Christmas Carol & the Shimmering Elf Read online

  “Rubbish,” Grandmother said. “Probably rumors this Supreme Leader started himself to keep people out of his territory. We go tonight, midnight. If you’re too frightened of imaginary monsters to lead the way, Carol and I will figure it out ourselves.”

  Ray looked hurt. Ivan-I-Am-Not lifted his chin like a soldier posing for a heroic portrait. “I will be going. No monsters scare me.” Ray glared at his goofy comrade. But he nodded.

  “Good,” Grandmother said. “I knew you were brave boys.” She hesitated. “I’m sorry, brave young men.”

  Ivan-I-Am-Not struck an even more heroic pose. I tried hard not to smile. Boys sure were simple creatures, easily manipulated. I didn’t care what we had to do to get them to help us. I was just happy we had allies. It felt good to finally be doing something. At last, we had a mission.

  I’d never seen such darkness. Though I guess seen is the wrong word, because we couldn’t see anything. Only blackness as we walked deep into the abandoned subway tunnel. Before we started out, Ray told us it was best not to use any light until we absolutely had to. “Just to be safe.” We didn’t want to draw the attention of any “monsters” in the tunnels. And a trickle of light might escape through a manhole and alert the Supreme Leader’s men to our presence.

  No one else would be out on the streets at midnight because of the strict 10 p.m. curfew. If you were caught without proper papers, you’d be arrested, or simply vanish. “It’s a police state,” Grandmother muttered.

  We walked without a word, Ray leading the way and Ivan-I-Am-Not bringing up the rear. The silence was as deep and thick as the blackness, except for the sounds of our footsteps and the occasional scurrying of some unseen creature. I was wearing a gray uniform Ray had scrounged up, a small attempt to blend into this strange world. The Ancient One, notoriously stubborn, refused to wear the clothes he offered her.

  We walked for a good half hour. I would touch Grandmother’s shoulder, and she would squeeze my hand and I’d feel less frightened. At long last, Ray flipped on his flashlight. Ivan-I-Am-Not did the same. The narrow focus of the beams revealed little of our surroundings, but debris was scattered along the edges of the tracks. I saw a flash of movement, and a tail, a rat vanishing to parts unknown. Water dripped from above, making a puddle in front of us.

  “This is as far as we’ve come,” Ray said. “Gallahad didn’t want us to risk going any farther. We’re at the edge of the Forbidden Zone. He was headed this way when he vanished.”

  “Why was he coming here?” I asked.

  “Reconnaissance,” Grandmother answered for them. “Know the enemy in order to defeat him.”

  “Yes, looking for weaknesses,” Ray said. “But we’re afraid he got captured.”

  “Or monsters grab him,” Ivan-I-Am-Not whispered.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” Ray asked.

  “Do you like this world?” I responded. “Do you like hiding underground?” The boys said nothing. “Then let me fix it. I know I can.” I said the words with as much conviction as I could muster, trying to convince them—and maybe me.

  Ray headed deeper into the tunnel, the flashlight dancing along the dripping walls and debris-strewn track. Our footsteps seemed to echo more loudly the farther we went into the Forbidden Zone. I could hear my own heart, like a bass drum in my chest. Grandmother’s breathing grew heavier. When Ray kicked a piece of rusty metal, the clanging was so loud I thought the entire world would hear us. Ivan-I-Am-Not yelped and we all froze. But nothing appeared. No men in black. No monsters.

  A few minutes later, however, I felt it. A presence. Someone, or something, was watching us. We’re not alone, dear, Grandmother said telepathically.

  I know. My heart beat so loud, I imagined the pounding had revealed us to whoever was watching. Should we go back?

  No. We’ll just have to deal with it. Get a pulse ready.

  But won’t they detect my use of Defender power?

  We may not have a choice.

  I moved my hand around, gathering up a powerful North Pulse, ready to fling it at what lay beyond the shadows. Suddenly Ivan-I-Am-Not hissed, “A monster!” Glowing red eyes, horrible and pulsing, moved toward us. I drew back my hand. More red eyes appeared. This was going to be a fight. The voice stopped me.

  “No, m’lady!”

  I nearly cried out at the sound of it. Joy overwhelmed me. I let go of the web, searching wildly for the source of the voice. No one else would use those words. It had to be him. “Mr. Winters?” I called out.

