Ottie and Bea Save Christmas (our storybuilding story)

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OTTIE AND THE BEA SAVE CHRISTMAS

INTRODUCTION

In which we are introduced to Ottie and to Bea.

{This Introduction was imagined by Astrid, Evie, Norah and Ottilie}

Here they are: two not-so-ordinary girls. Their names are Ottie, and Bea.

Ottie is the big one. She’s six. Her hair is bright orange, and she always always wears it tied back: one bunch up high. One bunch down low.

She’s wearing her favourite outfit:

A t-shirt with a rabbit on it.

A tutu.

Practical leggings for climbing trees.

And her magic boots. They really are very magic. If she says the magic words, you will see. How she got them, I don’t know. That must have been another adventure, and one day we will ask her, because it would be quite a story to tell …

And here is her little sister, Bea. She is three (which rhymes). Her hair is white, and fluffy, like a dandelion puff. And she is just as tall as a table.

Once upon a time, not all that long ago and really quite close to here, Ottie and Bea lived in a land they called Toyshopland. And that is where our adventure begins …

CHAPTER ONE

In which the adventure begins …

{Chapter One was imagined by Astrid, Evie, Norah, Ottilie and Ruby}

It was the middle of the night, Ottie’s favourite time of day. As she liked to do, every middle of the night, Ottie was awake and looking for adventure. Snuggled down deep in her soft soft bed (so soft that if an adult ever lay in it, they would sink so low they could never get out), she stared and stared at the velvet black of the air.

Just as she was wondering if you could stare so hard at the darkness that your eyes might fly out around the room, she heard a crashing BOOM so loud it nearly shot her ears off instead.

Across the room in her soft soft bed, Bea jumped awake like a jack-in-a-box.

Then she did a little shriek, like a mouse would make if you trod on it.

Which is how Ottie knew that she was scared.

And because she was the big sister, ready for adventure, and not scared at all, Ottie leaped straight out of her bed, over the carpet without even touching the ground, and into Bea’s little bed to give her a big hug.

Rain started to fall in big loud plops against the window. Then there was another CRASH and Ottie started to think that maybe it wasn’t clumsy burglars downstairs after all, but actually just a really really loud thunderstorm.

Yes, there it was, a huge RUMBLE like grandpa’s belly at teatime multiplied by about a million.

Brilliant! Ottie loved thunderstorms. Giving Bea one more hug to make sure she knew everything was okay, Ottie jumped from the bed to the dressing table, on to the bookcase, and landed light as a cat on the windowsill.

Then nearly fell off as a bright white FLASH of lightning shone through the curtains.

It was so bright that even when she blinked, she could see it jiggering across her eyelids.

“wow! That’s close! Let’s count and see how close it is” she shouty-whispered to Bea. “We’ll count in elephants. That way we’ll know for sure.”

Bea crept across the carpet, and together they pressed their noses on the shivery cold window.

ONE elephant TWO elephant THREE elephant BOOM.

ONE elephant TWO elephant CRASH.

ONE elephant WHALLOP.

OHHHHHHH!

The last one, they didn’t even have time to count: the lightning and thunder came both at once, and a thick jagged spear of light streaked straight onto the road right outside the bedroom window!

“Look!” said Ottie “Look Bea – right there where the lightning was! There’s something shining in the street! I wonder what it can be?”

Quick as a flash, Ottie darted off the windowsill (forgetting all about not touching the floor in her hurry) and down the stairs, Bea scrambling as quick as she could behind.

They needed to get out – but how? The door was locked up tight, and the key on the highest high shelf their dad could reach.

Quieter than the quietest they’d ever been, they got the little table in the hall and balanced the stool on top and on top of that, teetered the wastepaperbasket. Now, Ottie could reach on her tippermost toes for the front door key. Nearly – oops – phew! There it was.

Off the wastepaperbasket, down the stool, jump to the floor.

Ottie slid the key into the lock. Bea turned it. Together, they pulled the heavy door open and …

Splash! Yuk! Wet toes.

It was raining so hard outside that water poured in through the open door.

Quick! Wellies! Ottie helped Bea squeeze her mac on over her pyjamas, squashed her tutu under her big hoody raincoat, and shoved her feet into her magic boots.

Now they were ready.

Oh, let it still be there …

The street was more like a stream in all the rain. Water rushed almost to the top of Bea’s wellies as they sploshed across to where they’d seen the lightning strike.

Then – BANG! – what was that? More thunder?

No – worse! – the front door shutting tight behind them. With the key on the other side of the lock!

Oh dear.

Oh well, they were definitely on an adventure now …

And at least the rain was stopping at last.

Now, where was that shiny thing? Leaves and acorns and twigs floated past and for a sad little moment it seemed they might have imagined it after all. But then, under a particularly sticky stick that Bea thought she might save for a game of Pooh sticks later, they saw it.

A key!

Twinkling and shimmering under the rainstream, it shone now silver, now gold, now bronze.

Ottie reached into the cold, fast water and plucked it up.

Where had it come from? More interestingly, what would it unlock?

Maybe, just maybe perhaps, it would open their own front door?

But then the adventure would be over, and it was much too early for that. Ottie wasn’t at all ready to go back to bed and drop off to sleep when the world looked so silvery and inviting in all the rain.

Looping the key between her fingers, she took Bea’s hand and set off in search of what happened next.

CHAPTER TWO

In which Ottie and Bea meet some surprising new friends.

{Chapter Two was imagined by Astrid, Evie, Kate, Norah, Ottilie and Ruby}

Bea really really wanted to use her stick now. The world had turned into one giant perfect place for Pooh sticks! Ottie did agree, but somehow it wasn’t quite the what-happened-next she was looking for. They could play Pooh sticks any day. In fact, they did play Pooh sticks nearly every day. It was Bea’s favourite thing to do. Ottie supposed, if nothing better came along, it would still be a little bit of an adventure to play Pooh sticks by moonlight for a change.

But really, she wanted to know: what was the key for? What would it open? And where might it lead?

Just as she was about to relent, and find a good spot for Pooh Sticks, she saw it. Low down in the wall that ran beside the wall: a teeny tiny door. She might almost have missed it, if Bea hadn’t tried to pick one of the roses that grew there to be the most beautiful Pooh stick stick, and hurt her finger on one of its thorns. When Ottie bent down to kiss her finger better, there it was! Just big enough to crawl through. And right in the middle, a keyhole.

Somehow, Ottie just knew, even before she put the key into the dark, inviting slot, that it would fit. And, do you know what? It did!

The girls could tell right away that they’d come to a magical place. Even if finding a key at the end of a lightning bolt and happening upon a tiny door in a wall hadn’t given them the clues, opening that door and finding on the other side a secret garden would have told them in an instant.

The moon shone brighter here, and there was no hint of the rain which still dripped from the trees on the street outside. And in the moon’s rays, the garden sparkled.

Ottie and Bea’s eyes grew wider and wider as they looked all around. They saw roses, of every colour, growing everywhere. Not just any roses – when Ottie looked closer, she could see their pollen glittered with diamonds. No wonder the garden sparkled so!

Bea couldn’t contain her excitement. Totally forgetting to be scared, she ran all about, exploring everything. There – in the tree: an owl! And peeking behind that bush – a fox! Little red toadstools clustered in rings across the lawn, and squirrels chattered sleepily from branches as she passed. She had just spied a perfect little bridge across a stream and was running over to try it out for Pooh Sticks when – splat! She tripped down a hole in the grass and fell flat on her face.

