An Elf to watch over you
A door slammed shut and a stooped figure shuffled over a scruffy flagstone floor. Water dripped from it's clothing and made the floor glisten in the glow from the roaring fire at the far end of the room.
The owner of the dripping wet clothing took the offending item off. It was a black cloak. This was thrown onto the back of a rocking chair, causing it to rock back and forth as if possessed by an unseen spirit.
The figure could now be seen in more detail, it was a man and he wore red ankle boots, red leggings and a long black tunic with many badly repaired patches, as if he could not afford any other clothing. He was bald headed apart from some hair around his ears and the back of his head, his face was long with a big nose and a permanent look of annoyance. Deep furrows cut into his brow punctuated with two large bristly eyebrows which looked like large hairy caterpillars. A thin cruel mouth sneered as the man looked around him.
The rest of the small room was packed full of books, potions in many different containers, stills, cauldrons and on the ceiling beams, many small cages hung, empty but waiting.
"What a night! Can't see a thing out there is that torrential rain Azrael"
A scruffy ginger Tom cat, peered up from it's bed near the fire and seemed to look at it's master with distain. But rather than invite any wrath it decided to meow in reply, hoping that it would convey the semblance of interest.
"All we can wish for is that the Smurfs dam breaks and floods those little monsters out of the forest" muttered the man, mainly to himself. He had no-one else with him. Only his cat, some would say his only friend.
Others mocked and jeered him. But many feared him as he was dangerous with magic. He did not always get the spells right but most of the time they could cause a lot of trouble. That is why he decided long ago to live far away from other people, so that he could practice his art in peace.
And these days his work mainly consisted of dreaming up plans to capture small blue magical creatures called Smurfs. He needed them to act as a 'Philosopher's Stone' for his gold making potion. At first it was easy to catch them but as time went on they became harder and harder to catch. Well that's what he told himself. The truth was that he was going senile. Age was catching up with him and he was starting to forget things. Even silly little things such as the way through to the other side of the forest. The more he got confused, the angrier he became.
He blamed his bad memory on the Smurfs, they must have put some kind of spell on him.
But they were so cheeky and hard to catch that it became a vendetta. He was going to capture them, whatever it took. He would sometimes get so angry that he wanted them all destroyed. But he could never find their village, the cursed creatures had hidden it behind a force field. They went to great lengths to make sure that they could not be found.
The wizard however could always count on lying in wait for one of them to show themselves in the forest. He would either trap it or try and follow it back to it's village.
But in a couple of days it was going to be Christmas and Gargamel's thoughts turned to his family. Well more of his lack of a functional family. He only really had his mother to buy for, but she was never happy with his gifts and his God father was very rich and powerful. There was nothing he could get him for Christmas, apart from keeping out of his way. This year mummy was going abroad without him, so he couldn't even get a badly cooked festive dinner for free.
So, yet again, he resigned himself to spending yet another year at home all by himself, with only his cat for company. He still clung to the belief that one day Santa would bring him a gift. Anything would do. Even his cat didn't bother to even bring him a dead mouse. Had it come to this?
He went over to the pantry and opened the door. Most of the shelves were empty, there was one jar of pickles and a couple of eggs. At least he could make himself an omelette for the special day.
He longed for a whole Goose to himself, but it was impossible to get one. They cost too much to buy and the local farmers were too good with a bow and arrow. He didn't fancy being injured or worse.
Sighing deeply, he got undressed and laid his wet clothes in front of the fire, got into his nightgown, put his night cap on and climbed into his bed. He was soon fast asleep and began to dream.
'Have you been naughty or nice? That is for him to decide. Bad deeds and thoughts will be marked in his little black book and you, Gargamel have filled up almost all the pages. Oh dear, oh dear. No Christmas for you. The only thing you deserve is Childermas!
Gargamel screamed himself awake and made his cat run for cover. What a horrid dream! It all came flooding back to him. The harsh whipping on the fourth day of Christmas. It was expected that he took the whip without crying.
Childerrmas was a horrid tradition and he was so glad that he had outgrown it, by the time he was an adult it had turned into a kind of 'April Fools Day' and parents no longer whipped their children. But he never forgot it.
