When a magician (second class) chooses to do Christmas duty in the City of London, it's because he's hoping for a nice, quiet, seasonal time, not for ancient magic to break loose and the enchanted city to be filled with ghosts, monsters, wonder and danger. Not on his watch. Not when he's going to have to deal with it all on his own. That would be an all too magical Christmas.
An All Too Magical Christmas is a seasonal adventure story of magic, mayhem and mystery told in 24 instalments. It is written by Tobias Sturt and read aloud by Jon Millington.
Incident report YUL-XX/12
Section Thirteen
It occurs to me that this report is being circulated to some senior people. People may be, as they read, forming an opinion of how well I might be doing my job. People who might have some thoughts on my promotion prospects, or the opposite, more likely.
Let me seize this opportunity, then, to put in a word for my professionalism. Because as I escaped from that enchanted toyshop in Smithfield, at no point was I surprised that my legs were no longer just carrying me around in a circle but were going where I pointed them and to new places, not where I had just been only moments before.
Nor did I wonder that I was accompanied by three lifesize wooden soldiers, and neither was I distracted by the fact that trees were now growing up through the asphalt outside St Barts Hospital and that as we went we walked through a thin grove of hissing silver birch.
No, all my mind was on the task at hand. I did not allow myself to be overwhelmed by the strangeness of the whole thing, but instead concentrated on my job: taking another dowsing reading to try and find the London Stone.
To be honest though, I suspect that this was not occupational dedication at all, but in fact simply a sign that I had gone as mad as the day, because as I stood there, swinging my pendulum, what I thought was:
“The very spot where Wat Tyler and William Wallace were executed. The place will be swimming in magic! Perfect!”
I was actually excited about the whole thing. Quite, quite mad, as you will be able to tell.
“South west, do you think,” I said.
“If that direction is south west,” said Klaus the soldier, watching me curiously, “Then yes, it is.”
“Excellent,” I said, “Almost there, come on.”
“Whereabouts are you going?” asked Joachim, as the soldiers followed me down past the hospital towards Cock Lane.
“Ludgate,” I said, “I need to take one more reading with the pendulum and then I should have a pretty good idea where the London Stone is.”
“The London Stone?” said Gottfried, “What is this?”
“The stopper of London magic,” I said, as we passed St Sepulchre’s, the churchyard now overgrown with fresh, dark green yew, “And someone has stolen it, letting all the magic out. That’s why I’ve got to find it. It’s why you’re here and the magic shop is here, it’s why it’s snowing and it’s why these forests growing and it’s why, somewhere under those trees, an army of mice has taken over London.”
We had reached Holborn Viaduct and discovered that from it we were looking down on thick forest. Below us Farringdon Street had disappeared beneath a canopy of firs, all swaying and creaking in the wind, snow shaking from their waving tops.
“This mouse army,” said Klaus, “Before you have mentioned them. They are in the forest?”
“They are our enemy,” said Joachim, “We fight them.”
“I was hoping you could stay with me,” I said, “I could do with the help.”
“We fight them,” said Joachim again, “It is tradition, we are soldiers.”
“We are magical wooden soldiers,” said Gottfried, “Adventure is in our sap. There is a dark wood and a mouse army. What would you have us do?”
I looked at the three of them. It is hard for a wooden soldier with painted features to look impassioned, but they managed it.
“Alright,” I said, “I can’t force you. Thank you for coming this far with me.”
“And thank you, wizard,” said Klaus, “Good fortune go with you. Voraus!”
He drew his wooden sword, flourished and the three of them clattered down the steps under the bridge, into the dim depths of the forest. For a moment I heard them call to each other, then a raven croaked in reply and the wood fell silent.
I turned, not wanting to think about what grim fairy tales they might stumble into down there and set off.
The trees were thick down Fetter Lane and I found myself walking a narrow path down what had once been the middle of the road. But as I turned into Fleet Street they began to thin out and the statue that marked the old gate at Temple Bar now stood in a wide, snow covered clearing.
I was standing under the statue of the wyvern on the pedestal, watching my pendulum do it’s thing, when I heard someone shouting.
I looked up to see someone running towards me through the trees.
“They’re coming! They’re coming!” he shouted as he dashed past.
“Who are?”
“They are,” he shouted back over his shoulder, disappearing into the forest, “The hunt is on! They’re coming!”
There was more shouting now and with it, another noise, something like the chiming of tiny bells. Another man came pelting from the trees.
“The hunt! King Herla is hunting!”
King Herla. That rang a bell. And there it was again. A clamorous tinkling like… bicycle bells. A running woman paused to pull off her high heel shoes and throw them over her shoulder. She fixed me with a fevered eye.
“The wild hunt! The hunt!” she pointed at the Fleet Street forest, “Run! Hide! They’re coming through the trees!”
And they were. She took off once more and I could see them coming after her, weaving through the thickening wood on cumbersome city bikes, ringing their bells and ululating as they slalomed back and forth.
One skidded into the clearing and brought to his lips a plastic toy trumpet on which he tootled a tremulous tantivy and then, out from the shadows, he came. A huge man, broad and tall, sitting up straight in his saddle, riding carelessly with no hands, his arms cradling a French bulldog that peered out suspiciously from behind his long, carefully clipped beard. He was wearing some kind of hipster hunting outfit: jodhpurs and knee high boots, bright red braces over a collarless shirt and on his head perched a paper crown from a cracker.
And as the bells rang around him, I remembered: King Herla, the ancient British king lost in time, doomed to ride forever with his wild hunt, gathering up the lost and damned, carrying them away across the desolate and wintry places of the world.
And heralded by bells and terrible cries they came riding through the forest, weaving in and out of the trees and each other, calling and shrieking. And hunting. Even now a man ran between the bikes, weeping in panic as they kicked out at him and lashed him with riding crops and building pass lanyards, pressing him on before them. Pressing him straight towards me.
So I did what any self-respecting Londoner would do when they saw something disturbing, and particularly when they saw someone who needed rescuing from something disturbing: I put my head down and pretended I hadn’t seen anything.
Like an absorbed tourist studying a map, I glared fixedly at the notebook in my hand as I wrote, slowly and deliberately, the direction of the pendulum swing:
“East north east”
And as I wrote, felt them, heard them, ride past. The wheels crunching and sliding on the snow, the shouts of laughter, the whispers of threat. And then they were gone, the sound of ringing disappearing into the gathering wood.
Exactly, I realised, as I looked up from my book to see the last of them pass into shadow, croquet mallet at a jaunty angle over his shoulder, the direction I was going to have to go.
East North East to where the bearings crossed, into the dark forest to find the London Stone.
And it is another credit to my professionalism, I think, that I went.
An All Too Magical Christmas #13