Don't Call Me Christina Kringle

  “She’s right,” said McCracken grudgingly. “They can’t finish your unfinished labors, Mister Fred, until they finish finishing hers!”

  “Them’s the rules, pal,” said Smoothie. “Brownies are a bunch of chumps. Gotta do what they gotta do.”

  Mister Fred pouted out his lips. “Fine. Hurry up.”

  “Thanks.”

  Christina snapped open her violin case.

  “What were you working on?” Nails asked with a big, broad grin.

  “That jolly jig you guys taught me.” She tucked the violin under her chin and started to fiddle a tune.

  When McCracken and Smoothie heard the first notes, they panicked.

  “Oh, no,” said McCracken, involuntarily tapping his toe in time to the music.

  “It’s the ‘Scherzo Mesmerozo!’ ” gulped Smoothie.

  “Oooh,” said Mister Fred. “Catchy little ditty!” He started twitching to the beat, too, his blubbery legs becoming quite rubbery.

  Christina fiddled faster.

  Now all three of them—McCracken, Smoothie, and Mister Fred—started to dance like Irish river dancers: their arms stiff at their sides, their legs kicking and swinging to and fro, their feet twisting sideways.

  “Must … stop … dancing …” McCracken groaned. “Must … not … listen … to … enchanted … brownie … song.” He tried to raise his hands up to his ears but his arms wouldn’t budge. They stayed glued stiffly at his sides while his legs kept kicking and his body kept spinning. Likewise, Mister Fred and the little elf Smoothie were locked in a wildly delirious dance!

  “I can’t stop my feet!” cried Mister Fred.

  “Aye,” said McCracken. “None can resist the ‘Scherzo Mesmerozo’ once the fiddler calls its tune!”

  “We’re done for!” screamed Smoothie. “Our bodies will keep dancing and prancing so long as that horrid little girl keeps fiddling that wretched jitterbug of a jig!”

  “Wretched?” laughed Christina, fiddling faster. “Why I think it’s the holliest, jolliest Christmas song I’ve ever heard!”

  Sixty-six

  The “Scherzo Mesmerozo” was amazingly powerful.

  If Christina slowed down the tempo, the three dancers moved in slow motion. When she picked up the pace, they jittered and jumped and jostled.

  Mister Fred was bobbing and boogying so crazily, he dropped his pistol. As soon as it clattered to the floor, Professor Pencilneck and Nails unzipped the orange jumpsuits (which, truth be told, they stitched together themselves) and stepped out wearing their usual costumes.

  They weren’t dancing. Brownies were the only known creatures who could resist the ‘Scherzo Mesmerozo’ (it had something to do with their very shallow inner-ear canals), which is why brownie fiddlers had used it to ward off their enemies for centuries, according to Professor Pencilneck, who taught Christina how to play it.

  “Will I start dancing, too?” she had asked during her lessons.

  “Only if you want to,” the professor had told her.

  And right now, she didn’t feel like busting a move; she just wanted to bust her friends out of their boxy prisons!

  “You’ll pay for this, lassie!” shouted McCracken, hopping up and down in place, kicking up his heels like a demented donkey.

  “The cage keys are on his belt!” Christina shouted, sawing her bow back and forth and back and forth across the strings.

  Nails and Professor Pencilneck scampered over to where McCracken, Mister Fred (who was sweating profusely), and Smoothie were furiously dancing up a tsunami of twisted limbs. Nails boosted Professor Pencilneck up to his shoulders where the professor snagged the unhooked McCracken’s key ring with his cane.

  “Eureka!” said the professor. “It is time to free our friends!”

  He quickly dismounted from Nails’s shoulders (doing a nifty double somersault on the way down) and raced over to the locked cells.

  “Hang on, Trixie!” shouted Nails. “We’re comin’, babycakes!”

  Christina kept fiddling. The brownie-nappers kept dancing. And Nails and Professor Pencilneck kept opening cage doors, freeing Trixie and Flixie first, of course.

  “My hero!” cooed Trixie.

  “Sorry, doll. No time for smoochie-facing. I got locks to unlock.”

  “Maybe later?”

