Elves. Elves in motion are otherworldly. They are long and lovely and lean; when they dance they are whirling dervishes that sparkle and gleam like sun shining on snow. I should know. I’ve been watching them my whole life.
The decorations committee has gone all out for the Snow Ball this year. Which I suppose they do every year, but this year feels especially tinseled. Twinkle lights cover every inch of the Great Hall, so many that we don’t even need overhead lighting. There’s a huge spruce in the center that goes all the way to the ceiling, and from its branches hang wooden carvings of every elf who’s ever lived at the North Pole. Just the elves, though.
Around the perimeter of the Great Hall, there are lots of smaller Christmas trees close to eight feet tall, all themed. There’s a paper-crane tree from Japan, a Dutch tree with dangling wooden shoes painted in all different kinds of colors, a Day of the Dead tree from Mexico, which is covered in tiny sugar skulls. There’s a 1950s tree, which might be my favorite. It has a purple-and-pink poodle skirt around the base.
All the teen elves have paired off for the Snow Ball. It’s the most romantic night of the season. The last hurrah before things really kick into gear with the holidays. It’s like prom for elves. Not that I myself have ever been to a prom, but I imagine this is what it must be like.
Boys and girls all dressed up, dancing.
Tonight Elinor is wearing a white dress with silver spangles. Under the lights, her hair looks white too. So does Flynn’s.
The dress I’m wearing is made of the same cranberry red fabric as Papa’s suit. We match. A pre-Christmas gift. My first year at the North Pole, my dress had puffy sleeves and a lacy white pinafore. This year my dress has a scoop neck and cap sleeves and a full skirt. It came with a white fur muff as well. It’s a doll’s dress, not a fifteen-year-old girl’s.
Oh, Papa. Can’t he see that I’m growing up?
Everyone at the North Pole knows the story of how Santa found me. Fifteen Christmases ago, he was delivering presents to an apartment complex in Seoul, South Korea. He loves the big apartment complexes because he can zip from floor to floor and be done in a jiffy. When he returned to his sleigh, there I was in a basket with a note that said, which means, Please take care of my daughter. Santa didn’t know what to do. Every time he put me down, I cried, and he still had all of Asia to get to. So he took me along. He said I slept the whole way. Santa had every intention of bringing me back to Korea before morning, but by the end of night, he just couldn’t. I grabbed hold of his pinky and wouldn’t let go. And so here I live, at the North Pole, a place no human girl has ever lived before.
I’m standing with my back pushed up against the wall, and my tights itch, and I’m wishing someone, anyone, would ask me to dance. Even out of pity. That would be fine. I catch Flynn’s eye while he’s spinning Elinor around. She looks good in his arms. She looks right. If it were me dancing with him, I would only come up to his chest. I wouldn’t be able to dance cheek to cheek.
I hang by the refreshment tables. They are my safe zone. For the first twelve days of December, dessert is themed. It’s a tradition, one of many. On the first day of Christmas, a partridge in a pear tree. This year, they did chocolate partridges stuffed with chestnut cream and drizzled with a tart pear syrup.
The chocolate partridge reminds me of the wooden bird in my coat pocket.
When I was eight, a robin got stuck in the Great Hall. It flew in an open window, and it couldn’t figure out how to fly back out. It kept flying up to the ceiling. I tried to shepherd the bird out the door with a Quidditch broom—the number-one requested present with six-to-eight-year-olds that year, though I think kids were hoping it would actually fly. None of us could figure out how to help the bird. But then Flynn climbed up on the banister, and the robin flew right up to him. He caught the bird and carried it outside, cradled in the palms of his hands, and the robin flew away. For days it was all anyone could talk about.
So for Christmas that year, I gave Flynn a bird I carved out of wood. I tried to do a robin, but I just couldn’t capture its likeness. So instead I did a chickadee with a glass eye, carved out of pine. I was nervous to give it to him.
Because the thing to understand about elves is that they aren’t usually into presents. They make things, they create, they labor, but they don’t like to receive. It’s not in their nature.
