Father Christmas and the Feathered Fiends

The snow may not necessarily be falling, but it's certainly cold and it’s time for this year’s Christmas story! We’ve had all sorts in the past from poems about dancing dogs to tales of magic and monkeys: all of them can be found be clicking here!

This year's story features a brave hero called Molly, some birds, the North Pole and a very useful book. Can Christmas be saved, or are we all doomed to eat stones? I hope you enjoy it!

Happy Christmas,

Nick xx

Father Christmas and the Feathered Fiends

By Nick Josselin-Mellish

Chapter One

The Missing Mail

Molly first realised something was wrong when the post didn’t arrive.

     She’d woken up early that day (earlier than her parents wanted her to anyway) and stretched in bed, legs and arms as long as a cat’s. She’d had her breakfast, washed her face, brushed her teeth and got dressed for school, then leafed through a book of birds. Her dad liked watching birds and the two of them would walk over the hills and try to find some.

     Sometimes, Molly got a bit bored and pretended to see an eagle or an emu but her dad never believed her.

     The whole morning had been normal until there was a noise outside. At first, it sounded like the footsteps of someone walking towards her front door. Molly sat upright. She’d been waiting for a letter for a few days now. Could this be it? Was something about to be delivered?

She thought she saw the edge of an envelope pierce the letterbox where there was a loud tweet and it vanished! Now there was nothing there. No letter anyway. Something had fallen through the letterbox. It wasn’t the letter she’d been expecting, but a feather. A long, black feather.

     “Maybe there was a really big crow…” she wondered, though this feather was bigger than any crow she’d ever seen. She went to look in her book of birds and held the feather in her fingers to inspect it. It looked like there was something stuck to its back, caught up in the strands.

     She started to turn the feather around when her dad rushed in: “It’s time for school, Molly!”

Molly hadn’t realised it was so late already. She walked to her school bag, which was sitting beneath a Christmas tree. It wouldn’t be long now before school was over for the year and Molly couldn’t wait. She loved Christmas. Just looking at the tree reminded her of the letter she’d been waiting for though.

     She shook her head as if to throw her thoughts away, put the feather and her bird book into her bag so she could look at them at breaktime, and left the house. It was rainy and windy, but that was often the case in December. She wished the Sun would come out so there would be a rainbow, but she hadn’t seen a rainbow for ages, even when it was rainy and sunny at the same time. She’d wondered for a while why this was.

     “One thing at a time,” said Molly to herself. She put on her hood and looked for more feathers, but couldn’t see any. It was dark and large shadows kept sweeping over the ground as if the sky was full of planes, even though the sky was silent.

     Before long, they’d reached the lollipop lady outside her school. There was one there every day, keeping everyone safe when they crossed the road. The one today though looked a bit strange. She was wearing the usual fluorescent yellow jacket and carrying the usual big stick, but the jacket didn’t seem to fit her and she looked agitated. She kept looking up at the sky while checking a large silver pocketwatch.

     “Strange,” Molly thought. First there was the strange feather, now there was a strange lollipop lady.

     The lollipop lady put her pocketwatch away and stared at Molly thoughtfully.

     “Even stranger,” said Molly, pulling her hood tightly over her head. It was still raining but a rainbow was slowly forming up above, brightening the sludgy grey sky.

     “Really strange!” said Molly. She’d only been thinking earlier that there were no rainbows anymore, but there was one here now, and it wasn’t even sunny! You needed rain and sunshine for a rainbow, didn’t you?

     Molly said goodbye to her parents and started walking towards the school playground when she heard a cough behind her. She turned around.

     “Molly! Molly, over here!” It was the lollipop lady. She waggled her stick as if waving hello.

Molly knew she wasn’t supposed to talk to strangers, so she turned around again and ignored her.

     “I’m not a stranger, Molly!” said the lollipop lady, as if she had read her mind. “I actually know you very well. I know you didn’t finish your breakfast this morning. I know you accidentally ate some toothpaste and it was all yucky. I know you looked at a bird book and wanted to stay at home thinking about rainbows instead of going to school, and I know all about the long, black feather.”

     Molly’s mouth dropped open. All of this was true! How did she know? Could she read her mind? Molly thought up a simple sum to test it.

     What is two plus three? thought Molly.

     “Five,” answered the lollipop lady instantly. “And you didn’t just think of the numbers two and three, you thought of five big red apples. Here!” She rummaged in her jacket pockets and pulled out a big red apple, just like the ones Molly had been thinking of. “Is one not enough? Wait a moment.” She pulled out another four apples, all of them big and red, and started to eat one.

     “They’re really yummy,” said the lollipop lady between chomps. “Would you like one?”

Molly shook her head and asked, “How can you read my mind?”

     “Because it’s more interesting than reading the newspaper,” said the lollipop lady. “Some people learn to read books, I learned to read minds.”

     “Why are you reading my mind? Why not anybody else’s?”

     “Because you are very important, Molly,” said the lollipop lady. She checked her pocketwatch again. “And we are very late. Come on, it’s time to go!”

     “Go where?” Molly frowned. “I need to be at school.”

     “I don’t see how that would be useful,” said the lollipop lady, putting her half-eaten apple and all the others back into her pockets. “You can’t save the day if you’re stuck in a classroom.”

     “Save the day?”

     “Yup.” She looked at the sky and Molly thought she glimpsed another large shadow passing by.

     “You saw that, right?” asked the lollipop lady. She looked worried. “We don’t have long. I’ll just call our ride.”

     Molly looked around for a car but the lollipop lady held up her stick, waved it in the air like a giant magic wand, and then took a step back.

