“Atatatat!” I leant my head back sharply, narrowly avoiding a wooden spoon to the eye. “I’ll be taking that!”

  I yoinked the spoon from her little hand before any more cake mix could mingle with the artex on the ceiling, licking off a drooping dollop of chocote batter before it could hit the worktop. “Mm! Yum.”

  “Ewwww~” Anna giggled, shuffling on her feet and incidentally rocking the chair she stood on to reach the counter top. Gently, I pced my other hand on the back of the chair, steadying it, just in case. “Daddy, you gots’ cook!”

  I smiled unwittingly as she pronounced ‘daddy.’ Two separate words: ‘dad’ and ‘dee,’ a tiny pause between the pair.

  “Well, yes, but you can lick the spoon.”

  The four year old gaped at me as only a four year old can, as if I’d committed a mortal sin.

  “Umm. No.” The little girl frowned after a moment, scrunching up her face in distaste.

  “No?”

  “No. You gots’ cook.” She turned her head away from me, nose to the ceiling with her arms crossed.

  I poked her gently in the belly, restarting another fit of bubbly giggles, as she batted my hand away, dancing from foot to foot.

  I couldn’t help but snort as I dipped the spoon back into the bowl, holding it daintily at the tip.

  “Come on, want to help Daddy mix?”

  “Yes!” She grappled the spoon eagerly with both hands, wrenching it roughly in circles. I only course corrected a little here and there, stopping the mixture from spilling free of the bowl.

  “And why does it look like a doodlebug went off in here?”

  I swallowed down the pinch of anxiety that scuttled up the inside of my spine, as I spun with a sheepish grin.

  Golden rays of sunlight from the kitchen windows lit Chloe as if she where a statue, leant against the table, surrounded by a whirling sea of glittering dust motes.

  “Mummy! Mummy! Mummy!” Anna jumped off the chair, nding heavily on the grubby floor tiles with both feet, kicking up little clouds of scattered flour. “I’m doing cupcakes!”

  “Ah-heh. Surprise!” Even to me my voice sounded a little strained, wiggling jazz hands either side of my face. “We ah, where going to clean up once we where finished. Honest.”

  Chloe deftly slipped off her bck work bzer, tucking it over one arm, intercepting the charging sticky child with the other.

  “I can see that Annie-Anne!” She ruffled Anna’s hair with her free hand, kneeling down, pulling her into a one armed hug. My mind spun backwards like a Rolodex, flicking through memories, trying to work out why she was here.

  Yes, it was her home, but… For some reason I hadn’t been expecting her at all. “FortyThree.”

  She stood slowly, drawing up to her full height, not quite two inches shorter than me. Something itched in the back of my brain.

  I scratched at the stubble lining my chin and coughed.

  “Hi Chlo.”

  She pursed her lips, walking over to a spot of counter, miraculously clear from the floury explosion of spilt ingredients.

  Silhouetted by the kitchen window, the sun washed out the chipped wall tiles decorated with faded birds, vines and fruits behind her.

  Though just beyond my periphery as I helped Anna pour the big gss bowl out into the little divots in the baking tray. I could feel her presence.

  Digging into the back of my skull, as I slid the tray back into the oven. “Hey.” I knelt down to Anna’s height, with the smile you give to children when they need to think nothing is wrong pstered across my lips. “Since you’ve been such a big help, why don’t you go py with Babs while me and Mummy clean up?”

  “Mhm!” Anna nodded enthusiastically, curly hair bouncing, tearing her gaze away from the oven. Her feet spped ft-footed, as she zoomed round the doorway, thundering up the stairs.

  Chloe squinted at me, long and hard in the silence left by the little girls wake. Slowly, she tilted her head off to the side and leant back against the kitchen worktop.

  Sunlight formed a golden halo round her head, bleeding through her hair, fuzzing her outline against the gss.

  “You seem… happier, Three.” She gave me a weak smile after a moment.

  Leant back into the sunlight as she was, I had to squint to see her eyes. The strange, not quite an itch, scrabbled harder at the back of my skull, prickling in my brain.

  I pulled back one of the kitchen chairs and shrugged, settling down at the table.

  “It’s uh,” I frowned.

  It’s what?

  I shrugged again, and closed my eyes, feeling sunlight p, zy and warm, against my face. “It’s been a… hectic two weeks.” That felt like the truth, thought the details eluded me. I knew it’d been hectic. Incredibly hectic, I met her gaze fleetingly, and gestured around at the sun-soaked, batter-stained, kitchen. “I Feel like I’m actually… here, now. Like before everything was in a daze.” That was true too, thought something was missing.

  “Mm.” She frowned, sitting down opposite me across the wooden table. Familiar creases swept gently across her forehead.

  I knew that look.

  “Really, here this time, Chlo.” Her frown deepened as I smiled at her. It was a genuine smile though, somehow, from deep inside of me. Perhaps the most genuine one I’d ever shown.

  When was the st time smiling had been so… so easy? “I sorted it.” I finished, simply. She raised an eyebrow.

  “It?” Her voice rung with warning, like an almost broken gss.

  “Yy-Yeah… I…” I faltered as my train of thought came to a juddering unceremonious halt.

  I. It. Me? Something. Something was different.

  I felt… More. No don’t say that, that doesn’t even make sense. Ugh, I pinched between my eyes hard, scrunching up my face. If only emotions came with instruction manuals! “…I’ve been doing better, I mean. Much better.” I tried to smile again, but it came out more how they used to be. Wide, happy… Fake.

  It was quite a while before she spoke again.

  “I don’t…” She closed her eyes, wincing as she touched a few fingers to her temple, elbows propped up on the table. “I don’t know, Three.”

  Again my skull crawled, something about this was all wrong. “How can I trust that? How can I know, that this time is different?” Her voice washed over me from far away. This all felt, so familiar, but so different at the same time. I was so different. I was…

  I heard a light gasp.

  The pit of my stomach fell a solid foot.

  I looked up into her eyes across the table. Wide, wild, like a cornered hare. A sickly, ashen pallor slowly soaked into her cheeks. “What the hell have you done to yourself?” Her voice trailed away like a brook, disappearing into a horrified, husky whisper.

  I jumped as she stood with the grating squeal of old wood against old tile as she pushed her chair back behind her.

  I swallowed, my lungs fluttering with tiny, anxious, unhelpful breaths as she turned her back to me. Hunched over the sink, occasionally her shoulders would lurch, convulsions so suppressed they seemed more like vibrations.

  “Chlo?” She didn’t respond. All I could hear over the blood rushing between my ears was the slow irregur pp, of tears against the porcein.

  I stood quietly, and gently tucked in my chair, carefully touching it’s wooden back to the table.

  When I looked up, she still hadn’t moved an inch, her knuckles white where her fingers clutched the counter. “Chlo?” I stepped cautiously towards her, a tightening ball of tension grew steadily bigger, high, in my chest.

  I winced at how thunderous my feet sounded, with each heavy thud, against the kitchen floor, and carefully wrapped an arm around her back. “Hey. You okay?”

  “Don’t touch me!” Her long bck hair whipped through the air as she exploded upwards, growing and growing, until she towered above me. The cupboards rattled from her voice as I back-pedalled sharply, smacking into the back of one of the kitchen chairs.

  “W-what? Chlo it’s me.” I backed away past the table, open hands outstretched towards her.

  “Is it?” She spat through her teeth. “Is it?!”

  I recoiled back a further few steps, staring up into her face.

  She crumpled suddenly as tears started anew, and threw her arms down straight at her sides. If she hadn’t grown so tall, her face would have been almost completely hidden from me by her hair. “How could you?” She whispered quietly. “I trusted you.” She hiccuped softly, voice cracking on ‘you.’

  I looked up into her face, rogue thoughts whizzing all around me as my heart hammered against my ribs. Searching for something, anything, to say. Some way to defend myself, some way to console her, some way to… Looked… Up into her…

  With dawning horror I slowly tore my gaze from her face, down to my hands, outstretched towards her. Thin, bony, wrists. They where smaller than they should have been. Slender. My fingers began to tremble as I drew my arms in close, turning my hands to look into my palms.

  43.

  Embzoned twice in deep blocky ink, almost obscured by the shirt sleeves that fell loose and baggy about each wrist.

  “No…” I looked back up at her again. She loomed over me now, I barely came up to the middle of her stomach. “Chloe, no, it’s not…” Not what? “I’m not…” You’re not what, Three?

  Was that even my name?

  I couldn’t tell.

  She flinched away, recoiling at the sound of my voice, I tried, desperately to force it lower, but if anything, that simply disturbed her more. “Chloe, please, please, I didn’t want this! I didn’t! I didn’t choose to be this!” I begged her to understand, to just, please, believe me, trust me, don’t hate me.

  Tears budded, hot, and painful behind my eyes, racking my entire head with their pressure.

  Stupid, fucking emotion, I’d been fine for years without you, go away! “I-It’s not my fault! I- I- I- I’m doing better now, the past two weeks have been, I’ve been, so here!” She stepped back as I moved towards her, clutching my hands together close to my stomach. “I can be here for you, I’m ready, Chlo, we can share the load.”

  A small part of my consciousness reminded me I was probably starting to look rather manic.

  I swallowed, breathing heavily, trying to centre a, any, train of thought. “I can help, I can- We can- We can be a family again!”

  “I’m gd!” She screamed, shocking me into silence. The words all but fizzled in my throat. “I’m so fucking gd you’re happy! Really! I really am.” She pinched the bridge of her nose, squeezing her eyes shut for a second, breath shuttering, fighting down tears.

  But…

  When she opened them again she didn’t look angry, or upset. Simply betrayed. “But I can’t do this.” She looked me up and down slowly, shaking her head from side to side. “How could you do this to me?” Her voicewas barely a whisper, all the fight faded from her before my eyes. “To us? You never, you never said, anything.”

  “Th-Th-There was n-never anything to say! I was taken! They did this to me! I’m not.” I stopped, my chest, turned suddenly to stone as I swallowed the rock, forming in my throat. “I’m not like that, Chloe!” Tears burst free, like little rivers from my eyes now. Overflowing every dam I put in their path, unable to be contained. God dammit, no, don’t let her see me like this, not on top of everything else. “Chloe, please! I’m not like that!”

  She scootched sideways along the counter top, never turning her back on me.

  “In what world is this fair on us?” She was no longer crying, though her eyes where still stained blotchy and red.

  “Chloe. Chloe please.”

  “’Chloe please.’” She suddenly snapped, mimicking high and shrill. “Do you really think it’s suitable to have something like-like- This.” She gestured to all of me with her hands. “Around the girls? Around my children?”

  She was shaking as she gripped the peeling doorframe.

  Anna had poked her face into view. Peering out from under her mothers arm, watching with rge, round, inquisitive eyes. Drawn by the noise.

  Chloe pced a gentle hand, protectively, on Anna’s little head.

  I clenched my hands into fists, fingernails digging deep into my palms.

  “N-no, of course not, I, I would never.” I stepped towards her stretching out my hand. “Chloe, please.”

  “Don’t touch me!” Anna flinched as Chloe shouted, grabbing the little girl by the hand tugging her a few steps down the hallway.

  Everything in me froze, as if my very soul was suddenly encased by an impenetrable sphere of ice, my arm still stretched out towards her. “Don’t touch me.” She said again, quieter.

  I wished, desperately, to no longer be seen. Chloe’s gaze pierced me, right to the core of my being. And my core, I could see it in her eyes, was filthy.

  I sank into the kitchen chair as she slowly turned and began to walk away, staring at the floor tiles in shock. I was only vaguely aware of the voices from the hallway. Chloe calling Babs down from upstairs

  “Where’s Daddy?” Anna looked back at me from the front door, with wide innocent eyes, trailed by the hand as Chloe led her away.

  “Daddy’s gone a way for a little while, Annie-Anne.” She levelled a stare at me, and I dropped my head to my hands, lungs hitching, unable to look up. Unable to show my face her. “You’ll see him again when he gets back.”

  I didn’t move. Not until I heard the final click of the door. Leaving me alone in the suddenly still air.

  I couldn’t cry. I simply decompressed, slumping back in the chair.

  Every bit of me felt numb. I looked down at my hands again, gently holding one slender wrist, covering the numbers. Why couldn’t I just hate this like I should. It would make everything, so, so much easier.

  I scrunched my face up and hiccuped, as if to cry, but still I couldn’t.

  I didn’t- I wouldn’t. Chloe I would never. I promise you.

  Chloe.

  I’d never.

  ---

  A thunderous wail cut to the centre of my spine, splitting my skull, like a pickaxe cleaving clear through rotten wood.