Christmas day was always a let down at the Gargamels. They never had enough to eat, His parents did but however much he begged they would only give him extra sprouts. Never more meat. No wonder he grew up always hungry and never satisfied with anything.
Gargamel shook his head, trying to get rid of the bad memories. He got up off his lumpy bed and went over to the mirror. He looked even ghastlier than ever. Big shadows hung below his eyes and his skin was sallow and ill looking. Insomnia was his unpleasant bed fellow.
"Yeurghh! I'm even scaring myself" he muttered.
He was not prepared for what happened next. A voice replied;
"You don't scare me old man. I know all about you Gargamel!"
The wizard looked around, confused as to where the voice was coming from. Azrael had heard it too, as the feline was stalking something near the fireplace.
"Flush it out Azrael! Let's see who dares enter our hovel without permission!"
The mangy feline pounced and promptly fell against a cauldron making it roll into the centre of the room.
Gargamel and Azrael then heard a voice coming from the cauldron;
"You are both going to be very sorry if you hurt me in any way. I can make your life very hard if I am harmed"
"Get out of our home! Whatever you are. Begone!"
"And how very dare you even threaten me!" shouted Gargamel picking up a poker from the fire. He was going to attack whatever was in that cauldron.
It must be a Smurf to be able to fit in there. He was going to teach it a lesson it would never forget.
Taking a step towards his quarry, the human raised his right hand which held the poker, ready to squish the creature.
A blur of red and white, shot out of the cauldron and affixed itself to his face with a surprising grip, it was trying to suffocate him.
Gargamel went into full panicky mode and ran around the room, not being able to see where he was going and he ran straight into a wall knocking himself out cold.
A few minutes later he came round, flat on his back. His vision was all blurry and his head and nose hurt a lot. He moved his hand to feel if his nose was broken and was surprised to find that he could not quite reach it. He tried again, but his hand, eye co-ordination was totally out of synch. He must have hurt himself badly.
His vision cleared long enough to see a creepy looking Elf wearing a red hat with white trim and a suit of red. It was standing on his chest. It was a little bigger than a Smurf and leering right in his face.
He wanted to scream but the creature had taken out a tiny wand and somehow silenced him. He felt as if he was screaming his lungs out but not a sound came from his lips.
"You really are a very noisy human, Gargamel!" chided the Elf.
"Seems that we have started on the wrong footing haven't we? Let me introduce myself. My name is Bibury the Elf and I've been sent to watch over you. You see Santa is not happy with you. You send him letters every year saying that you've been good. But they are plain lies! He is giving you a chance to change your ways. I must observe what happens and not interfere. But he never said anything about not having fun!"
The Elf winked at Gargamel and vanished in a puff of smoke.
Slowly the human got up off the floor and carefully felt the bridge of his nose. Good nothing was broken but he was going to feel sore for quite some time.
He found his faithful cat hiding under the bedclothes and promptly threw him out onto the floor.
"Get out of my bed with your fleas! I'm having a terrible night and that was a hallucination. It had to be." It also felt good to be able to speak again. He went back to bed as he suddenly felt very tired.
The next morning whilst eating some dry bread with a fried egg, the wizard started to think about what the 'dream' he had last night meant. He felt his nose, it still hurt. The only explanation was that he must have been sleepwalking. Yes that was it! He'd been overdoing things, spending too much time planning and building machines to capture the Smurfs.
He should take things easy, it was almost Christmas after all.
Once he'd finished his meal, he went to the wood store with an axe and started to chop up some logs. He enjoyed this task, it was very satisfying reducing large pieces of wood to firewood. Sometimes he imagined that he was chopping up Smurf houses.
He had a big pile of firewood stacking up behind him. Or so he thought. Turning round to collect it up he was surprised to see that there was nothing there. Not even one tiny bit of kindling.
Scratching his bald head in surprise he looked around him. Still no sign of his hard work. He was starting to get worried. Maybe his mind was playing tricks on him. He was finally going senile? Plenty of people had said he already was!
He put his axe down and decided to go back to the safety of his hovel. He was feeling a little scared and was not quite sure why.
As soon as he opened the front door he recoiled from the smell of smoke that issued forth from his fireplace. There were books burning! He looked up at his bookshelves and they were bare!