There was a good chance he wouldn’t accept it, but when he opened up the box, he stared at the chickadee for a long time. I watched as he held it in his hand, turning it over, feeling its weight. Was it good enough? I’d practiced other birds as well, but this was the only one I thought worthy enough of my friend. And then he said, “No one ever gave me a gift before.”
I let out the breath I was holding. “So you’ll keep it?”
“I’ll keep it.”
I’ve given him a bird every Christmas ever since. This year, I finally got the robin right. Black walnut, painted holly-berry red.
I’m pouring myself another cup of raspberry-ginger punch when I hear Elinor say, “It’s sad that Natty didn’t have anyone to come to the ball with. I doubt she’s ever even met a human boy before.”
“Yes, she has,” Flynn says. “That guy Lars, remember?”
Their backs are to me. They don’t know I’m standing in earshot. I could still slip away without them knowing.
Then Elinor says, “Oh, Flynn. It’s so obvious she made that up to make you jealous. She’s always had a crush on you.”
My vision goes blurry, and I drop my cup of punch. Red liquid streams all over the refreshments table and some splashes on my dress. How could she say that? Never mind the fact that she’s right, I do have a crush on Flynn. Always have.
“She didn’t make it up,” he says, and his voice rings out loud and clear like a bell. “I checked it out. The databases haven’t been completely updated so I looked in Santa’s actual logs. There really was a boy named Lars.”
“You’re just saying that to be kind,” Elinor says. “We all know Natty tells stories.”
My cheeks burn hot. I used to tell stories. For attention. Like the time I told everyone I got lost in a blizzard and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer came and rescued me. But I don’t tell stories anymore. Aren’t people allowed to change?
I clear my throat before I can stop myself. They whirl around in one motion, as if it were choreographed. Elinor has the grace to look ashamed. She’s worried I’ll tell Santa. I won’t. I’m not a little baby tattletale anymore. I can handle myself. My heart pumps so hard in my chest, I worry that everyone can hear it. So I speak loudly. “I don’t ‘tell stories,’ Elinor. And I wasn’t lying about Lars.”
Two years ago, because I begged and pleaded, because it was my Christmas wish, Santa took me out with him on Christmas Eve.
Most things about the night are a blur, as most magical things are. But when I close my eyes and try hard to remember, I remember dogs that yapped and dogs that barked, the smells of other people’s houses, the thrill of being somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be. Christmas trees and Christmas cookies and Christmas stockings. Christmas everything. Mostly I took pleasure in watching Papa work, because he took so much pleasure in it. The way he arranged the presents just so. He really does know the name of every girl and boy. He’d adopt all the lost little girls and boys if he could. I just got lucky. Sometimes I think about my mother, my real mother, and I wonder if she knew whom she was giving me to. I like to think so.
Papa and I visited a house—it was small and blue with white shutters—by the sea. I remember the smell of salt and the sound of the water. While Papa got to work, I set off looking for the cookies. So far my favorites were peanut M&M’s ones at an apartment in Charleston, South Carolina, and a close second were fancy raspberry macarons in Paris.
I found a blue-and-white china plate with cookies dusted in powdered sugar. I bit into one. It was hard nougaty pecan. I was licking sugar dust off my fingers when I heard him. It was a teenaged boy, thirteen or fourteen, standing at the foot of the stairs, staring right at me. He had hair the color of lemon candy, a translucent yellow. “Jävlar!” he whisper-shouted.
The way he said it, it definitely sounded like a curse word.
“My father says cussing is a terrible habit,” I told him, furtively wiping my hands on my coat.
The boy just stared at me, round-eyed.
“Oh, sorry. You probably don’t speak any English, huh? Where are we again? Sweden?” I cleared my throat. “God jul.” That means Merry Christmas. I can say Merry Christmas in every language. The elves can speak every language, but I’m only human.
“Are you and your dad robbers?” he asked me.
I gasped. So he did speak English! “Excuse me, but my father gives people gifts, he doesn’t steal them. He’s Santa.” The boy just kept staring at me, so I clarified. “Claus. Santa Claus. Saint Nick? Père Noël?” Oh, right, we were in Sweden. “Tomte? Nisse?”
