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  Christmas Carol & the Defenders of Claus

  Copyright © 2019 by Robert L. Fouch

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Sky Pony Press, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

  First Edition

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are from the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  Sky Pony Press books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Sky Pony Press, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or [email protected].

  Sky Pony® is a registered trademark of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.®, a Delaware corporation.

  Visit our website at www.skyponypress.com.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  Cover design by Kate Gartner

  Cover illustration copyright © David Miles

  Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-5099-9

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-5101-9

  Printed in the United States of America

  For Mom and Dad

  Contents

  CHAPTER 1 All Alone. Nobody Home.

  CHAPTER 2 Back to New York

  CHAPTER 3 The Supreme Leader

  CHAPTER 4 Gallahad

  CHAPTER 5 Finding the Castle

  CHAPTER 6 The Shimmering Elf

  CHAPTER 7 1851

  CHAPTER 8 The First Defender

  CHAPTER 9 Seneca Village

  CHAPTER 10 The Defeat of Santa Claus

  CHAPTER 11 Lost in Time

  CHAPTER 12 The Battle for the Future

  Acknowledgments

  CHAPTER 1

  All Alone. Nobody Home.

  If the elf known as the Ancient One hadn’t yanked me into a portal, I would be gone.

  Not dead.

  Gone.

  As if Carol Glover had never existed.

  I never would have lost my mom or dad, or lived with my cold-hearted uncle, or become best friends with a girl named Amelia, or helped rescue Dad, or become a Defender of Claus and saved Santa from the uncle who betrayed me. None of it would have happened. But the Ancient One, also known as my grandmother, saved me.

  And I am thankful she did, even though the world we reemerged into was a terrifying place.

  The two of us were visiting in her cozy cabin at the edge of the elf kingdom. Actually, we were doing homework. Or I was. Now that I lived in the North Pole, Grandmother had taken it upon herself to be in charge of my “schooling.” Which meant math problems and geography lessons and quizzes on government and history and science. It also meant reading, lots and lots of reading.

  It’s not that I don’t like to read—I love to!—but I prefer exciting stories with adventure and magic and danger, or stories that make me laugh. Grandmother certainly lets me read books like that (Santa has a huge library of classics), but she also insists I tackle stuff like William Shakespeare (soooooo boring), and Charles Dickens (not just A Christmas Carol, unfortunately) and Mark Twain (not too bad), and Harper Lee (OK, I have to admit, Scout and Atticus are awesome!).

  And now I was reading A Wrinkle in Time, a super intense book about a girl named Meg who travels across the universe with her genius baby brother and a friend named Calvin to save her father and defeat a dark force trying to take over everything. I was really getting into it, with the magical Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which, and the creepy pulsating brain of IT. But that day in the cabin, I didn’t feel like “schooling.” Only four days remained until Christmas. I should have been on vacation already! And I also knew that when I finished, I would have to write a report (ugh) and then pick another book out of the stack Grandmother keeps on her living room table.

  We sat next to a crackling fire and sipped hot cocoa, a drink I had turned down but Grandmother brought me anyway because elves really love their sweets! I couldn’t concentrate on A Wrinkle in Time, distracted, as I often was, by thoughts of the Masked Man, the bad guy who turned out to be my Uncle Christopher. Nearly a year had passed since I’d defeated him, and I still couldn’t get over what he had done. He betrayed his own brother, the niece he was supposed to take care of, and Santa! I could never understand it, and I obsessed over it, which drove Grandmother batty.

  “Where do you think he is?” I asked.

  Grandmother sighed and spoke to me telepathically. I have no idea, dear. Read your book, please. Elves, in case you don’t know, communicate without speaking. And though I was only part elf, I had the telepathic ability, along with other powers that came from my potent mix of elf and Defender blood.

  “Or he’s plotting his revenge,” I responded aloud, pretending not to notice what she said about the book. I set it on the table to see if she would let me get away with it. I picked up my cocoa, pushing aside my wooden Santa figurine, the one my parents had given me and one of the fifty-nine Santas in my collection. I’d brought it from my room at Santa’s house to help decorate Grandmother’s cabin. Even with Christmas so near, she wasn’t overly excited about decorating—“It’s always Christmas in the North Pole!”—but I insisted on making her home appropriately festive. (My nickname is Christmas Carol, after all.)

  Three stockings had been hung by the chimney (with care, naturally): one for me, one for Grandmother, and the other for Dad. A small tree in the corner was weighed down with so many ornaments that Grandmother feared it would collapse. The tinsel I’d strung around the room made the cabin sparkle. Mrs. Claus had found a miniature ceramic Santa village, and it sat on a table surrounded by cotton snow. I was definitely in all-out Christmas mode, but that had the unfortunate effect of making me obsess about my uncle even more. I sipped my cocoa, trying to wash away the bitterness of his betrayal.

  “You can’t worry about your uncle, dearest,” Grandmother said, speaking aloud for the first time that day. She knew how, having spent years in the human world, which of course is how I came to be. “No one’s reported any unusual use of Defender power.”

