'If you go up to the North Pole, wander around until you're completely lost and happen to avoid being eaten by one of the many polar bears that patrol the region, you might be fortunate enough to find Santa's Workshop. The precise location of the workshop is unclear, but on one of the long winter's nights you can sometimes catch a glimpse of lights twinkling through the whirling snows.

 

If you follow those lights and creep up to the window of the big, long wooden building that dominates the frosty landscape you will see hundreds of elves dressed in green and gold hard at work making presents for all the people of the world. If you look very hard, you might even see that some of them don't quite sit comfortably on the wooden benches. Some of them squirm in place and occasionally rub their bottoms. That's because although Santa is a lovely, kind man, he does not tolerate disobedience or naughtiness from his elves, who, by their very nature tend to be mischievous in the extreme.

 

This is the tale of one particularly naughty little elf named Tilly, and how she learned to be sort of good some of the time.

 

***

“Tilly, stop that.”

 

“No, it's a good idea.”

 

“It's not in the manual.”

 

Tilly tossed her short blonde bob and disregarded the whispered warnings of her coworker. All around them were the sounds of elves hard at work, tapping, shaving, painting. Rows upon rows of neatly dressed elves working away at long tables, carving the little soldiers out of wood, painting them with Santa's special quick dry paint and packing them away for delivery. The workshop was very large indeed, standing as tall as seven or eight Santas and it was full of teams of elves making the toys that would soon be packed onto Santa's slay and go whizzing across the skies to the new world, where boys and girls celebrated Christmas but once a year.

 

“You're going to get us in trouble,” Lyssa whispered.

 

“Just paint it and put it in the box. They'll never know,” Tilly insisted.

 

“It's not in the manual,” Lyssa repeated herself.

 

“Ugh, fine.” Tilly snatched the brush out of her friend's hand and painted the final little red stripe across the toy soldier's chest. She blew on it for a moment, then wrapped it in soft white tissue paper and placed it in the box with all the other toy soldiers.

 

“You're going to get in trouble,” Lyssa said mournfully.

“Not if you keep your mouth shut.” Tilly's usually soft gray eyes went hard with an unspoken threat.

 

“You're so difficult,” Lyssa whispered. “You'll get in trouble. You know you'll get in trouble.”

 

Tilly stuffed several more toy soldiers into the box and sealed it shut with a healthy dab of mistletoe glue. “It will be fine,” she said, pushing it onto the leather carousel belt that traveled the length of the workshop. “It will be fine.”

 

***

 

A few hours later it wasn't entirely fine. Tilly found herself standing before Santa, the bell on her elf hat jingling softly as she trembled ever so slightly. A large, imposing man, Santa glowered down at her from his Santa Chair. It was called the Santa Chair because Santa always sat in it. Tilly had pointed out many times that the correct way of saying it would be 'Santa's chair,' but the other elves never did pay much attention to the genitive case and so the name had stuck. It was but one of the many things Tilly found irritating at the North Pole.

 

Santa was wearing a large woolen sweater with reindeer prancing across the chest and a pair of khaki slacks. Tilly thought that was rather unfair given that he always insisted all the elves work in their Christmas uniforms, which consisted of tunics that barely covered their bottoms, forest green tights and pointy, curly shoes and hats with bells on them.

 

As Santa bestowed the full benefit of his silent displeasure on her, Tilly examined her toes. One of her bells was missing in action and the other was looking quite battered and not at all shiny. Sooner or later she'd probably get in trouble for that too.

 

“What is your name, elf?”

 

Tilly rolled her eyes at her feet. Trust Santa to have no idea who she was, thanks to the uniforms all elves looked the same to him, even elves who were quite routinely sent up to answer to him for various misdeeds. She'd seen him last week and he hadn't remembered her then either.

 

“My name is Matilda,” she said, looking back up at the man and the damning little piece of evidence he held in his hand.

 

The Santa Chair was surrounded with gaily wrapped boxes and toys and treats of all kinds, but none of those were sufficiently wonderful to mollify the big man, whose white whiskers bristled with deep indignation as his coal black eyes beheld the travesty nestled in his palm. It looked at first, casual glance to be a traditional toy soldier. On closer inspection however there were two round humps on the chest of the toy, for Tilly had given the toy soldier a bosom.

