Someone Stole The Spirit - Episode 18

"Next stop, Highland, Illinois?" the llama asks. "Your porthole or somebody else really seems to like that state of the United ones of America. Where do you come from, Anthony, the elf? Are you an alien? Are you the reason for The UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois?"

"Don't be rude, animal", I say.

If I wasn't a bad writer I could describe this small town with its buildings and parks and the Silver Lake. But I am a bad writer and Highland has a motto and it is written on a banner at the City Hall on Broadway.

"Be mindful of the past.

Celebrate Today with an eye to the future."

It seems like I have to learn something about the past right now.

"You really do not remember what happened in that Christmas night when you were six years old and reached the North Pole, don't you, Bromford?"

Looks like Anthony wants to finish his story.

"The cold, the hospital, the pneumonia? My parents returning earlier from the mainland without cousin Tupilek, the only person who ever became a lawyer after leaving our home village near the Polar Circle? No, thank goodness, I do not remember much of it."

"Later", Anthony says, "maybe that happened later. Or it is happening now. Time is confusing and confused these days. And time is dangerous. I can see that you are not the six year old Nanuk I met at the North Pole all these decades ago. And yet all this is happening right now. Or is it happening again?"

"Wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey…", the llama says. "Now you are making me dizzy."

"Bromford, remember", Anthony's green eyes are glowing in all colours of the rainbow while looking in my face. "The lights in the night, some call it Aurora Borealis, but that is not exactly right. At the North Pole, the home of Santa Claus or Father Christmas as some call him, these are also the lights that call all of his little helpers to work around Christmas time. You were there on Christmas Eve, Bromford, back in the days when you were Nanuk, the little Inuit boy. You saw the lights. And you found the open black trapdoor to Santa's subterranean workshop where all the toys and presents for Christmas are made."

"Are you trying to hypnotize me?" I ask.

"No", Anthony says. "I try to help you remember. K'eyush got all black after the Dark Eater's attack and ran away. You met me, Anthony, the elf, being on duty changing all the broken lightbulbs in the tunnels of the workshop and on the many, many Christmas trees. You met Eleven, the elf, we called Eleven because in Klingon Elf is the name of the number eleven."

"You are dizzying me again", the llama complains.

"You met more elves, my colleagues, my friends. We took you on a tour through the workshop. You saw the great factory, the invention laboratories, the sleighs garage and the reindeer stables. But when we wanted to introduce you to Mr. Santa Claus himself, we couldn't find him. He was gone."

'But I never finished that story', I think. 'I never wrote down or told anyone what happened to Nanuk after he discovered the North Pole. I never dreamt that part of the story.'

"Yes", Anthony says all dizzying and mind-reading again, "and that is what's making all of this so extraordinary confusing."

BING!

"Time to go."

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"Bromford"

The boys and girls of Bromford
Are on the train from New York
Wearing new hats, shooting the shit
Deep in the heart of Dutchess County, bounty

And all the evening breakdowns
Will soon be washed from their hands
The next very day, as they make way
Eating the apple to the chapel, holy

Don't even try
They'll get away with murder
Sure as the rain washes away
And brings thunder

Oh, tell me can you see
The gentle tower rising?
Over the pines, out of a book
Zion mistaken for the state of Bromford