  I eased back in my seat. She said nothing about the discarded book. Maybe I was done with homework for the day. Mission accomplished! “Dad says he vanished from his job at International Toy.” Both he and my uncle have Defender powers like me, able to freeze time (helpful for Santa to deliver all his toys in one night) or make powerful blasts we call North Pulses. But my uncle chose to use his powers for evil, building a toy empire with the goal of eliminating Santa.

  “He’s probably afraid you’ll find him and kick his butt,” Grandmother said, winking as she blew the steam off her cocoa. I picked up my cane, which Grandmother had given to me and was carved from the wood of an ancient elven forest she once explored. The magical cane was a weapon I used to focus my powers, but it was painted with red and white stripes, disguised as an oversized Christmas ornament to hide its true nature.

  Suddenly, Grandmother bolted upright in her chair. The drink flew from her hands. The cup shattered. Scalding drops splashed my ankles, making me leap off the couch and spill my own drink, which soaked A Wrinkle in Time. My cane clattered to the floor.

  “What’s wrong?” I picked up the cane and held it close, sensing its pulsing power. I always felt safer with it in my possession.

  Grandmother held up a gnarled finger to shush me. The cocoa dripped from the table. She closed her eyes an
d placed her other hand to her head to concentrate. Without saying a word, her eyes popped open. She made a circle with her hands to create a portal, an opening through time and space that elves use to travel from one place to another in an instant. Moving faster than I’d ever seen her move, she threw her arms around me and pulled me toward the portal. “Jump, Carol!” We leaped in. The crackling fire and Christmas decorations, the spilled cocoa and the pile of books, they were all a blurry vision when I turned to look. In an instant, the living room vanished. I rubbed my eyes, wondering if the portal was playing tricks on my vision. What you saw from inside a portal was distorted, but it was real. And the living room was no longer there; only blackness.

  What’s happening? I shouted in my mind.

  The fear I sensed in Grandmother terrified me. Something terrible, she answered. A huge disturbance.

  We floated for the longest time, just waiting. Portals are hot, humid places. Everything moves as if in slow motion, everything’s a struggle, like being underwater. I had never been in a portal for so long. I need to get out! I can’t breathe!

  Hold on, dear. You have to hold on.

  I couldn’t understand why she was doing this. Where were we going? Who were we running from? How was drifting in a portal, feeling like I was about to die, helping anything? I thrashed around, desperate for air. I kicked my feet as if swimming, moving toward the portal opening.

  Not yet! Grandmother screamed, and she locked her arms around me, trapping me with her elven strength. I struggled against her. If I didn’t escape at that very moment, I would pass out and I feared I’d never wake up.

  When I didn’t think I could take it any longer, dizziness overcoming me, Grandmother screamed, Now, Carol! and we kicked toward the portal opening. I still could see no living room, no light from the crackling fire, no books or wooden Santa. Where had it all gone? With a final kick, we plunged through the portal. Cold air washed over us. I hungrily sucked in oxygen as we collapsed into knee-deep snow. I leaped to my feet. The cabin was gone. It was dark, but the clouds covering the full moon were drifting away, the snow glowing in the moonlight.

  “Carol,” Grandmother said quietly. “Look.” I turned and nearly fainted. The elf kingdom, that intricate city of beautiful blue ice, full of sliding, telepathically chattering, Santa-helping elves was gone! All that remained was a ruin—toppled houses, crumbling slides, smashed ice statues, everything covered with snow. And the massive tree around which the kingdom had been built was splintered down the middle, half of the tree on the ground, the other half hanging limp.

  “Nooooo!” I screamed, my voice echoing in the emptiness. “What happened?”

  Grandmother’s ancient body sagged, as if the weight of the centuries she had lived suddenly fell upon her. “Someone went back,” she said softly.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Someone traveled through time and changed the past, which changed the future.”

  “Who?” But I had already guessed who; I had no doubt about who. “I mean, how?”

  Before Grandmother could answer, something horrible occurred to me, a thought so awful that, once again, my head swam. I turned and ran, leaving the Ancient One standing alone in the snow. “Carol!” she called. Carol! Come back! But I kept running, so panicked that I forgot I could have made a portal to where I wanted to go. The snow was deep, and my legs burned. I stumbled into the dark woods between the elves’ kingdom and Santa’s house, falling twice over branches and stones under the snow. I emerged into the clearing where I had once practiced with my magic cane and accidentally destroyed the lone tree that grew in the middle of the field. I was stunned to see the tree standing tall and proud, as if what I remembered had never happened. I gripped my cane to reassure myself that it existed, that I wasn’t hallucinating.

  I breathed a sigh of relief when I spotted the giant reindeer barn, its peak silhouetted against the moonlit sky. At least something hadn’t changed. But there were no lights. There was no movement. I sprinted past the barn and toward Santa’s front gate. The house looked the same until the moon emerged from another passing cloud. The picket fence had collapsed. The mailbox that received every child’s letter to Santa leaned sideways. The front porch roof had caved in on one side. The swing from which I’d watched Santa and the Defenders leave on Christmas Eve a year ago lay broken on the porch. Boards had fallen from the side of the house. Windows were shattered. There was a large hole in the roof.