“Oy! Look where you’re goin’ with your great big clodhoppers!”

Too surprised to be hurt, Bea rolled over to see a plump brown rabbit standing over her, wagging his paw.

“Wow! A talking rabbit!” Ottie ran over to see what was going on.

“Yes, a talking a rabbit with a sore head, thanks to you lot galumphing about all over the place without a thought for the poor ordinary talking rabbits who might be sleeping what with it being the middle of the night …”

The rabbit looked as though he might keep rabbiting on and on for the rest of the night if Ottie didn’t do something quickly.

“We’re so, so, sorry” she spluttered (not quite believing that she was having a conversation with an actual talking rabbit). “We found this key you see, and then when we tried it in the little door it opened and here we are in this magical garden and Bea – she’s only little you know – well she got all excited and when she’s excited she does like to run about. We didn’t mean to wake anyone up. I’m very sorry. We just didn’t think”

“What’s that? You found a key, you say? Why didn’t you say so before? If you found the key well then that’s a whole other matter, isn’t it? That means you’ve come to help, doesn’t it? And that must be all for the good, mustn’t it?” And the rabbit started hopping up and down on the spot in time with his words.

“Help? er – yes – we’d be delighted to help.” Ottie couldn’t imagine quite how a magic garden, complete with a talking rabbit, could possibly need their help, but she wasn’t about to turn down such an excellent promise of adventure.

“well come on then” bustled the rabbit, “not a moment to lose no no not a moment” and with that he put his paws to his mouth and gave the most tremendously ear-piercing whistle.

Now if Bea had been surprised to meet a talking rabbit, well, she sat down plump on her bottom when she heard him whistle. And she stayed there with her mouth wide open when out of the trees there swung a little brown monkey.

“This here is Joey. He’ll show you what’s what and who’s who. And no, before you ask, he doesn’t talk. Monkeys don’t, as a rule, you know. Well, they chatter. But that’s quite another thing. Anyhoo, he knows the way and what to do and that’s what counts. So what are you standing there gawping for? Chop chop! Not a moment to lose! Time’s passing while you dilly dally away. And time, as we all know, is funny”

And before Ottie and Bea could even say goodbye, with a flash of his bright white tail, he was gone back down his rabbit hole.

Joey the monkey took hold of Bea’s hand in his tiny soft one and pulled her to her feet. Then, reaching out to Ottie too, he skipped with them across the garden to the bottom of a big, old oak tree. There in the bottom of the trunk there was a gap, just big enough for Ottie to duck inside. In they went, and found, cut into the heart of the tree, were steps leading up up up right to the topmost branches.

The monkey scampered ahead, with Bea and Ottie fast behind, round and round and all the way up to the bright green canopy of leaves where they brushed the sky.

Blinking in the moonlight, they were just about to gaze around at the garden down below, and the stars up above, when they saw something even more beautiful: on every leaf of the tree there sat a butterfly, their wings shimmering all the colours of the rainbow.

The monkey clapped his hands, and all of a sudden, the butterflies rose as one into the air.

And it was then that Ottie and Bea saw that what they’d thought were butterflies, were little tiny people – with wings! Fairies, in fact! And each of those tiny people seemed to be pointing.

Ottie looked to the left, guided by hundreds of little fingers, and saw, far in the distance, down a valley and over a hill, a railway station.

“But how will we get there?” she wondered aloud. The monkey danced and chattered on the tree, and the fairies danced in the sky, while Ottie thought.

Bea suddenly shouted so loud that it nearly shocked Ottie out of the tree:

“BOOTS!” she cried.

“of course!” said Ottie “why didn’t I think of that? Oh, clever Bea!”

Quick as they could, considering they were balanced at the top of a very tall oak tree, Ottie hoisted Bea into a piggyback, and Joey the monkey jumped onto her head, and they were ready.

“Magic boots, magic boots, turn into a parachute!”

With a WHOOSH that sent the fairies dancing to the stars, the boots shot out two fine canopies of silk, and Ottie, Bea and their new monkey friend were lifted light as a feather onto the breeze and up out of the tree.

CHAPTER THREE

In which Ottie and Bea travel to a magical land.

{Chapter Three was imagined by Astrid, Evie, Kate, Norah, Ottilie and Ruby}

Now, magic boots which turn into a parachute are all very well. In fact they’re pretty brilliant. But they are really quite tricky to steer. And with Bea on her back and a monkey on her head, Ottie was somewhat alarmed to find that they were flying higher and higher, up almost to the moon, and she had no way of getting them back down again, let alone guide them over the valley and on to the railway station.

But just as she thought this adventure might take them in a whole new direction, away into the stars, Ottie felt a tugging on the canopy above. Looking up, she saw that the hundreds of fairies had grasped hold of the silk and were pulling with all their might to drag the floating children through the air.

Now, Ottie could stop worrying and look down at the tiny world below. Toyshopland really did look as though it was made of toys, from up here! Little streams glistened in the moonlight, running through woods small enough for a baby to hold and round hills just the right size for a comfy seat. And there, in the distance, was a perfect little steam train, with a puff of smoke like cotton wool tufting out above.

A train!

“oh quick! We’d better hurry!” And Ottie and Bea tried to make themselves as light as possible to help the fairies swoop them down through the valley, pointing their toes and reaching forwards towards the station.

It was as if the stationmaster had known they were coming, for there waiting for them was a porter, reaching up to guide them gently to the platform and help Ottie fold away the tangled threads of parachute back into her magic boots (I’m afraid even magic things need tidying). He was just in the nick of time, because the moment the last piece of silk was tucked away, up puffed the train with a loud TOO-TOOT!!

Ottie and Bea thanked the porter for all his help, and Joey the monkey gave him a lovely tickly monkey kiss which left him chuckling for days. Then they turned for a proper look at the train.

Well, it really was perfect: orange, and pink, and purple and brown. One carriage spotty, the next carriage stripey. It reminded Ottie of a toy train she’d loved when she was little, come to life.

And then the doors swung open, in a shower of glitter, and the girls and their new monkey friend jumped aboard. Inside, the seats were velvet, and the roof was studded with hundreds of lights like miniature stars, but there was barely a moment to take it all in before the Stationmaster blew his whistle, and they were off. Ottie had to grab Bea’s pyjamas to stop her falling out of the window, she was leaning out so far to wave goodbye to the fairies.

Suddenly, Bea was very tired and sad. She was far from home, and she had loved the fairies and now they were gone. She began to cry.

Now Bea, as you know, was a brave little girl, and did not cry very often. But when she cried, oh my, she cried.

Ottie tried everything. She gave her a big squeeze. She pulled her ugliest face. She told her funniest jokes. Joey the monkey tried to help too. He turned somersaults, he did a silly dance. He hung upside down by his tail from the chandeliers.

Which is when Ottie noticed that they weren’t chandeliers at all. They were lots and lots of lollipops, hanging in bunches from the ceiling!

Perfect! Ottie reached up and picked a bright rainbow coloured one and popped it in Bea’s mouth. Just like that, Bea stopped crying and as the delicious sweet stickiness seeped onto her tongue, all was well with the world once more. Better than well: it was a magic lollipop that was all the flavours in the world!

The train had been racketing along lickety split all the while, and now Ottie turned to look at the blurry view as it rushed past the windows. They were heading for a tall tall mountain, and Ottie warned Bea to get ready for the tunnel. But no! Rather than go through the middle of the mountain, as a train normally would, it began to climb, higher and higher, steeper and steeper. And instead of slowing right down to a painful chug, as a normal train should, it seemed to be going faster and faster the higher it went. And then – suddenly – all was quiet. Once more, Ottie and Bea could hardly believe their eyes. Because rather than toppling over the other side and down the mountain, the train had shot right off the top and up into the sky. They were flying!

