Santa Series: Three Stories of Magical Holiday Romance Page 7

  One of the younger Image Specialists, a woman whose name Nissa could never remember, messed with a DVD player. Another female Image Specialist whispered something about thumb drives and internet hookups.

  Nissa knew neither thumb drives nor internet hookups would work. Discounting the smoke, which had to have a major impact on electronics, the technology faced a larger problem.

  The technology was made in the Greater World. This particular version of the North Pole didn’t exist in the Greater World. This North Pole was in its own magical sideways universe, one that sort of looked like the Greater World, but wasn’t the Greater World.

  And the real techs at the North Pole, the ones who could handle Greater World gadgets, worked in Tech Toys, a protected area that separated technology from the magical energy which filled the Pole.

  Nothing protected the technology in Image Headquarters. And, to make matters worse, the conference room’s natural magic was considerable: the oak table had ancient spirits in it, the glass table top was made of sand from magical beaches, and the thickly upholstered chairs were spelled for comfort. The people magic was considerable as well.

  Oskar was the most powerful mage in the room. He could create an image with a thought. He’d lived in the Greater World for more than a century, and had finally come back here as a reward. Nissa didn’t want a reward like that. The longer she stayed at the Pole, the antsier she got.

  But she did know how Oskar had become the most powerful Image mage. He’d done it through hard work. In the 1860s, he’d been the one to convince illustrator Thomas Nast to draw Santa Claus every year, a stroke of genius superseded only by the Coca-Cola ads of the 1930s (also Oskar’s idea—planted in the mind of greedy cola executives).

  Nissa used to admire Oskar—okay, to be fair, she still admired him, but she now knew that his knowledge of the Way Things Worked In The Greater World was horribly, awfully, terribly out of date.

  She didn’t say that as she sat down next to him. He smiled at her absently, like an indulgent father. He was old enough to be her great-great-grandfather, although he didn’t look it, with his pale blond hair and unlined face. He kept himself trim, which accented his great height, something that marked him as extremely extraordinary in a world of fat elves.

  She wasn’t fat either. She had to stay media-perfect—American media perfect. Ten pounds too thin (just right for the cameras), athletic and toned, expertly trimmed hair, and very white teeth, “blazingly white,” one of the Image execs at the far end of the table had said one afternoon. Not that he should talk; his teeth were brown from centuries of pipe tobacco and a fondness for hot cocoa before bed every night.

  Most everyone in the room was white and male, except for the two fiddling with the technology and Nissa herself. Nissa didn’t look like anyone else. She had black hair (most didn’t), cocoa-colored skin (most didn’t), black eyes (most didn’t), and a smile that her mother called pure Hawaiian (thanks to her father, may he rest in peace).

  Nissa fit into New York, where no one noticed how different she was. Nissa, who had a beloved apartment on the Upper West Side in New York, New York, the city so nice they named it twice. She missed both the city and the apartment more than she wanted to admit.

  “How’s your mom?” Oskar asked, ever so polite.

  “Better,” Nissa said. Her mother had severe diabetes, a heart condition, and a reluctance to get medical treatment. Nissa wanted to take her mother to the Greater World for care, but her mother wouldn’t hear of it, even though the magical doctors in the Pole had done everything they could.

  As they reminded Nissa every time she visited, magic had its limits. It could extend a human life, provided the human was healthy when she got the magical life extension, but magic could not prevent death—something Nissa had learned the hard way when her father had had a massive heart attack ten years ago. He’d been dead before he hit the floor, the doctors said, and then they told her that they wouldn’t revive him.

  To do so here, they said, would invoke black magic—even if they used Greater World techniques. All of the magical in the various magical realms were terrified of having their magic sink into evil, but here, at the North Pole, they were downright phobic about it.

  Which was why she wanted to take her mother away from here to help her get healthy. At least Greater World doctors weren’t afraid that normal, life-saving techniques might make them evil. In fact, Greater World doctors believed that saving lives was not only part of their jobs, but part of the reason that they were on the side of angels.