He just looked more confused. “Santa Claus is Asian?”
“I’m adopted,” I explained. “He’s not my biological dad.”
The boy backed up on the staircase. “If you guys don’t get out of here right now I’m gonna call the polisen. Police, understand?”
The police? Eeks. Weakly I called out, “Papa . . .”
From the living room he called back, “Almost done in here, Natty! Pack a few cookies for me and we’ll hop back in the sleigh.”
“The sleigh,” the boy repeated.
“Oh, um, a sleigh is like a sled. Or . . . a wagon? It’s how Santa travels.”
He glared. “I know what a sleigh is.”
“It’s parked in the snow,” I said. “Go look if you don’t believe me.”
He ran over to the window and looked outside. He turned back around with saucer eyes and sank down onto the floor. He closed his eyes and whispered, “This isn’t real. I’m dreaming.”
I pinched his arm so hard he yelped. “See? You’re not dreaming.”
He rubbed his arm. “That’s not proof of anything.”
That’s when I noticed it—the bundle of mistletoe hanging above our heads. I thought, here’s my chance. And so I grabbed him and kissed him, and he tasted like Swedish Christmas candy.
Then I heard a throat clearing and a ho ho ho, and we sprang apart. The boy’s eyes just about fell out of his head when he saw Santa in all his cranberry-velvet glory. “Time to go, Natty,” Papa said.
“You really are real,” the boy whispered.
“That’s right, and I know when you’ve been naughty or nice,” Papa joked, but it was awkward, of course.
Papa whisked me away, and the boy ran to the window and called out, “My name is Lars! What’s yours?”
I screamed back, “Natalie!”
When I think back on it, I realize it was the first time I ever got to introduce myself. I’d known everyone at the North Pole since I was a baby, and they all called me Natty, because that was what Santa called me. It was my first time being Natalie.
We’re all still standing near the refreshment tables when my papa comes bounding into the party, waving and ho-ho-hoing. The elves go wild. Elves don’t normally give in to big displays of emotion, but they make an exception where Santa is concerned. He’s a rock star to them. “Happy December First!” Papa calls out.
“Happy December First,” everyone shouts back.
“You’ve all been working so hard, and I’m just so darn proud of you. It’s going to be a real push to finish in time but we’re going to get it done, just like we do every year. Have a great time tonight! And tomorrow it’s game on!” Everyone claps and Papa looks around the crowd. “Where’s my Natty? Natty, come up here and say something to the troops.”
It’s the last thing I want, but the elves pull me forward and deposit me next to Papa, who puts his arm around me and looks at me the way he always looks at me, doting and proud. I wipe at the stains forming on the front of my dress. It’s a good thing my dress is the same color as the punch.
Papa beams at me. “Say something, Natty.”
What am I supposed to say? I’m just the boss’s daughter. “Um, merry Christmas,” I say, and everyone claps out of courtesy.
Papa signals to the elf band, who launch into a rousing rendition of “Last Christmas,” my dad’s favorite Christmas song. The elves all think it’s Elvis’s version of “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” but I know the truth. Papa loves Wham!
“Dance with your dear old dad, Natty,” he says, taking my hand in his. He leads me in a foxtrot, and I do my best to keep up. I can feel all the elves watching us, feeling sorry for me that I’m here dancing with my dad and not an actual date. “I bet your dance card’s been full all night. Natty, tell me what you want for Christmas.”
I cannot say the thing I want, because it’s the one thing he can’t give me, and that would break his heart. “I haven’t really thought about it,” I lie.
Papa gives me a knowing look and pats me on the shoulder before he twirls me. You’d think I’d know better than to lie to Santa Claus. “Dearest one, if you believe, I think you will get exactly what you want.”
I want to believe. I want so badly to believe.
There are two kinds of children. The kind who believe and the kind who don’t. Every year, it seems there are fewer in the world who do. Papa says it’s not an easy thing to ask a child to believe in what they can’t see; he says it’s its own magic. He says that if you have that magic inside you, you should protect it all your life and never let it go, because once it’s gone, it’s gone forever.
