CHAPTER FIVE
THE NORTH POLE, AVERY’S LIbrARY
The following morning, Avery was lounging in red and gold silk pajamas on her favorite couch, surrounded by fuzzy blankets and pillows, reading a book on the anatomy of magic reindeer.
Her hair was still bouncy and soft, her skin still glowing, her cheeks and lips still perfectly rouged.
She’d used the magic bracelet to decorate the entire library: it was covered in baubles, twinkling lights, and garlands dramatically draped over every surface.
There was an enormous spruce tree centered in front of the enchanted windows, enthusiastically decorated in tinsel and vintage ornaments reminiscent of her childhood.
She’d even created her own perfume to make herself as irresistible as possible: it smelled like molasses, coffee, and freshly baked caramel corn.
She spritzed some on her neck and her wrists; it would fade to the perfect strength by the time Louis returned.
In front of her, a three-tiered coffee table of her own design stretched the length of the long sofa.
It was covered in books, espresso-stained mugs, and half-eaten trays of cookies.
On the center tier was a self-playing grand piano no larger than a dinner plate, softly spinning jazzy Christmas classics into the warm, rich atmosphere of the library.
But she hadn’t spent all night simply eating cookies and preparing for Louis’ return.
Suspended in the air throughout the room were Avery’s notes.
There were bullet-point lists, Venn diagrams, and messy paragraphs, with red ribbons pinned to bows connecting corresponding concepts.
Halfway through the night, she stopped to wonder how much less traumatic the Big City bar exam might have been if she had possessed this pen.
Back then, all she had was her laptop, Chinese takeout, and her mother’s wonderfully awful jokes to keep her sane.
Now, with infinite coffee, sugar, and magic at her disposal, Avery wasted not a single moment of her time in the library, transferring everything she knew about Christmas from her heart to her pen to the air in front of her.
She had cracked it and was taking a reading break to celebrate when Louis walked in.
“Good morning, Ave—” Louis stopped mid-sentence and looked around, dumbstruck, at the Christmas chaos that surrounded him.
Avery set down her book, grabbed a cylindrical object off the coffee table, and bounded her way over to Louis.
“Good morning!” she said at a volume more suited for a crowded shopping mall than a library. “I have a gift for you.” She held out one end of the package to him.
“A Christmas cracker!” he said.
“Yes! I made it myself,” she said, out of breath with enthusiasm. “I hope I did it right. Here! Pull!”
He grabbed the other end of the decorated tube and gave it a tug.
A loud series of cracks and pops emanated from the miniature fireworks show that burst forth from the cracker.
A paper hat with “Louis” emblazoned on the front flew out and landed atop his head.
A flock of tiny exploding hearts and shooting stars brushed past his cheeks, forming clouds and peppering his shoulders with snow.
He took in the frenetically festive display dancing around him, flabbergasted.
Two small objects remained floating in the air between them: an envelope and a box. Louis grabbed and opened the tiny box at Avery’s urging. It contained a small enamel Christmas tree pin that said, “A VERY HAPPY CHRISTMAS.”
“Do you like it?” she asked hopefully.
Louis could only smile and nod.
“Here,” Avery said, taking the pin and stepping close to him, attaching it to the lapel of his suit jacket.
She heard him take a long, deep breath in through his nose as she secured the pin to his blazer.
Taking a step back, she admired her handiwork and his dazed look. Her perfume must have hit the mark.
“Now, don’t forget the joke,” she said, nudging the floating envelope toward him. “I wrote it.”
“Please,” Louis requested, his eyes glazed over. “Read it to me.”
Avery reached forward and eagerly ripped open the small envelope, pulling out a piece of paper. She cleared her throat. “Why don’t sharks attack lawyers?” she asked, looking at Louis expectantly.
He put his hand over his mouth and shook his head, smothering a laugh.
“Professional courtesy!” Avery finished. She grinned at him, waiting for a reaction.
Louis looked at her and burst out laughing. He walked away, doubled over, holding his stomach, wiping tears from his eyes before returning to her, red-faced. He placed his hands on her shoulders and, still chuckling, looked around the room, shaking his head.
“Did you get any rest last night?” he asked through a laugh.
“Actually, no! I didn’t need to sleep at all!