  (If only they had met some of those angels they sided with; they might reconsider.)

  The television fritzed again, then popped. One of the women near the screen cursed.

  “Can’t you just tell me what’s going on instead of trying to fix that?” Nissa asked. She didn’t want to be in this room any longer than she had to.

  “We wanted you to see it,” Oskar said. “Weirdly, it’s actually getting traction, and the Big Guy himself is concerned.”

  The Big Guy was Santa. But Nissa couldn’t trust Oskar’s statement. She didn’t know if the Big Guy was concerned or not. His handlers might have been concerned. Usually, they didn’t bother the Big Guy with anything outside of the toys, children, and humanitarian concerns of the operation. He had more than enough to do every day; he didn’t need branding or image worries too.

  Oskar might have been the only one truly concerned, and he might have been speaking with the royal “we.” Or rather, the fantastical “we,” since Santa, for all his importance, had no royal blood.

  “Got it,” one of the women said as an image flashed across the gigantic TV screen.

  The image showed a standard talk show set. Judging from the golds and yellows, this show was American daytime, probably morning, filled with “news” and happy talk. Nissa hated happy talk, and she shouldn’t. Half of what she did influenced the happy talk hosts. They were Santa’s biggest media supporters in the weeks before Christmas Day.

  The camera panned onto a dark-haired man wearing tweed. “…unhealthy lifestyle,” he was saying. He had a rich, deep voice, an actor’s voice. A singer’s voice. A Voice-voice, her trainer had once called it. A gift from the gods, and magic in and of itself.

  Then the image winked out. The woman in front of the television cursed and bent over the technology again.

  The sound continued, even though the images did not.

  “…has lots of nasty habits. The examples he sets aren’t good ones. Let’s not even discuss the sugar, although we should, given his girth. Let’s talk about the homes where he gets a glass of eggnog alongside those cookies. Eggnog, in most places, is laced with rum. And then what does he do? He gets into his vehicle and drives to the next location. After one or two of those, he’s probably tipsy. Anyone would be. But I can’t imagine that he would be merely tipsy. He’s spending twenty-four hours plus eating cookies and drinking rum. His capacity for alcohol…”

  “This is what you wanted me to hear?” Nissa asked. “Some rant against Santa?”

  “This is not a rant,” Oskar said. “We can ignore rants. This is an amazingly well-put-together argument, perfectly pitched toward America’s concern with obesity and overindulgence. The country’s ripe for this kind of discussion, and we all know that where the United States goes on this holiday stuff, the world follows.”

  Well, that wasn’t true. Large sections of the Greater World didn’t celebrate Christmas at all. Large sections of the United States didn’t celebrate Christmas either. Nissa’s neighborhood in New York had as many Jews as Christians, and the neighborhood two blocks away was mostly Muslim. She had no idea how many people in New York City actually celebrated Christmas as a religious holiday, and how many simply ignored it, letting the seasons and the seasonal holidays wash over them like rain.

  But once upon a time, Oskar had lived in a rarefied United States, one that closed its eyes to differences—or discriminated against them. Nissa wasn’t sure if he left bef
ore or after 1950, but it didn’t matter. He missed the Civil Rights Movement, the Women’s Movement, the Gay Rights Movement, and dozens of other movements.

  Plus, he still had a Eurocentric Greater Worldview, something she had tried to argue him out of, and failed.

  “People have made the argument this guy’s making before,” Nissa said. “In 2009, The British Medical Journal suggested that Santa eat carrots and ride a bicycle, just so that children would understand a healthy lifestyle. I’m the one who killed that story by having everyone cover it. Every single reporter laughed at it, which was exactly what I intended.”

  “I know,” Oskar said. “Your solution was brilliant. Which is why I’m assigning you this.”

  She sighed, and stifled a cough as she got a mouthful of smoke. She’d have to take a shower after she left here.

  “This sounds like the same kind of thing,” she said. “I’ll assign it to a member of my staff when I get back.”

