The Plan

A Mr. Jingles adventure · Illustrated story

Two weeks after the cookie caper, the North Pole had found other things to talk about.

A shipment of wooden ducks had arrived with every beak painted purple. Someone had hung the Halloween decorations upside down. And the workshop costume contest had become a matter of such importance that three elves were no longer speaking to one another.

Mr. Jingles considered this excellent progress.

The fewer people discussing a cat and five thousand cookies, the better.

At a little restaurant off the town square, he and Patch had claimed a corner booth. Between their plates lay two weeks of work: drawings of Santa's workshop, crossed-out ideas, a folded party notice, and one page Patch had labelled THINGS THAT COULD GO WRONG.

That page had writing on the back too.

Patch's lunch was a stack of waffles beneath marshmallows, whipped cream, and enough syrup to threaten the edges of the plate.

Jingles had a small sandwich and one cookie.

He moved Patch's syrup bottle away from the drawings.

"I would like our escape route to remain an escape route."

Patch looked down.

A sticky golden river had reached the service corridor.

"That's not the escape route. That's the ribbon cupboard."

"Then the ribbons are in considerable danger."

Patch wiped the paper with his napkin. Jingles watched the red arrow emerge again.

For two weeks, Patch had sketched the rooms he passed during his ordinary repair shifts. Each evening, they had spread the drawings across his kitchen table and argued quietly about entrances, exits, and how many things could go wrong before an idea stopped being an idea.

Jingles had also kept his promise about getting home. Patch had tested the machine's controls and written a return sequence. Without the Core, he couldn't test a real jump. They would have to do that before they tried to reach their families.

Now they had a route through the workshop.

What they didn't have was a route past Santa.

Patch tapped the largest drawing.

"The party is in the assembly hall. Employees can bring a guest. You come in with me. In costume."

"Naturally. I shall be someone respectable."

Patch looked at him.

"Try someone believable."

Jingles put a paw over his heart.

"Two weeks of friendship, and this is what I get."

Patch pointed at a narrow rectangle behind the assembly hall.

"When the costume parade starts, everybody watches the stage. We leave through this door."

"Everybody?"

"Most people."

"I preferred everybody."

"So did I."

Jingles leaned closer. Patch lowered his voice, and Jingles matched it. Beneath the clatter of cups and the hiss of the kitchen griddle, their conversation seemed safely tucked inside their booth.

"This passage takes us behind the wrapping rooms," Patch said. "Then the staircase. Then Santa's office."

He stopped his finger at a thickly drawn square.

"And the vault."

Jingles rested the candy cane across his knees.

"Leave that part to me."

"The lock, perhaps. The guards are not locks."

"That explains why they never make that lovely little clicking noise."

Patch gave him a look.

Jingles became serious.

"We wait until the corridor is clear. No chasing. No frightening anyone. If the way isn't clear, we leave."

Patch studied his face, then nodded.

"And we take nothing except the Core."

"Borrow."

"Jingles."

"Borrow carefully."

"And bring it back before the winter sleigh tests."

Jingles touched the corner of the drawing.

"Every present gets delivered."

That settled something between them.

Neither noticed the menu in the booth behind Patch had been open to the same page for nearly ten minutes.

The cat holding it had not ordered dessert.

She was listening.

Miss Tinsel wore a burgundy coat with a soft white collar. Chestnut hair swept around her ears, and a silver star rested against her chest. Her hot chocolate had stopped steaming.

At first, the conversation had merely amused her.

A cat in a Santa hat. An elf with a nervous pencil. A floor plan handled with all the discretion of a restaurant menu.

Then she had heard two words.

Time machine.

Her paw had tightened around the cup.

Behind the cover of her menu, she listened harder.

"Once we're back at the apartment," Patch said, "the Core fits into the cradle behind the machine. We check the containment rings before powering anything."

"Then the return sequence," Jingles said.

Patch nodded.

"A short test first. We don't choose the big dates until we know we can get back."

"And after that?"

Patch looked down at the little doorway he had drawn beside the workshop plan.

"After that, we find out where our families went."

Jingles didn't make a joke.

"Together," he said.

In the next booth, Miss Tinsel touched her pendant.

For a moment, she wasn't in the restaurant at all.

She was small again, standing beside an empty work stool. Her father's spectacles lay on his bench. Outside, the snow was covering footprints faster than she could follow them.

She remembered waiting for the clock-shop bell to ring.

It hadn't.

If yesterday was somewhere you could go...

She looked toward the drawings.

Perhaps she could stand in that doorway again. Ask the question she had been too young to ask. Follow her father before he disappeared.