     At first, nothing seemed to happen but then Molly saw the rainbow in the sky scurrying towards them. Rainbows didn’t normally move but this one was rushing forwards until it was hovering above them. It stretched and flopped out like an enormous multicoloured tongue. It kept on going down and down until it reached the ground, stopping at their feet.

     “Hop on!” said the lollipop lady, and she stepped onto the rainbow as if it were a flight of stairs.

     Molly didn’t know what was happening, but she knew she wanted to find out. She took a deep breath for bravery and stepped forward until she was standing next to the lollipop lady.

     “I’m Nipper,” smiled the lollipop lady. She was tall with wide black eyes like a deer and a nice smile. “Yes, yes, I know it’s a strange name where you come from, but where I come from, it’s pretty common.”

     Molly went to ask where that was when the rainbow jolted and started moving back into the sky. It whooshed up until everything looked tiny below through the rainbow at her feet: the tops of churches, shops, roads, pubs, fields, even her house. Soon, they were so high up that everything below was covered by fluffy rainclouds.

     “I’ve never seen the end of a rainbow before,” said Molly as they rushed through the sky.

     “Most people haven’t,” explained Nipper, “but rainbows are made of light, and we need to move at lightspeed to get to where we need to be.”

     “Where’s that?” asked Molly.

     “The North Pole,” said Nipper. “We’re going to see Father Christmas.”

Chapter Two

The Grotto at the End of the Rainbow

Molly thought she must have misheard Nipper.

     “Did you say the North Pole?”

     “Yeah,” grinned Nipper. “That’s where I live.”

     “And we’re meeting Father Christmas? The Father Christmas?”

     “The one and only,” confirmed Nipper. “Father Christmas, Santa, Nick, Mr Kringle. He doesn’t mind what you call him, so long as you’re nice and not naughty. You’ve met him before, haven’t you?”

     Molly had. She’d seen him in his grotto at school fêtes and shopping centres, but never in his actual home.

     “He’s waiting for us in his grotto in Lapland: that’s in the middle of the North Pole,” explained Nipper. “Don’t worry though, it only takes three and a half seconds to get there.”

     “But we’ve been travelling for longer than that already!” said Molly.

     “No, we haven’t, it only feels like that,” said Nipper. She showed Molly her pocketwatch and Molly could see the second hand on it was inching across the clock face very, very slowly, slower than a slow snail. “You know when you’ve done something really bad or feel embarrassed, how time seems to slow down?” Molly nodded. “Father Christmas noticed this and came up with an idea. When he needs to travel in his sleigh, he thinks up something that makes him embarrassed, like the time Rudolph saw him in his underpants in the shower, then he takes the blushes off his cheeks and puts them into his sleigh’s engine like petrol. It turns into a magic fuel that makes time slow down. That’s how he flies all around the world and delivers his presents across one night. He’s very clever.”

     Before anyone could say anything else, a large shadow grew in the clouds, the same as the ones Molly had been seeing all morning. At first it looked like a plane, then like a dinosaur, but eventually Molly could see it was a bird. She recognised its long, black feathers at once: they matched the one she’d found that morning!

     “An ostrich!” said Molly. She’d seen one in her bird book before, but never in real life. The ostrich was flying in the opposite direction to Molly and Nipper, and it had something in its beak. Molly stretched forward and saw it was a bundle of letters.

     The ostrich clocked Molly and squawked in alarm before flying off into the clouds, but not before another couple of long, black feathers fluttered down onto the rainbow. Molly suddenly realised where her letter had gone that morning.

     “An ostrich stole it!” she gasped.

     “You’re right,” said Nipper. “That’s what we’re trying to stop.”

     “Ostriches?”

     “Yes. Ostriches.” Nipper nodded gravely.

     “They’re going to ruin Christmas! I’ll explain more in a bit.”

     Molly looked back to the clouds and frowned. There was something strange going on, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was. Something unusual about the ostrich. What was it?

     “We’re nearly there!” called Nipper, snapping Molly out of her thoughts. She pulled a large map from her jacket pockets and spread it over the rainbow.

     “How do you fit everything into those small pockets?” asked Molly.

     “They’re made of the same thing as Father Christmas’s sack,” said Nipper. “Anything you put inside them shrinks until it’s tiny, then grows back to normal size when you take it out. It’s how he fits everything in his sleigh.” She pointed at a big white bit of the map. “This is where we need to go. His grotto is somewhere around… here!” She jabbed a finger at a small house on the map. “It’s beyond the unicorn fields, left of the hot chocolate streams, just after the terrifying marshes.”

     “What’s terrifying about the marshes?” asked Molly.

     “They’re made of marshmallows,” said Nipper. “If you step in one, you have to go into a bath for a whole week to unstickyfy yourself and your fingers get so wrinkly it takes even longer for them to feel normal. It’s not very nice.”

     Molly didn’t want to be unstickyfied but she did want to find out more about the ostriches and their plan, and to meet Father Christmas.

     The clouds parted and Molly started to see buildings and fields again. It was very cold and the ground was covered with snow and trees. In the sky, Molly saw more rainbows with elves riding them, all dressed as lollipop ladies.

     “Are all lollipop ladies elves?” asked Molly.

     “Yes,” said Nipper. “We take lots of jobs around schools: lollipop ladies, canteen staff, caretakers, librarians. It’s a good way to watch over all the boys and girls for Father Christmas across the year.” The rainbow started to shake. “Time to go: hold on tight!”

     The rainbow shuddered and stretched out. Nipper and Molly slid down it like they were on a slide, landing on the snowy ground below with a gentle bump. The rainbow then gave a sigh and floated away.

