When the enchanted animals of Hexwood discover they soon won't be magical anymore, they have to concoct an unlikely plan to save their village and themselves.
'Last Christmas in Hexwood' is a seasonal story of witches, enchanted animals and a series of unlikely plans to save Christmas.
Chapter 1
It snowed on Christmas Eve in Hexwood. But then it always snowed at Christmas in Hexwood, because a witch lived there.
Urchin the hedgehog was walking down the path under the holly bush that ran along the side of the witch’s garden. He was on his way into town to see his relatives, his arms full of parcels. The windblown sleet had turned the bare trees into charcoal sketches of themselves. Thickets of thorny brambles had become soft hillocks of snow; the puddles on the path were frozen over with glistening glass.
Because a witch lived in the wood, it always snowed the perfect amount of snow. Even though Urchin was short, and his legs even shorter, the snow on the path didn’t even reach the top of his little red gumboots. What snow there was, though, crunched satisfyingly under his feet, and trudging through it took just enough effort to make him feel hearty, but not so much as to be tiring. The cold air pinked his cheeks and the snow sparkled under the starlight. He was in a perfectly Christmassy mood, happily turning over in his mind the timetable for the following day. He was a hedgehog who liked a plan.
His reverie was cut short by a loud snort from somewhere over his head. He looked up. High above, looming over the top of the holly hedge, was a huge head. It looked like one of the deer who lived on the other side of the wood. Urchin did not know them very well; indeed, he rarely saw them. But he was sure they were not as big as this, nor did they have such tall, curving antlers.
“Happy Christmas, hedgehog,” said the head.
“You can talk!” said Urchin. He had never heard of any of the deer in the wood talking.
“I can talk,” said the head, with some asperity. "And what I said when I talked was: ‘Happy Christmas’.”
The head flared its broad nostrils and Urchin could have sworn they glowed faintly red, as with irritation.
“I meant, Happy Christmas, of course,” stammered Urchin.
“And compliments of the season,” said the head.
“And, and compliments of the season, yes,” said Urchin. And, putting his head down, he scurried off down the lane feeling distinctly less seasonal, the compliments notwithstanding.
Further on down the path, where it crossed the stream, was the Green Knight pub, and standing outside was Reynard the Fox, idly tamping a plug of tobacco into his pipe.
“Merry Christmas, young Urchin,” said Reynard as the hedgehog came up. "What rhymes with frost?”
“Happy Christmas,” said Urchin, having learned his lesson. “Moss?”
“Not quite,” said the fox. “But perhaps I can make it work. If sung, you know. I have a notion there ought to be singing, haven’t you? All this snow and jollity. Christmas songs. But moss is a little… earthy, isn’t it? Your trouble is that you’re too close to the ground. It lowers your horizons. Makes you too down to earth. Perhaps a pair of stilts would broaden your outlook.”
Urchin was used to not understanding half of what the fox said. Reynard’s conversation had a habit of darting this way and that, disappearing into thickets of thought and then reappearing where you least expected it.
“I just met a talking deer,” said Urchin, who only had one thing on his mind anyway, and had no space left in it for the fox’s meanderings. “Outside of Madame Befana’s. It was looking over the hedge.”
“Halloa, that’s new,” said the fox. “I’ve never met a deer that spoke. Leastways, not to me. Mayhap they talk to each other, though not in any tongue I understand. Or perhaps it's their concepts that escape us lower, slower creatures. They must live in a very different world to us, don’t you think? Or at least one several feet higher?”
“What fresh nonsense is this, fox?” said Buck Rabbit, coming out of the public bar.
“Urchin has been conversing with a deer,” said Reynard.
“It wished me a Happy Christmas,” said Urchin. "But I’m not sure it was a deer. It was very large.”
“Well, it can’t have been a deer,” said Buck. “Deer don’t talk.”
“That’s science, that is,” said Reynard. “Perhaps we should go and have a look at this marvel. Come along, Urchin, you can leave your parcels with old Brock in there, behind the bar. Come along, Buck. A little Christmas adventure. Something to sing about.”
“Sing?” said Buck. “Preposterous fox.”
