year, he would transform into the older, white-haired, bearded man with a belly that jiggled when he laughed and cheeks a rosy red, so well-known to children everywhere.
He wasn’t the only one affected by the magic. Like his family’s line, the elves aged so slowly that some were nearly four hundred years old. The magic allowed them to live in the frigid temperatures year round. The summers were a balmy thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit, while the winters dipped to negative forty degrees. For those in Santa’s village, winter meant heavy coats, while summer meant shorts and swim trunks.
That wasn’t the only magic here at the North Pole. Everyone moved a little faster than the rest of the world. With as many toys and gifts as the elves had to produce each year, extra speed was the only way it could be accomplished. When Luke was a child, the closer it got to December, the more he’d liked to go up on a hill overlooking the town and sit and watch the activity down below. The elves looked like ants scurrying around, their arms full of gifts and decorations or their hands waving animatedly as they told one story or another to their friends. And their ears… As a child, they had fascinated him. The tips were pointed, just like in all the stories, and from rumors he’d heard, they were extra sensitive. No one—not even Santa Claus—knew the reason for that. It was just something that was thought of as normal. Other than their ears and the fact that they could move at four times the speed of humans, there was virtually no way to tell the elves apart from their full-human counterparts. So if an elf was needed somewhere in the world away from the North Pole, they could blend in, as long as they kept their ears covered and moved at a human pace.
The reindeer were a lot like Luke’s family, only…different. Similar to whoever was Santa Claus, for every day but one, they looked and acted human but with all the magic of the North Pole. Bobby, Dalton, Max, Owen, Josiah, Dylan, Ryder, and the only female on the team, Chloe, worked in various jobs, including the greenhouse, helping to grow food for the village. Then one day a year, they transformed into the reindeer to guide Santa’s sleigh, going by the names in books and songs: Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Comet, Cupid, Donner, and Blitzen for the men, while Chloe became Vixen. Cooper, the last member of the team, was Santa’s personal assistant. On Christmas Day, his nose lit up when he transformed into Rudolph.
“Luke,” his mother said, pulling him out of his musings as he paged through another book. “You need a break. It’s time for dinner, sweetheart. Come eat.”
Luke tugged on his hair in frustration. He still felt unprepared, but his mom was right. He needed a break. Closing the book, he stood and smiled, following her out of the room.
Pulling her scarf tighter around her neck, Sadie hurried along the path, on her way to Lia and Blake’s house for dinner. It was two days before Christmas—Christmas Eve Eve?—and she’d been awake for nearly twenty-four hours. Santa’s list of children and their gifts seemed significantly longer this year—not to mention a lot more complicated—and she’d been putting in extra hours to get everything completed in time. Because Blake and Evan had finished a few hours earlier, they’d volunteered to cook dinner for Lia, Whitney, and Sadie when they finally finished. Sadie had insisted that the girls go home to their husbands a few hours before, while she’d stayed to make sure the last dolls were ready for the final dollhouse.
She was so caught up in her thoughts that she wasn’t watching where she was going, and she didn’t notice the man coming her way until she slammed right into a hard chest. He gave out a small grunt and quickly pulled his foot out from under hers.
“Oh my gosh!” Sadie took a step back, feeling her face heat, even in the cold air. “Are you okay?”
A deep voice chuckled softly. “I’m fine,
He wasn’t the only one affected by the magic. Like his family’s line, the elves aged so slowly that some were nearly four hundred years old. The magic allowed them to live in the frigid temperatures year round. The summers were a balmy thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit, while the winters dipped to negative forty degrees. For those in Santa’s village, winter meant heavy coats, while summer meant shorts and swim trunks.
That wasn’t the only magic here at the North Pole. Everyone moved a little faster than the rest of the world. With as many toys and gifts as the elves had to produce each year, extra speed was the only way it could be accomplished. When Luke was a child, the closer it got to December, the more he’d liked to go up on a hill overlooking the town and sit and watch the activity down below. The elves looked like ants scurrying around, their arms full of gifts and decorations or their hands waving animatedly as they told one story or another to their friends. And their ears… As a child, they had fascinated him. The tips were pointed, just like in all the stories, and from rumors he’d heard, they were extra sensitive. No one—not even Santa Claus—knew the reason for that. It was just something that was thought of as normal. Other than their ears and the fact that they could move at four times the speed of humans, there was virtually no way to tell the elves apart from their full-human counterparts. So if an elf was needed somewhere in the world away from the North Pole, they could blend in, as long as they kept their ears covered and moved at a human pace.
The reindeer were a lot like Luke’s family, only…different. Similar to whoever was Santa Claus, for every day but one, they looked and acted human but with all the magic of the North Pole. Bobby, Dalton, Max, Owen, Josiah, Dylan, Ryder, and the only female on the team, Chloe, worked in various jobs, including the greenhouse, helping to grow food for the village. Then one day a year, they transformed into the reindeer to guide Santa’s sleigh, going by the names in books and songs: Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Comet, Cupid, Donner, and Blitzen for the men, while Chloe became Vixen. Cooper, the last member of the team, was Santa’s personal assistant. On Christmas Day, his nose lit up when he transformed into Rudolph.
“Luke,” his mother said, pulling him out of his musings as he paged through another book. “You need a break. It’s time for dinner, sweetheart. Come eat.”
Luke tugged on his hair in frustration. He still felt unprepared, but his mom was right. He needed a break. Closing the book, he stood and smiled, following her out of the room.
Pulling her scarf tighter around her neck, Sadie hurried along the path, on her way to Lia and Blake’s house for dinner. It was two days before Christmas—Christmas Eve Eve?—and she’d been awake for nearly twenty-four hours. Santa’s list of children and their gifts seemed significantly longer this year—not to mention a lot more complicated—and she’d been putting in extra hours to get everything completed in time. Because Blake and Evan had finished a few hours earlier, they’d volunteered to cook dinner for Lia, Whitney, and Sadie when they finally finished. Sadie had insisted that the girls go home to their husbands a few hours before, while she’d stayed to make sure the last dolls were ready for the final dollhouse.
She was so caught up in her thoughts that she wasn’t watching where she was going, and she didn’t notice the man coming her way until she slammed right into a hard chest. He gave out a small grunt and quickly pulled his foot out from under hers.
“Oh my gosh!” Sadie took a step back, feeling her face heat, even in the cold air. “Are you okay?”
A deep voice chuckled softly. “I’m fine,
Similar Books
