used much earlier on to cloak his IPMA sedan, but with five streaks of brilliant orange and red through the black.
Santa opened the door with a thunk on the latch and then a tired-sounding screech from the hinges as he pulled it slowly about a foot open. He pointed towards the side that was presumably closest to the village and a gigantic door could be seen. It was raised up somewhat from the position where the group was entering. They’d have to climb a set of nearby stairs and then run across the narrow section just inside the doorway to the opposite side to get to the controls. Santa whispered the majority of the information to Peter and Agent Bartholomew and gestured with his hands for the rest.
Through the small slit that Josh could see, there were not too many Yeti moving in and out of the doorway and around the entrance. He would guess that there were at least fifty or so though, and it would be a hard enough rush.
“You kids stay as close to me as you can, got it?” Peter said to Hattie and Josh in a whisper.
They both nodded in reply. Hattie looped her arm around Josh’s and held him tight to her side as all six of the combatants got ready for battle. Joshua somehow felt a little dizzy then, and he could feel his arm warming and his cheeks blushing fiery red. He hoped Hattie was too occupied to notice and tried to play it cool.
“Ready,” Santa rumbled quietly, “GO!”
They rushed out, Santa first, followed by Agent Bartholomew, then Peter as he tugged the two kids along with him, and then lastly Qanik. They went hunched over as if that would prevent any of the Yeti from seeing them, but it only served to make the look more ridiculous.
Making it to the stairwell and then clanging up its metal grate treads noisily seemed to not be as big an attractant to the Yeti as Josh might have thought. There were great noises of thuds, metal on metal racket and creatures yammering, growling, laughing and in all creating one resounding ruckus behind them, further into the structure. He risked turning his head and what he saw made h
is stomach turn. There were thousands of Yeti bouncing, climbing, swinging, throwing things and in all virtually covering every surface for the mile of building heading east of them.
There had to be more than thousands. Tens of thousands! Josh thought to himself. The brief glimpse gave him the thought of an ant swarm covering a recent food cache discovery like a living carpet. And then, Peter crashed into Bartholomew, who had apparently bumped into Santa.
Just before Santa Claus on the stairway was one bemused Yeti, staring up at the group. It tilted its head and contemplated what the existence of the group before him meant as he was just headed down to find some more presents to unwrap. As it raised one arm and pointed at the group, shaking the finger excitedly and then beginning to jump up and down in place, Qanik jumped from behind the others onto the guard rail of the stairs, and used it to spring ahead of Santa, landing solidly on both of her feet.
Yeti number one had surprised Santa and the rest of the group and they did not know what to do with a singular Yeti staring them down. Fortunately, Qanik’s quick action meant she was able to respond just as the creature was inhaling a big breath to begin screaming in alarm.
The sprite held her two hands before her and from them a blast of cold and white snow shot forth, enveloping the Yeti in a solid block of ice in a fraction of a second.
Mouth open, and with only its eyes able to roll around, looking surprised and frightened, Qanik gave it a quick kick and sent the Yeti-sicle into the corner of the upper metal grate planks at the top of the stairs. The creature was on its side and clearly wasn’t happy as it watch the party of six interlopers hurry past towards the great exterior doors.
Quickly all six hustled along the metal-grate walkway until it butted against the cement floor of the production facility within a few feet of the gigantic front doorway. Peter, suddenly coming to a realization pulled out the stone he’d used to cloak his sedan back in Michigan, nearly dropping it into a hole in the last few feet of the grates as he fumbled it and then started waving it back and forth. All around Josh the six figures, including himself, faded into space.
“That’s not going to work,” Agent Bartholomew’s voice came in a gruff rumble just ahead of Joshua.
Then Josh felt something heavy, though softly clothed in thick, padded material bar his path. Another object quickly plowed into him squishing him against what he guessed must have been Qanik and squealed with Hattie’s voice into his ear as the three of them went clattering to the ground.
