Fraud at Snowfields Read online

  ‘Well, you better had, because that’s what I am. Everyone working here is a goblin.’ It smiled. Then it smacked its forehead, nearly throwing off its top hat. ‘But I’m forgetting myself again. Please excuse me.’ Then it bowed deeply, smiled, and extended its hand. Will tried very hard to ignore the fact that it had six fingers. ‘I am Lektrin, your obedient valet. Before you make any embarrassing mistakes, I am a boy-goblin. We wear the top-hats and the girl-goblins wear the pointed hats. Sharp hats, sharp tongues – get it?’

  Will, feeling slightly bemused, shook the offered hand and said, ‘Er, I am Bill Wurns—er, I mean Will Burns.’

  ‘Right then, Will. Welcome to Cloudy’s Transportation Service, the easy way to travel. Just find yourself a street lantern, say the words, and we’ll pick you up and take you anywhere you want. That’s our motto,’ he added with a slightly embarrassed grin, and pointed at the badge that was pinned to his robe. It said ‘Cloudy’s’.

  ‘So,’ he went on, ‘you want to go to Snowfields then? A fine school that is. Just give me a second to find the correct form for you.’

  He shuffled through the papers on his desk. Some fell to the ground, but the goblin ignored them.

  ‘Ah, here we are: Will Burns.’ He peered closely first at the form, and then at Will. ‘Yes, it’s you on this photo, so you’ve got permission to use Cloudy’s Transportation Service.’

  He ripped something off the form and handed it to Will. It looked like some sort of credit card.

  ‘That’s your transportation card for Cloudy’s Transportation Service. Just show it to the staff when you want to use the service and we’ll take you wherever you want. Now, if you’d please go through the gate here, and my colleagues will help you. Thank you for using Cloudy’s Transportation Service, and don’t forget to collect your “miles and a lot more”.’

  Lektrin looked down at his papers again, then he seemed to notice those that had fallen to the ground. ‘Damn,’ he stepped down from whatever he had been standing on, and started to pick up the papers, muttering under his breath.

  Will went towards the opening in the wall next to the desk, still wondering what Lektrin’s last sentence was supposed to mean. But then he saw a poster hanging on the wall (Hanging on a cloud?,—Will could not help wondering) and read, ‘Remember to collect your miles with our miles-and-a-lot-more-programme, and receive our attractive bonus gifts for free.’ He shook his head and went through the opening.

  Now he stood in a quite large, circular room. Again the floor and the walls were white and fluffy, with the blue sky forming the ceiling. In the walls were well over a dozen openings, leading into tunnels which stretched away farther than he could see. In the middle of the room were several desks. Sitting behind them were more goblins. They too were completely green, clad in red robes, and wearing golden hats with red bands. Several of them were talking to customers.

  Will looked around. There was a small man with glasses, wearing a long, black coat and a bowler hat. Beside him stood a black briefcase, and leaning against it was a black umbrella. The wood at the handle was formed like the elaborate head of a parrot. Will continued to look around the room, but then he quickly looked back at the umbrella. For what had looked like an ordinary wooden parrot’s head had suddenly moved. He stared at it, and the head stared back. Then it gave Will a sly wink and started talking to its owner, who calmly answered.

  Will shook his head in wonder and looked at the next customer, who was even weirder: a rather small figure wearing a large, conical helmet and a dark-red and golden cape. His face was hidden behind an enormous beard. This was not too bad by itself, but then Will noticed the small axe at his side, and he could not help but think that what he was seeing there must be a dwarf—a real dwarf!

  By then one of the goblins had seen him standing in front of the entrance and was waving at him. ‘Hey, Mr Burns! Over here! How can I help you?’ she called.

  Somehow everybody here happened to know his name, Will thought. He walked up to the desk. When he reached her, the goblin bowed deeply pointing her hat towards Will and said ‘Lektra, your obedient valet.’

  ‘Er, your colleague gave this to me and said to go in here.’ Will handed Lektra the transportation card.

