An All Too Magical Christmas #19

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 Nineteen

Through night time London, through London snowy and forested and shadowed and still, the Wild Hunt came riding. King Herla, lost in time and memory and magic, wrapped about in fire and smoke, led on his retinue of shades, the antlers on his head hung about with bells, and they followed his ringing through the trees. Dark horsemen, grim and silent, thundering through the darkness.

Silent, apart from me, hanging on for dear life at the back. I may, I must admit, have squeaked occasionally. Definitely gasped, possibly yelped. Horse riding was offered at college as an available pastime, but the library had always seemed safer to me, warmer, less possessed of big yellow teeth and crashing hooves. Horses had always seemed to me rather an intimidating combination of stupid and big, like public school boys or multinational companies: hard to control and prone to causing damage. To me, specifically.

If i had thought that ordinary horses seemed big and dangerous, however, this was nothing compared to phantom horses. Phantom horses breathing flame as they careened through a dark forest. Broad trees and low branches rushed at us, at every moment we seemed about to smash or fall or be thrown. Of all the awful things that had happened that day, this was very much becoming the worst.

And then, in an instant, everything changed.

For a brief moment we came clear of the trees and I realised that we were at Bank, just outside the Royal Exchange, where I had spoken with the Bird Woman on the steps. And then as we came hurtling up to the statue of the Duke of Wellington, sitting on his own horse high on his pedestal, our horse leapt to meet it and, of a sudden, we were airborne, the whole hunt, leaping, rushing into the air.

We whorled in a tight circle around the Iron Duke and then turned down Cornhill, skimming the tops of the trees that filled the road, the horses’ flailing hooves flicking snow from the tips of the highest branches. But we were climbing still, up over the roofs of the buildings, into the night sky over Leadenhall.

From above the City was utterly transformed. It was not just the streets that were wooded, many of the roofs were too, so that the buildings became escarpments in some mountainous forest. Even from the tallest buildings, trees sprouted from broken windows and ivy hung from balconies.

We passed over Leadenhall Market, where only that morning Old Tom the goose had stolen my wand. The glass roof was clear of trees and through I could see the flickering lights of fires and moving shadows. Who knew what strange market was being held now down in the dark, deep in the forest.

But all the rest was layered in snow, snow that was still falling, that blew into my eyes and soaked into my ragged coat as we flew through it. Snow that smoothed out the city, blurred its gables and pediments, that swirled up from the trees as we galloped overhead. 

That strange silence of snow, soft and mysterious. The city, enchanted, dark and unrecognisable. Round the Tower, where ravens came spiralling up to meet us, through the span of the bridge, trailing fire and mist and snow and back over the roofs of Fenchurch Street with a jingling of bells in the feathery air. I quite forgot to be frightened.

Then we were amongst the skyscrapers of Bishopsgate, our flying chase reflected, distorted and multiplied, in serried ranks of black windows, weaving between towers of glass into a low, descending curve over Liverpool Street Station, where something long, and shining and dark that wasn’t a train crept, curling, over the railway tracks.

And we dropped further still, down between the rushing walls of the tight alleys around Austin Friars, curving and swerving in ever more headlong turns, down, down, this way and that, clipping the tops of trees, dropping under hanging eaves.

A final rush, a turn, and a snatching branch caught my coat. The horse hurtled on and down, but I was plucked from the saddle, pulled into the trees, bouncing from snowy branch to branch, before dropping the final fall to the ground below.

There I lay, surrounded by the snow I had brought with me in my descent, staring up at the small sliver of night sky I could see through the branches, where small stars glimmered, cold and distant. I think, now, that I was more disconcerted by the sudden end to the flight than by my drop. My body might be lying on the ground, but my mind was still flying on and on through that snowy sky above the spellbound city.

But slowly, slowly, it stole upon me as I lay there under the trees, that I could hear music. Bells still, but now drums too, and pipes and fiddles. And laughter.

I lifted up my head. Somewhere ahead of me, fire was flickering through the forest. Not the baleful flames that sparked from the hooves of nightmares, but a ruddy and cheerful light.

I pulled myself up and, surprised to find that my limbs still seemed to mostly work, tottered to the edge of the wood, where I found myself standing at the entrance of the courtyard of the Guildhall of London.

But it was quite transformed. Normally the courtyard is a big empty space between the Guildhall itself and the church of St Lawrence Jewry with nothing in it except the curving markings on the tiles that trace the outline of the Roman amphitheatre that once stood there.

Now, though, it was full. It was full of decorations: boughs of holly and ivy hung in swags from all the walls, poles had been set up around the space between which hung loops of ribbon and more greenery. 

It was full of light: fires burned in braziers, lanterns hung from the poles, everywhere candles flickered and danced. It was full of furniture: long curving tables had been set up, following the lines of the amphitheatre, all piled high with more things, platters and bowls and candelabras and chafing dishes and jugs all themselves full of every kind of food and drink. It was full of people: children in fact, all sitting down the outer side of the tables, looking into the centre of the courtyard.

Which was, like the rest, full of life. Up against the wall of the Guildhall, with all the tables facing it, was a small stage on which sat a group of musicians, drummers, pipers and, I noticed, fiddlers three, all working away with great glee at a helter skelter version of I Saw Three Ships.

But what really caught my attention, and what had the attention of all the children was what sat in between the tables and the stage.

Or rather: who sat.

A huge man, bald and with a big white beard but somehow not old, in fact, under his loose green robe his chest was broad and muscular and his bare hands and feet were massive. He had on his head a circlet of holly and ivy and mistletoe and at his feet was a sack full of fruits and nuts and sweets. And he was smiling. No. Smiling is not enough. Grinning is not enough. Beaming is not enough. He radiated. He glowed. He exploded. He was, as the bathetic poet gives it, a jolly old elf. And every eye in the place was on him.

Except mine.

Because what had caught my attention was not the man himself, but what he was sitting on. Because there, under his robe, between his planted and immoveable feet was the London Stone.