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GINGER SAT AT OUR TABLE in the cafeteria. I called it our table since it was the only one in the room with a full-sized chair. And it was where Ginger always sat. I began to think she just knew when I needed to find her.
She looked up as I headed over to her with my hot cup of coffee in hand. She had told me that my footsteps, even when I only wore my slippers, made me sound like an elephant herd on the loose. I took quite a bit of offense the first time she informed me of this, but after realizing an elf’s hearing worked about ten times better than ours, I let that little gibe slide. Except now, as I passed by in my grandmother’s high-heeled witch boots, an elf or two held their ears as I hurried through the room.
“Mrs. Claus is a lot lighter in those things than you are,” she scolded. Then she looked at my cup of coffee, a distasteful look on her face.
I slid into the chair across from her and ignored her comment—and her unspoken insinuation that I drank way too much coffee.
I put the spell on the table, unfolded it, and spread my hands across it to settle its edges. A spurt of what looked like fireflies burst from where my fingers rested on the page. Ginger jumped back with a giggle.
I moved my fingers around on the paper. When my fingers touched any of the words of the spell, little fireflies suddenly shot into the air. I thought I should be scared, or at least heavily miffed, but mostly I was pleased with myself. I had just shot fireflies from my fingers. Probably not the most useful talent to have, nevertheless better than what my plain old human fingers used to do—which was nothing at all.
One of the little balls of light floated back down and landed on the tip of Ginger’s nose. I realized then they weren’t fireflies at all, but some sort of little fairy. It gave off a little chatter and poked Ginger on her forehead before flying off to join the other fairies heading out the cafeteria doors. Some elves stared after them, but most were too absorbed in their meals to notice.
“Do you suppose those little things are going to make trouble?” I asked Ginger.
“They’re too cute for trouble,” she said.
“Yeah, well, my grandmother’s cute too, but she’s a whole bag full of trouble.”
“And now you look just like her,” she said as she observed my wild hair and pilfered witch boots. Then her eyes landed on my ridiculous Christmas clothes. She blew a puff of air out of her nose in amusement.
“Anyway,” I said, “do you know anything about spells?”
“Well, certainly,” Ginger said. She took the paper from the table, scrutinizing it.
I expected at any moment she’d look back up to me with those sparkly green eyes and say, haha, just kidding, but she didn’t.
She continued to stare at the paper so long I thought she’d forgotten I still sat there with her. Finally, she said, “Okay. You’re going to need to head somewhere alone when you do this spell.”
“Not outside?” I questioned.
“No,” she said to me, her eyes widening with fear. “You need to be alone. If we don’t contain this spell, it’ll float off to any other being in the vicinity. And that’s all we need, a bunch of know-it-all elves and reindeer. Yeah, those decorator elves have big enough heads as is. Elves with intuition, no way; that’s a bad idea. You better go downstairs to the supply area; that’ll be empty this time of day.”
I watched Ginger as she continued to inspect the spell. Thoughts of elves running around with magical intuition, and that I needed to cast my very first spell, became a jumbled mess within my head. And then, there was the fact that Ginger seemed to know a thing or two about spells. “How did you learn about spells?” I asked.
“Well, I’m a witch, silly.”
I chuckled, and Ginger sent me a scathing glance before returning to her inspection of the spell.
“Okay... so like, a witch elf?” I asked, waiting for some kind of punchline.
“I’m not a full witch,” she said. “More like a quarter witch.”
I snorted and set my coffee aside before it had any thoughts of expelling itself out of my nostrils.
“I see that smirk on your face, Cinnamon Mercy. You can wipe it clean. It’s not because I’m tiny; it’s because my grandfather is a human witch, my grandmother was an elf, and my parents are both elves.”
“How? I... Oh, never mind.” I relieved her of the piece of paper with the spell on it and asked her to point me in the direction of the supply area.
