Tracy Tam: Santa Command (14 page)

“Thank you, my dear.” Chris removed a white handkerchief from his coat pocket and dabbed his forehead. “That was quite exciting, wasn't it?”

“Sorry,” she said while she made a mental note to write down the amount of magic she had used and the results. Good scientists always kept records. “Hey, did you ever think that maybe magic is just an undiscovered element? I bet they'd even let you name it. You could call it Santanium.”

Chris let out a belly laugh. “I wouldn't classify it as undiscovered. Those who believe have always known about it.”

“I guess,” she said, but she tucked the idea into the back of her mind for future hypotheses. “So, what now?”

Chris climbed into the sleigh and punched the red button on the dashboard. Phil's face appeared on the screen this time.

“Are we back?” Phil asked.

“It seems like it,” Chris said. “Now, I believe Mary asked you for a list.”

Phil smiled with relief. “147 houses. I'm uploading the coordinates to your sleigh now.”

Chris clapped his hands together and called down to Tracy and Jared. “Come on you two. It's not every Christmas I come out of retirement. Aren't you going to join me?”

Tracy was ready to go. There was still lots to do and very little time left in the night.

The two kids scrambled into the sleigh. After Chris wiggled his fingers, they were all sitting in a swamp with Spanish moss hanging from the trees. And it was hot.

The Cyprus Grove looked familiar to Tracy, like somewhere she'd once visited on a school field trip. “Are we…?”

“Precisely,” Chris answered. “The Green Swamp. Fifteen miles from your neighborhood.”

She scanned the area and found what she was looking for—a boardwalk winding through the trees and over a section of the swamp. She
had
been there on a field trip. Her teacher had led them across the boardwalk, searching for signs of wildlife. All they found were spider webs and bird poop. She felt like the whole trip had been a waste of time, much like this second visit to the swamp. They had 147 houses to take care of. “The sun's gonna be up soon. If you can pop from place to place, why didn't you just take us to the first house?”

“Because we needed to prepare first.”

“Prepare?”

“I can't deliver presents without my assistants, can I?” Chris rubbed his hands together, then placed one on each of her shoulders. A river of yellow air flowed from his hands and down her coat. Her shoulders tingled a little, but other than that, she felt nothing as the oversized Santa coat shrunk into a red and white fitted jacket that Tracy could have worn to a fancy party. It wasn't too hot anymore, and Tracy looked like she fit in perfectly with the theming of Chris' ancient sleigh.

Jared sat wide-eyed on the other side of Chris. “Are you gonna do that,” he gulped, “to me?” After everything he'd just seen, he was still struggling with his belief in magic.

Tracy held out her arm.

“It's real,” she said. “All of this is.”

Jared rubbed her white fur cuff between his fingers. He pinched his eyes shut and said to Chris, “Go ahead.”

Chris once again rubbed his hands together, then placed them on Jared's shoulders. That same yellow river of magic flowed across Jared's chest. One corner of his mouth tilted up in a smile as he saw his new outfit. He'd gone from a kid in a brown striped sweater to a kid in a red striped sweater. It was enough to make him look like he belonged with Santa, but not enough to make him stand out in a crowd of other eleven year olds.

“Thanks,” Jared said. “Again.”

“Anytime,” Chris said with a wink. “Now, as Tracy said, the sun is almost up. We have a job to do.”

“Are we going to pop over to the houses now?” Tracy asked. She hadn't admitted it to anyone, but traveling by magic was starting to thrill her. It was like having her very own Star Trek transporter.

“My dear girl, haven't you ever heard of making an entrance?” Chris snapped the reins, and the reindeer leaped into the sky.

Santa Command—Loading Bay

December 25
^th

0430 hours

All of the remaining presents had been loaded into bags and placed on the platform. Phil stepped back and examined the pile skeptically. It was an awful lot of presents to deliver in an hour, and there was no way it would fit in one sleigh. At least, it wouldn't fit in one of their current sleighs. He'd never seen Chris' sleigh in person. In all of the pictures, it looked like a rickety little thing that would blow apart in a good stiff wind. But who was he to question magic? All he knew was that Mary believed this would work.

