X-mas Files (eBook)

Margaret Cravens (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
120 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3178-1671-1 (ISBN)

Infos

In the magical world of the North Pole, Sadie North has trouble finding a place where she feels like she belongs. As a last resort, the career advisor at Holly Jolly Academy suggests she try the North Pole Library. Before she knows it, she's hard at work documenting some of the stranger, more bizarre happenings of the North Pole, and even getting dragged into one or two incidents herself. No matter what threatens to ruin Christmas, the North Pole is ready for it... or are they?

Margaret Cravens is a mystery and fantasy writer, currently living in Annapolis Maryland. Her other works include The Bernard and Clydesdale Mysteries, as well as several short stories and poems which have been published in various anthologies alongside pieces by other young writers.

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Most humans spend their lives under the mistaken impression that the only job available for a North Pole elf is making toys. This is patently incorrect, but since the North Pole is a magical world accessible only by a portal guarded by animatronic polar bears, very few humans will ever find this out. In the North Pole, all the elves are hard at work making Christmas happen, in all sorts of different ways. Some make toys, yes, but others work in the post office, or at the North Pole Library. Usually, things run like a well-oiled polar bear. Other times, though From shenanigans in the Library, to doll-making disasters, to even a few trips down to the human world, these five fun, festive short stories document what happens when Christmas isn't running quite to plan.

Textauszug

The Christmas
Library

December 1st, 2023

Humans have many misconceptions about the North Pole, and Santa Claus, and the elves and the reindeer and the sleigh, and all of that sort of thing.
The most dangerous of these is the rumor that none of them are real at all, and that Santa’s presents come from parents. This is, obviously, quite ridiculous. The second major misconception is that the North Pole is a physical location on the earth. That’s not true either. The portal to the North Pole is located in the Arctic. It looks like a bright green swirl of light, and is often mistaken for the Aurora Borealis. It would almost be too easy for humans to accidentally stumble upon it, were it not for the polar bears guarding the area. Polar bears, as I’m sure you know, are not real bears at all, but enchanted animatronics created in Santa’s workshop.1

The third (but by no means the last) human misconception about the North Pole is that the only job available for an elf there is toymaking. This was utterly ridiculous, of course. There are plenty of other non-toymaking jobs available for elves. Santa’s sleigh, for instance, requires constant maintenance and care. The children of earth need to be monitored, and the Naughty List and the Nice List need to be kept up to date. The North Pole’s post office requires enormous capacity to juggle all of the letters that come in from every part of the world (well, every Christmas-celebrating part) during the weeks leading up to December 25th. The sleigh needs to be kept in tip-top condition, Santa’s suit needs to be regularly mended (and occasionally replaced . . . in a larger size), holiday films and songs need to be written and produced, and that is only the beginning.

Toymaking is, however, the most common job of an elf. Over half of each graduating class of Holly Jolly Academy will go on to become toymakers.

“There’s two kinds of elves in this world,” Professor Peppermint, the toymaking instructor at Holly Jolly Academy would often say. “Those who can make toys, and those who wish they could.”

Sadie North didn’t fall into either category. She neither wanted to, nor had any ability to make toys. As far as toymaking went, she had two left hands. This was a metaphor, of course, although the doll she’d made for her final exam in her dollmaking course did in fact have two left hands. And was half bald. And had two differently shaped eyes. And vampire fangs, though those had at least been an intentional (if ill-received) creative choice, which she couldn’t claim about any of the other mishaps.

Her performance in her other subjects was only marginally better. She hated the reindeer with a burning passion, and they knew it. Cupid even bit her once, and Cupid never bites anyone! (Donner and Blitzen, on the other hand, are right terrors to all. And don’t even get me started on Rudolph). In Christmas Choir, she’d once gotten a detention for saying that she thought Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’ was overplayed. She also made the mistake of telling the teacher of Seasonal Cinematography that ‘big city girl goes to hometown to fall in love with her high school sweetheart and learn the true meaning of Christmas’ was a boring, cheesy plot with misogynistic overtones due to the implication that the woman must be unhappy with a career-based life and needed a man to fix her. The teacher hadn’t liked that, and sent Sadie out to go stand in the hall.

She failed at gift-wrapping and candy design. She was a disaster in Elf-on-the-Shelf remote control and sweater making. All of those still went better than gingerbread house construction or sleigh-bell manufacturing, the final exams of which had both ended in flames.

Now there were just two weeks until December 1st, when all of the final-year student elves would begin a month-long work-study for the last month of the year. Sadie, like every other elf in her class, had a meeting with the Elf Career Placement Counselor to determine where she would be sent.

“So, Sadie,” Mrs. Carol said, when Sadie was seated before her in her office. “Where do you see yourself in 50 years?”