Higher and higher they went, and for the second time that day they found themselves up among the stars. Only this time there were no fairies guiding them back to the ground, they carried on shooting up like a rocket, right around the moon, then swerved back down to where they could see the earth glowing so far below it looked like a great green moon itself.

Now they could see they were heading for the very top of the world. Closer and closer the train flew, and looking down Ottie and Bea saw what looked like a magical land.

It was covered all over with snow, which is what Ottie would expect at the top of the world. But nothing else was as she expected. Instead of polar bears and penguins, they saw brown gloopy rivers which looked suspiciously like melted chocolate, and floating on top of them, boats which could well have been made of gingerbread, with what seemed to be marshmallow sails.

“This is our kind of place!” shouted Ottie, and Bea jumped up and down on the seats with excitement.

But instead of jumping with her, Joey the monkey just looked sad, and frowned out of the window.

Ottie went and sat beside him, and held his hand.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

Joey pointed with his small, soft leathery finger, and as the train began a spiral descent towards the station below, Ottie looked more carefully at the landscape all around.

Yes, the rivers were chocolate and on them were gingerbread boats with marshmallow sails. But as they drew nearer, she could see the boats were abandoned, the sails turned soggy, the river was covered over with the kind of puckered milky skin you get when your hot chocolate turns cold.

With a soft bump, the train landed, and its door swung open with a cheery ‘ping’.

Ottie felt Bea’s warm little hand clutch hers as they stepped out into this strange, quiet world, and Joey the monkey led them up a curling path away from the station.

There, at the foot of a sugar loaf mountain, which glistened like ice in the cold thin sun, they saw a huge flag fluttering in the chilly breeze. It was white, with big red letters slashed across.

SOS

“Save our souls” whispered Ottie. “Oh dear, somebody really does need our help.”

CHAPTER FOUR

In which the mystery deepens ...

{Chapter Four was imagined by Astrid, Ella, Evie, Kate, Norah, Ottilie and Patsy}

“What’s a soul?” asked Bea.

“A soul is what makes a person a person,” said Ottie “and SOS is what people say when they need help from strangers. Which is us. So shall we go and find out what’s up? Joey, what should we do?”

The monkey hopped ahead, to a big wooden shed standing beneath the flag. It was rickety and falling-down, covered all over in cobwebs and moss, with tall glass windows turned smeary and green. Ottie used a corner of her tutu to wipe clean a spot big enough to peek through.

It was so dark inside the shed that it took her a moment to see anything. As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she could make out a tiny spot of light that flickered and sent shadows dancing towards her. Maybe it was a trick of those shadows which made the man inside seem like a giant. He was hunched forwards over a huge table, and seemed to be asleep. Ottie could feel the window under her hands tremble with his snores.

“errrm …” Ottie whispered, “I’m not sure this is the right place, Joey. I don’t think he needs our help. In fact, I don’t think we should tell him we’re here at all. Come on Bea, I think it’s time for us to be going, before he wakes up …”

Joey was surprisingly strong for such a small monkey, and although he couldn’t speak his eyes were full of questions as he grasped hold of Ottie’s hand and pulled Bea’s pyjamas to stop them leaving.

Bea didn’t want to leave either, or at least not until she’d seen what was through the great green window. While Ottie was distracted by the monkey, she rushed back to the shed and scratched her own patch of clean to look through. But she was in too much of a hurry and banged her head on the glass with a mighty CRASH.

Ottie froze.

From inside the shed came an answering thump, and then a scraaaape of an enormous chair being pushed back.

AAAAAAAH

Oh dear, someone was really angry

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

Very angry indeed

CHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The most earsplitting sneeze erupted from inside the shed, shaking sugary snow from trees all the way up the mountain.

Bea ran as fast as she could away from the window and hid behind Ottie, and the two girls watched in horror as the rickety wooden shed began to sway and judder, back and forth, and then with a terrible skritching-screeching sound collapsed down to the ground.

In the middle of the rubble, picking bits of moss and cobweb from his face, stood the tallest man Ottie had ever seen. As big as a house, he was, and very strange looking indeed. His hair – what they could see of it, under the dust - was bright pink, and he had stood up so quickly that his trousers had fallen down, so there he stood in his pants (I’m pleased to say they were those pants that are more like shorts, and were really quite jolly: half blue, and half orange). His ears, as you can imagine, were very big indeed, and his nose looked like a large purple potato.

“Oh my goodalie goodleness” boomed the giant, somehow managing to pull his trousers up with one hand and blow his nose on a handkerchief the size of a table cloth with the other, “this blimmin cold, will it never end?”

Joey the monkey chattered with excitement and skipped up to sit on the giant’s shoulder.

“Hello my dear Joey, welcome home: we’ve missed you. Who’s this you’ve brought to visit?”

The giant scrabbled on the table for a pair of half-moon glasses which he hooked round his dinner-plate ears before peering down at the girls.

“Hello” said Ottie, who was always polite, even in the face of possible danger, “I’m Ottie, and this is Bea”

“Very pleased to meet you” said the giant, and reached out a finger for them to shake.

Bea was enchanted: he reminded her of nothing so much as her favourite jack-in-a-box, and quite forgetting to be scared, she clapped her hands and giggled with delight.

Ottie found herself curtsying as she looked up into big, kind eyes which twinkled above the giant’s beard.

“We saw your sign,” she said “and we came to help. Joey brought us. But I don’t think it can mean us, can it? I don’t see how we can help you?”

“Ah, then I take it you haven’t heard the story of the mouse and the lion? What are they teaching you in school these days? Hoh yes, you can help us very much indeed. Follow me and you will see …”

As they followed the giant round behind the ruins of the shed and into the forest at the foot of the mountain, Ottie realized how very still and silent everything was, now that the echoes of the sneeze had died away. There were no birds singing or aeroplanes flying overhead, and the forest was dark and quiet. All around were pine trees, filling the air with the smell of winter. But look closer and the leaves were dry and brown, like their Christmas tree had gone that time Ottie’s dad put it too close to the radiator.

They came to a clearing, which Ottie could tell had been beautiful once: mossy rocks surrounded a little pool, now clogged with weeds, and a waterfall blocked with dry dead vines. In the pool was the same skinned-over chocolate water they’d spotted in the rivers all around.

“Dolls Houses!” shouted Bea, and bent down to peep into the windows of a tiny home no bigger than her boot. All around the edge of the clearing were little houses, some made out of rocks, others like the wooden musical boxes Ottie loved to see at the German market which came to Toyshopland each autumn.

“Dolls!” Bea reached in through the door and brought out a floppy manikin just bigger than her fist.

“No, not dolls,” The giant shook his head, “Elves, and you must be very very gentle with them”.

“Elves?” said Bea. “But …”

“Yes,” sighed the giant, “My poor elves are too sick to work. And that is why we need your help, very very much.”

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CHAPTER FIVE

In which Ottie and Bea are kind.

{Chapter Five was imagined by Astrid, Evie, Kate, Norah, Ottilie and Sophia}

“Poor elves,” said Bea, and she stroked the doll-like man’s hair gently with her fingers, rocking him in her arms as if he was a baby.

The elf just lay there, without moving or making a sound. One arm hung loose over Bea’s, and his face was green.

