The North Pole Challenge (Flea's Five Christmases, #1)

THE NORTH POLE CHALLENGE

By: Kevin George

For countless centuries, Old Man Winter ruled his cold kingdom. His massive ice castle was located in the most distant reaches of the South Pole, far away from where humankind had ever dared to journey. Luckily, he was spared an existence of complete loneliness by his group of tiny servants, who were not affected by the frigid conditions. These servants provided Old Man Winter plenty of joy from their mischievous and comical antics, but they also served a more practical purpose. They had an amazing ability to build Old Man Winter whatever he wanted in a matter of seconds, no matter how large or complicated. A special few servants had a gift to create something even more valuable – magical dust. But the secret of making that dust was unknown even to Old Man Winter.

As Lord of the South Pole, Old Man Winter’s sole duty was to control the weather on Earth, a task he was able to perform because of his most prized possession: a mystical snowglobe. He stored the snowglobe in a small cauldron in his bedroom, away from the prying eyes of his servants. It wasn’t that Old Man Winter had trouble trusting his loyal servants but he had to be extra careful. A change in the snowglobe’s possession would change control over the South Pole and thus the world’s weather, a power that could be tempting to even his most trusted allies. To further ensure the snowglobe’s safety, he filled the cauldron with a special freezing liquid. The dangerous liquid would freeze the limb of anyone foolish enough to try removing the unbreakable snowglobe.

Every year, Old Man Winter followed the same weather pattern: cold and snow in the winter, warmth and sun in the summer. He was very careful to maintain balance in the world. But he still kept his South Pole kingdom in a constant state of winter – his favorite season. Spoiled by his effort to provide six months of warmth, many humans dreaded winter. People across the globe constantly complained about the cold weather and failed to appreciate the beauty of snow and ice, not to mention the necessity of winter in the circle of life. Old Man Winter had the power to plunge the world into a new Ice Age, but he was far too merciful and loving to do this. Instead, he hoped to change humankind’s negative opinion of winter through positive means.
             

“I need to figure out a way to make people excited about the colder months,” Old Man Winter told his two most trusted servants.

“A celebration, a time of happiness and being with loved ones,” one of the tiny servants suggested.             

“And don’t forget presents for the children,” the other servant added. “Toys will make their hearts glow and have them counting down the days to winter.”

              Old Man Winter was not one to imagine such an idea on a small scale. He envisioned a magical place where toys could be built and then delivered on his winter holiday. But he and his advisors quickly realized that the South Pole was too small to house their ambitious plans. They considered building just beyond the South Pole border but human explorers had ventured farther south with every passing year. It was important to keep their holiday village safely away from human eyes, as this would make the winter holiday more magical. Therefore, Old Man Winter decided that only one other place would be suitable for his village: the North Pole.

With his great understanding and appreciation for balance, Old Man Winter knew that the North Pole was the perfect selection. Just like the South Pole, a part of the North Pole was also inaccessible to humankind. Since his servants had no problem enduring the extreme cold – and since an amazing use of their magical dust allowed them to travel long distances in the blink of an eye – his two advisors quickly scouted the North Pole location and deemed it ideal for their plans.

              Although Old Man Winter had gone countless centuries without his winter holiday, he was too excited to put it off another moment. He gathered together his remaining servants and told them of his grand plans. Though many were nervous about leaving their lifelong home, Old Man Winter’s energy was contagious. As one group, they traveled to a location just outside the North Pole’s border. But as the two main advisors led the group toward the North Pole border, Old Man Winter experienced a sensation he’d never felt before: weakness. Being the most powerful entity in the world, he was shocked and confused to feel his legs grow heavy and his breathing labored. Coldness flowed within him that had nothing to do with the blustering snow or sub-zero temperatures.

             
Upon noticing his absence, one of the advisors soon reappeared from the North Pole and found his master unable to continue forward. When Old Man Winter explained what was happening to him, his advisor questioned whether they should proceed with their plans. Knowing that there would never be a better place to build, Old Man Winter didn’t hesitate to make his decision. He gave up the chance to witness construction of his holiday village and returned to the South Pole.

Once home, his strength returned to full force. Old Man Winter immediately headed to the cauldron in his bedroom. He reached his hand inside the cauldron and the freezing liquid instantly parted for him, allowing access to the snowglobe. While possession of this sacred object provided Old Man Winter his power, the snowglobe also answered any question asked by its master.

