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Claus woke to merry voices and a new blanket of snow. It was freshly laid and without a wrinkle. Crystal tufts perched over objects buried beneath it. It was cold inside the warehouse, but not bitter or dangerous. Comfortable.
The new North Pole.
He hated that. There was only one North Pole. Even if this one was the perfect temperature, it could never replace it. It would never be home.
The elven were singing, their voices in perfect harmony, each the same tenor and pitch. We wish you a Merry Christmas...
They slid in lines and weaved in synchronized formations, their feet plowing through virgin snow. It had reached blizzard conditions on numerous occasions, the snowflakes so thick he could not see his ruddy companions when they were only ten feet away.
The elven skidded to a halt and turned at attention. Their beards were thick and bright red and lay across round bellies. Their cheeks were not rosy with cheer but brightly sunburned, a color that matched their long-tailed coats.
He had spent days exploring the warehouse, examining the endless collection of conveyors and mysterious machines that smelled of burnt clay and mechanical circuits. The room in the tower was circular and claustrophobic. He had yet to see walls inside the warehouse and feared becoming lost. The ceiling was a dizzying array of artificial lights.
The mountain was in the middle.
He assumed it was the middle. Everything seemed to orbit around the gigantic mound. It was a mechanical pyramid of ramps and belts and conduit like some dystopian, cyberpunk effigy and reached for the bright white ceiling.
An orb blazed at the top.
A low growl rumbled in its belly and seeped through the soles of his boots. The vibrations weakened his knees and stirred his insides. All of the things he had seen—the conveyors and belts and pipes—interconnected in a mad design to feed it.
The mountain.
As chaotic as it seemed, there was an orderly nature to its design. Despite the industrial aspects, it was elaborate and elegant and endless, like an organic Escher creation where steps led into steps and infinite belts.
Snow was piled on its multitude of flat surfaces and teetered on ledges. Occasionally, it reached a tipping point and the internal engines would gently knock it off. Claus scooped a handful of snow. It melted in his glove. The elven did the same—grabbing handfuls and rubbing them together until they melted.
“Do you have names?”
They had not responded to anything he said. They only watched him. The floor was smooth and slick beneath the snow. Claus glided on his specialty boots, drifting down the line of elven like a drill sergeant inspecting recruits. They stared ahead with eyes the color of frosted ice, where not a glimmer of joy twinkled but only dusted machinery reflected. What he had assumed were sunburns looked more unusual up close. The skin was smooth, almost waxen.
And they were identical.
The miser called them helpers. If they had names, it was likely the same one. They weren’t elven, even though they looked like them. These were something entirely different.
Redbeards.
They parted ranks as he glided past them. He followed an undisturbed path that circled around the churning mountain. The redbeards fell in line and began humming “Silent Night.” It soothed his anxiety. Not only did it mask the mountain’s grinding stomach, but it reminded him of the elven at home when they would sing after Christmas. This respite soon collapsed as he thought of Jessica.
If they sent a rescue mission, will they even find me?
The miser insisted he couldn’t be found, but even she underestimated the elven. But perhaps he did not have to be rescued. The miser had built this warehouse for him. She’d brought him to the island in, what she thought, was an act of kindness to save them from the North Pole. Of course, if he refused the kind gesture, he imagined she would not sit quietly.
She would have other plans.
A door opened at the base of the mountain. A redbeard popped out and slid around Claus. A strange cloud of freshly popped popcorn mixed with something earthy belched out of the door just before it closed along with the breath of a dragon.
And freshly baked pottery.
Claus occasionally stopped to examine a gadget or a moving mystery. Little crawlies were revealed—eight-legged, mechanical things that cleaned and inspected the warehouse. They brushed the artificial snow away and pushed it into perforations. Perhaps they were recycling it.
The snow had stopped and the air was the clearest he had seen it. The walls, now visible, were too far away to distinguish doors. He had no idea which way he was facing or if it was daytime or night.
He came upon a new object.
It was on the opposite side of the mountain—a large container wrapped in sparkling crimson paper with a green looping bow. While all of the machinery fed the mountain with a complex array of pipes and belts, none of the conveyors were as big as the one jutting from the giant gift.
The mountain was feeding it.
There were boxes and bags and packages of all colors riding down the conveyor and dropping into the crimson gift—an endless feed that would seem to fill it within the hour but continued nonetheless. There was something else riding along with the presents.
It was gooey and gray.
At the base of the giant gift, leaning against the wide green ribbon, a redbeard sat. Arms by his sides and fingers twitching, snow had accumulated on his belly and propped feet. The soles exposed the ice-sliding scales that the elven had evolved over thousands of years on the ice.
Claus knelt next to him.
The sunburned cheeks were mottled and his breath labored. They were always so cheery, playing and singing and following Claus wherever he went. This one was cold.
Claus hoped the miser was watching. “We need help!”
The redbeards surrounded their fallen companion. They remained silent, hands folded over their stomachs, eyes cast down. Their bright red beards bristled as their lips silently moved in song. All at once they looked up.
Claus followed their gaze.