The Dragon at the North Pole (6 page)

“We have fillets of baby dolphin with krill sauce, sirloin of seal pup, grizzly bear cub cheeks, and caribou calf steak … bloody rare.”

Jesse shuddered in disgust.
No thank you, Santa!

Meanwhile, across the table, Jesse was shocked to see Daisy shoveling food into her mouth. Daisy was practically a vegetarian. She didn’t even like to
eat hamburgers, much less baby anything, including baby corn!

“Psst, Daisy!” Jesse called across to her.

Daisy looked up, her eyes strangely glassy. She gave him a grouchy frown and growled, “I am eating. Go away and don’t bother me.”

“Well, excuse me,” Jesse said. He looked over at Emmy. She had the same intent, glassy-eyed look as she devoured the food on her plate. Emmy ate meat, but she had a soft spot for babies of any species. She would never in her right mind have eaten them for dinner.

Something fishy was going on. Were both Emmy and Daisy, stuffing their faces with this all-you-can-eat baby-animal buffet, under some sort of spell to which Miss Alodie’s cracker had made him resistant? He couldn’t know for certain, but one thing he did know: he was not going to touch one bite of his dinner. He began to cut up his food and move it, piece by piece, down onto the bench next to him and, from there, onto the floor beneath the table. While he did this, he listened with one ear to the conversation Santa and Emmy were having across the length of the table.

“I want you to file down the cogs on the reuptake inhibitor so it will function more smoothly,” Santa was saying. He leaned back from the table.
He was picking his teeth with a fishbone. The beard around his mouth was stained yellow.

“Will do,” said Emmy in an unfamiliar droning voice. “I will see to it forthwith. We will have to suction out the particles. Otherwise they will clog the works and make the carburetor malfunction.”

“We must avoid that,” Santa said. “And another thing we need to look at is the insulation in the cooling chamber.”

“I will take care of that, as you wish, Claus,” Emmy said, her green eyes wide and empty.

The tone of her voice and the look in her eyes bothered Jesse. Besides which, Emmy was a magical dragon. She had never shown much aptitude for machines. Did this mysterious new mechanical ability come with whatever spell she was under? And
Claus
? What was going on?

As Jesse listened, he fiddled with the raw emerald in his snowsuit pocket. A question popped into his head, and before he realized he was interrupting, he blurted it out: “Where’s
Mrs
. Claus?”

Santa stopped midsentence and tugged at his mustache.

“Hush,” said Daisy, frowning deeply, her mouth full of food. “You are a rude little boy.”

Jesse wanted to tell her that speaking with her mouth full made her a rude little girl, but Emmy
said, “He poses an excellent question. Where is she? I would like to meet this fabled personage.”

Santa leaned forward and whispered, “Don’t let this get out, but Mrs. Santa is down at the Honolulu Hilton, in her polka-dot bikini, basking in the sunshine.”

“Goody for her,” Daisy said in a flat voice.

“Really? Hawaii?” said Jesse to Santa. It was hard to imagine the plump, apple-cheeked Mrs. Claus wearing a bikini, polka-dotted or otherwise.

Santa and Emmy had resumed their discussion of thermonuclear turbines when a more important question occurred to Jesse. “Why do you need our dragon’s help again?”

Santa turned an icy blue gaze upon Jesse. “I have need of her dragon magic.”

“Yeah, but don’t you have Santa magic of your own?” he asked.

Daisy, her cheeks stuffed with food, growled at Jesse: “Leave the Claus alone. Eat up and shut up.”

Daisy never said “Shut up.” Ever. The elves came by to offer seconds. Jesse held up his hands and said, “I’m good.” But he wasn’t good. He was worried sick. Both Emmy and Daisy were suddenly strangers to him.

As an elf leaned in to take his empty plate, Jesse got a whiff of something rank. Rotting fish?
Where had that come from? He’d been near the elves before, when they were unhooking the reindeer from their traces, and he hadn’t noticed any particular scent then, much less something this gross. Were the elves not entirely what they seemed?

“Well!” said Santa, pushing back from the table and resting his hands on his belly. “Now that we’ve all eaten our fill, I think it’s time to get down to business.”

