Twelve days.

Charlie was sitting in the Director’s chair.

 

A drone flew over his head, carrying a Christmas star.

“Twelve Days”, Charlie thought to himself.

That was the number Charlie Walker kept turning over in his head, like a coin in his pocket.

Tommy was standing on the school stage, on a wobbly aluminium ladder. With a roll of thick black tape between his teeth. Dressed in a handmade Joseph costume, his tea-towel headdress kept slipping down over his eyes.

Twelve days until Christmas Eve.

Twelve days until the whole of Bramblewood village walked through the school gates in their woolly hats and best mince-pie smiles and squeezed themselves into the school hall to watch the annual nativity play.

Not just parents. Everyone. Grans. Postmen. The vicar. Mrs Henderson from the shop with her three rescue dogs, which she would absolutely insist on bringing even though the head teacher had asked her, twice, not to.

Bramblewood didn’t have a cinema.

It didn’t have a train station.

It barely had a high street.

But it had the Christmas Eve nativity. A tradition that had been running every year since 1857. Every single year. Not even two world wars had stopped it.

Twelve days.

Charlie, eleven years old. Director of this year’s nativity. He had the job of making sure it didn’t fall apart. Because the nativity is what made Christmas special in Bramblewood.

Every year, the villagers crammed into the school hall. Like an annual heart beat. There were no strangers in Bramblewood.

Everyone was a neighbour. Because the nativity connected everyone to each other. And to Christmas itself.

Every single year since 1857 …

Charlie had dragged the wooden Director’s chair out from the cupboard behind the smelly fish tanks. It wasn’t officially his chair. It was another tradition. Handed down over the years.

Charlie’s dad had painted the word “DIRECTOR”across the back three decades ago, when he had directed the nativity. And if you looked closely - really closely - you could still see a small chip in the left armrest where his dad had once dropped a hammer on it.

Charlie liked that bit best.

He rubbed the small chip for luck “Miss you Dad”.

Charlie’s Dad’s nativity play from three decades ago, was still talked about in Bramblewood. He was the best director the play had ever had. He created the best Christmas Eve nativity, the village had ever seen.

Charlie knew he had big shoes to fill.

He couldn’t mess this up.

Charlie tapped his rolled-up script against his palm. Steady. Thinking.

“Emma. Left. Go left!”

Emma’s tongue poked out of the corner of her mouth. The drone controller steady in her hands. She was wearing reindeer antlers in her hair - which she had refused to take off all week. The drone flew overhead toward Tommy and the stage.

The drone had a chunky mechanical claw. And gripped by the claw, was a dangly length of glittery string. And tied to the string, swung the handmade, hand-painted Christmas star. Gold and a little lopsided.

“Just like Mario Kart,” Emma grinned.

The drone, drifted in a swervy curve, and headed straight for Tommy’s ladder.

“Emma, left”

“I’m going left”.

“Emma, no!”

The drone, the star and the ladder all collided midair at exactly the same moment.

Clatter. Yelp. Glitter.

The drone went one way; Tommy and the ladder went the other. The Christmas star came loose from its claw. It fell in a slow-motion plop. Straight into a water trough filled with straw, tinsel and glitter.

The hand-painted banner “BRAMBLEWOOD PRIMARY SCHOOL - CHRISTMAS EVE NATIVITY PLAY” that Tommy had been trying to tape to the back wall peeled away and fluttered down over the cardboard stable. The cardboard stable that had been crayoned and decorated yesterday.

Crayoned with pictures of bright flowers and rainbows. And patterned with sequins all over.

The cardboard stable sighed and folded in on itself.

The stuffed donkey wearing sunglasses tipped over sideways.

Ka-thump!

Tommy lay in the wreckage with the tea-towel over his eyes and one hand raised limply, to demonstrate that he was still alive.

Charlie closed his eyes. He counted to three. He opened them.

“Guys,” he said. “Twelve days.”

“You said go left.”

“I meant your other left.”

Asif emerged from behind a school table piled with cables and dimmer switches and bicycle lights and, for some reason, a lamp shaped like a flamingo. The table had a paper sign sellotaped to the front:

“ASIF’S CONTROL CENTRE. DO NOT TOUCH. THIS MEANS YOU TOMMY!”

Asif was eleven, small for his age, with hair that always looked as though he’d just got out of bed. He had the calm air of a person who had already worked out the answer and was waiting politely for everyone else to catch up.

“Guys. Can I make a suggestion. Clock face. Instead of left and right.”

He drew a circle in the air with one finger. “You say fly to one o’clock. Six o’clock. Nine o’clock. Standard aviation practice”.

Asif demonstrated the directions with his hands.

Charlie blinked.

“Asif. That’s brilliant.”

“I know,” said Asif.

Tommy, who had not yet got up off the floor, lifted the tea-towel off his eyes. “Charlie. Where do you want the ladder?”

Tommy got to his feet, and with cheerful disregard, swung the ladder up over one shoulder. He turned in a wide, joyful arc.

The ladder swept directly towards the school’s resident guinea pig, who was nibbling in his cage - decorated with tinsel and a sign reading:

“MR WHISKERS — SCHOOL GUINEA PIG. HO HO HO!” on a low table near the stage.

Six pairs of eyes followed the arc.

Six mouths opened.

A hand shot out.

The hand belonged to a tall figure in a magnificent three-wise-men costume. Long golden robe, elaborate purple headdress, and pointy curly shoes. Shoes with bells on that jingled as he walked.

The figure plucked Mr Whiskers’ cage out of harm’s way, swung it sideways, and set it down on a chair on the other side.

“Gotcha, buddy.”

Mr Whiskers, gave a small “squeak.”

Dex, the class Teaching Assistant turned to Tommy and grinned.

“That,” he said, “is why they call me three wise men.”

Charlie muttered to himself “Twelve days”.

He had no way of knowing though, that within the hour someone was going to walk into Bramblewood Primary School - and try to take Christmas away.

And it would happen on Charlie’s watch.

Twelve Days.

Twelve Days to save Christmas.