     “It’s tired,” explained Nipper. “Needs a nap. But, it got us here.” She pointed ahead. They’d landed in front of a large wooden building with Christmas tree lights hanging from the roof.

     “Father Christmas’s grotto!” cooed Molly as she dusted snow off her bag. She looked up as yet another large shadow passed over them as yet another ostrich with more letters in its beak fluttered through the sky. Again, there was something about this that made Molly frown. Something about this wasn’t right…

     “It’s time to save the day,” said Molly, determined to find out what it was. She started to walk towards the grotto when something large and furry with antlers blocked her way: it was one of Father Christmas’s reindeer!

     “Molly, meet Vixen,” said Nipper, tickling the reindeer under the chin. “Are you going to let us pass?” Vixen considered this for a moment, then shook her head.

     “Please?” asked Molly. Vixen didn’t budge, and eyed up Nipper’s lollipop lady jacket instead.

     “Ah,” said Nipper, understanding the problem. She fished around her jacket and took out a large carrot. Vixen greedily snatched it out of Nipper’s hand and walked away munching, content to let them go now.

     “Father Christmas’s reindeer,” said Nipper, “are very greedy when it comes to carrots. I have to keep a dozen on me at all times.”

     Free to walk, Molly and Nipper stepped out of the cold air and into Father Christmas’s grotto. It was large, warm and crammed full of all things Christmas, from tinsel round the borders to a bauble hanging off the doorknob.

     The air smelled of gingerbread, candles and cakes, and the walls were covered in lights and long pieces of string, but there was nothing hanging on them.

     In one corner of the grotto was an enormous Christmas tree, fit to burst with colourful decorations. It was one of the prettiest things Molly had ever seen. In another corner was a small table with three tall glasses of milk and a plate piled high with cookies, and in between the two was a large wooden chair with a very familiar-looking man dressed in red sitting on it.

Chapter Three

The Rise of the Ostriches

“Father Christmas!” said Nipper, rushing towards the man on the chair. He gave her a warm, friendly hug as she sat on his lap. “I found Molly!”

     “So I see!” chuckled Father Christmas. “Hello, Molly. Would you like something to drink?”

     “Thank you, Father Christmas,” said Molly shyly, taking a glass of milk off the table. She sat down on the floor by a roaring log fire.

     “I’m sure Nipper here has explained all about the ostriches,” said Father Christmas. Molly nodded. He pointed to the empty rows of string. “I hang all the drawings and letters and Christmas cards children send me on my walls, but one morning I stepped in and they’d all vanished! There were long, black feathers everywhere though so I knew at once what had happened: an ostrich had taken them!”

     “Why?” asked Molly.

     “It’s all my fault,” sighed Nipper.

     “That’s not true,” said Father Christmas, giving Nipper a cookie for comfort. “It started last Christmas, Molly. I was delivering presents all over the world like usual when I went to land on a large grassy path and—BANG! An ostrich hit my sleigh, the poor thing. I can’t remember where I was: Christmas Eve’s a busy night, and I was flustered by the accident! The ostrich was dazed and bruised, so I flew back to the North Pole and dropped her off at Lapland so she could be nursed back to health.”

     “That was my job,” said Nipper. “The ostrich was curious and intelligent so we named her Savvy Annabel, or Savanna for short. I made her a nest in the stables by the reindeer and looked after her until she felt better… but one day, I accidentally left the stable door open.” She shook her head. “It was a silly mistake and Savanna ran away! She got into Father Christmas’s workshop and found a special room round the back.”

     “A very special room,” said Father Christmas. “It’s the room where we make rainbows!”

     “You make rainbows?” Molly was shocked. “I didn’t know that!”

     “It’s a little secret of mine!” he chuckled.

     “Haven’t you ever thought about the word? Rain-bow! Bows, like the things you tie around presents, and reins, like the harnesses my reindeer wear! We make them in my workshop and stuff them full of magic fuel so they can whizz through the sky.”

     Molly had always thought the ‘rain’ in rainbow was like the weather, but now she thought about it they were colourful and glittery like tinsel or Christmas tree lights.

     “The magic fuel we put in the rainbows doesn’t just make time slow down,” explained Nipper. “It can do all sorts of things. It can make you strong or make you fast: it can even make you fly! Savanna ate one of the rainbows and it made her clever. She went back to her nest, sat down and laid an egg, but the egg wasn’t a usual egg. She didn’t hatch an ostrich: she hatched a plan! A plan to steal Christmas!”

     “What we hadn’t realised is that Savanna had grown jealous,” said Father Christmas. “She’d spent her time in Lapland watching my reindeer eat rainbows and practice flying: it’s what gives them the magic to take to the skies.”

     “Rudolph eats the most rainbows, which is why his nose is so shiny,” added Nipper.

     “Savanna saw them flying and got grumpy,” continued Father Christmas. “She thought that ostriches like her should be the ones doing all the flying and pulling my sleigh (they’re very strong and have so many feathers after all), and this was the year the ostriches would do precisely that!”

     “Wait a moment!” cried Molly. She’d suddenly realised what was odd about what she’d seen earlier that day. “Ostriches can’t fly!”

     “You’re quite right, Molly!” said Father Christmas. “They normally can’t.”

     The penny dropped and Molly gasped. “Savanna didn’t just steal your letters did she? She stole all the rainbows as well! That’s what’s letting the ostriches fly and that’s why I’ve not seen any rainbows in the sky for ages: the ostriches have stolen them!”