All of his precious books on evil magic were burning in front of his eyes!
He leapt towards the burning volumes and pulled them out one by one with his bare hands. All the hair on the back of his hands and arms were singed and he badly burnt a couple of fingers, but he managed to save most of them, even though the edges were burnt, the insides were intact. Thank goodness for thick volumes!
He looked for his cat. The feline came towards him and explained with meows, what had happened. So it was true! He had not been dreaming, there was an Elf in the hovel and it seems that it had a mischievous streak!
Once again Gargamel grabbed his trusty poker and shouted out into the room.
"Come out where I can see you! Try something like that again and I'll, I'll..turn you into a lump of ice and melt you slowly in the winter sun!"
No-one replied. Success! The Elf had cowered in the presence of the great and powerful wizard Gargamel. There was no wrath as terrible as an angry, evil wizard!
He decided that he was going to make sure that it could not return. He did not care if Santa had sent the annoying creature, no presents were worth losing his lifetime collection of books.
He went to his potion store and opened up the cabinet. All the potions had been tampered with. He could tell as each individual stopper had a broken candle wax seal.
This complicated things a lot. What had that evil Elf done now? He had no way of checking what was in each bottle, they could have been mixed together. It was then that he noticed one of the larger bottles glowing red and starting to shake.
Slamming the cabinet doors shut he dived onto the floor, instinctively covering his head with his hands. He waited for the inevitable explosion.
And he waited and waited. Nothing happened. He had to get up and investigate.
He opened up the cabinet, he knew he shouldn't but he being Gargamel, meant that he could not help himself. He was doomed to do something stupid. And he soon paid the price.
The cabinet exploded in a bright red flash! Once the smoke cleared, Gargamel was still standing with a look of shock on his face. He was amazed that he felt OK, he actually felt quite, what was the word? Jolly?
He started to laugh, but it came out as a big "Ho, ho,ho! "
His hands went up to his mouth to silence himself, and he recoiled when instead of a flabby chin, his digits dug themselves into a mass of curly facial hair.
"What has happened to me, by Beelzebub?" shrieked the wizard.
Running to his broken mirror he saw that he had a full head of white hair and an equally magnificent beard. He wanted to cry but instead he started to "Ho, ho, ho!" again.
The Elf appeared on the table in front of him. Gargamel went to squish him, but once again, the creature's magic was more powerful. He was frozen in mid-grab. He looked like a ballerina. This made the Bibury the Elf smirk to himself.
"Gargamel, Gargamel, whatever shall we do with you? But all is not lost. Santa has a mission for you. Prove to him that you can be good and he will grant you your dearest wish as long as it does not harm any other living creatures and no, he said that you can't have the Smurfs. You are the master of your destiny. Choose wisely!"
"What if I refuse?"
"You've not heard the mission details yet"
"It's going to be something abhorrent to me isn't it?"
"As if Santa would be that cruel to you? Oh alright, I fibbed!"
"Go on, get it over with, this beard is itchy!"
"Your mission is to take presents to the Smurf village and spend some quality time with them on Christmas day"
There was total silence apart from Azrael who was having a feline fit of laughter.
Gargamel was going a bright shade of red, which went quite nicely with the white hair and beard. The Elf even imagined that he could see steam coming out of the wizards ears.
And then, just as a blood vessel in his temple was threatening to burst, the human calmed down and seemed to have accepted his mission. In reality Gargamel was busy planning in his mind what he would do when he got into the village. He would be able to grab all the Smurfs and have the happiest Christmas ever!
His train of thought was interrupted by the Elf who used his magic wand to open the front door and levitate Gargamel into the air. Before he could protest, his clothes were magically removed from his body and he was clad in the red and white clothing of Santa Claus. He was then magically pushed out of the door to a waiting reindeer.
It was just one solitary animal and it had a saddle. A full sleigh and team of reindeers would been too much for this human to handle. A big bag of presents lay next to it. It was blue and marked 'Papa Smurf and family'.
After a couple of attempts, the wizard managed to get onto his mount with the bag and the Elf uttered a few words in the reindeer's ear. Gargamel sat on the smelly deer and was starting to wish that it was all a horrible nightmare so that he could wake up from it soon.