The large head was still idly peering over the top of the hedge as the three of them came back up the lane.
“Merry Christmas there,” called out the fox. “Welcome to Hexwood.”
“Merry Christmas, Mr Fox,” said the head. “Merry Christmas, Rabbit, and a further Merry Christmas to you, little hedgehog. And once again I have the advantage of you in it, too.”
“Reynard,” said Reynard, cheerily. “And this is my friend Buck, and Urchin here I think you know.”
“Merry Christmas,” said Buck.
“Rudolph,” said the head.
“Well, now,” said the fox. "Now we know who you are, if it is not too impertinent, may we enquire as to what you are? Urchin maintains you are some kind of deer but Buck won’t countenance it on the grounds that the deer in Hexwood don’t talk. Not to the likes of us at any rate.”
“I am pleased to say that they are both wrong,” said the head, "and also both right. I am a sort of deer. A reindeer, in fact. But I am not from your wood. I am from Lapland.”
“Lap… Land,” said the fox. “That sounds cosy. Is it far from here?”
“Far to the north and not at all cosy,” said Rudolph. “Dark, snowbound forests and great plains of frozen crackling moss over which wander the vast herds of reindeer beneath the hissing curtains of the cold, distant, dancing Northern Lights.”
“Moss! Urchin, you were right, it is Christmassy,” said Reynard. “ I must admit Lapland doesn’t sound very cosy, but it does sound rather magnificent. Although I’m not entirely sure what the Northern Lights are. And you can all talk, you reindeer?”
“Well, that is where your friend Buck is right,” said Rudolph, "because no, very few of us can. Only those of us who live and work with Father Christmas. The rest, like your deer in this wood, are quite silent, apart from a sort of ruminative mumbling.”
“I know people like that,” said the fox.
“Sounds like Brock at the Green Knight,” said Buck.
“Indeed,” said Rudolph, "I was almost as surprised to discover that your little hedgehog friend there could talk as he was to discover that I could. Although not as surprised as I was to find he did not wish me a Happy Christmas in return.”
“Happy Christmas,” said Urchin, just in case.
“Well, there we have something in common, friend Rudolph,” said Reynard. “For, just as it is with you and your friends, so it is that it is only we animals who live here in Hexwood who can talk. I’ve certainly never met any others who can.”
“Certainly none that talk as much as you, fox,” said Buck.
“Until now, that is,” said Reynard. “It really is extraordinary; I can see why Urchin may have been somewhat dumbfounded. We can hardly blame him, can we, friend Rudolph? It is Christmas after all, even if he may have forgotten it temporarily. But that’s delightful too, of course: to be able to welcome a stranger to Hexwood, tonight of all nights.”
“Good point,” said Rudolph. “Christmas Eve: I have to get ready. Busy night for old Nick, so busy night for us.”
“Working?” said Buck.
“All night,” said Rudolph. “Which is longer than you’d think. Well then, Happy Christmas, little creatures.”
“Merry Christmas,” they replied, as Rudolph’s giant head withdrew behind the hedge.
“There, now,” said Reynard. “Both of you right. And about the most extraordinary thing. There’s a Christmas present for us all. Talking animals outside of Hexwood, of all things. I wonder how far north Lapland is? Beyond the big road, I suppose.”
“Sounds freezing,” said Buck.
“Sounds marvellous, you prosaic rabbit,” said Reynard. “I really would like to know what the Northern Lights were. He said they hissed. Some kind of gas lighting, do you think? Or some kind of hot air balloon. I suddenly have an image of the reindeer all towing floating lanterns behind them to light their way across the snow.”
“I suddenly have the image of you buying me a pint of beer to help me put up with your nonsense,” said Buck.
“Sensible rabbit,” said Reynard. “It’s started snowing again. Where better to be than in the pub?”
And arm in arm they wandered back down the lane towards The Green Knight, the fox singing as they went: “Beneath the Northern Lights, all hissing through the night, we crunch across the moss, all frozen by the frost.”
Left behind them, unnoticed, Urchin stood quite still on the silent path, staring up into the falling snow, his eyes wide with wonder.
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