"Are you real?"

       A stream of complaints about loud music and unruly behaviour, as well as mere drunk calls to Taivaankoski police station, was gaining steam since early December when people started “little Christmas” celebrations with colleagues. Both constables and the chief left inspector detective Antti Tuinen alone at the station, and quite legit: constable Crunchy went to the Blue Moose bar to check information on under-the-counter moonshine trade and would run an investigation to the last drop of the illegal booze. Constable Maria Bergfors had said she had an appointment with a family practitioner and disappeared before Antti could reach the attendance logs to check if she had any days off left. And the Chief didn’t need a justification to leave. At eight in the evening, Inspector Tuinen managed to get rid of an old lady complaining about incorrect pension indexation (“Mrs. Pöllölä, you should address this question to a social affairs department and not to police!”—“But it’s robbery, plain robbery! And robberies are investigated by the police! At least, they should!”) and completed a report with his last bit of strength. He’d better dash for home before he committed a murder. So, he redirected all incoming calls to Crunchy’s mobile phone and fled from the fire exit. The parking lot for employees was lit solely by the lamp above the police station entrance, and Antti noticed two short park lumps near the doors of his Ford only in a couple of meters. He called out to them, but they did not run away and turned their round, rosy faces towards him. “Inspector Tuinen, can we talk?” One clothes-parcel peeped, and the other one sniffed hard with his runny nose. Did they wait for him here since the supposed end of business hours?! “Let’s get to the police station, right now! You need hot tea!” He raised his voice and reached to grab them by the hoods but caught just one. The other, the talking one, flinched back. “No, not to the station! We are, we have a con-fee-dential business, our mom should not know about it!” So, they were two of the many children of Constable Maria Bergfors. Antti found out their exact number only after working here for a couple of months and only by checking her files. Seven kids it were. There were rumours that fathers were many as well in the absence of a single husband. Inspector Tuinen didn’t give up memorising the names of all those kids. “Alright, then get into the car.” Antti clicked the remote key. Ford blinked at him, and the small fry climbed the back seat. Sure, they were cold. Antti took the driver’s place and turned the AC on to the hottest in the whole cabin. Then he turned to the visitors. School year third or fourth, so, it’s not the oldest or the youngest Bergforses. What were the mid-boys’ names again? Juha? Jukka? Janne? “Can you find a mobile phone?” the more daring boy spoke straight away. “I mean, to see where it is on a map? Our home moby, the one that serves as a home number, it got stolen, and we want to return it quickly, before Mom finds out, so that she does not get nervous or upset. Stress is bad for her now.” Shouldn’t be nervous? What? Was yet another Bergfors baby underway? Oh, the woman would be appearing at work even more seldom. The kids took their beanies off. The speaker was dark-haired, with sharp, lively features. Antti remembered him; the boy was smart and ridiculously businesslike. But now he was suspiciously plaintive, his hazel eyes honest to a fault. The other one, flaxen blonde like all his other brothers, was staring at Antti in terror and silence. Gosh, what were their names? “Why do you think it was stolen and not just fallen under a sofa or—“ And then it dawned on him. “Or did you bring it outside and lose it, and now you want to find it at the government’s expense?” The still-silent blonde shrank into his coat like a turtle. The other shook his dark-haired head. “No, we didn’t lose it, no way! Well… I can’t tell more, there are reasons, but it’s stolen for sure.” Antti appreciated rare town lights behind the windscreen. He was thinking. “It won’t work,” he put on the sincerest regret. “Most probably, the phone is discharged already, and towers are unable to see it.” “No, we’ve charged it full before we—“ The blonde piped in suddenly, and his brother glared at him and kicked him into the shin. Now Antti could switch into the bad cop mode. “Now, little bunnies,” he spoke in a low voice and looked through them, “spill what’s your deal, and then, maybe, I won’t tell anything to your mother. So?” The dark one frowned, and the blonde spilled first: “We wanted to find Joulupukki! “Speak for yourself!” His brother interrupted him. “As for me, I wanted to prove to you that he does not exist.” And he turned to the inspector for support. “Please tell him! He’s ten, and he still believes in Santa!” Antti didn’t mind a magical gift-bringing old man in a red coat unless it was a robber in disguise, deceiving minors. That’s why Inspector would definitely tell any large city kids that Joulupukki didn’t exist just as a form of crime prevention. In these backwaters, though… Why not leave a piece of fairytale and joy to one little boy? Besides, Antti had witnessed quite a number of weird things in more than half a year of his service in Taivaankoski. It might be objective to say… “Actually, no investigation was performed, there’s no court judgement delivered on