The Dragon at the North Pole (4 page)

“What’s that?” Jesse and Daisy both asked at once.

“Why, a long winter’s nap, of course,” she said with a wink. She pursed her lips and tapped her foot. “Now, let’s see … you’ll need to bring some snacks with you. It gets very cold at the North Pole and you’ll be burning calories to stay warm.”

Jesse and Daisy, humoring Miss Alodie, went to the kitchen. Neither of them thought for a minute that they were actually going to the North Pole. People who went on polar expeditions spent months preparing. They dressed like astronauts and ate
special food made in high-tech labs.

Meanwhile, Jesse plugged in his Blueberry to recharge it. Wherever they were going, it wouldn’t hurt to have access to the grid, as Uncle Joe liked to say.

“Do you think this is enough cocoa?” Jesse asked Daisy as he poured some into a thermos.

Daisy shrugged. Then her eyes suddenly lit up and she ran out of the room. Moments later, she came bounding back with her arms full of what looked like blue plastic pancakes.

“Thermal gel pads,” she explained. “There’s a chemical in them that makes them heat up. We can stuff them in our mittens and boots.”

“You act like we’re actually going to the North Pole,” Jesse said.

Daisy shrugged again. “Can’t hurt.”

After Jesse and Daisy had filled the backpack with snacks, the thermal gel packs, the Blueberry, a flashlight, and one of Daisy’s bandanas (for cold, runny noses), Miss Alodie helped them bundle up. Then she sat them down on the mudroom bench and fitted their feet into the snowshoes. The snowshoes might have looked crude but they slipped on over their boots as if they had been custom-made. Jesse stood up and almost fell over.

“Tsk, tsk. They work best in the snow,” Miss
Alodie said, pushing them out the back door.

Jesse took a step off the back porch. Instead of sinking into the snow, he found himself standing on top of it. He slid his other foot forward and began to skate along the crest of the snow. He felt as if he were walking on water. It was smooth and effortless.

“These work great!” he said to Daisy.

“Let me try,” Daisy said. She launched herself off the porch and landed as light as goose down beside Jesse. “Wow!” she said. “It’s like we’re weightless!”

They slid in a circle on top of the snow, whooping and waving their arms. Meanwhile, Miss Alodie was tapping on the mudroom window, pointing toward the laurel bushes.

“I think she wants us to head north,” Jesse said. “Toward the barn.”

Side by side, they glided up the backyard. It was like sliding over butter. Jesse almost believed they could slide all the way to the North Pole.

They came to the laurel bushes and fell forward, paddling on their bellies like penguins on an ice floe. When Jesse pulled himself through the last of the laurel bushes, he emerged into darkness so complete, he thought something had happened to his eyes.

Behind him, Daisy sucked in her breath. “Who turned out the lights?” she cried.

Jesse checked the illuminated face of his watch. It was ten o’clock in the morning, but it looked like midnight.

“Where’s the barn, Jess?” Daisy said.

Squinting through the darkness, they could see that the barn was gone. The Dell was gone, the Deep Woods were gone, and when Jesse spun around to look for the laurel bushes, he discovered that they, too, were gone. In their place was an empty field of snow and ice.

“Look, Jesse!” Daisy said, her head tilted back.

The vast dome of the sky was blue-black and spangled with stars except for directly overhead, where red and green lights danced like a curtain made of twisted ropes, the fringed ends dangling tantalizingly just out of reach.

“It’s the aurora borealis!” Jesse said.

“But it’s right over our heads,” Daisy said. “Not on the horizon like before.”

“That’s because we’re at the North Pole, directly underneath them,” Jesse said, suddenly understanding what had happened. “When Miss Alodie said these snowshoes were the ticket to the North Pole, she wasn’t fooling around.”

Daisy said, “If I’d known we were really coming
to the North Pole, I would have put on even more layers.”

The air was dry and crisp. Their breath puffed out before them, but that was the only sign of cold. Jesse felt perfectly comfortable in what had to be subarctic temperatures.

“I don’t think we need extra layers or gel packs or anything,” he said. “I think the snowshoes not only got us here, they are keeping us warm, too.”