“I’ve never seen an elf before,” whispered Ottie (it seemed right to whisper near such a small and sickly man), “I didn’t know they had green faces?”

“Well no, normally they don’t” the giant’s booming voice was gentler now “that is the sickness. And he is one of the better ones. The others have spots all over their bodies, they are burning hot to touch. ‘Tis the worst case of Elf Pox I have ever seen, and there is nothing I can do to help them”. Ottie was horrified to see one huge tear squidge out of his eye, run over his great potato of a nose and land with a loud splat on the ground by her feet.

“What do you mean, you can’t help them? Isn’t this a magic land? Aren’t you …? I mean … I just thought because of the elves and the chocolate rivers and everything. And your beard and red trousers,” Ottie stammered on, “ Well … I thought perhaps you might be … Father Christmas?”

The giant smiled. “Yes, in your legends that is how I am known. I have many names to many different people. The elves just call me Pop.”

“Father Christmas?!” shouted Bea, nearly dropping the elf in her excitement. “Father Christmas!!!!!”

“Sorry about her, it’s just that Christmas is her most favourite time, and Father Christmas is her most favourite man,” Ottie explained. “Only – you’re not really a man are you? I never knew you were a giant.”

“How else do you think I can get to all those places around the world in one night?” chuckled Father Christmas.

“But how do you fit down the chimneys?” wondered Ottie.

“That’s where my elves come in, y’see. It’s not just that they make the presents and pack them all up, they’re the ones who deliver them too. A man of my size can’t go barging in to little children’s bedrooms at night when they’re tucked up fast asleep. It would give them all kinds of horrors. Not to mention what their parents would say. So my darling elves it is who nip down the chimbleys and under door cracks. Stop at nothing they do, to make sure the childers get their presents. Only this year none of that is going to happen, unless we can stop this blessed Pox.” Ottie watched with alarm as her new friend Father Christmas suddenly bumped down to the ground, buried his head in his hands and began to howl with weeping. Joey the monkey chattered soothingly and stroked the giant’s wild pink hair with his paws.

Pink hair … that was another thing Ottie hadn’t expected about Father Christmas. But there wasn’t time to wonder about that.

“Come on then Bea,” said Ottie, “Put the elf back in his bed and let’s see what we can do to make the elves better. Joey, can you help us? I don’t think Father Christmas – Pop – is going to be much use for a while.”

Bea refused to put the elf down. Stubbornly clutching him to her chest, she said “honey. Honey and hot water”.

“You’re right,” said Ottie, “whenever we’re poorly, mum gives us manuka honey and hot water to drink. I’m not sure it can cure Elf Pox, but it might be a start. Joey, do you know anywhere we can find some honey?”

Joey chattered and nodded, then leaped from Father Christmas’s shoulder and scampered off, looking back to make sure the girls were following. They crossed over the clearing, past the sad, silent elf houses, and onto a narrow path, which wove between the pine trees back into the woods.

Ottie was just resisting the urge to jump up and down to see if the pine needles underfoot were as bouncy as they felt, when Joey suddenly stopped and looked up into the branches above.

Ottie looked too, and saw near the top of the tree was a perfectly round hole, and flying in and out were hundreds of bees.

“But how can we get the honey?”

Joey looked sad again, and turned towards the elf in Bea’s arms. Was it Ottie’s imagination, or did the little man look a bit less green than before? Bea was still stroking his hair gently, and singing him one of her funny nonsense songs under her breath. Yes, his face was definitely much paler now. And then his hand twitched. And his nose wiggled. Ottie was sure of it. And there was no doubt at all when he arched his back and yawned like a kitten.

“Hello little elf” whispered Bea, “I love you.”

The elf opened his eyes and smiled up at Bea. “Ello,” he said, “and who are you, little girl?”

“Bea” said Bea, and gave him a big kiss right on his forehead.

“Thank you for making me feel better,” and the elf leapt straight out of Bea’s arms and onto the path for all the world as if he hadn’t been lying unconscious just moments ago. “What are we doing here in the woods then?”

“We came to find honey, to help you and the other elves,” explained Ottie.

“Aha, what a kind and lovely thought,” smiled the elf. “And that you see is the beginning of the betterness.”

“What do you mean?” asked Ottie.

“There’s only one cure for the Elf Pox, and that’s to reverse what started it in the first place. See, every time a child is mean or selfish or bullying, a little bit of the pox appears, and an elf gets sick. And then every time a child is kind and thoughtful and thinks of others before they think of themselves, it zaps the pox and the elf gets better. That’s how it is for us elves, always swinging between sick and okay, spotty and not. But this year, the pox has got out of hand. There’s just too much pox and not enough cure.”

“Ohhh” Ottie felt ashamed and sad, as if she should apologise on behalf of all the naughty unkind children in the world.

“Don’t look so sad, slightly bigger girl. All it took was Bea here singing me her pretty song and giving me a lovely big kiss and look at me, I’m right as rain. Only trouble is, it’s a one child one elf thing, so it’s not as if we can get her trilling her way around the elf houses and curing all of us.”

“I’m Ottie,” said Ottie (a little bit miffed at being called only slightly bigger when clearly she was much the biggest person there and certainly the bravest). “So are you saying there’s no point us trying to get the honey? There’s no hope at all for all the elves?”

“Oh there’s definitely a point. The honey can’t cure, but it can soothe and let us know that help is on the way: kindness is catching, you know, just like the pox. Come on, Joey, let’s do our thing.”

Joey lifted the elf onto his shoulder, and sprang up the tree trunk. As he climbed, the little man whistled a lilting, soothing tune, and the bees began a slow and drowsy dance, so that by the time elf and monkey reached the perfectly round hole at the top of the tree, Joey was able to reach in and pull out a long honeycomb dripping with honey, wrap it in leaves, and drop back down to the ground without being stung.

They took their precious harvest back to the elf village, where Father Christmas had (I’m glad to say) pulled himself together enough to help them go round from house to house, giving each elf a dab of honey on his or her lips, and tucking them safely back into their beds. Bea found some bits of rabbit fur and wool snagged on the bushes round about, to make them even more cosy, and sang them each a bit of nonsense song, just in case it might make them wake up.

And all the while Ottie was thinking and thinking, wracking her brains how she might help the elves – and not to mention Father Christmas – to get better in time for Christmas.

“I’ve got it!” she shouted at last, stopping so suddenly in her tracks that Joey the monkey bumped into her bottom. “I know how we can help. We just need to get home. Can you get us home?”

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CHAPTER SIX

In which Ottie and Bea prepare for a journey.

{Chapter Six was imagined by Astrid, Daisy, Evie, Norah, Ottilie, Ruby V and Sophia}

“Your idea doesn’t involve disgusting medicine, does it?” Pop looked a little worried, “Because we tried that already, and look what it did to my hair.”

Ah, so that explained the pink. Ottie felt better at that. It really was quite disturbing to think she’d been imagining Father Christmas wrong all these years.

“No, no, don’t you worry” she reassured him, “what I’m thinking about is our friends. They’re not disgusting, at least not all the time, and they won’t turn your hair pink. I don’t think. So, can you tell us how to get home? Can we call the magic train?”

“Hmmm no the train only comes here every third Monday after breakfast, I think it might be better if you take the sleigh.”

“The sleigh? Wow!” Ottie felt a thrill of excitement.

“Rudolph!” blurted Bea.

“Ah, no, not that sleigh. I’m afraid I had to let the reindeer loose on the island without the elves to help me take care of them. It’ll take days to coax them back. And anyway you’ll be safer in the dog sled, reckon.”