     “Correct!” said Father Christmas. “But nobody noticed the rainbows were missing: nobody apart from you! And that’s why I wrote to you.”

     Molly was shocked. “You wrote to me?” She’d written a letter to Father Christmas a few weeks ago with her Christmas list like she did every year, and she’d been hoping he’d write back.

     That’s what she’d been waiting for that morning: a letter from Father Christmas.

     “It was a very important letter,” said Father Christmas. “I was asking for your help!”

     “My help?”

     “Yes!” said Nipper. “I read everyone’s minds when they cross the road, and you are the only person in all the schools across the planet who noticed the missing rainbows: and you know loads about birds thanks to your dad and your big bird book! I told Father Christmas and he wrote to you, but an ostrich stole his letter before you could read it. That’s why I took you here myself!”

     “You are the only person in all the world who can help us, Molly!” Father Christmas looked at her urgently. “Will you help me? Please!”

     “Yes! I’ll do everything I can!” vowed Molly. “Do we know where Savanna and the other ostriches are right now?”

     “No,” said Father Christmas. “We’ve been busy making new rainbows so the elves can find the ostriches, but we’ve had no luck so far. We think they must be hiding somewhere, working on the next part of their plan: delivering all the presents on Christmas Eve.”

     “But there’s a big problem there,” said Nipper. “The rainbow Savanna ate was only a small one, so her cleverness ran out after she stole the rainbows and letters and flew away: and none of the ostriches can read! So now they’re busy stealing letters to Father Christmas everywhere on Earth but with no way to read them. They can’t even read minds like us elves, so they have no clue what to give everybody for Christmas! Instead, they’re going to give them ostrich things!”

     “Oh no!” said Molly. She knew what that meant. Ostriches were really fast, so it would probably be lots of things to help you run like shoes, but thanks to her book she knew that ostriches only had two toes. The shoes they made wouldn’t fit human feet! She also worried about food. Christmas was full of special food like mince pies and sprouts, but ostriches didn’t eat that sort of thing: they ate seeds and grass and flowers and pebbles, not things a human would eat!

     “I don’t want to eat pebbles at Christmas!” said Molly. She felt determined now. “Let’s work out where they are!”

     Nipper and Father Christmas looked at one another and smiled. For the first time in ages, they felt hopeful.

Chapter Four

We’re Going on a Bird Hunt

Molly finished her milk and had a deep think. If she was going to help find Savanna and the ostriches, she was going to need a plan.

     “Okay,” she said at last. “Here’s what we’ll do. Part One: we’ll hop on a rainbow and look through my book of birds.”

     “And what’s Part Two?” asked Nipper.

     “Part Two: we work out where Savanna is and land there.”

     “That sounds like a good plan to me,” said Father Christmas warmly. He’d apparently left the room and returned with more cookies. She wasn’t sure how he’d snuck in and out of the grotto so quietly, but she reasoned that if anyone could sneak into and out of a room without anyone noticing, it would be the man who did that in millions of rooms every Christmas.

     “Do you think our rainbow will be okay to take us again?” asked Molly.

     Nipper shook her head. “It’s too early. It’ll be sleeping in a cloud somewhere, wanting more fuel. We’ve got a spare one though.”

     “You’d better hurry,” said Father Christmas.

     “Molly here is meant to be at school, and I wouldn’t want your mum and dad to find out you’re not there! You’d get in all sorts of trouble!” He gave a loud whistle but nothing happened. He tried again, but still nothing happened.

     “Can you help me, Nipper?” asked Father Christmas. She nodded and took a large carrot out of her coat pocket. Father Christmas took it and waggled it in the air. As quick as a flash, into his grotto trotted a reindeer with a very famous, very red, very shiny nose.

     “Is that who I think it is?” whispered Molly in awe.

     “I don’t know any other reindeer with shiny red noses,” whispered back Nipper.

     “Rudolph!” instructed Father Christmas kindly, feeding the reindeer the carrot. “Please show Molly and Nipper to the rainbow.”

     Rudolph gave Father Christmas a little lick and exited the grotto with a swish of his tail, beckoning Molly and Nipper to follow. The three of them walked through tall drifts of snow and past a long river which burbled with chocolate bubbles until they reached a large boggy field stretching out as far as Molly could see. It smelt sweet but looked thick and gloopy.

     “This must be the marshmallow marsh,” she realised. It looked every bit as sticky as Nipper had warned her.

     Just before the sticky marshland started was a large mound of snow and there, half-buried in it, was a golden pot with a rainbow poking out.

     Rudolph tapped it with his antlers and Nipper took a large carrot out of her pockets and fed Rudolph while giving him a scritch between the ears, then turned her attention to the pot and tapped it. “People always think at the end of a rainbow there’s a pot of gold, but it’s actually a golden pot! It’s what you store rainbows in: it needs to be a pot as shiny and sparkly as rainbows themselves, or they sulk. Rainbows are very fussy.”

     Rudolph, bored now he’d finished following Father Christmas’s instructions and clearly not getting any extra carrots, slunk off to play in the snow with his reindeer friends.

     “We’re in luck” said Nipper. “There’s still some magic left in this rainbow.” She removed it from the pot. “It should be good for a few short trips.”

     “Thank you,” said Molly. She jumped onto the rainbow and Nipper followed her. An hour ago, stepping on a rainbow would have been the weirdest thing in the world, but now it felt second-nature. Maybe that was the magic of Christmas: making strange things feel normal, like trees inside houses, people made of snow and coins made of chocolate.

     Pretty soon they were high in the sky, hurtling over oceans and past clouds with only the sound of Nipper’s lollipop lady jacket flapping in the breeze for company. She’d sat down and was eating an apple while inspecting her map while Molly read her book.

