CHAPTER THREE
THE NORTH POLE, RECEPTION
“Next!” The golden grate in front of the reception window rolled up to reveal a polar bear in cat-eye glasses and a pearl necklace, holding a pen and a clipboard.
Avery blinked hard and looked around. After a moment, she stepped across the threshold of the waiting room, and the door slid closed behind her. Then the bedroom door, and the entire bedroom with it, rolled away. It chugged down the hallway on an invisible track and disappeared.
Stunned, she turned back to the reception desk where the polar bear was writing something on her clipboard, her large paw grasping an equally large pen.
“Excuse me,” Avery said, finding her voice. “Good morning. I think, um, can you please tell me if I’m dreaming?”
“Good morning!” the polar bear replied. “You must be—” she looked down, consulting the clipboard, “Avery Hoarfrost. We’ve been expecting you.”
“Oh! Well, then.” A question occurred to Avery. She expected a feeling of dread or maybe even terror along with it, but no such feelings came. “Am I...dead?” Remembering her manners, she added, “Ms.—?”
“Tilly.”
“Pleased to meet you, Tilly. So am I—?”
“Do you feel dead?” Tilly asked in a pleasant tone.
“I’m not sure, I’ve never been dead before,” Avery admitted. She stretched her back a little, luxuriating in the painlessness. “I feel amazing, actually.”
“Oh, I’m so glad to hear it,” Tilly said. “And I’m happy to report that you are neither dreaming nor dead. This is simply the next step in the application process. Here, this is for you!” Tilly slid a small, beautifully decorated box onto the desk in front of her.
Avery took a cautious step toward the bear.
“You’re perfectly safe,” Tilly assured her.
Indeed, she felt safe, which was an unexpected feeling six feet from a talking polar bear.
She smiled at Tilly apologetically, not wishing to offend.
Avery took a few more steps forward and gingerly lifted the top off the gift box.
Inside was a golden-orange maple leaf, outlined with a delicate, feathery pattern of ice crystals—no, real crystals.
Diamonds. Sparkling, glittering hoarfrost. “Avery” was painted in golden cursive across the center of the leaf.
“My goodness, this is stunning. This is for me?”
“It’s your ID brooch,” Tilly explained.
“My ID brooch?” Avery asked, confounded. She couldn’t fathom what this must have cost.
“Nicer than a plastic badge, don’t you think? You’ll need that to access certain locations while you’re here for your interview,” Tilly advised. “Try not to lose it.”
Avery let out a nervous laugh as she pinned the brooch to her pajamas. In the process, she noticed her bare, watchless wrist. She quickly patted herself down. No phone.
“Oh gosh, what time is it?” she asked. “I have a call scheduled for this morning with one of my clients.” Avery never missed a meeting. She braced herself for the sweaty mortification of delinquency, but it never came.
“Not to worry, dear,” Tilly said. “When you sign the application, the system automatically sends an email to your employer explaining that you’re sick; nothing too serious, of course, and puts up a very respectable out of office message.
It’s all in the terms of the non-disclosure agreement.
I promise, no one is worried, your watch and phone are safe at home, and you won't be fired.”
“Okay...”
Avery didn’t remember reading that in the terms of the NDA, which she admittedly skimmed. But she didn’t have time to process that information as she turned around and ran into an android.
“Oh, jeez, I’m so sorry,” she said, jumping back, and taking in his immaculately polished, silver physique.
“So glad you chose to join us, Ms. Hoarfrost, welcome,” the metal man explained in a posh British accent.
The silvery gentleman handed her a small, wrapped gift box. Inside was a silver bracelet with a round, green gem in the middle.
“Oh, this is lovely, but, um, what is your name?”
“My name is Ander, Ms. Hoarfrost.”
“Right. Ander. I don’t know if I can accept such lavish gifts. We’ve just met, and,” Avery trailed off, distracted by the sparkles bouncing off the bracelet she found herself securing on her wrist.
“This gift serves a purpose, Ms. Hoarfrost, like your ID brooch. Your tutor will explain how it works. In any event, it is a North Pole tradition upon making a new acquaintance that there should be an exchange of gifts,” Ander explained.
“Oh,” Avery said, looking sheepishly between Ander and Tilly. “I’m sorry. I don’t have a gift for either of you.”
“Not to worry,” Ander assured her. “You’ve only just arrived. You would have no way of knowing our customs. Now, before we head to your study room, may I get you something? Hot cocoa? Snickerdoodle?”
“Oh, um, yes, actually, coffee would be wonderful if you have it,” she said. She thought that coffee might either wake her up from what she still wasn’t entirely convinced was not a dream, or allow her to come to terms with her surroundings and prepare for whatever awaited her in the study room.
“Cream and sugar?” Ander inquired, navigating his robot legs with alarmingly human-like ease over to the table with the silver carafe that matched his skin.
“I wish, but I can’t do cream,” she said, placing a protective hand over her abdomen and thinking about the massive stomachache she gave herself last time she ate dairy.
“Oh, I assure you, that won’t be a problem here, Ms. Hoarfrost,” he said, bending his shiny silver arm to pour her a cup, adding a splash of cream. One of his fingertips tilted backward to reveal a spoon, which he used to stir the coffee.
“No stomachaches at the North Pole?” Avery laughed.
