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 15
Outside of the village of Inkstone, just off the Stone Magna road, was the Ringing Farm Shop. And round the back of the Farm Shop there was a bin, and by that bin, right now, in the cold, small hours of the morning, there was a fox who would not just leave it alone.
“Fox, come on,” hissed Buck from the shadows. "Hob’s got the door open.”
“Buck, old man, I don’t know what it is,” said Reynard, snuffing at the bin. "But do you smell that?”
“Yes, it smells disgusting,” said Buck.
“It smells fascinating,” said Reynard. "Doesn’t that smell fascinating to you? It smells fascinating to me.”
“Come on, fox,” said Buck again. "You’re too exposed out there, I don’t like it.”
The series of events that had led to Reynard sniffing a bin out the back of a farm shop had been long and complicated.
It had begun with a reorganisation of the The Special Committee for the Orchestration of the Ceremonies for the Departing of Ms Befana. This was long overdue, frankly, since Ms Befana had long since departed and there were no more ceremonies to be orchestrated. It was now The Special Committee for the Preservation and Maintenance of Hexwood and with the change in name came a change in status.
The Committee was now wholly independent of the Town Council and entirely free to act as its chair saw fit. And that chair was no longer Urchin the Hedgehog; it was Greta. Or Greta the Witch, as she insisted the animals now call her.
Urchin was, of course, still running things. He was still the head of The Emergency Action Planning Board, after all. Actually planning and taking action wasn’t really Greta’s area of expertise. She was strongly of the opinion that being in charge meant that you didn’t need to do anything. You just got to listen to the radio whenever you liked and issue orders without needing to explain why or worry about how they might be carried out.
The order to kidnap more children was one of those orders.
It had taken Urchin entirely aback. They already had a plan, and that plan was to kidnap a child, and that child, it had turned out, was Greta. And now they had her. It was a good plan and everything was going according to it.
This was all true, Greta had to concede. But to be entirely sure, she insisted, they needed to kidnap more children.
But more kidnapping posed more risk, Urchin pointed out. They could be seen or caught. And more children posed another risk: they could escape or cause trouble.
This was also true, Greta again had to concede. But surely Urchin had to concede that she was the one with a witch’s spellbook and perhaps -- if he didn’t want to be turned into something even smaller and less significant -- he had better get on and kidnap some more children.
So Urchin took the problem to The Emergency Action Planning Board. When the board moved to send this proposal back to the chair for review, he tabled the matter of the spellbook and being turned into things, and then the motion was passed unanimously.
Reynard was, of course, put in charge of the actual planning, and Buck was put in charge of the action, since Mr Tuft was too timid and Miss Sleekit too small. Which is how Buck came to be dressed up in a vest.
“This is ridiculous,” said Buck, “And what’s this rattle for?”
“Apparently you threaten people with it,” said Reynard.
“I’m a rabbit in a vest,” said Buck, “How threatening do you think I’m going to be?”
“Which is why you have the rattle,” said Reynard.
“Why isn’t Brock doing this?” said Buck, “He’s four times my size and a good deal more threatening.”
“Because the point isn’t actually to be threatening,” said Reynard, “It’s to be heroic and Brock isn’t heroic. He’s a moth-eaten old badger who smells of beer. Not like you. You’re heroic.”
“Flattery will not work on me,” said Buck, “And it certainly won’t work on those kids.”
Buck, it turned out, was wrong. Weasel scouts had spotted a group of small children playing on the green and Buck was hustled down to the edge of the forest and pushed out of the undergrowth at them. It didn’t even matter that he could barely remember the lines Reynard had come up for him or that he mumbled them grudgingly and with no conviction. He had only to mutter, sullenly, “Hands Grubber has kidnapped the princess in the wood, I need your help,” and they all trotted after him enthusiastically. He didn’t even have to use the rattle, which was just as well, because he was holding it the wrong way.
He led the children straight up The Walk to the crossroads. Once there, the sight of the dark and dripping witch’s house squatting under the firs, and Greta -- who they knew and feared from the playground -- brandishing a spell book had been enough to get them inside.
So now the animals had kidnapped the extra children Greta had demanded and, as Urchin had predicted, they started making trouble. Room was going to have to be made for them in the witch’s house, for one thing, which meant more beds and bed clothes. And for another thing, they were going to have to be fed.
They had been able to trade with Fran for enough food to keep Greta happy, but this was going to require more than a few tins of alphabet spaghetti. They were going to have to get more human food from somewhere. And Greta decided that ‘where’ was the Ringing Farm Shop.
The Ringing Farm Shop loomed large in Greta’s imagination as a place of unparalleled luxury and epicureanism. Even more so than the big supermarket in Stone Magna, because the farm shop had far stranger things in it. Homemade things in old-fashioned stoppered jars; strange imported things in unfamiliar labels; barrels of fruit that weren’t all wrapped up in cellophane; and big wheels of cheeses that weren’t already sliced up into convenient portions. More importantly, unaccompanied children were not allowed in the shop and so it burned, unobtainable and exotic, in her imagination.
Which was how Reynard the fox came to be at the back of the Ringing Farm Shop, sniffing around the bins.
He took a step closer, trying to identify the smell that had him so captivated, and a security light snapped on. He froze, perfectly illuminated in the empty car park, his shadow suddenly stark behind him.
“Fox!” Buck was beside himself.
A light snapped on in a nearby house, then a door opened.
“Who’s there?” shouted a human voice.
“Rey, Rey,” Buck ducked down into the shadow of the door he was holding open. "Move, fox, move.”
“It might be the kids,” said another human voice, somewhere the other side of the fence. "Call the police, I’ll get next door.”
Reynard’s ears twitched but he didn’t move.
“Here, what’s he doing?” Hob the weasel slithered out of the darkness at Buck’s side.
“Don’t do that, you almost gave me a heart attack,” said Buck.
“We’ve got as much as we can carry,” said Hob.
“Then go! Go!” and Buck himself took off across the car park, dashing straight past Reynard and off into the darkness without looking back. The rabbit coming past him, however, seemed to startle the fox out of his panic and he jumped round and sped off after him.
The streets of the village were all starting to fill with people, shouting to each other and waving torches. The animals had to duck and weave under fences and across gardens, leaving behind them a trail of dropped delicatessen goods as they fled from shadow to shadow.
Buck raced across the road, through the rushes around the village pond and up the bank of the Rill, in under the trees. The moment he was back in the wood he dropped, exhausted, to the ground. The fox, hot on his heels, almost tripped over him and sat down heavily beside him, watching as the weasels raced past carrying the stolen food.
“I haven’t run like that in years,” said Buck. "I was terrified.”
“Which is not like you,” said Reynard.
“Says the man who wouldn’t leave a bin alone,” said Buck.
“Exactly,” said Reynard. "That was odd, wasn’t it? And there was a moment there, chasing a rabbit across the village that I…”
“That you what?”
“Let’s just say I’m glad you’re a quick runner, old man,” said the fox, shaking his head, and he would say no more about it.
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