” she sped through her words. “I just kept drinking espresso and eating Christmas cookies—sorry, biscuits,” she tittered, “and I’m still wide awake!
Do you want one?” Avery didn’t wait for a response before holding her wrist up to her mouth.
“A Christmas biscuit for Louis, s'il vous pla?t.”
She turned to him. “It speaks French,” she explained, as a beautifully decorated sugar cookie shaped like a snowman burst into existence with an explosion of gold glitter and frosting. It rotated rapidly beside her shoulder before she plucked it out of the air and handed it to him.
He took the cookie without looking at it.
“Avery—” he said, caution in his voice, eyes wide.
“What is it?” she asked. “Do you want something different? I can get you whatever you want. This bracelet is brilliant. I can—”
He grasped her wrist, stopping her in her sugar-addled, sleep-deprived tracks.
“You have to press the green gem for the bracelet to work,” he said.
She cocked her head to the side and smiled, looking down at where Louis was touching her wrist.
“Oh...oh!” she exclaimed, realization dawning on her. “That’s a good thing, right? If I can do it without the bracelet?”
“No one’s ever learned to wield the magic that quickly,” he said reverently, taking a step back and touching a hand to his mouth.
From the corner of the library, a grandfather clock began to chime.
“Ooh! A bell! That’s great! Well, let me show you what I’ve come up with so far.” Avery sped around to the far left of the wall of words hanging behind the sofa. She turned around to see Louis, still stunned into speechlessness, staring at her from beside the fireplace. “Louis, darling?”
“Yes, dear?” he said softly, looking back at her, his eyes light-years away.
Avery laughed, and Louis shook his head, as if trying to wake from a dream.
“Look here,” she said. “I’ve separated everything I’ve learned about the meaning of Christmas into a few different categories to try and distill it down to its central tenets. I hope you don’t mind, I focused on Christmas movies. Family tradition.”
“I remember,” he said, still stunned.
She walked behind him and steered him over to the couch. “You, sit,” she commanded, turning him around and pushing his shoulders down to make him sit. She used the pen to move the wall of glowing words in front of him like a screen.
Avery’s presentation seemed to rouse him from his dreamlike state. She saw his eyes sharpen as she walked him through her findings.
“I’ve focused on film because there has, as far as I can tell, been a movie made about every significant Christmas story, fable and tale—at least a version or retelling of it. I’ve curated a selection of fifty and broken them down by category to—”
“Fifty?” Louis cut her off.
“Yes, but please don’t interrupt, or we’ll be here all day,” she replied.
He put up his hands in mock surrender, amusement creeping into his voice. “My apologies, please proceed.”
Avery used her pen to hook the end of her outline and shifted her entire collection of notes to the left.
In front of them was now a massive wall of text, threaded with red ribbon and bows, like the wall of an obsessive, manic detective trying to solve a Yuletide mystery.
Fifty movie titles, in no particular order, with paragraphs and circles and arrows explaining the moral of each one.
“I’ve boiled it down to three basic elements that comprise these stories. Some are more prominently featured than others, but they answer the question: What principles does a person’s behavior reflect, or what values do they uphold, when they are embodying the Christmas spirit?
“Start with the classic: A Christmas Carol. Dickens is fine, though the Muppets is my personal favorite retelling, and actually the most faithful to the original text.” She stood beside the words, tapping them with her magic feathered pen.
“Take Ebeneezer Scrooge’s nephew, Fred, positively brimming with Christmas spirit.
He talks about how Christmas is a time for charity and remembering that we are all in this together—I’m paraphrasing, of course.
But he makes clear that he believes in the power of Christmas to bring out the best in people. ”
She circled three words from the scribbled paragraphs floating in the air from her summary of the Muppet Christmas Carol: Generosity, Community, and Belief.
She pulled them to the space in front of Louis and arranged them in a triangle.
As she did so, the word “Generosity,” which appeared dozens of times in her notes across her movie descriptions, lit up green.
Each movie title with a description containing that word flew across the room and took its place under the “Generosity” heading.
The same thing happened for “Community,” which glowed red, and "Belief,” which shone a bright white.
A Charlie Brown Christmas fell into place under both “Community” and “Belief.” Home Alone 2 went to “Generosity” and “Community.” It’s a Wonderful Life sailed under “Community.” Soon, the three columns were full of familiar titles.