  “Definitely.”

  When Flixie was set free, she didn’t ask permission. She kissed Professor Pencilneck smack on his lips. When she did, his glasses fogged up.

  “Can I bake you some cookies later, Professor?” she purred.

  “Indubitably,” the professor stammered back.

  “You guys?” cried Christina, trying hard not to laugh, which might cause her to skip a note and somehow ruin the stupefying magic of the bewildering tune. “We need to hurry!”

  “I’m on it,” said Nails, scurrying down the row of cages, unlocking locks, swinging open doors.

  “Move smartly, everyone,” said Professor Pencilneck. “Kindly exit to your left in an orderly fashion.”

  “But,” said Mop, climbing out of his cage, “we can’t leave with the rising of the sun. This factory is full of human chores that have been left undone.”

  Yep. He was rhyming again.

  “They tried to pay me for you!” shouted Christina, dipping the neck of her violin to point out the briefcase stuffed with cash lying open on the floor.

  “Well, if they tried to pay her for us, then we all have good reason to take the bus!”

  “Huh?” said Nails.

  “He means we can leave,” said Broom.

  “Then why’s he talking about a bus?”

  Broom shrugged. “Poetry. It’s supposed to be confusing.”

  “Well, we ain’t got time for confusion right now,” said Nails. “Okay, people. Let’s hustle! On the floor and out the door.”

  “Sheesh,” said Broom. “Now you’re doing it!”

  All the brownies dashed toward the slid-open door and the loading dock.

  “Thanks, Christina!” cried Bobbin.

  “You’re the best,” said Spindle.

  “Look at me,” shouted Mops. “I’m free!”

  When the final freed brownies had scurried to safety, Christina focused on the three maniacs dancing like marionettes being manipulated by hyperactive puppeteers who’d eaten too much birthday cake.

  “Stop fiddlin’, I beg ye!” gasped McCracken.

  Mister Fred, whose jiggling, jowly face was turning the color of cranberry sauce, was drenched with sweat. Smoothie looked like he might need to change his name to Shakie.

  “What’ll we do with these guys?” she asked Nails and Professor Pencilneck.

  “Easy,” said Nails, pulling a striped straw out of a secret sleeve sewn into his carpenter’s apron. “We pixie dust ’em!”

  “Indubitably,” said the professor, unscrewing the top and bottom of his cane, which was actually a hidden pixie dust dispenser.

  “Ready?” said Nails, biting off both ends of his dusting straw.

  “Aim!” cried the professor.

  “Fire!” shouted Christina.

  Glittering gold powder shrouded the three dancers in a sparkling cloud. The three creepy conspirators slumped peacefully to the floor. Serene smiles filled their otherwise sweaty faces.

  Christina, whose bow arm was starting to ache, quit fiddling.

  “I shall quit hunting brownies forever,” said McCracken dreamily.

  “I shall only sell that which I make,” said a very laid-back and loopy Mister Fred.

  “And I shall take a bath,” added the dazed Smoothie.

  Both Nails and Professor Pencilneck blew across the hazy barrels of their pixie dust peashooters.

  “What was in those tubes?” asked Christina.

  “Extra-strength pixie dust,” said Nails.

  “Enough to tranquilize a whole herd of elephants,” added the professor.

  “Or,” said Nails, “one Mister Fred.”

  Sixty-seven

  Unfo
rtunately, the early morning blast of pixie dust didn’t take care of all the greedy shopkeepers in town.

  After Christina had all the brownies safely secured in the shoe-shop cellar and had given them all their breakfast cream and cake, she came upstairs to find Grandpa glued to the TV set.

  “Uh-oh,” he said. “This don’t look no good.”

  Tony Scungilli, the toy king, was holding a press conference with the mayor and the chief of police. Ms. Delores Dingler and a pastry chef in a poofy white hat were standing in the crowd behind the group clustered in front of the microphones. The mayor was speaking and held up a Dumping Dino.

  “We confiscated this counterfeit merchandise from the Engine Company 23 firehouse last night. As you can plainly see, there is no Toy Castle logo stamped here on the dinosaur’s, eh, er, posterior.”