The next moment, Daisy clutched at his sleeve. “Do you hear that?” she asked.

The air rang with a bright and cheery sound. At first he thought it was the wind, but as it grew louder, it became more musical.

“You know what that is, Jesse Tiger?” Daisy said, jumping up and down and flapping her mittened hands. “That’s sleigh bells!”

The jingling sound grew louder until it filled the air. Daisy gasped as a team of reindeer with broad golden antlers came into view. Hitched two abreast by colorfully embroidered harnesses, they pulled a huge glossy black sleigh with golden runners that
curled at the ends. Perched high up on the driver’s seat was a figure so strikingly familiar that Daisy nearly laughed out loud.

As she stared at him, Daisy found herself mentally checking off the details: red suit trimmed with white fur, cheeks like roses, nose like a cherry, beard white as snow—except that he wasn’t merry and lively and quick like the little man in the famous poem Jesse had been reading to Emmy. This man was big and hulking and serious-looking. As the sleigh bore down upon them, the driver pulled up on the reins and sat back. Then he burst into jolly laughter, his belly hanging over his low-slung black belt and jiggling like a bowl full of jelly.

“Ho-ho-ho, my wee little tykes! Welcome to the North Pole. You must be Emerald’s Keepers!”

His voice was loud and deep and filled Daisy’s head with a warm fuzzy feeling. Daisy groped for Jesse’s hand. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“Why the long faces, youngsters? She’ll be happy to see you,” Santa Claus went on. “It’s a good thing I was out patrolling for my runaway reindeer.”

Now that Santa mentioned it, Daisy noticed that there was an empty spot in one of the runners. The eighth reindeer. Daisy blinked back tears. It was true. It was all true. She turned to Jesse and
said, “Jess, it’s really him. It’s not a myth after all! Santa Claus is
real
!”

Jesse nodded eagerly as he looked over the reindeer. “I wonder which one ran off.”

“Look, Jess!” She pointed to the back of the sleigh to a compartment high up behind the driver’s seat. Tucked beneath a red blanket with white fur trim were at least a dozen adorable little creatures with pointy noses and chins, upturned eyes, and green caps with bells on the ends.

“Santa’s elves!” Jesse said. He turned to Daisy, his eyes as wide as hers.

“Hop in, my wee tykes, and I’ll give you a lift,” said Santa Claus. He held up a thick fur lap blanket. Jesse and Daisy scrambled into the bottom of the sleigh next to Santa’s big black silver-buckled boots. Santa tucked the blanket around them. Daisy was overwhelmed by a feeling of coziness. She said to herself,
It’s Christmas morning and here I am, tucked into Santa’s sleigh!

Just then, Santa snapped the reins and, as the sleigh started to move, called out the familiar string of names: “Now, Dasher! Now, Dancer! Now, Prancer and Vixen! On, Comet! On, Cupid! On, Donner!”

Daisy turned to Jesse and whispered, “There’s your answer, Jess.”

“That bad boy Blitzen,” Jesse said with a shiver of excitement.

The sound of the harness bells and the warmth of the blanket made Daisy feel drowsy. She didn’t want to fall asleep—she didn’t want to miss a single moment of this adventure—but all of a sudden her eyelids were so heavy, she couldn’t stay awake.

She woke to Jesse gently shaking her. Daisy rubbed her eyes and looked around. The sleigh had stopped. Reindeer hooves scraped restlessly on the ice and snow as Santa Claus heaved himself up and out of the sleigh.

“Oh, wow!” said Jesse, pointing.

Daisy saw not the cozy, quaint little snow-encrusted cottage featured in all the Santa’s Villages she had ever visited, but a shimmering white palace with towers that seemed to scrape the sky. Looking at the sky, Daisy noticed something odd. It might have been an illusion created by the high towers, but the aurora borealis seemed to shine everywhere except where the palace stood.

“Welcome to my humble abode,” said Santa. He clapped his hands, and the elves tumbled down off the back of the sleigh and scrambled onto each other’s shoulders to reach the reindeer’s harnesses. It took a team of four elves to wrestle the harness off each animal and lead it away.

