~~~
Josh had a tough time coming out of his dream. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of little white fur balls huddling in around him from all sides during the middle of a snow storm, each of them gnashing teeth and raising claws at him as though they were trying to scare him. He wasn’t entirely afraid but he was frustrated that he couldn’t move in any direction. And if he tried to step over one to move forward several of them instantly grew to fifteen feet tall and towered over him.
At first one of the large ones seemed to be shaking him by his shoulder. But then he heard Agent Samuel’s voice calling his name and sleep started melting from his eyes. He was back in the darkened cab of the monster truck, displays and lights all across the window panels in front of him.
“Are you ready to wake up, Josh? I might need you here again.”
Suddenly Josh sat bolt upright. “Holy Crap!”
He paused and looked around at the scene in front of him, some of it flying past him at speeds on the HUD shown as 93MPH. It took a second and then he formulated a question.
“How far have we come? This looks almost like Bay City!” Josh turned to Samuel flabbergasted and blurted, “Did you take me all the way to Bay City? My Mom’s gonna kill me!”
Samuel, glancing at the boy, cleared his throat. “Eh-hmmm. No. Er. We’re actually twice that far. You’ve been asleep for a little more than an hour.”
“So…” Josh said still puzzling. “Where are we?”
“This is actually Mackinaw City. We’re getting close to crossing where Lake Michigan and Lake Huron meet and take the bridge to the northern peninsula.”
“WHAT!??!” Josh yelled. He gripped the sides of his seat and looked around the window screens. “I can’t be here. If my mom knew how far away from home I was she’d ground me for…well… probably the rest of my life!”
Agent Samuel sounded truly sympathetic and apologetic, but it didn’t seem to change his reply any. “I’m sorry, Josh, but you’ve got to calm down. Remember, the agency has got your parents taken care of. They won’t even really realize where you’ve been. Just that you had a district competition you were participating in.”
Josh pressed himself into the back of his bucket seat tightly. He swallowed hard and tried not to vomit. He’d never been so far from home without his parents and it dawned on him maybe he wasn’t so worried about Mom as he was for himself. He grabbed the agent’s forearm tightly.
“Agent Samuel,” he began reluctantly, finding he had to force his jaw to move so his teeth weren’t grinding. “I don’t know if you really have magic, or where you got this car, or…if you really even work for this PMIA…”
“IPMA,” Samuel corrected.
“Or what the heck is even going on. I don’t even care anymore what those little fuzzballs are. But I can’t be this far away from home.”
“You’re perfectly safe, Josh,” Samuel tried to calm the boy, but his brow was furled and his concern for the pre-teen was showing.
“No! No, I’m not safe!” Josh gripped the man’s arm even tighter. “I mean, I don’t have a clue what I’m doing here! I showed you what I know. I’m not even any use to you anymore. What if… I mean, this kind of seems like…, I dunno. What if…”
“What is it, Josh?”
“Well, what if you’re just trying to abduct me or something?” Josh blurted out.
The engine continued mildly purring, revs quietly slowing down as the speed on the HUD dropped a couple miles-per-hour at a time down to about 50. Agent Samuel needed a moment to contemplate how to reassure the boy.
“Well…for starters, have you ever known someone to have a multi-million dollar truck like this just to abduct a smart young lad like you?”
Josh stared at the console and the screen for a moment. Then he shook his head.
“So, I think we’ve got that concern taken care of, right?”
It took another moment before Josh was willing to respond. It looked like he was still trying to stifle a barfing fit to the agent.
“And, don’t forget: you contacted us first.”
Good point, Josh relented in his mind.
“Now, as to why I’m taking you with me…”
Agent Samuel puckered his lips and moved his jaw about. He seemed to want to blurt something out but either his common sense or his training with the IPMA was successfully holding it in.
“See…It’s nearly Christmas, right?”
“Yeah,” Josh affirmed, somewhat sarcastically in tone.
“Well, there’s not a whole lot of investigations done during the Christmas season. Most of us tend to take some vacation time. So, when something does come up…we might be a little short-handed on agents.”
“Mmm,” Josh pondered. A snarky thought occurred to him that he couldn’t control as well as Agent Samuel seemed to. “Is that why they sent you instead of agent Davis?”
Samuel sharply cleared his throat, attempting a little drama in his reply, “I’m hurt, Joshua.”
The two caught each other’s eyes and smiled naturally. “I mean I’m really hurt. You think I’m not good enough to perform this investigation?”
“No,” Josh said quietly and shook his head, though his smile was still there, difficult to hide.
“Well,” Agent Samuel continued. “You might be right. I’m kind of new at field work.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. I suppose you might as well call me a rookie. But! It’s not like this is my very first mission either!”
Joshua stared at him for a moment, waiting to see if the man would give away any more information. Then he asked slyly, “Is it your secon…”
“Alright, yes, it’s my second mission! There! You happy?” but the agent was still smiling at Josh as he said it.
