Fever dreams could be deadly. Noelle had her first and—until now—only experience with one during her freshman year in college when half of her dorm came down with the flu. She was one of the especially unlucky ones whose case turned into full-blown meningitis. For two weeks she was bed-bound, and for one incredibly scary twenty-four hours, her one hundred and three degree temperature landed her in the hospital where she hallucinated all night long.

Who'd have thought that getting lost and passing out in the middle of a blizzard in an Arctic-adjacent part of Finland would land her in a similar predicament? This time, though, the experience came with an extra dose of holiday misery. Noelle's entire being felt as if someone had pressed shuffle on a Spotify playlist of the most annoying Christmas songs inside her head. Santa Claus was coming to jingle bell rock even though baby, it was cold outside, and a white Christmas was all that he wanted.

The tunes were garbled, and the resulting cacophony was overwhelming. In a heated frenzy, she tossed and turned to shake the juxtaposed melodies out of her mind, but they just intensified.

A sleigh ride in the silent night among the Christmas trees led to Mommy kissing Santa, but ended when Grandma got run over by a reindeer. Noelle squeezed her eyes closed more fiercely even though they were already shut, but the result was unchanged. The words flew at her in rapid succession, bouncing around like kernels of corn in an air popper.

Sleigh bells. Jingle bells. Silver bells. Bells. Balls. Snow balls. Snow flakes. Snow men. Amen. Hallelujah. Holy night. Holy. Holly. Holly jolly.

She wanted to scream, to snap herself out of this nightmare somehow, but no matter how hard she struggled, an unseen force was pushing her further into the dark recesses of her subconscious.

White Christmas. Blue Christmas. Last Christmas. Twelve days of Christmas. I'll be home for Christmas. Have yourself a merry Christmas. Christmas. Christmas! CHRISTMAS!!!

Her eardrums throbbed, which was curious since none of this was real. Her head also pounded. She was hot. She was cold. Worst of all, Noelle was frightened in spite of knowing she was unconscious. All she wanted was to wake up, yet she just fell deeper.

She was no longer simply hearing the sounds of the season, but rather she was seeing it in all of its horrible, shimmering glory. Lights twinkled, and candles flickered. Snowflakes glistened, and bows sparkled. The visual assault and the knowledge she couldn't stop it made her eyes water. The warm liquid streamed down her face, but these weren't simple tears brought on by a literal optical illusion. Her ragged breathing and despondent feelings made it clear: she was sobbing.

Was that even possible? Could a person cry in their sleep?

A sharp yip made her lose interest in the answer. Suddenly, all the previous sights and sounds disappeared, and Noelle was back, face down in the snow. Turning her head to the side, she willed herself to open her eyes in spite of being deathly afraid of what she'd see. But there, under the light of the moon and in the middle of a snowstorm, a white hare sat, staring at her.

With its chunky body, stubby ears and nervously twitching nose, it was the cutest thing she'd ever seen. Resisting the urge to reach out and scare it away, she wondered what had drawn the little guy out of the forest to her before movement in the brush caught her attention.

Unbothered, the hare also looked back, then waited patiently as an Arctic fox emerged from the shadows. Trudging toward them with its bushy, white tail and coal-black eyes and nose, the animal—not much bigger than a large house cat—approached with purpose. But unlike when she'd thought she was being pursued by a wolf, this time Noelle wasn't scared.

Surprised? Obviously. Curious? Definitely. But scared? No way. The hare would have been a much easier target for the polar predator, yet even it held its ground until the fox reached its side. Then, the two began approaching together, the fox with a light trot and the hare hopping along. Noelle's bubbling excitement at the unusual scene was only cut short when a large, snowy owl swooped down from the sky.

The three made an odd sight indeed, and Noelle mentally applauded her subconscious for coming up with such an absurd, yet entertaining delusion. It was no doubt a psychological remedy against her earlier panic-induced auditory confusion brought on by whatever was happening with her outside this make-believe bubble. Because any of this being real was definitely out of the question.

Fascinated by her heightened level of self-awareness, Noelle was just about to ponder how she could both manifest such realistic illusions while at the same time know they were just figments of her imagination when the trio approaching her began to fade away. But instead of disappearing, the white animals—one running, another hopping, and the third flying—gradually crumbled into snow, landing in one big pile just a few feet away from her.