  ‘Ah, you’re one of the new ones, right? Just a moment. I’ve got the memo here somewhere.’ She shuffled through the papers on her desk, and quite a few of them fell over the edge and out of sight. ‘Oh, bother,’ she muttered. She flashed Will an apologetic smile. ‘I’m very sorry about this hold-up. Normally we’d do this with our computers, but we’ve had this brilliant new system installed—“Doors”, it’s called. When they installed it, they said it was the most advanced system, and it would only crash very rarely, about once in ten years. Well, the ten years were over after two hours, and for the rest of the day the system crashed every two minutes. We then turned back to ordinary paper.’ She snorted. ‘“What do you want to do today?” is the motto of this stupid Doors programme. Well, I know what I want to do with this programme, but it wouldn’t be appropriate to say this in front of a customer... Ah, here we are.’ She pulled a sheet of paper out of one of the stacks, which wobbled precariously and started to slip, and then the papers drifted towards the others already lying on the floor. The cloud. Whatever.

  ‘Let’s see,’ Lektra went on. ‘Yes, Will Burns, student at Snowfields. Oh, you are going to Snowfields. That’s nice. I heard tell that the school is just fantastic. Well, wait a moment, I think….’ She looked around the hall. ‘Yes... Lektrius,’ she called.

  Another goblin looked up from serving a customer. ‘Lektra, my dear, what can I do for you?’

  Will noticed that the customer the goblin over there was serving was, to his relief, a perfectly ordinary human. In fact it was a girl, and she looked to be about Will’s age. She had rather long, blond hair, and wore a long, black coat. She looked in the direction of Lektra, and when she spotted Will a quite relieved look replaced the former slight confusion on her face, as if she were glad to see another human up here, too.

  ‘You’ve got another one for Snowfields there, Lektrius?’ called Lektra.

  ‘Yeah, that’s right,’ came the answer from Lektrius after he had consulted the papers on his desk.

  ‘Then the two of them could go together, couldn’t they? Mine is also for Snowfields.’

  ‘Yeah, no problem. I’ll wait for you.’

  Lektra turned back to Will and grinned. ‘Fine then. You’ve already met a school friend there. I’ll just finish your papers, and then we’ll send the two of you on your way.’

  With this she started a real fight on her desk: forms in all colours fluttered about, and her weapons were an army of stamps and an arsenal of quills, pens, and pencils. After a few minutes, she seemed to have won the battle and, again smiling apologetically, handed Will his transportation card back, together with a small piece of red paper.

  ‘Sorry about this, but without the computers we’ve got such a lot of paperwork up here, I sometimes wonder if we really are a transportation service or rather some sort of paper works. What you do now is go to the tunnel over there, where it says “Transfers” on the sign. Just walk into it. The rest will happen automatically. The red card is your ticket. You received one hundred and twenty miles for this trip. Thank you for using Cloudy’s Transportation Service.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Will. ‘Goodbye.’ As he started to walk over to the indicated tunnel, he noticed that the girl had also finished at the desk and was heading towards the same tunnel. They met in front of the entrance and looked at each other.

  ‘Hello. I’m Will. Will Burns,’ he said with a tentative smile.

  ‘Hello. My name’s Annabel Winston,’ she said, and smiled back at Will. ‘Are you new to Snowfields as well?’

  ‘Yes. I still can’t really believe this is happening, and that I’m really going to this school.’

  She laughed. ‘Nor can I. I was ever so surprised when Mr Chevalier came to our house at Christmas t
o tell me I was accepted at Snowfields—even though I never applied to it. I hadn’t even heard about the place before.’

  Will nodded. ‘That’s exactly what I thought.’ He looked into the tunnel. ‘Well, I guess we’d best go on inside.’

  Annabel nodded back and together they stepped into the tunnel. Then Annabel gave a small squeal, and Will let out a low grunt. The floor had looked exactly like the one in the other rooms—white and fluffy. But when they had stepped into the tunnel, the floor suddenly began to move them along. Will got over his surprise and turned to Annabel.

  ‘I think it must be something like the moving pavements they’ve got in the big airports.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so. But they could have warned us now, couldn’t they!’ Annabel said indignantly.

