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 12
The Walk was a long, largely well-maintained path that ran all the way through Hexwood. It started at the pond on Inkstone village green and ran wide and straight up under broad, leafy trees into the heart of the wood, crossing over the stream called The Rill.
Things got a little gloomier in the centre of the wood where The Walk went past a plantation of firs, which overhung the witch’s house and the path and blocked out the light. But beyond that The Walk began to climb up onto The Ledge, the ridge of high ground that ran along the southern edge of the wood. Up there it passed between tall beech trees growing along the top of The Ledge, under which the ground was bare and airy, before arriving at what the locals called The Silver Forest, a copse of slender and shining silver birch.
On the other side of The Ledge the ground fell away sharply, becoming almost a cliff in some places. Steps had been cut so The Walk could descend to the river below. This was the River Ringing, curving around to form the southern and western edges of the wood. Beyond that were the fields of Ring Farm, in which stood the stone circle that gave the farm and the river their names.
You could get to the stone circle by crossing the river. The Walk ended in a little rickety wooden bridge that had once been just a fallen tree, until someone had planed it off to make it easier to walk across and nailed on some handrails made out of branches. That someone was a farm hand called Fran who worked at Ring Farm, and he had done it because this is where he lived, in a caravan parked down by the river, just by the stone circle.
He had decided to make the bridge because he figured it would be a quicker way for him to get to the village of Inkstone and, more importantly, The Fox pub by the village green. This way he could just go straight through Hexwood, rather than having to go all the way round to the farmhouse and across the bridge there.
Then a witch had moved into the wood and it suddenly hadn’t seemed like such a great idea.
Especially once he had found out what she was up to. Fran was one of the few people who knew about the village of animals in Hexwood.
One of the reasons that local people didn’t visit the wood much is that the witch had cast a glamour on it to help keep the animals secret. This was partly to preserve her experiment from outside interference, and partly because she felt the animals deserved privacy. The moment the outside world found out about the talking animals of Hexwood, they’d no longer be the talking animals of Hexwood; they’d be the talking animals of some circus or sideshow, packaged up for display or carted off for study.
The glamour wasn’t a particularly dark spell. She didn’t want to make people afraid of the wood, or dislike it in any way. She just wanted to deter them from coming in. She knew all too well that making something scary and mysterious was more likely to encourage people to investigate than put them off. So she just made it so that the idea of going for a walk in the wood felt a bit odd.
In spring, when the buds were beginning to burst and the fierce green haze of new shoots fizzed between the trees, it was probably a bit muddy, they thought; it’s been raining a lot. In the summer, when the leaves dappled the sunshine in the drowsy glades, it was too buggy, they told themselves; too many midges. And in winter, when the frost glazed every branch with magic and the stillness of snow charmed the wood, it was just too cold. We’ll go into town, people said; there’s Christmas shopping to do.
It simply no longer occurred to people to go into Hexwood. To be fair, this wasn’t all that hard, since there was a witch living in it and people already thought that was strange enough.
Fran, though, lived close enough to the wood that he fell inside the spell, rather than outside of it; it didn’t quite affect him as the witch had intended. And then, one day, he’d gone to cross the bridge and found a fox standing on it. On his hind legs, leaning on the railing, watching the river below. And smoking a pipe.
The fox, who was wearing a green jacket and yellow britches, had taken his pipe out of his mouth and wished Fran a good morning, and Fran had had to go back to his caravan to sit down and think about this for a bit.
The next day, the fox had a rabbit with him, who was wearing a pair of dungarees, and they had both wished him a good morning and he had decided he wouldn’t cut through the wood any more.
He soon discovered, of course, that the animals weren’t really anything to be afraid of. In fact they could be positively friendly, sometimes bringing him little pies or cakes and trading him for items like pipe tobacco and fish hooks.
He wasn’t the only one, either. Farmer Giles, up at the farmhouse, traded with them too for chicken eggs and vegetables sometimes, but neither of them ever spoke to anyone else about it.
Perhaps it was the effects of the spell, but whenever the wood was mentioned in the public bar of The Fox, Fran and the farmer would go quiet and exchange significant glances. Then they would make their excuses and trudge home in silence, casting a wary eye at the wood on their left, as if they were afraid the witch could hear what they were thinking.
All of this meant that Fran wasn’t entirely surprised when, one night a few days before Christmas, there was a knock at his caravan door and he opened it to find that fox and rabbit standing outside.
It had snowed during the day, mostly over Hexwood, and the animals were bundled up in scarves and overcoats.
“Good evening, master farmhand,” said the fox, "and a Merry Christmas to you.”
“Ah,” said Fran. "Merry Christmas.”
“There,” said the fox to the rabbit. "What did I tell you? Now, master, I wonder if we might trouble you to ask you a question?”
“Ah,” said Fran, carefully, dim memories about animals asking riddles in fairy tales stirring in his brain.
“By any chance, do you have a thing called a television?” said the fox.
Fran shook his head, carefully, not wanting to disappoint the strange animals, but not wanting to upset them either.
“Got a radio,” he offered.
“A radio,” said the fox, relishing the word. “Is that like a television?”
Fran picked it up from the counter where it was murmuring sports results to itself and held it out to them.
“A box full of voices!” said the fox. “Like a piano but for words. How extraordinary.”
“No pictures, though,” said the rabbit. “She wanted pictures.”
“Well, perhaps you can make up the pictures to go with the words,” said the fox. “Like when one is being told a story. They’re always better than the illustrations, anyway. Better than my illustrations, at any rate.”
“What do you want for it?” said the rabbit, shushing the fox.
“Ah,” Fran stared at him, not sure what to say.
Back at the witch’s house, Reynard and Buck came in, stamping snow from their feet and unwrapping scarves.
“I still say we nabbed a book and a child perfectly well, we could nab a radio,” Buck was saying.
“What news?” asked Urchin.
“He has a thing called a radio,” said Buck. "But Reynard won’t let me nab it.”
“You asked him for it,” said Reynard. "I feel that may have tipped our hand a little. But he is willing to trade for it.”
“Trade?” said Urchin. "Did he say for what?”
“Something called a ‘carol’,” said Reynard. "Apparently they sing songs to each other at Christmas, the humans. Didn’t I suggest something similar, last Christmas, Buck? They call them carols. Only no one ever comes out to his caravan to do it. Too far away. He wants someone to come and sing him a carol.”
“So we just have to sing to him?” said Urchin. "Seems easy enough.”
“Not just any song,” said Reynard. "One of these carols. And there’s the snag, because I don’t know any. I could write one, but I get the impression he would notice. But I do have a notion that this is something our new friend would know.”
Greta looked up from the book she was reading and smiled. "Oh yes, I can teach you some carols,” she said.
In the field below The Ledge the snow had frosted the standing stones of The Ring, and it glittered in the moonlight. Somewhere in the shadows of the wood the River Ringing sang softly to itself as it raced under the bridge; the trees above were silent, all pillowed with snow.
Just beyond the stones was an old gypsy caravan, the curtained windows glowing merrily and smoke curling up from its tin chimney. The top half of the door was open and a man leant over it, swathed in a thick scarf. At the foot of the caravan steps was a group of animals bundled up in warm clothes: a fox, a badger, some rabbits and some mice, gathered together under a lantern on a pole that lit them in a warm light in the cold darkness.
And they were singing; high, ringing voices in the starlight:
“Jingle bells, Batman smells, Robin flew away. The Batmobile has lost a wheel and Joker’s gone astray.”
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