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When the dance had finished, Martin led us back to the hallway with the many different-sized doors. We each found the one that matched our height, knocked and passed through. Then we were taken around another few corners, to a solid oak door, on which was carved the VN symbol.
Martin stood before this entrance and gathered us around him.
“Candidates, guests, you are not the first young people to grace these halls with your company. Each year, for countless seasons, a lucky few have enjoyed the honor that you share tonight. That you are here at all means that you are especially sensitive to the strange magics. And the magics are sensitive to you.”
“Are we going to eat soon?” asked Gordon.
“Yes, young man. Very soon. But for now, you are going to enter my true domain. At Very North, Father Christmas is sovereign, but in this chamber, I make my own contribution. Inside are countless amusements and diversions. Here, I am curator, custodian, sometimes even inventor. I welcome you to the Chamber of Good Cheer.”
He opened the door, and the children immediately scrambled in. The sheer number of objects was astounding. There were toys, hundreds of them, but also machines: ornate clocks, automatons, mechanical trains, and music boxes. The room was two stories high, with twin staircases leading to a balconied loft. There, even more curios beckoned.
Martin shepherded us to an open, circular space in the center of the room. From there, we could get a sense of the impossible scope of the hall and its many features. By the entrance was a miniature fortress large enough for a child to enter, surrounded by a plaster hillside, and boxes with countless toy soldiers, cavalry and artillery. At the opposite side, an exquisite three-story doll’s house with a Mansard style roof, next to cabinets that offered hundreds of different dolls and furnishings. Centered against the far wall, I spied an elaborate toy theatre.
“This is the heartbeat of Very North,” said Martin. “Here, the strange magics respond to the simple pleasures of human amusement. Your experience, your feelings, your happiness and surprise, all of that energy remains a part of this place. Your joy is the lifeblood of Very North. It is our greatest secret.”
Everyone stood in the center of the hall, spinning in slow circles, taking in the view of endless games, toy trains and more. Then Martin called out, “Go! Play! Enjoy!”
Jeremy went to the fortress first and began an invasion of the toy countryside by Napoleon and an army of Huns, against a team of mountain climbers and jungle animals. Tabitha followed him, picking up vanquished wooden figures from the floor and returning them to their shelves. Samantha found the controls for the cranes and tractors and dug a trench through an elevated sandbox. Gordon ran the miniature railroad.
Clive stood off to the side and gawped at the entire spectacle. I encouraged him to take part.
“I don’t know any of these people,” he objected.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “You’re meant to have fun.” Clive gave me a doubtful frown. “You have heard of fun, right?” I asked him.
I led Clive over to Gordon at the controls and switches of the toy trains. “Gordon, this is my friend Clive. He might like the trains.”
“I’m glad you’re here.” Gordon sided up to Clive instantly. “This engine looks just like the one that goes to Auckland, except this one’s a steam train, and ours has a diesel engine. Do you like currants? I don’t. I always pick them out. We have two privies in our house.”
I left Clive to Gordon’s friendly onslaught and wandered to the upstairs loft. There, I found shelves of antique toys and inventions. Martin sat at a small desk, topped with a thick ledger and a few smaller notebooks. He held a quill, which he nervously tapped against the cover of a leather-bound folio.
“Is everything all right, Mr. Piper?”
“To be honest, I am nervous, Mr. Candler. This is the first time I have ever brought a group of candidates into this chamber without Kris. The whole purpose of this room is to create joy. Without Father Christmas, it may be we are only distracting them.”
“They look like they’re enjoying it.”
“That’s good.” Martin sighed, then made a clear effort to shake his momentary lapse into doubt. “Now, why aren’t you enjoying it with them?”
“I wasn’t certain that I should.”
“Oh course you should! We all should.”
“It’s just that, I know by now my parents must be miserable. And Kris could be in danger. And I’ve got this awful medallion. Everyone says it’s magical, but I don’t care. I just want to be rid of it.”
“Those are all fine reasons to fret,” said Martin. “But we must not! Go. Explore. The seven lanterns are not fully lit.”
“Then, Mr. Piper, shouldn’t you be having a bit of fun as well?”
Martin gave a surprised look. “My boy, you’re right. I’ve no business brooding.” He stood and went to the railing. “I’ll be back shortly. Keep an eye on everyone until I return.” He peered down to the floor below. “And help your friend Clive. He looks miserable.”
That was true. Clive had his hand on a control dial for a locomotive. He watched as the model engine rhythmically zipped across a bridge. His face showed no pleasure in it. He grimaced while Gordon continued his monologue, uninterrupted. I would have expected Clive to tell the boy to put a sock in it, but here he was enduring it stoically.
I asked Martin a single question, to which he gave an unqualified ‘yes.’ Then I followed him down the steps. As Martin left the chamber, I made my way to Samantha. She was busy controlling toy cranes and bulldozers. By pulling levers and pushing buttons, she raised up and then demolished a series of wood block skyscrapers. I asked what she was doing.
“Knocking things down, mostly,” she said. “I like knocking things down.”
“You see Gordon over by the trains there?” I said.
“Yes?”
“He was asking about you,” I lied.