  I threw myself to the side filing against the noise, but found my arms bound, tangled, strapped about my sides.

  My entire chest hammered, half panic, half sobs. I’d hurt her, who? It’s my fault, my fault. The dream bled away into confused fragments, chased away by sudden light, so blindingly intense my eyes burned in their sockets. Bck spots darted in and out of existence in all the corners of my vision whenever I opened my eyes, willing them to adjust.

  Finally, I managed to get my hands up about my head, smmed them over my ears and rolled, thoroughly tangling myself into the sheets. Only stopping when the sound finally ceased.

  Blearily, I peered up at the world through cracks in the bnkets, and eventually pulled my brain together enough to recognise the fading scream of the morning kxons.

  FortyFive groaned opposite me, sat up in her bed. Her brown mousy hair tumbled messily over her fingers as she rubbed at her eyes.

  The back of my hand itched, deep, under the skin. Throbbing, more painfully the more I thought about it. Looking down, linens bunching up under my chin, I’d managed to wrap myself into a coppery cocoon of blood stained sheets.

  “Hey.”

  Forty looked down at me, upside-down from the angle of my head, perched on the edge of his bed. “Want me to take a look at that?” He pointed with a finger, as he ced up his clompy boots.

  “Please.” I nodded, disentangling myself, wincing as some of the fabric stuck, peeling it slowly away from the wound. “You might need to stitch it up again.”

  I extended my arm gingerly for him to take. Big warm hands gently encompassed my bony, sinewy, ones. Tenderly, he squinted, and traced a soft line along the deep purpley-red sear where my skin had been torn open by the gears a few days ago, slowly oozing fresh blood.

  I hadn’t actually asked anyone for an opinion on the subject, but the lingering hope that elves weren’t as susceptible to infection as regur people where, rattled in the back of my skull.

  “Just as well I don’t need me gsses any more.” He pushed my arm away gently, passing my own hand back for me to take, as casually he might a mug of coffee. “Yer’ alright. Split the scabbing a bit’s all.”

  “Thanks.” I murmured, slightly morose.

  For fucks sake. I put pressure on the hand gingerly as the st dregs of whatever I’d dreamt dripped free of my ears, morphing into an unknown, nameless, nightmare.

  ---

  “Have we- Pah!”

  Even with him down the hatch and out of sight, I practically felt the pressure wave of air as FortySeven threw his arms up in the room below. Heralded by silence as the gentle murmur from the rest of the fourth died.

  “Daily! Full start up, full range of motion. You need to check daily.” ThirtySix sounded utterly exhausted, like he’d spent the st four hours talking to an unruly child.

  “Three!” FortySeven rapped on the base of the dder with irritation, sending judders all the way to the little control room as he hollered up the hatch. Surprisingly loud, given his stature. “ThirtySix wants to see it move!” I spun back around in the chair, balking at the huge curved, steel backed, control bank. Awash with little taps, levers and wheeled cranks. “Again!” He hollered after a pause that was probably dominated by some not insignificant gring.

  Ugh. I chewed aimlessly at my lip. Hopefully, most of these I’d never need to touch.

  I grabbed the little handle for the currently active lens at the base of the dome, just behind my head, and pulled. Rolling the great curved magnifying lens out of the way, until it was nestled down behind the control bank, hidden, within the wall. The handle, one in a row of simir handles for different lenses of different strengths. At this distance, any one of them would turn the barrel outside into a blurry unhelpful smear.

  “Okay, Three you can do this.”

  I let out my breath slowly, watching it mist in the cold, and held my hands out unsteadily before me. “Okay.”

  I closed my eyes slowly and let my hands drift zily through the air. It was one of these. Come on Three. You know it is. Or at least at one point you did, someone in this body did. I began to feel a bit stupid, but I couldn’t keep traipsing down the dder, asking for help every single time.

  My fingers wrapped slowly about a small wooden handle. Slightly rough where it’s varnish had begun to chip away.

  I opened my eyes. The handle was part of a heavy crank wheel, the handle itself a dark polished wood of some sort, while the accompanying wheel was metal, painted bck, bubbles of rust poking through here and there.

  I didn’t have… memories from past ‘FortyThrees,’ not exactly. Not proper ones anyway. But I could almost feel… experiences. Actions. Routines of the dead, all the little things done by rote, niggled at the edges of my mind. I swallowed uneasily, trying to wash an uncomfortable dryness from my mouth. It was always weird to think about. Past ‘FortyThrees.’

  I forced myself to blink, shook my head violently and spun the wheel with a rhythmic taktaktaktak, little tickly vibrations dancing through my fingers.

  The very walls groaned, gutturally in response. A low, metal on metal scraping, deep and heavy.

  The floor juddered, sending miniature tremors into the spring beneath my chair. Over my head, I heard the faint, tell-tale, hiss of spirit assisted pneumatics from somewhere behind the concrete.

  Beyond the gss of my little dome the giant tip of the barrel in the snow, grey against the grey of a gloomy arctic morning, pitched subtly to the left. Slowly at first, it gained momentum with every passing revolution of the crank wheel.

  It fell away from me, further and faster, until it was almost all but obscured by the drifts of snow clinging about it’s exposed base.

  “And reverse it!” ThirtySix called over the reverberating Thud! That heralded the giant machine’s end of travel.

  I swallowed, heart rate slowly returning to earth after spiking from the noise, and wheeled the barrel back the way it had come as fast as I could.

  The barrel began it’s slow methodical path, silhouetted against the clouds.

  Tiny, dazzlingly blue, specks of sky broke through the grey here and there, before being swiftly smothered, patched over by the wind. “No, no, no, no!” Great, ThirtySix had clearly found yet another thing to fault us over, though since he wasn’t actually shouting up the hatch just yet, thankfully not with me specifically.

  “What?! What now?!” I closed my eyes softly, defting sympathetically. Normally I found FortySeven unnecessarily abrasive. But while I don’t think I levied anywhere near as much bme for FortySix’s death at ThirtySix’s feet as he did, none of the ‘Squadron Leaders’ I’d met had managed to particurly endear themselves to me.

  Maybe FortyNine? I still wasn’t really sure if she counted.

  “You’re not, look, no.” There was a light, irritated tapping. “Here, you’re not monitoring properly. It’s a lot of power, you need to maintain a bance, especially when we’re adjusting the aim, and especially when the beam’s running.” Just, smile and nod your bloody head Seven.

  I focused on the sky and did my best to tune the pair of them out.

  Another patch of blue slowly, slowly, broke through the clouds, before fading quickly away. It was positively freezing out there. I had to wonder how much protection our jumpsuits might offer from the cold. A few minutes probably, before hypothermia began to set in.

  It was not a comforting thought.

  “It’s not fucking running though, is it!?” De-escation. Not FortySeven’s forte. I gnced at the tip of the barrel, now pointed towards me, quickly nearing the end of it’s range. Anxiety clenched tight in my chest, at least up here, they weren’t involving me.

  “Christmas Spirit’s finicky stuff! If you burn too much or too little, it’s hard to predict what it might do. You have to monitor it properly or-”

  “He knows, Thirty.” FortyNine called softly, her voice was quieter than the two men. It barely carried up to the little control room.

  “If he knew, he’d throttle it properly!” Tempers had been on the boil ever since we’d gotten the aurora working on the tenth, apparently going this far into the new year without a ‘January Raid’ arriving was completely unprecedented. “Lateral movement!” Some elves steeled their nerves well. “Lateral movement!” ThirtySix, decidedly, did not. “God damn it, Three!” Something cnged, hard, against the bottom of the dder. “I said, Lateral movement!”

  Oh! I shot upright in the seat, tore my eyes away from the clouds, downward towards the control bank.

  “Errrr!” I chewed ferociously on the inside of my cheek and grappled for a heavy lever sticking straight up.

  The lever lurched, clunking into heavy, iterative, notches as I threw my weight into it. Beyond the gss, the giant barrel began to mimicked the movement, chittering forwards in bass soprano like a ginormous scale model.

  By the time I had finally finished running the giant machine through it’s paces, restored the barrel to it’s neutral upright position, and flipped the power back off, any sembnce of patience FortySeven might have had, which honestly wasn’t much, had well and truly run out.

  “See? See? Lo and be-fucking-hold. It still works! Shocking!” The tiny man was not quite on the verge of shouting as I awkwardly cmbered my way round the steel chair. “Fucking pointless.” I winced as something cttered to the floor in the room below, and swung my legs, one by one, over the square hatch, feeling about tentatively for dder rungs with my foot.

  “Check the attitude Seven. I’ve been here a lot longer than you, and frankly, know a damn sight more than you as well.” The further I managed to shimmy down the dder, the more and more exasperated ThirtySix seemed to wind himself. “Oi, Seven, get back here right now. Seven. FortySeven.”

  I barely suppressed an instinctive jump when a sudden almighty crash shook the dder. Instead I froze mid descent, clinging hard to metal rungs that quivered in my hands, channelling vibrations from the room below into my fingers.

  I swallowed, cracked open an eye I didn’t remember closing, and risked a fleeting peek down at the room below.

  RrrrrrRrrrrr-Tclink. RrrrrrRrrrrr-Tclink.

  One of the backup spirit barrels slowly rolled it’s way across the floor, with a lolloping, uneven, gait each time the little gss pressure gauge plinked against the concrete floor. FortyEight back-pedalled away from the barrel as if he thought it might bite him, before I quickly looked away my stomach informing me that if I did any more ‘looking down,’ it would be staging an impromptu, and rather violent, coup.

  I shuddered, breathing in softly, and closed my eyes tight the rest of the way down.

  Finally, mercifully, I dropped the st few inches onto blessedly solid concrete, beside FortyTwo, standing awkwardly at the foot of the dder.

  ThirtySix paced a jittery little circle into floor while FortySeven panted across from him. “Unbelievable.” He tugged, jerkily, at his colr with a finger. “Un-be-lievable. Nine.”

  FortyNine raised an eyebrow and leant back against the wall, casually perched atop another barrel in the corner. The picture of bemusement.

  ThirtySix’s eyes narrowed when she smirked, idly kicking one leg. “Pull your damn team together.” I’m sure he probably meant to sound imposing or authoritative, but all he really managed was tired.

  She snorted, exhaling gently through her nose.

  ThirtySix blinked at her for several seconds before shrugging his arms up, high in the air.

  “You know what? What do I care?” He snapped, throwing a wide sweeping hand over the room, “when everything comes crashing down around us, it’s your head Santa’ll have, not mine.”

  She didn’t say anything and lost her smile, but even as he strode past her, she didn’t stop gently swinging the leg.

  He caught the door before it could swing fully closed, paused, and poked his head back around. “If you thi-”

  “You’re not intimidating Thirty.”

  “You-” Thirtysix scowled at her for several seconds, before snapping his mouth shut and pointing back at the rest of us. “Get. Them. In line.” She didn’t break eye contact with him until he finally let go of the door, letting it swing closed on it’s own. “I’ve better thi-” Whatever else he said was lost behind the cng of steel on steel. Though I could probably have garnered a guess.

  FortyNine rolled her eyes behind his back and sighed as she hopped off the barrel, stretching her arms up towards the cavernous ceiling, looking up at the enormous… Northern lights… gun… Not-a-gun. Thing. That needed a proper name.

  “Alright people,” she knocked over a barrel we’d been using for our practice run, and started to roll it away into a corner, “sooner we pack up, sooner we join Five and One on Sleighs.”

  The Fourth milled slowly into motion while FortySeven sullenly went to collect the barrel he’d thrown.

  Forty caught my eye across the room and gave a short, simple, shrug.

  I wasn’t overly sure what we where supposed to be doing down here, occasionally FortyNine would have FortyFive in control instead, but generally I found myself isoted up there. That said, I suppose I could set the safety levers. Tighten the block off valves.

  FortySeven shot me a gre, and made two sharp tilts of the head towards FortyNine.

  Right. I swallowed, spit building unhelpfully in my mouth. With ThirtySix gone, it probably was as good a time as any.

  FortyNine called, something about venting pressure, to FortyFour across the room as there pair worked together at different ends of the giant podium the huge steel barrel sat atop.

  I stared off into the distance, ignoring the twinge of fear in my heart, scooped up a loose spanner and sidled casually, awkwardly, closer. Don’t mind me, I’m just putting this here spanner away, hey, wanna bust this joint and possibly die, or, I mean, you can totally just turn us all in if you want, no biggie. Ugh.

  FortyFour narrowed his eyes at me in confusion, as I approached and- Shit she’s looking at me. I looked away too slowly. Down towards the toolbox at her feet.

  Subtle Three. Oh so subtle.

  I gnced between her, the box and the spanner. That’s not where this goes.