Find out why he had taken the Starfall Core.

And this time, change what happened next.

A server stopped beside her booth.

"Anything else, miss?"

Tinsel lowered her paw from the pendant.

"A little more time," she said.

The server blinked.

Tinsel smiled.

"With the menu."

"Of course."

Across the booth divider, Jingles drew an arrow toward the workshop exit.

Patch watched him.

"Why does that go through the pudding table?"

"A landmark."

"You've circled it three times."

"A memorable landmark."

Patch pulled the pencil from his paw and drew a cleaner line.

"We aren't stopping for pudding."

Jingles glanced at the mountain on Patch's plate.

"You have put remarkable faith in that sentence."

Patch tried not to smile. Failed. Then folded the first sheet carefully along its old creases.

They checked the plan once more. Entry. Party. Passage. Office. Vault. Return.

Jingles wanted to hurry. Patch wanted to account for every door. Between them, the route was beginning to look possible.

When the bill arrived, Patch lifted his plate to retrieve a drawing trapped beneath it.

The paper came up with the plate.

Jingles stared.

"Excellent. You've invented a portable restaurant."

It took two napkins and a little warm water to separate them.

Miss Tinsel waited until both friends were looking at the stubborn corner of paper before she tucked a coin beneath her cup.

Then she rose.

Outside, the afternoon snow had softened the edges of the town square. Pumpkins glowed in shop windows beneath evergreen garlands. A choir was rehearsing a Christmas song that one shopkeeper was firmly attempting to drown out with Halloween music.

Jingles stepped onto the pavement and checked both directions.

The streets felt different now. For the first few days after the caper, every whistle had sent him searching for an alley. But two weeks of ordinary errands and bigger local gossip had softened the town's attention.

Most people weren't studying passing cats anymore.

The police, however, still had his picture.

One weather-stained wanted notice remained on a lamppost. A costume-contest flyer covered half his face.

Jingles inspected it as they passed.

"The pumpkin has improved the likeness."

"Keep walking," Patch murmured.

They did.

Jingles kept to the inside of the pavement, away from the open square. At a crossing, he noticed the blue coat of a North Pole officer near a delivery cart and paused at a shop window until the officer moved on.

Patch stopped beside him.

"Interested in mittens?"

"Deeply."

"Those are oven gloves."

"One must be prepared."

They continued toward Patch's apartment.

Farther behind, Miss Tinsel stopped to straighten her scarf in the same shop window.

She watched their reflections move away.

She hadn't intended to spend the afternoon following a cat and an elf. But she now knew they had a machine, a plan, and a way through locks.

She still needed to know where they kept the machine.

At the next corner, Jingles looked back.

Tinsel was examining a tray of candied apples outside a shop. She lifted one slightly, as though deciding whether it deserved her money.

Jingles's gaze passed over her burgundy coat.

Then Patch spoke, and he turned away.

"We should put the drawings somewhere safe when we get in."

"Your kitchen table has survived two weeks of planning."

"My kitchen table is sticky."

"A security feature."

Tinsel replaced the apple and followed after a comfortable pause.

The pair turned into a quieter street. Above a little repair shop, a narrow staircase led to an apartment door.

Patch took out his key.

Jingles glanced back along the street once more, then slipped inside behind him.

The door shut.

Across the road, beneath the shelter of a striped shop awning, Miss Tinsel stopped.

A moment later, a lamp came on in the upstairs window.

She watched its warm square of light, one paw resting on her father's star.

Now she knew where to find them.

"Together," Jingles had said at lunch.

Tinsel remembered the way he had said it. For a brief moment, she wondered what would happen if she simply knocked.

Then she looked down at the pendant.

She had trusted promises before.

Above her, the apartment curtains closed.

Miss Tinsel tucked her paw into her coat pocket and started home.

She had a little planning of her own to do.

A look around

For the next several days, Miss Tinsel became very interested in the little street above the repair shop.

Not so interested that anybody noticed.

At least, that was the idea.

She learned when Patch left for work, when Jingles accompanied him on errands, and which upstairs window stayed lit long after the shops closed. Sometimes two shadows bent over the kitchen table. Sometimes blue light slipped beneath the curtains of the back room.

On the third afternoon, the candied-apple seller greeted her like an old friend.

“Another one?”

Tinsel glanced at the apartment stairs.

“I'm considering my options.”

“You've considered twelve apples.”

She bought the thirteenth.

Upstairs, Patch was considering an entirely different problem.

“We can't make Halloween night the first time you've seen the workshop,” he said.

Jingles looked up from a drawing.

“Why? I make excellent first impressions.”

