The North Pole Challenge (Flea's Five Christmases, #1) (8 page)

              Just as the final train-car sped next to him, Flea squeezed the last bit of energy from his tiring legs and dived for the train’s back railing. He breathed a sigh of relief when he grabbed hold. He started to pull himself onto the train, but his grip was nearly ripped free by a sudden heavy tugging at his legs. When he looked back to see the young man gripping his legs tightly, Flea knew that it was only a matter of time before the weight of them both was too much to hold.

             
“What are you doing? You don’t understand, you have nothing to fear,” the young man yelled as his body was dragged along the icy railroad track. “Just let go so we can talk about – ”

             
But Flea didn’t let him finish. He wriggled one of his legs free from the grip and placed his foot against the young man’s face, thus interrupting his plea for Flea to stop running. The young man was very strong and continued to hold on until Flea pushed with all his might. Flea’s captor rolled end over end along the icy track, cursing Flea the entire time.

Once free of the extra weight, Flea quickly pulled himself up and over the railing. He looked back in time to see the young man jump back to his feet and begin running after the train. It was clear that the train moved too quickly for him to catch and Flea felt momentary relieved knowing that he would reach the doors to the outside world in a matter of seconds. The young man suddenly stopped near a pile of building materials, but Flea soon learned that his captor was far from giving up.

              Although Flea had not watched much television in his life, he saw plenty of cartoon fights between cats and dogs, which usually looked like a big cloud of dust with the occasional arm or leg sticking out. That description was exactly how the young man looked once he approached the pile of wood, nails and tools. Flea was amazed by the frenzy of building activity as the young man moved in a blur.

             
That must be what I look like when I build things
, Flea thought. For the first time since waking up, Flea wondered if the young man wasn’t who he seemed to be, if there
was
some sort of connection the two had in regards to their amazing ability to build.
But why would he kidnap me unless he wanted to hurt me?

             
Flea’s view of the young man lasted only seconds until the train sped out of sight. But moments later, he spotted another blur of movement, this one rapidly approaching the back of the train. Flea was shocked to see the young man speeding toward him, riding a wooden bike. The young man pedaled furiously and it became obvious to Flea that he would catch the train very soon. Flea looked ahead of the train and saw that it wouldn’t be long until he reached the lobby’s exit, but he was certain that the young man would catch the train in time.

             
At least the
back
part of the train.

             
With his captor just seconds away, Flea turned and climbed atop the oversized toy train, scrambling his way across the different cars. Flea felt far less steady now and knew that one tiny slip would send him toppling off the side of the train, which seemed like it was moving much faster than he first thought. He risked a glance back and saw the young man jump expertly onto the train; his newly built bike veered off and crashed into the protective fence, shattering the wood into thousands of tiny splinters. The young man jumped on top of the train and ran toward him without fear, jumping from one train-car to the next with graceful ease. In turn, Flea picked up his own speed. It wasn’t long until he reached the front of the train and there was no place left to hide.

             
“Don’t do anything stupid!” the young man yelled from just a few feet back.

             
The train approached the exit doors. Flea didn’t know how to make the train stop; he didn’t even know if it
could
stop. While jumping was an unpleasant thought, it was the only way he could get off. He spotted a candy cane-shaped light-post just beside the track and hoped it would provide an easier way to reach the ground. However, reaching the light-post was not going to be easy.

             
“Leave me alone!” Flea yelled back.

             
Before the kidnapper could close the gap between them, Flea leaped off the train. Right away, he realized that he’d misjudged the distance to the post, that he was going to come up well short. He knew his fall to the ground could possibly prove deadly but as soon as that fear kicked in, Flea felt a strange warmth from his ringed hand. A bright golden light suddenly shined and a strong wind pushed Flea forward and higher into the air, just enough for him to grab the top of the light-post and slide safely to the floor. He had no idea how he’d gotten so lucky – or if it was
more
than luck that helped him – but he glanced back in time to see that the young man had no such luck.

The kidnapper also jumped toward the huge candy-cane post but did not reach it, crashing down to the ground. Although the young man fell, he was even graceful in that movement and rolled several times to ease the brunt of the fall. Still, he was very slow to get up and though Flea felt bad for him, he did not hang around long enough to check on him. Instead, he threw open the lobby doors and ran into the outside world.

              The first thing he noticed was snow, as several feet already covered the ground while plenty more fell from above. Strangely, Flea felt less cold on his skin than usual; it seemed more like room temperature out here than freezing. But he barely gave that a second thought. He was too focused on finding someone who could help him, or at least figuring out exactly where he was. Unfortunately, there was too much snow on the ground to figure out which street –

Wait, there
are
no streets out here
, Flea quickly realized. Through the heavy sheets of falling snow, he saw numerous buildings – some of them huge, some of them smaller – spread out across the land. His rapidly beating heart seemed to come to a complete stop. Flea had never exactly been
here
before, yet he still recognized every single one of the buildings, especially the icy structure closest to the hotel.

