The Day Before Juniper Arrived

The day before Juniper went to live with her first family, she woke up at Field Elf Dispatch, Workshop Annex 7, and found a clipboard on her pillow. Clipped to it was a list. At the top, in very neat green ink, it said Pre-Arrival Checklist. Juniper read it twice, and then once more upside down, just to be sure.

The list belonged to Mrs Hollyhock, the Dispatch Clerk. Mrs Hollyhock was the oldest elf in the Annex. She wore three pairs of spectacles on a chain, and she kept her rubber stamps lined up on her desk like soldiers. She had named every one of them. The biggest, a wooden stamp with a brass handle, was called Gerald.

“Item one,” said Mrs Hollyhock. “Your arrival letter. Handwriting, please.”

Juniper sat at the long writing desk and dipped her pen. She wrote Dear Noah in her very best letters. Unfortunately, her very best letters were also her curliest. The D curled into the e, the e curled into the a, and by the end of the line the whole name looked like a caterpillar having a nap.

Mrs Hollyhock held the letter up to the lamp. “Readable by moonlight,” she said. “Readable by a five-year-old with a torch. Approved.”

She lifted Gerald high and brought him down with a THUMP. Across the bottom of the letter, in red, it said Delivered with Care.

“Item two,” said Mrs Hollyhock. “Hiding practice.”

Behind the Annex was the Practice House. It looked exactly like a real living room, except that everything in it was pretend. There was a pretend sofa, and a pretend clock that always said ten past seven, and a bowl of pretend fruit with a pretend banana that squeaked if you sat on it. Juniper knew this because she sat on it.

“A good spot,” said Mrs Hollyhock, “is somewhere a child will find you before breakfast, but not before they have brushed their teeth.” Juniper tried the top of the curtains. She tried inside the teapot. In the end she chose the bookshelf, between a book about whales and a book about beetles, and Mrs Hollyhock nodded so hard that two pairs of her spectacles fell off.

“Item three. The case file.” Mrs Hollyhock handed her a thin brown folder. On the front it said Case EF-2026-1128, and underneath, in smaller writing, The Family of Noah. Juniper opened it as carefully as if there were a cake inside.

Inside was everything a Field Elf needs to know. Noah was five and three quarters. He liked dinosaurs, especially the ones with flat plates down their backs. He liked his toast cut into triangles, never squares. There was a dog called Pickle, who was very friendly but sneezed at tinsel.

“Item four,” said Mrs Hollyhock. “Packing.”

An elf’s suitcase is about the size of a matchbox. Into it Juniper packed one spare hat, a toothbrush as thin as an eyelash, a map with one house marked by a small silver star, and a raisin in case of emergencies. Then she tried to fit in a jar of snow from the Annex garden, so that the family could see what the North Pole felt like. The jar did not fit. She tried it sideways, and it still did not fit.

“Snow travels very badly,” said Mrs Hollyhock kindly. She gave Juniper a paper snowflake, folded very small. “Pin it inside your hat instead. It will remind you of home, if you ever need reminding.”

That was the last item on the list. But Juniper did not tick it. She sat down on her suitcase and looked at her boots. “Mrs Hollyhock,” she said quietly. “What if they don’t like me?”

Mrs Hollyhock took off all three pairs of spectacles, which she only did for important things. She opened the case file to the very first page, which Juniper had somehow missed. Written there, in big wobbly pencil letters, was a note from the family. It said: Please send a nice one.

“In four hundred years,” said Mrs Hollyhock, “I have never once sent the wrong elf to the wrong house. It is all in the paperwork.” She picked up her smallest stamp, which was called Doris, and pressed it gently onto the back of Juniper’s hand. It said Very Suitable.

That night, Juniper put her checklist under her pillow and her suitcase beside her bed. Outside the round window, snow came down slowly over the Annex roofs, as if it had all the time in the world. Far away to the south, on her map, the small silver star was waiting.

She pulled her blanket up to her nose. She thought about triangle toast, and a dog who sneezed at tinsel, and a shelf between whales and beetles. She thought about Noah. Tomorrow she would be there. But tonight there was nothing left to do, so Juniper closed her eyes, and slept.