Editor’s note: This is the fifth chapter of a 12-part fictional holiday tale that is running daily until Christmas. Parents are encouraged to read aloud with their children.

Jasper placed his hands on his hips and put on his best stern big brother face.

“Where are you staying? How are you eating?”

Juniper tried to contain her excitement, sensing her brother’s resolve was weakening. She pointed to the large gingerbread-style house at the far end of the Village.

“It’s their souvenir shop. It has so much candy! And the back room where I sleep has a comfy couch and a fridge full of cookie dough and pie! I sneak in when everyone is gone for the day. I even ordered pizza last night!”

Jasper grabbed her hand and pulled her behind a huge display of ornaments for sale. Once they were safely out of sight of all human eyes, Jasper waved his fingers at the ground. Snow rose in a circle, forming a perfect snowball in the palm of his hand.

“Snowball swear. I want your word that you will be careful and not use your magic in front of humans again. That you’ll stay safe and if you need me, you’ll call me. If you snowball swear, then you can stay until noon on Sunday.”

Juniper’s eyes were wide – snowball swears were serious. She didn’t want him to worry, though. So she summoned her own perfect snowball and made it dance through the air before it landed perfectly in her palm. She nodded once and the two of them raised their palms and joined the two snowballs together. It rose into the air and formed a star of shimmering gold dust before it exploded, letting powdery, golden snow fall all around them.

“Snowball swear,” they said in unison.

They were so focused that they didn’t hear the footsteps coming around the side of the display.

“Oh my gosh, I knew it!”

Standing a few feet away were the twin siblings. They were staring wide-eyed, and judging by Katie’s exclamation, they had definitely seen what Jasper and Juniper had just done.

Not wasting any time, Juniper jumped in. “Hi! I’m Juniper, this is my brother Jasper. We just moved here.”

“I’m Katie. How did you do that?”

“Do what?” Juniper asked innocently. “We were just having a snowball fight. My big brother is always tricking me into stuff like this. You know how brothers are.”

She glanced behind Katie where Kellan was silently standing with his mouth still wide open.

Katie’s eyes narrowed. “How did you know he was my brother?”

Juniper gulped; it was going to be difficult to get out of this one. These weren’t gullible young children, they were teenagers.

“It’s a little obvious,” Jasper spoke up from beside Juniper. “You guys look like each other.”

Katie glanced back at Kellan and raised her eyebrows at the dumbfounded look on his face. “I guess so. But I know what I saw. You just waved your hand around and snowballs formed and then they floated, and they slammed into each other, and then golden stars and dust shimmered down! I want to know the truth! How did you do that?”

Juniper looked at Jasper and he knew instantly what she was thinking. His eyes went wide with alarm and he pointed a finger at her. “No, Junie! No way!”

“It might actually be beneficial. We could swear them to secrecy, give them gingerbread juice.”

“We wouldn’t tell anyone!,” Katie piped in.

Jasper looked at her incredulously. “Yeah right, sure you wouldn’t.” He turned back to Juniper. “Even if we did use the gingerbread juice, it’s too risky.”

“What’s gingerbread juice?” Katie asked.

“It will keep you from being able to tell anyone our secret,” Juniper said.

“Junie, stop,” Jasper pleaded, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Just think about this, Jasper. You already said I could stay. What if these two could help me. Watch over me. They look responsible. They have jobs! They’re at least in high school — oooh maybe they could teach me to drive! I’ve always wanted to drive!”

Katie snorted. “What are you, like 8? You can’t drive.”

“I’m 11! And trust me, I could handle it. I started riding rein…”

“Okay! Okay!” Jasper stopped her from finishing her sentence, but Juniper didn’t pause her pitch to him.

“They can help me experience the best ways to do what I want to do! Show me things. Let me stay with them!”

“Um, excuse me?” Kellan said, breaking his silence. “What are you going on about? You can’t stay with us! We don’t even know who you are — or what you are, doing tricks like that. Aliens? Or wizards?”

Juniper cracked up. “We’re not aliens”

“Then what are you?” Katie demanded.

“We’re Christmas elves.”

Read tomorrow’s newspaper for chapter 6 of this Christmas tale.