The milling and pleased-looking Yeti all about them seemed to stop and look around. Josh thought he heard Santa making a shush-ing sound. So he stopped moving, and so did Hattie and Qanik from what he could tell. Most of the Yeti looked about and fairly quickly gave up on seeing anything out of the ordinary. They one by one returned to their moving in and out of the facility. All but one.
A Yeti closest to their group started stepping very slowly in their direction in a zig-zag pattern holding out a set of stubby-fingered pink hands from his hairy white arms, and squinted it eyes. It’s looking for us! Josh thought.
As if in confirmation he heard Qanik’s echo-y voice right beside his ear whisper, “Don’t move. They’re stronger than they look.”
So he didn’t. He could hear Hattie’s nervous breathing and then she gulped and held her breath as the creature came ever closer. Apparently, the Yeti could hear something too for he growled with an odd murmur at the end and a few other Yeti around him stopped again and looked in his direction.
And then what Josh feared most happened. The miniature ball of fuzz exploded to ten times its own size, threw its arms up and in the air and released a gigantic roar. As he did, Hattie must have fallen backwards because Josh could hear her scrambling across the floor away from the invisible huddle of people and the Yeti above them.
Hearing the noise the Yeti reached out and grabbed at the space before him and apparently came up with something. It thrashed in his arms and he held it above his shoulders and then shook. With the violent scuffle the shimmer that Peter had put upon Hattie dropped and she was suddenly in view. The great Yeti had her by her coat.
It turned her towards his face and brought her to within a few inches, then growled again. Hattie covered her ears, while at the same time screamed as loud as she could. Several of the other Yeti also bloomed into towering beasts and stepped to the attraction, forming a circle very near where Josh and Qanik were still lying motionless on the ground, invisible. Josh wondered desperately where Santa Clause or Peter, or maybe even where Bartholomew were right then, praying one of them would pull them, Hattie included, away from the horrific scene. All about them giant Yeti were roaring and swinging arms as though feeling for their prey.
The Yeti holding Hattie growled one more time and tossed her away about ten feet, where she was quickly surrounded by lumbering, furry white beasts. She curled into a ball and lay screaming. Suddenly, one of the Yeti surrounding Josh flew backwards tens of feet himself. In mid-air the beast shrunk back down to the size of the tiny fuzzballs. The little creature looked just as shocked and afraid as Hattie had moments before, but his flight through the air took three times as long.
“Joshua!” the boy heard Qanik say his name briskly. “They’re using their glimmer on you! They’re very strong, but they’re still very small. Kick low, at the base of their feet!”
Punt! Another Yeti went sailing, this time inwards towards the depths of the long production facility. As Josh watched the second flying Yeti arc into the building he got a good chance to look into the length of it. The entire facility was full of colorful, delightful things, each in a state of disassembly by a massing of fuzzy white furballs. He even thought he saw a P-38 twin-prop airplane, one of his favorites.
With a growl though, a Yeti had gotten ahold of Josh’s ankle and his focus returned to the issue at hand. He turned and saw a lumbering giant Yeti dragging him towards the beast’s feet.
“Kick low!” Qanik seemed to be yelling in his ear again.
He did, swinging his free foot in a wide, low arc skittering across the ground, until his boot connected with something solid with a thud. The giant beast seemed to go flailing off several feet away, again turning into the smaller fuzzball he had come to expect. When that one recovered quickly and started running back at Josh’s general area it become engulfed in a flash in a frozen ball of ice. Qanik had bailed him out again.
Santa’s voice rang out above all the ruckus and growled instructions to everyone to work their way through the Yeti to the other side of the door way into a control room on the far side of the plant. The only problem was that far side was probably two football fields away and they had all gotten entangled in the Yeti fight in the first fifty feet.
Looking to the outside, Josh noticed several small Yeti motioning to others closer to the village and hundreds more seemed to be pouring out of the buildings and the snowy hills around them heading straight for the doorway. If they didn’t get the door shut quickly, they’d have probably twice as many Yeti to deal with momentarily. Then it happened in a flash of amber light. Every Yeti had shrunk back down to normal size and looked dazed. The only other being in view was Hattie whose shimmer had dropped when the first Yeti grabbed ahold of her and tossed her. No one else was in sight still.
