Chapter Six

Chapter Six

A sharp bump to his head kickstarted Justin’s slow, arduous journey back to the waking world.

“Be careful! Watch what you bump him into!”

“I’m watching, I’m watching. Jeez, there has to be a better way to do this.”

“If you want to tell him his way isn’t good enough, then be my guest. Just wait until after we get to the Elder Stables!”

Ugh, what did I eat before bed last night? Justin thought. Getting fired from Willy-Mart, being pulled into my computer, getting turned into some kind of…mutant cow? Or was it a deer? I haven't had nightmares this bad since that time Paul MacField dared me to eat those Tabasco sauce popsicles as a kid.

“Hey now,” the first voice said defensively. It was a masculine voice, but young, like Justin’s. “I didn't say anything like that! I just meant—”

“How about you shut up and focus on not banging his head into any more doorframes?” snapped the second voice, this one more feminine. “I swear, if he wakes up with a concussion, I’ll mount you on my wall, you stupid yak!”

Justin frowned, his eyes still closed. Who were these two, and why were they having this argument in his bedroom? And for that matter, why was his bed rocking back and forth like a hammock in a tornado?

“I'm a reindeer and you know it, you half-baked gingerbread gnome!” the first voice shot back.

“Gnome? Have those trees growing out of your skull finally taken root in your brain? If you don’t shut your mouth, I’ll prune them down for you!”

“Oh please, as if you can even reach that high! You are to midgets what midgets are to normal people.”

“W- Well, you look like what a yeti has to clean out of its shower drain!”

“At least that would mean I'd actually touched a shower at some point in my life. But everyone knows yetis don't bathe anyway, making them smell nearly as bad as you!”

Justin grumbled under his breath. Couldn't these burglars take their little lover's spat outside? Tomorrow was Black Friday, and he needed all the rest he could get before…

Wait. Something clicked in Justin's mind. What was the first thing the guy had said? That he wasn't a yak, he was a—

“Reindeer?” Justin exclaimed, jolting fully awake.

He found himself in what he could only assume was some kind of mansion. The walls were made of sweet smelling pine logs beneath a high peaked roof. He was in a long corridor, with doors painted red and green every few feet on both sides. Wreaths hung from the walls beneath wooden chandeliers whose candles gave off light as constant and unwavering as a light bulb's. A comforting warmth permeated everything—and had absolutely no effect on Justin as he instantly went into another full blown panic.

“Let go of me!” he screamed, realizing that the rocking he had felt was because he was being carried through the mansion. The deer-demon from before was holding his ankles, and a short, blond haired elf girl was holding his wrists. She looked to be about the same age as Justin and the antlered abomination, just with everything reduced in size a few times. It was a strange sight, a full grown woman who was only as big as a seven year old—but not as strange as the brown fur that was growing on Justin’s arms, or the points of the antlers that curled down slightly in front of his face.

“Hey now, careful!” the unholy spawn of hell exclaimed him as Justin kicked his legs free.

“Oh, great,” the elf snapped, stubbornly clinging to Justin’s wrists. “Now look, you’ve gone and scared him!”

“Get off!” Justin shouted, finally managing to yank his arms free.

“Take it easy!” warned the furry slap in sanity’s face. “You don’t know how to control—”

Too late. The moment Justin was standing on his own feet…hooves, whatever…he abruptly began to rise into the air.

“WHAT? WHAT? WHAT THE WHAT?” was all he could get to come out of his mouth as he floated higher and higher. The thing that desperately wanted Justin to think it was a deer tried to grab him, but Justin recoiled from his hand. Not that it mattered, since he was already too high for him to reach.

“Get down here!” the elf yelled, her ice-blue eyes wide with terror. “You’re going to hurt yourself, you—”

“Name calling's not going to help, Lena,” the eldritch creature of unfathomable horror interrupted her. “Seriously, what happened to elves being cheerful and kind?”

“They started having to put up with you every day!”

By now, Justin's antlers were bumping up against the ceiling, leaving a trail of little holes behind him. He had to be at least thirty feet above the ground. Barely a fraction of how high he'd been when…he shuddered just to think about it…he'd fallen from the sky earlier, but still more than enough to kick his phobia into high gear. He drifted close to one of the chandeliers, and grabbed hold of it with a white-knuckled grip.

“What are you just standing there for, Lucas?” the elf demanded, red faced. “Get him down already!”

The embodiment of terror and despair put his hands on his hips and chuckled. “Don’t pretend you’re not impressed, little miss ice queen. Not even an hour after his transformation, and he’s already achieved full body levitation. This guy’s a natural!”

“Now!”

“Fine, fine. You’re such a…” Muttering to himself, the living plague on Justin’s sanity rose up off the ground as well. He flew much more gracefully than Justin, not banging his antlers on the ceiling even once. Justin watched, trapped and terrified, as he came to a stop, hovering just beside the chandelier. “Hey there. Remember me? We met about thirty thousand feet above the ground. My name’s Lucas.”

Justin didn’t respond.

The embodiment of…Justin decided to just call him Lucas…jerked his thumb down toward the elf on the ground. “The three hundred year old brat down there is Lena. I guess you could call us your welcome party, so, uh…”

He spread his arms.

“Welcome to the North Pole!”