 

“Are you the elf responsible for making this anatomically correct toy soldier?” Santa thundered. His well known booming jolly voice didn't sound very jolly at that moment.

 

“Yes Santa,” Tilly admitted right away. She was rather proud of her achievement if the truth were to be known. She wasn't about to start denying it.

 

“What possessed you to do such a thing?”

 

“In the interests of accuracy,” Tilly explained. “And gender equality. All the toy soldiers we make are men. But there must be ladies in the military.” Tilly didn't know if there were ladies in the military or not, but she had a feeling that there probably would be. “Some of the soldiers should have bosoms.”

 

Santa grumbled and rumbled before he replied. “We do not give children toy soldiers with breasts!”

 

“The plastic dolls have breasts. Some of them have very large ones,” Tilly pointed out.  “And then there are the inflatable ladies, you know the ones with mouths like this.” She opened her mouth in a very wide O shape and made the rest of her body all limp.

 

“Enough!” Santa thundered. “The men's department is none of your concern.” His face was growing redder and redder underneath his white bushy beard and Tilly could sense that the large man was very uncomfortable about being confronted so brazenly about the lesser known lines coming out of Santa's Workshop. “We don't speak about the men's toys,” he reminded her.

 

“Why not?”

 

“Because I said so,” Santa said with a grumpy growl. “Now come here end receive your punishment.”

 

Knowing full well what was about to happen and having steeled herself for it in advance, Tilly went forward dutifully and was hauled over Santa's lap without so much as a 'beg your pardon'. The large man was soon whacking away at her behind with great gusto. Usually he lectured, but that day he seemed to have been so enraged by her cheek that he put all his energies into warming her pert round bottom.

 

The spanking was far from a silent affair however. Tilly's wails were interspersed with the jangling of her bells as they waggled furiously back and forth, kicked about on her toes and wiggled around on her head. The thin green tights pulled across her bottom and upper thighs, offering absolutely no protection at all from the red hot fire that rained down mercilessly on her behind. Years of handling naughty elves had made Santa's hand very hard and he gave Tilly no quarter at all. He spanked her very soundly until her eyes were full of tears and her bottom was tingling and aching as if she'd fallen into a basket of holly from a great height.

 

Many people think that elves are tiny little creatures, but that's not so. Elves are basically people like you and I, but instead of living in normal houses and doing normal things, like passively aggressively washing the dishes quite loudly in the hope that someone will notice that they've done them every night this week, elves live at the North Pole with Santa Claus, have Christmas all year round, and make all the toys in the world. Some of the elves are tall and some are short and some are skinny and some are large. Tilly was quite a shapely young elf, with a pronounced bosom and a rounded bottom that was fast turning bright red underneath her tights.

 

When she was sure that her bottom could not take another slap, Santa finally stopped spanking and started the lecturing. “You will do as you are told, and you will follow the manufacturing directions to the letter, young lady. You are an elf, and elves do as they are told. They do not decide to make items to their own specifications.”

 

“Yes Santa,” Tilly droned towards the floor. Her face was just as red as her behind, both from the exertion of being spanked and frustration at Santa's hard headed approach to things. He never changed anything, anything at all. Silly old fogey.

 

“I do not expect to see you here again,” Santa rumbled above her. “Oh yes, I know you've been here before, I did not recognize your face at first, but I surely recognize this bottom. I see it more often than I see my own wife!”

 

Tilly bit her lower lip to stop from giggling. The pain of the spanking was already beginning to melt away, and she was a veteran of many Santa spankings so her backside was quite well accustomed to being lit up on a regular basis. The familiar and not unpleasant 'after tingle' was already starting to settle in as she lay there across the big man's soft lap, her eyes half closed like a contented cat as Santa rubbed the pain away. The old man never could bear to see an elf go away still sore.

 

“What a naughty little girl.” A deep masculine voice came from somewhere new entirely. Tilly turned her head and saw a nice pair of well shined leather shoes. Casting her gaze up from the shoes she saw someone standing in the doorway, someone tall and well built with arctic blue eyes and a slight dark stubble around his jaw.