“But how will we know the way?” Ottie was still getting that beginning-of-an-adventure shiver, but this was starting to sound a bit more of an adventure than she’d bargained for.

“Rudolph,” Bea’s mouth was turning down at the corners and her top lip was getting that dangerous wobble it got when she was about to cry.

“Well now, little Bea, don’t be upsetting yourself. That’s a good idea you’re having there. Alan, my friend, do you think you might be able to persuade Rudolph back into the fold?”

“If you’ll lend me Bongo, I can” replied the elf (whose name, it turned out, was Alan).

“BONGOOOOO!!!!!” if the giant’s voice had boomed before, it positively shook the candyfloss from the mountains now.

Ottie and Bea’s ears were still ringing when out of the woods pelted a ginormous fluffy red and white striped cat.

Bongo was almost as tall as Bea, which is just as well because Alan promptly hopped onto his back as though he were a horse and the two galloped off through the trees.

“Right, let’s go and see about this here sled shall we? Come on Joey, come on Ottie and little Bea” and with no more effort than if he were picking fallen plums in an orchard, Pop scooped the girls up, one in each hand, and with the monkey safely back on his shoulder carried them all three back to his shed – or what remained of it – at the foot of the mountain.

There, he rummaged around in the rubble (he put Ottie and Bea gently on the ground first, I’m pleased to say. It was pretty dusty in there) and pulled out a beautiful red leather harness. Joey stood on Pop’s head, put two leathery fingers into his mouth, and gave a piercing whistle, which brought six husky dogs trotting down from the mountains. The monkey was nimble and quick as he hitched them up to a simple wooden sled, and the dogs panted eagerly, ready to be off and away.

Pop scooped the two girls on to the seat at the back of the sled, and tucked them under a snuggly fur blanket.

“Now where’s that Alan got to I wonder? He’ll need to be going with you, to drive the sled and see you safe home. That Rudolph, he thinks just because of his red nose he can get away with anything. Always the trickiest reindeer of the lot, he is. Ah -  here they are at last.

“Now then Alan, you make sure these two precious ladies get back to their own beds safe and sound.”

“Will do” piped Alan, and with a cheerful salute to Pop and Joey he sprang onto the driver’s seat, picked up the reins, and with Rudolph leading the way, they were off.

The sled ran swift and silent over the snow, the dogs pulling and racing past the cold still rivers of chocolate. Alan pointed them towards a slope which lifted out from the edge of the island over the sea, and Ottie and Bea were no longer surprised to find themselves shooting into the air as the dogs carried on running through the sky, up above the clouds, until the giant Father Christmas looked no bigger than an elf, waving back at them from underneath his flag.

Ottie could just make out the bold red letters: SOS, and knew this was the most important adventure of her life so far.

CHAPTER SEVEN

In which Ottie and Bea face great danger.

{Chapter Seven was imagined by Astrid, Daisy, Evie, Norah, Ottilie, Ruby V and Sophia}

“Hungry” said Bea.

“Really?” said Ottie. “But we haven’t any food now. Why didn’t you say so before, when we had chocolate rivers and honey and things to eat? Alan, there isn’t anything, is there?”

“Oh dear no” said Alan, “I was in such a hurry to find Rudolph and get going I clean forgot about vittles for the ride. Can you hold on, Miss Bea? I’m a might peckish meself, but there’s not much to be found in these parts.”

“Chocolate” said Bea, and pointed over the edge of the sled.

Looking down, Ottie saw they were flying over a lush, green land criss-crossed with rivers much like Father Christmas’ island – only these seemed thick and delicious, no sign of the cold skin they’d seen before.

“Oh, might we stop, Alan?” Ottie pleaded. “I know we’re in a hurry, but we’ve never seen a chocolate river before.”

“Too dangerous,” Alan shook his head, and as if to prove the truth of what he said, a strong wind began to shake the sides of the sled.

The clouds around were getting darker and darker, and the air was turning colder and colder. At first, Ottie thought the freezing flakes buffeting her face were snow, until she licked her lips to stop the ice forming there and found it tasted sweet. She was about to tell Bea to stick out her tongue and catch the drifting candyfloss when a mighty blast picked up the sled, dogs and all, and sucked them into a terrifying whirlwind.

Round and around they spun, clutching desperately together and holding the sides of the sled so they weren’t tipped out. Rudolph’s nose flickered a bright red far away, like a warning light, and there was nothing to do but screeeeeeaaaaaaaaammmmmm as they tumbled downwards.

Ottie watched in horror as the rivers which had looked so tempting only moments before built into huge waves, and seemed to be sucked towards them by the wind as if they were all together in a giant straw. Then everything went black, and instead of the whirling clouds around them, Ottie realized that they were in a funnel of chocolate – the swirling river frozen the instant it touched the icy sky.

Now they were sliding over the chocolate, the dogs forced to run as fast as their paws could carry them so that the sled wouldn’t come crashing in to them from behind. Their claws made a clattering screeching sound as they scrabbled to stay upright on the smooth hard surface, and Ottie, Bea and Alan hung on for dear life as the sled bounced up, down, left, right, along the frozen river’s surface.

At last, they began to slow, and Alan dared to peep out over the fur rug.

“Where’s Rudolph?” he trembled, and Ottie realized that she hadn’t seen the reassuring flash of red since they fell into the chocolate hurricane. Desperately, they began to look out over the banks of the river, and back towards where they had fallen, but there was no sign.

“Rudolph!” Bea jumped up alarmingly in the sled and pointed to a dark hill looming at a bend in the river.

Yes, there was a dim red light ahead. Alan pulled the reins and brought the dogs to a halt. Exhausted, they curled up on the riverbank, and Ottie gave them each a pat on the nose before slipping Alan into the bunny-pocket on her t-shirt, and taking Bea by the hand.

Something told her it wouldn’t be wise for them to charge straight in, so instead they slipped quietly from tree to tree.

There was a house on the hill, black, spiky and spooky. Ottie and Bea crept as close as they could, ducking down behind a bush at the edge of a rough yard. Poor Rudolph was tied to a stake in the middle, his head drooping. Around him danced a band of plump little children, each dressed in a ridiculous velvet suit, taking it in turns to poke the reindeer’s nose with a stick. No wonder his light was shining so dimly now.

“Oh no,” whispered Alan, “they’ve trapped him at the Chemistry House. I told you it was too dangerous here.”

“What can we do?” said Ottie. “We have to rescue him.”

Bea was quicker though. Before Ottie even realized she had gone, a small determined figure with a white dandelion puff of hair was barreling into the bullies, snatching the stick from their fat fingers, and stamping her feet.

“Stoppitstoppitstoppitstoppittttt” Bea yelled.

“OOooooohhhhhWhoooo have we here?” a hideous cackle shrieked from the top turret of the house. Looking up, Ottie saw a hooked green nose above rotten teeth, and long snaggly purple hair that reached all the way down to the ground.

Somehow, the witch climbed down her own hair (even thinking about it later, Ottie couldn’t work out how she possibly did that) and in the blink of an eye was standing in the circle of children.

Her crooked back made it easy for her to peer down at Bea, who was looking a bit less determined now but still holding the horrid stick as though it was a sword.

“Well, horrible little girl, who are you?”

.

“Bea,” whispered Bea.

“Hmmm. Bea. What an icky sicky name for an icky sicky child. You smell. You reek. Of good. EEEEEEuuuuuucccccccccchhhhhhh.”