Santa Claus rang the little silver bell again. Two elves marched in carrying a large scroll, a quill, and a small bottle of ink.

“I want to thank you two for coming all this way,” he said to Jesse and Daisy. “Had you not come to me, I would most certainly have had to come to you. I have a proposition to make.”

“We are always open to a proposition from the Claus!” Daisy droned. She set down her fork, having cleaned her plate for the third time. Her cheeks were pink and greasy, her eyes glassy.

Jesse turned to Santa. “What’s the proposition?”

Santa leaned forward. “I stand ready to give you a bounty of toys—more toys than you ever imagined, two each of every toy I have ever made—if you will sign over the Keepership of Emerald the Dragon to me. I have taken the liberty of having a document drawn up.”

“Toys are us!” Daisy chanted. “We want more toys! More, more, more!”

Jesse didn’t know what astonished him more, Santa’s business proposition or Daisy’s reaction to it. He sputtered, “Are you crazy?”

Santa turned to Jesse. His eyes narrowed to icy slivers, and he rasped, “Far from it, my lad.” Then, snapping his fingers, he bid the elves to unfurl the scroll.

“Here is the contract for transference of title,” Santa announced. “I trust you will find everything in order.”

Jesse whipped around to Emmy. “You can’t possibly want to go along with this, Em.”

She gave him that disturbingly empty look and said, “We must not thwart the Claus.”

“The Claus must be obeyed,” droned Daisy. Her head swiveled toward the elves. “Bring the contract of the Claus! We are ready to sign for the Claus! The Claus rules!”

Jesse couldn’t believe it. Was everybody nuts but him? “Wait a minute,” he said, his voice rising in panic. “We need to discuss this first.”

The elves, ignoring him, marched over to Daisy. Jesse got up on his knees and crawled halfway across the table to get a look at the contract. It was printed on old parchment paper. Jesse didn’t
recognize the language. He didn’t even recognize the alphabet. It looked like bird tracks, lots of sharp wedges and triangles.

Just then, Jesse felt something pulse in his snowsuit pocket, like a cell phone set to vibrate. The emerald! He reached in and pulled it out.

Meanwhile, one of the elves handed the quill to Daisy.

“Show me where to sign,” Daisy said in the dead, singsong voice.

Jesse opened his hand and looked at the stone. It was as clear as glass; the emerald’s natural green color had completely disappeared. He was in the presence of treachery. Something was rotten at the North Pole!

Daisy touched the point of the quill to the document.

Jesse dived the rest of the way across the table and landed on the bench beside her. Daisy frowned and slapped at him, as if he were a giant gnat.

“Let’s take this back to the room and discuss it first,” Jesse said. “After all, this is a big decision.”

“We disobey the Claus at our own peril,” Daisy said darkly.

“I’m sure ‘the Claus’ will understand our need to discuss this first.” Jesse plucked the quill from her fingers. He thrust it at an elf. To Santa, he said, “We’re taking this contract back to our rooms with us. We’d like to discuss it. Does the Claus mind?”

Santa’s blue eyes scorched him like dry ice. It was as if someone had stuck a pin in Santa. Beneath the smoking jacket, his jolly girth had dwindled down to nothing but muscle and sinew. “He minds very much. You disappoint me, boy. Know that my offer is good until midnight.”

“Toys are us,” Daisy chanted again, beating on the bench with her greasy fists. “We want toys!”

“We have all the toys we need, Daise,” Jesse said between clenched teeth. “But can we save this discussion for when we’re alone?”

Santa barked at the elves. “Escort them to their room. Let them take the contract with them as well as the quill and the bottle of ink. Know this: in the end, I will be obeyed.” Santa gave Jesse a frigid look. His cheeks, which earlier had been rosy and plump, were now sunken and chiseled.

“Merry Christmas to you, too,” Jesse muttered. Gone were the twinkly eyes, the dimply cheeks, the nose like a cherry, the mouth like a bow, and the jolly belly that shook like a bowl full of jelly. The man he was looking at might have a white beard, but that was where the resemblance to jolly old Saint Nick ended. The blue goo cracker had not only protected Jesse from the food, which he was now convinced had put a spell on Emmy and Daisy, but it had also undone a masking spell and revealed their host to be someone other than Santa Claus.