“Tell you what. I brought you along because I thought you might have fun, and I thought you might want to find out what these Yeti are all about. Also…I kind of need a partner. You know…just in case.”
“In case of what?” Josh asked cynically.
“I don’t know,” Samuel shrugged sincerely. “That’s the problem when you’re dealing with faerie folk. You never really know what to expect. Personally, I’d rather have all the human-magic investigations myself.”
“Really? There’s humans with magic too?” Josh asked, trying to keep the conversation light.
“Oh yes. Not usually nearly as interesting. Or as powerful. But we find ways to use magic sometimes.”
“I see,” but Josh wasn’t sure he did exactly. “And faeries are…more dangerous then?”
“Well…yes. They can be.”
“Great,” Josh huffed quietly.
“Look, we’re in no real danger…I don’t think. Yeti are pretty mellow fellows usually. But I just want to have someone with me in case, you know. I need a call to back up or something.”
They sat quietly as the small city before them rose ever closer into view.
“Tell you what. Why don’t you just call me by my first name, Peter. That’s how partners should talk to each other anyway. No sense in you calling me ‘mister’ all the time.”
“Alright,” Josh agreed. He found he was much more calm about the situation at that point, but he wasn’t quite sure why.
“Let me tell you where we are with this investigation, alright?” Peter asked.
“Sure.”
“I’ve been following the trail for over an hour and it just keeps getting bigger. I mean, look at the screen. You can’t really even distinguish tracks anymore, but the aura given off is like, fifty-feet wide and must have hundreds of Yeti using the exact same trail.”
“Yeah. So what does that mean?” Josh asked confused.
Peter shook his head and tutted a bit. “I’m not entirely sure. But it’s not normal. Usually the most you see together is half a dozen at most.”
“Hmmm.”
“And, really I first followed the
trail right up to the north eastern shore near Robert’s Landing. I thought maybe they were swimming to Bois Blanc or even Mackinac Island or something. See, there’s a state park there. Pretty secluded too.”
“So…” Josh was again accessing the deeper reaches of his mind and memory trying to understand what the Yeti could be up to. “They were like, migrating or something? Like Salmon?”
“Nope. That’s what I thought too. But instead, they went along the shoreline near route 23 for several miles. Then I found a spot near the shore that it looked like they’d all huddled down and camped for a while.”
“Why do you say that?” Joshua asked.
“Well…the aura was spread out over a couple acres and the snow was all depressed and moved around, even with all this snowfall. You could see mounds and things that looked like they had built dens.”
“That…doesn’t seem too strange…you know. If they’re just migrating,” Josh suggested.
“Yeah. But to have so many?” Peter was shaking his head. “In the past two centuries, no one has ever found that kind of evidence.”
“Not only that, but I found something. I would have missed it if we weren’t using this special CCV. But the aura scanner showed a sort of pattern in one part of the snow, right in the middle of the camp. At first, I might have guessed they built a fire or something. The Doppler scans showed some logs or something. But no.”
“No?” Josh asked.
“No. The logs and some stones and things had been laid out in a certain pattern. If you were to look at it you’d say it almost looked like blue prints or something. Here, let me pull it up for you. Home? Display thermal, Doppler, aura overlay image I took from the suspected Yeti encampment.”
“Right away, sir,” replied the pleasant voice he’d heard on the phone at the beginning of their adventure.
“Uh…” Josh whispered, “has she been listening to us the whole time?”
“Not exactly,” Peter replied in a quiet voice. “But she’s been on hand. You have to initiate communication.”
“By saying Home.” It wasn’t a question. Josh was just stating for himself so he’d understand, but Peter nodded in agreement all the same.
An image came up on the screen just to Peter’s left so as to not directly block his view straight ahead. He lifted his left hand and closed the fingers slightly, then swiped to the right. The image flipped over to Josh’s side of the screen.
“Put your two fingers up and spread them apart, like you’re zooming in on a tablet or something,” he ordered.
Josh did what he was asked. There in the middle of the image, which was mostly lumps of white snow, with overlays of thousands of tracks and prints of green aura, was an outline of shapes that, sure enough, seemed to be logs buried under the snow. They seemed to be gray shaded. About it where aural patterns that looked a little like drawings too.
“What does that look like to you, Josh?” the agent asked, official-like.
“Well…it does kind of look like they were laying out buildings. Like my friends and I do when we’re playing paintball, for example.”
Agent Samuel chimed in excited. “Exactly! Like they were identifying landmarks on a make-shift map.”
“Yeah,” Josh agreed, extending a finger and moving it around experimentally seeing what the display could do. The image moved about in conjunction with his finger. “That’s what it looks like anyway.”
“Mmm-hmm. And,” Peter continued, “you know what those landmarks look like?”
Josh shook his head.
“No, I suppose you don’t. But there’s one place in this world that all agents are familiarized with. One site where we would recognize the layout of the buildings and landmarks.”
Josh waited, somewhat nervously, but excited to hear where.
