The Troll Who Snored on Christmas Eve

It snowed all day on Christmas Eve.

By bedtime, the clay forest looked like someone had spilled a giant bag of sugar over it.

Under the old stone bridge, Brum the troll was sitting up very straight.

This was unusual.

Brum was normally lying down. Or asleep. Normally both.

“Tonight I’m staying awake,” he told his slippers. “I want to hear the sleigh bells. Just one jingle. That’s all I’m asking.”

The slippers said nothing. They were slippers.

Outside, his friends were finishing the Christmas tree.

Owl had found eleven pinecones and was very proud of every single one.

Bear had built a snow troll that looked a lot like Brum, if Brum had a carrot for a nose.

Luka the dinosaur stretched his long arms and put a star on the very top. It wasn’t straight. He fixed it twice.

And Mila the pony draped red berries around the branches, and only ate three of them. Well. Four.

Brum watched from the bridge.

It was such a lovely tree.

And his scarf was so warm.

And the snow was falling so slowly…

His chin dipped.

His eyes closed.

“SNNNNOOORR… HONNNK!”

The bridge rattled.

WHUMP! A whole branch of snow slid off the tree and landed on Bear.

PLINK! Owl’s best pinecone bounced away into the dark.

And the snow troll’s head rolled off and stopped right by Luka’s toes.

“Oh, come ON,” said Bear, from somewhere inside the snow.

Luka picked up the head and looked at it sadly. “He was smiling a minute ago.”

Mila shook the snow out of her mane. “If Brum keeps snoring like that, nobody’s going to hear any sleigh bells. Not him. Not us. Nobody.”

That was when three little lanterns came bobbing across the snow.

The gnomes. Of course it was the gnomes.

They had heard the HONNK from the other side of the forest. Everyone had.

“Cocoa,” said the first gnome straight away. “Hot cocoa. Works every time.”

“Blanket,” said the second gnome. “A big one.”

The third gnome just held up a feather and wiggled his eyebrows.

They tried the cocoa first. Brum slurped the whole mug without waking up, smacked his lips, and snored even louder. HONNK!

They tried the blanket. It was a gnome-sized blanket. It covered one of Brum’s toes, and not even the big one.

They tried the feather. Brum giggled in his sleep, wriggled, and sneezed. KA-CHOO!

Three gnomes sailed through the air and landed in a snowdrift, hats first.

Nobody said anything for a while.

Then Owl ruffled his feathers. “Can I tell you what I think?”

Everybody looked up at him.

“I don’t think he’s being noisy on purpose,” said Owl. “I think he’s trying so hard to stay awake that he’s worn himself out. That’s why it’s extra loud tonight.”

Bear thought about that. It made sense. He snored too, when he was very tired. (He didn’t like to talk about it.)

“So what do we do?” asked Luka.

Mila looked at the bridge, and at Brum’s big sleepy face, and smiled.

“We stop trying to make him be quiet,” she said. “We just make him comfy.”

The first gnome climbed out of the snowdrift. “The pillow,” he said. “The giant one. From last time.”

So they fetched it.

Mila tucked sprigs of pine around it, so it smelled like the tree.

Bear gave it a long hug to warm it up.

Owl pulled out three of his softest feathers, which he really didn’t have to do.

And the smallest gnome tied the silver bell from his lantern to one corner, because, he said, every Christmas pillow should jingle.

Getting it under Brum’s head was the hard part. It always was.

Bear pushed.

Luka lifted.

The gnomes pulled and puffed and argued about which way was left.

“He weighs as much as a HILL,” grunted Bear.

Then… PLOP.

In it went.

The little bell went jingle.

Brum’s face crinkled into a smile. “Sleigh bells,” he mumbled, without opening his eyes.

Nobody had the heart to tell him.

Owl started the old lullaby, the one they always sang, and made up a new line at the end.

“Snore less, sleep more,

Snow is falling past your door…”

Bear hummed the low part. Luka swayed. Mila swished her tail.

And slowly, the snoring changed.

HONNK turned into honk.

Honk turned into prrrr.

And prrrr turned into a very small, very happy whistle.

Snow kept falling on the Christmas tree, and this time it stayed there.

Then, high above the treetops, they all heard it.

Jingle… jingle… jingle.

Real ones.

A little golden light slid across the moon, and was gone.

Nobody moved. Not even the gnomes.

In the morning there would be a parcel next to Brum’s slippers, tied up with red string.

But that was the morning.

For now, the friends squeezed in close under the bridge, between Brum’s big warm elbow and his big warm knee.

Bear fell asleep first. He would always say it was Luka.

And Brum slept all the way through Christmas Eve without one single HONNK.