The paper-elf was late again and, in the hurry to catch up, ripped the front page of the Elven Times by pushing it too quickly through the letter-box of the T.E.D.A office.
“That little imp’s done it again,” said Eglantine, picking it up from the mat. “I’ve told the little twerp umpteen times to be more careful.”
“Elves will be elves,” said Jonquil.
Jonquil and Eglantine had set up “The Elf Detective Agency”, or T.E.D.A. over a year ago. Their office was a modestly sized cave, complete with door and window, near Bodmin Moor in Cornwall. Not ideally placed for passing customers, but the rent was very low. Business had been slow and they were running out of gold; they desperately needed a client. Any sort of case would do.
“Soon we won’t be able to afford the ET, never mind having it delivered, anyway,” Eglantine said, handing it over to Jonquil.
Jonquil was by nature much more optimistic than Eglantine. “Maybe, maybe not. Let’s see if there’s anything in here for us.” Opening the paper at the advertisements page, Jonquil looked to see if there was anyone in need of some detective work. Halfway down the ‘Help Wanted’ column was a small square advertisement:
CAN YOU HELP SANTA?
STOUT HEARTED ELVES REQUIRED IN DIFFICULT TASK.
APPLY NORTH POLE.
URGENT!!
(toymakers need not apply)
“Look at this Eggers!”
“Hmm, I don’t like the bit about ‘Stout Hearted’ - it sounds as if it might be dangerous.”
“Santa wouldn’t put anybody’s life at risk, especially not an elf; and we don’t have anything better to do, do we?” Jonquil pointed to the empty ‘Work In Progress’ board hung on the wall of the cave in more optimistic times.
“No, I suppose not, but how will we get there?”
“The usual; when no-one’ looking we’ll jump on the train up to London, then mix in with the crowd and get the tube to Heathrow, and then sneak on a plane to Lapland. There are plenty of flights going there at this time of year; it’s surprising how many people fancy a holiday in Lapland at Christmas.”
“I’ll make some sandwiches,” said Eglantine, who was always careful to take proper care of dining arrangements.
Ten minutes later, they closed the curtain, locked the front door and off they went to the train station.
By far the hardest part of the journey was getting to Santa’s Grotto from the airport in Lapland. They tried the train station, but didn’t know which town was the nearest to the North Pole, no trains went all the way there. They couldn’t speak Lappish, so couldn’t understand what the people were saying. But Jonquil saw a sign outside a sleigh station which was in several languages, including English Express to the North Pole”.
Eglantine insisted that before sneaking into the luggage compartment of the sleigh they ate one of their sandwiches each, they didn’t know how long the journey would take, or if being scrunched up with the luggage would make eating sandwiches too difficult.
When they had reached the North Pole, Santa’s Grotto was just how Jonquil had imagined it; covered with snow and made of wooden logs, with square white windows, a pointed roof and a tall chimney with smoke coming out. All the lights were on, and it looked warm and friendly.
A big brass bell hung outside of the front door and Jonquil and Eglantine raced to ring it. They both arrived at the same time and swung on the rope that hung down beneath it.
“Ding, dong, ding, dong, ding!”
The door was answered by one of the toymaker elves, “Where’s the fire?”
“Sorry about that,” Eglantine said, brushing some snow off. “We’re here to see Santa; please tell him that T.E.D.A is here.”
“Too busy; tell him yourself,” the elf turned around and went back inside to a workbench that was piled high with half finished toys.
Across the room they saw a door with the sign “Santa’s Office” written in jolly red and white stripy letters on a dark green background. They went over to it, Jonquil straightened up, coughed quietly and knocked.
“Come in!”
They entered Santa’s Office; he sat in a comfortable armchair in front of a roaring fire, drinking a large mug full of cocoa.
“Yes?”
“Hi, Santa, I’m Jonquil and this is Eglantine. We’re The Elf Detective Agency and we’ve come to help you with your problem,” Jonquil said, handing Santa a business card.
“Oh, I see,” Santa smiled and peered at the card, “Please sit down,” he pointed some stools over by the wall, “bring a couple of those next to me. Do you want cocoa? It’s very good at heating you up when it’s cold outside.”
He nodded his head in the direction of the desk behind them, and when they looked they saw two more steaming mugs of cocoa. It was the best cocoa they’d ever tasted, and very hot. As they sipped it, Santa continued:
“I’m very glad you’ve come, things are getting desperate. It’s Christmas Eve tomorrow, and it’s going to be a foggy one. Do you know what happens on a foggy Christmas Eve?”
“Rudolph!” the elves said together.
Well my trouble is, someone, and I think I know who, has stolen the brightness from Rudolph’s nose. And if I can’t get it back in time, I won’t be able to take the sleigh out. And if I can’t take the sleigh out…”
“Nobody gets their presents” said Jonquil.
“Worse than that, I’m afraid. If I don’t deliver any of the presents, I lose my magic and won’t be able to do it ever again. The amount of magic I have this year depends on how many presents I managed to deliver last year. So if there I don’t deliver any presents this year, there’ll be no magic for next year. will be the end of children getting presents from Santa at Christmas forever.”