"Aren't you worried that I might find out where the Smurf village is?" asked Gargamel.
"Not to worry, I've told Prancer here, to make it a trip of a lifetime. You won't have time to work out where you are"
"What do you mean by that?" Replied the wizard with a scowl.
And that was the last thing he said to the Elf, as Prancer shot up into the sky like a rocket!
Higher and higher they went, through the clouds, on and on, until the wizard could hardly breathe and he felt that he would die of cold. The rate of ascent slowed and they started to dip towards the Earth.
He could not even make out the forest from up there, but he could see the whole continent of Europe.
His stomach made friends with his mouth as they came back down to the ground at almost supersonic speed. He found it impossible to open his eyes, which was the whole point. He would never know where the Smurf village truly was.
Just when he thought he would surely fall off the reindeer they slowed and Prancer, landed like a delicate snowflake right in the centre of the Smurf village.
Gargamel was still hanging onto the reindeer's harness with a death grip. His knuckles had turned white and he could hardly open his hands to let go. Then one by one, Smurfs emerged from decorated mushroom houses, there were dozens of them and then all crowded around the reindeer and the human.
Gargamel was the centre of attraction, but he was not feeling very happy about it. He was feeling furious inside as he seemed to be showing weakness in front of his foes by not even being able to free his own hands. He must be more terrified than he first thought.
He swallowed his pride and tried to control his nervousness and spoke up,
"Ermm, greeting Smurfs. Believe it or not, Santa sent me here to give out your Christmas presents. They are here in this sack. But unfortunately I seem to be stuck". He took a deep breath and said something he never imagined he would say to the Smurfs.
"Merry...ermm Smurfmas to you all. Can you help me unfreeze my hands?"
He waited for the laughter to start. But instead a chorus of "Say Please!" came from the gathered blue mass. Hundreds of tiny blue eyes were staring intently at him.
"Please?"
Then all as one, the blue hoard leapt up onto the reindeer and clambered all over Gargamel's immobilised hands.
Tiny little blue hands pulled at his digits and one by one they uncurled from the harness and finally the wizard was able to get off his mount.
He stood before them, in his new red and white clothing with a Santa hat atop his head, a blue sack over his left shoulder and a full curly white beard.
Papa Smurf came forwards up to Gargamel's black boots and gave a bow.
This puzzled the wizard. A Smurf was bowing to him? Were they trying to mock him? Did they truly think that he was a 'willing' Santa's helper?
"And what have you got for us Gargamel? Or should we call you Santa Gargamel?" A snigger rose up from the crowd of Smurfs. Papa turned around and gave them a stern look. He then turned back to look up at the human in front of him and gave a big Papa smile.
"I've been told to give you this"
And Gargamel put down the sack, rather heavily, inches away from the elderly Smurf.
"Why thank you Santa Gargamel. Won't you join us for the festivities?"
The wizard fought down the urge to tell him what he thought about Christmas and having fun, then he remembered what the Elf had said about Santa granting him his 'Dearest Wish' if he manages to be kind to the Smurfs.
The torture of the next few hours would be worth it, wouldn't it?
Reluctantly, he followed Papa and all the other Smurfs. They were heading to a glade just outside the village where a huge decorated tree stood, full of lit candles. How it had not caught fire was anyone's guess.
They motioned him to sit down on a human sized stool, just in front of the tree. Whilst he sat there, some of the other Smurfs came along with the sack and placed it to the left of Gargamel, then all the Smurfs lined up in a straight line on his right.
"This is a special treat for us Santa Gargamel. As the real Santa never had time to do this for us. It would be smurfing wonderful if we could sit on your lap and receive our presents"
Gargamel exploded with laughter. In his mind he was laughing like an evil maniac, but to the Smurfs he was sounding very, very jolly. All they could hear was a gusty 'Ho, ho, ho!" The Smurfs, sit on his lap? How preposterous!
He didn't have time to think about it further as at least twenty at a time sat on his lap. They were small, but in such numbers were quite heavy. Their little feet dug into his thighs. It was quite uncomfortable.
He was so glad Azrael could not see him now, he would never hear the end of it!