Justin stared at him, his mouth hanging open. After a few seconds, Lucas’ smile faded and he coughed awkwardly.

“All right, look, I know you’re scared and confused. So was I when I first got here. Santa doesn’t really believe in easing people into things, you know?”

“Don’t say things like that when I’m with you!” Lena snapped from below.

Justin spared her another glance. While Lucas was wearing more or less modern clothes, Lena was wearing…Justin wasn’t even sure what to call it. It was like a combination of a full body leotard and a suit of armor. The soft looking green fabric stretched over her entire form, from her neck to the tips of her toes, but certain sections of it—like over her chest, her arms and legs, and back—hardened into a substance that almost looked like turtle shell. It was all one single garment, the soft parts simply becoming the hard parts in a way that Justin could only describe as magical.

“You think he’d care? He’s got bigger things to worry about!” Lucas rolled his eyes, then looked back at Justin. “Anyway, I told you we’d explain everything once we got to town, and we will! But we need to walk while we talk. Someone important is waiting to see you.”

“S- Santa?” Justin asked. The very fact that he’d even said such a thing made his head spin.

Lucas shook his head. “No, not Santa. You’ll probably meet him soon enough, but for now there’s someone else you need to talk to. So come on down, all right? I can’t make any promises for Lena, but I won’t bite.”

Justin looked into Lucas’ eyes, and to his complete and utter surprise he didn’t see a single glimmer of hostility in them. It was almost as if this living blasphemy of nature from the depths of Satan’s worst nightmares was actually telling him the truth.

“I…” Justin whispered, still clutching the chandelier, “I don’t know how to come down. I don’t even know how I got up here!”

Lucas held up his hands. “It’s all right. Listen to me, just take my hand again and I’ll—”

“Listen to you? Are you listening to yourself? Everything you just said is insane!”

“I’m telling you, things will make sense if you just give me a chance to explain!”

He reached out, but Justin didn’t take his hand. He’d decided to believe that Lucas didn’t want to hurt him—not yet, at least—but he was still a long ways off from trusting him.

“I want to go home!” Justin cried. “ I want…”

Suddenly, the magic keeping him afloat vanished, and he found himself dangling from the chandelier by his fingertips.

“There, see?” Lucas muttered. “That’s what I was worried about.”

“No, no, no, not again!” Justin whined, his fee…his hooves kicking back and forth below him.

“Oh, for the love of fruitcake!” Lena groaned, and sprang into motion. Her lithe elf form moved supernaturally fast, with grace no mere human could ever achieve, leaping up to land on the wall, her body parallel to the floor. Before gravity could reclaim her, she launched herself even further upwards, all the way to the ceiling, and grabbed Justin by his ankles

“Lena, no!” Lucas shouted, his eyes going wide, but it was too late.

“Agh!” Justin cried out. She was lighter than she looked—not that she looked that heavy to begin with—but the extra weight was still enough to almost break his grip.

Lucas flew downwards and started trying to pry the elf’s fingers apart. “What exactly are you hoping to accomplish here?”

“Get your hands off of me!” Lena spat. “And you, quit your kicking and screaming! You call yourself a flying reindeer?”

“No, actually I don’t!” Justin yelled back.

CRACK.

All three of them froze, then slowly turned their heads upwards to see that a dark line had appeared in the ceiling right where the chandelier was bolted in. It began to spread, showering them with sawdust, until…

“Well, crap,” muttered Lucas.

The chandelier broke free, and the three of them went plummeting toward the ground. Justin closed his eyes. So he’d survived Black Friday and a fall from orbit, only to be crushed by a freaking light fixture? The absurdity of the whole situation would have made him laugh if he weren’t about to die.

But he never hit the ground.

Forcing his eyes open, he found that he was hovering a couple of inches above the floor. His head spun. Was he doing this? Lena, Lucas, and even the chandelier, were floating as well—and the others were looking at something with chagrined expressions on their faces.

“We’re sorry, sir,” Lucas said, bowing his head.

“Th- This isn’t my fault!” Lena said as quickly as her mouth could move. “I was trying to—”

“Enough.”

Justin turned his head, and saw that yet another reindeer monster had joined them. This one was clearly older than either Justin or Lucas by several decades—perhaps even centuries. He wore a deep red robe over wiry gray fur and leaned heavily on a walking stick that, when Justin looked closer at it, he realized was made of dozens of antlers seemingly welded together. The antlers on his head were tall and proud, more than four feet long, but his neck and spine were bowed under their weight.

“Sir, this is him,” Lucas said with obvious respect. “The one who just came through the portal.”

The older reindeer’s antlers began to glow with a warm red light. A beam of that light, bright yet not painful to look at, shot from the tip of his snout, and the three of them slowly rose into the air. This time they only went high enough to get their feet beneath them, and then the magic released its hold. To Justin’s relief, when his feet—hooves!—touched the floor, they stayed there. Still glowing with the red light, the chandelier floated upwards to return to where it had been before, the cracks in the ceiling disappearing as it reattached itself.

The old deer stepped forward, looking Justin up and down.

“This is him, you say?”

“Yes, sir!” Lucas said again, bowing his head.

To Justin’s surprise, the old deer smiled at him. “Then I am pleased to meet you, young buck. My name is Dasher. Come with me. You must have many questions.”