Jesse turned to Emmy. “Can you come with us? This concerns you, too.”

Emmy said, “I must stay with the Claus and serve him.”

“Right.” Jesse sighed and shook his head in disgust.

Two elves rolled up the contract and led the way back to Jesse and Daisy’s suite. Beside him, Daisy walked stiffly, like a robot. But Jesse’s attention was on the elves. With every step, their elfin escort was undergoing a transformation. Their delicate little feet broke out of their slippers and sprouted dusty gray fur and claws. Their shoulders broadened, and huge humps appeared on their backs. They swayed along like chimpanzees.

Jesse didn’t know what they were, but they
weren’t elves and never had been, any more than their host was Santa Claus.

The sculptures in the hallway began to transform, too. The cheerful Christmas-themed characters gave way to a terrifying gallery featuring giant bears, fierce wolves, slithering serpents, warriors with horned helmets, grimacing trolls, and other creatures Jesse didn’t even have names for.

When their escort turned to usher Jesse and Daisy into their room, Jesse stared at their faces in numb horror. Their eyes, no longer delicate and upturned, were now huge and goggly, poking out of the tops of their scabby foreheads. Their jaws hung open nearly to the floor, revealing jagged yellow fangs. The rotten fish odor he’d smelled before had become overpowering.

Jesse looked at Daisy, but it was obvious from the expression on her face that all she saw were Santa’s elves.

“I’ll take those,” Jesse said, plucking the scroll, quill, and ink bottle from the monsters’ clutches. He went inside and set everything on the sitting room table. The monsters slammed the door behind them. When the sound of their claws dragging along the icy corridor faded away into silence, Jesse turned to Daisy and said, “Ready for your dessert?”

She frowned, but she licked her lips in anticipation. “What dessert?”

“It’s a surprise,” Jesse said. He reached into the pouch of his sweatshirt and drew out the remains of the blue goo cracker. “The Claus himself had it prepared for you.” He broke the cracker in half and returned the last quarter to his pouch.

“Open your mouth and close your eyes, and I’ll give you something to make you wise,” he said. Daisy shut her eyes and stuck out her tongue. Jesse placed the cracker piece in her mouth and said, “Chew and swallow.”

Daisy’s eyes fluttered open in suspicion as she chewed. “Hey,” she said sharply. She swallowed and said, “How dare you …?” Then, as Jesse watched, Daisy’s face turned an alarming shade of purple. Her eyes widened and she clapped a hand over her mouth.

“Jess! I’m going to be sick!” she gasped.

Dragging her across the room, he flung the French windows open and held on to her as she spewed up what looked like the entire lumberjack buffet into the abyss.

When she was finished, he pulled her back in, shut the window, and sat her down on one of the ice chairs.

“Better?” Jesse asked.

Daisy nodded weakly. Her eyes were clear, but she looked as pale as chalk. “What happened?” she asked.

Jesse took a deep breath. “I think we have been the victims of a masking spell cast by our host, who is
not
Santa. I think the food you ate was bewitched. I think he did that to force us to sign over Emmy to him. Miss Alodie’s blue goo cracker, which you just ate—and which I ate by mistake before dinner—not only counteracted the bewitched food, but it seems to be undoing the masking spell.”

Then he told Daisy how the emerald had revealed the presence of treachery. He told her how, not long after he ate Miss Alodie’s cracker, the elves had started turning into something hideous.

“What did they look like?” Daisy asked.

Jesse described them.

“Trolls,” Daisy said. “I saw a picture of them in a book in Alodie’s Alley. They’re ugly customers.” She put a hand to her mouth. “Jess, remember what the professor said? The North Pole has been a magnet for unsavory characters.”

“Whoever is pretending to be Santa seems pretty unsavory to me,” Jesse said.

Daisy nodded slowly. “I remember, when I first heard the sleigh bells … they made me feel a little
bit dizzy. I thought I was just overjoyed to be meeting Santa, but maybe …”