An elf fixes things before they are broken, and it is very pleased about it. A hinge is oiled the night before it would have squeaked. A sled runner is waxed on the one morning it will be needed. Santa's elves work through the long dark of December in lofts and woodsheds across the pine country around Elmarrow, and the old argument among their neighbors has never been whether they are useful. It is how they should be paid.
The argument came to a head in my second week there, at a meeting in the grange hall. Rolf Ostrand, who keeps the sawmill, held that an elf should be paid in cocoa, hot and in the morning, since an elf who is cold works slowly. Madda Quill, who keeps the bakery, held for cookies, at night, since an elf who is hungry works sloppily. They are both right and both wrong, and I was asked to say which. I spent four days in the Ostaly workshop with a notebook before answering.
An elf stands three feet tall and is built like a pear, with hands too big for its wrists and long ears that sit up under a felt cap. The one I followed wore green felt, a red belt with gold buttons and red-and-white striped stockings, and it sang under its breath while it worked. It made one wooden toy every ninety minutes, and each time it finished one it held the toy over its head with both hands and laughed. In four days I counted forty-six toys and forty-six laughs. It drank cocoa when the loft was cold and ate cookies when the light went, and its work did not change either way. What changed was the singing, which was louder with cocoa and slower with cookies, so I told the grange hall to give both.
Nothing about my visit was routine for the elves except the tidying. Every evening each elf sweeps its own bench, stacks the offcuts, and folds the apron it will not wear tomorrow. When I returned the following winter, the loft had acquired a string of colored lights along the rafters, put up in the night, with no one willing to say who had done it. The grange hall had kept my ruling. The elf I had followed was on the bench again, with a new toy held over its head, and when I asked whether the cocoa was warm enough, it said, "Already fixed."
- Classification
- Workshop fey, small humanoid
- Habitat
- Toy workshops, lofts, woodsheds
- Danger
- Minimal
- Size
- 3 ft tall, round as a pear
- Activity
- Seasonal
- Realm
- The northern pine country
- Binomial
- Fabricula hiemalis
- Diet
- Gingerbread, hot cocoa, candied nuts
- Temperament
- Industrious, giggly, proud of tidy work