Chapter 47 — In Which the Christian Spy is Tricked into Revealing Herself
Jumeau, that living nightmare of animated porcelain. Jumeau, her vacant, owl-like gaze haunting Peter from across the room. Jumeau, that anorexic, goth lolita, misfit slice of Halloween, her crooked witch hat jingling merrily as she whispered a one-sided conversation to herself, then held a fork up to her ear and listened with wide wonderment. What secrets do you hold, oh silverware of old? What ghosts of chocolate cakes and figgy puddings do you foretell? What was that flesh obsessed ghoul plotting with the Holy Spirit? How would her betrayal befall them?
Another bacchanalia of drinking and feasting was underway. Yuika’s underlings in their professional chef attire brought out all manner of roasts and stews from tender puffin to char broiled narwhal, and hocks of juicy moose meat— as big as a grown man— like something out of Monster Hunter. But Peter did not have an eye for the food— his attention was focused on Pinocchio’s goth girlfriend— that murderous, doll-jointed lunatic. To think that she was on the loose— free to go about her grim business with impunity— after trying to kill him— twice! Who knows what instruments of death she had collected? What otherworldly Biblical allies she had conspired with? Even now she could be carrying a phial of poison, a brick of C-4, an eggsack throbbing to burst with a million black widows. And Peter alone knew of this traitorous doll’s conspiracies against Christmas— no one else believed him!
While Peter’s idled at the entrance of the great hall— awaiting Yechdel’s arrival— morbid visions of his own assassination disturbed the calm surface of his thoughts. But these gruesome what-ifs were themselves disturbed by Yuki, the elf in charge of ugly Christmas sweaters— who, unaware of the fatal game of 4-D chess playing in his head, cooly flirted with him.
“Hi.” She smiled and twirled a lock of blonde hair around her finger.
“Hi,” Peter said.
“I’m Yuki.”
“I’m Peter.” He twitched frightfully— Jumeau was wielding a fondue fork!
“I know.” Yuki bit her pink lip and fluttered her eyes at him. “Hey. What’s my name?”
“Yuki.”
A smug grin formed across Yuki’s face. She pointed at him and said, “That’s right!”
The conversation went on like this, that is to say, it went nowhere, but every now and then Yuki would ask Peter if he still remembered her name. Each time he repeated “Yuki,” she beamed a big smile, winked, and congratulated him. Peter didn’t know that she was literally brainwashing her way to the forefront of his memory, butting ahead of all the other elves he had acquaintanced with. But then Yechdel arrived with her patented look of bureaucratic disapproval, her fountain pen crossing off names from a clipboard with guillotine precision. Peter shoved the flirty elf’s face away, saying, “Goodbye, Yuki— Yechdel! There you are! I need to talk to you about Jumeau. You followed her for a day, right?”
Surprised at Peter’s interest in Jumeau, Yechdel silently adjusted her enormous, perfectly round glasses and pondered to herself for a moment. Would this discussion over the creepy doll align with her core values. When she figured it was in fact permissible, she smiled and said, “Yes, I did. What did you want to know?”
“What did she do?”
“Ah, well… she spent time with Tchaikovsky and tried to play the violin, but she could only make horrific screeching noises. She seemed to enjoy it, though. Then she climbed out a window onto the roof of the workshop and spun around in circles for half an hour and sang a song to the moon. Then she tried to help chop some firewood, but she got carried away decorating the axe with bows and ribbons and didn’t cut anything. Then she pretended to get hungry and had a snack— or, she pretended to have one. After that she went to the pet kennel and tried to teach the kittens the alphabet. Then there was dinner— you were there for that. Then she spent time with some of the elves from the workshop brushing and plaiting each other’s hair. After that she retired to her room and pretended to sleep.”
“Did she do anything strange?” Peter asked.
“You mean other than everything I just said? No.”
“Did she do anything else at all? Anything noteworthy?”
