"Please, Dinky! Please! You have to tell me!"

"I don't know, okay?" argued the elf, struggling with one of Rudolph's massive legs.

"Hinky? Stinky? One of you—"

"Listen, Timothy..." said Stinky with a serious air. "If you do choose to go back before any of these things happened, then you might not run into Matthew again. It's as simple as that. He will die, and all your efforts to save your sick adoptive mother will have been in vain, for they will have cost another life. It's your choice."

Beholding joyful Matthew who was making his first snowman in years left Timothy speechless.

"This thing is so heavy!" complained Hinky, wiping his sweaty brow. "What are they feeding him?"

"I honestly don't understand why you just couldn't perform your reversed spell on him in the shed. Why must we pull him out? He weighs at least a ton!"

Rudolph opened an eye, then he put his tongue out and tasted the cold snow, then he refrained from sighing. He didn't know what was going on, so he pretended to be unconscious just to find out what those crazy kids were about to do.

"We must put him in a place where he will not affect anybody else when the magic starts to unreel. Otherwise, he might disrupt space and time, and guess who might find us..." explained Stinky, dropping the armful of twigs he had brought back.

By now, they had managed to drag him all the way to the fence behind the Workshop and they had propped him with the legs against the wood. Rudolph muttered under his breath. His antlers were not made to stick in the snow and keep him upside down, but he still played along, although the itch on his lower back was driving him insane.

"So what do we do with the twigs, Stinky?" asked Timothy, as he helped Hinky and Dinky build a wall of snow around the reindeer.

"We scatter them on this bed of snow, like this," said Stinky, throwing the twigs around Rudolph. "Then—"

But the reindeer could not hear anymore, but for his desperate, roaring thoughts that told him they were about to set him on fire, make him into roast reindeer or possibly just smoke him alive.

"And then?" asked Matthew. He had just added the last twig to his small snowman, without paying attention to the whole Rudolph conundrum.

"Then we throw this in," answered Hinky.

Rudolph felt the hot thing touch him and he uttered a deafening, unnaturally high cry. But nobody else could hear him, even though the night had come aglow with the threads of light and the reindeer torch that was presently floating in the air with a red, brilliant blister popping out of the upper side of his muzzle.

"I don't think you should have given it back, after all!" said Stinky demurely. "He's going to give us hell from now on. And he will even be able to tell the way and to smell our trail."

"We are supposed to do good things, Stinky!" answered Hinky, his voice breaking and his eyes wet. "We agreed to do this. All three of us!"

Stinky frowned at Hinky, but Dinky grabbed his shoulders and held him in a one-armed hug.

"It's okay, Snowball," he whispered in the elf's ear. "I bet he'll be so much happier! Away goes the grumpy Rudolph. Welcome the nice, kind Rudolph!"

The reindeer, whose nose was just inflating like a doughnut, looked mighty proud by then. He stared at the five with a sort of superior contentment, as if he himself was the magician who made it all possible, then he put out his large tongue again, then he spat, and the wall of light turned it on him.

The elves burst into laughter when the ball of phlegm hit Rudolph in the eye.

"Oh, look at his face! I bet he's sorry for that one!" Hinky roared with laughter.

Timothy, who didn't find the situation amusing in the least, pulled Dinky closer and asked about the upcoming return.

"Well, yes," answered Dinky, "we're going back as soon as this is over." He pointed unhappily at Rudolph who, for some reason, had started to cry hysterically inside the bubble of light.

"What is wrong with him?"

"Oh, Timmy," said Stinky sarcastically. "There is nothing wrong with him. He's just reliving some of the best moments of his life. Throwing you off his back at hundreds of kilometres above the ground, pretending to look for you when all he did, in fact, was to return to the shed and sleep throughout every Christmas night until Santa found him and gave him the sack, and some other moments of glory."

"Well," said Timothy, beholding the weeping reindeer sadly, "I think he is very deserving of our pity. You can't be so mean and rude to everybody else just because you think it's funny. I think it's a sickness, actually." He leaned in and whispered in Stinky's ear. "It's like Matthew's sickness on his lungs, only Rudolph's is eating out his heart."

"I don't care," said Stinky, pressing a ball of snow in his hands, then aiming at the reindeer's nose and hitting the bull's eye. "It's still meanness, it is! And I said to him, I said, when he was but a small ball of white fur, I said! Rudolph, I said, why must you always be so horrible? Why don't you try to get along with everybody else?"

Timothy nearly snorted with laughter, for Stinky's freckles seemed to have caught fire again. Under the unleashed Aurora Borealis that poured its light on the elf's face, they looked phosphorescent and vivid, glowing intermittently.

"But does Rudolph ever listen?!" he asked, patting Stinky on the shoulder.

The threads of light were returning to their compact state to reshape the meteor piece again, and Rudolph, whose head had just been uncovered by their former glow, screamed so loudly that the snow on the evergreens in the Snowy Forest slipped off.

"He never listens! Help me! I told him to stay away!"

The three elves and the two boys stared at him horrified. Timothy and Matthew shared in the elves' terror unknowingly, for when the light was gone, Rudolph crashed on all four knees and started to cry.

"He said to me, 'where are those dreadful elves?' and I said to him, 'The three Snows?' and he said, 'yeah! Those horrible little piglets!' and then he grabbed my neck and he stared me in the eyes and his chain went around my middle and it squeezed me until I could barely whisper!"

Hinky, Dinky and Stinky all took a step back.

"And I said to him I didn't know! And he said how come I was getting my nose reattached?"