Phil signaled to an Inkling who climbed to the top of the pile. Once there, the little creature grabbed a fistful of dust from one of her pouches and threw it up over her head. The Inkling and the pile were gone before the dust settled.

Tracy

A single red bag appeared in the back of the sleigh. Tracy reached back to touch it. It was the same slippery, silky material as before, but this time it felt tingly too. Did it have magic that the other bags didn't? She poked at a few places on the fabric. It acted like a mini trampoline, springing back into shape after each poke. When she poked something soft and squishy, she heard a squeal.

Tracy yanked her hand back.

A small guinea pig-sized lump made its way under the surface of the bag and up to the top. An elf face popped out of the opening. “Watch what you're doing. I don't remember poking you.”

The elf had a sprout like ponytail on the top of her head, just like the one Tracy had seen earlier that night. “No, but I remember you from the rooftop.” She also remembered the wolves and the troll and scowled.

“Well, you shouldn't have run from me,” the elf said simply. “I do love a chase.”

Jared had been watching the whole thing and started laughing. “Even I know better than to mess with one of the Inklings.”

Tracy might have turned her back on the little creature just out of spite, but when she wasn't snarling or sitting on top of her, she looked kind of cute. “Inkling?” Tracy tested the sound of the word. It seemed to apply to the girl staring back at her.

“Yeah.” She climbed out of the bag and perched on top. The wind from the moving sleigh made her do a backwards somersault. She balled her tiny fists up in the material, holding on tight so she didn't get blown away. “Inklings. Santa's helpers. You know, we're what people call
elves
.” When she said “elves,” she made a face like she was tasting sour milk.

“You're not elves?” Tracy asked.

“Here we go again.” Jared rolled his eyes. “Can we skip the speech, Sasha?”

“Us? Elves?” Sasha turned her head to the right and spit. “Ptooey! Those foul little rats don't have one ounce of magic in their bodies.”

Jared turned around and sunk back into his seat. It was obvious he had heard this a million times, but Tracy hadn't, and she was very interested.

“And you have magic?” Tracy asked. Of course they did. She'd seen them transform into wolves and a giant troll only a few hours earlier. She just hadn't believed it was magic at the time.

The Inkling smiled smugly at Tracy. “We're
made
of magic. Watch this.” She closed her eyes. Her body melted into a ball of yellow swirls, exactly like the magic that had filled the box back in Chris' barn.

“That's amazing!” Tracy said.

Chris kept his eyes on his reindeer as they soared over the Cyprus trees. He smiled as if he knew that Sasha was showing off. “The time came when I needed someone to help me with deliveries. I made a simple wish, opened the box, and they came running out.” Chris spoke fondly of the memory. “I haven't been able to tame them since.”

The Inkling blew a raspberry at Chris, but she did it with a smile. Sasha's round brown eyes said everything. She adored that man, her Santa Claus.

Tracy realized it was the first time she had ever thought of Chris as Santa, and she wondered how she hadn't known it the moment she met him. Now, as she looked at his profile—his long, white beard, his rosy cheeks, his shining eyes—she knew there was no way he could ever be anything but Santa. So why did he quit? “Hey, Chris? Why did you…?”

“First house!” Sasha squeaked over Chris' shoulder. “Let's do this!”

Tracy

They landed on a roof two streets over from Tracy's house. As soon as the sleigh stopped moving, Sasha dove back into the bag and came up with a pile of presents ten times larger than her tiny body. She balanced them easily in a pile above her head. Chris took a few. The kids grabbed the rest so Sasha could hop out and run over to the chimney.

“This way,” Chris nudged Tracy out of the sleigh, then marched over to the chimney without looking back to see if Tracy and Jared were following. They always did.

Chris jumped first. As his feet left the rooftop, he and his stack of presents dissolved into a mist that floated down the chimney.

Jared took a step backward. “Um, I can't do that.” And he looked like he didn't want to either.

Tracy looked at Sasha, unsure of whether to follow Chris or side with Jared. “How does this work? We're…” she searched for the right word, “...human.” Believing in magic was one thing.
Becoming
it was something else entirely.

