An All Too Magical Christmas #17

In which a magician (second class) has his fashion sense critiqued by The Yule Cat

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 Seventeen

“Now I don’t wish to alarm you too much,” I said, as the kids and I picked our way through the trees, “Although it occurs to me that being lost in a mysterious dark wood that has suddenly sprouted in the middle of London, having just escaped a magical maze in which you were trapped by a child eating witch, you may already be a little alarmed…”

“Get to the point, Gandalf,” said one of the children.

“We are being hunted by a giant cat,” I said, “Possibly. Probably.”

“Cats are quite small,” said the girl who was dressed all in black, “You have to be more specific with scale. Humans are probably giants for a cat. Are we talking giant in a cat context or giant in a human context?”

“Last time I saw it,” I said, “Giant in an elephant context. Let me put it this way, compared to this cat, humans are small in a mouse context.”

“You could have left us in the maze,” said the girl.

“Yeah, thanks for rescuing us, Dumbledork,” said a large, red-headed boy, “Without you I would never have had this unique chance to be eaten alive by a giant cat.”

“Well, thank you for giving me something to do,” I said, “I would have had to get on and do boring work things like saving all of London if you lot didn’t keep needing to be rescued.”

But why, I wondered, did I keep rescuing them, especially when they were so ungrateful about it? Why didn’t I get on with my job, especially when once the London Stone was back in place I’d actually be able to perform magic and do all the rescuing that anyone might require?

Rescuing, after all, wasn’t strictly my job. It wasn’t even a hobby, to be honest. Barely a passing interest. In general, I have to admit, I was no more prone to saving people than I was to putting them in danger in the first place.

I had chosen the Christmas shift precisely because I wanted peace and quiet. I wanted to do as little of the job as possible, not go above and beyond the call of duty, put myself at risk to save others, be the sort of person who ran towards the sound of witches, etc.

Come to think of it, it was these kids and doing my job that had started all this in the first place. If I had been thinking straight, I would have just summoned reinforcements, sealed off the City and left the whole mess to the sort of people who liked rescuing, and didn’t mind taking the blame when it went wrong.

And yet here I was, lost in a dark wood with a retinue of whining children, being hunted by a giant cat.

It must be the wild magic. I must be enchanted in some way. Under a spell. It was the only explanation.

Somewhere close by leaves rustled and a branch creaked.

“Wait,” I said, stopping and holding up a hand.

“I would have gone with ‘run’” said the girl.

“Shush,” I said, “I think it’s here.”

“I’m not deaf,” said a deep, throbbing voice from the shadows, “Neither am I blind. I don't know what's louder, your voices or your socks.”

“Ok,” I said, “I’m going to go with your ‘run’ suggestion. Run!”

As an idea, it had legs, running. The trouble is that in a forest, those legs got caught on brambles, slipped on slimy leaves, tripped on roots, scrambled and flailed and stumbled and didn’t get anywhere very fast.

“The fledglings,” came the voice from the trees, apparently keeping up with us with no effort at all, “Are all wearing running shoes and yet none of them can run. Curious.”

I turned to look and caught a glimpse, between the leaves, of green eyes, baleful and large, burning in the darkness. Then I whacked my head on a low branch and had to sit down suddenly.

“Do you need a rest, old person?” said one of the children.

“Probably the effort of trying to carry off that coat has worn him out,” came the voice of the cat, “Are you dressed like that for a bet or is it some kind of punishment?”

“I’m going to go with punishment,” I said, “I can only imagine that hitting my head has given me amnesia because I can’t remember doing anything so awful as to deserve all this.”

“I imagine,” said the cat, the voice moving round us as it prowled between the trees, “That’s it’s your just desserts for your terrible dress sense, the ultimate punishment being that you will be just dessert.”

“And you have the nerve to criticise my clothes,” I said, “With lines like that.”

“I can only hope,” said the cat, “That you taste better than your taste.”

“This is even poorer quality material than this coat,” I said, “Isn’t it bad enough that you’re going to eat us without all this low-grade fashion humiliation?”

“I like to play with my food,” came the voice, now on the other side of us, “I am a cat, after all.”

“The Yule Cat, in fact” said the red haired kid, his face illuminated by his phone.

“Do you kids ever put down your phones?” I said, “You are about to be eaten. Pay attention. How have you even got reception?”

“I thought it might be a good idea for someone to do something, Obi Wan Nobody,” he said, holding the screen out for me to look at, “So I looked it up.”

It was the wikipedia page for something called The Yule Cat.

“Icelandic folklore?” I said, offended, “That’s not fair. How can I be expected to know anything about Icelandic folklore?”

“It says it eats people if they haven’t had presents,” said the boy.

“Of new clothes,” I said, “Yes, I just got to that bit. I suppose it’s a metaphor for winter.”

The children looked confused.

“The cold,” I said, “It bites you if you aren’t wearing new warm clothes.”

“Except the cold,” said the cat from the shadows, “Doesn’t have foot long teeth.”

Perhaps this wasn’t the time for deconstructing fairy tales.

“Alright, then,” I said, shrugging out of the toymaker’s patchwork coat and handing it to the boy along with his phone, “Happy Christmas.”

He glared at me, offended.

“I don’t want your stupid coat,” he said, “What kind of present is that?”

“The kind that gets you not eaten by a giant feline metaphor,” I said, “It's the thought that counts.”

“It eats you if you haven’t had a present of clothes,” said the girl in black, trying to explain.

“New clothes,” said the boy, “It says new clothes. This isn’t new. This is very far from new.”

“It’s new to you,” I said, “Take it and give your coat away.”

“Give what now?” said the boy.

“Like you mean it,” I said.

Already the girl in black was holding out her long, shapeless, raggedy coat to another very confused child, trying to explain what was going on, as I tried to fit into a constricting puffer jacket.

“I’m impressed,” said the cat from somewhere above us. I looked up. Two green eyes burned down out of the branches.

“We figured it out,” I said.

“”No, it's simply that I didn’t think you could look more ridiculous,” said the cat, “I’m impressed that you managed it.”

“Everyone’s had presents of clothes,” I said, “Poke all the fun you like, you still can’t eat us. That’s the rules.”

“Those are the rules,” said the cat, reluctantly, “I can’t eat you.”

“And that’s all I’m worried about,” I said.

“You should be worried about so many other things,” said the cat, “That colour really doesn’t suit you, for a start. Also, I’m not the only one who’s hunting tonight. Good luck.”

And, with a blink, the green eyes were gone and we were alone in the silent dark of the London forest.