Patch glanced at the candy cane.

“You usually make entrances.”

“A related skill.”

Patch spread a clean page between them.

“One visit. A look around. We check whether the route on paper matches the route in the building.”

Jingles nodded toward the square marked VAULT.

“And perhaps introduce ourselves to that.”

“No.”

“From a respectful distance.”

“We aren't touching the vault.”

Jingles sighed.

“Fine. An extremely respectful distance.”

Patch had found a reason for the visit that didn't require either of them to invent a story. The repair room needed help returning a cart of mended toys before the afternoon inspection. Helpers were allowed in with an employee, provided they stayed in the work areas.

Jingles could be helpful.

He could also, Patch insisted, wear something other than the outfit on every wanted poster.

By morning, a plain wool cap covered his Santa hat's usual place, and an oversized work apron hid his striped shirt and bell.

Patch inspected him.

“You look almost ordinary.”

Jingles adjusted the cap.

“A terrible thing to say to a friend.”

They agreed on the rules before leaving. No Core. No vault. No magic unless they genuinely needed it. If anybody asked them to leave, they left.

“Today,” Patch said, “we're delivering toys.”

“And collecting impressions.”

“Quiet impressions.”

They took the cart downstairs.

Across the street, Miss Tinsel lowered her apple.

She watched them turn toward the workshop. Patch pulled the cart. Jingles walked beside it, giving a wooden duck a stern warning about squeaking at the wrong moment.

Tinsel waited until they disappeared around the corner.

Then she crossed the road.

She stopped at the apartment door with her paw raised.

For a moment, it looked almost like she intended to knock.

Instead, she took a small case from her coat pocket.

Her father had taught her to understand mechanisms. What she had chosen to do with that knowledge was something she preferred not to examine too closely.

A little later, the lock clicked.

Tinsel slipped inside and closed the door softly behind her.

She had expected a secret laboratory.

She found marshmallows.

They stood in a bowl on the coffee table, beside cookies, toaster pastries, and a syrup bottle with a sticky handprint on its neck.

Tinsel stared.

“Either he's an inventor,” she murmured, “or breakfast has gone terribly wrong.”

Drawings crowded the walls. Not careless drawings. Calculations. Wiring diagrams. Notes written, crossed out, and written again.

One sheet read: RETURN SEQUENCE — CHECK BEFORE EVERY JUMP.

Another, smaller note beneath it said: BOTH TRAVELLERS HOME.

Tinsel's smile faded.

She moved closer.

There were two places marked on the little seating diagram. Two names beside them.

Patch.

Jingles.

No space for a third.

She couldn't decide why that bothered her. They didn't even know her.

From somewhere behind a door came a faint ticking.

Tinsel followed it.

At Santa's workshop, meanwhile, Jingles had discovered that appearing ordinary required an unreasonable amount of restraint.

The assembly hall stretched ahead of them, full of moving belts, painted toys, and elves carrying decorations for the Halloween party.

Patch murmured directions without turning his head.

“Stage. Side passage. Wrapping rooms.”

Jingles studied each one.

On paper, the passage had been empty.

In person, it contained a stack of enormous cardboard pumpkins.

He leaned toward Patch.

“Our escape route has developed a vegetable problem.”

“Decorations,” Patch whispered.

“An important distinction when you're trapped behind one.”

Then a supervisor called Patch's name.

Both friends straightened.

Back at the apartment, Tinsel opened the door to the other room.

And stopped.

The time machine filled almost the entire space.

Its circular frame rose above her, brass fittings catching the faint blue glow of the control panel. Carefully mended parts sat beside pieces Patch had clearly made himself. It wasn't tidy. It wasn't elegant.

It was real.

Tinsel stepped inside.

For years, she had imagined yesterday as a place behind a door that nobody could open.

Now somebody had built the door.

Her paw closed around her pendant.

“Dad?”

The word escaped so quietly she hardly heard it.

She looked toward the empty cradle marked STARFALL CORE.

So that was what they still needed.

She didn't touch the breaker. She didn't turn a dial. Whatever else she was willing to risk, she wasn't foolish enough to experiment with someone else's time machine.

But she leaned closer to the cradle.

Its brass housing carried a familiar arrangement of small interlocking stars.

Tinsel drew her pendant away from her chest.

She turned it over.

On its back, beneath the tiny hinge, was the same pattern.

Her father had used it to mark his work.

For a long moment, she forgot the workshop, the Halloween party, and the two strangers.

Then she looked around the room again.

How had Patch come by a part her father had made?

And what else had he built into this machine without knowing where it came from?

To be continued.