              “Why can’t I enter the North Pole?” Old Man Winter asked.

             
He shook the snowglobe. Inside, the real snowflakes floated gently before disappearing into a cloudy haze. The answer came as it always did, through a voice that only Old Man Winter could hear in his mind.

             
“You already know the answer to that question,” the globe responded.

             
“Balance.”

             
“That is correct, my Lord,” the snowglobe said. “If you enter the North Pole, then you would disturb Earth’s balance and risk plunging the planet into eternal winter. You have dedicated your existence to maintaining balance in the world. You’ve always done this from the South Pole for a simple reason:
this
is where you belong.”

             
“Should I have the holiday village built here instead?”

             
“With all due respect, my Lord, you ask questions despite already knowing the answers,” the snowglobe said. “The village is destined for the North Pole. You made the correct decision allowing your servants to begin construction there. And the answer to your
next
question is no, none of your servants will accept the task of running the North Pole. Unfortunately, they are too comfortable being followers, not leaders. However, there
is
a way of finding someone suitable to fulfill your vision.”

             
Old Man Winter stared into the snowglobe as the cloudy haze faded away. The image of a baby appeared.

             
“A child?” he asked.

             
“
Your
child, My Lord. Created of winter, dust and you.”

             
Old Man Winter watched as the snowglobe instructed him what to do before promptly fading back to its simple snowy interior. He carefully placed the globe back inside the frosty cauldron. For the first time that he could remember, he was unsure about a decision. The prospect of raising a child to carry out his holiday vision was not an easy one to make. But with his ice castle empty of servants for the first time, Old Man Winter realized that having a son would not
just
give the world a reason to celebrate winter. It would also provide
him
a family he never expected.

             
Old Man Winter marched out of his ice castle, dreaming about the son he would create. The child would be kind and loving to all the children of the world, a son who would treasure the task of leading the winter holiday. Raising a child to follow his plans would postpone the start of his holiday for many years, but that would allow more time to expand the village far beyond Old Man Winter’s original expectations.

             
He scooped up a large mound of snow and carried it inside, laying it carefully on the castle floor. Old Man Winter reached into his pocket and removed a small pouch of magical dust. He sprinkled dust over the snow mound that he cradled with his other arm. A bright blue light erupted from the snow and nearly blinded Old Man Winter, who had to turn away. When he turned back, he saw a handsome baby boy, who was more striking than any child he’d ever seen. With glowing pale skin, ice-blue eyes and a full head of white-blond hair, the baby was the future of the North Pole.

In the corners of Old Man Winter’s eyes, tiny ice crystals began to form.

              “From now on, I will be known
not
as Old Man Winter but
Father
Winter,” he told his son, who did not cry. The boy simply stared at his father through piercing blue eyes. “And you, my son, I shall call Jack.”

The two team captains stood in front of the class, studying the other kids with more focus than any test. Finally, the first captain pointed to someone in the front.

              “I’ll take Rob.”

             
Rob was big and burly beyond his twelve years of age and could throw the hardest. The second team captain took an equal amount of time before making the next-best selection.

             
“Cory.”

             
The next biggest kid jumped off the gymnasium floor and joined his new team. The biggest and best athletes were chosen first, followed by the smaller scrappier kids, then the bookworms, the band geeks and finally, the students most overweight. The selection process went this way every day in class. The gym teacher – he of the high-shorts, long-socks, whistle-toting variety – never noticed the cruelty of the process, especially for the one student picked last
every
time. In fact, the two teams began to head toward their ends of the gym, leaving one student sitting all by himself.

             
“Hold on just a minute,” the gym teacher said. “You still got one…
person
left.”

             
The second team captain looked at the last kid and rolled his eyes, sighing loudly before he made his last choice – not that he had much
choice
in the matter.

             
“Okay, let’s go, Flea.”

             
Flea scurried toward his team, nearly tripping over his own two feet along the way. He received dirty looks from everyone on his squad – from the most athletic jock to the fattest nerd.

             
“Just make sure you stay out of the way,” the team captain told Flea.

             
Not only did Flea have the dubious distinction of being the smallest kid – boy
or
girl – in the entire class, he also looked much different from the other students. His features could be described by no other term but pointy:
pointy
nose,
pointy
chin,
pointy
ears. Even his right ear – the top of which was split halfway down the middle – had
two
sharp points. As if his tiny size and strange looks weren’t bad enough, Flea had a dandruff problem that was impossible to miss. His real name was weird but the students and teachers called him by the nickname he’d had for as long as he could remember.