After the song is over, Papa wishes everyone a good night and goes back to his office. I want to follow him and fall asleep by the fireplace watching him go over his Naughty or Nice lists. But I don’t go, I stay in the Great Hall and sway to music and watch everyone else dance. Sondrine glides up beside me and says she likes my dress, which I know she doesn’t, but I say thank you anyway because she’s only trying to be kind. At least I’m not standing alone. Sondrine tells me about a dancing-elf video game they cooked up in the gaming department, complete with nonslip dance pad. At first it was a joke, but then they all got really into it, and now it looks like it might end up under a few kids’ Christmas trees.
But then Roan, a puppeteer elf, asks Sondrine to dance, and she skips off with him, smiling from pointy ear to pointy ear. When I was little, I used to tape my ears to try to get them to point. I was unsuccessful.
Elinor and Flynn are dancing again.
At lunch in the workshop last week, Elinor asked me, “Who are you going to the Snow Ball with, Natty?”
There was a long silence. And then I said, “No one.”
“Oh,” she said, and there was so much pity in that one little word I couldn’t stand it.
I swallowed a bite of mooseloaf and then I said, “I thought about flying in this boy I know who lives in Sweden, but—”
“Who do you know that lives in Sweden?” she asked.
When I told her the story of yellow-haired Lars and the Swedish candy, her eyes got that squinched look they get when she doesn’t believe you. “Hmm,” she kept saying.
“So why is this the first we’re hearing about him?” Elinor ran her fingers through her silvery hair. “It sounds like you two had a strong connection.”
I bit my lip. “We did have a strong connection. But we—we lost touch. I don’t even have his address anymore.” I never had his address. We were never in touch.
“I think you should find this boy, Natty. See if it’s meant to be.” Then she called out, “Flynn? Would you please look up the address of a Swedish boy named Lars? Aged fifteen to seventeen.” He didn’t answer, so she called out his name again. “Flynn?”
“What?” he said at last.
Sweet as spun sugar, she said, “We need you to look up a boy named Lars from Sweden. Natty, did you say what he asked for? We can cross-reference his Christmas wish with Swedish boys with blond hair named Lars.”
Flynn took off his headphones and pointed at the countdown clock on the wall. Twenty-five days till Christmas Eve. “You guys should get back to work if you want to hit your numbers today.”
“Don’t be such a Scrooge,” she said, and she went over to the computers, and nudged Flynn over, bending over the keyboard. Her silken hair grazed his cheek. “Okay, so I have the year, a first name, hair color, toy, country of origin. Natty, you said he lived by the sea?”
I nodded.
She typed some more. “Hmm. I don’t see anything.”
“Maybe it wasn’t Sweden. Maybe it was Norway. Or Finland. It could have been Finland!” I could hear the note of desperation in my voice, and they heard it too, and it was unseemly.
Elinor straightened up. “I should get back to the BB gun station. Ever since they started showing A Christmas Story on TV all day, it’s all kids are asking for.”
When she was gone, Flynn said to me with a grin. “You made that story up, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t make it up,” I said. “I was telling the truth! And you’re supposed to be my friend, which means you’re supposed to believe me.”
“I am your friend, Natty. And as your friend, I’m telling you, you shouldn’t make up stories anyone can easily disprove.”
“I’m not! There really is a boy named Lars! I don’t know why he’s not in the database, but there has to be an explanation.” I let out a big sigh. “And I wish everyone would stop calling me Natty. My name is Natalie.”
“Sorry. You’re not a Natalie to me. It sounds so . . . grown up.”
“Well, I’m not a little girl anymore,” I said, putting my head down on the table.
“Whatever you say,” Flynn said.
I sat there with my head on the desk, watching him work. He gets a very intense look about him when he works. Silver head bent over a toy, eyes narrowed in concentration. When he’s working, he doesn’t like to be disturbed. No elves do.
To his back, I asked, “Who . . . who are you taking to the Snow Ball, Flynn?” I held my breath. Don’t say Elinor. Anyone but Elinor.