     “Have you tried looking for ostriches in Africa?” asked Molly after a moment. “My book says it’s where they normally live.”

     “Africa was the first place we looked,” said Nipper through mouthfuls of apple. “We’ve looked all over the continent, but they’ve fled!”

     “I see,” said Molly. She read on. Just as she’d remembered, it mentioned their number of toes and the fact they couldn’t fly. It also said they were really strong and good at kicking as well, so she made a mental note not to annoy any ostriches on her adventure.

     Molly sighed, worried she wouldn’t be able to help after all.

     “Don’t feel blue,” said Nipper sympathetically.       “We can only try our best: you, me, Father Christmas, even the reindeer! If you find a solution, that’ll be amazing. But if you don’t? It’s okay. Christmas is a lot more than gifts, you know that.”

     Molly did. Christmas was about kindness and everyone being together. Even the ostriches knew that. Savanna wasn’t trying to make Christmas Day awful for everybody, she just didn’t understand that not everybody was an ostrich. She was being selfish and a bit silly, not wicked and maniacal.

     “A good point,” said Nipper, reading Molly’s mind again. “The ostriches aren’t trying to ruin things, they’re just not very good at Christmas.”

     “Wait a moment…” said Molly. She rummaged in her bag. “I’d forgotten! This morning, I noticed there was something stuck in the ostrich feather!” She found the feather and twirled it around and sure enough, there was something stuck in it. She inspected it closely then looked down at her bird book, reading the rest of it. She had a big smile on her face. “I think I know where the ostriches are!”

     “You do?” Nipper shuffled over. “Where?”

     Molly plucked out of the feather a thin strip of sticky paper.

     “It’s a stamp!” said Molly.

     “It must have got stuck in the ostrich’s feathers!” said Nipper. “Maybe it fell off one of the letters they stole?”

     “No,” said Molly, shaking her head. “When you send a letter, the post office puts a special post mark on the stamp. This doesn’t have any mark on it: and look where it comes from!”

     They looked at the stamp carefully. It had a photo on it and a price, and there at the bottom was one word: AUSTRALIA.

     “Now read this!” Molly pointed at the bird book. “Right at the bottom there, it says that ostriches don’t just live in Africa: some of them also live in Australia! Maybe it’s a coincidence, but I think the stamp could be a clue and it’s worth checking!”

     “You could be right!” Nipper was growing excited now as well. “I’ve been to the Australian outback on Christmas Eve before, and you get grasslands there.”

     “Let’s get going then!” said Molly. Before she could get too excited though, the entire rainbow shook. Its ends tucked in and Molly watched as it shrunk beneath her feet, growing thinner. Its colours dulled a bit, like someone turning down the lights with a dimmer switch in a room.

     Nipper quickly snatched the map before it could fall to the floor but her half-eaten apple had no such luck. The rainbow beneath it vanished and they watched as the apple twirled down to the ground far below.

     “I hope it doesn’t land on anyone’s head,” said Nipper. “There was all sorts of trouble last time that happened.”

     “The rainbow’s running out of magic fuel already,” realised Molly. Nipper just nodded and checked her pocketwatch with a concerned look on her face. The two of them had felt nervous before; they felt scared now.

     The rainbow flew on in silence. Every so often, there was a creaking sound and it shrunk a little more, its colours growing dimmer and its speed slowing down. This really was a race against time!

     Eventually, there was movement somewhere under the rainbow. Nipper and Molly peered over the edge. Below them they saw grass, sand, rocks—and an awful lot of ostriches with an awful lot of Christmas letters.

     “I was right!” said Molly. Despite how scary it had been and how Christmas was still in danger, she was proud of herself.

     “Well done, Molly!” said Nipper. “What do we do now though?”

     “That’s easy,” said Molly. “I have a new plan: but it’s a risky one!”

     “Go on!” said Nipper eagerly. In all the rushing and excitement, she’d stopped reading Molly’s mind.

     “It all depends on rainbows,” said Molly. She pointed to an area down below which was glowing a warm shade of gold. “They must have a golden pot full of rainbows there. We need to land there and do what Savanna did: we need to eat one!”

Chapter Five

Lost and Found

“Eat a rainbow?!” spluttered Nipper. She was sure she must have misheard Molly.

     “Yes!” said Molly. “You said that rainbows do different things when you use them. You said they can make you strong or make you fly, or in Savanna’s case make you clever. Do you think they can make you sneaky?”

     Nipper chewed it over. “I can’t see why not,” she concluded. “Magic can do most things if you want it to.”

     “Good!” said Molly, and she explained her new plan. “Part One: we eat a bit of a rainbow—not a lot, it might make us feel sick, but enough to give us magic powers! We then quickly gather up the Christmas post and put it in your jacket pockets. You said they’re like Father Christmas’s sack, so they should all fit in.”

     “And Part Two?” asked Nipper.

     “We grab the golden pot and all the rainbows, then fly back to Lapland! By the time the ostriches notice, we should have time to mount a defence there and stop them getting them all back!”

     “Alright” said Nipper, “but do I have to eat a rainbow? I bet they taste funny!”

     “Pebbles for Christmas dinner would taste worse,” Molly reminded Nipper.

     Nipper nodded—she didn’t need telling twice—then gulped as the rainbow shrank again and its colours darkened. They were running out of time!

     She parked the rainbow close to the golden pot. Its glow was so dazzling that Molly wished she’d worn sunglasses, but that wasn’t the weirdest thing about it. The weirdest thing was that the golden pot hissed like an angry cat, and the rainbow they’d just been on moved backwards a little bit.

