A Sparkle of Belief | Teen Ink

A Sparkle of Belief

September 24, 2011
By 3sdefran SILVER, Moosic, Pennsylvania
3sdefran SILVER, Moosic, Pennsylvania
8 articles 0 photos 0 comments

Favorite Quote:
"I’d rather live asking a good question than knowing a bad answer."


Santa Claus. Magical or fat? Elves. Magical or midgets? Reindeer. Magical or large caribou? Questions need to be asked for answers to be given, and answers cannot be given to those who do not believe in what is actually real. Love for the things in life that can’t be seen is as important as the love shared between a family. Without believers there are no dreamers, and without dreamers how do we keep moving forward. The rights to life, love, belief, and skepticism join the world together to read this story. Where will it take us, though? That is a question worth asking, but the answer is hidden in the imagination of all. The problems to come need answers, and the answers come from the questions that are complicated and obscure. Believe in the story and it will truly be magical.

“Once upon a time in a land far far away,” stated Remy, “there was a magical castle full of toy making elves. They just loved to work for their boss so much that they moved up to the North Pole, and declared it home.”

“Yes Remy, that is absolutely true,” Rex said sarcastically. “They’ve got it all wrong, we are not elves we are normal sized!”

“Sure! That enormous growth spurt you had brought you up a huge amount. What are you now? I thought I heard two feet, six inches.” Remy bent over in an extreme form of laughter, seeing how he couldn’t hold in his amusement.

“Oh shut up!” As soon as the last syllable hit the room every worker stopped, stared, and fixated their eyes on him. The sighs that filled the room outnumbered the stars in the sky. “Ooops!” Rex supposed he had done something wrong except that his best friend was laughing hysterically at him.

“I cannot believe that you haven’t figured it out yet!” Remy whispered in a hysterical voice. He pointed at the round, plump man standing behind Rex.

“Oh my bad. Sorry sir.” Rex ran out the other door into the freezing bitterness of winter.

“Now listen up everyone. We have one week until Christmas, and we are down ten gumdrops worth of toys. I myself have had to start building toys again. I will barely finish my naughty and nice list,” Santa announced with immense depression.

“Do not worry Santa,” the head elf proclaimed from his workbench. “We will do fifty gumdrops worth of overtime in the week to come.”

The melancholy expression on Santa’s face remained there as if it was frozen that way. “If only that were enough… If only that were enough…” He started toward the door, but stopped at the window. He stared into the cold abyss that was the North Pole

On another note, even though it is much grimmer, Santa’s wife, Mrs. Claus, was sick with the flu. She was bedridden and unable to cook or clean. All hope for a perfect white Christmas had vanished with the Sparkle that used to fill Santa’s eyes. As he sat down on his bed, next to his ill wife, Santa lost the last desire to believe. With his own belief gone, the love of the world’s children evaporated into the cold desolate outskirts of space.
**********************************************************

Okay now let’s flip the globe around. We are in Antarctica, the coldest place on Earth. Living a frozen-hearted, bitter-cold life was Atnas. He was the cruelest person in the entire universe. Not even a black hole sucked as much love, life, and light away from people as he did. Most people assume that the cold makes him so fierce, but the truth behind his façade of frostbitten rage is that he was Santa’s elder brother. According to the hereditary privileges given to older brothers, Atnas should have been the head toymaker. Atnas’s inability to take pleasure in the joys of Christmas was the downfall to his privileges.

“I hate my life!” Atnas snarled. “It’s unfair, cruel, and unusual punishment to be banned from my home up North. Being stuck in this frozen version of the devil’s sanctuary. I love to order, but there is no one to order. No ordering means madness in loneliness! That’s probably why I started talking to myself.” He stared into the half-shattered mirror with disgust. His cloak wrapped itself around his heartless bones. No flesh or blood coursed through his body. Atnas was a skeleton of frozen ferocity.

Suddenly, his crystal ball lit up with a warning. “Oh, it’s getting too warm in New York.” With a wave of his boney fingers a blizzard formed over Wisconsin in seconds, and headed toward its destination. “There we go. They’ll be stuck inside for the next week!” Atnas tittered until he couldn’t make a sound anymore, but his mind whipped around ideas from place to place in his evil sub conscience brought a sinister thought to his frostbitten mind.

“I love people freezing. I have the magic to control snow. I can freeze the world?” Atnas questioned his own abilities until he came to an awful realization. The Sparkle that left Santa’s eyes found its way across the Earth to Atnas’s. His plan was brilliant. It was an awful plan, too. His plan was an awfully brilliant plan with great thorough thought, and great pleasure. Nothing could get in his way. Atnas would sneak up to the North Pole, put a spell on the presents, and wait until Christmas day to watch every family in the world open a box of freezing cold fury. “Hurricanes of snow will be in everyone’s house for the next decade.

When all living things were frozen solid, Atnas would move them to the North Pole. He would be in charge up North, and his statues would guard in like a fence. There would be no living heartbeat for the next million miles. The end of love and Santa was coming, and within a weeks time it would reign true to all who believe.
**********************************************************

Six days later, after straining labor, the elves had finished all the toys. “We’re done sir, but all the elves are burnt out. Can we please have a break?” one of the elves pleaded.