He hesitated. And then, without turning around, he said, “Elinor,” and I could feel something in me wither.
“Why?”
“Because I always go with Elinor.”
“Oh. Right. Of course you do.”
If I had outright asked and not only hinted, would he have said yes? Would he have changed course? Or would it have been the same as it is every year?
Flynn, the handsomest of all the boy elves. And me, at the Snow Ball. I’ve got a good imagination, but even I have trouble picturing it.
We were both quiet. Too quiet. I had to speak, because if I didn’t, I would cry, and that wouldn’t do.
I got up and stood behind Flynn, and I tried to stand up tall, as tall as an elf. Shoulders back, chin up. Up, up so tears don’t fall. Up so high that I was looking at the ceiling and not straight ahead. I cleared my throat, and my voice came out thick like molasses. “I think you should go really dramatic in the bathroom. Gold faucets and black tiles. Also I think that the staircase you designed is sort of dated.”
“I’ve already told you, this is a mid-century modern dollhouse.” Flynn was annoyed but he was also relieved, I could tell. He was relieved I wasn’t pressing the issue. The issue of him and her.
I leaned in closer, as close as Elinor stood next to him. I could smell his hair; it smelled faintly of pine. “And I’m telling you, this house needs a more feminine touch. It’s looking too sterile.”
Another thing elves hate—to be criticized. “Can you please just let me work?” he asked.
“Not until you say you believe me about Lars.”
“I’m not going to say I believe something when I don’t.” Flynn finally turned his head to look at me. “I have a job, Natty. I mean, Natalie. We all do. Christmas Eve is—”
“I know. Twenty-five days away.”
Flynn nodded, satisfied that I got it, that we were on the same page, both of us understanding how great is the magnitude of twenty-five days away. He swiveled back around to his computer.
“Are you saying we all have jobs to do here but me?” I demanded.
Flynn turned back around. He looked perplexed when he said, “No, that’s not what I’m saying—”
“My father says that my contributions to the cowgirl outfits were inspired. He—he said that it was the single most requested outfit for girls ages five to seven, so don’t you dare try to minimize what I do. And just so you know, I wasn’t lying about Lars. He really does exist, and he really was my first kiss. I don’t care if it’s in the database or not.”
I turned on my heel and left before he could say another word. I knew what I’d done. I picked a fight with my only friend because I was mad. Mad that Flynn picked Elinor. Mad that it wasn’t me.
I’m the foolish one for being surprised. There’s no such thing as elves and humans dating. It’s just elves and elves. They marry, they have elf children, and the North Pole keeps spinning and children keep getting their toys and everyone is happy. It’s the way it’s always been. Nothing ever changes here.
A few years from now, I can see it. Her in a silvery wedding gown made to match her hair, a wreath of ivy at the crown of her head, him, tall and slim, together in front of the marriage tree every North Pole elf has ever married in front of. Of course he will love her. Of course he will marry her. Who else would he love? Not me, obviously. I’m not an elf. I’m not like them.
I stepped outside of the Great Hall for a breath of fresh air, but then I just kept walking.
The air smells like peppermint all the time now. The candy-cane factory is just next door, and the confectionery elves are working round the clock.
It’s snowing, of course. There’s always snow on the ground here. It makes everything look diamond dusted. The thing about snow is, it’s very quiet. The air is hushed. It’s like church.
It’s reverential.
It’s dark, but it’s always dark this time of year. We won’t have sunshine for weeks. The elves don’t mind it, because it’s their natural habitat, but my papa worries I’ll get seasonal affective disorder, so in our house there are light-therapy boxes everywhere.
The sound of my boots crunching along the ground is the only sound I hear besides the sound of my heartbeat as I walk along the path from the Great Hall to our house. And then through the silence I hear Flynn call my name. “Natty, wait!”
I freeze. When I turn around he’s already caught up with me, and he’s just standing there, not wearing a coat. The cold doesn’t really bother the elves. I eye him warily. “Are you here to give me a lecture on holiday cheer and a joyful spirit?”