     “What’s going on?” whispered Molly, determined not to disturb any nearby ostriches.

     “Don’t you remember?” said Nipper. “I told you earlier that rainbows are very fussy and demand a golden pot. These ones are looking at our poor rainbow and how faded it’s getting, and they’re trying to make it go away!”

     “That’s not very nice!” said Molly indignantly.

     “It isn’t,” agreed Nipper with a shrug, “but rainbows are like that: just look at our one! It’s getting fussier and fussier about not being sparkly, and moving slower and slower. Eventually, it’ll get in a huff and stop moving altogether!”

     “Another reason for us to hurry up then!” said Molly.

     They reached the golden pot and Nipper rummaged around until she found two teeny, tiny rainbows. They were small enough to fit in the palm of her hand but big enough to shine like stars, and perfect for what they needed.

Nipper handed one to Molly and they clinked them together like glasses and said, “Cheers!”

     Molly was a bit nervous. It was one thing to talk about eating a rainbow, but quite another to do it in real life. She closed her eyes and swallowed hers whole, all the while thinking, “Let me be sneaky! Please, let me be sneaky!”

     Eating a rainbow was an odd sensation. It smelled like summer: barbeques and suncream and sand, but was wet like mango in her hand, and it tasted fruity and tangy on her tongue, like limes and oranges mixed together with fizzy lemonade. As it ran down her throat to her tummy, it felt warm and tickly and before she could stop herself, Molly hiccuped loudly.

     She put her hands to her mouth, but it happened again: hiccup! And again: hiccup! And again, two times now: hiccup-hiccup!

     Molly spun around, expecting a host of ostriches to be running towards them, but no! They hadn’t heard her at all.

     “The rainbow worked!” she realised. She was so sneaky, she may as well have been invisible and making no noise at all!

     “Let me try,” said Nipper. She took a deep breath and then howled like a dog barking at the Moon. Again, the ostriches didn’t hear or see her. She gave a little whoop and clapped her hands. “Okay, we need to take back our lost mail before the magic runs out!”

     The two of them ran over to the big pile of letters and started shoving them into Nipper’s jacket pockets. Just like her map and apples and pocketwatch and Rudolph’s carrots, the letters all shrank as they reached Nipper’s pockets, so small you could hardly see them. Molly doubted you’d even have been able to see them if you’d squinted at them under a microscope. No wonder Father Christmas could fit so many toys in his sack!

     They both kept an eye on the ostriches as they worked, worried they’d realise what was going on. They didn’t though, even when Molly kept on hiccupping. Magic clearly did very strange things to her tummy!

     They soon fell into a rhythm, Molly scooping up letters from the pile, Nipper putting them into her pockets. It reminded Molly of steam trains, shovelling coal and putting it into a furnace to make the train run.

     They were quick, quicker than anyone could ever possibly normally be. The magic coursed through their bodies, making them faster than an Olympic athlete or firework or space rocket. They were so fast, Molly could hardly see their hands move, it was all just blurry in front of her eyes, like watching people move when you hit fast-forward on a video. 

     Finally, they finished. What would have normally taken weeks if not months to do had only taken them half an hour, but neither of them felt tired, which was good as there was more work to be done.

     “It’s time for Part Two of the plan!” said Molly, eyeing up the golden pot of rainbows. They started to walk back towards it when Molly hiccupped once more, but this time it felt different. Molly couldn’t say why but it sounded louder somehow, more noticeable: less sneaky.

     “Uh-oh!” said Nipper. “I think the magic’s run out: look!”

     They turned and saw that this time, the ostriches had spotted them! The whole flock looked to where the letters had been and realised they were gone! They started to panic, rushing back and forth and staring at Molly and Nipper. Molly knew it was a myth that ostriches buried their heads in the sand when they were nervous or scared, but she wished it hadn’t been. Having all of them looking at her was a bit unnerving.

     “Let’s be quick!” hissed Nipper. “They don’t know what to do, so let’s grab the rainbows and get out of here!”

     Suddenly, there was commotion at the back of the flock of ostriches. One of them was standing up, looking straight at them. That ostrich was a bit taller, her eyes a bit narrower, her beak a bit sharper. She was clearly the leader of the flock, and Nipper recognised her straight away.

     “It’s Savanna!” she cried. “Run, Molly, run! The ostriches are coming!”

Chapter Six

Speedy Savanna

The ostriches started chasing after them, but they soon grew tired and stopped: except one! Savanna seemed incapable of being worn out.

     Molly knew how fast ostriches were, but even so it was impressive to see. Despite being so far away, Savanna was soon catching up with them!

     Molly and Nipper raced towards where the golden pot and their rainbow were but as they got closer, they realised something was very wrong.

     “Oh no!” said Molly. “They’ve both run away!”

     She was right. Bullied by the others in the golden pot and ashamed of running out of magic, their rainbow had scarpered and was about half a mile away from where they’d left it and the golden pot, full of magic and feeling snooty, had run even further in the opposite direction, haughtily huffing and haughtily puffing.

     Molly hiccupped again. She could feel more and more of the magic leaving her body, but she still had enough inside to make her run faster than the wind: but not enough to reach their rainbow and the golden pot.

     “We don’t have time for both!” Molly shouted to Nipper. “Let’s get to our rainbow! We’ve got the letters: that’s the most important part of the plan!”

     “Agreed!” said Nipper, too tired to add anything more.

     Savanna was getting closer and closer, leaving huge dust clouds with every thud of her feet. She tweeted in rage and snarled through her gritted beak.

