10. An Elf Appears

10

AN ELF APPEARS

QUINN

I'm staring at an elf.

At least, I think he's an elf.

I guess it's insensitive of me to assume but there is a short (though not that much shorter than me) white man wearing a pointy green hat on top of a mop of messy black hair with pointy ears sticking out the sides.

"Don't touch it unless you're willing to take the job!" Patrick snaps up and looks back at me. All I can do is point at our new visitor who is still standing in his own tornado of golden glitter. Slowly, it swirls to nothing.

"Who are you?" I ask because my husband is clearly too stunned to speak, still crouching centimeters away from the glowing cloak that lies crumpled on our floor. Who knows where that's been? I teach second graders. I know the dangers of touching lost items, just rewind to my last three head colds.

"Bart. I mean, Ho bart Holly, head elf." He shimmies up to full height, shoulders back, smile tight. He wears velvety deep green overalls and leather boots with pointed toes. "All my friends call me Bart."

"Nice to meet you, Bart," Patrick says, extending a hand in the professional way he's been programmed to do.

"I said friends ." There's a firm edge to his otherwise singsong voice.

The shade of it all! Patrick retracts his hand awkwardly, so I step forward, needing to pronounce some agency here because Patrick is fumbling. "Hobart, excuse my husband. He didn't mean to offend you by assuming we were all friends here. We obviously just met. Listen, we're having a very bad night, and we're a little stressed out."

Hobart sighs. "You're stressed out? This is my first Christmas as head elf and Santa has just quit on me!"

A rational, less tired version of myself would question everything that's going on here, but right now, either Patrick and I are having a joint hallucination or this is really happening. Strangely, this is really happening seems to be winning out, so I aim for the easiest answer I can get. "To clarify, that man who just walked out of here is Santa Claus?"

" Was Santa Claus," Hobart clarifies.

"I'm going to need more than that from you, buddy," Patrick says.

"I said my name is Hobart, not Buddy." Hobart crinkles his face in cartoonish disgust, leaning away. "As if I would ever be as careless as Buddy. How could you mistake me for him ?"

I shake my head. These two are sorely ineffectual communicators, which makes sense given how Patrick kept his unemployment from me for five whole days. Could he not have asked me to unplug the vacuum for a minute so we could talk? How hard would that have been?

"How rude!" Hobart adds.

"Hobart, I apologize for my husband again, but please focus. We don't know any Buddy or anything about your beef with him. All we know is that Santa broke into our home, transformed into a grumpy much-younger man, and then left his sleigh on our roof and his cloak on our floor, so what do you mean that he was Santa Claus? Who's Santa Claus now?"

"No one," Hobart says with head-of-his-class snootiness. "That cloak is enchanted. Its magic masks the wearer as Santa or his cultural equivalent in other cities and countries and continents across the world. What you see is what you believe."

"So there could be more than one Santa Claus?" Patrick asks.

Hobart tsks. "Don't be ridiculous. There's only one cloak. Whoever wears it has the job. The magic bonds to you."

Enchanted cloaks? Magic bonds? I can't wrap my head around any of this.

"How was that guy able to walk right out of here if the cloak is bonded to him?" Patrick asks, sounding nearly intrigued and excited. It's the same voice he uses when he's walking me through his budding ideas for a new project.

"We really don't have time for me to explain the complex magic system of the North Pole to you," Hobart says, producing an ornate golden pocket watch from the front of his overalls and cringing at the time. He shakes his head. "I need you two to make a very important decision very fast."

The banging on the roof interrupts us again. The sound is so loud I fear those flying reindeer might come falling in on us at any second. Hobart taps his fingers on his chin, clearly antsy. "Decision? What sort of decision?" Patrick asks.

Hobart nods. "Put on the cloak or cancel Christmas."

"You're joking." I look to Patrick, who is possibly seriously considering this. "He has to be joking, right?"

"I'm afraid I'm not joking. On Christmas Eve, if the enchanted cloak gets taken off, time stops for exactly one hour." Hobart toys with that golden pocket watch, which has a similar dusty golden aura to it as the cloak that's still balled on the floor. "If nobody puts it on by the stroke of sixty minutes, then the reindeer are rerouted back to the North Pole and the rest of the gifts go undelivered."

"Why don't you put it on?" I ask, voicing the obvious.

"I'm an elf! There are rules! Which again, I don't have the time to get into right now." His eyes sparkle with sudden pleading. "I only have forty-five minutes to get one of you into the cloak, prepped on sleigh navigation, and off to New York or we're done for."

I can't believe the entire fate of Christmas is hanging on our shoulders. Why us?

Well, I guess there's an easy answer: because my husband nearly made an omelet out of the last guy.

"We'll—" Patrick starts to say, probably about to step up and play the hero. I love that he wants to be a reliable helping hand, but what kind of husband would I be if I just let him bond with an enchanted cloak without talking it through first?

"Sidebar!" I shout. " We'll sidebar. First. Give us five minutes to discuss this." I'm marching toward the stairs as I whisper, "Our room. Now ."