  ‘I’d guess they just forgot we wouldn’t know about it.’

  Annabel said nothing to this, but still eyed the moving floor suspiciously.

  As they were travelling quite fast, it took them only a moment to reach the end of the tunnel. There the floor slowed down, and then stopped completely when they reached the opening into the room at the end. They picked up their suitcases that had travelled with them, took a few steps into the room, and looked around. They seemed to be in another reception area: four other tunnels led away from the room, labelled ‘Express’, ‘Executive’, ‘Standard’, and ‘Functional’. There were four counters as well, one beside each tunnel.

  Behind each counter small squares of cloud floated several inches above the ground. Sitting at the counters were four goblins, all clad in red robes and wearing golden top hats with red bands, and they had the usual stacks of papers in front of them.

  When Will and Annabel entered the room, all four goblins looked up expectantly. The one sitting next to the tunnel labelled ‘Express’ called, ‘Miss Winston. Mr Burns. If you would come over here, please, and we’ll have you on your way in no time at all.’ The other three goblins turned away, looking rather bored.

  Will and Annabel walked over to the counter. The goblin bowed to each of them, saying, ‘Lektro, your obedient valet.’ Then he started on his papers, mumbling, ‘Now, let’s see. Will Burns and Annabel Winston. Where did I put this memo again... Ah, here we are! Could I see your tickets, please? The red cards, please.’ Will and Annabel handed him their cards. ‘Thank you. Ah, yes. Destination is Snowfields, service is express, status is priority, special arrangements... Oh, you’ve got the grand tour. That one’s great! You’ll certainly enjoy it. The grand tour is my favourite way of going to Snowfields. It’s perfect if you want to get a first impression of the place. But you’ll see that for yourselves. Now then, if you would hand me your luggage, please—thank you.’

  Lektro put their suitcases on one of the small squares of cloud floating about two inches above the ground behind his counter. Then he took out what looked like a small stick and touched both of the suitcases. A bright label appeared out of thin air on each of them that indicated ‘Snowfields’ in large golden letters. He gave the cloud a light tap with his stick, and it silently drifted away through a small opening in the wall behind the counters. Will stared at this in amazement, and then looked at Annabel. This was magic—the labels had just appeared out of nowhere! Annabel looked back at him and nodded equally surprised.

  Lektro ignored this. ‘All right, we’ll handle your luggage. Now let’s get the two of you on your way.’ Lektro handed them back their tickets. ‘Just walk through the gate here beside my counter and your journey will begin. Thank you for using Cloudy’s Transportation Service. Always your obedient valet.’ Once more he bowed deeply to each of them in turn.

  Will and Annabel walked through the gate. Behind it was another corridor and again, just as soon as they stepped into it, the floor began moving, taking them along. But this time they were prepared for it. Finally the floor stopped, and the room they stepped into was by far the largest they had seen so far. Will immediately saw it had only three walls. Where the fourth wall should have been, he could only see blue sky. Dozens of sleighs stood all over the hall, each with reindeer in front of it, and they formed neat and orderly rows just like in a car park, or rather—a sleigh park. Some of them were large and were pulled by four or even six reindeer; the rest were smaller and had only two reindeer. On one side of the hall was an enormous sleigh, and it was pulled by no less than twelve reindeer.

  Before Will and Annabel could take in anything more, they were greeted by yet another goblin (green, red robe, golden pointed hat with red band). ‘Miss Winston, Mr Burns? Welcome. I am Lektrissara, your obedient valet.’ She bowed to them both deeply. Then she pulled out a memo from inside her robe and glanced at it. ‘Ah, yes.’ She looked up again, gave Will and Annabel an inviting smile, and made a sweeping motion with her hand. ‘Would you please follow me? Sleigh number sixteen is reserved for you.’

  They followed her to a sleigh, and when they had reached it Lektrissara indicated for them to climb up onto it. Then she left, but not without a ‘thank you for using Cloudy’s Transportation Service’, which was immediately followed by the inevitable bow combined with ‘your obedient valet’.