 

With a shriek of surprise she bounded up from Santa's lap and tugged her tunic down. Santa's insistence on traditional dress was an irritant at the best of times, but there were moments when being caught in nothing but stockings was definitely less than ideal. This was one of those moments, Tilly could practically feel the stranger's eyes sweeping across the curves of her barely covered behind. His gaze alone made her bottom feel all hot and tingly all over again.

 

“Stefan, my son!” Santa boomed merrily, forgetting about Tilly entirely. “You're home!”

 

“Hello father,” Stefan's voice was not as loud as his father's, but it was a strong, good voice with more than a hint of natural gravel in it.

 

Forgotten by Santa, but not by his son, Tilly scrambled off to the side of the room and finished righting her clothing whilst the man smirked. Stefan was just as tall as his father, but considerably less rotund. He was dressed casually in modern clothes, a pair of dark, well tailored jeans and a warm white woolen sweater that showed off a natural tan. Tilly felt quite quivery looking at him, convinced that he was the most handsome man she'd ever laid eyes on. Sure, some of the elf men were quite attractive in their own way, but it was hard to take any of them seriously when they jingled with every step they took.

 

Whilst Santa embraced his son Tilly took the opportunity to make a quick exit. With slow, shuffling steps that muffled the bells on her hat and toes she backed out of a side door and made her way back to the toy shop where everyone was still far too busy meeting the Christmas deadlines to notice that she was walking gingerly. Elf hands moved so fast that they were almost a blur as they whittled and painted and varnished wooden toys.

 

“I told you you'd get in trouble,” Lyssa whispered when Tilly sat down very slowly.

 

“Shut it,” Tilly hissed back. “It was a good idea.”

 

“Your ideas always get you into trouble. Why can't you just do as you're told?” Lyssa was like a broken record.

 

“Because that's boring,” Tilly muttered, pushing bits of splintered wood around with her fingernails.

 

She stared out the window, watching the snow flurry by outside. There was a little natural light, just enough to see the plains of ice and snow stretching all the way to the horizon. There was a world beyond the snows, every elf knew that. It was the world their toys went to brighten and cheer. It was the world Stefan had just come back from, all strong and tanned by a sun that they hardly ever saw up at the North Pole.

 

Not much information about the new world was known, the elves had no access to reference materials besides those they needed to learn to work wood and increasingly, plastic. Those who expressed discontent with the way things were tended to be hushed quickly. If that didn't work, a good dose of eggnog kept even the most cynical old elf merry enough to push a few more thousand toys out.

 

With a sigh, Tilly picked up her little whittling knife and went back to shaping the standard model soldiers, her bottom prickling and burning whilst she did. She'd made a good ten units in sullen silence before she was interrupted by an elf with the largest, silliest hat there ever was. It was at least a foot tall and Tilly strongly suspected that there was scaffolding inside to keep the thing upright on the wearer's head. There was not one bell upon the pointed peak, but several bells sewn down the front of the thing that conspired to make a sound like a load of old change being dropped down the stairs every time its proud owner took a step.

 

“Greta, how are you?” Tilly greeted the hat's owner. Greta was the supervisor for their shift, a well dressed woman who'd had her tunic edged with gold ribbon to match the numerous bells she had sewn about her person.

 

“Matilda!” Greta snapped waspishly, failing to return Tilly's pleasantries. “You're on deer duty. Hop to it.” She jerked her head towards the door.              

 

“What? I was on deer duty last week?” Tilly dropped the little soldier she was working on in dismay.

 

“Well now you're on deer duty again,” Greta smirked. “They've not been done for two days, so best you get out there now.”

 

Muttering threats she would never have the nerve to carry out, Tilly made her way out of the workshop. 'Deer duty' meant wrapping up in a big coat and going out to the stables and cleaning up after the reindeer. Most of the reindeer she didn't mind. Dancer and Prancer always got out of her way quite nicely, as for Vixen and Dasher they barely made a mess at all. Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen were less easy to deal with, for they tended to nose about her curiously whenever she showed up, hoping that she'd bought carrot and apple treats. The real pain in her rear however, was Rudolf. Rudolf was a jerk.

 

As Tilly approached his stall, she was pleased to see that the deer was out for once,  which meant she was able to shovel out his mess and replace the hay without risking life and limb. She spent a good half hour shoveling out all the old muck and hay and piling it into a wheelbarrow, then began pushing her heavy burden through the thick snow.