I took one last sip of my coffee before I headed through the kitchen. I tentatively put my hand on the cellar door. The doorknob heated weirdly as I wrapped my hand around it. I went to move my hand away from it, but my palm lit with a tingling electrical current as I did, holding the knob against my hand.
I blew out a shaky breath, turning the knob and entering the room. I stepped forward. Only a small metal platform stood in view. The door slammed at my back, the heavy sound of the metal such an absolute. No turning back now.
Tentatively, I moved forward. As I did, a small light buzzed to life, lighting the first set of steps. I blew out three heavy breaths, the penetrating darkness wrapping tightly around me. I placed my foot upon the first step, and as I did, a massive spiraling staircase lit before me. It glowed in the darkness, appearing as a one-way entrance into the deepest depths of the Earth.
I walked forward, slowly. With nothing but darkness surrounding the stairwell, I had no concept of time or space. The air changed as I descended farther. The atmosphere had the man-made feel of the air in the computer room.
Brightness finally shone before me. I exited the stairwell, walking slowly down a long, cement hall. When I turned the corner, I could see why the air felt so odd. I stood in the most massive warehouse I could imagine ever existed on Earth. Its length ran out interminably before me, and when I looked up, I got vertigo. The room stood at least twenty stories high.
I called out as I entered the room, my voice echoing and then swirling off into the great unknown. If anyone was there, they’d certainly have heard me. I continued to make my way through the room, hoping at some point I would come to an area that seemed to be where I should read—no, cast—my spell. Cast a spell. I was about to cast a spell. I could do this.
My next breath expelled in a shaky tremor upon my lips.
I caught a flash of red furniture through the rows of boxes and shelves and headed in that direction. Finding myself unable to reach the end of the row of shelving, I finally just bored my way through a pile of boxes. I spilled out on the other side, my arms and legs all heading in different directions. I started to right myself when a big box of glitter poured down upon me in a massive glitter shower. Elves didn’t mess around when it came to their glitter. They didn’t fill a tiny craft box of glitter; they filled a refrigerator-sized box of glitter.
I pulled myself to my feet, the glitter pooling up to my calves. My feet suddenly slid out to the side, my body practically doing a split as the slick glitter turned my boots into ice skates. I clutched onto the shelf and shimmied myself along its length until I pulled myself free of the pile.
With thoughts of sneezing out glitter for the next 100 years or so, I closed my eyes and held my breath before I shook out my hair and waved my limbs around. I must have looked like I tried to ward off a swarm of bees.
I held my hand before my face. I sparkled. I clapped my hands together. The glitter remained. I sighed. “This place is ridiculous,” I said to myself.
At least I’d made it through to the other side of the shelving. I stood in some sort of lounge area with elf-sized couches and chairs—in red, green, and gold, of course—and a few side tables with lamps. I tried one chair, but practically got stuck as the soft sides tried to swallow me. Prying myself loose, I instead tossed a few cushions onto the floor and sat cross-legged on top of them.
I took my time spreading out the paper in my lap. More fairies floated up from my fingers and dispersed. Since I wasn’t certain if the spell would affect them or not, I waited until they headed off toward the stairs before I considered myself once again alone.
“Hello?” I called out into the cavernous space. I still received no response. Being careful of where I touched the paper this time, I held it along the edges, steering clear of the words. I took a deep breath and opened my mouth to begin. I closed it. I breathed out heavily.
My arms tingled, and my nerves fired as if those little fairies now danced on my skin.
“What’s the worst that could happen?” I asked aloud. “No. No! I take that back! Pretend I didn’t say that. It’ll be fine.”
My grandmother wouldn’t have left this spell for me if she thought I’d screw it up. Ginger just said no one could be around. I called out again, just to make sure. Nope, no one.
I looked back down at the spell. One finger had slipped off the side of the paper and sat on the very edge of a letter. Before I could move my hand away, a single fairy grunted as she tried to squeeze herself from the paper. Finally pulling herself free, she buzzed in front of my nose like an angry wasp. She shook her finger at me and mumbled something I couldn’t decipher, but assumed it wasn’t very nice.