Flea was in his fourth month at this particular school. He finally reached the point where he was being ignored rather than teased. But the daily game of dodgeball seemed to bring out the worst in everyone.

              The whistle blew and the gym teacher released a sack of bright-red dodgeballs in the center of the gymnasium. Although Flea had been picked last –clearly for good reason – he refused to fade into the back of the gym and wait to be picked off like all the other athletic outcasts. A small part of him hoped that by trying hard, he could earn the respect of his fellow students. An even
bigger
part of him hoped that he could get lucky and eliminate one of the better athletes.

Once the fastest kids on both teams retrieved the dodgeballs, the game officially began. Deemed a weak, insubstantial target, Flea was overlooked at first and picked up a stray ball missed by the others. Unfortunately, the targets he
wished
he could hit were on the far side of the gym, so Flea picked out a rail-thin girl nearby. Although he felt guilty for going after a weak link, he needed to prove to his teammates that he could be
somewhat
useful. Using a running head start, he wound up and threw the ball as hard as he could.

             
In a perfect world, the dodgeball would have found its intended target. Better yet, the other team’s captain would have drifted directly into the ball’s path and been the first person eliminated. But the thin girl easily stepped aside as Flea’s dodgeball lazily fluttered by her like a butterfly. Any shot of dodgeball glory – or even respectability – had instantly evaporated. He quickly retreated to the back of the gym, where he joined the other sorry saps who had no business playing this game with the real athletes. As he watched his teammates picked off one by one, Flea somehow managed to dance and duck away from several balls. But his time was quickly running short. There were fewer and fewer targets remaining on his team and the biggest athletes on the other side were licking their lips at the chance to peg the new, ‘weird-looking’ kid.

             
“Excuse me, may I interrupt for a moment?” a voice called out near the gym’s doors. The gym teacher blew his whistle seconds before the best athletes could unload on Flea.

             
“Can I help you with something, Mr. … what was your name again?” the gym teacher asked.

             
“Mr.
Strick
,” said the man with the bright red hard hat. “We’ve only met about a
dozen
times in the faculty room during the last four months.”

             
“Yeah, yeah, Mr. Stick, what do you need?”

             
“Actually, it’s
Strick
and I need to borrow one of your students for a while,” the other teacher said. “I’m working on a very important project and there’s only one student who can help me.”

             
“We’re kind of in the middle of a game here,” the gym teacher said, “but I
guess
you can take whoever you want, as long as he –
or
she – wants to go.”

             
Mr. Strick turned to Flea, who ran toward the gym doors before even being asked. The tiny boy passed the dodgeball-armed athletes, who sneered at him like a pack of hungry wolves unexpectedly denied their dinner. Flea knew he couldn’t avoid dodgeball forever, but he was more than happy to put it off for the time.

             
“Thanks for saving me back there, you showed up just in time. I still have welts all over my body from yesterday’s game,” Flea said. He looked up at the teacher’s head. “Do you wear that hard hat
everywhere
you go?”

             
Mr. Strick smiled and rapped himself in the bright red hard hat several times, causing a shower of sawdust to rain down on Flea.

             
“You never know when one of these can come in handy,” Mr. Strick said. “You might think of wearing one the next time you’re playing dodgeball.”

             
Flea laughed though he did not find Mr. Strick’s joke particularly funny. Still, Flea felt better every time he was with his favorite teacher. Since he’d started at this school, Mr. Strick was the only person – student
or
teacher – with whom Flea had felt any sort of connection. That was probably because they were both so weird. Mr. Strick didn’t seem to care that Flea was different from everyone else so Flea didn’t mind either.

             
As usual, the two headed toward the only room in school – or
anywhere
for that matter – where Flea felt confident, where he truly felt at home. The school’s shop classroom consisted of nothing more than a dozen oversized dusty tables, a large rack of tools that looked ancient and three table saws that were cordoned off by a few pieces of yellow-and-black caution-tape. Still, Flea felt excitement running through his veins whenever he stepped inside this room and saw the large stacks of lumber against the wall. This was the first school he’d ever attended that had a shop program in its curriculum and it hadn’t taken long for Flea to take a liking to the class. Ever since he was a little kid, Flea had enjoyed playing with toy building blocks – one of the few toys he’d had growing up – but he
never
would have expected to be so skillful when it came to the real thing. Flea’s amazing ability had delighted Mr. Strick the first day of shop class. The teacher had called him a ‘natural.’ Flea had never been called a natural at
anything
.

