The Girl Who Saved Christmas Read online

  Published in Great Britain in 2016 by Canongate Books Ltd,

  14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE

  www.canongate.co.uk

  This digital edition first published in 2016 by Canongate Books

  Copyright © Matt Haig, 2016

  Illustrations © Chris Mould, 2016

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 78211 857 2

  eISBN 978 1 78211 858 9

  Typeset in 13.25/15pt Bembo by

  Palimpsest Book Production Ltd, Falkirk, Stirlingshire

  Contents

  The girl who saved Christmas

  One year later . . .

  The trembling ground

  The Toy Workshop

  Mr Creeper

  Little Mim

  Humdrum gets out of bed

  The chamber pot

  Her mother’s hand (quite a short but very sad chapter)

  The Barometer of Hope

  The Flying Story Pixie

  A knock at the door

  Father Vodol and his long words

  Running

  Officer Pry

  Charles Dickens

  The dark sky

  The falling reindeer

  The soap

  One year later . . .

  Noosh’s new job

  The Truth Pixie

  A woman called Mary

  Four cheers for Father Christmas!

  The new sleigh

  The bite

  A crash landing

  A royal guest

  Dasher to the rescue!

  The royal seal of approval

  The girl with a beard

  Father Christmas makes a decision

  Walking among humans

  The cat

  48 Doughty Street

  The night inspector

  A ghostly place

  Something magic

  The girl downstairs

  Unhappy Christmas

  Mr Creeper’s shoelaces

  Child on the loose!

  Amelia’s last dash

  Father Christmas’s escape

  Reindeer to the rescue

  The return of Captain Soot

  Mr Creeper’s fingers

  News from Father Vodol

  Amelia gets angry

  The Troll Valley

  Inside the troll’s fist

  A Christmas dinner

  The cracking cave

  Drimwickery

  Footprints in the snow

  Home

  The girl who saved Christmas

  o you know how magic works?

  The kind of magic that gets reindeer to fly in the sky? The kind that helps Father Christmas travel around the world in a single night? The kind that can stop time and make dreams come true?

  Hope.

  That’s how.

  Without hope, there would be no magic.

  It isn’t Father Christmas or Blitzen or any of the other reindeer that make magic happen on the night before Christmas.

  It’s every child who wants and wishes for it to happen. If no one wished for magic to happen there would be no magic. And because we know Father Christmas comes every year we know now that magic – at least some kind of magic – is real.

  But this wasn’t always the case. There was once a time before stockings and Christmas mornings spent excitedly ripping off wrapping paper. It was quite a miserable time, when very few human children had any reason to believe in magic at all.

  And so, the very first night that Father Christmas ever decided to give human children a reason to be happy and to believe in magic, he had a lot of work to do.

  The toys were in his sack, the sleigh and reindeer were ready, but as he flew out of Elfhelm he knew there wasn’t enough magic in the air. He travelled through the Northern Lights but they were hardly glowing at all. And the reason for the low magic levels was that there wasn’t much hoping going on. After all, how does a child hope for magic to happen if they have never seen it?

  So that very first visit from Father Christmas nearly didn’t happen. And that it did happen is thanks to one thing. A single human child. A girl, in London, who believed in magic totally. Who hoped and hoped for a miracle every single day. She was the child who believed in Father Christmas before anyone else. And she was the one who helped Father Christmas, just as his reindeer were starting to struggle, because the amount she hoped while lying in bed that Christmas Eve, added light to the sky. It gave Father Christmas purpose. A direction. And he followed a thin trace of light all the way to her home at 99 Haberdashery Road, London.

  And once that was done, once he had placed a full stocking of toys at the foot of her bug-ridden bed, the hope grew. Magic was there, in the world, and it spread among the dreams of all children. But Father Christmas couldn’t fool himself. Without that one child, that eight-year-old girl called Amelia Wishart, hoping so hard for magic to be real, Christmas would never have happened. Yes, it took elves and the reindeer and the workshop and all of that, but she was the one who saved it. The dream of magic.