  Then I spotted it, a wisp of smoke from the chimney. My heart soared. I ran to the front porch and saw a glimmer of light inside. “Dad!” I yelled. “Santa!” I ran up the stairs, nearly falling when my foot crashed through the broken first step. I burst through the front door and stopped short at the sight. The room was lit with only a barely smoldering fire. Shadows danced like wicked creatures on the walls. To my left were the shelves of toys, a sort of museum display of Santa’s long history of bringing joy to children around the world. But only the top shelf was full, showing the earliest toys like straw dolls and wooden wagons. The other shelves held no G.I. Joes or talking dolls or video games or any other modern toys. Dust covered everything. White sheets draped the furniture. If not for the fire, the house would have appeared abandoned.

  A soft clearing of the throat broke the silence. “Who’s there?” The feeble voice came from an ancient wooden chair I recognized as Santa’s “throne,” as Mrs. Claus called it, teasing the old guy as only she could. The chair was turned away from me, toward the warmth of the fire.

  “It’s me,” I said, inching closer. “It’s Carol.”

  After a long pause, the man in the chair said, “Carol? I don’t know any Carol.”

  I stopped at that. What was happening? Nothing made sense. “But I live here,” I said. “With my dad. With Santa.”

  “Impossible,” came the voice. “Santa’s gone. He’s been gone for a long, long time.”

  I screwed up my courage and took the last few steps to see the man in that chair. His face was buried in his hands. But he had a long white beard. His hair was wild and unwashed. He wore red pajamas. A blanket lay on his lap. A half-eaten piece of bread sat on a plate on the table next to the chair. “What do you mean he’s gone?” I asked. The man said nothing. He didn’t look up. He didn’t take his hands from his face. All he did was let out a long, soft groan. “Are you OK?” I asked.

  The man yanked his hands from his face and jerked his head toward me. His eyes were crazed. His face was gaunt and skinnier than I’d ever seen. Though he looked like a different person, I had no doubt this was the man I’d dedicated my life to protecting as a Defender of Claus. “Santa?”

  The man launched himself from the chair and I jumped back. “I told you!” he screamed. “Santa’s gone. All that’s left is me. Just me. Poor old Nicholas. All by his lonesome.” Then he laughed a terrible laugh that scared me more than anything else I’d encountered on that dreadful day. Santa wasn’t right. Nothing was right.

  “Stop it!” I yelled.

  And Santa laughed again, his eyes dancing crazily in the firelight. “All alone. Nobody home. All alone. Nobody home.”

  “I said stop it!” I shouted and slammed my cane on the floor. A North Pulse blasted Santa back into his chair. Sparks flew from the fire, lighting up the room. Furniture toppled. A cloud of dust exploded, making me choke and cough. Santa buried his face in his hands and cried softly. I rushed over and threw my arms around him. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

  In the glow from the firelight, the air shimmered. A portal appeared with Grandmother on the other side. She dove through and landed with a thud in front of me. “Too old to be jumping through portals,” she grumbled, wiping dust from her robe. “Goodness, I’m a wreck.” Then she noticed her surroundings. “Oh my.”

  Santa looked up at the Ancient One, his eyes wide. “You’re an elf.”

  “I most certainly am,” Grandmother said.

  “Why did you all abandon me?” Santa asked.


  “I did nothing of the sort,” Grandmother snapped. “Where are the elves? Where is Mrs. Claus?”

  “Gone,” Santa said. “For ages.”

  “And what about the Defenders?” I asked, desperate to know where Dad was. And for that matter, Mr. Winters, the man who had recruited me to become a Defender.

  Santa looked at me as if I were speaking an alien language. “What are Defenders?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. What was wrong with him? “The ones who protect you!”

  Santa laughed again, this time with bitterness. “No one protected me. Why do you think I’m alone up here?”

  “Carol,” Grandmother said, nodding toward the door. “Let’s talk outside. Excuse us, Santa.”

  “It’s Nicholas,” he said and sank back into his chair. “All alone. Nobody home,” he muttered. “All alone. Nobody home.”

  We walked out to the front porch, and Grandmother gazed at the empty reindeer barn. The doors stood open, one hanging crooked from broken hinges. “What’s happening?” I asked, my voice crackling in the silence.

  The old elf looked at me with fear in her eyes. A chill tickled my spine and worked its way into my heart. “I think your uncle went back in time and stopped the Defenders from ever being formed. He changed history.”

  “Then where’s Dad?”

  “I have no idea, Carol. There’s no way of knowing. All of our memories, everything we think of as reality, none of it may have happened. Maybe he was never even born.”

  I felt dizzy and leaned on my cane. “Then how am I still here if everything’s changed?”

  “I sensed it,” Grandmother said. “There was a massive shift in the time-space continuum, like being in a plane as it hits turbulence. That’s why I pulled us into the portal. I kept us outside the continuum while he traveled back. So we weren’t affected by whatever changes he made.”

  I tried to wrap my mind around what she was saying, but it made my head hurt. “So what do we do?”

  “I don’t know, Carol.” Grandmother sighed, glancing at the house in which poor Santa sat staring at his lonely fire.