“No. I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”
“Oh.” And then I draw up all my courage, and I just ask, because I have to know. “Why does it have to be her?”
“It’s only a Snow Ball, Natty.” But it isn’t. He knows it, and I know it.
Flynn looks up at the sky, at the North Star above us. Polaris, it’s called. A fixed point, more accurate than any compass. You always know where you are when you look up at it. Home. “The north celestial pole is shifting, did you know that? It’s because of the gravitational forces of the sun and moon. Polaris won’t always be what it is now.” I’m about to reply when he asks me, “Do you ever think about the future, Natalie?”
It thrills me to hear him say my name. So much so that I don’t answer so he’ll say it again.
“Natalie?”
“I’ve only ever thought about the future in days till Christmas,” I tell him. No more than three hundred sixty-four days ahead. It never occurred to me that anybody thought differently. Especially not elves. But I guess Flynn is different, and I guess I’ve always known that. It’s why we are friends. It’s why he knew I wasn’t okay, why he followed me out here to check. Whatever we are, we’ll always be friends.
I’m thinking maybe now is the right time to give him the robin. I feel around for it in my pocket. And then he says, “You don’t really belong here.”
His words hit me like a snowball to the face. They sting, but they land true. The robin slips through my fingers and deep into my pocket.
Flynn is still talking. “Sometimes I wonder how different things would be if you weren’t here. Sometimes I think maybe I’d be different.”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Like . . . maybe if you weren’t here, maybe I wouldn’t wonder about what the world is like beyond the North Pole.”
I wave him off. “Flynn, it’s not that great. I saw the world two Christmas Eves ago and I’m telling you, what we have here is better than anything out there. There’s eggnog every day! And candy cane hot chocolate, and those marshmallow cakes with the little red dots.”
“I’m pretty sure they have all that stuff, too. You’ll see. You’re going to go away someday,” he says, and it sounds like a premonition. “You’ll stop believing.”
Tears spring to my eyes. “Not me. I’ll never stop. Never ever ever.”
Stubbornly, he shakes his head. “One day you will, and you’ll forget all about us.”
“Stop saying that!”
“It’s all right. It’s what you’re supposed to do.”
I don’t like the sad look on his face; it weighs on me in a way that is unfamiliar and strange. We’ve never talked like this before. I don’t like the way it makes me feel—too real. Lightning quick, I pull the robin out of my pocket and hand it to him. “Here,” I say. “Merry Christmas.”
He holds the bird up to the moonlight and examines it. “It’s your best work,” he says, and from an elf, there’s no higher compliment. “It’s beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
Faster than I can blink, as fast as only an elf can be, he touches my cheek with his fingertips, whisper soft and cool. He tucks my hair behind my ear. And then, a sharp intake of breath, my own. Is this really happening?
I lean in closer, I close my eyes, and I purse my lips. And nothing.
I open my eyes. “Um . . . were you going to kiss me?”
“I—I can’t.”
“Why not?”
He hesitates and then he says, “I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”
“You won’t hurt me,” I quickly say.
Flynn shakes his head.
I can see that he means to stand firm. The answer is no. So I say it, my whammy, my ace in the hole, the one thing an elf cannot refuse. “It’s my Christmas wish, Flynn.”
He opens and closes his mouth. He tries not to smile. “How is it that you always find a way to get what you want?” Before I can reply he says, “Don’t answer that. Just—close your eyes.”
Dutifully, I do.
“And Natalie?”
“Yes?”
“You aren’t the one I’m worried about getting hurt.”
Before I even have time to think, he tips my chin up, and he brushes his lips against mine. Flynn’s lips aren’t cool the way I imagined; they are warm. He is warm. He’s warm but why is he shivering? When I open my eyes again to ask him, he’s already backed away from me. “I have something for you, too,” he says.
I hold out my gloved hand, and he drops a piece of paper inside, and then he’s gone. Leaving me to wonder if I imagined the whole thing. Living where I live, it can sometimes be hard to tell the difference between magic and make believe.
I open the piece of paper.
Lars Lindstrom
10 Osby