  She was the first child.

  The girl who saved Christmas.

  And Father Christmas would never forget it . . .

  One year later . . .

  Dear Father Christmas,

  Hello, my name is Amelia Wishart. I am nine years old and I live at 99 Haberdashery Road in London.

  You know this because you have been here. Last year. When you gave me presents. That was very kind. I always believed that magical things were possible, even when times were hard, so it was so wonderful to see it was true.

  THANK YOU.

  Anyway, I live with my mum Jane and my cat Captain Soot. I found Captain Soot up a chimney. You see, chimneys are rarely straight up and down. Sometimes they have sideways bits. Did you meet him? He is great.

  But he sometimes steals sardines from the fishmonger and gets into fights with street cats and I think he thinks he’s a dog.

  I know you are a busy man so I will just tell you what I would like for Christmas. I would like:

  A new brush for sweeping chimneys

  A spinning top

  A book by Charles Dickens (my favourite author)

  For my ma to get better

  Number 4 is quite important. It’s more important than number 2. You can keep the spinning top.

  It really was a magical thing to wake up to those presents last year.

  Ma was a chimney sweep and now I am too. She can’t go up chimneys anymore. She can’t do anything anymore except lie in bed and cough. The doctor says only a miracle will fix her. But miracles need magic, don’t they? And you are the only person I know who can do magic. So that is all I want. I want you to make Ma well again, before it is too late.

  That is the main thing I ask.

  Yours faithfully,

  Amelia

  The Trembling Ground

  ather Christmas folded up Amelia’s letter and put it in his pocket.

  He walked through the snow-covered Reindeer Field and past the frozen lake, looking around at all the quiet sights of Elfhelm. The wooden village hall. The clog shops and the Bank of Chocolate and the Figgy Pudding café on the Main Path, not open for another hour. The School of Sleighcraft and the University of Advanced Toymaking. The tall (by elf standards) offices of the Daily Snow on Vodol Street. Its walls of reinforced gingerbread, shining orange in the clear morning light.

  Then, as he trod through the snow, turning west towards the Toy Workshop and the wooded pixie hills beyond, he saw an elf in a brown tunic and brown clogs walkin
g towards him. The elf wore glasses and was a bit short-sighted so didn’t see Father Christmas.

  ‘Hello, Humdrum!’ said Father Christmas.

  The elf jumped in shock.

  ‘Oh, h-hello, Father Christmas. I’m sorry. I didn’t see you there. I’ve just been on a nightshift.’

  Humdrum was one of the hardest working elves at the Toy Workshop. He was quite a strange, nervous little elf, but Father Christmas liked him a lot. As the Assistant Deputy Chief Maker of Toys That Spin or Bounce, he was a very busy member of the workshop, and never complained about working overnight.

  ‘Everything all right at the workshop?’ asked Father Christmas.

  ‘Oh yes. All the toys that spin are spinning and all the toys that bounce are bouncing. There was a little bit of a problem with some of the tennis balls but we’ve fixed it now. They are bouncier than ever. The human children will love them.’

  ‘Jolly good. Well, you go home and get some sleep. And wish Noosh and Little Mim a “Merry Christmas” from me.’

  ‘I will, Father Christmas. They will be very pleased. Especially Mim. His favourite new thing is a jigsaw with your face on it. Jiggle the jigsaw-maker made it especially for him.’

  Father Christmas blushed. ‘Ho ho . . . Merry Christmas, Humdrum!’

  ‘Merry Christmas, Father Christmas!’

  And just as they said goodbye they both felt something. A faint wobbling in their legs, as if the earth was shaking a little bit. Humdrum thought it was just because he was so tired. Father Christmas thought it was because he was so excited about the big day and night he had ahead of him. Neither said anything.