  Which she hoped would be Real Soon Now. Since everyone at the North Pole was focused on Christmas, the tension here in the holiday season was outrageous. She hated the North Pole at Christmas.

  New York, on the other hand, was beautiful at this time of year.

  “What this young man is arguing is not the same kind of thing,” Oskar said. “This time, the argument isn’t coming out of a medical journal. It’s coming from Professor Ryan Palmer, a deadly combination of good looks, charm, and brilliance. He’s entertaining, passionate, witty, and on a damn mission.”

  Oskar leaned forward and frowned at the television. The Voice-voice—Ryan Palmer, apparently—was chuckling, and saying, “…yes, I know it sounds ridiculous, but we’ve seen that imagery impacts belief. Smoking has gone down since cigarette advertising was banned on television in 1970, and by eliminating child-friendly icons like Joe Camel, fewer young people…”

  Nissa glanced around the room to see if anyone was hearing that argument. The Image Specialists didn’t even smoke less as Palmer talked about smoking declining. They just clung to their cigarettes or puffed on their pipes, as if something like a Greater World Voice-voice couldn’t screw up their bad habits.

  “Can’t you get the picture back?” Oskar asked one of the other women.

  “Trying,” the woman closest to him said.

  Nissa tried to focus on the task at hand, which was, she was beginning to realize, letting Oskar know that Palmer wasn’t a threat. Nissa didn’t want to spend the holiday season arguing with some professor, as if she were his perfect foil. She had a schedule mapped out, one that would remind everyone of Santa, and would help all the charitable organizations Claus & Company had set up to deal with the other problems that the public noticed only at Christmas—poverty, homelessness, starvation (even in big countries like the US), and childhood illnesses. She loved using her position at Claus & Company to goose holiday donations.

  She didn’t want to be distracted from that mission.

  And if anyone would distract, it would be a voice-voice. Palmer’s was perfect. That quintessential American announcer combination between kind, reassuring, and authoritative. Palmer sounded like an adult version of your very best friend.

  Nissa frowned at the entire idea of it.

  “This Palmer is on a mission against what exactly?” she asked. “Santa?”

  “No, no,” Oskar said as if that were unthinkable, and it probably was. “Professor Palmer is on an anti-obesity mission, and that’s a bandwagon that everyone seems to be jumping on of late. But he has a particularly interesting way of approaching it. He says we shouldn’t be tolerant of role models who overindulge.”

  “That’s not original.” Nissa had heard that argument since she left the Pole and moved to New York, almost two decades ago. “And besides, criticizing role models doesn’t work. America hates judgmental types.”

  Oskar patted his shirt pocket. She realized he was looking for a cigarette. From across the table, someone slid him a cigarette package. With a camel on the cover.

  She didn’t know if someone had magicked it as a screw-you to Professor Palmer, or if no one in the room had noticed that the man had even been talking about cigarettes.

  “That’s the point,” Oskar said as he picked up the package. “Somehow this Professor Palmer isn’t coming across judgmental. He’s managing to come across like a reasonable guy with the solution.”

  She had no idea how that argument, even made with a voice-voice, could be anything but judgmental. “His solution is to make Santa skinny?”

  “No,” Oskar said. “The solution is to change Santa’s habits. Palmer’s arguing that Santa’s behavior is very last century, and we need a new Santa for the modern age.”

  She looked at Oskar in surprise. He was staring at the blank television, turning the cigarette pack over and over in his hands.

  “Do you think he’s correct?” she asked.

  Oskar shrugged. She couldn’t tell if he was being noncommittal or if he did not want to agree with Palmer in front of the Image Specialists.

  Still, she wasn’t going to let Oskar off the hook.

  “You were the one who made Santa’s image public,” she said. “It’s not even really an ‘image.’ It’s who he is. We can’t change who he is from the outside.”

  That had been part of Oskar’s genius. He had convinced the mortals in the Greater World that they had created Santa in their own image. In reality, their images just reflected the S-Elf who occupied the position.