“But I'm not.” Sasha stuffed a fist into a small bag hanging from her belt and pulled out a handful of dust. “The clock's ticking. Are you gonna trust me or not?”

Tracy sighed. She'd already accepted magic was real. This was just one more experiment that would prove her theory. “Fine.” She took a deep breath and jumped.

Sasha tossed a handful of dust into the air over the chimney. As Tracy passed through it, her entire body, from her scalp to her toes, shivered with magic. It was the best thrill ride ever. Going down the chimney was like going down a water slide, except she was the water. She popped out at the bottom and landed on her feet, solid once more. “Wow. That was—”

Chris grabbed her arm and pulled her out of the way, just as Jared came shooting out after her. He wasn't nearly as graceful, and his stack of presents tumbled to the ground. Jared grabbed hold of the mantle as he caught his breath. “Wow.”

“I know,” Tracy answered him.

Somewhere in the house, a floorboard creaked.

Chris put a finger to his lips, and the children froze.

They all looked at the staircase, where ten bare toes appeared on the top step.

Santa Command—Control Room 8

December 25
^th

0435 hours

The entire control room was silent as Phil watched the screen, his fingers tapping nervously on his knees. He'd been allowed back into the control room to watch, with Walt, naturally peering over his shoulder. They had protocol to follow whenever a child got out of bed while the Santas were in the house. But this wasn't just one of the Santas. This was Chris. And he was different.

All of their Santas were normal guys who had displayed extraordinary acts of kindness toward others. They were recruited because of their very nature—they wanted to make the world better. They agreed to being hypnotized, because they understood that their job did not need to be recognized or remembered. The deliveries just needed to happen, and they were willing to do it.

But because they were nice, normal guys following a program in their minds, they had no ability to improvise. If children got out of bed, Santa Command saw and corrected it, usually with Inkling magic. The Santas never knew about it and didn't have enough magic to do anything, even if they did know.

But now, here was Chris, making deliveries for the first time in over a century, and he was about to be caught by a child.

This was his operation. It had been from the very beginning. There was no protocol for him. So, all Phil could do was sit and watch.

Jared

A girl, maybe six or seven years old, with short, blond pigtails and a yellow nightgown stepped off of the last stair and into the living room. She bounced on her toes, but didn't come any closer. There were an awful lot of people in her living room, and she was a tiny girl who was supposed to be in bed.

Jared knew exactly what Santa Command did in this situation. He kept his eye on Sasha, expecting the Inkling to yank some dust from her bag and toss it into the kid's face. But that didn't happen. Sasha stood perfectly still, watching Chris in much the same way the little girl was watching him.

Chris knelt down on one knee and waved the little girl toward him. “Hello, Sophie. Are you ready for Christmas?”

She ran over and jumped on his knee.

Chris wobbled a little, but kept his balance. “Whoa, there,” he said. “I'm an old man you know.”

Sophie reached one finger up to touch his beard. As soon as she touched it, he said, “Boo!” and she yanked her finger back and giggled.

“You're the real Santa, aren't you?” she asked. “You know, not the fake ones from the malls and stuff. I have to know. It's important.”

Chris wrapped his arms around her, holding her steady on his knee. “Why do you ask?”

“Well, my dad…” She stopped and scrubbed her fingers under her eyes. Then she clammed up again.

Chris filled in the rest for her. “Your dad said he had something for you, didn't he? That only the real Santa could deliver it.”

Sophie's eyes lit up. “Yes! He said it in a dream. He couldn't tell me in person, because he's not…” She looked from Jared to Tracy to Sasha, then leaned in to Chris as if she were telling him a secret that the others weren't supposed to hear. But Jared was standing right next to Chris, and he heard her whisper. “He's not here anymore.”

Jared felt a knot form inside of his chest. There were pictures all over the living room of Sophie with her mom and dad. He wondered how and when she'd lost him, even though he didn't want either thought in his head. He knelt beside the tree and started arranging the presents they'd brought, just to get his mind on something else.