“Of course not,” Ander said simply, handing her the cup.
Avery took a cautious sip. It was delicious, and the perfect temperature. Surely Ander was joking about no stomachaches at the North Pole. Yet the stabbing pains that usually immediately attended her consumption of dairy were nowhere to be felt.
“Could you please show me where I could freshen up?” she asked the helpful android.
“Certainly. Right this way.”
Ander held her coffee while Avery entered a changing room that was nicer than her apartment.
It was beautifully appointed, similar to the vintage train car in which she awoke.
It smelled like sugar cookies and pine trees.
Against the wall was a locker underneath a worn gold nameplate, engraved with “Hoarfrost” in formal script.
She opened the locker to find several changes of clothes: a dress, a pantsuit, and a fuzzy, vintage sweater.
They were all her size. The sweater called to her, but she opted for the pantsuit.
She was still entirely bewildered, but at least she’d be dressed appropriately.
She hung up her pajamas in the locker, donned the dark green velvet suit, admired the white-fur accents along the lapel and trim of her blazer, then attached her brooch.
It was the finest fabric she’d ever worn, and somehow it seemed perfectly tailored to her curves.
She slid into the black leather ankle boots that sat at the bottom of her locker and stepped back to inspect herself in the large, gilded mirror on the wall.
She looked festive, yet ready to take on the world. It was a niche look, but so was her situation.
She stepped closer to the mirror and saw her fair skin was clearer than usual, and glowing.
Her cheeks were rosy. Her hair was half-up, perfectly coiffed in vintage victory rolls.
It was her favorite way to wear her hair, but she could never get the style to set quite right.
The fact that she simply woke up like this confirmed for Avery, more so than even the talking polar bear and the solicitous android, that something extraordinary was happening.
When she emerged from the locker room, Ander was stationed in the hallway, waiting for her.
She retrieved her coffee from him as something large came sliding toward her on the floor.
She flattened herself against the wall as she saw a penguin whizzing past her on its stomach, smacking into one of Ander’s metal legs, nearly knocking him over.
The penguin popped up, flapping its flippers. “Almost ‘ad it that time, Andy old chap,” he declared in a Cockney British accent. “I’ll be flyin’ by Tuesday.” He turned to Avery. “‘Ello there, love.”
“Gregory,” Ander announced, “may I present Ms. Avery Hoarfrost. Ms. Hoarfrost, this is Gregory. He’s…a hawk.”
Avery shot Ander a confused look. He nodded.
“Well, she can plainly see that, mate, with those sparklin’ blue eyes of ‘ers,” Gregory assured Ander. “Can’t you, Ms. ‘oarfrost?”
“Of course. Pleased to meet you,” Avery said with a small curtsy.
Gregory dipped his head forward in what she assumed was a formal gesture for a bird. He then reached his beak under his left wing and produced a silver pen, with a beautiful, long, brown-and-white hawk’s feather attached to the end. He extended it toward her.
Avery retrieved it from his beak.
“For you, poppet,” Gregory said. “Added the feather me’self.”
“Oh!” she exclaimed. She looked at the feather on the pen, which bore no resemblance to Gregory’s plumage. She glanced at Ander, who was shaking his head, and decided to take Gregory at his word.
“How wonderful!” she gushed. “Thank you so much. Um...”
She wished she had something to give him in return. What did penguins, or penguins who apparently thought they were hawks, like?
She felt something stirring in her jacket.
She reached into her pocket and was surprised to find a small box.
Inside was a wet, mostly dead fish. She held the open box in front of her, and Gregory quickly dipped his head forward, swallowing it whole.
Avery stared at the empty box, dumbfounded, and returned it to her pocket.
A moment later, the box was nowhere to be found.
“She’s a regular Bobby Dazzler,” Gregory said, clicking his beak. “And right cracking in that suit ain’t she, Andy old chap?”
Avery blushed and ran her hands along the front of her jacket, straightening her lapels.
“I can see it now,” Gregory envisioned, “‘er and the Big Man, side-by-side, what a team—”
“Oh, do behave yourself, Gregory,” Ander said, cutting him off. “Ms. Hoarfrost is our guest, and she’s not even had her interview yet,” Ander said, tapping him on the top of the beak. Gregory nipped at his metal finger.
Side-by-side with the Big Man.
A mysterious, high-stakes, Christmas-centric legal job. In the North Pole.
Avery inhaled sharply, realization stealing her breath.
She was interviewing to be Santa’s lawyer.
“I apologize for my uncivilized companion, Ms. Hoarfrost,” Ander said. “He takes some getting used to, I’m afraid.”
Avery stared at the absurd pair before her. Emily Post’s Etiquette did not prepare her for this moment.
“Not at all,” she said at last. “You have both been most welcoming.”
Gregory tilted back his head and honked approvingly. “Now, if you’ll follow me, love, I’ll show you to your study room.” He waddled ahead, flapping his flippers as though trying to take off.
Ander rejoined Tilly at the reception desk, while Avery followed Gregory down the hallway.
“Third time’s the charm?” Avery heard Tilly ask in a hushed voice.
Gregory turned a corner, and then another. The hallway terminated at a bookcase. He tugged on a lever on the first shelf, causing the bookcase to rotate on a hinge, opening a passageway to the most beautiful library Avery had ever seen.