  Santa got voted in by S-Elves, just like popes got elected in the Catholic Church—only at the North Pole, the vote came a lot less often. Santas held their position for centuries, and could sometimes decree that a beloved child or heir take their place. It all depended on the S-Elf’s magical capability, purity of his elf heritage, his empathy, and his political skills.

  “You’re not saying we’re getting a new Santa, are you?” she asked, feeling both alarmed and intrigued. She’d been hearing rumors for years now that the current Santa was getting tired and wanted to pick a successor soon. She hoped that a female S-Elf would get the position, but had been informed that such a thing would never occur in her lifetime. Every century of it.

  “No, I’m not saying Santa’s retiring,” Oskar said as one of the women slapped the television. It vibrated on its stand. Nissa wanted to tell the woman that hitting a television to make the picture clear hadn’t worked in more than fifty years, but she knew she was just wasting her breath.

  “Then what are you saying?” Nissa asked.

  “There are a lot of competing images out there,” Oskar said. “Lots of things that demand the modern child’s attention. Santa is one of the few pure things left. For about ten years, a child gets to believe that magic exists. So many then get over that, and their lives become dull and sad. But those that hang on to the spark—”

  “Yes, yes, I know,” she said. She wanted him to get to the point. Everyone in the North Pole had been raised on this ideology. Those children who hang on to the spark become the Greater World’s optimists, the ones who believe anything is possible if they only give it a try. The others, well, life got increasingly more dreary for them as the years progressed.

  She’d never seen any studies that proved or disproved this theory, but that didn’t change the fact that everyone in the Pole used the theory as an argument. And honestly, she loved that theory. It was one reason she worked for Image Headquarters at Claus & Company. To use Santa’s good image to promote everything she cared about.

  But her desire to get to the point got misinterpreted.

  “Don’t dismiss that idea, missy,” said Ludwig, who sat in the back. He was one of the oldest of the Old Boys, a man with a long white beard, a subservient wife, and an ego the size of the Atlantic Ocean. She had always wondered how he’d managed to keep that ego in check so he could work with Oskar.

  The other Old Boys also had egos, just not as big as Ludwig’s or Oskar’s. They all had had illustrious careers, careers she’d studied in Image c
lass, and then confirmed (in her own way) on her days off in New York. She’d spent a lot of time in the New York Public Library, digging through old images and archives, looking for pictures of the Old Boys.

  And she’d found a few, mostly in group settings like this one, holding stogies and some kind of liquor and looking very pleased with themselves.

  “I’m not dismissing the argument,” she said, trying not to sound defensive, even though she had been trying to move Oskar forward. She wanted out of this room. “I’m just familiar with it. We all are. I understand how important child-magic-beliefs are.”

  She probably shouldn’t snap at her so-called betters. Not if she wanted to remain employed.

  And while she found a lot to dislike about life in the North Pole, working for Claus & Company was one of the best jobs in any world, Greater or otherwise. She wasn’t sure what would happen to her if she got fired. She wasn’t even sure if she could continue to live in New York. She might have to come back here and work the toy-manufacturing line—the physical line, not the one that used magic. Her magic wasn’t strong enough to work on the magic part of toy assembly. She’d learned that early. As a young mage, she’d put in her time at the physical assembly line. Even now, the idea of putting safe, plastic baby toys in gift-wrapped boxes made her shiver.

  “Well, then, missy,” said Ludwig. “Shape up your attitude.”

  She started to take a deep breath to calm herself, then changed her mind, and exhaled. She would make it through this meeting without coughing. She would.

  Oskar looked at her sideways, with just a bit of sympathy. Then he patted her knee. His hand came to rest on her thigh. She wanted to tell him that such familiarity wouldn’t play in the Greater World, but she knew what he’d say. This wasn’t the Greater World.

  He’d say this was better.

  And he might be right.

  She frowned at the blank television. Professor Palmer droned on. Although really, she couldn’t call his side of the conversation droning. Even without the visuals, he was compelling. He had to have some magic. Or supreme amounts of charisma. It wasn’t just the argument alone that made him impossible to ignore.