  “So! Uh. He’s high strung. Heh.” I nodded towards the door. Please say something. Anything. Seconds ticked by as she stared bnkly.

  “Mmm.” She dropped her head as she pinched the bridge of her nose, scrunching up her eyes.

  I chewed at the inside of my lip until I tasted the first hints of metal, pointedly looking anywhere in the room that wasn’t her, as I rocked back on my heels, twiddling the spanner that didn’t belong.

  FortySeven gestured towards her violently with both arms, earning a single bemusedly raised eyebrow from FortyFour, who looked rapidly between me and the shorter man.

  Suddenly FortySeven snapped his arms back to his sides and gred at the wall. FortyFour looked at me bnkly, then at FortyNine beside me, and rolled his eyes.

  “Something funny?”

  I whirled, straight into FortyNine’s piercing emerald gre.

  “No! I, uh, um.” I stepped subconsciously backwards as her brow furrowed slowly, flickers of light fought one another across her irises, like roiling firecrackers. Her gaze flicked to FortySeven over my shoulder and back to me. “Uhm.”

  Heat crept slowly up the sides of my neck, as I fought find words and cleared my throat unable to meet her eyes. “… No.”

  Eloquent Three. Way to make yourself trustworthy. I pulled idly at knots in my ponytail and breathed a tiny sigh of relief when she finally turned away.

  “Whatever.” Her clunky boots squealed against the floor as she spun on her heels. “We’re done here, there’s a sleigh to mend.”

  I opened my mouth to speak but no words came, leaving me powerless as she walked away. Elves trailing after her in drips and drabs.

  A hand fell, so heavy on my shoulder, I nearly lost my bance.

  “Wowww.” FortyFour smirked, voice nguidly low. “Smooth moves, Three.”

  “…What?” I blinked bnkly at him for several seconds.

  “Pff. You’re really not very good at secrets, Three.” He scoffed, a sharp, quiet, bark, of a ugh. Secrets?

  Fuck. I gaped up at him, gormless. He knew! How did he know! Something in the way I moved? The way I spoke? Even as a woman, did I just radiate masculine essence? Probably! Fuck! I bit my tongue, chewing back the first pattering spasms of my lungs hyperventiting.

  “I-I’m not-” Well you fucking well are aren’t you! Who had he told? How many of them knew?

  I watched Forty catch the door, propping it open for FortyTwo. Did they all know? I felt suddenly, uncomfortably, raw.

  Exposed.

  Like a snail without it’s shell. Cold sweat began to pool cmmy and unclean about my temples, and tiptoeing down the back of my neck.

  FortyFour snickered and gave a wink.

  “Come off it, I’ve heard you talking about your, ‘husband.’” I gawped and protestations bubbled, dying on my lips, as he made exaggerated air quotes with his fingers. “Though I gotta say, reckon you’d be better off with Five.”

  What? “I mean, come on, look at her!” I blinked up at him even more confused. “Total queer.”

  Oh.

  Relief washed over me like gentle a wave of water, quickly followed by a much, much bigger, much less gentle, dirty wave of guilt as he cpped me on the back and sauntered off, towards the door.

  I should have been happy that I hadn’t been found out. Instead I felt unclean. And more than a little sick.

  ---

  I gripped the bannister so tightly I was, almost comically, dragging my hand behind me, turned to face the concrete wall. Don’t. Look. Down. Don’t look down. Don’t look-

  God fucking damn it Three! FortyFour’s comment had left me feeling uneasy for the rest of the day, my back was sore, my hands where sore, my everything ached, and the pole’s ck of any sane safety regutions where not helping. I was dizzy enough from fatigue without the awful drop spinning beneath me.

  I focused, pointedly hard, on the giant grid of names spanning the great white wall of the Snowglobe. Really, it was the same as a slow descent down a gentle hill. Only with a few hundred foot drop, a few metres off to the side. So not at all the same now is it? At least none of the Fourth where ‘Naughty’ any more. Well…

  ‘Elf 46 | Naughty | Deceased.’ In deep, carmine red, lettering.

  It was probably the closest thing any one of us would get to a headstone. And even that would be gone next year. I felt a shiver skitter down my back, jumping the bumps over each vertebrae in my spine and quickly looked away.

  ‘Elf 88 | Nice | 4th Year.’

  I disagreed vehemently with the Santa’s definition of ‘Nice.’

  Four years, though. Well, Three and a bit…

  Whoever she’d been… Anna had still been a babe in arms when EightyEight had been taken. An entire childs worth of time, spent in this pce. I shuddered trying not to think about spending years wasting away in here and dropped down another step.

  It almost made me feel sorry for her.

  “Pssht!” FortySeven poked me hard in the side.

  I levied a gre at him. He’d fallen back to walk beside me, behind the others.

  It was strangely reassuring to still have a man to be shorter than me. Santa aside for obvious reasons, while I greatly preferred Forty for his company, sometimes he could be unintentionally intimidating in a way that was difficult to describe. He was just so much bigger than me, and I was always conscious, of that.

  FortySeven gred at me with a ferocity that was only mildly diminished by his long pretty eyeshes. “What the fuck was that this morning?” He hissed in a spittle flecked whisper. “You fucking froze, Three!”

  “Well no thanks to you!” I sputtered back under my breath. “Dancing around with your arms in the air like a lunatic, how was that meant to help! And! Now Four thinks I’m a- a-” I balked. “Th-That I’m fucking gay.”

  “You’re not?” He still gred at me, though slightly more confused.

  My jaw dropped. My throat locked.

  Unfocused air pushed against the tense muscles of my neck, leaving my body completely unresponsive from the eyes down for several seconds.

  “WHAT?!” I squeaked, the sharp noise echoing off the Snowglobe walls.

  I winced at the noise, and swallowed slowly.

  FortySeven looked visibly taken aback. The rest of the Fourth stood in a fractured conga line, snaking down the stairs, all frozen, staring back at the pair of us. FortyNine narrowed her eyes. FortyFour beside her just raised his eyebrows with bemused smugness. There was absolutely no way he’d heard what we where talking about. He was just smug I decided.

  “I. Am. Fucking, not!” I hissed back to FortySeven as soon as faces began to turn back around. “I like-” -Girls. Guys? God no, don’t say that- Should I like- Nope! I shoved a mental telegraph pole through the wheels of that particur train of thought, derailing it spectacurly. “I’m straight.”

  I snapped my big fat mouth shut quickly before I could do any more sting damage.

  Urgh! This was ridiculous! I was supposed to be, just a regur normal bloke. Straight should mean straight. Just as it always bloody had. Back when everything was simple. Before there where all these… These fucking options.

  I shouldn’t be dealing with this.

  “Three, I don’t give two flying fucks if you are.” That. Didn’t sound like believing me. “We’ve got more important shit to deal with! And you, fucking froze!”

  My temper plummeted, sinking heavily like a stone, deep, deep, into the pit of my stomach.

  “Yeah… I did- I know… I- I dont’t.” I shrugged.

  “Yeah well ‘you don’t’ a fucking lot, don’t you.” He sighed and wiped his face roughly with both hands. “Come on, can you do it or can’t you. If you don’t think she’s gonna be on board, we’ll just move the fuck on without her, quit leaving us in the bloody lurch.” He looked off into the distance. Or at least as far into the distance as you can look inside a giant concrete dome painted to look like an igloo.

  “I’ll talk to her.” I held my hand out in front of me, as if to shake an imaginary hand that wasn’t there. “I will.”

  “When?” He ughed, short, sharp and dripping with exasperation. “Why you’re so set on rockin’ up fashionably fucking te is beyond me.” He narrowed his eyes, face twisting into a contorted sneer “You don’t gotta fucking woo her-”

  “It’s not like you, have, a proper pn.” I snapped back. My lip twitched into an involuntary snarl, exposing a canine.

  I blinked, shocked in spite of myself. I felt… angry.

  That was… new. I’d felt sad, before the Pole, though numbed by the miasma that fogged my memories in it’s haze. I’d felt put out, maybe. But never angry, not like that. The feeling faded uneasily and I cmped my mouth shut, pursing my lips.

  “I have a pn.” FortySeven scowled, a gre that, again, would have worked far better if his eyeshes weren’t quite so long and fluttery. I rolled my eyes.

  “You have a dream at best.”

  “You’re the one who’s dreaming. If you just fucking accepted she’s in Cus’s pocket we could get on with it. But ohh no. FortyOne, he believes you. Genuinely thinks, fuck knows why, that you can actually get her help. Fuck you, Three.” He elbowed past me, nearly making me trip, before whirling around again a moment ter jabbing a finger up in my face. “I don’t know whatever this weird thing you’ve got going with FortyNine is. Where you both pussyfoot about eachother, and frankly, I don’t care.” His eyes drew into narrowed slits. “Get. Over yourself.”

  He breathed heavily looking at me for a moment, towards the end of his speech, he’d nearly reached normal speaking volume.

  I quickened pace as he set off again, dropping down a few steps to walk beside him again.

  “Your ‘pn.’” I forced my voiced even, making air quotes with my fingers. “Boils down to flying away merrily into the sunset. Despite-” I started counting on my fingers- “One. It’s freezing cold outside, we’d freeze to death. Two. We have absolutely no idea of which way to go. Three. We’re fucking elves.” I pulled at my ears to emphasise the point. “The first people we come across will absolutely freak.

  “Shut up Three-”

  “Four.” I continued undeterred. “You don’t know how to fly a sleigh, and neither do any of the rest of us.

  “Three, please-”

  “Five! Even if you did you don’t know how to get the door open! And six! You don’t even know if the big shuttery door in the Flightbarn is the way out! What if there’s another door behind it? What if it’s somewhere else entir-Mmmpth!”

  FortySeven cmped a hand over my mouth. Teetering, up on his tiptoes.

  “He might be listening!” He hissed into my ear.

  Right. Be vague. I swallowed as we both gnced to check that the other two hadn’t noticed our scuffle. “Just… Don’t take too long Three, if January raids are as bad as people ‘round here seem to think… I’d really rather not to stick around.”

  I pushed him off of me and set off, taking the stairs two at a time.

  Nausea broiled in my chest, infting my lungs with queasiness at every shake and judder of the unsteady metal beneath my boots. Immediately I regretted it, and wished I’d kept to my slow careful, sidestepping crawl down the stairs. Not that I’d let him know that.

  Seven. The jolly psychopath in red.

  “I’ll talk to her.” I sighed betedly under my breath as I heard FortySeven catch up beside me, the shff, of his palm over the outer bannister, the tremor of his footsteps through the stairs. Anxiety welled like an old fashioned cannon ball wedged deep in my chest. “I’ll talk to her.”

  Though as we made our way down the stairs, I wasn’t sure which one of us I was more trying to reassure, him or me.

  ---

  I still hadn’t talked to her.

  I bundled my grimy sheets up into the washing machine, along with four of my, currently filthy, jumpsuits. The one I had on honestly wasn’t the cleanest either, but with so little time at the end of each day, washing was hard to keep on top of. Not that I’d been particurly good at keeping on top of it before the pole either. 43, The crumpled numbers stared back at me, higgledy-piggledy in the pile. If I stained the bedsheets green, at least they’d be unique.

  Two days. And I still hadn’t talked to her. ThirtySix would rat us out if he could, that was obvious. EightyEight would too, and she’d revel the chance. But FortyNine? Well, maybe.

  She was a much harder read. Sometimes it felt like she was desperately reaching out for a friend, and others it felt like she’d sooner lock you in the Spirit mines under the pumps.

  I chucked my second pair of boots into the machine for good measure as I felt more than heard footsteps beside me.

  Muscles I hadn’t realised I’d tensed, rexed in my stomach when FortyFive crouched down into view beside, me one machine over, stuffing it with her undry of her own.

  “Heya,” she shot me a wry smile.

  I gave her a simple nod in return, her eyes twitched momentarily with confusion before she bit it down. “Sooo…” She tapped her hands together, alternatively bouncing her palms off her fingertips as she stood up. “I spoke to her.” She blurted, at once straightening up. “She likes the whole, um, idea, and even had a few suggestions.”

  Who? FortyNine? I blinked up at her for a second, before standing up as well, leaning against the washing machine with my palms. “…FortyTwo’s on board?” I pulled at my ponytail and gnced over my shoulder. A huddle of the Fifth murmured together in the corner. I wasn’t really sure what to make of them. We’d barely interacted since FiftySeven’s little outburst st week. I spun back around to find her nodding meekly. “To be honest, I kinda assumed you already had.”

  The shorter woman flushed awkwardly, looked down at the floor and shrugged.

