Scroll down for Text | Index | Next Episode
8
It could have been worse, Pim thought, sitting dejectedly in the box of Santa’s sleigh. ‘At least she’s still my friend, and she doesn’t think Santa is going to banish me.’ He took what cheer he could out of this state of affairs, but it’s not a lot of cheer for a Christmas Eve, he sighed.
‘Chin up, though,’ he told himself. ‘No sense looking at your shoes all the while.’
So he lifted his head and looked about. In front of him, the reindeer waited for whatever was going to happen next. ‘It’s all very well for you lot,’ Pim mused. ‘You’re in Santa’s Good Book, that’s for sure. But me! Well, my name will be smeared in the blackest of ink. Indelibly black ink. Gooey, dark, spreading black ink of the inkiest kind!’
Prancer rolled her eyes and snorted. ‘A bit melodramatic, don’t you think,’ she whispered to Dasher, beside her.
He stamped and groaned in agreement. ‘Whatever is taking Santa so long?’ he complained. ‘You’d think he was growing a Christmas tree down there, and manufacturing all the decorations, too!’ He shook himself, and in shaking rattled his harness, and in rattling his harness, wriggled the reins, and this wriggle ran down the long leather straps and over the front rail of Santa’s sleigh, making them dance before Pim’s astonished eyes.
‘Oh!’ Pim said, then looked away.
Don’t you dare! he admonished. Don’t you even think of it!
Thoughts are funny things, though. Once one’s entered your head, just try and keep it away. Can’t be done – no more than you can unsneeze a sneeze or unblink a blink. Pim whistled a tune. He counted from one to a hundred and back again. He got up and tap danced until Dabbledee shouted at him to stop being such a fool. He imagined he was itchy, and scratched himself in the most difficult spots. He twisted his ears and tweaked his nose. But in the end he simply had to look at the reins, while telling himself not to do what he was tempted to do.
‘I won’t touch ‘em,’ he declared. But there’s nothing wrong with looking.
Now, if Santa had popped up from the chimney at this exact instant, Borealians might never have heard one of the most fantastical stories ever told in their part of the world. For Pim would have stopped thinking how ordinary the reins looked, and how harmless it would be to grab them and give them a little shake.
‘Why, they’re the same kind of thing you’d see attached to a dray horse, or an ox,’ he said.
‘Steady!’ Rudolph cautioned under his breath, seeing Vixen’s fur stand on end. ‘Not a twitch or we lose the moment.’
Pim continued studying the reins, thinking there would be nothing at all wrong with touching them. Just a touch, he told himself. To see what they feel like.
So he reached out and tagged them… then withdrew his mittened fingers as if they had been burned, and folded his arms tightly on his chest. See! Nothing. ‘Why, I bet I could pick them up and hold them and the world wouldn’t be any the worse off for it.
Without delay he did just that, picked up the reins and felt the weight of them over his hands. The leather was supple and heavy, the ends dangling to his knees. ‘There,’ he said confidently. ‘See. Nothing to worry about.’
A few seconds later another thought occurred to him. ‘If I shook them, I bet I could get Santa’s reindeer to budge, just a little.’
This thought frightened him so much that he dropped the reins again. No-one but Santa had ever driven the sleigh, and even he harnessed the reindeer only once a year. The thought of an impudent elf actually shaking the reins when they were attached to the mythical team… well, that was unthinkable!
‘But,’ Pim reasoned, ‘if I could get them to move even an inch, I would be the only person in Borealis – the only person in the world, aside form Santa himself – who could say I had actually driven Santa’s sleigh. Why,’ he thought, warming to the idea, ‘if I move it an inch, perhaps Santa will let me fly it a mile, or a million miles. Maybe he needs a driver on Christmas Eves. Who better than Pim Anterlaffson to be Santa’s chauffeur. Now’s my chance. It may never come again.
He picked up the reins and held them steady in his hands. Gave them a little shake.
Nothing! The reindeer stood stamping and steaming, unimpressed.
Pim frowned and rattled the reins more vigorously.
They ignored him.
‘What’s the matter with you!’ he grumbled, standing up in the box and giving the reins a really good shake.
Still nothing.
Then Pim remembered all the times he’d watched Santa take off on Christmas Eve – how he snapped the reins and called out to the reindeer. ‘There’s more to this than I imagined,’ he admitted. ‘But I’ll get the hang of it.’ Imitating Santa’s technique, he snapped the reins and cried out: ‘On Rudolph! On Dancer! On…. Whoooa!’
Alerted by Pim’s shout, Dabbledee looked up just in time to see the sleigh leap forward and Pim fall backward over the seat. ‘Pim!’ she shrieked. ‘What are you doing? Stop! come back!’
In a panic she raced after the departing sleigh, still calling out for the reindeer to stop. It was no good though. Before Dabbledee could catch up the sleigh cleared the gable end and shot into the sky. She tripped and fell face-first into the snow, lifting her head just in time to see it streak heavenward like fireworks.