 

The biting cold wind made her squint her eyes and she saw the tell tale red glow a little too late. She'd not gotten half a dozen steps before Rudolph, who had apparently been lying in wait outside the stall stepped out into her path and quite deliberately overturned the barrow with a flick of his great antlers. Then, for good measure, he tipped Tilly into the mess he'd made, leaving her covered in snow, straw and dung.

 

“Cut that out, or I'll have you replaced with a LED,” Tilly hissed viciously.

 

Rudolf snorted and pawed at the snow, lowering his head and bright bulbous nose for another go around. Rudolf had grown a great deal since he'd first been discovered as an awkward baby and he was now a 350 pound behemoth with thick antlers that branched and branched and branched again. Tilly closed her eyes and braced for the next impact, but it didn't come. The stag seemed happy enough to watch her gather the straw and excrement all over again. It wasn't until she had filled her barrow completely that he sniffed and took himself into his fresh stall, no doubt to foul it immediately.

 

By the time Tilly bathed and returned to the workshop she was exhausted, and there were still five hours of the shift to go. Elves worked in twelve hour shifts with two hours for food and eight for sleep. Tilly had often pointed out the irony in working themselves to the bone without breaks so that other people could stuff around playing with toys, but everybody was always too busy working to pay any real attention to her. Those rare souls who did bother to reply to her misgivings about the system at large usually just told her to be thankful for having a job. Why, if it weren't for Santa's wonderful workshop many of them would be exposed to the elements, food for the polar bears!

 

Setting aside her internal complaints she started to work again, but before she could so much as lay her fingers on yet another generic male toy soldier, bells started ringing out around the hall. “Assemble for inspection!”Greta called the order, though they didn't need her to. Everybody knew what the bells meant and excitement rippled through the room. Inspections were somewhat rare, especially that close to Christmas time. Before the bells had stopped pealing, all the elves had downed their tools and were lined up in a long row that snaked all around the workshop. No talking was allowed, but there were a few elfish giggles here and there.

 

Another ripple of whispers ran down the line when it wasn't Santa that came into the room through the large double wooden doors, doors large enough to allow Santa's sleigh to be slid into the shop when the time for loading came. Instead it was Stefan who came walking down the line, his hands clasped behind his back. Greta followed him, clutching her clipboard and asking obsequious questions as to how she might help him with every step. Stefan ignored her. He clearly knew what, or rather who he was looking for. He peered into each elvish face, pausing once or twice, then shaking his head and  moving on. Tilly began to blush as he drew closer. She tried hiding by stepping back out of line, hoping that the elves either side of her would close ranks and hide her. It worked, sort of.

 

Stefan walked past the spot where she was skulking,  took a few steps down the line then came back and reached through the assembled elves to pull her forward by the hem of her tunic. “You,” he said, fixing her with a hard look.                                                                                                   

 

Tilly pointed at herself. “Me?”

 

“Yes you,” Stefan took a step closer. “You're the elf who was getting spanked earlier today, aren't you?”

 

Tilly shook her head and blushed brightly. “Nope, not me.”

 

She hoped Stefan would believe her lie and keep looking, but he frowned at her, took her by the arm and spun her around. Once she was facing away from him he hooked a finger in her tights and pulled them out so that he could see her bare bottom. “You've got a very red behind for someone who wasn't spanked.”

 

“Fine,” Tilly admitted whilst the other elves tittered. “It was me.”

 

He turned her back to face him. “Why did you lie?”

 

She shrugged. “Habit, I guess.”

 

“You are a very naughty little elf.” Stefan frowned at her very seriously and Tilly felt a little guilty. She also felt a little embarrassed because all the other elves were listening and everyone would know the story of how Santa's oldest son had seen her bottom and told her off. Knowing her luck it would probably make its way into one of the little jingles they were always singing around the workshop. 

 

“Come with me,” Stefan ordered abruptly. “And don't try any more little escape attempts.”

 

Tilly could hear a low hubbub of chatter start behind her as she followed Stefan out of the hall, the rumor mill was in full swing. She wasn't going to hear the end of this for a very, very long time.