FREE -- Santopia - Book One: Santa & the Lost Princess (The Annals of Santopia) [Kindle Edition]

Three days before Christmas, Connie Claus has a son, and Santa names the boy Nicholas.

Ameritus, Great Wizard of Santopia, issues a Prophecy – the next girl born in the kingdom will grow up to become Prince Nicky’s Queen, and Nicky will become betrothed to her on his eighteenth birthday when he is invested as the future Santa at the Ritual of the Green Gloves.

Far across Frozen Lake, the Baroness von Drear gives birth to a baby girl – she’s is overjoyed that her new baby will be the future Queen of Santopia. But when she discovers another girl was born just hours before her own to a peasant family living in her Realm, she sends her ugly Gelf administrator, the ruthless Spicata, to bring the baby to her.

But the peasants, as soon as they learn the Baroness has had her baby just hours after their sweet Noelle was born, know the Baroness will seek them out and kill the baby. They devise a desperate plan to get Noelle to the safety of Santopia, but it is forbidden for anyone to leave the Realm of Drear. Noelle’s father, Taraxa, under cover of night, skates across Frozen Lake, finally reaching the Wizard’s Volcanic Palace halfway across. When Ameritus hears Taraxa’s story, he sees no choice but to take Taraxa and Noelle in his fastest sleigh to see Santa Pops (the current Santa’s dad), now retired and living in the Santa Museum.

Santa Pops agrees that Taraxa should leave Noelle in his care, but return to Drear, buy time by putting out word that Noelle died suddenly, and bring his wife, still weak from childbirth, back across Frozen Lake when she is healthy. Once in Santopia, Santa Pops will be able to protect them.

Moving fast in the Wizard’s sleigh, Taraxa returns to Drear in time to make a phony gravesite where he tells the villagers he buried Noelle the night before after she died of fever. When Gelf Spicata arrives to seize the newborn, he is shown the gravesite. He reports to the Baroness, who now wants to see the parents.

Meanwhile, back in Santopia, Elfie Molliso and the staff at the Santa Museum are shocked to find Santa Pops sitting at breakfast with a newborn babe, but Santa Pops won’t tell them anything about the little girl. When his friend, Henry, visiting from London, comes down to breakfast, Santa Pops tells him how little Noelle came to him. They agree the safest thing to do with Noelle—to protect her from the Baroness—is for Henry to take her with him when he returns to London, smuggling her aboard the Grand Sleigh when Santa takes it to the Other World on Christmas Eve in two days’ time.

Back in Drear, Taraxa does not waste time waiting for Spicata’s return. He and his wife hide out near the lake waiting for the Sending Off Ceremony, when everyone will muster on the ramparts to salute Santa and the Grand Sleigh as they fly past Castle Drear and into the magical tunnel in the Forest of Shadows on their Christmas Eve trip to the Other World.

But when Taraxa sees the Grand Sleigh flying majestically over the lake and heads out in a desperate race to make the Wizard’s Volcanic Palace, he finds Spicata and a troop of soldiers blocking his way!





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