  The Toy Workshop

  he Toy Workshop was the largest building in Elfhelm, bigger even than the Village Hall and the Daily Snow offices. It had a vast tower and a main hall, all covered in snow.

  Father Christmas stepped inside and saw the preparations were in full swing.

  He saw happy, laughing, singing elves doing final toy tests: taking off dolls’ heads; testing spinning tops; rocking on rocking horses; speed-reading books; plucking satsumas from satsuma trees; cuddling cuddly toys; bouncing balls . . . Music was provided in the form of Elfhelm’s favourite band, the Sleigh Belles, who were singing one of their favourites, ‘It’s Very Nearly Christmas (I’m So Excited I Have Wet My Tunic)’.

  Father Christmas placed his sack down on the floor at the front of the room.

  ‘Good morning, Father Christmas,’ shouted one elf, called Dimple, with a cheery smile. Dimple’s name was easy to remember because she had dimples in her cheeks whenever she smiled, which was always. She was sitting next to Bella, the joke writer, who was working on her last joke of the year and chuckling to herself as she ate a mince pie.

  Dimple offered Father Christmas a peppermint and when he opened the lid of the peppermint jar a toy snake popped out. ‘Aaagh!’ said Father Christmas.

  Dimple was now on the floor in hysterics.

  ‘Ho ho ho,’ said Father Christmas, and tried to mean it. ‘How many of them do we have?’

  ‘Seventy-eight thousand six hundred and forty-seven.’

  ‘Very good.’

  And then the Sleigh Belles saw him across the room and instantly changed their song to ‘Hero In The Red Coat’ which was a tribute to Father Christmas. It wasn’t the Sleigh Belles’ best song, but all the elves started singing.

  ‘There’s a man who’s dressed in red,

  With gifts for those asleep in bed.

  A tall man with a snow-white beard,

  Whose ears are round and rather weird.

  He showed us elves that there’s a way,

  To make life as happy as Christmas Day.

  He and his reindeer travel the world,

  Giving presents to every boy and girl.

  As all their hopes and dreams take float,

  We all like to thank . . .

  (Is it a goat?)

  No!

  It’s THE HERO IN THE RED COAT!’

  As the elves cheered, Father Christmas was a bit embarrassed and didn’t know where to look, so he looked out of a window. He saw someone outside running across the snow towards the workhouse. No one else had noticed, as no one else was tall enough to see out of the window.

  It wasn’t an elf, Father Christmas knew that. It was even smaller. Too light. Too graceful. Too stylish. Too yellow. Too fast.

  And then, realising who exactly it was, he left the workshop.

  ‘Back in a moment, you wonderful folk,’ he told the elves, as the music lulled. ‘And the infinity sack is there so you can start dropping toys in it . . .’

  By the time Father Christmas opened the door, she was there, hands on her little hips, bent double, breathless.

  ‘Truth Pixie!’ he said, happy to see her. After all, it wasn’t often a pixie entered Elfhelm. ‘Happy Christmas!’

  The Truth Pixie’s eyes, which were always huge, were even wider than they were normally.

  ‘No,’ she said, staring up at Father Christmas, from the height of his knees.

  ‘What?’

  ‘No. It’s not a happy Christmas.’

  The Truth Pixie stared inside the Toy Workshop and saw all the elves and felt a bit itchy, because she didn’t like elves very much, and they gave her a bit of a rash.

  ‘I’ve got a new suit,’ said Father Christmas. ‘It’s even redder than it was before. And look at this fur trim. Do you like it?’

  The Truth Pixie shook her head. She didn’t mean to be rude, but she had to tell the truth. ‘No. I don’t like it at all. You look like a giant mouldy cloudberry. But that’s not the point.’

  ‘What is the point? You’re hardly ever in Elfhelm.’

  ‘That is because it is full of elves.’

  Some of the elves had seen the Truth Pixie.

  ‘Merry Christmas, Truth Pixie!’