  There was a long silence. The red eyes stared out at us. Ivan-I-Am-Not whimpered. Ray squatted as if ready to leap in attack. Grandmother tried to catch her breath. At last, the voice answered. “How do you know that name?” A man stepped from the shadows. Others did the same. They all wore contraptions that had two glowing red lights on the front. Night-vision goggles. The man removed his.

  Ray gasped. “Gallahad!”

  I gasped, too. “Mr. Winters!” And I sprinted toward him, ready to throw my arms around him. But he stepped back.

  “Carol, no!” Grandmother shouted, and I stopped.

  “Mr. Winters, it’s me,” I said. “It’s Carol.”

  Gallahad stared at me blankly. He looked pretty much the same, with his striped red hair cut short. Only he was thinner, wiry looking. “I don’t know any Carol,” he said. “How do you know my name? Are you a spy?”

  It was all I could do to keep from crying. I’d finally found someone I knew in this world, and he didn’t even recognize me. “But you do know me,” I said softly, trying to make it so.

  “Carol, dear, he doesn’t. Not here.”

  “What are they talking about?” Mr. Winters asked Ray. “And why are you in the Forbidden Zone?”

  “It’s hard to explain,” Ray answered. “She’s OK. They’re both OK.” He looked around at the glowing goggle eyes. They gave me the creeps. “Who are these people? Where have you been, Gallahad?”

  Suddenly I remembered. Gallahad! One of King Arthur’s Knights of the Roundtable. That’s how the Mr. Winters I knew viewed the Defenders, as knights willing to lay down their lives to protect Santa. It’s why he’d gotten into the habit of calling everyone “m’lady” or “m’lord.” The same sort of thinking must have led this Mr. Winters to adopt the nickname Gallahad. That made me smile.

  “I’ve been recruiting allies,” he answered, pointing to the red eyes that surrounded us. “Brothers and sisters in arms.” His face had softened. He looked more like the Mr. Winters I had known. My heart ached for him to remember me.

  “They’re allies, too,” Ray said, pointing to me and Grandmother. “They say they can change things.”

  Mr. Winters studied us. “And you trust them?”

  “You trust them?” Ray asked, pointing to the red eyes.

  Mr. Winters nodded. “Follow us.”

  After another twenty minutes of walking, a light appeared down the track. The people in the goggles took them off, and I could finally see their faces. Men and women. Young and old. A few teenagers. Two of them—an older man and a young woman—had the red hair with the white stripe. I was hoping I’d recognize more Defenders, but neither looked familiar. They studied me warily.

  When we reached the light, we emerged into another abandoned station, and the sight took my breath away. Aside from the people (there had to be nearly fifty), the only way to describe the station was with a simple word: beautiful. Christmas lights in red, green, white, and purple covered the walls, the old turnstiles, and the ticket booth. Tinsel was draped everywhere and glittered in the soft light. And in the center of it all stood a tree, beautifully decorated with a mix of carved wooden ornaments, more twinkling lights, strings of popcorn, silver icicles, and a shimmering star on top. Beneath the tree were dozens of packages wrapped in newspaper, plain brown paper, or whatever scraps could be found and tied with lovely homemade ribbons and bows. Beside the tree stood something that brought tears to my eyes: a large wooden Santa, meticulously carved, paint
ed in bright white and deep red. Someone was a true artist. Everyone watched in silence as I approached the Santa and touched his face, crying softly for this beautiful symbol of my lost world.

  “You know that man?” Mr. Winters asked.

  “Santa,” I answered, and a murmur spread through the station.

  Mr. Winters’s eyes widened. “And you’ve read the book?”

  I glanced at Grandmother, who shrugged. “What book?” I asked.

  Mr. Winters motioned toward an old man with a long gray beard. A hush fell over the room. The old man took a key from his pocket and knelt to open an ancient trunk. He removed a tattered-looking leather-bound book, lifting it gently, as if it might break into pieces at any sudden movement. From the looks of it, I thought it just might. He handed the book to Mr. Winters, who stepped beside me and turned to the title page. A musty smell tickled my nostrils.

  “A Christmas Carol,” Mr. Winters said, as if he were speaking of a holy book.

  “Yes, I know it. Charles Dickens. You were reading it the first time I met you.”