Noelle gasped. Not at losing sight of what was just there, but at seeing what the remnants of the three animals was quickly becoming.

The tips of the hats came first. The pointy felt cones rose out of the powder as if pulled upward by an invisible string. Bushy eyebrows located above rosy, squat noses emerged next, before a wave of rowdy facial hair, a burst of woven sweaters and a smidge of leather boots completed the transformation.

The tonttu trio shook their limbs, sending snowflakes flying. After exchanging a few unintelligible words, they turned toward Noelle and began to walk.

Noelle, Noooooo-eeeeellle. Nooooooo-elle, Noelle. The background soundtrack of her mental Christmas music had returned, but this time it was solely playing her namesake song.

Noelle never wanted to awaken as much as she did at that moment, yet the Nordic gnomes continued to advance. She felt helpless as no sound could escape her struggling throat.

Noelle, Noooooo-eeeeellle. Nooooooo-elle, Noelle. The song continued, the soft melody becoming louder in her consciousness.

Help! Help me! She wanted to yell, but words still failed her. She desperately tried to sit up, but couldn't move.

"Noelle. Noelle," someone outright uttered her name, no longer delivered like the melodic chorus of the carol, but rather as a pleading address. The voice was familiar, but she was still in a daze, and the sound echoed in her skull as if it were an empty cave.

Cave. The word took her back to those magical hours spent at the thermal pool with Nick. The recollection ignited a vision of him staring intently into her eyes while whispering her name.

"Noelle," he said, forming the soft syllables with his shapely lips. In her dreams, Noelle smiled, yet it quickly became apparent that the memory wasn't just in her head. The act perfectly mimicked the sound she was now hearing.

It was real. It was him. It was Nick!

Gathering every ounce of her remaining energy, Noelle attempted to will herself awake one more time. Finally, the world around her came into view again. She blinked rapidly to focus her vision in the dimly lit room, but all she immediately cared about was the man at her bedside.

"Nick," she croaked as relief flooded through her at seeing the younger Klaas—with his tousled, brown hair, dark rimmed eyes, and frost-tinged, rosy cheeks—sitting on the edge of the mattress. Propelled by a mix of emotion and adrenaline, Noelle bolted to a sitting position and threw her arms around his neck. "Oh, I'm so glad you're here. It was horrible. I thought—"

"Shhh," he shushed her, while reassuringly stroking her head with one hand and squeezing her torso tight with the other. He smelled of cool, winter air and his wooly sweater felt itchy against her chin, but she happily melted into him. "It's okay. You're safe. Everything will be fine," Nick whispered.

Noelle appreciated his attempt to comfort her and she could have stayed in his arms like this indefinitely, but suddenly her agitation about almost dying in the blizzard was replaced with the memory of what had led her out into it in the first place. Pushing Nick away, she tried to keep her breathing steady even as panic overtook her.

"No, no, no. You can't be here. You shouldn't have looked for me. Halla said this would—"

"Halla?" Nick cut her off as a dark shadow momentarily washed over his face. "You've spoken with Halla?"

Noelle frantically nodded. She didn't have time for what could easily turn into a game of twenty questions, so she had to explain everything as quickly and simply as she could.

"Yes. Halla the frost fairy who turned your father into Santa Claus and his brother into the Black Buck came to your house a few hours before the concert," she answered in a rapid mumble, barely taking a breath between phrases. "She took me back in time a few days—to Yule Eve, in fact—into the forest. There I saw your cousin Piet making some kind of wicked deal with her—Halla, that is, but the past version of her, not the one who took me there. Anyway, Piet was working on a plan to take Christmas from you and your father, and Halla agreed to help him. So she brought me here to distract you and have you pick me over your obligations, but then she had a change of heart so she told me about the whole plan. And that's why I decided to skip the concert and get as far away as possible for the rest of Christmas Eve from you so that you don't have a chance to make such a bad decision."

Noelle paused and took a very deep breath before tearfully adding, "So please tell me that you didn't. Please tell me that you still want to inherit Christmas."