He reached down for the bag and looking inside it. There were at least a hundred little blue boxes (what else!), but they didn't seem to have any names on them. He took one out and held it in front of him.
As if by magic a name appeared on the box. It said 'Brainy Smurf'. And that particular Smurf just happened to be sitting on Gargamel's left knee.
He continued to hold the box and let the Smurf take it from him. The myopic Smurf was quite tentative about reaching for his present, but he did manage a small "Thanks".
The giving out of the presents took longer than he thought, but somehow the boxes knew which Smurfs were the closest and wrote the corresponding creature's name upon themselves. After the first group left, another took it's place. This went on at least five times and his legs were feeling very sore.
Finally the sack was almost empty apart from three presents. Where were the missing Smurfs? He wanted to get this over with and go back to the hovel where he could be miserable in peace and quiet. The other Smurfs had already opened their gifts and they all had identical hats! What boring presents!
He started to get up from the stool as his back was hurting now as well. But he sat down again when he saw the three missing Smurfs approaching him.
They were Smurfette, Vexy and Hackus. All were true blue Smurfs. They had betrayed him to go and live with the Smurfs. He could feel his anger rising again. He wanted to tell them how ungrateful they were. He gave them life! And they never thanked him for it.
The trio leapt up onto the wizard's lap without even asking permission and Gargamel felt like brushing them off. But he noticed that they were not angry with him or in a confrontational mood.
They were all smiling at him and Hackus was holding out a little gold coloured box with his big podgy hands. Vexy coughed and then spoke.
"Thank you for visiting us today Father. It's been smurfy to watch you being kind to my new family. I hope that one day you will learn to understand our reasons for leaving you all alone. A year ago you meant the world to Hackus and I and then I saw that what you called 'love' was nothing of the sort.
It might have been the way you were brought up. Maybe you didn't know any better? But by coming here today and not attacking us you have proved that you can be kind deep down where it matters"
Vexy then motioned Hackus and Smurfette forward.
"This gift is from all three of us. It will remind you that we will always be your children and that we will always love you as our 'Birth Father' even if you cannot be our real father."
Gargamel, blinked a couple of times. That speech from his youngest daughter was making him well up. How could that be? They had betrayed him. They had tried to hurt him. He felt confused by his emotions, it must be that explosion, he was still being affected by it. He glared at the three Smurfs trying to work out if they were trying to trick him. Was it a plan to hurt him again? He did not like receiving small packages. They always seemed to blow up in his face. Was this one of Jokey Smurfs pranks? He took the box from her. Quite roughly.
"Open present! Open present!" said Hackus excitedly
Once again, he could feel hundreds of little Smurf eyes staring at him. He had to distract himself with opening the gift as he could feel a panic attack coming on. He'd not had one of those for years, not since his youth when he had to perform magic for his exams.
He busied himself with tearing off the gold paper and then opened the wooden box.
Inside was a small blue quartz heart stone, threaded onto a leather thong. He lifted it out and laid it on his left palm. It started to glow brilliant blue. It felt warm and the light emanating from it was almost hypnotic.
It was the first gift given to him with love that he had ever received in his life. He didn't quite know what to say. But his heart knew and as he sat there looking at his gift, tears welled up in his eyes and two tracks of salty water wound their way down his craggy cheeks. He sniffed a couple of times and started to tie the loose thong ends together. He then pulled the whole thing over his head and tucked the heart stone into his clothes.
"Thanks you very much my children. Believe it or not this means a lot to me"
All the Smurfs cheered and clapped and for the rest of the night his little Smurf children spent some quality time with their dad. There was merriment, lots of Smurf wine, which seemed to agree with their human guest a lot! Before midnight, Santa himself turned up on his way across the country and he picked up the inebriated Gargamel and took him back to his hovel. Tucked him into his bed. He then filled the stocking on the fireplace with Smurf shaped cookies and a pot of gold, that would mean that the wizard would be able to afford some nice things for the coming year. He just had to be wise enough to budget. He wasn't going to hold his breath about Gargamel being able to manage that. But Santa believed in all who believed in him. Even bad tempered adults. They were children once too.
All in all, it was the best Christmas...Ever!
The End