Her face brightened to full beam. “He was?”
“I think so,” I said, giving myself a shred of wiggle room for my shameless fib.
Samantha wasted no time but went to Gordon’s side. Without missing a syllable, he kept talking, shifting his focus away from indifferent Clive and on to the far more eager audience of Samantha Krupp.
I tapped Clive on the shoulder. “Follow me,” I said. He did so, in a daze.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“I’m not sure’ he started, then his gaze locked on mine. “Mannie! How am I supposed to respond to all this? I can’t even take it in.”
“The other children seem to be enjoying it,” I said.
“I’m not a bit like the other children,” he said, in an almost manic whisper.
“You’ve never said a truer word,” I answered. I led Clive upstairs, and to the little desk. He immediately noticed the notebooks and quills, and he jumped at them. He opened a pretty green journal and found it contained blank pages. “Will it be all right?” he said.
“I’ve already asked Martin. He said you may write whatever you like in it.”
Clive smiled. “I’m glad someone around here understands me.” He moved the chair to the edge of the balcony and looked down, then began scratching out his own observations, as fast as his wrist would allow.
I returned downstairs, satisfied that Clive was as merry as present circumstances would permit. Tabitha and Jeremy were now redecorating the ornate doll’s house. She was trying to impose a Georgian motif, while her younger brother had decided that what the house really needed was more giraffes. Gordon had not finished talking, but Samantha appeared content to let him ramble while she poured sand into the freight cars. I wanted to investigate the toy theatre I had seen when we first entered the Chamber of Good Cheer.
The theatre had two rows of bench-like seats in front of it. Miniature boxes and balconies, a painted audience of well-dressed patrons within, surrounded the proscenium. A lever beneath the orchestra pit bore the label START. I flipped it down, and the show was underway.
Music box tones played an overture. The curtain lifted mechanically. The first scene was a three-ring circus. Carved wooden figures of horses and riders, tigers and tamers, moved and spun along a grooved track. Two trapeze artistes swung from above. The sound of the sprightly march caught the attention of the other children, and soon, all four candidates were gathered around.
To their great delight, each candidate soon saw him or herself on stage, represented as a tiny wooden doll. A fifth figure, a girl clearly meant to be Olivia, appeared with them. Olivia was meant to see this. I should call down Clive. I looked back up at the second level, and Clive was fully absorbed, wandering from shelf to shelf, taking notes with uncommon intensity.
The circus backdrop was lifted away, and with a whirring of gears, another took its place. This time, the setting was a snowy countryside. The figures now appeared to ice skate across a frozen pond. The music changed to fit the new spectacle. Presently, a Christmas tree emerged from below the center of the stage.
All of the figures crept off to the wings, and out of view. The curtain lowered, but the music continued. Now, the melody that sounded forth was familiar to me. It was the tune Rex Palmer had composed for the Christchurch Cathedral pageant. I had heard it so many times, it did not occur to me at first to think how strange it was to hear it in this setting. The curtain lifted again, and the cathedral sanctuary was now the setting. It was a perfect representation, lovingly crafted of painted plywood, with stained glass windows made of semi-transparent tissue paper.
My astonishment was multiplied when I saw figures emerge from the sides dressed for a Christmas pageant. The figure of Olivia was there, in costume as Mary. Every element was alike with that event, so recent and yet so long ago. It was uncanny to see a scene from my own recent experience recreated in this fanciful way. There was, however, no little effigy of myself on that stage.
Rex’s melody continued to chime from the little stage. Suddenly, there was singing. Clive, still upstairs examining the shelves of antiques and making notes, had begun to perform his solo along with the gentle music box tones. He did not cast a single glance down at the theatre or us. As before, his voice was clear, his tone pure. The moment seemed to me uncanny, as unreal as any miracle.
So breathed a new life
Into the cold night air
So breathed a new life
The cathedral scene shifted away. The curtain closed and opened again, this time to a dance set in the Great Hall of Very North.
A trap door in the stage floor opened, and a new puppet came into view. It was a reindeer, with antlers decked in shining tinsel. On its head, unmistakably, was the mark of VN, and hanging just above it, a tiny medallion. It was a perfect miniature of the one in my pocket. So that’s where it belongs. As a crown on Trimble’s head.
“It’s Trimble!” Jeremy shouted. Soon, new puppet figures of Jeremy, Tabitha, Gordon and Samantha appeared, dressed in little copies of the same knitted apparel each had received earlier. I was troubled by the thought that this theatre is showing us what should have happened, I thought. Olivia should be here. Trimble ought to be alive.
The little Trimble puppet bowed its head as the tiny candidates assembled around it, and the curtain came down. The notes from the music box slowed and came to a stop. Martin spoke, startling us, as we had not noticed his return.
“Your merriment is having an effect. The seven lanterns are shining in the yard. Not so brightly, but with a nice glimmer. Perhaps Kris will find his way now.”
As soon as he said this, we all shook from a blast of sound, as of trumpets and pipe organs playing at fortissimo. The entrance to the chamber flew open, and for a moment, we were flooded with blinding white light. Mother Solstice had arrived.