The Christmas Fairy Disaster.
This is a story that I have written for the festive season. I hope you all enjoy it! Oh, and a special thanks to Pen on Paper for helping with the first draft.
For my sister, who always loves Christmas.
Have you ever seen a Christmas Fairy? No, I haven’t either but that’s not surprising as they are very elusive creatures like lynx. Let me describe one for you. They wear soft gowns or trousers and shirts in light dreamy colours like cream or mauve. From their eyes emits a glowing flame and they have an aura of magic about them.
You know how Santa or Father Christmas has his elves? The classic ‘little helpers’? Well, there are some other ‘little helpers’ that Santa has frantically working behind the scenes to make sure that you have the most perfect Christmas ever. And these are his Christmas Fairies. Christmas Fairies run their own special secret Christmas postal service. In this postal service they collect children’s Christmas lists from around the world and then copy them and send them off to Santa in the North Pole. This way Santa can make sure to give you the presents you want.
One year disaster struck when the head of the postal service fairy was found murdered in her bed! This was awful; how was the postal service going to survive without her? After all she was the most magically gifted Christmas fairy of them all.
Pandemonium rained. Fairy folk shouting and crying in the streets. Everyone knew that Christmas would be ruined if no solution was found immediately. They all knew that they would be blamed for this. And so, the fairies started to blame one another. The older fairies knew that if this continued Christmas really would be ruined!
They gathered together and decided that the best thing to do was to hold a council and try to find a way forward. So all the fairies met in a great chamber and argued about how to move on.
“We need to find the killer!” they called up to the elders. “Then they can be held responsible for all this.”
The elders agreed and they ordered an investigation to begin work on it straight away. The investigation that ensued went on for three whole weeks. People were questioned and theories were explored but nothing led anywhere. And then on the third day of the fourth week. Someone confessed. The fairies got excited but the news was not as they had imagined at all!
The fairy who confessed was a maid to the head of the postal service. Her name was Joan Smythe. Joan said that on the evening before her mistress was discovered dead she had requested that Joan bring her a bible and then go home early.
Joan found this odd but said nothing and did as she had been told. She found it even more weird when her mistress asked for a penknife. It was not until the following morning that she suspected anything.
“I was right shocked I was when I see me mistress’s death in breakfast papers,” she laughed. The investigators then asked if she knew why her mistress had asked for these things. Joan looked at them as if she thought they were dumb.
“Because she murdered herself didn’t she?” she said simply. “She wanted the bible to say her last prayers and she didn’t want me hanging around in case I stopped her. The penknife was what killed her I tell you. Ain’t it obvious?” they told her it was now that she’d confessed. And they thanked her for saving them from looking like fools. Also this meant that there was a chance they could save Christmas.
Joan said it was a relief to get it off her chest and told them that they were most welcome.
The investigators looked again in the head’s room and found the penknife and bible. This proved what the maid Joan had said. And when they tested the knife they found that only the head’s fingerprints were on it and no one else’s. This settled it.
The next day the investigators announced to all the other Christmas Fairies that Claudia Haynes, the head of the secret postal service, had committed sucided. She had, they said, stabbed herself fatally in the heart and died quickly. They also discovered her will hidden away in a crack in the wall. It read that she passed on her magical ability and important job to her most loyal friend and servant Joan Smythe.
Everyone was pleased with this, especially Joan Smythe! And so in the end Christmas was saved just in the nick of time and all was well. With the exception of Santa’s elves, who had eaten rather too many sugarcanes and were sick everywhere on Boxing Day.
The End!
Hetty Monksea
