GTA: Santa’s Sleigh

By the glow of the open fire, Callum and Nathan were able to study the large man in the bright red suit lying snoring in their living room armchair. The fairy lights twinkling on the mantelpiece clock showed 1am, a good four hours since the boys had pretended to be asleep when their parents looked in on them, and by Callum’s calculations they had less than an hour to carry out the plan.

‘How much sleeping potion did you use?’ asked Nathan in an anxious whisper.

‘Enough,’ replied Callum, tapping with his toe the empty milk-stained glass resting on the rug beside a saucer of cookie crumbs. ‘Now let’s get ready. And don’t forget the carrots.’

Nathan gawped at the ruddy-cheeked figure snoozing before him, the huge belly rising and falling in time to the snorts and wheezes that were whistling forth from the pink button nose nestled in a bushy beard of cotton. ‘Are you sure about this? If we’re caught, we’ll end up on the naughty list.’

Callum scoffed as he pulled on his boots. ‘Take it from me, bro, all the best people are on the naughty list.’

‘You’re only saying that because you’re never off it,’ said Nathan.

But Callum was already halfway to the hallway, the beam of his torch bouncing over the pots and pans scattered around the kitchen containing Brussel sprouts and halved potatoes and parsnips marinated in honey. An icy chill cut through the downstairs of the house as he opened the back door, and the gasp of disbelief that escaped his lips as he rushed outside prompted Nathan to forget his concerns and quickly slip on his shoes to follow his brother.

The reindeer looked at them with bored indifference. There were eight of the tawny animals clomping the carpet of snow in the back yard, their antlers as majestic as tribal headdresses. As the safety lamp on the wall clicked into life, its white radiance glittered as bright as sunlight on the polished cherry-red sheen of the sleigh parked behind the reindeer pack, the vehicle’s copious cargo basket resting on golden runners that curved upwards like a pair of pixie shoes.

‘That’s the new Bugatti Super Sled xi,’ said Callum with hushed awe. ‘It serves up twice the reindeer-power at half the carrot-intake.’ He emitted an appreciative whistle as he ran a hand along the sleigh’s top rail. Tonight’s adventure would be his masterpiece of mischief, his magnum opus of magnificent outrageousness. After he pulled this one off, his name would live forever in the prankster’s history books.

Nathan, however, had quite a different opinion as to what this little stunt would do to their names. His older brother was known for pushing the limits of acceptable behaviour but sneaking off with Santa’s sleigh for a joyride around the town was taking things to a whole new level.

‘This is a bad idea, Callum,’ said Nathan. ‘We’ll be on the naughty list ‘til we’re old men.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Callum, leaping into the front seat. ‘If anything goes wrong, we won’t make it to old age – mummy will kill us.’ He took hold of the reins. ‘I’m driving first. You fuel the engine there.’

‘Here you go, lads.’ Nathan proffered a couple of carrots to the snorting reindeer, who gobbled them down with slabbery chomps.

'Yah!’ Callum whip cracked the reins, startling the reindeer pack into a forward trot that nearly flattened Nathan beneath an onslaught of hooves.

‘Hey! Wait for me,’ said Nathan, managing to clamber aboard as his brother drove the herd into a gallop by shouting out some of the colourful phrases he had picked up from his farmer uncle.

'Gup dere, ya boya! Pick up dem feet!’

The boys shrieked as the sleigh struggled into the air, the reindeer staggering against each other in uncertainty as they sensed a strange hand guiding their flight, one stray hoof clopping the top of a streetlamp as the stolen vehicle ascended into the night sky with a drunken whoosh.

‘Go slow, Callum,’ cried Nathan, but his warning was ripped away by the rushing wind.

Howling laughter, Callum tugged the reins to send the reindeer into a sudden upwards arc that caused a loose gift to tumble forth from the gargantuan sack fastened by towropes to the rear of the sleight and go careening over the side.

‘You’re losing presents!’ Nathan gripped the handrail as he watched the beautifully wrapped gift tumble to the ground.

‘Rubbish!’ Callum bellowed. ‘This will make me famous.’

‘No, presents. Pres-ents!’ Grabbing his brother by the shoulder, Nathan directed Callum’s attention to the rear of the sleigh.

‘Oops.’ Callum’s face lit up with a cheeky smile. ‘So long as it wasn’t one of ours.’

Sailing over the rooftops of the neighbourhood, the sleigh turned in the direction of the giant tree at the centre of the green area. With a violent yank on the reins, Callum forced the pack of reindeer into a sharp incline to clear the top branches, their hooves chopping handfuls of leaves into seasonal confetti as the sleigh bobbed over the tip of the tree with the stomach-churning lurch of a rollercoaster. A few more parcels were hurled from the sack by this dizzying motion, and they spiralled down through the darkness to plop into the snow below like frozen sparrows.

‘Callum, stop!’ Nathan grabbed at the reins gripped in his brother’s hands. ‘Give me those.’

‘No, I’m driving!’

‘You’re too reckless. Gimme!’

The tussle that ignited over the reins quickly degenerated into an exchange of punches and kicks, forcing the sleigh to rock as though a rowing boat tossed by a tidal wave and sending presents tumbling from the sack in a blizzard of ribbons and wrapping paper. As Callum hacked his younger brother’s shins with the toe of his boot while Nathan responded with a flurry of karate chops, the sleigh bombed towards the ground with the reindeer whinnying in alarm. The boys screamed in unison as they grasped at the flapping reins, but even with their combined might, it was too late to arrest the sleigh’s kamikaze plummet. In an explosion of scattered snow and splintered wood and raining gifts and gurning reindeer, the sleigh crashed into the earth with the sound of thunder and the two boys went hurtling head over heels.

