down to see pink-orange cloudberry juice spill out.
No one realised it had been Father Vodol, because no one had been watching how intensely he had been staring at Father Christmas.
‘What happened there?’ Mary asked.
‘I have no idea,’ said Father Christmas.
‘It was him,’ I said and pointed to the black-bearded culprit.
The whole hall suddenly went very quiet. Everyone looked a bit worried, including Father Christmas. And then, I started to feel a little worried too. ‘It was Father V—’
But I couldn’t finish my sentence as my mouth was jammed shut. My lips were forced together yet no one was touching them.
It was then I realised: he was doing it.
‘I have no idea what the human girl is talking about,’ said Father Vodol, with a smile. ‘She is clearly mistaken.’
I tried to speak but I couldn’t. I looked at Father Christmas’s and Mary’s troubled faces. I didn’t want to ruin their special day, so I just shrugged and gave a tight-lipped smile.
Father Christmas looked at his now empty hand and at the puddle on the floor beside my feet. He pushed out his bottom lip. ‘Well let’s not cry about spilled juice. We are here to celebrate.’ He clapped his hands. ‘Sleigh Belles, play us another tune.’
The music began again, and elves filled the dancefloor, and there was some rather competitive spickle dancing going on. And I danced too, in a rather unmagical human way, until Father Vodol came and stood right in front of me.
I was a little bit frightened but was determined not to show it. So I said, ‘Do you like dancing?’
And he said, ‘No, I don’t. You see, the trouble is you have to watch your step. And if you put a foot wrong there can be consequences.’
I laughed. ‘I don’t think dancing has to be so serious.’
But then I realised he wasn’t talking about dancing, because he said, ‘I’m not talking about dancing.’
‘Oh.’
‘I’m talking about you.’
‘Why do I have to watch my step?’
‘Because your feet are too big.’
‘What? This is precisely how my feet are meant to be. I’m a human.’
‘Exactly.’ His eyes widened. He looked quite mad. ‘You are a human. You do not belong here.’
‘Father Christmas is a human. Mary is a human. Don’t they belong here? All the other elves seem to think so.’
He leaned in closer, so he could speak quietly but still be heard above the music. ‘Oh, you don’t understand the mind of elves. You see, they are very changeable. You take one wrong step and they’ll turn against you. You’ll see. I’ll make sure of it.’
‘I’m not scared of you.’
‘Yet,’ he said. ‘You’re not scared of me yet. Just watch those big feet.’
And then he turned and left, and everyone was too busy to notice that the smile I had been wearing was now gone, replaced with a look of worry. I was so concerned that I had just made an enemy of the nastiest elf in Elfhelm that, for the rest of the evening, I completely forgot I was due to start my new school the very next day.
My First Year at Elf School
I was always bumping my head on the school doorways, I could hardly squeeze my legs under the desk, and the seat of the chair seemed to be on the floor. The notepads and the crayons were too small. And the toilets – well, the toilets were just ridiculous.
But I did like it that all the classes had names. There was Frost Class and Gingerbread Class and Sleigh Bell Class, and the oldest elves were in Mistletoe Class. I was in Snowball Class.
I sat next to a smiley elf girl called Twinkle who was good at everything. All the elves were good at everything, but Twinkle especially. The reason Twinkle was so good at everything was because, even though she was a child, she was actually three hundred and seventy-two years old.
‘Three hundred and seventy-two and a half, actually,’ she told me on the first day. ‘I know that might sound confusing, but what happens to elves is that we grow older and older, and then we stop growing old the moment we reach our perfect age, the age at which we truly know ourselves and will be happy for ever. Most elves generally don’t find out who they are – what makes them happy, what they want to do – until they are quite old.’
I knew this already. For instance, I knew Father Topo was ninety-nine before he stopped ageing. Father Christmas – who is not technically an elf but a drimwicked human – stopped ageing somewhere in his sixties, when he discovered his destiny. But some such as Twinkle find out when they are very young. So Twinkle was eleven and three hundred and seventy-two (and a half) all at the same time.
There were about twenty of us in Snowball Class. As well as Twinkle there was also a tiny but extremely enthusiastic elf called Shortcrust, who was the junior spickle-dance champion, and Snowflake, who was a bit annoying and always laughed at me whenever I made a mistake, which was quite often.
We had different teachers for different subjects but our form teacher was Mother Jingle. She always looked at me with kind eyes, but I couldn’t help thinking she thought I was a big waste of space.
It was she who told me, in my first week, that I wasn’t ready for sleighcraft lessons just yet.
I felt anger boil inside me. It was an anger I hadn’t really felt since the workhouse, and Mr Jeremiah Creeper. ‘But I’ve flown a sleigh before! I flew Father Christmas’s sleigh! The biggest sleigh there is!’
She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, but when people arrive at this school, they have to wait six months before they are allowed to start flying sleighs. Those are Kip’s rules, I’m afraid.’
‘But most people who start at this school are five years old. I’m eleven.’
‘You have lived for eleven years as a human, which is different. Humans aren’t made for flying sleighs.’
And that was the end of it. I had to wait. And in the meantime I had to get on with all the other lessons.
There was maths, with Pi, which was really tricky. You see, elf mathematics is
