An All Too Magical Christmas #6

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 Six

My instinct, when confronted with problems, is to make a list. Well, it’s easier than dealing with the problems. They’re comforting, lists. Everything in its place. Makes it feel like the problems are under control. They’re not. In fact, they’re probably getting worse as you waste time making lists, but at least then you can face the ghastliness with a slightly clearer mind, at least for a bit.

But by breaking the problems down into parts, you can deal with those parts one by one. You can make a plan instead of confronting the whole whirling maelstrom all in one go. How, after all, do you eat an elephant?

Actually, it now occurs to me, why do you eat an elephant? Is this some kind of gruesome bet? Or one of those bizarre Victorian naturalist’s supper clubs, eating their way through the animal kingdom? And how? You’d need big plates. And where? What kind of restaurant serves elephants? One with big seats.

I was, at this juncture, as you might surmise, getting hysterical and needed to calm down.

Also: don’t eat elephants. They’re endangered. And difficult to fit in a sandwich.

Get a grip, man. Make a list.

1. There are problems

2. More problems than I’m even aware of at this point, probably

3. This is bad

Wait. This is no good. Start again.

1. A goose has stolen my wand

2. And also the London Stone

No. Other way round

1. Someone has stolen the London Stone

2. Actually, more like 1 (a) I am beginning to realise that this may, in fact, be the ‘plans’ the Yule Lads were muttering about when I made them move south of the river so that this may in fact be in some way 1 (b) MY FAULT. 1 (c) We’ll deal with that later.

3. Without the London Stone holding it in place, magic was pouring out into London, causing mayhem like

4. A goose laying golden eggs that stole my wand and

5. A riot of Santas stealing things to give out as presents and

6. This was only going to continue and probably get worse as more and more magic built up in the City of London, a city full of

7. Ghosts, spirits, goblins, djinn, giants and dragons

8. Dragons. Oh my stars, dragons.

9. Get, and this is important, so pay attention, a grip

10. But without a wand there is nothing I could do, until I

11. Find the London Stone and put it back

The trouble being that with the Stone gone, so was my magic. All my training, all my spells and knowledge depended on that network of magic that bound the country together. With that gone, I had nothing but my wits.

Which was

12. Another problem because I was rapidly losing them.

I stood in Cannon Street, the station behind me a raucous hullaballoo of blaring tannoys, caterwauling Santas and one very loud goose, wracking my brains for any vestiges of the one term of classical magic I had taken at the Invisible College in Dorking.

Weaving corn dollies? No. Foretelling the future from the nodules on a calves liver? No. Dowsing. N…

Oh.

Dowsing. There was an idea. It ought to work. Of course, I was going to need more than a couple of bent coat hangers to do it. That stuff was fine for locating a forgotten well down the bottom of someone’s garden, but this was the most powerful magical object in London I was looking for. I was going to need something that was magical itself. Or at least very, very old.

Fortunately, I knew where I could get it.

Just round the corner from Cannon Street was the London Mithraeum, the remains of a Roman temple to the mysterious god Mithras, moved - under much protest and then an awful lot of form filling from the Ministry of Workings, I might add - down from Walbrook where it had been uncovered in the 1950s (we’d known it was there, of course, and were quite happy with it being left where it was, frankly, which was why all the fuss, but money is more important than civil servants, apparently, even when the occult is involved).

It was in the basement of an office building now, with a little museum attached, and if I was going to lay my hands on something ancient and magical, that was absolutely the place.

Unfortunately it was also a place that was locked and had a security guard.

I pounded on the glass doors and he opened them a crack.

“No entry, we’re closed,” he said, “There’s a riot.”

“I am from the Ministry of Workings,” I said, fishing out my creased identity card, “And I have to have access to your collection. It’s a national emergency.”

He eyed the card suspiciously. I’m sure they had a lot of fun designing it, what with the eyes and compasses and pentagrams, but I was painfully aware at this moment that it rather looked like the sort of thing a crazy person might run up at Kinkos.

“This is private property,” said the guard, “No entry,” and he closed the door on me.

He stared at me through the glass, as if daring me to do something. Behind me, someone honked.

The bloody goose again.

I turned round only to discover that it wasn’t just the bloody goose. It was also the Bird Lady, who now had the goose, my wand still in its beak, tucked under one arm. She had a cheerful look in her eye that made me nervous. She was a magical creature after all, and who knew what the theft of the London Stone was doing to her.

“Were you wearing a hat before?” I said.

“Nice fat goose,” she said, squeezing it. It honked. Happily, I thought, if one can honk happily.

“Yes, well,” I said, “Don’t kill it, it lays golden eggs.”

“What’s your story, deary?” she said.

Now that I looked at her, I realised that she appeared to have changed her clothes. She was no longer wearing a stained and ragged crombie overcoat done up with string, but voluminous Victorian skirts with a shawl over her shoulders. And she definitely hadn’t had a tall, conical Welsh hat before.

“I need to get into the Mithraeum,” I said, “And distract the guard long enough to steal something. This day is definitely getting weird. I…” something occurred to me, “I don’t suppose you have any other birds about you, do you? I could do with a hand. A wing.”

I’ve never really considered London pigeons in any great detail, but I’ll say this for them: they did a cracking job.

The moment I persuaded the guard to crack the door again, they swooped in through the gap, a great swirling melee of them and he jumped back, allowing me to barge my way in.

“Look out,” I shouted, lunging for the wall display of archaeological finds behind him, “They’re getting at the artefacts!”

Pigeons flapped about the foyer, slapping against the walls in explosions of feathers. I ducked the careening birds as I examined the shelves of antiquities. There. That. That would do brilliantly. I grabbed it.

“They’ve set off the alarms!” I yelled, “Look out!”

And waving my arms, I ran out of the door, propelling pigeons before me.

Outside the Bird Lady was watching the guard dart to and fro in the foyer, making useless sallies at the panicked pigeons, with a toothless grin on her face.

“Have you still got your bit of string?” I asked.

“For a story,” she said, fishing in her pocket.

And so I told her about my day, which I felt was story enough, as I tied the length of string around what I had taken from the museum. It was a little head of a god, carved out of limestone, that looked old enough to have been old when the Roman Emperor Claudius arrived in London with his elephants. It was worn quite smooth by time, almost nothing but a little stone ball, apart from two shadowy eyes and some whorls of beard round it’s spherical chin. It was precisely what I needed.

I held it up and it swung gently on the end of the string. A pendulum.

“Going dowsing, are ye?” said the Bird Lady, “Good luck. You never know, ducks, your boat might come in.”