  “I was… Nervous, about talking to her about something so important. Y’know, it’s not like any of us have known each other long. Who knows what might be lurking under the surface.” She looked me in the eye. Her voice had cut off, unnaturally, as if there had originally been more to the sentence, or maybe I was being paranoid.

  I frowned as she failed to meet my eyes.

  She shrugged again, and looked off to the side. “Silly. Stupid, really.” A gentle smile tugged at the corners of her lips as she spoke, her gaze focused unsteadily at a spot on the wall. “Two… She’s got people depending on her, she’s worried sick about them on their own. Kinda like you I guess?”

  I frowned, studying the face of the machine as it slowly began to fill with water. Chloe had done, and was doing, fine on her own. She’d proved that, time and time and time again. My own reasons for reuniting with her, reuniting with all of them suddenly seemed so much more self serving. It wasn’t them that needed me, if anything it was me that needed them.

  I sighed.

  “What about you?”

  She looked up quizzically, her head only ever so slightly tilted to the left. “Who are you going back to?” I prompted gently.

  “Oh, oh no…” Her face grew wistful and she ran an awkward hand through her short, mousey brown, hair. “No one. Not really. I have my students.” She ughed sharply. “Terrors that they are. And.” She rubbed roughly at her eyes. “Just. So much paperwork.” The small smile returned as she turned back to me. “I have my parents, we just, well we haven’t talked in a while… Nothing bad!” She shook her head, tousling her hair gently. “There just never seems to be anything to say.”

  She didn’t say anything for a moment before she continued softly, staring down at the tumbling clothes. “I always thought… that, someday, I’d find someone, settle down, have a family of our own.” She shrugged. “It always felt like I just had so much time. Y’know? Never expected everything to be snatched away by, well,” she gestured around us, “this pce.”

  I bit nervously at my lip.

  All my memories of the pole felt so… clear. While everything from before was all such a dull, cloudy, swirling mess.

  I’m not sure if I had ever felt like I’d wanted a future like she described. I’m not sure if I’d ever really wanted anything. If I’d even been aware of the world around me. Had I even cared about anyone? Anything? I could have had a perfect life, a perfect family, a perfect marriage, if I’d just taken it. I chewed furiously at my lower lip.

  Hell, just, participated, in my own fucking life!

  And now, it may well be too te. I wished I just snapped free of that life long drunken stupor stupor, actually started living, years ago. But no, typical, useless, me, it takes getting kidnapped and stuffed inside an elven woman before I can even see what I had, what I’d taken for granted.

  Ruddy copper exploded slowly across my tongue as I tore through my lip. Whoops.

  “Uh, yeah.” I nodded, blotting my lips, hopefully subtly, with the back of my uninjured hand. I felt a heavy clonk through my boots as somewhere a water valve shut off. The drum whirred arrhythmically as it began once more to slowly spin.

  FortyFive squeezed my arm gently.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.” I smiled at her, though her concerned squint didn’t seem particurly convinced, but, with so many thoughts whirling, fighting, tumbling in my skull. How did you even begin putting all that into words? Instead I coughed, changing the subject. “So… how did you decide in the end? That you trusted Two?”

  She looked away for a moment, and made a drawn out sucking noise against her teeth.

  “Hm. Is this about FortyNine?” She turned and leant casually against the bank of washing machines.

  I felt suddenly put on the spot.

  “I… Uh, a lil’ bit.” I rubbed between my eyes with a frown. “I know. I know. I should have talked to her by now. I… I’m…” I tapped my boot against the side of the washing machine and gnced up at the ceiling. I’m what? Procrastinating? Don’t say that. “What if she won’t like the idea?” What if I get us all killed.

  FortyFive leant back against the machine next to mine and shrugged.

  “Why should she help us?”

  I stared at her rather bnkly until she ughed. “I mean, well, with FortyTwo-” she slowly drew little circles on the top of the washing machine with her finger “- I suppose it’s not really the same, because she’s more like us, she wasn’t already settled in like Nine is. But, we where talking, just, not really about anything important I suppose… She mentioned her family and… I guess it just clicked for me. How much she cares, how responsible she feels. And how worried, guilty, she feels about leaving them alone.”

  FortyFive shrugged, looking me directly in the eye, the flecks of light swam zily in her gaze, like sparkly fish, ambling across a shallow emerald pond. “She had her reason. So I knew I could trust her. So… What’s FortyNine’s reason? Why should she help us?”

  “I…” My dirty jumpsuits danced, whirling in slow, lolloping circles, mingling in a muddy puddle of suds as vibrations skittered through the floor, into my boots. An elf across the room ughed, a private conversation. I shrugged.

  “Maybe… You could just ask her about it?”

  I blinked.

  “What, straight up?” I couldn’t help an arrogant, sarcastic edge, from bleeding into my voice. Swiftly followed by an immediate pang of guilt. “Sorry.”

  FortyFive gently held my arm with a soft smile.

  “Maybe not in as many words, but, hey, you’ve got an in with her, somehow. It might well be worth the try.” Her eyes twinkled, soft, and earnest. “One didn’t ask you, because she’ll magically help if it’s you that breaks the news. He asked you because you’re the only one of us she talks to about anything that isn’t just giving out orders.”

  I smiled back weakly, exhaling softly through my nose.

  She gave my arm a little squeeze. “Ultimately. Right now, you don’t know.” She continued. “Maybe telling her will just blow up in our faces…” She shrugged casually. “All I’m saying is, start by getting to know her a little better, then decide what we do from there, yeah?”

  I nodded slowly, then balked as a scowl fshed across her features.

  It took me half a second to realise it was directed over my shoulder and not actually at me.

  She gred daggers into the back of FiftySeven’s head as the little group of the Fifth walked past. FiftyThree held the door frame with one hand, going up on her tiptoes as she said something to FiftySeven, who ughed a gentle ugh.

  FortyFive’s scowl disappeared with the pair around the door frame. “Anyway, wanna’ see if there’s any food left?” Ah yes. ‘Food.’

  “I’m not really feeling it honestly.” I gave her a shrug which, while she frowned, she seemed to accept. “Hey, Five?”

  “Mm?” She stopped mid turn, thumbs tucked into her pockets.

  “Thanks.”

  She smirked faintly, with a gentle crease of her brow.

  “Don’t mention it.”

  ---

  FortyNine pulled her braid through her fingers, letting it fall, swinging, as she waited for the rota machine to finish scratching out our itinerary. Over and over again in a cycle as she stared into the whirling cogs, lift, slip, fall.

  Braids are really impressive when you think about it, how people can weave such mesmerising patterns without even being able to see what they’re doing. I’d never be able to manage it, I’d just tie it all into one big tangle. Too cack-handed.

  I exhaled shakily, and steeled my stomach against the tense knot of nerves roiling within me.

  ThirtySix was with the Third, he had been since the spat the other day. Which… Ugh, I sighed, shaking out my fingers by my sides. Meant I didn’t have any excuses left not to broach the whole ‘operation run away very fast’ thing.

  Her braid fell again as she let it gracefully slip through her fingers. Even if I did braid mine, or badgered someone into doing it, there’s no way it could look like that, it was too short for a start. Probably? You’re procrastinating Three.

  “Alright there Duck?” Forty’s low calming rumble washed over me, gently tugging me back to the world. “You got quite the, thousand yard stare, going on there.”

  “Yeah. I’m okay.” I smiled up at him weakly. We should have told Forty. Even if he didn’t come up with any immediate suggestions it would be great just to be able to talk to someone I actually got on well with about everything.

  … Not that there was anything wrong with FortyFive. I just, hadn’t really talked to FortyTwo much and the pair where always together. It was all so… Being in a group of girls, I felt like an imposter. But… Was that so different? The only difference with Forty, was he was a man treating me like…

  Three. The pole is getting to your head. Knock it off.

  I pointed towards the gnashing mass of spinning gears in front of FortyNine. “There should really be a grate or something over those.”

  “Aye.” Forty looked down at me, a crease to his brow. “Now. To be fair, we could make one.”

  “Mmm.” I nodded absently. “We should.”

  Was that what elves did? How many previous FortyThree’s had added incrementally to the pole over time. “We really should.” That’s me, elf FortyThree, chief of health and safety. ‘Elf n safety.’

  Ugh. At this rate I’d have long lost my marbles before I even got the chance to speak to her.

  The gentle breeze from the whirling cogs stopped with an abrupt clunk. The few flittering strands of hair across my cheek stilled.

  FortyNine tore the paper from the machine, giving it a once over. Furrows ran, gradually deeper across her brow, as she grabbed the paper more intently with both hands. Looking up, towards us, she blinked twice before swallowing, neatly folding the paper between her fingers.

  “Why do I feel like we just caught a curveball?” FortyEight murmured.

  “Thrown a curveball.” FortyFour said simply. He raised an eyebrow, looking between me and FortyEight as he caught my side-eye. “What? That’s the phrase, you get thrown, a curveball.”

  “Okay people!” FortyNine twirled a finger in the air beside her head as she gently popped the paper back through the lower slot “It’s time to meet some Reindeer.”

  ---

  Reindeer.

  Of course there where reindeer. Why wouldn’t there be reindeer? It’s the North-Bloody-Pole. What the hell did I expect?

  I snatched a quick glimpse at the CallingBird as we passed. Fully, well I mean, mostly, well at least… Almost half, assembled.

  We’d have been much further along if we hadn’t missed the tiny little bels that read ‘this way up’ on the engine schematics. FortyNine had been fairly horrified when she’d finally rejoined work on the sleighs, the day after we’d finally made gotten the Aurora to work. That’s a much better name than Gun-Not-Gun.

  I slowly drifted to the back of the group, while a faint pang of nausea puddled in my stomach.

  My boots occasionally scuffed the wooden floor of the flight barn, kicking up tiny clouds of dust, intermingled with gentle smell of woodsmoke. I could still feel the ghostly imprint of Santa’s thumb, like a warm calloused slug on my cheek… Ss-So-

  Focus on something else, Three.

  FortyNine’s braid swished as she walked at the front of the group, like a rope, no, something prettier. like a ribbon. Or… Focus on something else. You’re being weird, Three…

  Urgh! I rubbed my face vigorously with both hands. I needed more sleep. Each day I seemed to wake up more tired.

  The huge arched doorway dominated the wall, looming higher and higher as we approached.

  ‘Stables.’ Shimmered in gold, deceptively simple, the font seemed itself to move, reflecting back the flickery firelight.

  Reindeer. It was hard to imagine.

  If we could learn how we could fly a sleigh. Fly in a sleigh.

  Everything about this was utterly insane… Still, if we could… Maybe escaping wasn’t such a dream after all. Apprehension melted gently into familiar coils of dread, slithering uneasily in my chest as FortyNine stopped abruptly.

  She held one hand out towards the giant doors. Her fingertips just barely gracing the wooden surface. She looked so horribly small, silhouetted by the two soaring arches of endless dark wood.

  I bit back the coils as they grew bolder, turning to tentacles looping up over the back of my tongue.

  Firelight crackled from the burning braziers that fnked either side, above her head, and cast her face eerie in their shadow, with an almost frozen expression.

  She broke, suddenly into motion as her shoulders rose with a steeling breath, like gss shattering.

  I caught FortyTwo as she bit her lip nervously in my periphery, step closer to FortyFive. The shorter elf sent her a faint smile and gently squeezed her hand. Forty shifted beside me in the unnatural silence, an almost imperceptible flicker of movement at his neck betrayed his rexed demeanour, though his face remained pleasantly neutral. Thumbs tucked neatly into the pockets of his jumpsuit.

  He looked down at me and raised an eyebrow, crowsfeet splitting either side of his face, with a gentle smirk.

  “Not much one for animals, Duck?”

  With a start I realised I was shivering.

  I shrugged, and tensed my stomach as hard as I could until I finally managed to stop it.

  “What’s the betting they’re to elf scale?” My voice was shakier than I’d have liked, but better than it could have been. A cold patter of relief crept down my back when Forty was polite enough not to notice.

  “What, this pce? Pass up an opportunity to scare us witless? Pssh.” He blew out through his teeth and smirked, wider this time. “That’d just be disappointing.”

  TakTakTak!

  The ghostly smile faded from my lips as I wrenched my gaze forwards just fast enough to catch the trailing end of FortyNine’s knock, her hand already beginning to fall away from the dark wood.

  An inhuman wail screamed from the other side, rattling the doors. Penetrating deep into my bones, hair prickled up the back of my neck, tense, and alert.

  The horrific cry came again a second ter, from a ravaged, distorted, throat. Like keys scraping through the paintwork of a car, the noise plucked at the strings of my soul, grasping and grating with sharp uneven cws, with a malevolent will to reach me, someone, anyone, through the thick protective wood.