And all the children began to dance again, holding their noses and chanting “stinky stinky goody sneak.”

“Well, we’ll soon fix that, won’t we my lovelies?” and pinching the cheeks of the piggy little boy nearest to her, the witch clutched Bea’s arm in her bony fingers and dragged her towards the house.

“These are children who know how to behave,” the witch lectured as she went, “kickers and hitters, pushers, rushers and boffers the lot of them. Every child has a little streak of mean inside – yes, every child. But you’ve got to know how to grow it. Oh yes. Do you like liquorice? You will!” and she gave a hideous laugh as she opened a cage on the outside of the house and shoved poor Bea inside.

Ottie was clutching the branches of the bush in front of her to stop herself from running straight out and beating the witch with her own beastly stick. But it was no good if both of them ended up in that cage. Ottie needed to think. How could she save her sister?

“Oh Alan,” she cried quietly, “what have we done? I wish I’d never wanted an adventure. I wish we’d never found that key. I wish we’d stayed tucked up in bed, where Bea is happiest of all.”

“If wishes were reindeer, we’d all ride in sleighs” replied Alan. “And no amount of wishing is going to help Miss Bea. Or Rudolph. No, what we need is ACTION. Now, am I right in thinking there’s something special about those boots of yours?”

“What?” sniffed Ottie. “Oh – yes. But I don’t think now is the time to be explaining about my magic boots.”

“I don’t want no explanations. I want to use them.”

“They’re a bit big for you, aren’t they?”

“Well, all right picky, just give me the one, that’ll do. But we’d better get away from the house or they’ll see us and then it’ll be liquorice for supper all round.”

Ottie really didn’t want to leave Bea alone in the cage, but for a small man, the elf had a big lot of determination. He took hold of Ottie’s tutu and pulled until she had no choice other than to tiptoe back with him to where the dogs were sleeping on the riverbank.

There, she undid the sparkly laces of her right boot and watched as Alan jumped inside.

“lace me in, and say the magic words – quick!” he said.

Ottie tied her best double bow so that the elf was fastened in securely, then stood back and chanted:

“Magic boots, magic boots, turn into a parachute!”

Out whooshed the silken canopy, and boot and elf were lifted gracefully up, up into the air.

“I’ll be back soon, don’t you worry!” Alan’s little voice drifted down to her as he flew away out of sight.

CHAPTER EIGHT

In which Ottie and Bea face even more danger.

{Chapter Eight was imagined by Astrid, Daisy, Evie, Norah, Ottilie, Ruby V and Sophia}

It seemed a long, long time that Ottie waited, worrying all the while about Bea. As often as she dared, she crept back towards the house to watch over Rudolph, tied miserably to his stake, and her little sister, who was curled up in the corner of her cage as the fat little children took it in turns to tell her tales of their naughty deeds.

“… so I kicked the ball as hard as I could into his stupid soft stomach until he couldn’t breathe and we laughed and laughed and laughed” boasted one.

“That’s nothing,” crowed another, “I didn’t use just any ordinary squishy ball. I got a cricket ball – nice and hard, that is – and then I painted it to look like a tennis ball! Made holes in all their rackets and knocked their teeth out!!! That’s what I call a smash …”

On and on their nasty stories went: telling tales, lying, stealing presents, playing tricks, cheating friends out of Disneyland tickets, spitting – it seemed there was no end to their ingenuity and meanness. Now Ottie could understand why the elves were so sick. If this was the kind of thing children were getting up to, it’s surprising the whole world hadn’t gone down with the Elf Pox.

Just as she was about to give up hope, and starting to fear that Alan must have tumbled out of his boot-parachute, Ottie saw a bright cloud of butterflies fly over the brow of the hill, and land on her hiding-place bush. Thousands more followed behind, until they covered the spiky roof of the house and turned it into a beautiful rainbow of colour.

“Oh, clever Alan!” smiled Ottie, and reached out her finger so that the nearest butterfly-fairy could flutter on. “Please will you help us?” she asked. “I don’t know if Alan – the elf – explained – but that evil witch has captured my sister and Rudolph and we need to get home so we can help Father Christmas and make the elves better and oh, please can you help?”

Ottie started to cry again. She couldn’t help it – she thought she was so brave and strong and wanting adventure, but with Bea caught in a cage by a witch she felt so helpless.

The fairy smiled, gently, and then she did the most surprising thing. Taking a miniature bottle from her sleeve, she reached out and caught one of Ottie’s tears. Then, one by one, each fairy from the bush fluttered up and did the same.

And now, here came Alan, floating back down on the parachute. No, not floating – plummeting! For, hanging from the bootlaces was a gigantic, lumpy sack.

The fairy-butterflies flew up to meet him, and with tiny hands they guided elf, parachute and sack down to land smack in the middle of the yard.

The bully-children had stopped their taunting of Bea and were watching open-mouthed. Some of them were trying to trap the fairies, or swat them with their fat fingers, but the butterfly wings were too quick for them.

“Hello children!” Shouted Alan at the top of his voice (which wasn’t that loud, as you can imagine, but it did the trick.) “Because you have all been so good this year, Queen Chemistry has arranged for you to have an extra bit of Christmas!”

“HOORAYYYY!!!!!” shouted the children, their greed for presents so great that they never stopped to wonder what good it might be that they had done, when all they ever wanted was for the bad.

Alan had to leap away as they pushed and shoved each other aside in their haste to reach the presents. One boy at the front was too quick for his own good, and was knocked and trampled into the ground by the others barging and grabbing.

They were so distracted that they didn’t notice Ottie running to the cage door, and with the help of her fairy-butterfly friends breaking open the lock to set Bea free. And nobody saw Alan cut through the rope which tied poor Rudolph down, so that when the evil witch Queen Chemistry came scrambling down her hair-ladder to see what all the fuss was about, and tripped on her own tangles, she was pranged on his antlers.

Witches don’t bleed when they die, Ottie realized. They hiss and sizzle, and vanish away into a puff of foul-smelling smoke.

Now it was the other children’s turn to cry. Their stepmother was gone, and as the fairies flew amongst them, they dropped a potion of Ottie’s tears onto their eyes, so they could see clearly all the bad that they had done. At last, they were ashamed.

Clutching Bea’s hand so tightly she never wanted to let go, Ottie faced the witch’s children.

“It’s not too late, you know,” she said. “You may have done things worse than I can imagine, but I know a way for you to make up for it. You will go to Father Christmas, who needs our help. And you will be his special present-wrappers. But know this, none of the presents will be for you. They are for the good children in the world, and that is who we need to go and find now, or there will be no Christmas this year, or the next.”

Ottie, Bea, Alan and the fairy-butterflies allowed each child to pack a bag, and break off a piece of the liquorice-house, then marched them down to the river bank. There, they tied the liquorice slabs to the back of the sled and ordered the sad little bullies to hold tight. Alan whispered to Rudolph, and then hup! Reindeer and dogs leaped into the sky, pulling their prisoners behind, off to the island where giant Pop would see no nonsense from even the naughtiest girl, and was sure to turn their mean to kindness before long.

“I don’t know about you,” said Ottie, “but I’ve had quite enough adventure for today. Now, please, can we go home and find our friends?”

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CHAPTER NINE

In which Ottie and Bea come home at last.

{Chapter Nine was imagined by Astrid, Evie, Kate, Norah, Ottilie and Sophia}

But oh dear, they had just watched the dog sled fly away with the witch’s children towed behind. How could they get home now?

