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 Ten
There is something rather delightful about empty city streets. The relief of sauntering casually down a street where you would usually have to swerve and hustle among the crowds, of humming a happy little tune where usually you would have to shout over the bang and roar of the traffic, to look up at the buildings around you instead of down at the road, dodging smeared fast food and pedestrians too fixated on their phones to actual look where they might be walking.
But it’s not just a relief: it’s a pleasure. An illicit, secret pleasure, having the pavements and plazas and parks all to yourself, unshared, uninterrupted, as if the whole city was built purely for you own entertainment.
This was the London that Puss in Boots and I found ourselves in. Somewhere in the distance you could hear traffic and the omnipresent grey noise of the city, but these streets were deserted. Echoing and silent.
After my morning chasing geese and being chased by Santas, bargaining with ravens and being threatened by pantomime characters, it was a glorious, indulgent respite. Peace and quiet.
Too quiet, of course.
I do realise that there’s entirely another, possibly more responsible and reasonable, way to look at this empty city.
You might see it as post-apocalyptic, haunting, terrifying. You might wonder, perhaps, what on earth had actually happened to all the people. You might be aware that somewhere, in the alleys and tunnels and cellars, was massing an army of enchanted mice, plotting their next move. You might know that even now ancient, coursing magic was swirling unfettered all around you, gathering in strength and strangeness.
You might then not saunter, or hum, or gaze about you quite so happily but instead, as the cat said:
“Take care!” he snagged my jacket with his claws, “Unless I judge amiss something fell gathers in these streets.”
“I think it might just be that that bin needs emptying,” I said. But I stopped humming.
He was right, of course. The City was not as quiet as it seemed.
As we crept past Liverpool Street Station we could hear a sound like a great mass of people, only considerably more squeaky, and what sounded like someone making a very high pitched speech.
There was a Pret a Manger with the window broken in and the shleves ransacked, the floor covered in discarded crusts, and down a side road we glimpsed a Greggs on fire.
As we wound through the streets towards Moorgate we heard fifes and drums in Finsbury Pavement and from the Artillery grounds beside Chiswell Street there came an ominous pop, pop, pop, which sounds all too like target practice.
But it was as we approached the Barbican underpass, however, where the road dives into a tunnel under the housing blocks above that we were to discover quite how right he was. What was ‘fell’ was a black cab, tipped onto its side across the road, and a barricade of shopping carts, shipping palettes and Amazon boxes piled up around it.
“Halt!” cried a high pitched voice, and a mouse climbed up on top of the overturned taxi. But no ordinary mouse. This was was now the size of a small dog, and was wearing a saucepan as a helmet. In his hand he held a broomstick that had a carving knife tied to the end of it.
“Stop right there!” he said, “You are now prisoners of General Oliver Crumbwell and the New Rodent Army!”
“Curfew for humans!” said another voice and a head appeared up out of the smashed driver’s window of the cab, this wearing a red football sock as a hat with a croissant shaped cockade pinned to it, “By order of Ma Rat and the Revolutionary Committee.”
“You keep out of it, apparatchik,” said the first mouse, “These are military prisoners. I’m going to cut off their tails with a carving knife, see how they like it.”
“Humans don’t have tails,” said the other mouse.
“That one does,” said the solider.
“That’s because he’s a cat,” said the other.
“A cat!” said the first, finally realising and the cry went up all around us “A cat! A cat!” as more heads appeared from behind the barricade.
“The cat!” shouted the first mouse, “Facist gangster! Enemy of the people!”
“Execute him!” shouted a voice.
“Show trial!” shouted another.
“Show trial and execution!” shouted a third, “Or the other way round, doesn’t matter really.”
“Hold on, hold on, hold on,” I said, “There’s just one thing I want to clear up before we move on to the travesties of justice and guillotining. What on earth is going on?”
“Revolution!” cried the mouse in the sock, “You imperialist running dogs!”
“Cats” corrected the mouse with the carving knife.
“Cats,” said the other, “The workers are rising up.”
“Out of the subway,” said the first.
“And sezing the means of production!”
“Production of what?” I said.
“Bread, mostly,” said the soldier.
“Bakers!” said the mouse in the hat, getting himself worked up, “Capitalist stooges! We demand a bap for every mouse!”
“Let them eat cake!” shouted the soldier.
“Cake?” I said, “That’s rather bourgeois, isn’t it?”
“Class traitor!” shouted the mouse in the taxi waving a hastily stapled together pamphlet, “The words of Chairman Mousey Tongue himself: pastries are elitist! Bread is the food of the working mouse!”
“Meaning that the political cadres will keep all the cake for themselves,” I said.
“Yeah, why can’t I have cake?” said the soldier, waving his carving knife, “Aren’t I good enough, eh?”
“Sedition!” shouted the mouse in the hat, ducking back into the taxi, “Aux armes, souris!”
Two more mice in red hats leapt up onto the taxi, both waving toasting forks at the mouse in the helmet.
“Oppressors!” he shouted, slashing at them with his broom handle, “Aristocrats!”
“Elitists!” came a voice from behind the cab and
“Traitors!” came another.
Toasting fork rang against carving knife and the precarious barricade began to shake and rattle as scuffles broke out, voices crying and shouting: “Baguettists!” “Briochites!”
“Come on cat,” I said, “While they’re distracted. We’re right at the edge of the City here, and the edge of their revolution, I think - that’s why their barricade is here. Smithfield is right there, we can just go.”
“You go,” said the cat, “Save qui peut, mon ami. My work is calling me.”
“What are you going to do?” I said, “You’ve seen them. They’re getting bigger.”
“A challenge,” he said with a horrifying grin, “No matter how big they may get, mice are still a cowardly, superstitious lot. I shall become a creature of the night. I shall become… a cat!”
And he swept off his hat in a low bow, turned, sprang into the shadows of the Barbican underground car park, and was gone.
“Good luck, you kill crazy maniac,” I said, and edging my way through the quaking, yowling barricade, ran as fast as I could through the underpass and out into Aldersgate Street.
Where I discovered, much to my consternation, that it was snowing.
An All Too Magical Christmas #10