“Not forever?” Eglantine was horrified.
“Yes, all my toymakers will have to find another job. This place will have to go. The reindeer will have to go back to the wild. It will be a disaster. And to make matters even worse, I’m pretty sure it’s those naughty Imps who’ve stolen the brightness, and taken it to Naughtyland,” Santa gave a huge sigh and stared into the fire.
Jonquil, as a Professional Elf Detective, pulled a notebook from out of one pocket, and a pencil from another. This situation required an interview.
“When was the brightness taken, Santa?”
“Oh I don’t know, it could have been any time before this week. I first saw it was missing two days ago, when I put the advert in the paper. Do you know, you two are the only ones to offer to help me? In the old days, everyone would have helped. I think elves are getting too selfish.”
Jonquil didn’t like the sound of this; it began to seem as though Santa was expecting them to work for nothing. Even so, a truly professional detective should take notes.
“You suspect the Imps have taken it to Naughtyland. . . why don’t you just go there and bring it back?”
“It’s a bit of a character defect of mine, really. You see I’m very, very good all of the time. Hearty, jolly; ho, ho, ho. That sort of thing. But a downside of that, well not so much a downside as an unexpected side-effect, is that I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be anything else. I no longer know how to behave any differently. If I were to go to Naughtyland, there’s a very good chance that before you knew it, I’d become a Naughty Santa, and we wouldn’t want that now, would we?”
“Wouldn’t we?” asked Eglantine, imagining just what a Naughty Santa might get up to.
“No we wouldn’t!” Jonquil, the professional detective, continued with his interview. “So, Santa, if you’re not prepared to go to Naughtyland, why do you think it would be safe for us to go there?” Jonquil held the pencil ready to write down this answer, the most important so far.
“We all know how naughty elves can be, don’t we. It’s not completely a bad thing, a little naughtiness now and again can jolly things along. And most of the time I find elves to be well behaved, honest and truthful. It’s just that being immersed in the influence of naughtiness is likely to have much less of an effect on you two than on me.”
Eglantine looked at Jonquil; Jonquil just shrugged and continued with the questions.
“Where exactly is Naughtyland?”
“Oh, it’s just about everywhere, really.”
“Everywhere?” Eglantine was making a habit of one word interruptions.
“Shhhh,” said Jonquil, ”what do you mean, Santa, it can’t be everywhere.”
“It’s wherever a little bit of naughtiness occurs. To get there, the easiest way is to start from a Naughty Corner or a Naughty Step and just say the magic word.”
“Magic word?”
“Poo.”
Jonquil was stunned, Eglantine smirked.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I’m not going to repeat myself, you heard exactly what I said. Eglantine was trying hard to not say anything, and not to laugh. What were the chances of hearing Santa say “Poo”? And now the desire to join in and say it too was almost overwhelming.
“The trouble with naughty words is that once they get out into a room, everyone wants to say them” said Santa. Jonquil was biting hard on the end of a pencil and blinking, also trying not to say “Poo”.
Santa stood up. “Well I think I’ve given you two plenty to go on; I’ve got to press on. I must anticipate that you’ll be successful, otherwise I may fall behind, and I won’t be able to deliver the presents anyway. You can borrow Donner und Blitzen to get around on ,they need the exercise. Just don’t bring them back tired out, because hopefully, when they get back, they’ll have more work to do.”
Santa directed Jonquil and Eglantine to the stables, and there they met with Donner und Blitzen. All reindeer speak fluent Elf, but the elves had never spoken to reindeer.
“There aren’t many children around here,” said Jonquil, “which is the nearest city?”
“Murmansk,” said Blitzen.
“But ve should go to London. I luff der tvinkling of der lights in London,” said Donner.
“Ja, London ist der better place, mit more children too,” agreed Blitzen.
Jonquil asked, “But London’s miles away, surely it will take us too long to get there and back; shouldn’t we go somewhere nearer?”
“Ach, for der flying Reindeer, ist nussing. Ve get zair und back in der tvinkling of an eye.”
And that was true, it took longer for the elves to clamber on the reindeers’ backs than it did to get to London.
“Ve vill head for Chizvick, dair are lots of naughty children dair,” said Blitzen.
Eglantine could see why Donner liked the lights of London; from the air they looked just like Christmas decorations – even the lights of the traffic looked like shiny silver ribbons.
The reindeer took the elves to a house where they knew several naught children lived; their parents were rich, but hardly ever home, and the children were spoiled – they got whatever they asked for and were rude to their nanny.
Jonquil and Eglantine sneaked in through a back window and found themselves behind the curtain in the Children’s bedroom. There were people in the room, so the elves were very still and quiet.
Quentin, the youngest boy, was arguing with Jonty, his elder brother:
“I bet they would.”
“Not a chance.”
“Would too!”
“Go on then, try it; you’ll see. Just because you get the smoke detector to sound the alarm doesn’t mean the fire brigade will come. They’re too busy.”