Ottie felt like crying again as she looked down at Bea and Joseph. They might have saved Bea from the witch, but she was still out in the middle of the night in her pyjamas and not tucked up at home in her cosy bed. What kind of a big sister would let that happen?

Bea didn’t seem to mind, though: she was happily reaching out her hand for the fairy-butterflies to land on her fingers, and then she started to chase them around the yard, dancing with them round the pole that only moments before had been a cruel prison for Rudolph. The fairies had caught up the silk from Ottie’s parachute-boots and were wrapping Bea gently round with it, then setting her free.

Laughing and skipping, Bea managed to leap onto the sheet of silk and the fairies flew up with her lying on it like a magic carpet. She peeked over the edge and waved down at her sister.

“Joseph,” said Ottie, “I’m having an idea. Do you think the fairies are strong enough to carry us all the way home?”

“Oh yes,” replied the elf. “Fairies are strong as anything. They might look all tiny and delicate and like the wind might puff them away at any minute, but they’re tough as magic boots, are fairies.”

“Come on, then,” Ottie cried, and scooping Joseph up in one hand and carrying her magic boots in the other, she ran after Bea and the fairies.

Bea stretched out and caught Joseph as Ottie jumped on board the soft, floating hammock of silk. It was like travelling on a cloud! As the fairies beat their strong wings to carry them home, Ottie, Bea and Joseph curled up in the middle of the parachute and fell fast asleep.

It was dark when one of the fairies gently brushed Ottie’s cheek to wake her up. They were lying on their silken bed on the pavement right outside Ottie and Bea’s house.

How could it still be night, when so much had happened? Ottie knew they had been in magic time, in a magic land, but still it was strange to think of her dad just sleeping away while all this had been going on.

Ottie, Bea and Joseph thanked the fairies and watched them fly back to the secret garden, then with the elf tucked into her rabbit-pocket and the parachute neatly folded back into her boots, Ottie pushed the front door.

Oh dear. It was shut. She’d forgotten about that.

“Come on, open up,” said Joseph, “It’s cold out here and my feet are all squashed in this nasty hard pocket of yours.”

“Hard? It’s a bunny, it’s the softest pocket ever!” exclaimed Ottie.

“Not,” retorted Joseph, “It’s like standing on ice. Listen.” And he did a little dance (very little, what with him being an elf and being in a pocket) to prove his point.

Sure enough, it sounded as though he was tap-dancing. Bea tapped her fingernail on the bunny-pocket’s nose and it gave a most un-bunnyish ‘ting!’ She reached in to the pocket, trying not to tickle Joseph as she did, and pulled out – the key.

Ottie took the key, and crossing the fingers of her other hand for luck, slipped it into the front door. The luck – or the magic – must have worked, because with a soft click that sounded like a welcome home, the lock opened and quick and quiet as they could, Ottie and Bea crept up the stairs and tucked themselves up in bed just in the nick of time for their dad to come and wake them up for breakfast.

CHAPTER TEN

In which Ottie and Bea ask for help.

{Chapter Ten was imagined by Astrid, Evie, Kate, Norah, Ottilie and Sophia}

“Did you hear that terrible storm last night?” their dad asked over the porridge.

Bea was drawing a fairy with maple syrup on the top of hers, and shook her head so wildly that she spilled stickiness all over the table.

“err … no, we slept all the way through!” Ottie chirped as she mopped up the mess.

“Oh, that’s good: I thought I might have to share my bed with two wiggly girls!” He chuckled to himself. “Best wear your wellies to school today: I expect there’ll be lots of good puddles to splash in.”

And if their dad was surprised by how quickly the girls ran to put on their boots that morning, he didn’t say anything. And he didn’t seem to notice that Bea’s wellies already had splashes of water on them. Or that Ottie had an elf peeking out of her t-shirt pocket. Grown-ups never see anything they don’t expect to see. They must miss a terrible lot of interesting things.

The puddles were brilliant, but Ottie and Bea didn’t have time to splash in them much. They were in too big a hurry to get to school and tell their friends all about their adventure in the night.

As all the children lined up to go into their forms, Ottie sent a whisper round from friend to friend, telling everyone to meet for a special assembly at first break time.

She could hardly sit still through all the morning lessons. Her head was full of Father Christmas and elves and Rudolph and witches. There was no room for times tables when in your head all you could think about was how many presents there were to make and how few days there were until Christmas to do it in.

At last, the bell rang and everyone ran out into the playground. Ottie waited under the old oak tree at the bottom of the playing field, and her friends gathered round.

“Last night Bea and I had an adventure!” she announced.

“Yeah right,” shouted one mean voice from the back, “Was that like the adventure when you found your supposedly magic boots?”

“Yes as it happens, it was,” retorted Ottie. “The thing you’ll never understand, Billy, is that magic only works when you believe in it. So you’re never going to see anything magic, because you never believe anything. But this time is different, anyway. I’m not talking about magic. I’m talking about something even more important. It’s Father Christmas. He needs our help!”

Billy started to laugh then, and all the children standing nearest to him started to laugh too. “Father Christmas needs our help!” they echoed, “Ho ho ho, let’s get our beards on. Ho ho ho!”

“Well that’s a good start,” said Joseph as he climbed out of Ottie’s pocket and onto her shoulder. “I thought you said you could help, and here you go bringing me to see these mean children. I can feel the Elf Pox itching already. Let me have a go, before the spots appear.”

“SHHHHHHH!” shouted Bea. “Listen to Joseph!” and she stamped her feet and glared at mean Billy until he felt ashamed of himself and spluttered into silence.

It was then that the children gathered around noticed the little man on Ottie’s shoulder. Her friends, who had really wanted to believe her about her adventure, because Ottie’s stories were always good, were secretly relieved to see him standing there: even for Ottie, pretending you’d met Father Christmas was a bit much.

“I am Joseph. And in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m an elf. Ottie and Miss Bea here have been very brave and wonderful and they promised us you weren’t like all the other children who have been making us sick. They said you’d help us out. But it looks like they were wrong. I’d have thought that friends of such fine girls as these would be the ones we need, but it seems I’ll have to keep on looking.”

And with a look of disgust, Joseph leaped down and started to stomp away with as much cross stamping as his tiny feet would allow.

Bea started to cry, and now all the children who’d been laughing with Billy felt really bad.

They felt worse when Joseph suddenly fell to the ground and lay very still, looking quite green in the face.

“Now see what you’ve done!” yelled Ottie as Bea gently picked up the elf and started rocking him in her arms, singing him her special nonsense song. “Because you didn’t believe me and were mean about my stories, you’ve given him the Elf Pox again! Poor Joseph. But at least now you know why Father Christmas needs our help. All his elves are sick. They’re sick because we children have been selfish and unkind and beastly to each other. And now there’s no one to make presents or give them out on Christmas Eve.

“I called this special assembly because I thought we could all help. But maybe I was wrong. We can’t save Christmas after all.” Ottie put her arm round Bea’s shoulders and together they began to walk sadly out of the field, away from the school.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

In which Ottie and Bea work day and night.

{Chapter Ten was imagined by Astrid, Evie, Kate, Norah, Ottilie and Sophia}

“Stop!” Ottie’s friends shouted. “Of course we can help! It was only Billy who didn’t believe you, and he’s sorry now, aren’t you Billy?”

“yerp” muttered Billy, scuffing his feet in the tree roots. “But I still don’t see how we can help Father Christmas. I mean, he’s like magic and everything isn’t he?”

