An All Too Magical Christmas #15
In which a magician (second class) accidentally burns a witch to death, which is generally frowned upon at a departmental level
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 Fifteen
In the churchyard of St Paul’s there stood a house. It was a small house, made smaller by the towering trees around it, at whose feet clustered mossy and tumbledown gravestones and whose heads scraped the balustrades of the cathedral.
It was small, the house, but neat and trim, with steeply pitched roofs that reached almost to the ground, from under which unexpected windows peeped out. Smoke curled up out of the chimney into the tree tops and from the open top half of the front door came the smells of baking and the sound of someone singing to herself. Somewhere far behind me the sun was lowering into the west and in the thickening dusk, the ruddy lights in the windows shone cheerfully.
I paused in the shadow of the trees and considered the little house. There was much to consider about it.
In the first place there had never been, to the best of my knowledge, a house in St Paul’s graveyard. But then there hadn’t been a forest there before, either, so perhaps a house wasn’t such a surprising addition.
But that wasn’t the only surprising thing about it. For a start the tiles on that steep roof weren’t slate but books: hardback books, all laid one on top of the other and then tented along the ridgeline. And the walls weren’t plaster, but paper. Pages of books lacquered and layered one over the other, whole chapters running between windows and under the eaves. A very readable house.
A house of books in the middle of a churchyard in the middle of forest.
The reading list for the first year of magical training college consisted of a collection of folk stories, One Thousand and One Nights and Grimm’s Fairy Tales. I know: a lot of first years think it’s silly too, but a lot of those traditional stories are just scrambled versions of ancient religions and magical practices going back millenia. You can learn a lot from a fairy tale.
You can learn, for instance, that a mysterious little book house in the middle of a deep, dark wood, is probably something to consider carefully before approaching. Which is what I would have done if I had not heard, floating frail but clear through the stillness of the forest from the direction of the little house, a child’s voice crying ‘Help!’.
It was probably only a witch, right? I knew witches. Some of my best friends are witches. And even an evil one would offer me some kind of professional courtesy. Wouldn’t she?
I was just about to go and investigate when the bottom half of the front door opened and a little old lady stepped out, carrying a wooden bucket.
Now, I’m well aware that ‘witch’ is a term often used to dehumanise and persecute older women. After all, actual witches aren’t that easy to catch and burn to death, believe me. But when you see a bent-backed old lady, who shuffles along with an old, rolling step because she has one foot much bigger than the other, who has a long hairy nose and a beady bloodshot eye peeking out from behind two hanks of limp grey hair, who looks, in other words, like every picture book villain you ever saw, I think you might be forgiven for leaping to conclusions.
The squeal and clatter of a well winch and chain filled the air and I took my opportunity, moving from tree to tree in an attempt to get as close to the house as possible without being seen. As with everything that day, I turned out not to be very good at it.
“You, there,” the creaking of the well wheel stopped suddenly, “Hiding behind that tree. Help old Befana with her water.”
To be fair, the bucket was extremely heavy. I did try to look like I hadn’t been hiding, but we both knew I wasn’t fooling anyone. There didn’t seem to be any other options but to help her with her water, and anyway, if someone was trapped inside, I was going to have to get into the house eventually. What better way than through the front door?
There was no one else in the house, of course, except me, now.
Me and a huge pie on the kitchen table that looked just huge enough to cover a small child, if you got it to curl up a bit.
The house was smaller on the inside. Every surface was crammed with crockery and pans, every rafter was hung with herbs and hams, the table was piled high with vegetables, the stove with bubbling pots and kettles and on the mantelpiece, between two china dogs, slept a little black cat with a white mask round its eyes. But everything else was in motion. Dried flowers spun in the hot air, lids jumped and clattered over steam, sunlight on the dappled water in the sink spun arcs across the plates and in the firelight brasses gleamed and flashed and shadows danced under the furniture and words, words, words crawled up the walls and ceiling in twining, mazing sentences.
“Fill up the cauldron, there,” said the old woman, “And see if the oven’s hot enough for my pie, it’s a low stoop for my poor old back.”
I emptied the bucket into a big black cauldron on the stove top that looked like the sort of thing in which one might boil a missionary.
“I’m no cook, I’m afraid,” I said, “Perhaps you better show me how to open the oven and check it.”
“So you can shove me in and roast me up?” said the woman, a glint in her eye, “You don’t get to be this old and witchy without learning to avoid getting burnt by upstarts.”
Somewhere close by someone cried again, ‘Help’. A small, tired voice that sounded like it had tears in it. It sounded like it was coming from outside.
“Did you hear that?” I asked, “What was that?”
“Just the livestock,” said the woman, “You get on and check that oven, I need to get my pie baking.”
“It’s a big pie,” I said, “What’s in it?”
“Kid,” said the witch, smiling.
“Like a small goat?” I said.
“Like a small goat,” said the witch, with an emphasis on the ‘like’ that made me wonder how like a goat it might be, “More than enough to go round, if you make yourself useful.”
“I’m not very handy, I’m afraid,” I said, not at all sure that I wanted to be used.
“Nonsense. Everyone can do something,” said the old woman, picking up a cleaver from the table and sitting down, placing it carefully on her lap, “Sing a song, tell a story.”
“Oh, I have a story,” I said, finally getting the oven door open, “Several, and that’s only one day so far.”
“There, then,” said the old woman, “A story for your food. It’s always nice to have someone new for supper.”
“I’m… not sure I’m very hungry,” I said.
“Well,” said the old woman, running her thumb along the edge of her cleaver, “I am, and I like some entertainment with my food, and I like my food to be entertaining, so you tell your stories, hedge wizard.”
“Well,” I said, thinking fast and grabbing hold of the cast iron tongs hanging on the stove door, “There is a story about an old woman who kept a lit oven in a house made of paper…”
And I grabbed hold of a red hot coal out of the fire and dashed it across the kitchen at the far wall. The witch leapt up with a shriek and scrambled up onto the table, kicking vegetables left and right as she scampered down the length of it towards the already smoldering corner.
But I had already thrown another in the opposite direction, and another, and as she flapped her apron at the smoking walls, the other side of the house was starting to catch. The words on the walls started to run and flake in the fluttering flames, punctuation peeling off in petals of ash.
“Excuse me,” I said, “I think your house is on fire. I’ll go and fetch help.”
The witch threw herself across the room at the door, slamming the bolt across and putting herself against it.
“And now you’re trapped in it with me, magician,” she actually cackled.
“Madam,” I said, “The walls are paper. It’s why they’re on fire.”
And I put the tongs through the back wall, tore open a hole and pushed through into the garden beyond.