“Of course, three days of vacation for everyone!” Santa supposed.

“Hurray!” all of the elves shouted with joy. The mistletoe went up, and the party started. No elf could resist dancing to music, no matter how exhausted they are. Across from Santa’s house, the last of the presents were loaded into the sleigh and stored in the safe house. Or at least everyone thought it was safe.

“Finally,” Atnas whispered with glee. After six days of traveling by glacier, ship, and plane, Atnas was ready to undo Santa’s hard work by using evil to overthrow love. The Sparkle he had was still burning strong in his cold lifeless soul. With another wave of his boney hand, Atnas turned all of the presents into a gift of frozen tundra that would soon bring terror to the world’s children.

Little did Atnas know that he had a small two-foot six-inch elf named Rex watching him from the window. “Huh? Oh my nutcrackers!’ Rex was as befuddled as a palm tree in Iceland. I’ve got to tell Santa, Rex thought. Only thought. Rex wanted to makeup for his mishap in the shop earlier in the week, and this was his only shot. As soon as Atnas closed the door, Rex snuck out from the shadows and ran toward the present farthest away from the door. He opened each one up to release the cold bitterness of Atnas’s magic, and the only thing that kept him from freezing was his warm workshop clothing he wore. After each icy gift had been opened, Rex headed toward the door. In an instant, Rex tripped over one of the presents, and the same frozen fury blew at him again.

“OH NO! I’ve got to tell Santa now!” As soon as Santa closed his house door, Rex ran over to him and shouted, “AtnasfrozealltheprsentsandChristmasisover!” It was all one scrambled group of letters to everyone else who would of heard it, but Santa took enough away from the sentence to comprehend the situation.

“Are you sure?” Santa’s dazed look told Rex to slow down; his question needed an immediate answer.

“Well, I think it was him. Let’s see here…” Rex thought back to his moments as a spy and recalled every detail that came to his mind. “His hand was made of bones. When he waved it all the presents turned an arctic color. He had a blue cape and hat. So all in all, I’m pretty sure it was Atnas.”

“What was that Rex? I stopped listening after boney hands to call in all the elves,” Santa stated with an uptight illustration. “ Thank you for warning me, though.”

In almost three seconds flat every elf emerged around Santa’s position. “Atnas, my evil brother, has turned all of the presents into canons of snow. If any child receives one of those gifts he or she will be frozen where they stand.”

“Santa, I know what we can do,” Remy uttered as he passed through the crowd. “We can ask Atnas to change all the presents back to normal.” The whole North Pole burst into laughter, but after all their giggling was done, they thought about the idea. It was the only chance at saving Christmas anyway.

Santa was puzzled in the most horrific of ways. “It’s not the worst idea, but at least its still an idea. However, we do not know where Atnas went.”

“Yes we do Santa,” Rex explained. “I saw him walk over to the reindeer after he froze all the presents.”

“That would have been useful information ten minutes ago, but my brother doesn’t even know how to fly reindeer.” The Sparkle returned to his eyes with more strength than ever before. “My brother doesn’t know how to fly reindeer.” Santa repeated again and again until he realized that the words weren’t in his head, but coming out of his mouth. Santa looked up with an embarrassed on his face. “Well, let’s get over to the stable.”

Everyone ran as fast as they could over to the stable. When Santa passed through the threshold, he saw his brother cornered by eight reindeer.

“Your lucky I can only freeze things that are magicless,” Atnas scowled.

“Well it looks like you have two options. I can wait here until you melt and the magic wears off. Comet will love to lap up your puddle.”

“OR,” Atnas yelled.

“Or you can change all the gifts back to their original form.”

“Never!” Unexpectedly, Atnas peered down toward his feet, and saw all of his toes were missing. “Well, uhh? Fine I’ll try to deice the gifts, but whatever I freeze cannot be unfrozen if I’m still cold-hearted.” Atnas chuckled at the thought of giving up his icy powers. “There is absolutely no chance on my sub-zero tundra that I will give up my wonderful command over snow.”

“How would you feel if I made your headquarters in Hawaii instead of the South Pole? That way, if you give up your bitterness, you’d be nice and warm. Best of all, you would never melt. Just to be fair I’ll give you Nice magic instead of that Naughty magic,” Santa bargained with small expectations.

A tear trickled down Atnas’s face, and with one final wave of his hand, the magic of wintriness evaporated into the air. At the same moment the magic of love filled itself inside of Atnas. The skeleton became a body, and the new eyes he had, enclose the same Sparkle as Santa’s.


The author's comments:
I wrote this for the people who have lost their way on the path of life. I hope it inspires you like my thoughts inspired me.

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This article has 1 comment.


on Sep. 27 2011 at 5:47 pm
Norma-Bernard GOLD, Moosic, Pennsylvania
14 articles 2 photos 26 comments

Favorite Quote:
"When a door closes, somewhere out there a window opens."

I <3 this story! Xmas is my favorite time of the year so i guess I'm kind of prejuidce :) Keep up the good work!!!!!!