“A boy in our class did it and they came to his house.”
“Well they won’t come here.”
Quentin struck a match and set fire to a piece of toast he had in his pocket. He knew that burning toast set off fire detectors because it had happened several times in the kitchen. It worked. The smoke detector sounded the alarm.
Within seconds the nanny came hurtling into the room.
“What are you doing? You silly little boy, you know playing with fire is very, very dangerous! Oh, Quentin,” she snatched the toast and matches off him, pulled a chair under the alarm, reached up and pressed the reset button.
“I told you earlier that any more nonsense today and you will be punished. Now get over to the Naughty Corner and stay there until I say you can move. Jonty, take your homework down to the lounge and do it there.”
“No fire engines then, Quentin?” Jonty smirked as he walked passed Quentin and over to the table to pick up his homework.
When the nanny and Jonty had left the room, Eglantine whispered to Jonquil “That didn’t take long; what do we do now?”
“Get in that corner and Poo!”
Eglantine looked startled.
“You know what I mean, we go over there and say “Poo”, that’s all.”
“Yes but how do we get there without him seeing us?”
“Just wait a minute, I have a hunch we should be all right soon enough.”
Jonquil’s hunch was correct. When Quentin was sure that the nanny and his brother were safely downstairs, he tiptoed to the door and slipped out.
“Now’s our chance!” They ran over to the corner and on the count of three they both said “Poo!”
Naughtyland wasn’t at all what Eglantine was expecting; Jonquil seemed to take it all with equanimity, not showing any surprise at all. It was like a huge underground cave system, all carved out of chunky white rock. Except it wasn’t rock, it was quite papery and not quite real. It wasn’t very bright and you could only see about a stone’s throw in front of you, so it was hard to work out just how big Naughtyland was. Every ten or twenty steps along the main path, which stretched on out of sight, there were side-caves and in these side-caves there were lifelike scenes of naughtiness.
In the first side-cave they came to they saw the naughtiness that they’d just witnessed in the real world: Quentin arguing with Jonty, setting fire to the toast and being sent to the Naughty Corner. It was like watching a three dimensional television with the sound turned down very low. They saw him sneak over to the door and slip out. They saw themselves walk over to the corner and disappear. Then the door opened again and the nanny marched Quentin back to the Naughty Corner, made him face the wall, and sat down in a chair with a thick book. It looked like he was going to be there for some time. Then side-cave went dark, and when it brightened again the whole scene re-started. It was very real, just like being there.
In the next side-cave along they saw a sweet little girl tip her bowl of porridge on the floor, shouting,
“I’m not eating that, it’s horrid, horrid, horrid.”
The porridge made a fine mess of the carpet underneath the table, and her mother told her that she was a very naughty girl and must go and stand on the Naughty Step, the first one on the staircase in the hall. When the little girl reached the step, the side-cave went dark, then brightened to show the little girl throwing her porridge on the floor again.
“That’ not a very good one,” a voice said from behind Jonquil and Eglantine, “there’s a really good up there, about three caves farther on, on the right hand side.”
Jonquil and Eglantine looked around and found themselves face to face with an imp.
“How do you do?” the imp said.
“Pleased to meet you; tell me, is this Naughtyland?”, asked Jonquil.
“Course it is, what else? – We don’t often get elves visiting, what are you here for?”
“We’ve come to –“ Eglantine kicked Jonquil in the shin, “OW!”
“We’re just looking around, it’s very interesting, isn’t it?” Eglantine didn’t want Jonquil telling any strange imps their business in case they might try to stop them.
“Not when you’ve been here as long as I have. I’d love to leave. It’s not fair, really. I’ve been told that during the days of creation, God was walking past Mother Earth and he turned and blessed her. All of her children who were playing in front of her were blessed and became well behaved elves, whilst all those children who were playing behind her missed the blessing and became imps. Now I think that’s rubbish. I think you’d both agree that there are some elves who are naughtier than some imps.”
“I can certainly think of one or two” Jonquil had to agree. “Me too,” added Eglantine.
“I’d just love to leave here and get into the real world,” continued the imp, “if only I could.”
“Tell you what,” said Eglantine, “if you help us do what we came for, we’ll take you back with us.”
“Really? Promise?”
“We promise” Jonquil and Eglantine both said at the same time, showing the Elven Salute as they did so.
“So what are you here for?”
“Before we go any further, I’m Jonquil and this is Eglantine”
“And I’m Dandelion.”
“Well, Dandelion, we’ve come to take back the brightness from Rudolph’s nose.”
“Oh, yes, I was expecting someone to come. What a stupid trick that was. I mean, it’s all very well being naughty, but to upset Santa is going too far, even for an imp.”
“Do you know where it is?” asked Eglantine.
“Sure, it’s locked up in the same room as the Naughty List.”
Dandelion led Jonquil and Eglantine along a very twisty, winding path to a small door at the end of one of the tunnels.
“It’s locked” said Jonquil, trying the handle.
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