  Mr. Winters looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. “This book is banned. This is the only copy I’ve ever seen. We in the Underground have passed around hand-copied versions, but the real books were destroyed long ago.”

  My mind raced. The book that gave me my nickname, the name I had embraced once I’d discovered my true destiny, that book was forbidden in this awful world.

  You know why, Carol, Grandmother said. Dickens painted a world of magic and generosity and goodness around Christmas. If your uncle wanted to destroy Christmas as we knew it, one of the most beloved books of all time would have to go, too.

  “So, if this book is banned, how do people celebrate Christmas?” I asked.

  “All celebrations center around the Supreme Leader,” Mr. Winters said. “People buy gifts in his stores. The more you buy, the more favor you gain with him. Those who are rich, get richer and more powerful. And the Supreme Leader is the richest and most powerful of all.”

  “But what about less fortunate kids?” I looked around. A few young faces, dirty and gaunt, stared back at me. I couldn’t believe how skinny they all were. I wondered how they survived in these tunnels. Did they ever see the sun? Or take in deep breaths of fresh air on a crisp winter’s morning? Or do something as simple as ride a bike? I would go crazy if I had to live in such a place.

  “Parents do what they can,” Mr. Winters said. “Some make gifts. To me, that’s a purer form of giving because it’s from a place of love, not wealth.”

  I thought of my best friend Amelia, how her parents struggled and she received only a fraction of the gifts I did when I lived with my uncle. Yet, what she received was a gift more priceless than all the gold in the world: a family’s love. That’s something Uncle Christopher never gave me. “We can fix it,” I said.

  Mr. Winters laughed. Whispers and chuckles flitted about the room. “A little girl and an old woman?” He motioned at the station and everyone in it. “Will fix all this?” I stared at him in angry disbelief. The man who had told me a girl was capable of anything, who made me believe in myself, who loved me like a daughter, he sounded almost cruel. This world had made him a different man. A bitter man.

  “I’ll have you know I’m an elf, not a woman,” Grandmother snapped. “And this little girl defeated your ridiculous Supreme Leader in our world.”

  Mr. Winters snorted. “What do you want from us?”

  “They need to get to someone who lives in the Forbidden Zone,” Ray said.

  “Where?”

  “Close to the palace.”

  “That’s suicide,” Mr. Winters said. “I’ll have nothing to do with it.”

  “Please, Mr. Winters,” I said, stepping closer to him. I tried not to focus on how different this Mr. Winters was. His gleaming white teeth were dirty and dull from neglect. The sparkle that always seemed to be in his eyes had been extinguished. Like the others, he looked hungry and ragged in his dirty gray uniform. I tried to concentrate on what I knew was within him: goodness, kindness, courage.

  But this Mr. Winters turned away from me. He returned the Dickens book to the trunk. “Feel free to get yourself arrested, or worse. You’ll have to find help elsewhere.” He slammed the trunk shut as an exclamation point.

  “What happened to you?” I screamed. “In my world, you are brave and strong and the first person who had faith in me. The Mr. Winters I know isn’t a coward.”

  “Call me all the names you want, little girl. This Mr. Winters doesn’t have a death wish.”

  I crossed my arms and stomped my feet, probably looking like the “little girl” he accused me of being. But I didn’t care.

  From behind me came a voice so soft I barely heard it. “I’ll go.” Ray stepped forward. He cleared his throat and repeated himself, louder this time. “I’ll go.” The room came alive with whispers. Mr. Winters glared at the boy. Ray looked away.

  Then Ivan-I-Am-Not stepped up, standing shoulder to shoulder with his friend. “Me also,” he said. He wouldn’t even make eye contact with Mr. Winters but stole a glance at me. I smiled at him and mouthed the words, “Thank you.”

  “You’ll do no such thing,” Mr. Winters said. “We have to be smart. This isn’t smart.”

  “And what are we doing down here, Gallahad?” Ray shouted. “Living like rats, hiding. What’s the point?”

  “We’re gathering strength. Building resistance.”

  “We are losing,” Ivan-I-Am-Not said. “Nothing we do.”

  Mr. Winters stared at the floor for a long time. An almost unbearable tension seeped through the silence. Someone coughed, making me jump. Finally, Mr. Winters said, “You boys are the only family I have. I can’t lose you.” There was a hint of the kindness he had shown me in my world. It gave me hope.