  FortyNine took a single small step back and a deep red glow spshed out across her boots, slithering out from under the doors and cast us with her shadow

  I found myself rooted into the floorboards while my heart thundered. Screaming for me to do, something. Anything!

  The reindeer, it had to be a reindeer, surely? Whatever it was, it sounded massive, and rammed the doors in succession, each time accompanied by a progressively more thunderous, BANG!

  Barely audible, voices accompanied it in a muffled murmur, like an ebbing, flowing, distorted backing track.

  Slowly the red light receded, though not linearly. Instead it dimmed in stages, dipping in rge chunks as cttering and shouts seemed to drag whatever it was, further into the room.

  A whirlpool swirled at the pit of my stomach, pulling at the room, intent on making everything spin with it. I forced myself to take deeper, slower, breaths as the short instinctive contractions of my lungs began to make me light headed.

  The monster- I’m sure it had to be a monster, the thought of a simple animal even being capable of such a pained sound, was too horrific to bear -wailed again. Though this time it was quieter.

  Eventually the remaining glow, by then as dim as the final embers of a campfire come morning, cut out abruptly, taking all noise with it. As quickly as though someone had flipped a light switch, we where abruptly plunged into the gentle chorus of only softly crackling braziers and the occasional intermittent whisper of our breath.

  THUNK.

  I didn’t flinch. I’d already been braced for whatever it was to charge the doors again. But this was a different sound. A deadbolt being smmed open. A big one at that. The giant, heavy wood, to sagged outward drooping on tired hinges.

  No longer locked in pce, the only thing that stopped both doors from swinging wide all on their own was a heavy central tch, tying them both together as they bulged towards us.

  They hung there for a moment, until FortyNine flipped the tch, letting the doors fall outwards either side of her.

  We where bathed in gentle firelight, and a wave of muggy heat. A light giggle carried on the air.

  “Well, look who’s finally arrived~!”

  Oh hell. My heart rate spiked, tenseness built like corrosion in my chest.

  My face must have proved particurly amusing to EightyEight, as she opened and closed her hand repeatedly in a gleefully childish wave, peering over the top of FortyNine. “Heya, Threeee~”

  FortyNine simply brushed past the blonde without acknowledging at her. Much to the taller woman's amusement, who grinned at FortyNine as she passed, then back at me. It was only then I noticed her short bob of blond hair was nk and tousled. Her face streaked with grime and slick with sweat, a slightly manic look to her eye.

  I searched around as the Fourth began to pile past, looking anywhere but her face as my heart hammered harder and harder. She wouldn’t try anything here, it was dark then, it’s light here, we’re in a group now. It’s gonna be fine. Forty looked at me, confused. It’s gonna be fine. FortyFive looked at me… I’m not sure what her expression was.

  “I…” I could feel each new breath hitch shorter and shorter, despite willing myself to just, calm down, you’re fine, Three!

  FortyFive’s brow twitched, the shortest of frowns. She gnced between me and the apparent unknown newcomer.

  Without warning, she grabbed my hand and tugged me past EightyEight’s grin into the rolling muggy wave, dominated by the sweaty stink of wood, livestock, hay and manure.

  The stables where… Well. A stable. Given the rest of the pole it was unsettlingly quaint. EightyEight snorted softly, and pulled the door to, behind us.

  Thick clumps of dust occasionally sprinkled down from the wooden rafters of the long rectangur room unsettled from their homes by airflow from irregurly pced cool-grey stted vents. Possibly aided by air currents from the flickery fming braziers, a different style to those in the Flightbarn proper, swinging from the ceiling. Or maybe it was the occasional intense stomping of the enormous reindeer.

  Fnking either side of the long room, they brayed and snorted. Some had their faces shoved up against the uneven wooden bars to their stalls, pressing irregur lines into their muzzles. Others lingered at the back of their stalls, heads drooped morosely, almost to the floor, showing no reaction to our presence.

  Evenly spaced, floor to ceiling pilrs, served both as something structural, and impromptu doorways to the various stalls.

  We bunched up, subconsciously. Tightly. Away from the murmuring deer, and congregated in the centre of the room. The floor gave slightly beneath my feet with a soft unsettling crunch, as I found myself pressed up between FortyFive and FortyEight.

  Ash.

  I kicked my boot against the wooden floorboards, flicking the bck, crumbly ash free, where it powdered finer still.

  There where scorch marks, everywhere, pocketed here and there by slivers of unblemished wood. Ancient burns that spread spindly across the room, the floors, the walls, the ceiling. Growing thicker and thicker, like a crunchy mould, denser the further into the room I looked, until I finally met the far wall. Except it wasn’t a wall, instead the room was cut off abruptly by a huge steel door. With hinges the size of my head.

  Multiple deadbolts provided contingencies for the huge circur handle, it looked like a stereotypical bank vault, only square, instead of round. There where no windows in it, no signs, pques or nameptes above or beside it. Nothing, but bnk heavy duty steel, scuffed with a simir charring to the rest of the room.

  Members of the Eighth leant here and there against the walls, watching us, they all looked utterly exhausted, streaked with grime and sweat, just like EightyEight. With an unsettling start, I realised there where also some behind us, completely encircling our little group.

  I jumped, nearly out of my skin, when one of the giant deer charged straight for us.

  It’s teeth cmped empty air where FortyNine’s head had been moments before.

  It screamed at her in fury, a rough, strangled cry, not quite like a bray you’d hear from a horse, as if the creature didn’t even know how to use it’s own throat.

  I blinked up in arm, very thankful for the chain. The unnatural sound ran cold, down the back of my neck, weaving amidst prickling goosebumps.

  My head barely graced the bottom of it’s chest.

  The Reindeer lunged again, and again, straining against the chain about it’s neck tied firmly to the back wall of it’s stall, snapping taunt each time with a low Thunk!

  The little, half-height, stall door swung limply, as the giant deer shook it’s head violently. Huge gnarled antlers, like knotted bone, scored deep grooves into the thick wooden pilrs of the rudimentary door frame. Fresh new divots ced with a shower of wood shavings, over the top of deeper, far older scars.

  My heart trembled, high in my chest as I stepped back, eyeing the thick chain, warily, where it quivered.

  The leather straps of his… Santa’s Reindeer are all boys right?

  I bit my lip, and self consciously tugged at the sides of my jumpsuit.

  No. I screwed my eyes shut for a second, as tight as I could. Not addressing that.

  The leather straps of the reindeer’s headstall bore two identical little metallic name pques on either side of his face.

  ‘Comet’ glittered against a backdrop of golden sparkles, in clear silver script. Rising and falling with the deer's ragged breaths.

  “Oh, no. Mm Mm.” EightyEight put a guiding hand on FortyNine’s shoulder, drifting her back to the centre of the room. “I don’t think he’s quite forgiven you hunny.”

  FortyNine looked back at the reindeer wide eyed. Frankly, getting anywhere near one of the sthering beasts seemed like an obviously awful idea… But she seemed genuinely shocked. “Wouldn’t you agree~?”

  FortyNine threw the taller woman's hand off, by jerkily rolling her shoulder.

  EightyEight just ughed, snapping her fingers twice, two sharp cracks, in the air. “Eighty~!”

  “Here are.”

  I jumped as a gruff man brushed past me from behind, casually handing EightyEight a clipboard. He shot me a familiar, genial, smile as he leant easily against the wall behind her. A smile I’d st seen bearing down on me in the dark, with his boot, heavy upon my chest.

  “That’s the one what grabbed me the first day.” FortyOne murmured quietly, gesturing towards Eighty. I nodded softly. The broad bald man, leant his head back against the pilr behind him, and idly perused the clipboard over EightyEight’s shoulder. “When they dragged us off, an’ FortySix got…” The end of his sentence disappeared into an uneasy swallow.

  He a worried crease crept into his forehead as he gnced down at FortySeven, but the tiny man seemed to be in shock, staring straight ahead, with only the occasional twitch at his temple.

  “When Santa made him an example.” FortyTwo murmured after a moment, twirling some of her ringlets with one hand. Half disappearing behind her hair again.

  “Not.” I leant, subtly, towards them. “As quiet as you think you are.” I hissed, lightly, out the corner of my mouth.

  Eighty’s eyes fshed up from the clipboard for a second, locking onto mine. He smirked, then winked. Oh fuck me.

  “Now let’s see… Mm. No, no. Definitely not.” EightyEight flipped quickly through papers on the clipboard casually ignoring us, periodically tapping a finger to her tongue to turn a page. “Ahah, Prancer! Now there’s a id back d. Bsé attitude to timekeeping, hey! Kinda like your lot!” She pointed back at us with a snicker as she sauntered past FortyNine, who, for her part, gred sharpened kitchen knives into the back of the other woman’s head. “Aren’t chu’ boy!”

  She patted a dark, dusky brown deer twice on the forehead with a finger, jumping back in a fit of bubbly giggles as he snapped after her hand and charged the low wooden door of his stall, smming into it with his chest.

  Chains rattled, jangling about his hooves as she giggled all the louder, snaking about the floor as Prancer retreated further back into his stall and paced back and fourth, snorting through the bars.

  “You!” FortySeven suddenly surged forwards, bursting free of whatever stupor he’d found himself in. “You- you-you!” He seethed, sputtering and spitting.

  “Me! Me!” EightyEight drew herself up to her full height, grinning down at him with violent glee.

  The Eighth shifted, ominously around us, as one. The subtle scrape of boots against the floorboards behind me, the brush of loose disturbed hay to the left. Fuck.

  Sweat pooled down the back of my jumpsuit. I could scarcely hear the reindeer over the hammering of my heart. My every muscle tensed and untensed in a cycle, ready to duck, or lunge, or swing, or something. Anything.

  “You’re a fucking murderer.” FortySeven spat, stepping clear of the little huddle of safety that was the Fourth, squaring up to the tall blonde woman. “All of you!” He wheeled, gring into hard indifferent stares. “You just rounded us up, and sent him to die!”

  “Seven.” FortyNine said in a hard ft tone, but the small man didn’t respond.

  I swallowed slowly, as we drew closer together into a protective huddle. I could feel my heartbeat, throbbing through both fists by my sides, painful beneath the gashed skin of my hand.

  Eighty pushed himself away from the wall and took a single step forwards, standing motionless, just to the side of EightyEight. A cold shiver scuttled up the back of my scalp, running little criss crosses through my hair. If he came for me I needed to, I was going to…

  I don’t know what I was going to do. If he’d really wanted to hurt me before, he bloody well would have.

  Forty sighed loudly, and stepped forwards, out of our huddle.

  EightyEight grinned at his approach, her eyes level with his. A wide, beaming smile, that promised however a fight went, she’d enjoy it. He looked back at her, blinking slowly, before carefully looking down at FortySeven beside him.

  “Steady on there mate.” Forty’s deep calming rumble snipped neatly through the tension, like a careful incision made at the bottom of a balloon, leaving it to slowly defte on it’s own.

  He gently pced a heavy hand over FortySeven’s shoulder and squeezed, squinting down at the votile elf. FortySeven’s eyes flickered to meet his for a moment, as the bulky man looked down at him with a small smile, no more than a tiny twinge at the corner of his mouth. “There’s a time an’ a pce. You’ve got to think, what’s important, right, now? An’ is this,” He gestured slowly to the side, towards EightyEight, “gonna’ help?”

  FortySeven blinked, his flew through too many emotions to count as the seconds ticked by.

  “He’s right you know, what’s important, say, murder is pretty important,” EightyEight tapped a pondering finger to her lip, exaggeratedly tilting her head, “didn’t you manage to get a certain someone burnt alive?”

  “That was you.” FortySeven spat. “And others. Others and you.”

  Her grin cracked even wider like a Cheshire cat, splitting across her face. “Was it?”

  FortySeven stared at her, eyelid twitching, before he took a deep, steady, breath and slowly crossed his arms, and took a single step backwards, putting himself in line with Forty.

  His eyes narrowed as her smile widened, but for several seconds, made no other movements.

  “Pff.” EightyEight gnced between the pair of them, before eventually she rolled her eyes, and passed the clipboard back to eighty with an exaggerated sigh. “Well, some of us actually do shit around here. Go on, you’ve got your deer.” She made a shooing motion with her hand, as if she where making gentle waves in a shallow pool of water. “Just.”

  She gnced at FortyNine with a withering look. “Try not to break him this time, hm?”

  ---

  A pile of smarties sat like an uncomfortable mound of hard chocotey pebbles in my otherwise empty stomach and I really started to regret not eating the day before, as I gradually trailed to the back of the group. Folowing almost aimlessly, it felt as though I where being tugged along on a rope as the tunnel spun blearily behind me.