the subject, so I can neither confirm nor deny this opinion. And formal logic claims that it is impossible to prove the non-existence of anything,” he went on with the most serious air, hoping that the smart kid was not deeply acquainted with the formal logic. The round face of the blonde lit up. “But you have to explain why your home phone is involved in this.” “Jukka,” the talkative one nodded at his brother. Okay, the blonde is Jukka, “sent a letter to Joulupukki. Again. Without a postage stamp.” Antti nodded. He didn’t understand anything yet, but the ball was set rolling; let the kids speak up, they might tell more than they wanted. “And the post officers returned the letter to the sender, as their instructions tell.” “I know that you need a stamp,” Jukka protested. “But I didn’t have pocket money, I’ve spent it all on Christmas presents. But I did paint a pretty stamp on the envelope so that maybe Sir Postman didn’t notice. Or maybe Joulupukki will pay when he sees it’s for him, he is kind, after all.” The still-nameless brother did a facepalm. “I told him he should have made it the opposite, write Joulupukki's mail address as the sender and our address as the receiver. That way, post officers must return it to the sender. And then I had an even better idea!” Invigorated, he unwound his scarf, unbuttoned his coat, and waved his hands so that a mitten tied to his coat was bumping his blonde brother on the head now and then. Jukka remained stoic and silent. “If we send not just a letter but a mobile phone, you will be able to track it and show it’s in Rovaniemi and not at Korvatunturi!” “That is,” Antti wanted to clear the details up. “You wrote Korvatunturi as the receiver’s address on the envelope, right?” “Joulupukki Estate, Mt. Korvatunturi, Lapland, post code nine eight eight zero zero, I checked it up in the post office directory.” The smartass kid was indignant that the cop had such a poor opinion on his mailing skills. “Also, I asked at the post office about how long a letter would take to travel to Rovaniemi, and now it should be right there.” Antti shut down to consider the case. “Or, call our home number,” Jukka suggested, “and ask if Joulupukki is real.” “It won’t prove anything,” his sceptical sibling objected. “A common human employee gets paid to tell that he or she is a fairy and that everything is real!” While they argued about the criteria of truth, Antti pondered what to do with these young prodigies. Also, he’d better ask at the post office where they stuffed a suspicious unpaid parcel with an electronic device, but it should wait till the next business hour, that is, till morning. “And what have you provided as the sender’s address?” he enquired along his train of thought. “Your home?” “No! I’m not that stupid,” the smart-ass sounded offended. “I gave your address so that the post officers didn’t suspect us.” Actually, no harm was done, but still Antti felt somewhat peeved by such insensitive treatment of his personal data. And he felt for poor Jukka. And he wanted to flash his competence. And… and it was a good cause to involve someone else. “Thus,” he spoke with authority after suspending the kids in silence for a minute, “I can’t send a request for phone tracking to the mobile network operator right now, their working hours are over. That must wait till tomorrow. They’ll process the request and provide tracking data to our software in a day or two. Then we'll see where your phone is. You can even join me and fetch it if it is not too far—and if you invent a prop for your mom to be away until late at night.” *** The sun was setting right after lunch these days, and now the Ford was cruising by a barely cleared highway in darkness, as if towed by coupled ovals of light. Snowdrifts were flashing in the lights along the roadsides, with fir trees looming, or red glimpses of pine trunks or white birch barcodes. Empty planes were drowning in endless black. Thank God, there was no blizzard, though the sky remained overcast. A green cursor triangle crawled over the green line to the top right corner of the phone screen. To the northeast. Antti looked in the interior rearview mirror to check on the brothers, Jussi and Jukka (he had looked up their names in the file of their mother the very next day). Jussi turned out to be one year older, though he looked smaller and thinner. Now they both were sleeping in the rear seat, leaning onto each other. Jussi was very focused and frowning even as he slept. Jukka seemed relaxed, drooling on his scarf. Dry leaves, small grey feathers, pine cones, twigs bound to the same thread pinned to the cabin ceiling were dangling above the kids. Varpu had given the stuff to him yesterday to suspend over the back seat. It was supposed to make them sleep and misjudge the distance to the destination point. Antti followed all instructions, but, in his opinion, the boys were lulled by the boring monotony of driving in darkness and silence. That is, at first Jussi had showered him with questions about police operations in the capital, about Helsinki in general, but Antti hadn’t been answering, claiming he’d better not divert his attention from an unknown road. And the radio remained turned off. Preset coordinates served as a signal from the mobile phone mailed. Antti did study the route in advance, but a map on the screen was not the same thing as a night road. What if a moose broke