  “You won’t,” I said. “I’ll protect them.”

  Mr. Winters stared hard at me and I met his gaze. “How can you be so sure, m’lady?”

  My heart ached at those words. In truth, I couldn’t be sure. I didn’t know what kind of forces I was up against. I might lose. We might die. But I had no choice but to believe I could do it, that we could come together to defeat my uncle and restore the world. “I can’t be, Mr. Winters. You know that. But I will do everything in my power to keep us safe. I need your help, though. Will you join us?”

  Mr. Winters glanced at Ray and Ivan-I-Am-Not. They moved closer to me. He looked at Grandmother, who winked at him. Everyone in the station leaned in, holding a collective breath.

  Mr. Winters’s face hardened and the words he spoke once again jabbed me in my fragile heart. “I will not be a part of this madness,” he growled. The whole world seemed to deflate. And as he stormed off, my tears came. And they didn’t stop for a long time.

  CHAPTER 5

  Finding the Castle

  Elves, I was about to learn, become forgetful when they’re old. Just like humans. Though to be fair to Grandmother, it had been close to two hundred years. I’d probably forget, too. We wandered through the tunnels for nearly two hours, the night-vision goggles the “monsters” loaned us giving everything a ghostly green glow. I wondered again if our new allies spent their entire lives wandering around dark tunnels that were eerily illuminated by the goggles. Maybe they always would if I didn’t change things.

  As I stumbled through the tunnels, my heart hammered again. Every shadow could conceal a man in black. My imagination ran wild with thoughts of giant mutant rats ruling the tunnels. Or other humans, definitely not like our allies, living down here alone, resorting to cannibalism to survive. Perhaps even bitter, twisted elves escaped to the tunnels and would defend what territory they had left. But all we saw were scurrying rats (not the mutant kind), dripping water, and hissing pipes. No one else appeared. And we emerged through a manhole near Jane Street. That’s where Grandmother insisted the wayward elf had lived for more than two centuries. “I can see his house like it was yesterday.”

  Ray had conferred w
ith Ivan-I-Am-Not, studying the map to determine the best place to exit to reach the elf. Mr. Winters never returned. We were on our own. “We need to be on the streets as little as possible,” Ray had said. “It’ll be a miracle if we’re not spotted.”

  Now the moment had come and, leaving our goggles behind, the four of us slithered out of the manhole and dashed to cover in the shadows. The whole area was quiet and deserted. Streetlights shone but barely penetrated the gloominess, as if the dark force that ruled this world had taken form and enveloped lower Manhattan. I thought of the creeping darkness in A Wrinkle in Time and shuddered, trying hard to be as brave as Meg.

  Grandmother looked around, then up at the street signs, and said to me telepathically: Uh-oh.

  What do you mean uh-oh?

  I think we’re on the wrong block. This doesn’t look familiar.

  It’s probably changed after two hundred years.

  Not his house. It was huge, like an old castle. I would recognize it immediately. Hand me the map.

  The gray-bearded man had loaned me the small map, and Grandmother unfolded it quietly, studying the maze of streets and buildings. “Oops,” she muttered.

  “What’s wrong?” Ray whispered, glancing up and down the street.

  “It’s not this part of Jane Street. It’s three blocks over.” She pointed to a block west of the location she’d highlighted before we left.

  “You’re kidding,” Ray said. Ivan-I-Am-Not slapped his hand to head.

  “Let’s go back underground,” I suggested.

  “It doesn’t work like that,” Ray said, his voice edging above a whisper. We have to follow the subway lines.”

  I turned to Grandmother. “Can we make a portal to outside the house?”

  “The elf will sense it and run.”

  Ray groaned. “Then we’ll have to go on the streets. Keep to the shadows.”

  We crept along Jane Street, our shuffling feet sounding like a stampede of buffalo in the thick silence. The emptiness made my skin crawl. New York was supposed to be the City That Never Sleeps, the streets teeming with people and endless things to do. But it was as if everyone had been abducted, or a plague had wiped out the population. Ray held up his hand for us to stop and pointed to a camera above a dimly glowing streetlight. The camera rotated toward us and we ducked behind a corner food stand. The camera panned, pausing when it pointed at us. We held our breath. But then it started back the way it had come, and we exhaled in relief. We scampered across the empty street.