  ‘Idiots,’ mumbled the Truth Pixie.

  Father Christmas sighed. He stepped outside onto the snow and closed the door behind him. ‘Listen, Truth Pixie, I would love to stay and chat, but it is Christmas Eve. I need to go and help get everything ready . . .’

  Father Christmas noticed she was looking quite scared. He had never seen the Truth Pixie look scared before.

  ‘You need to forget about the Toy Workshop. You need to forget about Christmas. You need to get out of Elfhelm. You need to run for the hills.’

  ‘What are you talking about, Truth Pixie?’

  And it was then that he heard it. A kind of grumbling sound.

  ‘I knew I should have had a bigger breakfast,’ he said, patting his stomach.

  ‘That wasn’t coming from you. It was coming from down there.’ The Truth Pixie pointed to the ground.

  Father Christmas stared down at the fresh snow, as blank as a white page.

  ‘It’s happening even sooner than I thought,’ she squealed, and began running. She looked back over her shoulder. ‘Find a safe place! And hide! And I suppose you should tell the elves to hide too . . . And you better cancel Christmas before they do . . .’

  ‘They? Who are they?’ But the Truth Pixie had gone. Father Christmas chuckled, looking at the pixie’s tiny footprints in the snow heading back to the wooded hills. It was Christmas. The Truth Pixie had obviously been up all night drinking cinnamon syrup and was probably a bit confused.

  Even so, he heard the rumbling noise again.

  ‘Oh, stomach, do be . . .’

  But the noise was much louder and lower and suddenly not that stomachy. It was a very strange sound. He was sure it was nothing to worry about. But even so, he went back inside and quickly shut the door so he could hear nothing but the sounds of the Toy Workshop.

  Mr Creeper

  eventeen days after Amelia had sent her letter to Father Christmas, Amelia Wishart was where she very often was – inside a chimney.

  It was dark inside chimneys. That was the first thing she had had to get used to. The darkness. Another thing was the size. Chimneys were always a bit too small, even if
you were still a child. But the worst thing about being a chimney sweep was the soot. The black dust got everywhere once you started sweeping. In your hair, on your clothes, on your skin, in your eyes and mouth. It made you cough a horrid unstoppable cough, and made your eyes water. It was a horrible job but it was a job she needed. A job that could help her earn enough money for food and to get medicine for her mother.

  And anyway, the thing about sweeping chimneys was that it made you enjoy daylight more. In fact, it made you enjoy being anywhere that wasn’t a chimney. It made you hope. Being in the sooty darkness made you dream of all the exotic and light places in the world.

  It was certainly no place to be on the morning of Christmas Eve. Stuck there, knees and elbows rammed against the chimney walls, choking on the clouds of soot as she brushed.

  Then she heard something.

  A tiny little crying sound.

  Not a human sound. But something else.

  A miaow.

  ‘Oh no,’ she said, knowing exactly who it was.

  She pressed her heels against the chimney wall and felt around with her free hand in the dark until she reached something soft and warm and furry, lying on a sloping shelf inside the crooked chimney.

  ‘Captain Soot! What have I told you? Never climb in chimneys! They are not for cats!’

  Her cat began to purr as Amelia picked him up and carried him down towards the light of the living room. Captain Soot was black all over except for the white tip on the end of his tail. But today even that was as black as, well, soot.

  The cat wriggled out of Amelia’s arms, did a twisting jump through the air, and started to walk across the room. Across the cream-coloured rug. The expensive cream-coloured rug. Amelia stared at the sooty paw prints in horror.

  ‘Oh no. Captain Soot! Come back! What are you doing?!’

  Amelia went to get her cat but then of course she was getting the rug dirty too.

  ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘Oh no, oh no, oh no . . .’

  She quickly got a wet cloth from the kitchen, where a kitchen maid was peeling carrots.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Amelia said. ‘I’ve just made a bit of a mess.’