a turn signpost? What if a direction board was pasted over with snow? What if… No, there was the right minor road sign and a gap in the snow ridge along the roadside, where the route line turned to a by-road. Characteristically uncleaned one. Antti prayed not to get stuck in a snowdrift. Hardly would Joulupukki tow them out, and explaining to rescue personnel what a police inspector was doing in the wilderness with two minors would be tricky. He had already had to provide a cover story for the boys; smart Jussi asked him to call their mother and tell her that the three of them went skiing. Jukka doubted they needed a cover story so much: Maria Bergfors was not very keen on controlling the whereabouts of her numerous children. Other police officers joked it would be easier for her to give birth to a new child than to find an existing one. The Ford was howling with exertion, rolling and lurching but climbing over the snow. The road went upwards gradually, and Antti checked the map. Right, just about a couple of walkable kilometres were left to the destination. And he stopped the car before an especially ominous snowdrift. The kids woke up already from all that rumble tumble and now stuck their noses into windows. But only the closest pine trees loomed from the dark. The travellers walked forth: Antti, with a torch on the head, a phone on the chest, a backpack on his back, and the small fry in tow, clipped to the towing cable, all three with ski poles. Jukka cheered up and was sure that Joulupukki existed since the signal brought them to such a wilderness. Jussi refused to give up. He claimed he had noted the time on the dashboard when they had set forth and now, and in the couple of hours they could not physically reach Korvatunturi, what do you think, Inspector Tuinen? The guy would be a good cop; Antti duly admired him but kept silent neutrality and trod forth through the snowdrifts trying to find the route described to him in quite vague phrasing. At the fifth attempt, he found a gap in a fir thickset and hauled the kids into an opening where– Antti’s torch flickered and went out after flashing over the silvery space. In the complete calm, frost was gnawing at the face skin, glueing eyelashes and hair in the nose, stabbing gaps between the cap and collar. For a moment, exhaled vapour dimmed the picture. Jukka gasped when moonlight flood fell through a sudden gap in the clouds and glistened over the hoarfrost lace covering everything around: a circle of boulders around the opening, garlands of dry leaves and flowers between tree branches, a large, flat altar-like stone in the middle with a reindeer skull and something uncannily like a ribcage of the same animal. Only one object stayed dark; a tall hunched figure behind the altar stone, covered in furlike moss (or mosslike fur). A goat skull with dark eye sockets concealed—or comprised—its head, with a tangled grey beard falling onto its chest. The creature hit the ground with a staff bearing a crow skull on its top and walked towards the guests. His shadow followed him; aside from the horns, it was quite different from its host—thinner, longer, more flexible, it seemed to move on its own. The inspector stepped back but got ahold of himself and chose to provide an example of good manners to children. “Hello,” he addressed the approaching monster, “Sorry for coming uninvited…” His voice seemed to unfreeze the boys. Jukka hid behind his back, Jussi stayed on the spot and even stamped the ground in indignation. “I don’t believe you!” he exclaimed, his voice thin and strained. “The distance to Korvatunturi is twenty hundred and fifty kilometres; I checked it with a map! And it can’t be more than fifty kilometres from Taivaankoski to here. Seventy at best!” And a brave kid, Antti added to himself. “Stubborn brats,” the creature said in a rustling voice similar to a distant thunder or landslide. “I’ve tangled their paths, and still they came.” He walked very close, leaving a distinct, heavy, slightly sweet odour despite the frost. A familiar scent of rot. Fresher than reindeer bones on the stone. Antti flinched seeing skulls of small birds and rodents in the mossy fur of the supposed Joulupukki. That was absolutely not what he had expected to meet. Right, Varpu promised to help, but Varpu was shorter, more lean—alright, that all can be feigned. And voice can be altered. But the feel, the sense of danger… Antti’s right hand made a jerk almost on its own towards the gun holster, but both the gun and the holster were resting in a safe box at the police station. And the boys stood at both sides from him, it would be inconvenient to screen them both if… Antti ordered himself to stop panicking; there was no direct threat yet. Doubts stayed droning in the brain, piercing the common sense with theirproboscises.Meanwhile, the goat-head loomed over Jussi. “Little human, did you think I would let your kin find the real Korvatunturi? Let them believe it is in the Land of Lappi,” he snorted, not unlike a reindeer, and returned to the flat stone. Jussi shrank and didn’t reply. And his younger brother seemed to realise no one was going to eat anyone right now and dared to peek from behind Antti with a question of his own: “Are you a real Joulupukki?” “And what you’d say?” The subject snorted again, and suddenly Antti noticed that the fairytale character did not exhale vapour clouds like the