Arthur Christmas (10 page)

At the sound of heavy panting, the three travelers looked up. Dasher trotted to the campfire. His fur dripped with seawater. He dropped something soggy at Arthur's feet.

Arthur snatched up the sopping slipper. Then he grabbed the bike from Bryony and ran off along the shore. The relentless (and apparently water-resistant) slipper started to play its tune, and the young man sang jauntily along. “Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way …”

Concerned for Arthur's sanity, Bryony and Grandsanta followed, with Dasher on their heels. When he found a dinghy on the shore, Arthur pushed it into the surf. Then he scrawled a quick note in the sand: SORRY, I BORROWED THIS! Bryony and Grandsanta hurried into the boat to keep an eye on Arthur.

Arthur rowed with all his might, but he wasn't much of an oarsman, so he wound up splashing around in circles. Bryony had found her Hoho, and Steve's recorded voice droned over its speaker. “4,227 miles, then slight right …”

Grandsanta shook his head. “I've seen this before. ‘Sleigh fever,' they call it: Pressure of Christmas drives a man loony. Santa Claus the Sixteenth got it, 1802. Every child that year got a sausage nailed to a piece of bark.”

Bryony gently asked, “Arthur, do you really think you can row the whole Atlantic Ocean in the next …” She consulted her Hoho, “… thirty-seven minutes?”

“It's not too late yet. I just have to keep going.”

Grandsanta looked around the small boat. “We need a blunt instrument. Knock him out and regroup.”

Steve's recorded voice droned on, “Make a legal U-turn, then slight right in 4,228 miles.”

Bryony tried to bring Arthur back to his senses. “You do know we're going around in circles?”

Grandsanta looked up, struck by a new idea. “You know, we're not the only ones. Maybe I
will
see Evie again …”

“What do you mean?” Arthur wondered.

Grandsanta explained, “Reindeer are brave, powerful beasts. But they're also silly fur-balls with twigs on their heads. They'll just keep going in a straight line right around the world! They'll be a thousand feet above us, flying at unimaginable speed, but they'll pass right over our heads!”

The three gazed up into the sky. Arthur spoke with wild excitement. “Then we CAN get the sleigh back!”

Meanwhile, in Brussels, the high command of UNFITA (United Northern Federal International Treaty Alliance) gathered to discuss the ominous UFO. Chief Elinora De Silva tried to understand the babble of “intelligence” filling the busy war room.

“Maintaining course 760 …,” one operative observed.

“It's circling the globe!” a second added.

A third announced, “Ma'am, the UFO has gone into orbit!”

De Silva heard their words, but what did any of it mean?

Similarly, Grandsanta understood Arthur's plan, but he still thought his grandson had lost his mind. “You?! Up there?! Catch that?! With this?!”

Arthur nodded, taking the boat's anchor from the old man's hands and adding two words, “Magic dust!”

Bryony pulled an Emergency Cracker from her kit.

“You crack it over your head,” she explained. “You'll have to focus. The sleigh'll be coming at you at 45,000 miles an hour.”

Arthur's breath came in desperate, shallow gasps. “Forty-five thousand …”

“You'll be torn in half!” Grandsanta worried.

“Depends on the angle the sleigh hits. You might just get beheaded,” Bryony amended.

Arthur shuddered. “I've got a phobia of being beheaded! And heights and speed and reindeer and buttons …”

Bryony hadn't heard that one before. “Buttons?”

“I'm pretty much scared of everything!” Arthur admitted.

Then he muttered miserably to himself, “Gwen thinks you're coming … Oh, no, I can't do it … yes, you can … no, you can't … Yes, I can … come on, Arthur!”

Grandsanta tried to comfort him. “Don't worry, son. Only a raving lunatic would …”

“I have to worry! It's the only thing I'm good at!” Arthur exclaimed, adding with a sudden inspiration. “Worry me!”

“The sleigh'll be back any minute,” Bryony observed.

“C'mon! Worry me quickly!” Arthur urged.

Grandsanta looked at him with growing understanding of Arthur's odd request. “Imagine Gwen! All alone, nothing under the tree!”

Arthur nodded. “Here we go!”

He pulled the cracker! In a flash, Bryony tied a roll of ribbon around his waist, and Arthur floated up like a balloon on a string, shaking wildly!

His fear of heights kicked in, and he gasped, “Aaaahhh! No, I don't like this! Stop! Stop! Stop! Get me DOWN!”

Grandsanta went on, “Imagine the tears as she finds she's been left out!”

Bryony realized what the old man was doing, so she added, “… screaming, ‘SANTA DIDN'T COME!'”

Arthur's focus returned, but only briefly. “Oh, Gwen … No, no! I'm just too high!”

Grandsanta and Bryony urged him on, their shouts receding as he floated higher, and the wind filled his big ears.

“… Gwen in the street, surrounded by kids on new bikes, pointing, ‘That's the girl that Santa HATES!' She runs away, drops out of school …”

Grandsanta jumped in, “Her childish heart broken, she may never build a snowman again!”

Arthur looked down and his head spun with dizziness and a new fear. “Aaaagh! But what if there are buttons on the sleigh I don't know about?!”

