Thomas Scrivener made pleading gestures to Ylith.
"What have you done to him?" Ylith asked.
"Well," Azzie said, "Brigitte here said she wanted him to shut up, so I shut him up for her."
"Oh, Azzie, stop playing around. Little girl, what do you want to be when you grow up?"
Brigitte considered. "When I was little I wanted to be a princess."
"I don't know whether Azzie can handle that," Ylith said.
"I don't want that now," Brigitte said. "Now I want to be a witch!"
"Why do you want that?"
"Because you're a witch," Brigitte said. "I want to be like you and ride a broomstick and enchant people."
Ylith smiled. "Azzie, what do you think?"
"One more witch, what does it matter?" Azzie asked. "Is that it, kid? You want to be a witch?"
"Yes!" said Brigitte.
Azzie turned to Ylith. "What do you think?"
"Well, I do take on apprentices from time to time. Brigitte is a little young, but in a few years ..."
"Oh, yes, please!" Brigitte said.
"All right," Ylith said.
"Okay," Azzie said. "You got it, kid. Now let me out of here."
"First give my father his voice again."
Azzie did as was requested of him. Thomas Scrivener went to give Brigitte a good slap alongside the head. He found his arm held by an invisible force.
"What did you do?" Brigitte asked Ylith.
"It's simple enough magic," Ylith said. Turning to Scrivener, she said, "Be good to your little girl. In a few years she will be able to make mince pies of you. And you'll have me to reckon with, too."
Chapter 1
After Brigitte released Azzie from his captivity, Ylith tied together two of her broomsticks with a stout straw rope and, with Azzie clinging behind her, rode them back to Augsburg. The sensation of the virile young demon clinging to her was very sweet to Ylith. She felt a frisson of delight when his claws, gripping her shoulders, accidentally brushed her breast. What bliss it was to ride with the beloved high above the clouds! For a while all thought of sin or sinner was forgotten, all question of good and evil put aside as she cavorted in the high blue of the sky, through violet-tinged clouds formed into fantastical shapes, melting and reforming before her eyes. Azzie liked it, too, but urged her to hurry home. They had to recover the young couple from the Harpies.
Back at the mansion, Ylith had a chance to wash her hair and pin it up securely. Then she was ready for the journey.
Using a freshly charged broomstick, Ylith mounted the heights, flying alone now, darting and sweeping with quick control. The earth fell away, and soon she was in the sparkling realms of the sky. There she searched and searched, but not a sign of the Harpies could she discover. She circumnavigated the world by its outer edge and still did not find them. But then a slow-moving pelican appeared and told her, "You're looking for the Harpies with the two stiffs? They told me to tell you they got bored and have parked the couple in a safe place and gone back to rejoin their sisters."
"Did they say anything else?" Ylith asked, making slipstream movements to keep her speed down to that of the slow-moving pelican.
"Just something about a mah-jongg game," the pelican said.
"Didn't they say where this safe place was?"
"Not a bit of it!" said the pelican. "I thought about reminding them, but they were off, and there was no way I could overtake them. You know how fast they go with those newfangled brazen wings."
"In which direction did they fly?" Ylith asked.
"North," the pelican said, motioning with his wing tip.
"True north or magnetic?"
"True north," the pelican said.
"Then I think I know where they are," Ylith said.
She turned her course to the north and piled on the speed, even though she knew the wind force would make her eyes red and unattractive. She overflew the land of the Franks in no time, then passed the deep fjord-pierced coast where Northmen still worshiped old gods and fought with hammers, axes, and other farm tools. She went past the lands of the Lapps, who sensed her passing as they trekked over the snow with their reindeer herds, but pretended not to see her since the best thing to do with ambiguous phenomena was to ignore them. And at last she came to the North Pole, the real one which existed within the imaginary point of true and absolute north and could not be reached by mortals. Slipping through the fold of reality in which it lay, she saw, below her, Father Christmas' Village.
It was built upon the solid sheet of ice with which the North Pole was capped. The buildings that had been set up here were very fine indeed, being half-timbered and wainscoted. Over to one side Ylith could see the workshop, where Father Christmas' gnomes made gifts of all sorts for mortals. These workshops are well known. What is less well known is the fact that there is a special room at the back where essences of good and evil are received from the secret storage places of Earth.
In each gift, a bit of good luck or a bit of bad luck was inserted. Exactly who got what kind of luck was a matter no one could tell. But it seemed to Ylith as she strolled through the workshop, watching the little men with their hammers and screwdrivers, that the process was more or less random. There was a hopper in the center of the big worktable, and into it fell glistening bits of good or bad luck, each of them like a little bouquet of herbs. A dwarf would reach in and insert the luck into the Christmas gift without even looking to see what it was.
Ylith asked the dwarves whether a pair of Harpies had come by recently carrying two frozen people. The dwarves shook their heads irritably. Making and stuffing Christmas presents is precision work, and if people talk to you, it spoils the rhythm. One of them jerked his head toward the back of the workshop. Ylith went that way and saw, at the end of the long room, a door with an inscription on it: SANTA'S OFFICE. She went there, knocked, entered.
Santa was a big, fat man with the sort of face that smiled easily. But looks don't always tell the story. Santa was frowning, and his face was long and drawn as he talked into a magical seashell.
"Hello, is this Supply? I need to talk to someone."
The answer came out of a baboon's head, stuffed and mounted on the wall.
"This is Supply. With whom am I speaking?"
"Claus here. Santa Claus."
"Yes, Mr. Claus. Are you authorized to speak to us here in Supply?"
"I guess you haven't heard of me," Santa Claus said. "I'm the one who brings presents around every December twenty-fifth by the new calendar."
"Oh, that Santa Claus! When do you start bringing presents for demons?"
"I'm overworked enough bringing presents for humans," Santa Claus said. "I've got this problem-"
"Just a minute," the voice said. "I will connect you with the problems clerk."
Santa Claus sighed. He was on hold again. Then he noticed Ylith, who had just entered the room.
He blinked three times rapidly behind his little rectangular spectacles. "Goodness gracious! You're not a dwarf, are you?"
"No," Ylith said, "and I'm not a reindeer, either. But I'll give you a clue. I got here on a broomstick."
"Then you must be a witch!"
"You've got it."
"Are you going to bewitch me?" Santa asked, slobbering slightly as he perceived Ylith's charms, which had been brought into prominence by her windblown clothes. "I wouldn't mind being bewitched, you know. Nobody ever thinks of bewitching Santa Claus. As if I don't need a little cheering up from time to time, eh? Who brings Santa Claus presents, eh? Ever think of that? It's give, give, give all the time around here. But what do I get out of it?"