     Meanwhile, Molly ran faster than she ever had in her whole entire life. She could feel a stitch digging into her side but she pressed on. Christmas needed to be saved!

     They finally got to the rainbow and jumped on, just as Savanna reached them. She reached forward and with her beak, she grabbed Nipper by the trouser leg!

     “Get off! Argh! Help!” said Nipper. The rainbow started rising but struggled to get any higher as Savanna used super-ostrich strength to drag Nipper and the rainbow back down to the ground.

     Molly looked around desperately and picked up Nipper’s lollipop lady stick. She didn’t want to hurt an animal, so she waved it in front of Savanna in a threatening manner. It did the trick. Savanna was so worried she’d be bonked on the head, she let go of Nipper and lurched backwards.

     The rainbow shot up, eager to get away from the ostriches and the mean golden pot.

     “Phew!” said Nipper, wiping sweat off her brow. “We’re safe!”

     “Oh no we’re not!” said Molly. There in the sky, looking angrier than ever, was Savanna!

     “Hurry! Hurry!” cried Nipper, patting the rainbow for encouragement. It shrank and dimmed a little more as it used more magic to race towards Lapland and evade the angry ostrich. Molly tried to think of something embarrassing to fuel the rainbow, but her mind was awash with ostriches.

     Savanna would not be deterred. She flapped her wings even harder and pushed on through the clouds. Bolts of lightning flashed behind her followed mere moments later by peals of thunder. She looked terrifying.

     Nipper and Father Christmas had said Savanna had run out of cleverness, but she’d clearly had enough brainpower to work out that being strong and able to fly would help her cause, and a diet of rainbows had worked wonders. Her wings beat hard and her legs scurried in the air, running over clouds like she was on a racetrack. She looked determined as she caught up with them.

     As for their poor rainbow, it was going as fast as it could but the magic was shrinking as fast as Savanna was flying! Every few seconds, the colours faded a bit more and the rainbow grew even thinner.

     “I’m not sure I can stay on!” said Molly, wobbling from side to side.

     “You must!” said Nipper, wobbling herself, trying to use her lollipop lady stick for balance like she was on a tightrope. “Lapland isn’t far away!”

     Would they make it though? Molly wasn’t sure. The rainbow shrank again and started slowing down even more. All the while, Savanna inched nearer. Feathers flew off in every direction and rain lashed down, but it didn’t make a difference. Savanna wanted the Christmas letters back and nothing was going to stop her now!

     The rainbow juddered and suddenly started dropping down. Molly and Nipper nearly fell off and crouched low, digging their fingers into its sides to try and stay on. Below them, Lapland reared into view.

     “The magic fuel’s nearly exhausted!” said Nipper, alarmed. The rainbow fell faster.

     Desperately, Nipper steered it as best she could until she was above the large snow pile outside Father Christmas’s grotto. Some of the reindeer were milling around nearby and looked to the sky, confused.

     “Shoo! Shoo!” cried Nipper. “We’re going to crash!”

     The reindeer fled in alarm and Molly braced herself for impact, but something even worse happened: the rainbow was suddenly yanked backwards! Savanna had finally reached them and had caught the end of their rainbow in her beak! She pulled it with all her strength, trying to take them all the way back to Australia!

     Molly watched as Father Christmas’s grotto slowly got further and further away with every tug of Savanna’s beak.

     Tug! The reindeer were in the distance now.

     Tug! So was the grotto.

     Tug! Now they could see the rivers of chocolate and the golden pot Rudolph had taken them to.

     Tug! Now that was getting further away!

     The more she tugged, the more the rainbow dwindled.

     Shrink! It spluttered as the last bits of magic ran out.

     Shrink! It stopped glowing altogether.

     Shrink! It finally gave up and Savanna started slurping it in like a long strand of spaghetti.

     Molly and Nipper held on for dear life as Savanna swallowed the rainbow and their feet reached her beak.

Chapter Seven

A Tumble of Trust

“Isn’t there anything in your pockets that can help us?” cried Molly, kicking out as Savanna went for her shoes.

     “No!” said Nipper. “I’ve got the letters, my map, some food and that’s it!”

     Molly gasped: the food!

     “I’ve got a new plan!” said Molly. “Quickly, get me a carrot, then jump off the rainbow! Trust me!”

     “I do!” said Nipper, and she pulled a carrot from her pocket before diving into the clouds below with Molly by her side.

     As they fell through the air, Molly grabbed the carrot and held it aloft, hoping for the best.

     “Rudolph!” Molly shouted. “Rudolph! I’ve got a carrot for you!”

     She needn’t have shouted. She had barely finished when there came the sudden sound of hooves in the breeze: it was Rudolph, flying through the sky towards them!

     “Now!” said Molly. Rudolph took the carrot, and quick as a flash Molly and Nipper hopped onto the reindeer’s back. He was alarmed by the sudden extra weight and raced to the snow below, where Molly and Nipper leapt off him with utter relief.

     “Good plan!” said Nipper.

     “It’s not over,” said Molly. “Part One: we save ourselves.”

     “And Part Two?”

     “Watch!”

     She pointed and Nipper watched as Savanna flew through the clouds and swallowed the rest of the rainbow. She looked happy to start with, then confused. She hovered in the sky, and then she did something Nipper wasn’t expecting: she gave a very loud hiccup and out of her beak flew a tiny, sparkly rainbow.

     “It’s the one Savanna ate to make herself fly!” realised Nipper.

     “I thought about how far the golden pot had run away from our rainbow,” said Molly, “and that was when it still had some magic left inside it. Now? It hasn’t got any, so I thought Savanna’s rainbow would want to be as far away from it as possible!”

