An All Too Magical Christmas #18

In which a magician (second class) hitches a ride across enchanted London with King Herla and his Wild Hunt

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 Eighteen

Without a doubt, the most tedious part of your first year of training as a prospective wizard is all the practical stuff. You arrive, all eager at the prospect of brewing potions or speaking with dragons or, at the very least, enchanting mops and buckets to do the tidying up for you and instead you spend the next eight months pickling mugwort and learning the language of bees and very much not just doing your own tidying up but also the tidying up of older students and quite a few of the lazier teachers.

It isn’t until much later that you realise that all of that basic knowledge you were having to stuff into your bored and complaining brain is actually the most useful stuff you ever learn at magical college. Much, much later, when, for instance, you are lost in an enchanted forest in the dark in the middle of London with a group of quarrelsome teenagers trying to save the City from an ancient and creeping magic.

“Moss grows on the north side of trees, right?” I said “Is it the north side? It’s definitely a side.”

We had stopped to regift each other our own coats, as I couldn’t stand the children complaining about wearing the wrong clothes anymore, and I was taking the chance to try and get our bearings. I knew we couldn’t be far from St Pauls, but all the usual landmarks were obscured in the thick forest.

“There’s no moss on any of these,” said one of the kids, “Why are we looking at moss?”

“Shamans eat the moss that’s been peed on by reindeer,” said the girl dressed in black, “It’s how they see ghosts.”

“Do you drink reindeer pee, showman?” said a boy.

“Look,” I said, “For one thing the reindeer eat the moss, not the shaman, and they also eat fly agaric mushrooms which contain hallucinogens, which is what makes their urine psychoactive.”

“So you shoot up reindeer pee,” said the boy.

“Second thing,” I said, “No one is eating moss. I’m trying to find the right direction.”

“Then why don’t you look on a map, you weirdo” said the red-haired kid, pulling out his phone again, “Where are we going?”

“In the direction of the Guildhall, I think,” I said.

“You think,” said the other girl, “Why don’t you know? I thought you were supposed to be some kind of wizard?”

“Yeah, why don’t you just magic us somewhere safe and then you can just carry on wandering round these trees?” said one of the boys.

“Two more things,” I said, “One is that there is nowhere safe, or soon won’t be, if I don’t get on with the second thing, which is this: how do you know I’m a wizard?”

“It was all over the internet,” said the girl in black.

“Right,” I said, “Except you shouldn’t be able to remember that, because I put a spell on you, a good, old-fashioned government approved spell to make you forget.”

“I knew it!” said the girl, “I knew it was real!”

“But that spell’s not working any more, is it?” I said, “You read about me on the internet, so I had to put a spell on you and track down the trolls who had put that stuff online and put on a spell on them, so they, in revenge, stole the London Stone, and let all the ancient magic out and now the city is full of forest and the forest is full of giant cats and there is nowhere safe anymore! And even if there was I couldn’t magic you there because I can’t magic anything. There’s only the old, wild magic now. I’ve only got this far on quick thinking, which you are not currently helping. Will you turn that phone off!”

“I’m looking up, for you, where you need to go,” said the boy.

“Well, at least stop it ringing,” I said.

“It’s not ringing,” said the boy, “It never rings. It’s on silent.”

“Well, someone’s ringing,” I said.

“No one’s ringing,” said one of the girls, “They’re all on silent. We’re not old people.”

“Then something is ringing,” I said, “Can you hear bells?”

“Why do we even say that,” said the girl in black, “Phones don’t ring. They buzz.”

“Or play tunes,” said one of the boys.

“Two last things,” I said, “One: phones used to ring. Phones used to only be landlines and they were attached to the wall by wires and they had actual bells in them that rang when someone called you. And, while we’re at it, they had dials on them instead of keypads that you had to turn to enter numbers, which is why we talk about dialling numbers.”

“This is some real Harry Potter crazy stuff right here,” said one of the boys.

“Secondly: this is not at all important because I’ve just remembered what else rings,” I said, “Bicycle bells.”

“Bicycle bells?” said the girl in black.

“We need to start running again,” I said, “Which way are we running?”

“Head southeast on Cheapside,” said a calm, computerised woman on the boy’s phone.

I started running. I was slightly surprised to discover that the kids started running with me too.

“Hey, Quasimodo,” said the red-haired boy, “What are we running from now?”

“You heard what the cat said,” I said, stumbling over a root, “There are other people hunting tonight. Specifically: the Wild Hunt - an ancient king and his phantom horsemen, scouring the night for the unwary. Last time I saw them they were on bikes.”

“Phantom horsemen on bikes,” said the boy, “Who’s pedalling? The horse?”

“They’re scarier than that sounds,” I said, “Besides, that doesn’t sound like bikes anymore, does it?”

It didn’t. It wasn’t the clattering, abrupt ring of a bicycle that was closing in on us through the trees, but a jingling of many little bells, clear in the cold night air, filling the darkness under the trees with echoes so that it surrounded us, so that we ran through ringing.

And then it was among us and with it came King Herla, not on a city bike now, but astride a black horse, a horse that was massive in the closeness beneath the trees, his bridle hung with bells that rang as he tossed his head, his wide, snorting nostrils, breathing out gouts of red fire that evaporated the snow as it fell, so that the awful king, in his black firs and black beard and black crown of an antlered stag’s skull, came through the forest wreathed in mist and flame.

And on they pressed about us, the Wild Hunt, not whooping and crazed as they had been before, but now silent and purposeful, the only sounds the panting of horses and the ringing of bells, as corpse lights flickered between them, their fierce, fixed eyes dancing in firelight and shadow.

And then an arm came down and snatched up a child, easy as picking up a doll, swooping it up onto the saddle before a huntsman. And then another was taken up, and another. All the children, one by one, gathered up into the hunt as it rushed silently past them.

I should have known better, of course, all that practical knowledge drilled into me at college told me to leave them be, to concentrate on finding the Stone, on saving everyone, not just these irritating children. But, of course, I didn’t. And as the last horseman rode by, I jumped and snatched at him and without seeming to notice me, he grabbed and swung me up behind him.

And there, against all my better judgement, I was, riding with the Wild `Hunt through the wild London to who knew what terrible end.