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 Four
I was woken the next morning by an alarm.
Funny how language works, isn’t it? If I’d said ‘the’ alarm, you’d have known it was something I expected, like an ordinary bedside clock. The moment I called it ‘an’ alarm, you got worried. That doesn’t sound usual. I got worried too. It wasn’t usual. It was very much not usual at all.
This wasn’t any usual kind of alarm, this was what we call a clarion. A clarion is a special kind of alarm: it is important, loud, and magical. It sounds entirely in your head, and doesn’t switch off until you’re doing something about it. It is impossible to snooze, impossible to ignore and impossible to like.
It got me out of bed and didn’t switch off until I was actually in the monitoring room, looking at the read-outs.
I want you to picture one of those big panels you see in old movies, covered in light and gauges, usually showing something like an electricity grid or international shipping or the status of deadly killer satellites or something like that. Anyway, that’s what the monitoring room in the Tower looks like, only these gauges are showing the strength in magical fields around the City of London.
Now imagine towards the end of that movie when everything’s going wrong and all those lights are flashing and all the gauges are going crazy. That. Worrying, isn’t it? Very worrying.
I stood, staring at the board. I had never seen anything like this in my entire life, and certainly not in the City of London. I hope I have made it plain so far that this kind of thing just doesn’t happen here. This was very much not what I had been expecting for my quiet Christmas duty and I was not prepared for it. I did not know what to do. There was magic everywhere. Everywhere magic wasn’t supposed to be. I stared at it in horror, trying to think what to do.
And then the clarion went off again in my head. This was, apparently, not a time for thinking, it was a time for doing. Not that I could think with that noise clanging around in my skull. I tried to pick something out on the board. Leadenhall Market. The gauge was right off the scale, the needle buried in the red at the far right hand end.
This time the clarion didn’t stop until I was in the departmental van and on my way.
Leadenhall Market is actually a number of streets, winding away between office blocks, all covered over in glass, held up by monumental and brightly colour Victorian iron work. It’s more of a shopping arcade these days - full of cafes and bars and the kind of stores that sell expensive and pointless presents, but it’s still a bit of old London hidden away there among the new.
That only made me more worried, of course. It’s the old bits that you’ve got to watch. They’ve had more time to soak up history. It’s where the past is that little bit closer to the present. That’s where the magic seeps through.
The first thing I saw as I got out of the van on Gracechurch Street was Father Christmas. I mean, it wasn’t, on closer inspection, actually him, but on first glance I really thought it was. A chubby little man with a fluffy white beard, whose red jacket was pulled tight with a black belt over a shaking belly and whose bright little eyes twinkled out from underneath a red pointed hat with a flashing pom-pom on the end.
It was the illuminated hat that persuaded me it wasn’t the real Father Christmas. I don’t think the real one wears one of those. That and the fact that as I watched, another Santa, this one considerably thinner and without a beard, came running past and shot into the Market.
I followed them. The whole Market was full of them - people in Santa costumes, all milling about, shouting and larking. And just when I thought I couldn’t get more worried.
It must be some kind of charity thing. It was a common thing at this time of year. Get dressed up as Father Christmas and go on a fun run, or a pub crawl, or a fun run that devolves into a pub crawl. Whichever it was, no matter how well intentioned it might be, it was bad news. A seasonal ritual inside an historical site, with magic running out of control. Definitely time to be worried.
And then, as if to confirm my concerns, the little fat Santa turned, grabbed hold of a chair outside a cafe and quite casually flung it through the window of a chocolate shop opposite. As I watched, he crossed over and reached through the broken glass to pull out a box of chocolates from the window display. He turned, saw me watching and smiled a big, happy smile. He trotted up to me and pressed the box into my hands with an enthusiastic “Merry Christmas!” his eyes sparkling and his cheeks positively glowing with good cheer. Or possibly drink.
And he was gone again, wrestling out more of the window display and flinging the contents out at the other Santa’s around him. Then there was another smash, and another, and they were all suddenly at it, all the Santas, smashing shop windows, grabbing what was inside and then handing it to each other with all the glee of handing out Christmas presents. This was really putting the ‘nick’ in St Nick.
Which was what they were doing, of course. They weren’t drunk - this was Christmas spirit they were full of. And they didn’t look like stopping. All that wild magic making the gauges go haywire had found a place to go: a jolly gang of increasingly riotous Santas. I had to think of something.
And that was when I saw the sign. Back when Leadenhall Market had been an actual market, one of the things they sold there was geese. Real live geese. At least live at the time of sale. Not destined to be live much longer after that, except for one of them: Old Tom. Tom was a resourceful goose who escaped the butcher, hid out in the market and quickly became the hero of Leadenhall, living there until he died as he preferred, of old age and over-eating. Which was when they put up a plaque to him.
I don’t know what it was that put the idea into my head - maybe it was just Christmas and Santa and pantomime and the whole season - but in my defence it seemed like an excellent idea right then, and I didn’t have time to think of another one. If the Santas were so keen on giving out presents, why not give them something truly valuable to give away?
I pulled out my wand. This was going to be tricky. It wasn’t exactly Tom I was summoning: I would need a female goose. Would this even work with all this raw magic in the air? could I concentrate surrounded by a horde of enchanted Father Christmasses all busily handing each other stolen goods.
I was somewhat relieved, then, when a fat white goose came waddling round the corner, looked up at me and honked. And as it honked, behind it, a golden egg fell to the cobbles and rang, when it hit, clear and resonant, like a bell.
At the sound, all the Santas turned as one, and then rushed for the egg. It was working!
I was considerably less relieved, however, when the goose, catapulted ruffled and honking from a scrum of Santas, came rushing towards me and, before I knew what was happening, grabbed the wand from my hand, and took off, flapping down Leadenhall Market with it in her beak.
I leapt after her and in that instant so did a crowd of laughing Santas, picking me up, jostling me from shoulder to shoulder, “Merry Christmas!”, “Merry Christmas!”, before spinning me out the other end of their cheerful maelstrom.
I was left, stranded on the pavement, watching as the goose, carrying my wand, turned out into Gracechurch Street, a crowd of St Nicks on her webbed heels, golden eggs clanging to the ground behind her as she went.
An All Too Magical Christmas #4