Jesse stepped out of the sleigh and up the palace stairs. He ran his hands over the walls. “They’re ice. Solid ice, Daisy,” he said. He stood back and stared up at the palace. “The whole thing’s made of ice.”

Daisy joined him. Jesse was right. Every part of the palace—the walls, the roof, the window frames—was made of ice.

“Ice is the only building material here,” Santa said as he stepped up to the big front door. It had a doorknob the size of a cantaloupe and required both of Santa’s big gloved hands to turn. It opened with a loud creak, just like a wooden door.

Jesse and Daisy stepped into the vast entrance hall. In the center of the room was a life-sized ice sculpture of Santa Claus presenting a package to a small child. An icicle chandelier hanging from the domed ceiling seemed to sparkle from within. The slick ice walls glowed pale blue as if there were tubes of fluorescent light behind them. Twin grand staircases wound up to the right and left. An open door to the side offered Daisy a peek into a vast room in which there was a long table made of ice with a long ice bench on either side.

“Kindly remove your snowshoes, my wee little tykes,” Santa said. “Mrs. Claus wouldn’t want you to scuff up my nice ice floors!”

Jesse and Daisy consulted each other silently. The snowshoes had gotten them to the North Pole. Maybe now that they were under Santa’s roof, they wouldn’t need them. They untied the snowshoes and left them by the front door.

“This way,” Santa said. Big boots jingling, Santa set off down a wide corridor.

Jesse and Daisy followed him. On the walls were ice carvings of candy canes and reindeer, one of them sporting a large bulbous nose.

“Rudolph,” Daisy said to Jesse. Even inside the palace, her breath made plumes of condensation. Now that they’d taken off their snowshoes, she noticed that her feet, in her white fuzzy boots, had begun to grow numb from the cold. The walls and floor and ceiling of the corridor all glowed with the same pale blue of the entrance hall. If there was a light source, she thought, maybe there would be a heat source wherever Santa was leading them.

The corridor branched out like an icy maze, but Santa kept bearing left, leading them past more ice carvings of elves, swans, wreaths, garlands, and Christmas stockings. Daisy rubbed her hands together as they walked. Her fingertips were tingling from the cold. She looked over at Jesse. His teeth were chattering and his eyes, beneath his shaggy brown bangs, were watering.

Daisy gave her scarf an extra wrap around her lower face and reached over to do the same for Jesse. He flashed her a grateful look as Santa took another left turn at an ice statue of a snowman with a top hat, ice carrot nose, and ice pipe sticking out of its mouth.

“Frosty,” Daisy said through her scarf. “Now I know how he feels.”

“So far, I’ve counted sixty-three doors and fourteen staircases,” Jesse said to her through his scarf. “I wonder where they lead.”

“To toys?” Daisy asked. She didn’t even play with toys anymore, but the thought that Santa’s actual workshop was located somewhere in this building made her heart pirouette like a ballerina.

The hallway widened. In the center of the space was a sculpture of two happy children skating, their arms linked. Opposite the sculpture was a door. Santa opened the door and stood to one side. “I’ll let you two wee tykes settle in. I think you’ll find everything you need. Make yourselves at home.”

“Can we see Emmy?” Jesse asked.

“In a bit. I’ve been keeping her busy,” he said with a wink.

Daisy wondered how Santa was keeping Emmy busy. Using her flame to heat this place would be a
good start. Jesse and Daisy stepped through the door, and Santa closed it behind them. They were standing in a sort of sitting room. Directly across from them were French windows. There were two doors on opposite sides of the room. Jesse opened each one.

“Bedrooms,” he reported.

On one side of the sitting room was a huge carved wardrobe. On the other, two chairs stood before a fireplace in which flames licked the hearth. Daisy went over and huddled there. After a moment, she grumbled, “Ugh. This fire is
cold
!”

Jesse looked thoughtful. “Maybe real fire would melt this place. But Miss Alodie was right about how when you’re cold you burn calories staying warm. I’m starved.”

Jesse slung off the backpack and sat in one of the chairs, breaking out the trail mix and the thermos of cocoa. He looked over at Daisy. “Better hurry before I eat it all. Aren’t you hungry?”