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3
‘Have you seen that scalawag Pim!’ Fanafroo fumed.
‘No,’ Dabbledee answered. And I do hope you don’t find him in the state you’re in Fanafroo, she thought, for he looked in a very dangerous mood. ‘Perhaps you need a rest, sir,’ she suggested.
‘There’s those that can rest on the night before Christmas Eve, Miss, and there’s those that know their duty. I’m of the latter breed, and heaven help the former if I lay my hands upon him. That young lout was supposed to be cleaning up the sled hanger for tomorrow’s send off, but I looked in just a moment ago, and there’s not a sign of him. How’s that for Christmas spirit? Eh Miss?’
Old Fanafroo eyed her so fiercely that Dabbledee dare not say what she was thinking, that the Spirit of Christmas isn’t all grim and grumbly. Instead she answered with a little bow, and an ‘excuse me’, and continued on her way to the sled room.
‘Well, at least there’s two of us on the job tonight,’ he commended, nodding toward the jars of paint and lacquer rattling in her tray.
‘Oh, I’m sure there are many busy this evening sir. And I don’t doubt for a moment that Pim is up to something worth-while in his own way. We all contribute according to our abilities and talents… that’s what Santa says.’
‘Har!’ the foreman barked. ‘Don’t make me laugh, Miss. If you call daydreaming and scheming any sort of a contribution, then I suppose our Master Pim has put in his fair share, but if you think of daydreaming as nothing but sleeping with your eyes open, and scheming as something worse than that, you’d be angry with Pim yourself!’ With that Fanafroo stumped off.
‘Goodness!’ Dabbledee sighed. ‘What an old sourpuss.’ She couldn’t linger on such thoughts, though. So, murmuring a quiet prayer for Pim, she trotted on, her paint pots jiggling and jingling as she went.
She’d only gone a few paces when Whizzpop caught up to her, breathless and red in the face. ‘Have you seen Pim?’ he inquired, glancing nervously over his shoulder.
‘No,’ Dabbledee answered.
‘Well someone better get to him before old Fanafroo. He’s on the warpath. I swear, he’ll break our dear friend’s bones when he finds him.’
‘Oh Whizzpop,’ she said, remembering Mrs. Claus’s assurances, ‘you really have been staring through that ioscope of yours too much. People don’t break bones here, in Borealis.’
‘He was in the sled room last time I looked,’ Whizzpop told her. ‘I don’t know where he could have got to.’ With that he darted off, looking left, right and all over for his missing friend.’
Shaking her head, Dabbledee carried on, pushing open the sled room door. She jingled across the gleaming marble floor, and put her tray down on the mechanic’s table.
The harness and reins Santa would put on his beloved reindeer festooned the wall. Next night the deer, which roamed free in Borealis all year long, would allow Santa to slip the harnesses over their woolly necks and tighten the buckles and cinches around their chests. They would submit to this without complaint for just one night a year.
‘Of all the creatures in the world, I love you most,’ Dabbledee said. ‘I know it’s not fair, but I do.’ And the reindeer loved Dabbledee, too. More often than she could recount she had been greeted by the magnificent creatures out on the ice fields. Sometimes they would pad up behind her and rest their shaggy chins on her shoulder. Others they would loom out of the darkness and paw the ground in front her, eager to play.
She was still lost in these thoughts when she began inspecting the sleigh inch by inch. Of course it had been inspected a hundred times already, and she might not find a single scratch, but that didn’t lessen Dabbledee’s vigilance. Christmas Eve minus-one was no a time to shirk.
She snickered then, scowling as menacingly as she could, and blustered in her best Fanafroo voice, ‘There’s those that can rest on the night before Christmas Eve, Miss, and there’s those that know their duty.’ She giggled. ‘Oh, that’s not nearly gruff enough,’ she said, making her eyes bulge and her face redden. ‘Pim!’ she thundered, pleased with the effect. ‘You’ve scallied your last wag! Get up from there, you young scoundrel, so I can break your bones.’
Dabbledee had barely finished this roguish pantomime, when, with a clatter and a shout, someone leapt up from the bench of Santa’s sleigh.
‘Eeeee!’ Dabbledee shrieked, falling backward, her jars flying through the air then crashing and splashing onto the floor.
‘Yaaaa!’ Pim yelled, tumbling out of the other side of the sleigh with a thud. ‘Please, sir!’ he pleaded. ‘I was only cleaning up. Just getting Santa’s sleigh ready for the big night!’
Realizing who had frightened the curls out of her hair, and where the naughty elf had been – a place no elf should ever have been without permission – Dabbledee sprang to her feet, marched around the sleigh and grabbed the cowering elf by the collar.
‘What on earth were you doing in there!’ she demanded.
‘Please Dabble,’ Pim begged. ‘Tell him I was just cleaning up. I didn’t mean any harm. Honest!’
‘Tell who?’ the confounded Dabbledee asked.
‘Fanafroo!’ Pim implored. ‘Tell him I wasn’t sleeping up there, and that I wasn’t dreaming about riding Santa’s sleigh anywhere – not even around Borealis and back. I was only cleaning up, that’s all.’
Dabbledee blushed. ‘If you want to tell Fanafroo such nonsense, go tell him yourself,’ she snapped. ‘But I would stay out of his way if I were you. He’s likely to do things to you that have never been done in Santa’s domain before, he’s that mad.’
‘But he’s here! I heard him!’
‘Guilty dreams, no doubt,’ Dabbledee suggested.
‘I don’t know if they were guilty or not,’ Pim said, rubbing his noggin, which had taken quite a rap when he fell over backwards, ‘but they sure were convincing. I could have sworn I heard the old tyrant threatening to break my bones.’
‘I heard him myself not more than ten minutes ago, making such threats,’ she said coolly. ‘Like I said, I would avoid Fanafroo this night if I were you, and learn to please him a little better in the future, too. He’s not one to toy with, our Fanafroo.’
However angry she had been, though, Dabbledee could not glare at the disheartened elf for long. A smile turned up the corners of her lips, then Dabbledee had to laugh just a little, because it really was quite funny, the two of them startling each other. For his part, Pim chuckled too, and his chuckle turned into a laugh as well, and before they knew it, the two of them were holding each other up – it was either that, or find themselves on the floor again, they were laughing so hard.
‘Come help me clean up,’ Dabbledee said when they had recovered.
Pim was only too glad to help his friend, and later in life – when the two of them had been married many years – they would always laugh heartily when they told the tale of their meeting in Santa’s sled room. Indeed, it is a tale that has been told at many a hearth in Borealis on many a long, cold night.