  Reindeer… Hard work. Especially when they hate you, apparently.

  The door to our barracks opened, like the lid of a steel and concrete coffin, with an undignified creak that at that moment, my aching joints deeply sympathised with.

  I swayed gently on my feet as the Fourth one by one disappeared into the yellow light. See, Three, this is why you walk at the front of the group.

  With a startled jolt, I found my back shoved sharply into the concrete wall.

  “Right. You’re going to tell her, and you’re going to do it now.” FortySeven gred, with his forearm pushed hard against my sternum. The flecks of light in his irises, glinted coldly as I gaped down at him dumbly.

  “I…”

  I looked to the side towards the door. “I really don’t think that’s a good idea…” I thought of FortyNine, sullen and silent, since our run in with EightyEight in the morning.

  “We can’t stay here, Three, this pce is a fucking deathtrap!” He hissed in a hoarse whisper, a rivulet of sweat ran slowly down his left temple, leaving a tiny shimmery tail in it’s wake.

  “Just.” I gently put a hand over his forearm and pulled him off of me. “Give me a little time.”

  “Time. Is up. You’ve had almost a week! We have to move, soon, and she’s our best, hell, let’s be honest, our only fucking bet.” He yanked on my arm, surprisingly hard. Strong bony fingers bit deep into my flesh as he hauled me away from the wall, and grabbed my hand.

  I looked down at the smattering of little paper scraps, with pencil scrawled letters in my palm.

  “Seven-” He sent me tottering forwards with a short, unexpected, shove.

  I caught myself with a stumble, bathed in the light of the open door. An anxious pit gnawed at the lining of my stomach as I straightened up with a swallow, and without looking back at him, stepped carefully into the room.

  ---

  The Fifth weren’t here yet.

  I sat cross legged on the bed, and tapped a fingernail off the head of the little, half finished, wooden penguin, bouncing one leg in time with the scarcely audible tiptiptiptiptip of each tap. Cold concrete bled slowly through my jumpsuit into stiff aching muscles where my back brushed up against the wall.

  Usually we where some of the st elves to leave the canteen, not FortyNine, she’d usually sod off on her own as soon as she finished, but the rest of the fourth.

  I gnced towards her, perched on her bed, facing the wall. So still she could have been carved from stone, her braid perfectly traced a vertical line down her spine. Without the Fifth here, only empty beds between her and the rest of us. She’d moved only once that I’d seen, to spare a gnce and small frown over her shoulder as I’d filtered through the door. Otherwise, we’d been ignored.

  I chewed anxiously at the inside of my cheeks, tearing little strips of flesh away, and subconsciously tapped faster at the little penguin. FortySeven caught my eye and made two sharp tilts of his head in the direction of FortyNine, gring with his eyes.

  I swallowed and stuffed the little wooden figure into my pocket where it nestled amid the little scraps of paper.

  Head down, I tip tapped my fingers together in my p, unsure what to do with my hands.

  FortyFive opposite, locked eyes with me. She held my gaze gently and slightly tilted her head. Seconds ticked by with the gentle whir of overhead ventition fans, under the bubble of casual conversation between Forty and FortyEight. A gentle smile plucked at the corner of her mouth, accompanied by the slight softening of her eyes.

  I pursed my lips, holding my breath for several seconds before I exhaled. I looked down. Gave myself a short, sharp, nod, and I pushed myself up off the bed.

  There was almost too much space around FortyNine’s bunk. Something looked off. It took me a moment to realise that the tatty Christmas tree in the corner of the room was missing. Someone must have finally gotten sick of it shedding in their bed.

  I know I would’ve.

  “Uh. Hey.” I cleared my throat, roughly, coughing into a fist. Dead pine needles crunched underfoot as I stepped into the empty space.

  FortyNine looked up. I caught the briefest glimpse of pencil sketches before she snapped the little notebook in her p shut.

  “Oh, hey.” Her stony frown marring her brow melted after a moment, eyes softening. “What’s up?”

  My mouth felt coarse, and dry. Fuck. What do you even say? ‘Hi, yeah, so, I know you’re like, totally meant to be leading us, keeping an eye on us, telling us how to work an all that, how do you feel about this super cool jail break we’re pnning? We don’t actually really know how the fuck we’re gonna do it, by-the-by, but if you you had any pointers that’d be great!’ Because that would instil all the values of trust and confidence, wouldn’t it! Fuck! “Three?”

  Her eyes narrowed in confusion before me as time ticked by, unimpeded. Dammit Three, think of something, say something, anything!

  Why should she help us?

  Why should she help us? Like FortyFive said. What would keep her to our side? Prevent her from running straight to Cuse?

  She raised a questioning eyebrow and all at once I couldn’t see a ‘squadron leader’ any more.

  In her endless emerald eyes, there was just the FortyNine who’d helped me across the catwalk suspended from the Snowglobe’s ceiling. The FortyNine who’d shown quiet vulnerability in a dingy little bathroom.

  She looked so tired. Especially today. So… Isoted. Always slightly away from the rest of us. Who did FortyNine talk to? She didn’t socialise much with the Fourth. But she didn’t seem to get on with any of the other groups of elves we’d run into either.

  “What did EightyEight mean earlier?” I gently lowered myself to perch at the foot of the bed, about a respectable yard away from her. “When she said the reindeer ‘bmed’ you?”

  Her face gzed in an instant and little droplets of guilt began to condense along the bottom my ribs, slowly dripping into the pit of my stomach, marking the seconds ticking by.

  I swallowed slowly in the silence, watching for changes in her face. “Are you alright?” Stupid question, Three.

  She stiffened, like I’d dished out a vocal sp to the face. Before she swallowed, slowly, and stared bores deep into the concrete wall.

  “I…” She turned slowly, but couldn’t look me in the eye, instead she stared off into the distance, far further than the little confines of the room truly allowed. “It was so chaotic, not as chaotic as this year, I guess.”

  She pulled at her braid, letting it slowly slip through her hand, nding with a soft thwump on the bed beside her. “It just, it all went so wrong… I was supposed t-to…” She didn’t trail into sobs, though for a moment I’d thought she might.

  “I-I’m sorry, Nine. I… Shouldn’t have asked.”

  She simply stopped, bit her lip, and folded her arms in on herself, hands crumpling in her p.

  We sat in a soft bubble of silence silence, save for the gentle trickle of conversation from the wider room behind us. A single thorny vine slowly floundered from the awkward puddle of guilt at my core, while FortyNine stared hard into the wall.

  “It’s alright.” She smiled weakly, after a gap so long I’d been contempting leaving to give her some space. Her eyes still had a slight gssy sheen to them

  I smiled back for a moment, before I sighed and tilted my head back, looking up at the ceiling. Leaning on both hands.

  “Fuck.” I shrugged. She snorted and gently kicked my foot with her boot.

  “Mood.” I smiled a little bit at that, still looking up at the ceiling.

  “I’d give anything to have things how they where, just be away from here, curled up in a depressed lump right now.” That… Wasn’t strictly true, maybe the be away from here bit, I definitely didn’t want to be stuck in the cold catacombs of the pole.

  But something about the thought of suddenly being thrust into my old life left an acrid aftertaste on my tongue.

  “Hey, at least here the food’s free.” She smirked, and propped one foot on the bed frame, arms wrapped about her leg, chin resting on her knee.

  “Pff. Yeah, right. ‘Food.’” I made air quotes around food, looking back towards her, my voice a deadpan drawl. Her eye twinged with confusion. I raised an eyebrow. “…I’m not generally in the business of calling sweets, ‘food.’”

  “You don’t like it?”

  “Nine, give us a few weeks, and I might literally murder someone for a hot dog.”

  She stared at me with an inscrutable expression.

  Shit. One of us literally was murdered a few weeks ago. I swallowed uneasily, stringy panic beginning to quiver in my chest. Who knows what horrors FortyNine had seen before the rest of us had even arrived. Fuck, Three, you disgusting, vile, moron. “I… I’m sorry, I wouldn’t really. I was just… Making a joke.” I finished mely, and bit my tongue. Hard. Holding it between my teeth.

  “You’re good.” She blinked, slightly confused, and shook her head. “I… Don’t think I’ve met an elf who didn’t love sugar before.”

  “Oh.” I Felt one side of my mouth curl into a small smile as relief fluttered warmly behind my ribs.

  She smiled back and all at once the pleasant feeling twisted sharply inside me, like my head had been plunged back into an icy bucket of guilt.

  I was so, tired, of confusion, of trying to gauge her. Of knowing that I had to convince her. Find out if she could be trusted. Find out if she’d help.

  She looked down after a moment, breaking eye contact, fiddling with the end of her braid.

  She clearly didn’t like Santa. She clearly didn’t get on with ThirtySix. She clearly hated EightyEight. I breathed in slowly, a tight ball of nerves knotting and unknotting in my chest. She had a right to know. Along with Forty. And FortyEight. And even FortyFour. If we didn’t trust even our own little circle, we’d never be getting out of here.

  Fuck it, looks like you’ll get your wish, FortySeven.

  “Sorry, I-There-Actually.” I swallowed, refocusing myself. “There actually was something I wanted to, like, talk to you about.”

  She frowned. The lights of her irises shone like sparks from a cutting wheel through steel, only more golden than red. Words melded together into a gummy mess on my tongue. “I, like, I mean. I wanted to…”

  Come on Three. When the Fifth get back, this conversation is over. She deserves the truth and she may well be able to help. Spit. It. Out.

  I sighed. “I need to tell you something.”

  Worn springs in the bed clunked as one of us, I’m not sure which, shifted. I felt distinctly sick as I realised she’d unwittingly wormed gradually closer to me throughout the conversation. I shuffled slightly further away, I felt the edge of the mattress begin to dip down towards the floor. Of course she had. She felt at ease with you.

  Because you didn’t tell her.

  I balked as my heart thundered in my chest. Disgusting, liar. You lie about so many things. I bit my cheek, roughly dragging my brain back on track. “Nine, we, that is, a few of the others and me… We… Well, we have a pn.” Nervous energy vibrated through every one of my ribs, turning my chest into a chaotic well of unstable psma.

  Her face contorted apprehensively, the shimmering lights of her eyes seemed to surge. I had to look away. “We need- Would like, I mean, your help.” I took a shaky breath, I couldn’t look at her. Couldn’t look up. Instead I focused downwards, my gaze locked hard to the floor.

  Something deep at the pit of my throat locked tighter and tighter as I strained against it, like a wall of solid iron I had to push past as it was sealing away my voice. “Nine w-we’re going to- to-” I made a small hiccuping noise and pulled out the little scraps of paper from my pocket, ying them out on the bed between us.

  The kxons in the ceiling suddenly screamed and I nearly fell off the bed.

  The tiny pieces of paper tumbled, flittering to the floor as FortyNine flew to her feet, the kxons wailing in distress. So incredibly loud in the tiny room.

  Amber lights pulsed from the little candy cane striped speakers, bathing the room in their glow.

  She froze, just for a second, almost alien in the strange orange glow staring from face to face. She licked her lips and took a deep breath.

  “Go time people! Get dressed! Boots on! Now!”

  The Fourth exploded into sudden action, jittery with adrenaline. FortyEight fell backwards, arse over tit, as he hopped about attempting to pull his jumpsuit back on.

  “I- I- I-” She breezed past me and I grabbed her hand. She whirled and I dropped it in shock. Her face softened.

  “Boots on, Three.” She said gently.

  “N-Nine, I have to tell you, we’re-”

  “Boots on.” She firmly gripped my shoulder, and shook me lightly. I stood, grasping after her.

  “No!”

  I came up short, nearly running into the back of FortyNine. FortySeven stood with his arms wide in the gangway, completely blocking her exit.

  “Seven, get out of the bloody way.” Her voice dripped with a tense, unnerving necessity.

  “Absolutely fucking not!” He squared up to her, pointing up into her face with his finger. A slight tremble to his hand. “We.” He jabbed himself in the chest with a thumb. “Are leaving.”

  He ughed, as if he’d just heard the most relieving news, a slight hint of mania creeping into his eye. “We’re cmbering into that god awful fucking sleigh and flying away into the night! And, you, are gonna’ help us!”

  FortyNine didn’t react for several seconds. She didn’t even tremor.

  If it weren’t for the bre of the kxons under the pulsing swathes of amber light whirling around the room, I’m sure there would have been silence enough to hear a pin drop. She whirled, gring about the room, searching from face to face. Deep furrows split across brow, her lips parted slightly, but no sound came out. She looked back at me.

  “And she!” FortySeven snarled. “Was supposed to bring you the fuck in, weeks, ago!” I looked away.