  He pointed at the plastic dinosaur’s big green butt.

  “All genuine Dumping Dinos carry a trademark, eh, back here.”

  “Gustav and Gizmo made that for me,” said Christina. “They donated it for the kids.”

  On the TV, Tony Scungilli stepped up to the microphones.

  “Who would steal intellectual property from Santa’s number one helper?” he asked, choking back some crocodile tears. “Who would steal from me? Whoever you are, may Santa put a lump of coal in your stocking!”

  “Given these developments,” said the mayor, “and the fact that we found several other counterfeit toys at the firehouse …”

  Uh-oh, Christina thought. The two toy-maker brownies made us some “fake” Wetty Betties and Bopping Beanos, too.

  “… I, as mayor, have no choice but to cancel the traditional Christmas Eve gift-delivery activities at Engine 23 until we conclude our ongoing investigation. I have instructed the chief of police to confiscate all the toys that have been ‘donated’ to the firehouse.”

  The reporters groaned.

  The mayor held up his hands. “Now, now. I’m not a Scrooge, people. We hope to deliver any toys that prove to be legitimate donations and not stolen property sometime before Valentine’s Day.”

  Brokenhearted, Christina snapped off the TV.

  “Christina?”

  She turned around. Nails, Professor Pencilneck, Trixie, and Flixie were standing at the top of the basement stairs.

  “Did that guy just cancel Christmas?” asked Nails, propping his hands gallantly on his hips.

  “Just for the kids who need it most.” She shook her head in disbelief. “Man …”

  “We know, we know,” said Giuseppe.

  “That is precisely why you hate Christmas,” said the professor.

  “Christmas stinks,” Trixie and Flixie said in two-part harmony.

  Christina grabbed her backpack.

  “Nails? Professor? Hop in. We’ve got some unfinished business to finish.”

  “Oh, dear,” Pencilneck said apprehensively. “Are we going to get in trouble again?”

  “I sure hope so!” said Nails, eagerly rubbing his hands together.

  “Just hop in,” said Christina.

  They did and she slung the backpack over her shoulders.

  Grandpa held up a hand as Christina tugged down hard on the book bag’s straps like a commando about to parachute behind enemy lines. “Christina?”

  “Yes, Grandpa?”

  “Be careful, dear.”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t do anything my dad wouldn’t do.”

  And that made Grandpa worry even more.

  Sixty-eight

  Christina could not believe her eyes as she turned the corner and headed down the sidewalk to the firehouse.

  The crowded sidewalk.

  People carrying unwrapped toys were lined up around the block waiting their turn to drop off a present for the Christmas Eve run of Engine 23!

  “Look at this, you guys,” she whispered over her shoulder to her backpack.

  “We see it,” said Professor Pencilneck.

  “We’re peeking through the zipper slit,” added Nails.

  It was absolutely incredible. As Christina walked down the line, she saw all kinds of people carrying all kinds of wonderful Christmas gifts. Shopping bags crammed with board games. A young girl clutching an oversized, brand-new stuffed monkey with a tag flapping off its ear. One woman balanced a stack of doll boxes under her chin. A man had a grocery sack filled with fleecy gloves and hats.

  And everybody in line was laughing and chatting with those around them, overwhelmed with the good feeling that comes from doing something for someone other than yourself.

  “So who does the mayor think he is?” said one woman with a laugh. “Stealing Christmas from needy kids? Next year, we should steal the election from him!”

  “My kid’s got too much stuff,” said a man with an unwrapped iPod. “Me, too! It’s time to give some of it away!”

  “Merry Christmas, sir,” Christina said with a soft smile.

  “Let’s hope it will be for whoever gets the iPod I was going to give myself!” He roared with laughter.

  “Better to give than to receive,” said another woman. “That’s what I always say!”

  And then, the whole line started singing Christmas carols and showing each other what they had brought to give away and passing around plastic tubs of Christmas cookies. They weren’t sprinkled with pixie dust but they sure seemed to make everyone feel warm and happy, just the same. Strangers were quickly becoming friends.

  “So,” whispered Nails from the backpack. “You still hate Christmas, kid?”