             
But as the initial shock of Flea’s talent wore off, the relationship between the teacher and student became business-like. Mr. Strick pointed to a table that held a large stack of lumber, a few cans of spray paint, some small nails and two tools: a hammer and a simple handsaw.

             
“Don’t tell me,” Flea said disappointedly. “More birdhouses.”

             
“I know, I know, birdhouses are boring to you now,” Mr. Strick said. “But hopefully
these
ones will be a bit more challenging.”

             
Mr. Strick handed him three sets of detailed blueprints. Somehow, Flea understood exactly what he was looking at though he’d never seen a blueprint in his life. While Flea might have been amazed by this a few months earlier, he was no longer surprised by any of his instinctive shop class skills.

             
“Well, at least the birdhouses are getting a bit more interesting,” Flea said as he pointed out several new additions to the design. “Functioning garage door, multiple levels, birdfeed dispensers inside
and
out. I see these are much larger, too, and need to be painted several different colors.”

             
“Like I said, more challenging.
And
there are three of them that I need finished today,” Mr. Strick said. “Think you’re up for it?”

             
Flea looked at the clock and saw that his gym class was scheduled to end in about thirty minutes. He glanced down at the detailed blueprints and smiled, knowing it would take a highly advanced shop student an entire semester to finish only one of these birdhouses.

             
“No problem.” Flea cracked his knuckles and picked up the saw and first piece of wood. “Here we go.”

             
Over the next half-hour, Flea worked at a frenetic pace never before witnessed by
any
shop teacher. The tools were like an extension of Flea’s hands, working in such fluid unison that he didn’t waste a single movement. Sawdust flew and nails were hammered and paint was sprayed, all without Flea needing to stop a single time to check the specifics of the blueprints. Flea didn’t understand how this came so naturally to him but he didn’t question his good fortune since he’d caught so few breaks in life. With a final spray of paint, Flea finished the third and final birdhouse with five minutes to spare. Once done, Flea finally had the chance to step back and check out his work as a whole.

             
“Wow, your plans really turned out great,” Flea said, admiring the three houses – each of which was taller than him. When he turned to see Mr. Strick’s reaction, though, Flea was surprised to see that the teacher appeared sad, at least until he saw Flea looking at him. Strick smiled but Flea sensed there was a problem. “Is something wrong? Did I do something wrong?”

             
Flea checked the blueprints but already knew he’d followed the plans to every tiny detail.

             
“No, they’re absolutely perfect,” Mr. Strick said, eliciting a prideful smile from Flea. “Your talent is quite extraordinary. But the paint needs time to dry so we better get you back to gym class before the period ends.”

             
Flea took a final look at his work before Mr. Strick shut off the lights and led him into the hallway. Flea asked when he would get a ‘
real
challenge’ but before Strick had the chance to answer, a large balding man interrupted them. He had a thin mustache, long bushy sideburns and a face that always burned bright red.

             
“Mr. Strick, I need to talk to you,” the man said sternly.

             
“I’m sorry, Principal Baldy, but I have to bring Flea back to class,” Mr. Strick said.

             
“What did you call me?” the principal asked, his face turning a darker shade of red. The man forced his way between Flea and Mr. Strick as though the small boy wasn’t even there. It wasn’t the first time that Flea had been totally ignored.

             
“Principal
Crawley
,” Mr. Strick said coolly, apparently unaffected by the large man’s growing anger. Flea thought he noticed the shop teacher’s lips curl in the slightest of mischievous smiles. “I’m sorry, have I been pronouncing it incorrectly the entire time I’ve known you?”

             
Mr. Strick seemed to be prodding an angry bear and Flea had to bite his tongue to stop from laughing. Principal Crawley, however, did not find anything humorous about him.

             
“Maybe you could explain something to me,
Mr. Strick
,” the principal started.

             
“I’m sure I could explain
many
things to you, sir.”

             
“Why has the budget for shop class gone through the roof this year? Our last shop teacher didn’t require nearly as much money,” Crawley said.