  Even out of the corner of my eye, I caught her blink with surprise. Nebulous emotions passed the storm in her eyes, before she set her jaw and ughed. A short, bitter, hollow ugh.

  “How!” She rounded back on FortySeven, audible contempt dripped from her mouth. “How can you be so fucking stupid!” The smaller man jumped as she suddenly exploded. “Fucked in the fucking head?!” She tapped her forehead violently with four fingers. Her voice wavered on the high, razors edge, between rage and terror. “I should hand you all in to Cuse my bloody self, just for being fucking morons!” Her voice cracked and she screamed the st her sentence, flecks of spit misting the air.

  I swallowed and shoved my hands deep into my pockets, squeezing the little wooden penguin so hard my forearm shook.

  FortySeven for his part took a few seconds to look taken aback, before matching her scowl.

  “For the record,” FortyFour raised his hand like a css’s model pupil, “I had no part in this.” He smirked, as if kxons weren’t still bring overhead.

  Forty just just stood pensively protective, in front of FortyEight behind him.

  A sickening rumble shook the room. Metal bed frames rattled, scraping against the floor, tiny sprinklings of dust tumbled down from the ceiling, with a quiet fwoosh like falling sand.

  FortyNine pushed her way past the shorter elf, staggering as another deep bellowing rumble shook the room, vibrating headboards against the walls.

  “We have to go.” I shivered as she grabbed a hold of the door, leaning against it with most of her weight as she swung it wide, half inside, half outside the room. Her tone alone could have rendered molten lead.

  The corridor behind her was bathed in the same dim, amber, light, pulsing over the top of the regur mps. She gnced, slowly, from face to face, staring every one of us in the eye.

  Apart from me. “Right now. Before I call Cuse down on the lot of you.”

  ---

  A breeze came from somewhere, the vents, maybe a hole in the pole leading to the outside, maybe there where simply air currents from so many people moving at once. Either way, a strong wind snaked through the crowd.

  I hadn’t seen the tunnels this chaotic since my first day. The crush of elves moved as one broiling mass, pushing and pulling, I felt almost like a row-boat lost somewhere in the middle of a dark stormy sea.

  Both FortyFive and FortySeven had quickly slipped below the waves entirely. I could scarcely see FortyNine either, save for occasional fshes, weaving through the crush. Instead I focused on FortyEight. Using him as an impromptu nky ndmark. Rolling over the river of charging elves like a floating lighthouse.

  “Think this a January raid?” I shouted in Forty’s ear as the tunnel mps whizzed by overhead, washing the crowd in amber swathes, but with surprise I found he was no longer there.

  “Thas’ it! Raid’s incoming love!” A woman's voice hollered beside me, I didn’t recognise her, I could scarcely see her face amid the juddering of the crush, and had no way of seeing her number. “You’ll be alright new blood,” she wrapped an arm around about my shoulders, pulling me close as we ran. “Stick with ‘yer squad leader!”

  “FortyNine?” She didn’t have the yellow numbers and red stripes… But that was her, right?

  “You’re Fourth?” She looked taken aback for a moment, pushing my head down and checking my back. I’ve no idea if it did any good, or if it had even been intentional in the first pce. Maybe she’d simply been pushed.

  She looked up as we approached a split in the tunnels, elves splitting off into two rushing streams.

  She rounded back on me, csping my hand firmly. “TwentyTwo.” She stared intensely, as if there was a certain significance I was missing. “See your lights up there!”

  She pushed me away at the split, disappearing down the left tunnel, while I found myself sucked down the right.

  ---

  Light seared at the end of the tunnel, and turned the elves before me, more and more to silhouettes, the closer I got. I could still see FortyEight, barely, bobbing over their heads. Until he too fell away, and everything became blindingly bright.

  I didn’t even recognise the Snowglobe at first.

  Kxons echoed through the giant dome, reverberating out of sync, running over the top of one another. Spinning amber warning lights dyed the stark white surfaces a very light pink where they refracted.

  I gasped for air, stumbling out of the crowd and finally found the space to easily breathe as elves fanned out into the space. FortyEight! God bless you for being so tall!

  FortyFour waved with an almost bored expression as I approached. FortyNine beside the pair of them tapped her foot anxiously, staring back towards the tunnel.

  She threw her gaze over her shoulder to the elves pouring up the spiral stairs spanning the circumference of the dome.

  The entire dome shook, as deep booming thunder nearly tossed me from my feet as if the giant concrete dome where being pounded by the hooves of a thousand reindeer.

  “Where are the others?” I looked back at the tunnel, elves emerged in drips and drabs now, most of them already climbing the stairs. “I thought they where ahead?”

  “S-so did I.” FortyEight was shaking so badly, he could hardly keep his jaw from cttering. FortyFour simply shrugged. FortyNine turned away.

  “Come on. We have to go.”

  “W-What about-” FortyEight nervously twitched back and forth between her and the dark maw of the tunnel, but FortyNine had already disappeared into the patchy throng of bodies making their way to, and up, the foot of the stairs across the room.

  FortyFour snorted.

  “Come on mate.” He cpped the nky, skittery, elf on the back with a grim smile.

  I watched as FortyEight begrudgingly followed FortyFour away, staring back towards the, now rather forlorn, mouth of the tunnel.

  An elf brushed gently past my shoulder as I lingered making me jump. I turned, trying to track FortyEight as I fgged behind the other three, on their way to the stairs.

  ---

  The nondescript steel door to the Flightbarn swung open so hard I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had left an indent in the wooden wall.

  I cmped my hands over my ears, wincing as I accidentally bent back their elven points; The noise was thunderous! Bent double, ducking instinctively low, I stumbled free of the tunnel, out onto the floorboards after the others.

  The giant metal shutters blotting the far side of the hall opposite the stables where open wide. A shimmery wall of blue and green flickered, like translucent fme, in their pce.

  A howling, arctic wind poured from the icy passageway that sloped sharply upwards beyond the shutters and out of sight. The freezing gale cut straight through my jumpsuit, and ruffled the fmes of the braziers, setting shadows a dance across the wooden walls, merely adding to the chaos.

  The exposed, icy, tunnel floor was scored with sharp, criss-crossing lines.

  Ski tracks.

  A sleigh sat in the centre of the room, facing the tunnel. Jostled from side to side on runners that hadn’t quite been straightened out, by elves swarming all over it. A man cmbered up the sleigh’s side, hoisting himself up, atop one of it’s three engines ‘05’ in yellow across his back.

  A kicking, snorting, reindeer, tore at it’s reigns, shed tight to the front of the sleigh. Elves either side jumped to and fro with their hands up, trying to ward the disgruntled creature away from other sleighs as it tossed it’s head, the antlers of the enormous beast gouging scrapes into the ceiling.

  “Crank ‘er-!” Five… OhFive? Was barely audible over the din. He grabbed the wall of the passenger compartment to steady himself as the engine under his feet juddered while the propeller began to turn.

  WhhhhhhVVHHHOOOM!

  Whatever else was said was torn away as the engine thundered to life. Rattling, banging and backfiring dull, murky blue smoke, speckled with sparkly flecks. It seemed to smooth itself, finding it’s feet, until it’s propeller spun so fast it disappeared into a single, deadly, translucent disc.

  Air was thrown violently back, snatching at my baggy jumpsuit as I tore after FortyNine, nipping behind the sleigh to cross the room. I nearly fell to my knees as a second of it’s engine’s roared into life right beside my head with a hefty whoosh of thick air, galloping after it’s sibling, occasionally belching a small cloud of the same dark blue-bck smoke.

  I turned away sharply, coughing into my sleeve.

  The giant arched doors to the stable y open, swinging on their hinges. Beyond that, the steel vault door within, open, empty, and dormant. A charred, bckened, nondescript steel box, the floor lined with dents and a thick coating of soot.

  BRRAAAPbangbangbangbangbang. Torrents of dark, pitch bck smoke billowed from the third and final engine, as it spun up, throwing bursts of yard long fme behind it, momentarily separating me from the others with a sheer sheet of fire.

  FortyNine swung one of the many steel doors on the far side of the room wide while I stared dumbly sideways at the engine’s propeller, freewheeling in the air. Another elf jumped up, her boot atop the broken engine, and shoved her hand up to the elbow through an open access panel.

  I snapped from my stupor when the door cnged shut, audible even over the roaring din, and ran towards it.

  I swung, hanging on the door for a moment as I wrenched it wide. FortyNine and FortyFour disappeared up the corridor in front of me, while OhFive-maybe-ZeroFive-maybe-JustFive shouted something behind me, his garbled words torn from his lips by the wind.

  I watched the chaos mesmerised, while the elf atop the broken engine belching dark smoke, shook her head violently waving a ft hand back and forth across her throat. QuestionableNameFive frowned and stared back towards the icy tunnel as she slid down into a seat.

  Elves either side of the reindeer broke away suddenly at his nod, scrabbling aboard. Light golden sparkles crystallised about the reindeers hooves, a little localised puddle of light, pouring from tiny nozzles in the front of the sleigh.

  The reindeer screamed and reared back on it’s hind legs, though whatever noise it might have made was completely lost in the cacophony. The two healthy(ish) engine’s surged faster and faster, the third, simply belched even more smoke, and lumpishly lolloped after them in a fruitless bid to catch up.

  An artificial gale, flew out from behind the sleigh, throwing me into an awkward back-step when it smmed through my chest and ripping at my jumpsuit and my hair with ghostly fingers.

  Without me to steady it, the door was thrown violently closed on top of me, nearly taking three of my fingers with it.

  Not quite alone in the retive dark, I could just make out FortyFour disappearing round a corner with my adjusting eyes, while the door’s thunderous muffled cng! Echoed throughout the tunnel around me. Muffled and strange, my ears, deafened and full of cloth. Barely audible over my own beating heart.

  ---

  FortyNine barged the door to surface defence open with a BANG! Sending it cnging against the wall.

  Swirling blue gas burst up into two twirling plumes from a loose fitting in the giant podium sat in the centre of the room, bsting free either side of a chunky hose.

  “Eight!” She was already across the room, wrestling with the hose as the three of us flooded from the tiny tunnel.

  FortyEight jumped only hesitating a moment, before running towards her, tucking his chin and mouth under his jumpsuit with one hand grappling with her for the hose with the other. “Someone man control!” FortyNine screamed through a coughing fit.

  “Hey, I don’t know what the fuck you do up there.” FortyFour stared at me, hand wide.

  Okay, Three. Doing time now. Freak out time ter. With a stumbly little slide, I broke into a sprint for the dder.

  Pressure gauges all across the giant podium jumped as one as something outside impacted the exposed section of the giant barrel.

  I raised my arms instinctively, protectively, over my head as the giant barrel careened to the side in a rush of whirling podium cogs.

  It nded t the end of it’s travel with a second almighty CRASH!

  Vibrations rumbled from the ceiling, down the walls, and into the floor with an accompaniment of small concrete chunks, so strong, that if I hadn’t just grabbed the bottom of the dder, the shuddering may well have tugged my feet out from under me.

  “Pressure’s way too high!” FortyNine’s voice cut, pitching and stringy, through the cacophony as I hauled myself up, hand over hand, rung over rung. “Four!”

  “I know! It would help,” FortyFour grunted, pulling on a giant wheeled tap, trying desperately to tighten it, before giving up and moving to another one, “if someone hadn’t run off without half the bleeding team!”

  The dder shook, threatening to rattle my hands free as something in the walls whooshed, a great hissing sound, rushing all around. Fuck, fuck, fuckfuckfuck! I clung to the dder, trembling in the air like a limpet on a rope, as the room rumbled about me.

  I screwed shut my eyes against the noise, against the drop, against the panic. Everything.

  Only a single thought remained clear, like a shiny jewel against the swirling mass of everything else. I’m going to die. No one would ever know what had happened to me. Never know who I was. Who any of us where. No one would ever look. Ever know where to look. The corpse wouldn’t even be mine.

  I felt… Almost relieved, at that.

  But come next year, there wouldn’t even that.

  “Three!”

  ‘FortyFour,’ a part of my brain informed me numbly. He sounded far away. “We can’t reroute forever!”

  Some other woman would come and puppet my corpse, and that would be it. Even if the other elves survived, there’d be nothing left of me, not even for them. The sting memories of me, would just be those of the people I’d left behind when I was taken by the Pole.

  A missing man.

  Dark, oily, dread pooled in my stomach. It filled me with such a deep omnipresent, all encompassing horror that it forced my eyes open. Sound came rushing back, thunderously, overpoweringly loud. “Fuck’s sake, THREE!”

  I pulled myself up the dder. If I could have sprinted up it, I would have.