“Move NOW!” Josh heard Bartholomew yell, and he hopped up and started dodging and stepping over confused and re-miniature-ized Yeti.
It took nearly a minute to get to the other side, but as Josh was nearing the doorway to the control room a couple of Yeti seemed to be coming-to and they started growling as the giant entrance door to the facility started shutting. Looking behind Josh saw Hattie rushing in an uncomfortable-looking posture, as though she were being dragged by the arm. Probably Qanik, he thought to himself. And then he was in the little control room.
As Hattie entered by her ghost chaperone someone else seemed to slam the door shut. It quickly locked and there stood Pete
r waving his shimmer rock back and forth again. Each of the party of six wavered into view again, Santa at the control station, Peter and Agent Bartholomew standing near one another and watching the group as Peter worked, and Hattie being held up by Qanik tried to catch her breath. Santa slapped a couple buttons, including a big red one that quickly brought down shutters over the observation windows of the control room.
Heads turned and everyone had just enough time to see the giant facility door about halfway closed. Oh why can’t it close from the bottom up? thought Josh. Then at least the Yeti wouldn’t be able to keep getting in here.
It was true that several Yeti were still pouring in. But the mass migration wave from village to production facility hadn’t gained access yet, and it looked like they were unlikely to make it.
Something tried the doorknob to the control room. Santa turned to the others and pressed his forefinger to his lips in an effort to urge everyone to remain still. All six held their breath. Then Santa reached slowly over his controls and tapped a button.
Outside, as though a ways off down the length of the facility they could hear an assembly tune being played, like a morning revelry but it was a jazzy, drum-heavy version of a Christmas song. The rattle of the knob stopped.
“I told you that wasn’t going to work,” Bartholomew groused at Peter, who was putting away his stone.
Peter just nodded, understanding completely what the problem with not being able to see one another might be.
“It’s too bad we don’t have a way to use glimmer and have us all look like Yeti,” Santa replied.
“Well…” Bartholomew started, bouncing the orange striped rock he had taken out before their attempt to cross the facility. “That wouldn’t have stayed long either once I used this.”
“What is it?” Qanik asked.
“This, my dear Sprite, is what brought those little hooligans’ glimmer down.” With that the stone was palmed and then pocketed again.
“Oh!” Hattie replied. “That’s perfect! It made it a lot easier to get around them all!”
Bartholomew and Peter both snickered just a little. Then Bartholomew added, “Yes. Not quite so scary as when they enlarge themselves, eh?”
Hattie just shook her head a little embarrassed at her panic earlier.
Josh thought about the discussion for a moment. “But, Qanik told me to kick low and that seemed to work too! Maybe we could deal with them while we’re invisible, as long as we know how to handle them.”
“That’s true!” Peter said. “Good thinking Qanik! They’re using their glimmer to confuse you and make you think they’re really huge. But really, they’re still quite small, …even if they are quite strong.”
The agent looked at the girl again with that comment and seemed to be making sure there were no injuries.
“Are you alright, Hattie?” he asked.
She nodded again, sheepishly.
“Well then!” Santa said, slapping his knees and standing up again. “That’s job one. We’ve cut them off from their reinforcements. Now has anyone got ideas on how to get the rest of them out of the building?”
Everyone stood dumbfounded, pondering. Santa looked from one to the other and then also placed his hand upon his chin to consider the situation. If he hadn’t been locked inside a tiny room with a misfit collection of people he didn’t think should even exist in the first place, Josh would have thought the picture of five people standing around stroking their chin hairs, whether they had any or not in the case of three of them, and muttering to themselves in whispers was quite comical. Then, Qanik spoke up.
“Mr. Belschnickel?” she asked.
Everyone turned, wide-eyed but hesitant.
“Do you happen to have a helicopter?”
“Well…Yes,” he replied still hesitantly. “I do, actually.”
“Is it more accessible than the CCV we left outside?”