             
It’s
not
a hotel,
Flea thought, knowing that his kidnapper had told him at least one thing that wasn’t a lie.
It’s a dormitory.

             
Though Flea had already constructed the ice bank on TV, seeing the full-sized building just across the way caused his feet to skid to a halt. Flea was too shocked to keep running and there was no place for him to go anyway. Instead, he stood a few feet outside of the dormitory and stared in awe at his surroundings, not budging even when he heard the doors opening. The young man crunched in the snow behind Flea and when he spoke, he was out of breath, his words mixed with irritation and pain.

             
“I was hoping this introduction would be much easier,” the young man said. “But welcome to the North Pole.”

CHAPTER NINE

An Elf’s New Home

Flea was too shocked to do much of anything but follow orders from the annoyed young man, who introduced himself as Niko.

             
“I still don’t understand,” Flea said slowly, his mind barely working. “Why am I here?”

             
“Isn’t that obvious?” Niko answered, his voice oozing with condescension. “It’s because you’re an elf.”

             
“An
elf
?” Flea asked. He could hardly believe he said that word, though it didn’t seem like such nonsense when he considered what he’d just seen. “Well, where are all the other elves then?”

             
“Are you
kidding
me? Our busy season just started, the rest of the elves have
much
more important things to do then hang around the dorm,” Niko said. “You should thank your lucky snowflakes that nobody was here to witness that little stunt of yours on the train. That was really stupid.”

             
Although Flea had ten questions for every answer that Niko told him, he somehow knew exactly what he’d meant by ‘that little stunt.’ Flea glanced down at his ringed hand and still saw a slightly golden glow.

             
“Here, you’re going to want to cover that hand at all times,” Niko said, tossing Flea a glove.

             
“I don’t know how that happened, the wind that is,” Flea said. He tried to remove the gold ring from his finger but it wouldn’t budge. It was as if the ring had become part of his skin. “I can’t get it to come off.”

             
“And that’s exactly why I gave you the
glove
,” Niko said. He shook his head, clearly annoyed, so Flea finally pulled the glove over his hand. “If the other elves saw your hand glowing, they’d probably be frightened of you – more so than they probably will be anyway.”

             
“But I still don’t understand why I’m here in the first place,” Flea said. “This doesn’t make any sense.”

             
Niko sighed angrily and stopped walking. He turned to face Flea, looking very threatening as he did so.

             
“I’m only going to ask you these questions once and then I don’t ever want to hear you question your heritage again. Do you understand?”

             
Flea nodded his head.

             
“Are you bothered by the cold weather?”

             
“No.”

             
“Have you ever noticed that you have strange abilities when it comes to the snow and ice?”

             
“Yes, just recently I – ”

             
“Are you good with your hands, more so than any other skill you might have?” Niko asked.

             
“Yeah, I’m
really
good at building things.”

             
“And did anyone need to teach you
how
to build things?”

             
“No.”

             
“Sounds like an elf to me,” Niko said. He turned and continued walking to the heart of the lobby as Flea rushed to catch up. “Now please, no more dumb questions about whether or not you’re an elf. Only a fool would question it further at this point, especially after seeing all of this around you.”

             
Niko began to walk again, picking up his pace so that Flea had to jog just to keep up.

             
“Where are we going?”

             
“Back to your room,” Niko said. “There’s one order of business we have to take care of before you can leave the dorm. It would’ve been much easier – and far less
time-consuming
– if you’d just listened to me in the first place and didn’t run all the way down here.”

             
Flea’s mind raced with countless questions about the existence of the North Pole and elves but decided not to push his luck. Instead, he tried to take in every detail of this amazing lobby. He wasn’t quite sure how life as an elf would be – or if that was even the reason he’d been brought here – but Flea hoped to have some free time to spend in this lobby at some point. He’d never been to an amusement park before so having one to himself would be really cool. They quickly approached a part of the lobby that Flea wanted
nothing
to do with, though, especially considering what had happened the first time. He remembered the old man –
the old
elf
,
Flea reminded himself – saying that the ‘hopwell’ was used for going up. When he looked around the lobby, Flea saw no signs of a conventional elevator.

             
“You’re going to have to show me a better way to use that thing,” Flea said as they approached the staggered tower of trampolines. But Niko walked right past it, giving Flea hope that there would be a much less frightening way to reach his floor.

             
“We already wasted way too much time with our little
run
earlier,” Niko said. “Like I said, I’m a very busy elf and I have a lot to do so we have to take the quicker way to the dorm’s upper levels.”