  As soon as they were seated the driver of the sleigh said, ‘Hello. My name’s Lektrorius. Your obedient valet!’ He bowed to them both too. ‘Please make yourselves comfy. I’ll fly you over to Snowfields. This is your first flight?’ he added rather as a statement than a question.

  They both nodded—though Will thought briefly of his flight with Conrad. But that had only been a short one, just around and above his home, and did not really count.

  ‘Right then. I can assure you, you’re definitely going to enjoy this! I’ve never met anyone who didn’t like flying. And the view is just unbelievable. There’s no need to worry,’ Lektrorius continued when he saw their rather apprehensive smiles. ‘This is an absolutely safe way of travelling. So just enjoy the view, snuggle into the blankets if you get cold—and here we go.’

  He shook the reins, and the four reindeer stepped out of the row of sleighs, pulling the sleigh towards the open wall—and right over the edge, as if there were solid ground and not thin air out there. Lektrorius pulled on the reins again, and they moved faster and gained height.

  After the first few moments, Will got a bit more confident and loosened his rather tight grip on the rail of the sleigh. He looked around. They were high up now and level with a few puffy, white clouds. He could hardly see the ground, and then only intermittently when there was a break in the clouds, and he could not make out many details, only a small town, a dark forest, and a small lake. Behind him the opening to the sleigh hangar was getting smaller and smaller. Then they were so far away that all he could see was an unsuspicious-looking cloud. He turned towards Annabel. She still looked a bit shocked, but seemed to be coming round as she gazed at the clouds. A look of wonder lit up her face.

  ‘They look so beautiful when you are this close to them,’ she said dreamily. And she was right, thought Will. The clouds shone, brilliant and unspoiled, in the bright sunlight. They formed delicate figures of pure white in an otherwise blue sky. And every light touch of the wind left minor changes here and there in the structure.

  ‘Yes,’ said Will while reflecting on this. ‘And the world looks so tiny and unimportant down there.’

  Annabel just nodded, and they sat in silence, watching the scenery in wonder, totally spellbound by the beauty all around them.

  They finally came to an enormous cloud, and Lektrorius shook the reins again so the reindeer slowed down. Will swallowed. It seemed as if they were heading right into the cloud.

  Lektrorius turned to Will and Annabel. ‘We are now going through the main passage to Snowfields,’ he told them with a grin, and pointed towards a huge opening that had appeared in the cloud.

  They entered the opening and went down a tunnel that led them continually downwards. It was lit by the sunlight that filtered through the cloud, and this gave the whole tunnel a rather mysterious appearance. It was much wider than it was
high, and they passed quite a few other sleighs that were coming up it. After a short time and a few gentle curves, they reached an opening. The moment they left the tunnel, Annabel gave a small squeal of pure delight.

  ‘Oh, that is just beautiful.’

  Will was also quite taken by the sight.

  They were soaring high above a valley surrounded by mountains on three sides. They could not see the tops of the mountains because clouds lay like a ring around them. The mountain range opened at the far side of a village, and there stood a dark-green forest, split only by a road and a small river winding their way through the trees. The river was fed by a sparkling waterfall that cascaded down one of the mountains, then it flowed through the village with gentle, elegant curves before it led off into the forest.

  The village consisted of houses of very different sizes. Some were so small Will could not believe there was enough room for anyone to live in them. There were normal-sized houses—those formed the majority—and there were a few very large ones that looked like warehouses.

  Lektrorius shook the reins once again, and took them right above the village. There he flew them round in a wide circle and let the sleigh sink lower so they could get a good look at the buildings. Will could now see that the houses were all built in the same style, but each had its special touches that made it quite unique without disrupting the overall appearance. They were all made out of red brick, had golden window frames, and brown doors. The roofs were laid with light-brown pantiles. Between them were neatly-paved streets. Tall golden lanterns were placed at short, regular intervals.

  Then Will noticed something that only the warehouses and the very large houses had: right in the middle of the buildings there were no pantiles, but flat roofs laid with beige tiles with marked areas on them. Then Will understood—these were landing areas for sleighs, several of which were parked in marked corners at the sides of the platforms. While he was watching, he could actually see one landing on a platform on one of the warehouses.