I dropped the paper to my lap, refusing to chance releasing any more fairies; especially if they had the attitude of that one. I closed my eyes. I counted to ten. Then, for good measure, I counted to ten again. I opened my eyes and read the spell:
Upon my dreams, wisdom will ride.
The powers within me shall abide.
Knowledge to be gained with no understand.
Hear me now, upon this great command.
The truth will come without qualms of source.
Empty the nonsense that will block my course.
Please grant this upon me—close my mind and open my heart.
For a moment, nothing happened. I picked up the paper from my lap, ready to read it again when suddenly, a massive pain wrenched my heart. I grabbed my chest as the pressure increased. I felt my heart expanding like an over-inflated balloon, filling up my chest cavity and threatening to burst free. I couldn’t breathe.
I heard a screaming, but it sounded soft and distant.
My entire body spasmed, and my hands involuntarily crumpled the paper within my death grip. Flickers of light bounced across my vision as fairies released, unhindered, from the page. A few skittered around my fingers, trying to tug the spell from my grasp. At first, I thought they were trying to steal it, but then I realized they wanted to shut whatever portal allowed more and more fairies to enter. As my body relaxed, they tugged the paper free from my hand.
I dropped back off the cushion. My head bounced on the floor. I tried to fully open my eyes, to gain a breath through the pain, but light and darkness flashed across my vision. The lights called to me, wishing for me to rise off the floor and float to them. I could not move and decided I never needed to move again. The flashing lights suddenly faltered, and I stared up at the distant ceiling.
My mind felt fuzzy like I’d just woken from heavy sedation. I wondered why I lay on the floor of a warehouse. I didn’t work at a warehouse. Right? Maybe I was having a secret affair with someone at a warehouse? No. I wouldn’t do that. Well, I didn’t think I would. My memories of me jumbled together, uselessly within my mind.
Maybe I have amnesia?
Yes, it must be amnesia. But I remembered my name: Cinnamon. Because I was fun and spicy, my mother used to tell me.
But was I fun?
I didn’t remember being fun.
A set of crystal blue eyes stared down at me. I remembered those eyes. They were from the man the elves had carried down the hall.
“Who are you talking to?” he asked me. “Who’s Cinnamon? It better not be one of those crazed elves.”
“Elves?” I questioned him.
“Oh,” he said, tripping backward. “You’re in on this, aren’t you? I saw you in the hallway. I asked you to help me.”
He backpedaled away from me. I tried to sit up, but my body was stuck within the pile of cushions, and my chest still pained. He watched on, refusing to move closer to me as I flopped around like a beached whale before I could suddenly right myself and stand.
“What did you do to me?” he questioned, rubbing his hand against his chest. “I heard you talking, and then, pow, like someone shot me in the chest.”
I rubbed my own chest as I pondered this. I knew I went to the warehouse for a reason and didn’t think it was because I was schlepping a warehouse worker.
I scrutinized the man who still kept his distance from me. He looked quite plain. I was used to Armani suits and men with cell phones attached to their ears. This man dressed in work boots and a flannel-lined shirt.
I approached him slowly and although he had the look of a deer in headlights, he didn’t back away from me. I picked up one of his hands and a hot tremor rippled across his skin. The skin on his hand felt rough and calloused.
He has a fifteen-year-old daughter, and his heart aches because he might not be able to buy her the art set she wants.
I dropped his hand and backed away from him. I didn’t know how I knew that. He saw the fear in my eyes and took a protective step behind the couch.
I gripped the back of the chair as pressure entered my head. I stood there a moment, wondering if an intense headache afflicted me, when a flood of images entered my mind. I tried to sort them out, yet they spun too quickly for me to make any sense of them. The warehouse around me dimmed, the walls seeming to close in around me until I stood in my own isolated bubble. A flash of light appeared to go off within my head, and when it dimmed, images started again. This time, reel after reel of pictures whirred through my head, as if someone had pasted together a thousand movies and set them on lightning-speed fast forward. The visions set my body in motion, tipping me from side to side. A comforting warmth enveloped me, and then the visions slowed. The images skipped around and then stopped.
