Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

For a place technically located at the North Pole, Justin thought, Val Luminara was surprisingly warm. Not hot, but closer to it than any temperature a literal icy wasteland should have ever been able to achieve. It reminded him of an early spring day back in Pleasant Ridge, just warm enough that he wasn’t uncomfortable in his jacket, but he also wouldn’t have missed it if he’d taken it off.

Frankly, he wasn’t sure why he was surprised by any of this anymore. While Val Luminara was many things, an icy wasteland certainly wasn’t one of them. He had seen the enormous evergreen forest that surrounded Laetitia when he’d fallen out of the portal, but that had quickly been forgotten in the hurricane of impossibilities he was subjected to immediately afterward.

It was in that forest that Justin stood now, amidst a small army of other reindeer. Justin had no idea where they were in relation to the city, or how far Lucas had flown them, since he had, of course, closed his eyes the moment they’d taken off back at the Aviary. All he knew was that all he could see in any direction were trees, trees, trees, each one shaped like a small green and brown mountain.

Before him stood a wooden stage, above which flew a banner with the same green fox that adorned his jacket. Beyond that, Justin could vaguely see wooden walls, poles, and sticks with large hoops on them rising intermittently out of the ground between the trees. Some kind of obstacle course, he assumed.

There were at least fifty other reindeer gathered before the stage, most of them looking to be within a year or two of Justin’s age in either direction. There was also an equal number of elves milling around, though Justin still had no idea how to judge their age.

“Hey,” he said suddenly, pointing into the crowd, “isn’t that Lena?”

“Hmm?” Lucas turned to look, then nodded. “Yeah, that’s her. But I wouldn’t…”

Justin wasn’t listening. Desperate to see another familiar face—even if he’d only known her for a day—he set off in Lena’s direction. She was wearing the same green armor she’d had on the night before, but now she had a large piece of leather slung over her shoulder that was almost as big as she was. She spotted him as soon as he raised his hand to wave at her, and her normal scowl deepened even further. She turned on her heel, vanishing into the crowd.

“Wait, Lena!” Justin called. He put his hand on the reindeer’s shoulder that she had slipped past, trying to squeeze through after her—and suddenly a sharp pain exploded right between his eyes. With his vision going dark, Justin stumbled backwards, tripping over his own hooves and falling flat on his back.

Justin groaned in pain and raised his head. When his vision finally cleared, the crowd had gone silent, and every eye was fixed on him. His skull was pounding and something was soaking into his fur. He put a finger to his forehead, wincing, and it came away red with blood.

“How dare you try to corrupt me like that?”

His head still buzzing, Justin looked up to see the deer he had tried to squeeze past standing over him, his fist still clenched. A few specks of Justin’s blood stained the fur around his knuckles, and the look in his eyes was nothing short of murderous.

“Wha…What was that for?” Justin asked, confused, in pain, and more than a little scared.

The buck looked to be about Justin’s age, perhaps a couple of years older, but while most of the other reindeer were slim and sleek, he was a veritable wall of muscle. His fur had a natural glossy shine to it that Justin’s lacked, and his antlers, which Justin’s eyes were inexplicably drawn to, were longer and thicker, like a crown declaring his superiority over the lesser beasts.

He pointed disdainfully down at Justin. “I know who you are, lightless one. I know what you did, and I know why you’re here. I don’t know why the council decided to let you stay, or why my grandmother shamed herself and our family by taking you into her unit, but if you think I’m going to let you run around doing whatever you please, you’re in for a very painful awakening!”

Justin stared at him in shock. “I was just trying to—”

The bigger deer bent down, grabbed Justin by his jacket, and pulled him upright. “Are you challenging me? First you try to burn down Celebration Hall…”

“No!” Justin protested, but judging by the mutters coming from the crowd, nobody was listening to him.

“...then you tell the council you want to destroy Christmas, and now you’re trying to pick a fight with me?” The bigger deer’s eyes bulged out of their sockets with anger.

“I didn’t say or do any of that!” Justin yelled.

“Maybe I should snap your puny little neck right here and now, and save Santa whatever grief you have planned for him!”

“Okay, gentlemen! Let’s dial this back for a minute!”

To Justin’s relief, Lucas appeared by his side, doing his best to squeeze between him and the bigger reindeer.

“Tornado, I see you’ve met Justin,” he said with a wide, fake grin. “Justin, this is Tornado, Vixen’s grandson. Probably not the best guy to be picking fights with on your first day of flight training!”

“I didn’t pick a fight with him!” Justin insisted. “I was just—”

“Are you this thing’s friend?” Tornado demanded, turning his blazing eyes on Lucas.

Lucas, realizing that everyone was looking at him now, wilted a little and took a step backwards.

“Friend?” he asked with a weak chuckle. “Oh, heck no!”

Justin’s ears drooped.

“I’m just following orders. I’m the one who pulled him out of the sky—Accidentally! I didn’t know who he was!—and now the council wants me to show him the ropes.” He held up his hands. “Don’t ask me why! I definitely don’t want to be here. And I’m not saying he doesn’t deserve it, but letting him get killed before his first flying lesson would kinda be a bad mark on my track record, you know?”

Tornado snorted, clouds of steam coming from his nostrils, and he glared at Justin again. “I don’t care about your track record!”