Callum pulled his head out of a bush to survey his handiwork: the sleigh was lying on its side like a beached whale, parcels strewn everywhere, and the poor reindeer were stuck in the snow as though it were quicksand. Not for the first time in his young life, he considered the possibility that maybe – just maybe – he should have given this idea a bit more thought.

He was interrupted in his soul-searching by the thump of a pinecone hitting the back of his head. He whirled around just in time for another pinecone to whack him right between the eyes.

‘I told you to slow down, you eejit!’ Nathan snarled as he hurled handfuls of mucky snow at his older brother.

‘Hey!’ Callum wiped the dirt out of his eyes and launched himself at Nathan, and both boys tumbled to the ground in a flurry of fists and feet. Thankfully, this fight ended much quicker than the earlier one.

They jumped to their feet in panic at the crunching of footsteps in the snow behind them. Their anxious eyes travelled all the way from the shiny black boots up along the stout red-clad legs and ballooned stomach to finish on the dismayed face of Santa Claus.

‘What have you done?’ Santa put his hands to his head in horror. ‘For the love of Christmas, this is a disaster! Blitzen!’ He ran puffing over to a reindeer half buried in the snow. ‘What happened, boy? Are you all right?’

Exchanging a worried look, Callum and Nathan tried to sidle away, but Santa froze them in their tracks with a cry of, ‘Stop!’

The boys turned sheepishly to face their punishment. Hitching up his belt and putting his hands on his hips in the style of a sergeant major, Santa fixed them with a glare.

‘Where do you think you’re going? You crashed my sleigh.’ As he indicated the wreckage, a sob escaped his lips that made the boys well up with shame. With his head bowed, Nathan timidly approached the distraught patron saint.

‘We’ll help fix it. We’re really good at building things,’ said Nathan.

‘You two?’ Santa frowned. ‘I’m not sure I’d trust you to make a cheese sandwich.’

‘Please let us help. We even built a sleigh out of Lego just the other day,’ said Nathan.

‘It fell apart when I picked it up, but still...’ Callum shrugged.

Santa studied the boys for a long time, the way a scientist with a microscope might study a five-legged frog. The slight nod he gave indicated that he had reached a decision.

‘The least you can do is gather up those presents that are scattered everywhere. I’ll see about getting the sleigh back on its runners. And then...’ The twinkle in his eyes made both boys nervous. ‘Then we’ll see what’s to be done with you two.’

With heavy hearts, the boys got to work scavenging in the dark for anything that glittered of tinsel. Bit by bit, as though they were reassembling a large Jenga puzzle inside its box, they squeezed all the gifts back into the sack exactly as they had been. While they worked, Santa heaved and humped the sleigh upright, and then the three of them lugged the sack back into the rear.

‘There,’ said Santa, dusting off his gloves. ‘Almost as good as new. Which is more than I can say about my reindeer. Poor Dasher and Dancer have twisted their legs and can’t possibly pull the sleigh.’ He pushed his glasses up with a mischievous twitch of his nose. ‘So there’s no other option than you two boys taking their place.’

‘Us?’ Callum’s jaw dropped.

‘Pull the sleigh?’ Nathan shook his head in disbelief. ‘But we can’t do that.’

‘Yeah, we can’t fly,’ said Callum.

Santa chuckled and produced from his pocket a little green pouch. ‘We’ll soon fix that,’ he said. With his thumb and forefinger, he extracted from the pouch a few pinches of a fine golden powder with which to pepper the boys.

The sprinkle of magic dust irritated Callum’s nostrils, and a series of sneezes shot out of him, each one louder than the last, until one final thunderous nasal explosion sent him shooting upwards – and he didn’t come back down again.

‘Callum! You’re flying.’ Nathan pointed in amazement at his brother, who was floating in the air with the grace of a Christmas robin. ‘How are you doing that?’

‘You tell me,’ said Callum, nodding at his brother’s feet. ‘Look.’

When Nathan glanced down, he could see the ground three feet below him. ‘We’re flying,’ he squealed, flapping his hands to ascend almost to the roof of their house.

‘Let’s see who can go the highest.’ Callum aimed a fist at the sky and bent his legs preparing to launch, but before he could propel himself higher, the soft jingle of bells brought him back to the task at hand. Santa was looking up at them and holding out a harness each.

‘Time to become honorary reindeer, boys,’ he said.

The boys had never worked so hard as they did that Christmas. They felt the sweat pop on their foreheads despite the frost as they led the remaining reindeer on their important mission, delivering the last of the presents to all the children tucked up soundly in their beds. When Santa finally brought them back home hours later, they were fit to crawl into their own beds and sleep until the new year.

‘Well, I must say, you two boys certainly redeemed yourselves,’ said Santa as he reached into the sack and produced a small package. ‘You may have caused a mess, but you were responsible enough to fix things, so here’s a special gift just for you.’ He gave them a wink and unfurled a rosy grin. ‘If I ever need help pulling my sleigh again, I’ll know who to call.’

With a click of the teeth and a snap of the reins, Santa and his reindeer leapt into the sky. As the sleigh vanished into the night, the boys tore the wrapping paper off the gift.

'It’s a computer game,’ said Nathan.

“Sleigh Simulator,” was the name on the cover of the case. “Learn to fly a sleigh just like Santa! For two or more players.”

The boys shared a wry smile.

'You can have this one, Nathan,’ said Callum.

‘No, Callum, I think you deserve it more,’ replied his younger brother.