  “Not so much,” said Christina. “Not today.”

  She made it to the firehouse doors and saw Captain Dave shaking hands and thanking people for dropping toys into what had been, just an hour earlier, an empty foil-wrapped bin.

  “Merry Christmas, Christina Kringle!” he said when he saw her.

  “Yeah,” she said, the nickname not bothering her at all. “It just might be!”

  The cardboard box was overflowing with unwrapped toys. A couple of firefighters, wearing red-and-white Santa hats, emptied the first batch of toys into big black sacks to make room for more.

  “This has been goin’ on ever since the mayor went on TV,” said Captain Dave. “In under an hour, we collected more toys than ever before!”

  “This is awesome! I wish my dad were here to see it!”

  Captain Dave placed his hand on her shoulder. “You know what? I’ll bet he is.”

  “Yeah. So, how can I help?”

  “Well, we need someone inside to separate the boy gifts from the girl gifts.”

  “I’m all over it!”

  She was about to head into the firehouse to sort the toys when a police car, its siren whoop-whoop-whooping, crawled around the corner and drove up to the firehouse doors.

  Sixty-nine

  The Chief of Police, whom Christina had seen on TV, stepped out of the police cruiser.

  “Dave,” he said, smoothing out all the ribbons and medals on his dress uniform.

  “Chief Farnsworth.”

  “What’s going on here?”

  “A Christmas miracle, sir. Since we can’t deliver the gifts you guys impounded last night, these good citizens have brought us all sorts of new toys to put on the truck. The Christmas Eve Run is on!”

  The chief shook his head. “Sorry, lieutenant. That’s not going to happen.”

  “What?”

  “Malloy? Reed?” The chief gestured toward the fire truck and two armed cops marched into the garage to guard it.

  “What’s going on, Chief?”

  “We’re impounding your truck.” He handed Captain Dave a sheet of paper. “Orders from upstairs. The mayor does not want that piece of municipal property going anywhere tonight.”

  “You’re kidding. What if there’s a fire?”

  “Engine 74 can handle it. We’re shutting you down, Lieutenant, effective immediately. You should go home. Spend the holidays with your family. That fire truck? It’s going nowhere tonight.”

  “S
o, tell me, chief: Exactly how much did Tony Scungilli contribute to the mayor’s re-election campaign.”

  The police chief squinted hard. Didn’t answer.

  He didn’t have to.

  Because now a long stretch limousine pulled up to the curb.

  Tony Scungilli stepped out.

  “You impounded their delivery vehicle?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” said the chief of police.

  “Good. That fire truck is going nowhere until we apprehend the thief who stole my intellectual property.”

  He gave Christina a sinister sneer.

  “And all her little accomplices!”

  Seventy

  That night, Christmas Eve, as if on cue, snow started to fall, turning the whole city into a gently shaken snow globe.

  Inside Giuseppe’s shoe shop, Christina paced back and forth in front of the counter, trying to think of a way to save Christmas for the kids who needed Christmas most. Her grandfather was back at the apartment, theoretically wrapping presents. In truth, he was probably sleeping.

  It’s what Christina’s grandfather did when he didn’t know what else to do.

  Professor Pencilneck and Nails stood on the countertop, watching Christina walk back and forth, waiting desperately for inspiration to hit.

  It didn’t.

  “Those kids are counting on us!” she muttered. “We’ve got to do something.” She looked up to the ceiling. “Come on, Dad. Help me out here. Show me what to do!”

  “Perhaps,” suggested the professor, “your friend, Captain Dave, can borrow someone else’s fire truck.”

  Christina shook her head. “It’s not just the truck. It’s the toys. The mayor won’t allow any firefighters to ‘abandon their duties’ or ‘directly violate orders from their superior officers’ to deliver them. If they do, they could lose their jobs.”

  The string of jingle bells over the front door tinkled merrily.

  Nails and Professor Pencilneck dove for cover and hid behind the cash register.

  A huge biker with a big, bushy beard strode into the shop. He was dressed in a black leather jacket, fringed leather leggings, and hand-tooled cowboy boots. He carried his motorcycle helmet tucked under his arm.