I just saw every single gift for the kids on the Naughty List.
I knew why I went to the warehouse. I cast a spell. I needed to save Christmas.
My heart pounded wildly. I looked to the man now seated next to me on the tiny elf couch. I didn’t see him move and didn’t remember sitting. His thigh pressed against mine, and I continued to have flickering images about his life.
I saw him in a small shop, leather and metal rings spread out on the bench before him. A small light burned. It was dark outside. The vision skipped to a brightly lit office, and I unconsciously squinted my eyes at the glare. A man sat at a bank of computers. I wondered why my vision had changed from the man next to me. Then the man in front of the computer turned, and I saw they were the same. He wore a nice suit, and his hair was trimmed short. He was unhappy but sure of himself. The emotions I felt from him now came across as uncertain, wavering.
I scrubbed my hand forcibly across my face, trying to dislodge the incoming visions. My hand tangled in my glitter-drenched hair, and I suddenly became very self-conscious that I had left my hair unruly. I looked down at my clothes. Yup, just as I feared. I wore sparkling gold tights, a cropped emerald green duster, and yes, my grandmother’s witch boots. I looked like a madwoman. Or like a witch, stuck at the North Pole with a bunch of elves.
“You don’t have to worry,” he said. “You still look pretty.”
I felt my cheeks blush, my pale, do-not-hide-anything cheeks. “I... wait, how did you know I worried about how I looked?”
“You just said you left your hair unruly today, and that you’re dressed like a witch in elf’s clothing.”
“No, I...” Did I say that out loud? I didn’t think I did.
The spell? Was he too close to the spell?
Right now, I didn’t have time to deal with the implications of that. I had thousands of presents for the naughties circling through my head, and I needed to get them taken care of before I forgot. “How about hacking into Santa’s Command Center?” I asked him.
He looked at me as if I’d known him in a past life and he just couldn’t place me. As if I could hear his thoughts, I suddenly knew that he realized he’d never met me before, because he would’ve remembered someone who looked like me. I squeezed my eyes tight, trying to interrupt all this incoming information. I needed to focus.
“You’re a computer whizz, yes?” I asked this as more of a rhetorical question as I grabbed his wrist and pulled him to his feet. “Then you need to follow me because we don’t have much time. I need to get this Naughty List out of my head before my brain fizzles on overload.”
The man didn’t speak, but he followed me out through the warehouse and up the stairs into the back of the kitchen. If the spell had affected him as it had me, he had his own set of unwanted knowledge pouring through his mind. I now pushed him in front of me, weaving us through the stoves and pallets of food, but when we reached the first batch of elves, he stumbled to a stop. I almost plowed into his back.
“You,” he said accusingly, as he pointed his finger at the elves.
“Nuh—not us,” they stuttered out together and scurried from the room.
“They took me,” he said as he turned to me.
“Those are kitchen elves,” I told him. “Those weren’t the elves that took you.”
“Then you!” he said, as another group of elves unwittingly entered the kitchen.
“Sorry,” I said, “he’s new here.” I turned to him. “You can’t keep scaring every elf you come across. There are thousands of them here. The chance you’ll ever again see the elves you saw at your shop is minimal.”
“How do you know I saw them there?” he asked.
“I don’t know. But it’s true, isn’t it? You saw elves outside your shop. They took you. They shouldn’t have, but they panicked. Our cloaking defenses have been all wonky since my grandmother left.”
“Who’s your grandmother?”
“Mrs. Claus. But she’s not here right now. She’s really mad at Santa.”
“Santa?” he asked, his voice on the verge of breaking.
“Yeah. Where else did you think you were with a bunch of elves running around? You’re at Santa’s workshop.”