“I didn’t understand at first,” said Ottie, “But it seems his magic only works when there’s kindness in the world. You really only do get presents if you’ve been good, not just because it’s Christmas. So if we help by making presents, we’ll be doing good, and that way the elves will get better and Father Christmas will have his magic again.”

All their friends started talking at once then, clamouring ideas and suggestions: the different presents they could make, the kind things they could do, the toys they could give.

Billy was the first to realize that someone needed to take charge. Looking at Ottie to check she didn’t mind, he got an exercise book out of his bag and started making a list of what everyone was saying.

“Right,” he said. “Meet back here next break and we’ll work out who’s going to do what, and when.”

Just then, the bell rang to go back into class. Luckily, Bea was able to sneak Joseph into her classroom with her and play with him at a doll’s tea party, and none of the teachers ever guessed that he was an elf, and she really was feeding him honey to make him feel better.

By lunchtime, Joseph was well enough to help Ottie, Bea and Billy to tell the children what needed to be done.

For the rest of term, they managed to sneak present-making into all their lessons:

In woodwork, they made yoyos …

In craft and design, they made pets out of cardboard boxes and strung beads into necklaces …

In home economics, they made raspberry sweets and chocolate fudge …

In sewing, they knitted cotton blankets and made teddy bears and toy rabbits …

In literacy, they wrote books of jokes and fascinating facts …

In geography, they looked up all the children in the world to find out where they lived …

And in maths, they counted up all the presents they had made and divided them between all the children.

It was very, very, very hard work.

All through the half term holiday and every weekend, the children at Ottie and Bea’s school spent every spare moment they had making and baking.

It was lucky their dad didn’t have any time for gardening that autumn, or he would have been very surprised to find the tools in his shed buried under piles and piles of toys and games, books and balls.

But even though they were working hard day and night, harder than they’d ever worked, Ottie was starting to get worried.

There were just so many children in the world! So many presents to make! There’s no way they could ever get it all done in time for Christmas.

And then, the last straw, Joseph came to tell her and Bea that he was going home.

“You’re all doing such a good job here, you don’t need me. I’m missing my family, and Joey, and good old Pop. He’ll need me back there now, now it’s nearly Christmas and all.”

“But that’s exactly it!” cried Ottie. “It’s nearly Christmas, and we’ll never be ready in time!”

“Don’t you worry,” said Joseph, “Pop has his ways, just you wait and see.”

Nothing they could say would change his mind, not even Bea trying to lock him into her dolls house (he just climbed out of the chimney: elves are good at that). And that very night, without even giving them time to bake him a goodbye cake, he was gone.

Ottie and Bea didn’t give up, they and their friends carried on working just as hard. But they missed Joseph. They tried to go back to the secret garden again, to see if they couldn’t catch the magic train and go on a quick visit to see how the elves were getting on. But when they looked for the little door, they couldn’t find it. The magic key that Ottie carried everywhere with her in the bunny-pocket on her t-shirt no longer glowed gold and silver and bronze. It just looked like an ordinary key.

After a while, they were so tired with all the present-making that they began to wonder if it hadn’t all been just a dream after all. Maybe Ottie had made it all up, as a story to tell Bea and stop her being frightened of the thunderstorm?

But when Ottie whispered to her best friends Kate, Sophia, Evie, Astrid and Norah that she thought she might have made a mistake after all, they reminded her that they had met Joseph too, and that if Billy of all people believed that Father Christmas needed their help, then she must stop being silly and keep helping.

CHAPTER TWELVE

In which Ottie and Bea rest at last.

{Chapter Ten was imagined by Astrid, Evie, Kate, Norah, Ottilie and Sophia}

Christmas Eve morning was bright and sunny.

Bea leaped out of her soft soft bed and ran to the window.

“Snow!” she shouted, waking Ottie up from her very lovely dream about flying with the fairy-butterflies.

Ottie thought about trying out her new route to the windowsill without touching the floor, but she was too excited and just ran over the carpet instead. How perfect – thick white snow lay over everything and twinkled in the sunlight.

“I wonder if it’s made of candy-floss?” she laughed, and the girls ran downstairs as fast as they could.

Their dad was already up and waiting for them. “I thought I told you not to put your stockings out until tonight?” he said crossly.

“But – we didn’t …” Ottie started to protest, until she saw, hanging on the fireplace – not her usual stocking, but a new one, purple to match her t-shirt, and peeping out of the top a friendly face she recognized immediately.

“Joseph!” Bea cried and ran across the room to gave him a huge hug (well as huge as you can give a tiny elf, so actually it was a biglittle hug).

“Eh? Oh I see you’ve been playing games again have you. Well, glad you’ve found that Joseph doll you’ve been so upset about.” Dad went back to reading the paper while Ottie and Bea quickly put on their boots, wrapped up warm and dashed out into the garden to show Joseph all the toys they’d been working so hard to hide in the shed.

He was very impressed.

“Pop will be so pleased. All the elves are right as rain again, and those bully children have turned out to be good little workers in the end. The boxes and wrappings are ready. We just need to get all these presents off to them and we’ll be all set for delivering them tonight. Rudolph sends his love, by the way.”

And with a whistle the girls recognized from long ago and far away, he called the dogs in their bright red harness from where they’d been hiding at the end of the garden. He must have used magic then, because Ottie and Bea could never work out how such a little man had, in the twinkling of an eye, loaded all the hundreds of presents onto the sled. They scarcely had time to kiss him goodbye before he’d hopped into the driving seat, picked up the reins and was off.

“He didn’t even say thank you!” said Ottie, all the excitement of the morning suddenly whooshing out of her and leaving her feeling like a deflated balloon.

But Bea just laughed and threw a snowball at her, so that Ottie couldn’t help but laugh back and run after her into the street where all their friends were waiting for them to come and build snowmen and write their names in the huge drifts which covered every bush in the park nearby.

It felt blissful, after their months of hard work, not to worry any more about Christmas and making presents. They ran and jumped and slid and laughed and shouted and by the time they fell into bed, exhausted, they had almost forgotten everything they had done and felt just like normal children again.

“Aren’t you going to put your stockings up, girls?” their dad asked, perplexed. “You were so excited you hung them up a day early, and now you’ve forgotten Father Christmas comes tonight!”

“Silly us!” said Ottie, winking at Bea, and just to please him they put their stockings out on the fireplace as usual.

“We won’t get presents this year,” Ottie whispered to Bea as they lay in bed that night, “after all, it wouldn’t be any kind of a surprise, when we made them. But that’s okay, isn’t it? We’ve had the best present of all: an adventure we’ll never forget.” And the girls fell asleep with big grins on their faces, dreaming about flying with Rudolph and chocolate rivers and all the happy faces of all the children in the world.

EPILOGUE

Christmas Day.

Imagine Ottie and Bea’s surprise when, stumbling downstairs on Christmas morning, they found their stockings bulging with presents!

And there, sitting at the table calmly eating a boiled egg as big as his head, was Joseph the elf.

“Morning!” he twinkled, mouth full of crumbs.

“Happy Christmas, darling girls,” said their dad. “We’ve got a special guest for Christmas lunch. I hope you don’t mind. Oh, and he’s bringing some friends along too.”

Ottie and Bea’s eyes were round with surprise as they noticed that their kitchen table looked much longer than usual, and was laid with hundreds of tiny knives and forks. And they couldn’t stop laughing when they saw that at the head of the table was one huge chair, made from hay bales stacked up so that they looked like a enormous, golden, fluffy throne, just the right size for a giant.

It really was going to be the most amazing Christmas ever.

THE END