three humans did. “But Joulupukki wears a red coat,” Jukka muttered. His lips trembled. “He makes toys for children in his mansion at Korvatunturi. And delivers presents in a reindeer sleigh. And elves help him...” “A pack of merchants’ lies,” the goat-head replied in scorn. His shadow shrugged. “I have more urgent business than fiddling with toys for spoilt brats. Though gifts there are.” He approached the altar stone, whirled around in a veil of silver snow. “I see far, I hear far, I know who is nice and who is naughty, and every child will get their due. To the meek and industrious, I send good luck.” He tapped on the reindeer skull on the stone with his staff butt, and a roundish brown pebble dropped out of the right eye socket of the skull, rolled over the hoarfrost. An acorn, not a stone, right. “To liars and rogues,” He turned ever so slightly to Jussi, and his shadow almost touched the boy with its horn. Jussi flinched away, “No luck at all.” A second knock made something small and black fall out of the other eye socket of the reindeer skull and roll down leaving a black trace. A coal. Antti sneezed making both boys jump in the air and the skull at Joulupukki’s staff shudder. Oh no, he didn’t want to catch a cold. Or to ruin the atmosphere. “Right, we’ve come for a purpose, you see,” he came back to senses and to the plan. “A mobile phone of these nice but silly kids must have been mailed to you by mistake. They need it back, badly, and they promise never to take it outdoors, right?” He patted the boys on the napes, and they nodded in agreement. As Antti had expected, the phone had been stuck at the post office and waited to be delivered to the closest reasonable address, i.e. to him, but the post manager forgot about it in the busy pre-Christmas season. After retrieving the item, Antti had only had to give it to another person. “Ah, that one,” Joulupukki fished in the reindeer ribcage and retrieved something small, hardly visible in his giant mitten, threw it over the altar stone. A tiny, immortal Nokia-type button phone spun and slowed down at the very edge of the stone, barely not falling. Antti rushed to get it and did drop the kids, still bound to him by the tow cable. Alright, the task is over, it’s time for honest folks to go home. He bowed, pulled the boys to their feet, and backed to where they came from. “And you’ll let us go just like that?” Jussi wondered. His voice trembled a bit. “Aren’t you afraid that we tell others about your hideout?” That one future inspector detective… Joulupukki burst into a coughing or laughing fit. Dark eyeholes scanned the guests. “The adult one will soon forget everything,” he rustled and raised his staff, its shadow snaking up to Antti’s boot. “And no one will believe you alone.” *** “Oh,” Yukka seemed on the verge of tears when Antti unloaded the brothers at the driveway to their cottage, “I’ve forgotten! I wanted to ask him by myself—since my letter didn’t reach him! To ask that we have a new brother, not a new sister. One is enough.” Yussi, still downcast, didn’t even call him stupid or anything. As for Antti, he could barely hide a snicker. But he coped, and added with a well-acted surprise, “Him? Whom do you refer to?” *** “Merry Christmas, Varpu! A box of pasta, just as you asked.” Antti dropped the heavy box onto a skewed wooden porch and put two pouches of biscuits and candy from the jacket pockets on top of it, and a whisky bottle crowned the pyramid as a personal, unordered gratitude for help with the Operation Faith. Rauno Varpunen, a wilderness liaison officer, nodded silently. As usual he didn’t greet the guest or invite him in, but didn’t shoo him, either. Antti was used to that already and went inside past the host. “What about some hot tea? Weather gets freaking freezing.” “Get used to it; it’s normal.” The tea was herbal, savoury, and slightly sweet, meaning the host was in a good mood. A woodcut mug was warm in the hands. “Couldn’t you warn me in advance that you arranged such a... an ethnic show? With skulls. For most people, Joulupukki is still a jolly old man in a red coat, with a bag of gifts, a reindeer sleigh, that kind of thing, you know. Even me, I got freaking gobsmacked, and the kids must be getting nightmares after that. Did you rob a wolf pack for decorations?” “You asked to make it believable,” Varpu was squinting like a happy cat, “so I aimed to scare you. If they saw you spooked, they’d believe it’s for real. And no, it wasn’t wolves and wasn’t a robbery. I visited a reindeer farm. Just that.” Then he stirred his tea with a piece of gingerbread for a long time but added at last, “So. Success?” “You say!” Antti was eager to reply. “Even the rationalist prodigy Jussi was impressed. Before Christmas, they dropped by the station, eyed me for some minutes in a row, then Jussi told, No, he doesn’t remember a thing, and they left. If I were them, I’d believe in Joulupukki for the rest of my life. Darn, even if I were me—oh my!” He gulped down his tea and scrutinised his fellow as if for the first time. Well, Varpu looked absolutely human in his fifties, without horns or beard (that stubble didn’t count for one), with an absolutely normal moustache, with very human wrinkles in the corners of merry eyes. “Aren’t you, by chance, a Joulupukki undercover in the human world? That would explain a whole lot of things.” “And what you’d say?” Varpu smirked.