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6
Pim suffocated under the crushing weight of sacks in Santa’s sleigh. He crawled out of his own bag and wormed through the pile. ‘Let me out,’ he cried, but his muffled voice could not be heard over the send-off crowd’s cheering. Now that he wanted to reveal himself, he couldn’t, so instead of wasting breath shouting, he toiled on in desperate silence.
I’ll confess, he promised. I’ll ask for Santa’s forgiveness and hope for the best.
Spurred on by this resolve, he wriggled through the stack, upward, always upward until chinks of light appeared. Almost there, he thought, ready to pop out of the heaped presents like a groundhog. Just when he was about to break through, though, Pim heard a call that stopped his heart. ‘On Dasher, On Prancer, On Donner and Vixen…!’ Santa urged his reindeer.
Hooves drummed on the marble floor, the sleigh leapt forward, and they were on their way. Pim struggled more desperately than ever. Faster and faster the hooves tattooed. Then Santa commanded, ‘Up Rudolph! Takes us up my beauties!’ and the clatter gave way to silence, the nose of the sled tilted up, and with a lurch they took to the air. ‘That’s it Vixen! Well done Blitzen!’ Santa cheered.
One last push and Pim’s head sprouted between the sacks. He was at the very back of the sleigh, looking down at the receding city of Borealis. Forgotten now was his vow to throw himself on Santa’s mercy. It’s too late, he reasoned. It will only delay Christmas. Then, abandoning all his clever arguments, Pim delighted in the sheer wonder of flying – flying over the vast darkness of the North Pole, watching the twinkling lights of Borealis get smaller, and smaller, until his home was but memory.
‘Oh my!’ Pim gasped in wonder. ‘Oh my, oh my!’ For this was even better than he’d imagined… except… except… he wasn’t driving. He was stowed in the back of the sleigh like a sack of presents, while Santa and Dabbledee sat up front.
~~~
Whizzpop had hurried into his observatory and swung the ioscope southward. Just in time, too, for as he put his eye to the instrument, he heard the drumming of hooves from the direction of the Toy Factory and Santa’s tally ho!
The ioscope, you must understand, works best when its object is beyond the horizon. It snoops round the curvature of the earth and can detect things at a stupendous distance – half-way round the globe, to be exact – which means Whizzpop can spy on the South Pole from his observatory in the North. But the instrument is too powerful close up, so he had to fidget and fuss with the dials, and (it must be admitted) cuss a few times, pulling Santa’s sleigh into focus.
‘Ah!’ he said, watching closely.
Santa and Dabbledee were seated with their backs to him. He could make out the reindeer galloping along merrily. Nothing seemed unusual – once you got over the notion of a flying sleigh in the first place, which had always astounded the scientific mind of Whizzpop.
‘I wonder what old Saint Nick was on about!’ he said, scratching his head. Soon they would break through the barrier into accelerated-time and he wouldn’t be able to see them any more. If something’s going to happen, it had better happen now, thought Whizzpop.
He was on the verge of giving up when a sudden movement amid the heap of presents made him lean forward and press his eye closer to the scope. One of the sacks at the very back of the sleigh seemed to be moving. ‘The wind,’ Whizzpop figured, immediately contradicting himself and shaking his head. That couldn’t be, he realized, for Santa’s sleigh moves in a protected bubble of perfect calm. How else could Santa, Dabbledee and the prancing reindeer survive the bitter cold of rocketing into accelerated-time. The bag shifted again, though. ‘A mechanical gift that’s out of control,’ he surmised. ‘That must be it.’
Next instant though, he was proven wrong. Something that looked very much like a head popped up between two of the sacks teetering at the back of Santa’s sleigh. Zooming-in on the curious object, Whizzpop thought the head in question looked more and more like the one he had last seen attached to Pim Anterlaffston’s neck.
‘Pim!’ Whizzpop hollered when he was certain it was indeed his friend. ‘What on earth are you doing!’
Shocked beyond belief, although he could in no way deny what the ioscope had revealed, Whizzpop watched as Pim squirmed free atop the stacks of presents. He saw Pim grip the back of the speeding sleigh and look directly toward Borealis. Then Whizzpop broke into an adoring grin, for the look of wonder and delight on his friend’s face made all Pim’s obstinacy and plotting seem, well, if not exactly right, perhaps not exactly wrong either.
‘Why you little rascal,’ Whizzpop gasped admiringly. ‘You confounding, absolutely astounding, completely flabbergasting devil,’ he shouted happily.
Then Santa’s sleigh vanished, which meant it had zoomed though the barrier into accelerated-time. Whizzpop didn’t waste an instant. Spinning round on his stool, he leapt down and took to his heels. Down the stairs he dashed, out onto the main street, and into the Toy Factory tunnel. ‘He’s stowed away with Santa!’ Whizzpop bellowed to anyone who would listen. ‘Pim! He’s stowed away in Santa’s sleigh. I saw him myself through the ioscope!’
Everyone who heard the report – and soon enough it was passed on to everyone who was anyone in Borealis – first frowned, then smiled enviously, because now it had happened it made perfect sense the Naughty Elf would have to stow away rather than accept a perfectly legitimate invitation to be the first Borealian to accompany Santa on Christmas Eve.
Only one person in all Borealis thought different, expressing the opinion that ‘Santa should give that scurrilous scoundrel away to the antipodal Penguins with strict instructions that the gift can never be returned.’