  Hand over hand, foot over foot, occasionally I’d miss and my limbs would fil in the air, I accidentally tore open the scabs across the back of my hand in my haste, I didn’t care.

  I hauled myself bodily through the little trap door in the ceiling, and nded hard, sprawled on all fours across the, thankfully solid, if still trembling, grate metal flooring.

  Blood ran in slick rivulets up my forearm. Shimmery and reflective in the strangest, dim blue light.

  Breathing heavily, I looked up, the world returning around me. Slowly I pulled myself back to my feet, gripping the steel chair for support.

  Four giant twisting pilrs of light twirled, dancing against the night sky beyond the dome. Like ethereal tornadoes, reaching silently into the heavens. They bathed the, murky, night with rippling light as they bnketed the underside of the clouds that blotted out the stars, and cast the little control room in a simir, dim blue, glow.

  The room about me started to shake, harder, and harder. The chair jumping on it’s spring in my hand, pipes rattling with an ominous hiss in the walls.

  No. Not clouds.

  “Oh, hell.” The sky, writhed. It writhed with. With… ‘Thingies’ FortyNine’s voice echoed in my head, it seemed an apt description.

  A red streak shot across the sky, dipping in and out of view.

  Icy cws dug their way inside my chest, lightly folding about my heart giving a gentle squeeze. Somehow, I knew. Even without pulling over one of the magnification lenses. That was Santa.

  I half jumped, half tumbled over the back of the steel chair, catching the lever on the left as I did, pulling it down with all my weight as I slid into the seat.

  There was no build-up. No thrumming vibration, not like every other time we’d fired aurora. It was instant.

  I was bounced up into the air from a single colossal BANG! Right beneath my seat, like a single instance of horrific water hammer.

  Sparks of green and red mist exploded from the tip of the barrel outside. The gss of the little dome ceiling reflected colourful sparkly circles as an immense twirling twister of light burst silently forward, faster than I’d ever seen it move.

  The shaking subsided to a gentle tremor, with nothing but the quiet rush of spirit in the walls.

  It… it wasn’t blue. Instead, it was a deep, ruddy scarlet, spitting with tinges of green. And it. It was… Oh no.

  With both hands I lunged for the tiller wheel on the control bank and threw all my strength into moving the giant barrel. After a measly half turn, the little wheel smmed to an abrupt halt with a quiet clunk.

  Tu-clunk… clunk.

  Shit! I braced myself against the control bank, the cold metal jabbing into my hip, squared my feet against the base of the chair’s spring, pushing with my legs. I bounced my entire weight, into the little handle.

  It didn’t move an inch. Shit, this might really be a problem.

  “Ah!” I slipped, hands slippery with blood, smashing my hip into the edge of the control bank.

  Pain blossomed in a tingly circle about my side as I flew over the chair, so fast I barely caught myself from plummeting to my death through hatch, arms spread wide either side of the hole. “FortyNine!”

  “I know!” FortyNine shouted, loose hairs had pulled from her braid, leaving it frazzled. The entire world spun as nausea bubbled, high in my chest. Every muscle screamed for me to get away from the drop. “We’ll fix the mix! I’ll get it blue! Just give us time.”

  Another hose had broken its way free of the podium, and was spitting translucent blue spirit into the air, FortyEight was desperately trying to wrestle it back into pce surrounded by a hazy ball of the blue gas, nose and mouth tucked into the jumpsuit, though he was looking wobblier and wobblier by the second. We could really use some of those masks. While FortyFour desperately tightened and loosened various taps in response to the trembling needles of pressure gauges.

  “This would be a hell of a lot easier with more hands!” He hollered at no one in particur. Prompting FortyNine to run towards him.

  “Nine! Nine!” She finally stopped, looking up at me. “Something’s jammed it!” I pointed at the giant barrel wildly, sending the room spinning beneath me. “If we don’t straighten out we’re gonna’ hit…”

  We both saw at the same time.

  The giant steel barrel was still pitched as far at it could go towards the wall from whatever outside had hit it. And one of the huge, powerful, cog wheels holding the barrel to the podium… Was bent.

  Like someone had taken a 2p coin and hammered it over edge of a table.

  Panic fluttered freely, like swarming clouds of feathers in my chest. I tore my gaze back to FortyNine, her eyes where wide, mouth gaping, moving, trying to form words, staring at the machine. “Nine, they’re gonna’ collide!”

  She flinched, her stare flickering to focus up at me, her eyes empty, like a wounded animal.

  The world almost seemed to stop around us. Like we where both two ancient trees frozen in time, trapped in the midst of a storm. “I’ll shut her off!”

  “No!” She burst free of her reverie, shaking her head and pointing manically at the podium with all it’s trembling needles, and occasional bursts of runaway spirit. “It’ll blow if you do!”

  Maybe we should tell the elf sat next to the bloody lever that it has the potential to blow the fucking gun up. Not gun. Gun. Don’t care.

  “Ww-What?” FortyEight all but screamed, his voice cracking into pieces as he staggered unsteadily away from a third, or at least the third I’d seen, re-secured hose.

  FortyNine threw open a toolbox at the foot of the podium, scattering tools across the floor, and scooped up a crowbar.

  “Eight! Four! We need that straightened, now!” She pointed with one hand, running for the foot of the dder.

  “What, how?” FortyFour stood up straight, for once, cracks splintering through his mask of confidence to reveal a hint of panic. “Why?” FortyEight fell on all fours behind him, and did his very best not to accidentally cough up a lung.

  “I don’t know! Try hitting it! Hammers! Get some hammers!” She threw the crowbar at me. My stomach twirled, and my brain span with light headedness as I leant far out over the hole to catch it. “Leverage!” She screamed up as she began to climb.

  I could barely hear her over my heart thundering in my ears, as I turned away from her, back into the room. I scraped my cheek raw against the concrete wall as I pushed my way past the chair and smmed the wedged foot of the crowbar into the base of the control bank, leaving a dented divot in the metal.

  I pushed, trying to lever the handle, it slipped free. I smmed it back down again, trying to find better leverage, but it simply slipped and scraped, again, and again.

  “Oh, give me a break!” I scrabbled with the tool, as little metal filings built up in tiny piles around my feet.

  Everything went blurry as frustrated tears welled painfully behind my eyes. For fucks sake, Three, this isn’t helping anything!

  FortyNine put her hand over mine, and I blinked back the traitorous tears. There where times for crying and this so was not one of them.

  She gently repositioned the crowbar until it was wedged, firmly, between the stuck handle and the base of the control bank, giving us perfect leverage.

  The handle trembled, as we pushed against the crowbar, bouncing into it with all of our combined weight. The metal body of the tool bit, deep and painful, as we against the tiller handle, but still it wouldn’t move.

  From behind us a frantic, erratic, cnging floated up through the hatch.

  “Come on! Come on- Fucking- Damn you, move!” FortyNine screamed, her voice ringing in tiny room, amplified by the domed ceiling.

  It was like being trapped forever in an endless waking nightmare, always trying, always failing. Muscles in my back, my legs, my arms, trembled. All the while, just over our heads, beyond the dome, the swirling, crackling, broken tornado of scarlet, bloodshot energy, barrelled silently for the closest of the four neighbouring blue pilrs.

  Wait! Was that? For a split second, I thought it had to have been my imagination, a sliver of cold doubt slipped through my chest. Then the handle went flying free with an unhealthy, crack, sending the pair of us staggering. I grabbed it with my good hand as I fell, propping myself up slumped across the control bank, whirling it faster and faster, one full circle of the wheel, two, three-

  THUNK!

  Vibrations skittered painfully into my bones as it smmed to a halt. “Again!” FortyNine was already positioning the crowbar, braced against the lever again.

  I put my hands next to hers, and braced my back against the wall. She gave a short nod, and I threw my entire weight back into the crowbar along side her. But I couldn’t tear my gaze away from the scene outside.

  The barrel had moved, barely. Now pointed a little more upwards. Not enough. Too little, too te.

  The coiling stream of chaotic, crackling, colour was stretching, morphing. Bending like a branch, forced to bear tremendous weight, it was righting itself, but.…

  All sound seemed to dim as I watched in powerless, slow-motion silence.

  It hit the closest pilr of blue energy about half way up. Severing it in half. Both pilrs colpsed into one another bursting outwards, and tumbling down towards the shimmering snow in a great broiling ball of bleeding red-blue light.

  “Nine…”

  She breathed, meek and hollow beside me. Watching our broken stream tear the healthy aurora apart.

  The crowbar fell to the floor with a ctter, ringing against the grate flooring. But she didn’t say a word.

  The mess of light and colour continued to spread, like a great colourful sickness. Smaller streams of blue broke away from the remaining three pilrs, sucked into the hurricane the collision had caused.

  The shimmering ke of colour in the sky waned, great dark puddles forming here and there. Holes.

  I looked at her horrified, mesmerised face. “Nine? Nine what do we do?”

  She didn’t respond for a moment, until finally she swallowed slowly. “We shut it down. Slowly. Straighten out the gear down there. Then try again.” She sounded almost robotic, like she wasn’t entirely in the room with me. “And we hope that until then, the other four will be enough. It’s okay.” She nodded to herself. “This is recoverable.”

  Everything went silent.

  Deafeningly silent.

  The hiss of spirit in the walls waned away with a final whisper. The st few dregs of light fizzled from the mouth of the giant barrel. Before the mess of colour began to starve, bleeding away into the night.

  I could only barely hear the omnipresent rattle of the pole’s ventition as it slowed gradually into oblivion, until that too was gone.

  A few wayward dregs of snow flitted across the outside of our dome. My heart, and the sound of our breathing felt thunderous.

  I licked my lips nervously, and slowly reached out to brushed my fingers against the rapidly cooling gss. In the distance. The three remaining pilrs slowly faded as well. The northern lights flowed, pulsing in and out of view as they faded away, leaving only the inky dark of night.

  Wriggling with fleeting glimpses of practically invisible movement.

  “Ss-Something took out the power.” FortyNine whispered under her breath. I looked back to her, but any expression there, was neigh unreadable in the rapidly dimming room.

  WHUMP!

  Something hit the ground outside, sending up a flurry of snow in the gloom.

  WHUMP!WHUMP!WHUMP!

  More projectiles fell from the sky, travelling so fast all I could see where dark rounded shapes, disappearing past the base of the dome. Each as big as an elf.

  Pipes began to slowly rattle in the walls. A rumble shook the pole. like something very big had just hit the ground outside.

  The cnging and banging of pipework gradually grew louder and more insistent. But… There was no power, that didn’t make sense, the spirit was gone, it’s telltale hiss, absent.

  The control bank began to chitter. Levers and taps rattling gently on their own. FortyNine gasped.

  “What? Nine? What is it?” Dread began to build in my belly as I stared at her intently, but she wouldn’t respond. I turned, following her gaze outside but it was hard to see anything wrong, like peering through muddy water, I squinted pushing my face up to the gss.

  Murky shapes seemed to shift, growing and shrinking in the dark.

  All at once my blood ran cold. There where dozens of them, all cmbering over one another, swarming up the barrel, pouring freely into it’s open maw.

  “Um… Hello?” FortyEight’s stringy voice carried from the hatch, hoarse from coughing. “Nine? You know where we can find some torches?”

  Horror snatched my heart, squeezing as hard it could. Savagely wringing faster, ever more thunderous beats from it.

  I threw myself past the motionless FortyNine, over the back of the chair, smming my knee on something in the dark in the process.

  “FortyEight!” I nded hard over the now pitch bck hole in the floor, for once my stomach didn’t spin as I stared down into the darkness. Snakes of murky spirit swam through the air, the only source of light, glinting off of the occasional murky surface. “They’re crawling down the barrel!”

  “What?” FortyFour, but I couldn’t tell where either of them where, he sounded just as groggy as FortyEight.

  “Get away from the podium!” I shrieked over the top of FortyEight’s response.

  There was silence. A tiny ctter.

  Then the room exploded.

  Something smashed into me like a mule’s kick to the gut, and for one moment, I found myself weightless. Followed swiftly by an earth shattering smack, pain blossomed like wildflowers, all the way up the side my head, neck and shoulder, decidedly less weightless.

  Something, possibly the floor shook beneath me with a steady rhythm as the darkness spun, permeated occasionally by a fsh of murky blue. From somewhere far away I could feel the metal dder, thrumming, like the skin of a giant drum.

  My everything hurt.

  I coughed, and felt something thick and painful in my throat. Dizziness chopped through my head in sweeping waves, but the more I tried to breath, the more nauseas I felt and the more the darkness spun.

  The st thing I heard was a light melodious jingle as a thousand tiny pieces of metallic shrapnel tinkled wherever they struck.

  Penelope-Namesley