“See it’s supposed to be this big secret in the world, but…it’s like the world’s greatest non-secret actually. It’s like…twenty agents go up there every year for a party, sort of non-secret practically.”
“Well…okay…maybe I’m exaggerating a bit. But sheesh there’s something like a hundred different movies that try to show it, for Pete’s sake!”
“Huhn. Pete’s sake? I’ve never thought of that before. In this case, it really is for Pete’s sake,” the agent said, smiling and poking his thumb back at himself.
“Oh my gosh! Just tell me where!” Josh lost his patience.
“Oh, right! Those markings look very much like the North Pole site.”
Josh squirmed a bit. He was a little uncomfortable, as though perhaps he had been right earlier to question Peter’s motives. Or at least his sanity.
“Whaddya mean, ‘North Pole’?”
“You know…Santa’s Workshop?” Peter said with a prideful grin.
“No,” Josh replied simply. “No such thing.”
“No, really!” the agent continued to press. “Here, check this out. Home? Send us the images from the field agent’s training documentation regarding North Pole inhabitants.”
“Please confirm, Agent Samuel. You are requesting trainee details on Belschnickel operations? You have a non-agency passenger. May I remind you those documents are classified?” the familiar friendly voice replied.
“Yes, yes, I know. Just, uh…give me the images from that section then,” Peter asked.
“Agent Samuel, you know we cannot do that. May I inquire as to the purpose of those documents at this time? Having a friendly conversation with your guest about sworn secrets are we?”
“No. No, Home. It’s part of this investigation. I need it to compare to the prior image.”
Josh sniggered a bit in his seat. Peter turned to him and made a very quiet shushing sound.
“Transferring images from source library, Agent Samuel. NOT the official training documentation.”
“That will do just fine, Home.”
“Yes. I’m sure it will.” The voice had turned somewhat less friendly.
But there on the left was a set of images, six all together. Agent Samuel grabbed and flicked them over to Josh’s side again and they bumped the scanning image he had been looking at upwards and out of their way.
Sure enough, a couple of them seemed to show aerial shots of some buildings and what looked like a small airport that very closely matched the way the Yeti had laid out their little map. In place of the one large spire or tower in the photos, the Yeti had apparently utilized a small stump or trunk broken off and standing straight upwards, then laid the other shapes around it to provide a pretty close facsimile of the shots of the North Pole, or whatever it was Agent Samuel had managed to produce on the screen from his conversation.
“So…” Josh looked from the screen to the agent and paused.
“So…?” Peter repeated and grinned. He was letting it all sink in and providing time for Josh’s thought processes to reason it all out.
“You’re saying this is Santa’s workshop that we’re looking at?” the boy continued with the motherly tone he usually got at home whenever she’d caught him in a bit of a mis-truth.
“You could call it that.” Peter was grinning even more uncontrollably.
“For real?!”
“What? I’m making this stuff up?” Peter returned to focusing on the approaching city limits.
“Well…yeah…I uh,” Josh stumbled having a tough time committing agreement to something so lunatic. “I think you are, actually.”
The man beside him, steering the gigantic beast of a machine with loads of technology before him at his command and apparently, even some magic, just grinned and said, “I suppose we’ll find out in the next day or two, won’t we.”
Josh swallowed hard. “Are you saying we’re going to the North Pole?”
Peter nodded, still smiling, though less enthusiastically. “Yeah, I think so. I believe these Yeti may be up to something big. Here, let me get through Mackinaw City and I think we’d probably better make camp for th
e night.”
Peter Samuel communicated briefly with Home again, apparently to make sure he understood how the cloak or magic or whatever it was worked on the giant CCV. Once he’d confirmed they were fully undetectable he accelerated again and plowed through town towards a bridge to the northern peninsula. The green trail veered off around the city to the east and they lost track of it on screen, but even Josh figured it was such a huge trail now that it would be easy to pick it up again.
With the snow the town was mostly devoid of any cars driving around but there were a few parked here or there, and some people still manning the shops. Christmas was only days away and certainly folks were still trying to stock up for the holiday. Twilight seemed to be approaching quickly so far north and with the clouded skies and Josh found himself getting sleepy again, despite the worry.
“Hey, sleepy head,” Peter nudged the boy. “When we get setup tonight I’m going to have you call your Mom and Dad. Then I’ve got to see if we can meet up with someone in East Selkirk, Manitoba tomorrow.”
“Where’s that?”
“Where’s that?” Peter chuckled. “Canada of course. The IPMA has a friend there. And I don’t know if we’ll be going south around Lake Superior, or north, but I’m pretty sure we’re going to be pretty close to East Selkirk.”
“Hmmm,” Josh nodded in agreement, though he had no idea what Peter was really talking about. Right then the snowfall and the small city lights passing by were more powerful than a lullaby. But a thought occurred to him before dozing off: “How do you suppose the Yeti would have crossed the bridge without being seen?”
Agent Samuel went on for a few minutes about his assumptions, but Josh either didn’t hear any of them, or he’d forgotten them all by the following morning because he dozed off without an answer to his question.