50 years may sound like a long time to a human, but to an elf it would be around 10.

Sadie shrugged and looked down at her feet. When Mrs. Carol said nothing, Sadie blurted out the first job that came to her head. “Polar Bear Repair, I guess.”

Mrs. Carol pursed her lips. “I’m not entirely sure you have the marks in Animatronics for that.”

“It’s not my fault the dog blew up!” Sadie protested, a jerk reflex. The robot dog had indeed been a near-unmitigated disaster, but she was definitely 100% sure that it hadn’t been her fault. She’d been very, very careful that time, followed every instruction and checked and double checked and triple checked and then checked twice more. But the second she’d turned it on for her presentation in class… Well, at least she hadn’t been suspended.

“Do you have a second choice?” Mrs. Carol asked. ‘You seem to be quite good at Festive Botany.’

Sadie sighed. “I’m allergic.”

Mrs. Carol didn’t seem to have heard. “It’s one of your highest scoring classes.”

“But I’m allergic. Can’t walk into the Merryhouse2 without starting to sneeze.”

“Unfortunate,” Mrs. Carol said. She scanned Sadie’s class record again with something approaching panic in her eyes. “Don’t you worry,” she said, in a tone of voice that very much made Sadie worry. “We’ll find something for you yet. Something for everyone, that’s our motto!”

“I could… be a Sugarplum Dancer?” Sadie suggested. “I can dance. Sort of.”

Mrs. Carol didn’t laugh, but it seemed to take a supreme force of effort. “Your dancing, Sadie, while… enthralling, isn’t quite what the Sugarplum Dancers usually look for. Your style is too… unique for that.”

Sadie suspected Mrs. Carol was remembering the time when, during the school performance, Sadie had lost control of her spin and fallen off the stage. And knocked two other dancers off as well. And sprained her ankle.

“Anyway,” Mrs. Carol added, “you’d need a recommendation from the head of the music department for that.”’

Sadie knew that would not be forthcoming, thanks to the aforementioned ‘All I Want for Christmas is You’ debacle.

Sadie was properly grasping at straws now. “Stocking stuffing?”

Mrs. Carol looked down. “That would require at least a B in Toymaking, I’m afraid.”

“I guess it’ll be Festive Botany, then,” Sadie said, making a mental note to stop by the Yuletide Apothecary on her walk home and pick up some antihistamines.

“See?” Mrs. Carol said, her wide smile brightening. “A job for everyone!”

Sadie rose and slung her bag over her shoulder.

“Unless…” Mrs. Carol said. ‘Sadie, have you ever thought of being an Archivist?”

“A what?”

“Working in the Library, with Christmas books, studying the history of Christmas? You’ve done well in Human Studies. It’s your only A class.”

“Nobody takes Human Studies seriously, it’s just an easy A.”

“Normally, yes, it’s a fairly useless class, but there’s actually an opening at the Library this year, Old Nick Treacle retired.”3

“And I could work there? Permanently, even?”

“If the internship pans out and the Head Archivist wants you back, yes.”

Sadie sighed. At least it would be better than facing down her allergies.

That was why, come December 1st, Sadie found herself riding the train to the North Pole Public Library.

She was let off in front of the building. Like every structure in the North Pole, it was made entirely of gingerbread and spun-sugar glass, but it stood out due to its giant peppermint-spiral dome and the great columns out front.4

Sadie walked up the brightly colored hard candy steps, her school shoes making a tak-tak-tak noise as she climbed. The door loomed before her, beautifully carved from milk chocolate.

Sadie knocked and the door creaked open. She took a deep breath and stepped inside.

Rows and rows of books reached up to the stained light coming through the peppermint dome. The air smelled of gumdrops and cinnamon and Christmas lights.5

“Hello?” called a wispy voice from the deepest of the shadows. “Are you the intern?”

“Intern? Yup. I mean, yes. Yes, that’s me. Hi. I’m… My name is Sadie North, I’m the… the intern.”

The shadows shifted and then birthed a very tiny, very old elf. Most elves stand around a meter tall. Sadie was on the short side (92 centimeters), but this elf was a head beneath her still. He wore an archivist’s uniform, complete with a tall pointy hat6 and a little blue waistcoat. His hair was stark white and very wispy. His shoes were so old fashioned that they did the thing where they curved up after the toes, and he had a pair of very round glasses perched low on his face. Between his glasses and his protruding belly, there were very few straight lines about him.

“You’ve very young,” he said, looking Sadie up and down.

“I’ll be 86 next June,” Sadie couldn’t help...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 28.11.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Fantasy
• ISBN-13: 979-8-3178-1671-1 / 9798317816711