A Letter from Missy Mistletoe

So last night Santa and I played a bit of ice-basket, but I could tell his mind wasn’t really on the game, because at one point he accidentally picked up a young elf who happened to be skating past, bounced him up and down a couple of times and then lobbed him through the hoop.

To be fair, the elf was in a big fluffy orange coat, but still, ice-basket balls don’t usually have small worried faces peering out on top.

“Is everything OK, Santa?” I said.

“Mmm?” Santa said, removing a notebook from under his baseball cap and scribbling something in it with a heavily chewed pencil. “Oh, yes please Ronald.”

“Pardon?”

“What?”

“A little help, please?” interrupted the elf, who was now dangling from the hoop.

“I thought you asked me if I wanted a cup of tea?” Santa said.

“No, Santa,” I said. “You may not have realised it, but since we’re playing ice-basket in the middle of a skating rink, there’s nowhere to plug in a kettle. Even if I’d actually brought one with me. Which I haven’t, because what sort of loony brings kettles to an ice-basket game?”

Santa blinked at me a couple of times. Always a sure sign that he’s trying to think about something else.

“Good point, that bear,” Santa said, and returned to his notebook. “Shame though, I am quite thirsty and a cuppa would be just the job.”

“It would be really appreciated,” the elf said. “Only I’m quite little, and for me it’s a rather big drop.”

“Look, Santa, what is it,” I said. “You’ve been acting weird – that is weirder than usual, all week. Only this morning I came in and you were spreading marmalade over an envelope.”

“That was an envelope? I thought it was my toast,” Santa explained. “I suppose that would explain why it was so thinly sliced.”

“I mean, I don’t want to be a nuisance, and I can see you’re both busy, only my arms are really hurting now,” the elf called.

“Oh good,” I said, wandering across and lifting the elf down. “For a moment there I thought you were just crazy.”

“Thank you,” the elf said, in quite a sweet sing-song voice, before skating off towards the Yeti Village. I found myself thinking that it was a good job that elves were quite bouncy and so hopefully he wouldn’t be too badly concussed.

“Come on Santa, out with it,” I wandered over and rested a paw on Santa’s shoulder. “What’s worrying you. Are we running low on cotton wool again for the bear-stuffing factories?”

Cotton wool is a frequent headache for Santa. The supply chains involved in getting several tonnes of good quality cotton wool to the North Pole each year are surprisingly challenging.

“No, no,” Santa rubbed his eyes. “Cotton wool supplies are fine. Cocoa beans are running a bit low, but we should have enough to work with.”

“Then what?” I picked up the real ball and threw it to Santa. But he’d turned around to glance at his notebook again, so it hit him in the back of his head. For other people, the ball would then do something normal, like rolling into a patch of nettles. But for Santa the ball did a weird ricochet, corkscrewed through the air, then dropped smoothly through the hoop.

Santa didn’t even seem to notice. Instead there was a rustling sound as he rooted around in his pocket. He removed a crumpled piece of paper and passed it to me.

“If you must know,” he said.

I smoothed the paper out. It was a vivid green and covered in tiny neat writing, written in gleaming white ink.

My heart sank, and I hadn’t even read the letter yet.

“I’m guessing…” I said.

Santa nodded, his face glum. “Yes,” he said. “It’s a letter from Missy Mistletoe. She wants to come home.”

I closed my eyes and sighed a deep sigh. Then in something close to anger I grabbed the ice-basket ball and lobbed it at the basket.

“Owww,” said the elf. as he bounced off the hoop.