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 Fourteen
There is a lot of debate these days about the poor air quality in cities caused by traffic and what might be done about it. I am pleased to report that as a result of my experiences in London over the Christmas in question, I believe I have a solution. Simply plant all the streets full of trees.
This works in two ways. One: the increased greenery helps with the processing of pollution, trees being a key way in which our air is kept clean. The other is that it helps decrease traffic because, and I repeat, the streets are full of trees.
Fleet Street was a forest. Not a wood, but a forest. Not a place of sun-dappled glades, of spreading oaks and tall and singular beech, of cheerful bird-song and a watchful deer bending warily over a bubbling brook. This was a forest of firs, thick and dark under the snow, where beneath them all gathered shadow, the pavement quieted with falling needles, all still and silent, like the trees were holding their breath, waiting for something.
For a forest that was only hours old, it felt ancient, like it had always been growing there, we just hadn’t noticed. There was a bicycle a tree had grown around, lifting it off the kerb to hang in mid air, a branch punching through its gears. A phone box full of ferns, a London taxi snarled up in brambles.
All the way up Fleet Street small courts run off between the buildings into hidden courtyards and mazy alleyways. But now these openings hung thick with ivy, and in the unseen paths beyond branches snapped and undergrowth crackled and something large moved and paused and moved again.
I couldn’t help but think of how the Roman city of Londinium had been abandoned after the legions retreated, left to the weather and the wild, and how alarmed the arriving Anglo-Saxon tribes had been at this lost city, these incredible ruined palaces, these works of giants. So alarmed, in fact, they didn’t dare live there, but instead founded their own Lundenwic outside of the old Roman walls, leaving the city within a toppled wilderness of beasts and bandits and mystery.
And now here it was again, that ancient ruin, following the magic through the city, filling it with something old, something dark.
Which is when I found the artisanal farmer’s market.
I mean, I shouldn’t have been surprised. This was London, and you know what they say. In London you’re never more than ten feet from a rat or a hipster food outlet. And in this case, as I soon realised, both.
At the bottom of the hill, where Ludgate and Fleet Street meet, the trees began to thin. Snow was falling but the ground had been swept clean, fairy lights hung in swags across the clearing and around the edge of it, booths had been flung up, little windows of cheer against the dark of the forest. Every stall was lit up, by flaming barbeques, red hot ovens, heat lamps and spirit stoves, all of them cooking, flipping, frying, stirring, each one of them redolent with the smell of roast meat and spiced wine, baked pastry and bubbling stew.
And after the muffled silence under the trees, there was a happy chatter. People wandered to and fro, cooks and sellers called out their wares and somewhere underneath and around it all was a strange music, a delicate, belling pluck of something like a zither, clear and ringing in the frosty air.
But what people, and what chatter? Here in a magical forest grown in the heart of an empty city? I paused at the edge of the trees. Their clothes were odd. But what was there odd about that? This was London. Breeches and buckled shoes, a fashion statement, a velvet doublet and cocked hat, a regrettable individualism.
Their faces were odd. But what was odd about that? This was London. Their ears were perhaps pointier, perhaps larger, their moustaches whiskery, their narrow noses given to twitching; well, perhaps it's not nice to be too personal.
Their tails were odd.
Ok, their tails were odd.
The mice. Of course the mice. Who else would be running a food market in an enchanted wood? They had changed now, though, they were almost human sized, and shaped. They seemed less bolshy too, debating the merits of gluten-free pasties. Centrist mice with bourgeois tastes.
What possible danger could there be in the mouse market? It had been a long time since I had eaten and I have bourgeois tastes too.
“Come buy, come buy,” called the mouse at the stall closest to me, “Taste them and try; sweet to tongue and sound to eye; come buy, come buy!”
I edged closer to see what he was selling. Were those mince pies? Snow and merry lights and mince pies? I have very bourgeois tastes.
“Christmas pie, good sir?” said the mouse, “Hodge-podge of fruit, counterpane of pastry? Taste them and try.”
“Do not eat the pies,” clacked a voice in my ear.
I turned to find at my elbow, Klaus the wooden soldier, now wearing a striped apron and carrying a tray of glasses of steaming, pungent mulled wine.
“Klaus!” I said, “Is that mulled wine?”
“Do not the wine drink also,” said Klaus, “Do not eat nor drink their food.”
“Klaus, I’m starving,” I said.
“Do not eat their goblin fruits,” said Klaus, trying to whisper, which is not easy when you have a wooden jaw that only snaps up and down loudly, “Who knows upon what soil they fed their hungry thirsty roots?”
“I’m sure these aren’t goblin fruits,” I said, turning to the mouse behind the corner, “What’s in them? The pies?”
“Goblin fruits,” said the mouse, nodding happily.
“Ok,” I said to Klaus, “Maybe a few, but I’m sure the rest is just ordinary mince pies: raisins, currants…”
“Moon berries,” continued the mouse, “Star drops, candied dreams, the gellid tears of a mournful maiden, grated mandragora and a little cinnamon.”
“There,” I said, “Cinnamon, perfectly normal.”
“You eat the food,” said Klaus, “You never stop. You are then all theirs. Theirs to command and make to carry the tray of drinks.”
“Klaus,” I said, “You’re a wooden soldier, you don’t have to eat. What happened?”
“They threw me a nut,” if it was possible for a painted wooden face to look miserable, Klaus managed it, “I am a nutcracker, in my mouth I crack the nuts. What else was I to do?” He sighed, “Do not fall into the trap, my friend.”
“A parcel of Christmas,” said the mouse, holding up a mince pie towards me, “Warm from the oven, a little brandy butter over to pour, you try for free and you will buy more.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “I’m allergic.”
“Gluten free,” said the mouse, holding up another one, “No nuts, no milk.”
“To magic,” I said, “Allergic to magic food, I’m afraid.”
“Ah,” said the mouse, looking at his wares on the counter in front of him, “Well, I have, no… wait… no, no is all magic. Everything,” he swept out an arm at the market around him, “Is magic. You’ve come on the wrong day.”
“I’ll say I have,” I said, and, turning to my friend, “Thank you, Klaus. I wish there was something I could do for you.”
“You must find your stone, wizard,” said Klaus, “And stop it all.”
“I am trying,” I said, “I really am.”
And I pressed on into the forest.
An All Too Magical Christmas #14