     “You were right!” said Nipper.

     “So now Savanna has no magic inside her,” said Molly, “and what can an ostrich with no magic not do?”

     “Fly!” said Nipper.

     Molly was correct. Poor Savanna looked shocked and tried to flap her wings, but it was too late. She fell down to the ground: but not just any ground. Molly had remembered what was right next to the golden pot.

     Savanna plummeted down and with a very loud PLOP! she fell feet first into the marshmallow marsh. She struggled a bit, then stopped, worn out and thoroughly stuck. She gave a wail and hung her head, defeated.

     “It’s going to take a long time to unstickyfy her,” said Nipper with a smile.

     “Long enough to have a conversation with her and persuade her not to try this again, I hope!” chuckled someone else. Nipper and Molly turned around and saw it was Father Christmas.

     “Rudolph told me you were both back,” he said. “Thank you, Molly! You’ve saved Christmas!”

     “I’m glad I could help!” smiled Molly. Then she gasped. “But I need to go back to school, before my mum and dad work out I’m missing!”

     “I have just the thing for that,” said Father Christmas, and he pointed in the distance to where a group of reindeer were waiting for them. Inside Rudolph’s mouth, Molly could see the rainbow that had flown from Savanna’s beak, ready to be used as fuel.

     Father Christmas laughed and asked Molly a very exciting question: “Fancy a ride in my sleigh?”

Chapter Eight

One Night, Before Christmas

Magic, it turned out, could do lots of clever things. It could give you great ideas; it could make you super fast and super sneaky; it could even make you fly; and it turned out, it could make your teachers and friends not realise you’d missed an entire day from school.

     Molly promised Father Christmas that would not skip school on purpose ever again, and watched as he flew back through the sky to the North Pole, Rudolph’s nose glowing through the clouds.

     She slept well that night, dreaming of reindeer and of rainbows, lollipop ladies and snow, marshmallow marshes and Australia, ostriches and elves. She didn’t mention a word of what had happened to her mum and dad: they would never have believed her anyway.

     Soon, school finished for Christmas and before Molly knew it, it was Christmas Eve. She normally always found it difficult to sleep on Christmas Eve. She was too full of excitement, waiting for Father Christmas to arrive. That year was different though. She managed to close her eyes and fall asleep straight away.

     Maybe she was still worried about Christmas. Had the ostriches regrouped after Savanna was captured? It was possible. She hadn’t seen any rainbows since that day either, or Nipper. Molly checked every day when she went to school, but it was never her. The other lollipop ladies were really nice, but it wasn’t the same. Molly wondered if all lollipop ladies were elves, but never felt brave enough to ask. After all, the whole adventure was meant to be a secret. She couldn’t just ask in broad daylight! What if a sneaky ostrich heard?

     Molly was busy dreaming, when there was the sound of something sliding under her bedroom door. She yawned and wiped sleepy dust from her eyes. She checked her clock and saw it was still Christmas Eve. What had woken her up? Could it have been an ostrich seeking revenge? Was there a feather there?

     It turned out it wasn’t an ostrich after all: it was a letter. Molly picked it up and rushed to the nearest window to read it by the light of the Moon:

Dear Molly,

Thank you again for all of your help! We would never have saved Christmas without you!

You’ll be pleased to know that everything worked out alright. Savanna was very sorry. You know how it is: one day you’re having fun, the next you’re stealing letters and trying to take over Christmas.

Nipper says hello, by the way! She also says that she’s sorry she hasn’t been back to your school but she has a new job now! You see, Nipper had a very good idea: an idea in two parts, just like one of yours!

Part One was to wait until Savanna was unstickyfied. Once she was, they returned to Australia and Nipper spoke to all the ostriches. She’d remembered what you had said in your mind about the ostriches not being wicked. They’d just wanted to take part in Christmas: and who can blame them? Christmas is wonderful! So she asked them who still wanted to help.

Some of them said no, ate the last of the rainbows and flew back to their various homes. I think all the excitement of Savanna’s escapades had worn them out! The others said yes though, and that’s where Part Two of Nipper’s plan came into play.

For the past few weeks, Lapland has been very crowded! It’s always dead busy before Christmas, but this year has been extra busy because on top of getting all the toys and gifts ready in record time, Nipper has been teaching the ostriches how to steer my sleigh!

The reindeer have been very kind and agreed that it isn’t fair for them to have all the fun, so from now on it won’t just be reindeer pulling my sleigh but other animals, too. I hear there are some alpacas who want to give it a go, and I swear I saw an eager platypus near my grotto the other day, but this year it’s the turn of the ostriches!

Thank you again for ALL of your help: you saved Christmas for everybody! I am so very grateful and proud of you, Molly.

Ho ho ho,

Father Christmas.

Molly put the letter away with a smile: she wouldn’t have pebbles for Christmas dinner after all! She yawned. It was time to fall back asleep. She went to go back to bed when she heard another noise. It wasn’t a letter this time, but something merrier: the sound of bells jingling!

     She looked out of the window and gasped! There by the Moon was a large shadow: it was Father Christmas! She could make out his shadow and his sleigh’s and the outlines of loads of reindeer, but right up front, next to Rudolph and his glowing nose, was the shadow of a very happy ostrich wearing a Christmas hat, with a present or two jammed firmly in her beak.

     “Happy Christmas, Savanna!” called out Molly and even though the sleigh was many miles away, she could have sworn that way up high in the Christmas sky, an ostrich waved a wing as if to say to the whole wide world “Happy Christmas!” right back.

THE END