“Well… we had a slumber party together in her room. It was great fun.”
“Slumber party? Yechdel, was Jumeau ever alone?”
“No. We hung out together the entire day.”
Peter sighed heavily. “You were supposed to be spying on her.”
“Spying? On Jumeau? Why?”
“Nevermind. You said Jumeau has a bedroom. Can you tell me where that is?”
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The usual pe-dinner toast was made with Santa saluting her glass of fortified wine and downing it in one gulp. In a great cacophony of noise, five thousand elves were uniformly seated and supper commenced. But Peter did not reach for his fork— his mind was aflutter with plots to expose Jumeau as the enemy of all things Christmas. What traps could he set to lure that creeping Catholic parasite out from her web of deceit so he could squash her? Squash her like a tarantula under a battle tank. While Santa calmly enjoyed her meal beside him, Peter crossed his arms and furrowed his brow and tapped his foot, deep in thought— so deep— like a child drowning in the bottomless depths of an inflatable pool— overflowing with the water of logic. Then, much to Peter’s surprise, he caught a stray thread of genius.
Down the table, seated between the master elves, Jumeau amassed a collection of dishes, sampling a little bit of everything, although her doll mouth was not connected to any digestive tract, and indeed she couldn’t even chew food, much less taste or swallow it. She was lost in her own little culinary world— or perhaps she wasn’t, and maybe this too was part of her ruse to lower everyone’s defenses.
Peter briskly stood up, and rang his knife against a goblet like a crystal bell. The elven chatter hushed as all eyes fixed upon Peter.
“Before supper tonight, would anyone here like to say grace?” Peter asked.
Hesitation filled the air as the elven girls looked about, whispering Peter’s question as if it were a foreign language. But the silence was short-lived, as Jumeau jumped out of her seat, hand outstretched like a honor student eager for those participation points on her grade point average. Peter gestured to the puppet as if to pass the honors onto her.
Jumeau sat down, folded her hands in prayer, closed her eyes and said, “Bless us O—”
And then she halted as if the air had been robbed from her non-existent lungs. Peter’s eyes burned across the table like a white laser, dividing her into doll parts. He had got her this time. The elves and Santa, however, did not understand these foreign gestures and these strange words such as ‘bless’ and ‘O,’ and they looked back and forth between Peter and Jumeau, wondering what was going on. Jumeau cut the tension with a nervous and clown-like giggle.
“I mean… what?” she said. Then she giggled again.
“Thank you, Jumeau.” Peter raised his glass as if toasting, his eyes like centroids burning in their sockets, and sat down.
“What was that?” Santa asked him.
“That’s a Christian prayer,” Peter whispered out the corner of his mouth.
“She’s just a doll, Peter.”
Peter turned his back to Jumeau and leaned in towards Santa and whispered, “I just caught her red handed— in front of everyone. How much more evidence do I have to find before you believe me? It’s so obvious.”
“Jumeau says and does weird things all the time. She’s different. That’s not wrong.”
Peter sighed a long defeated sigh, took up his knife, and sawed into a bloody moose steak.
“I’ll find something. I tricked her once, I can do it again.”
Deep at night, while all the elves were nestled all snug in their beds, Peter was out and about, prowling through the shadowy corridors with a fiery candelabra in hand. The workshop whispered through the dark, its architectural bones groaning as the foundations of ice shifted down below. He tiptoed in search of Jumeau’s bedroom, and the terror in his heart told him he was drawing near. From the ceiling hung grinning marionettes, frozen mid laugh, their limp bodies swinging gently from cold drafts. He came upon her door and listened into the wood for signs that the living doll was up and about. Try as he might, not a footstep or whisper was offered from the next room.
Oh, to sneak into a girl's bedroom in the dead of night. And not just any girl's bedroom, but an evil girl's bedroom. An evil, creepy girl made of porcelain who wants to murder you. What an awfully suspenseful way to close a chapter!