The moment of truth had arrived, Bryony screamed, “Here it IS!”

Still upside down and traveling faster than a speeding bullet, the sleigh approached almost before Arthur's eyes could perceive it. He swung the anchor, but before he could throw it, the metal hook snagged the reindeer harness and whipped Arthur into the sleigh's wake.

SNAP!
The ribbon broke as the sleigh shot away with Arthur trailing after it, helpless as a tin can tied behind a car of newlyweds.

But Arthur wasn't a tin can. He was a young man, terrified out of his wits, but determined to achieve his goal. He somehow gathered the strength to pull himself along that wildly-whipping rope, toward the sleigh soaring above the sea.

In the boat far below, Bryony and Grandsanta tried not to worry. Finally, Bryony broke the nervous silence. “How do you think he's … um …”

“Fine. Fine,” Grandsanta said hastily. “Probably just …”

The whole sleigh flipped over. Shaking and screaming, Arthur was bounced from the back of the sleigh all the way to the front. He grabbed onto the nearest reindeer's antlers. He soon found himself nose to nose with the beast. But the reindeer was upside down and still running!

He pulled himself farther, up to the belly of the beast, only to be surrounded by flailing hooves. Arthur held onto the fragile harness, hoping against hope that it would not break.

In the boat below, Bryony and Grandsanta continued their awkward vigil. “So, um … how come they didn't scrap the sleigh, sir?” Bryony wondered.

“I threatened the elves,” Grandsanta explained. “Said I'd feed 'em to the polar bears.”

Bryony didn't know what to say to that. So she fished a treat out of her pocket and offered it to the old man. “Um … fig roll, sir?”

Arthur managed to climb toward the center of the jingling harness. Unfortunately, the harness broke and released yet another reindeer. Arthur dangled from one arm, swinging almost as uncontrollably as the metal deer logo.

Bryony and Grandsanta had nothing to do now except worry. As the silence grew from merely uncomfortable to downright miserable, Grandsanta nervously sighed. “Elf, how do you fancy being the one to tell his parents about all this?”

ARTHUR COULD NOT
imagine telling anyone about this amazing adventure. Who would believe him? Arthur himself could not believe he was this high up, traveling this fast, and clambering over big beasts to try to reach an upside down sleigh. Yet he was!

Astride a flying reindeer, the young man afraid of, well, everything, somehow found the courage to leap from the beast's back to the sleigh! Arthur grabbed the reins, and then lunged for the handbrake.

WHOOSH!
Once again, the sleigh dropped like a stone!

Bryony and Grandsanta heard a whistle and a jingling. They looked up just in time to see the sleigh speeding right for them!

The impact of the reindeer smashing into the small boat sent Grandsanta, Bryony, and Dasher bouncing into the air. Then the sleigh splashed down into the sea, and the three landed inside it—with Dasher's warm, furry rear end pressed into Arthur's face.

Normally, such close proximity to his grandfather's pet would have frightened Arthur. But instead, he laughed!

Bryony cheered. “Yay, Arthur! You did it! You did it!”

Arthur marveled, “I … I did it with worry!”

Bryony hugged him. “Oh, I was sure you'd die! It was great!”

Steve's voice interrupted this emotional moment, as Bryony's Hoho3000 slowly sank, along with the wrecked boat. Its navigation program commanded robotically, “Proceed to the highlighted route. Procee …
gurgle, glub
.”

Grandsanta wasn't concerned about the loss of the GPS. He said, “Just keep worrying about Gwen. I'll find a way there, boy. Whatever it takes.” He cracked the reins and cried, “To Trelew!” With a
WHOOSH
and a splash, the sleigh took off.

At the North Pole, Santa Claus had reached a decision. He burst into his bedroom and told his wife, “Margaret! Hand me my Me suit! All sorted! Steve's … um … holding the fort, while I … er … deliver the present. Yes! And find Arthur and Father!”

The ever-supportive Mrs. Claus said, “Well done, dear.”

But she was already dressed and closing her coat. Mrs. Claus continued, “Trelew's on a course of 187.7 degrees from the geographic pole, but as it's the old sleigh, we should allow a drift margin of 1,000 miles either side of the Greenwich meridian.”

She paused to show Santa what she had packed for their journey. “I've got a sweater for Arthur, your father's pills, and some nice, sweet tea.”

Santa put on his red jacket, eager to get the mission over with—and glad for his wife's capable company.

Despite Santa's reassurance that their older son was “holding the fort,” Steve had no idea the S-1 was leaving the dock. So Steve was completely shocked when his room suddenly started to shake. Only one force in the whole North Pole complex had the power to shake its icy foundations—his beloved ship!

BANG!

Steve winced at a second loud noise, even more ominous than the first. What was going on? Who would be crazy enough to try to steal the S-1?!

Steve ran down what felt like an endless hall toward the dock doors. He carried his Santa suit. His doting assistant chased after him, wondering what was wrong. “Sir? SIR!” Peter cried.

Steve did not answer. He was too busy reading the sticky note stuck to the dock door:

Popped out to take present.