"Kramp— Krampus?" asked Timothy tremblingly.

"And he said, 'I know that one is named Stinky! But what are the names of the other two?' and he stared in my eyes and his eyes were shedding tears of blood!" Rudolph gave another desperate cry, and the elves took another step back, staring frightfully about. "You know how he is, when he cries blood! He said he would strangle me if I didn't say the names, and I said I couldn't say! And he said, if I couldn't say them, maybe I could think them. 'Go on, Rudolph with the red nose, what are the names of the toothpick and the stew? We both know Stinky's gonna be the pudding!' and I— I—I thought—"

And with this, Rudolph was thrown into the air by the explosion of the meteor piece on which he was kneeling. Hinky and Stinky both conjured their efforts to send Matthew back into the past, but one of Krampus' rusty chains flew out of the red light thrown by the broken meteor piece and wrapped painfully around Timothy's ankles just as the boy was disappearing.

Rudolph made desperate efforts to get up, but his otherwise sturdy legs failed him. His red nose was pulsating in waves of black light.

"Let me go!" cried Timothy, trying to grab on to something, anything, for he was ruthlessly dragged towards the red light in which Krampus' massive head had appeared, shortly after followed by his clawed hands and the rest of his tall, furry body.

"Mr Stew," Krampus growled, and his snake-like tongue hissed as it licked his shiny-black lips. "What a pickle you made that night! I think I might continue this evening. I distinctly remember forgetting the apple-cider vinegar!"

The elves grabbed Timothy and tried to pull him back, but another one of Krampus' rusty chains flew over and hit their hands, leaving them screaming with pain.

"Toothpick," said Krampus pensively. "Come here!"

Dinky took a step forward, although Hinky and Stinky called him back repeatedly.

"What a toothpick, with that brushy hair, and those flapping ears! You'll make for a toothbrush too! And you'll also clean the insides of my cheeks with those oversized ears of yours! What an adventure it will be, little Snowflake! I have been looking for you around the world and back!"

The monster laughed, spurting saliva that hissed and steamed after landing in the snow and thawing the space around it.

"And Hinky, Hinky, Hinky! Mr Stew himself! I won't pickle you, as I've already settled on Timothy here, but you'll be the main dish. Get in the cauldron!"

He snapped his fingers and his cooking device showed up out of nowhere.

"As for cookie-pudding-Stinky, whose name was at the top of my list for only a second before he pinky-promised to never lie again!" Krampus roared and stomped, leaving a large, deep footprint in the ground. "I'm thinking gingerbread or cinnamon-rolls, mixed with his minced—"

The ground shook. Krampus' grip on Timothy loosened, and the boy dragged himself away from the foul creature, rubbing a handful of snow against his burning ankles before he managed to get up and limp towards catatonic Dinky and pull him away. Hinky and Stinky had covered their eyes and were shaking in each other's arms.

"Do you dare—"

Again, the ground quaked as Krampus fell, his blood-tears staining the snow.

"Hinky! Stinky! Open your eyes! We have to get out of here!"

Krampus darted up again, and his claws reached threateningly for the antlers that had stabbed him in the chest.

"It's Rudolph! Come on! We have to leave!"

The meteor piece glowed between his fingers and he looked back at the reindeer with both regret and fury. Here was the beast that had left him without a family, so reckless and hateful, and a bully to rule them all, tackling the beast four times larger than himself that had hurt all four of them.

"Will the threads of light get Rudolph out of here too?" he asked, wavering.

"They won't, unless you want that rabid demon coming with us! Come on! You are right! We have to get out of here!" cried Hinky, fighting to unclench his fist and retrieve the rock.

One of Krampus's chains had wrapped around Rudolph's antlers and the reindeer was presently being dragged forth towards a raised set of claws that would most surely slash his throat.

"No!" cried Timothy. "We can't leave Rudolph! This is a nightmare!"

"Snowstorm! We have to go now!" argued Stinky, sticking his teeth in the boy's wrist.

Timothy grunted. His fist opened and let the meteor piece fall, and Stinky grabbed and smashed it against the ground so furiously that its threads of light split in many more strings than he had ever seen on the previous occasions.

"No!" he cried, as he felt the cords wrapping around him to efface him from the present moment and push him back into the past. "I am not an elf! I am not named Snowstorm and I don't want Rudolph to die!"

The wind intensified, and dense snowflakes started to whirl. The air shook the evergreens in the Snowy Forest and the woods seemed to wail.

Krampus threw a glance at the bending trees bared of their protective white layers, then his grip on the chain grew stronger as his long fur started to flail in the violent wind.

"Let him go!" cried Timothy, bitter tears spurting out of his eyes. "I'm not leaving until you let him go!"

The strings of light seemed to falter, and he could see the two beasts more clearly now, although, to his surprise, a storm had been unleashed across Lapland, and one so fierce that the Aurora Borealis had started to spark up.

A lightning bolt smashed into the rusty chain, and Rudolph wailed, and Krampus roared in pain, as if a part of him had been cut off when the chain was broken.

"Snowstorm! You absolute fool!" the demon hollered, although the heavy snow had raised a curtain between the boy and the beast. "I'll be the last one laughing! There is no mocking Krampus, there isn't!"

Timothy felt one of the light-cords coiling around his wrist. Distant voices called impatiently.

"Come on, Tim! Snowstorm! Cross over!"

He raised his hand and whipped the air, and the string stretched all the way to shaking Rudolph, and fastened itself around his thick, strong antlers.

The last thing the reindeer saw was the warm light in the space-time vortex that slowly changed to neon-white.