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 Twelve
Things you discover when you are trapped as an cursed automaton in a toy shop window display diorama:
You are compelled to walk. If you try and stop walking you will just sort of pirouette for a moment until the spell takes hold and lurches you off again.
Cotton wool is even harder to walk on than actual snow.
It is very disconcerting to be able to see, through the shop window, a full size version of yourself, matching you step for step, striding through the actual snow outside.
Wait, are you the miniature model in the window or the person outside?
The model children standing and gazing in at the model toy shop’s model window appear to think they’re the real them.
They also think, despite having been caught in the same spell, that you’re an idiot.
The model window in the model toyshop also appears to have a model you in it, walking back and forth.
Maybe they’re the real one.
You can’t see if there’s a model of that model in the model of the model toyshop because the transfixed teenagers are in the way.
You’re kind of glad you can’t.
But you can’t keep from looking every time you go past.
It turns out that you have a lot to think about in this situation and a lot of time to do it in, because you are enchanted now and cursed to be a figure in a shop window diorama, a pedestrian on a Christmassy street, passing by a brightly lit toyshop in your patchwork coat and oversized boots as children gaze in at the wonders inside.
And as you do this, slogging through a layer of cotton wool snow, past the wooden model of the toyshop, on the other side of the window, out in the real world, there goes an actual, full size you. Down the alley past the shop, round the corner out of sight, just as you reach the edge of the display, and then you’re back at the other end of the window, and here comes yourself again from the other end of the alley.
It is a situation that takes a lot of thought.
The main thing I was thinking, though, was that I needed to get out here.
It wasn’t just the unnerving boredom of this endless stomp across the shop window. This was just one small alley in a forgotten corner of London. If something so strange was happening here, who knew what else was going on. Outside snow was falling, and with it, magic, not some seasonal cliche, but actual magic, blanketing the city, swallowing it, enchanting it.
And the only person I knew of right now who was trying to do anything about it was me. I had to get out of this window, get my dowsing bearings, find the London Stone and put an end to this nonsense.
If only I could stop walking.
I tried grabbing a leg, but the other one kept moving, dragging me forward. I instinctively let go as I started to fall over, and I spun in a tight circle and then staggered off again.
But I was beginning to notice something. As I reached the edge of the display it felt like shadows gathered around me. The glowing lights of the window dimmed and for a moment I was walking in darkness before the light grew again and there I was, at the other side, walking past the model shop front once more.
Each time it happened, though, I began to notice more in those shadows. Figures standing around me. Soldiers! Wooden nutcracker soldiers. They must also be on display in the window.
“Excuse me,” I said, “Coming through.”
“Bitte,” said a soldier and
“Silence in the ranks!” shouted a Sergeant-Majory sort of voice, and I was gone into the shadows and back out again.
“Gangway!” I said as I approached the next time, “This is fun, isn’t it?”
“On parade we are,” muttered a soldier, “Kein Spass. Fun this is not.”
“Always on parade,” said another, as the darkness drew about them, “Never action.”
By my next circuit, I had had an idea.
“There is an army invading London,” I said, as I passed through the dim ranks, “An army of… mice!”
“The mouse army!” the whisper went through the ranks, “The old enemy. We must to arms.”
“I need your help,” I said, as I passed into the shadows, “Are you with me?”
Even before I reached them the next time round, I could hear them muttering.
“We are with you,” said one as I passed, “But what can we do. At parade we must remain.”
“I may not have command of my legs,” I said, “But I still have my arms, and I will have yours!” And I grabbed a wooden gun and pulled…
...and out I came at the other side of the window, dragging behind me a wooden soldier.
“What are you doing?” he cried, “I have broken ranks!”
“Don’t worry,” I said, “I’ll bring the ranks to you.”
I let go of him and for a moment he swung about crazily, and then he got his balance and snapped to attention in front of the shop. I had been right, they were enchanted too, in their case to stand to attention rather than walk back and forth. Wherever I put them, there they’d have to stay.
Into the shadows I went once more, and out again with another soldier.
“Klaus!” he said.
“Joachim!” said the soldier already standing to attention, “Adventure!”
“Action!” cried Joachim from behind me, gleefully.
Through the window I now see Klaus standing to attention in the snowy street and as I let go of Joachim and looked back over my shoulder, I saw him scramble to his feet and dress off against Klaus to join him in his sentry duty.
They looked very smart, as did the next soldier, who turned out to be called Gottfried.
“Sentry duty,” he said cheerfully, joining the others.
“Who goes there?” said Klaus and they laughed, their little wooden nutcracker mouths clattering up and down.
And a voice from on high said:
“What are you soldiers doing out there?”
I looked up and there was the toymaker, wrenching open the door, the bell jangling anxiously, and stepping out into the street.
I strained to look back over my shoulder. I was right! The door to the model toy shop behind me in the window display was opening too.
I grabbed at my left leg and pulled. For a moment I pivoted, my right leg instinctively still kicking forwards, trying to walk on. I lurched back the way I had come, just far enough to reach over, fingers straining, and grab hold of the little model apron straps of the little model toymaker that stepped from the little model door behind me.
And then I spun again and slipped on the snow and we fell into a cold, wet drift.
Snow! Cold! Wet! Real!
I scrambled to my feet: I was outside again, out in the alley. I was damp, chilly and free!
“Kids!” I shouted, “Run! You’re free! Run!”
“Anything to get away from you, Hairy Pooper,” came the reply as they disappeared down the alley.
“You can thank me later,” I said, “Ungrateful little swine.”
“Get back in the window!” Said the little shop keeper, quite red in the face, “You soldiers, get back in the window!”
“Jawohl, mein Herr,” stammered Klaus, taken by surprise.
“Klaus,” I said, getting in between the toy maker and his toys, “Joachim, Gottfried, you now face the hardest decision a soldier has to face: a choice between duties. Between your duty to your senior officer and your duty to your calling. To obey orders or to obey your hearts, to defend the weak, to fight, to fight the mouse army!”
“Fight!” Cried the soldiers, “Fight the mouse army!”
“Well,” I said, “that’s decided then.”
“Stop!” cried the toy maker, “you’re ruining my display!”
“That may be,” I said, “but I might yet be saving Christmas!”
I ran for the end of the alley and this time, when I turned the corner, I was gone.
An All Too Magical Christmas #12