“I know, I know, but consider this…” Lucas took a hesitant step forward again. “The Council of Eight declared that he needed to be trained. Killing him before that happened, however justified you are in doing so, would be acting against their will. They’d probably be pretty upset with whoever did it. Maybe even upset enough to revoke their flier status. You see what I’m getting at here? It’s not just my track record that’s at risk here, big guy.”

Tornado stood there for over a minute, mulling Lucas’ words over in his head. Finally, with a grunt of annoyance, he grabbed Justin by the antlers and forced him to his knees.

“Everyone, take a good look!” he yelled, standing behind Justin and pointing at him. “This might look like a reindeer, but it’s not! This is the lightless one, and he was sent here by Krampus to assassinate Santa and destroy Christmas forever!”

Justin could feel every pair of eyes in the crowd boring into him. His heart was racing. Were they actually listening to this nonsense? Was bullying so uncommon here in Laetitia that they genuinely couldn’t recognize when it was happening right in front of them?

“None of that is true!” Justin yelled, earning him a second punch to the back of the skull. His head sagged listlessly on his neck, barely able to stay conscious.

“Every word that comes out of his mouth is a lie,” Tornado went on. “Don’t listen to him! Don’t speak to him! Don’t speak to anyone associated with him!”

Lucas winced and took another step back.

“I don’t know why he’s being allowed to stay here in Laetitia, or why the council decided to train him,” yelled Tornado, “but as long as we all stand united against him, he’ll never be able to do what he came to do. And if you see him trying anything dirty,” He leaned in close so that he was yelling directly into Justin’s ear, “you come and tell me!”

With that, he pushed Justin face down in the dirt and walked away, stepping directly on top of him in the process.

Maybe I should just stay down here forever, Justin thought. The mud doesn’t taste that bad, after all.

“Come on, up you get.”

Two pairs of hands pulled Justin back to his knees. His eyes were having a hard time focusing, but he recognized Lucas on his left, and Lena on his right.

“Are you okay?” the elf asked. It was hard to tell, but Justin almost thought he could detect a glimmer of concern in her eyes behind the wall of undisguised contempt.

Justin didn’t answer. He didn’t trust himself not to burst into tears if he tried.

“Us deer have thick skulls,” Lucas said, brushing the dirt off of Justin’s clothes. “He’ll probably have a headache for a couple hours, but it’ll take a lot more than that to cause any serious damage.”

“Why didn’t you stop him?” Lena demanded. “You were right there!”

“Excuse me? At least I was there at all! Where were you? Hiding in the crowd pretending like you didn’t know him?”

Lena looked away, her cheeks burning.

With some effort, they managed to get Justin on his hooves again. He wobbled for a few seconds, but eventually his balance came back. Lucas was right, his skull was pounding fiercely in both the front and the back, but he didn’t think he had a concussion.

“Will someone please just kill me?” he asked softly.

“Don’t say that!” Lena exclaimed, her eyes widening.

“Yeah, she’s right,” Lucas agreed. “It’s still your first day. They’ll warm up to you sooner or later.”

“They think I’m here to kill Santa!” Justin said with tears running down his face. “That’s not something they’ll just forget about!”

“Nah, that’s just Tornado,” Lucas lied through his teeth. “He gets more than his share of attention since Vixen is his grandmother, but in the end he’s just a trainee like the rest of us.”

Justin looked at him, confused. “His grandmother?”

“Well, technically she’s his great, great, great, great, great, great, great…I always forget how many greats I’m supposed to use…grandmother,” Lucas answered. “But everyone just calls him her grandson for simplicity’s sake.”

“How is that even possible?”

“How is what possible?”

“For the reindeer here to have kids and grandkids.”

Lucas’ ears perked up. “Ooh, so nobody got around to telling you? Weird, most people learn that by the time they’re, like, thirteen.”

“Wha—” Justin took a step back.

“Well, when two reindeer love each other very—ow! What was that for?”

“Just answer his question, or I’ll kick you again!” Lena snapped.

“I don’t even understand what his question is!” Lucas protested. He turned to Justin. “What do you mean how is it possible for reindeer to have kids?”

“I mean,” Justin said, jaw clenched and cheeks burning, “how can he be related to Vixen when she’s hundreds of years old and all the reindeer used to be people?”

Lucas blinked in surprise, and then let out a genuine laugh. “All of them? Not even close! Humans who were given the Opportunity like you and me are extremely rare. For every one of us, there are at least thirty deer who were born the old fashioned way.”

Justin folded his arms self-consciously. “O- Oh…”

“I’ll admit, there’s a bit of a stigma against us,” Lucas admitted. “Can we really fly as well as a natural born reindeer? Is Santa playing favorites by choosing us instead of other people? And that’s added on top of your…unique situation.”

Lucas looked around, and Justin realized that the three of them were alone. The rest of the crowd had drawn back, creating a bubble ten feet wide between them and the so-called lightless one.

“At attention, fliers!”

As one, every eye in the crowd snapped upwards just as a lone figure in a red robe swooped out of the sky to land on the stage. Unlike Dasher, Vixen was able to stand without a walking stick, but her antlers still clearly weighed on her, making her hunch forward as she regarded the trainees.

“Welcome to flying class!”