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 6
If anything, the final meeting of The Special Committee for the Orchestration of the Ceremonies for the Departing of Ms Befana was even more chaotic than the first.
This time, at least, the animals were convened in the Village Hall, which was bigger than the Council Chamber; but then there were even more animals in attendance, and the room was quite stuffed, with the smaller mice and voles all sitting on the cross beams and bats hanging from the rafters.
And every one of them was talking at once: at each other, over each other, around each other -- all of them were talking about what the witch had said at her going away party. It had caught them all by surprise, even though many of them now realised that it should have been obvious all along.
It all made a kind of nightmarish sense now they thought about it. It was only because the witch lived there that there were talking animals in the wood, that those talking animals had all started wearing clothes and building houses and putting together their own little town.
But it was a nightmare, because now they discovered that it had all been for nothing. None of them had suspected it; none of them had dared consider it, but here it was. When the witch left the wood, her magic would go with her and, left behind, they would all turn back into animals.
“When’s she going?” said Buck Rabbit. “Does anyone know when she’s leaving Hexwood?”
“Yeah, when’s she off?” said Hob.
“It’s before Christmas, I know that,” said Brock. “That’s what Martin told me.”
“Before Christmas!” said Mr Mammit. “I’m digging a whole new extension to the burrow to be finished for Christmas! What’s the blessed use of doing that if I’m just going to be a normal rabbit by then?”
“At least you won’t have to worry any more about having everyone over on Christmas Day,” said Buck.
“That extension was for your lot to stay in, Buck, me lad,” said Mammit.
“Well, I’ve got a special Christmas beer brewing,” said Brock. “What’s going to become of that?”
“What about all my Christmas cards?” said Mrs Mouldywarp. “I shan’t have time to write and read them all for everyone.”
“We’ve already started felling the Christmas trees,” said Terry the Squirrel. “I’ve got a whole stock of them all ready to go. Who’s going to want a Christmas tree now?”
“People, people, please.” Cuwert the hare climbed up onto the stage of the hall. “Urchin, our chair, has asked me to form an Emergency Action Planning Board of this Committee.”
“This is no time for meetings,” said Mr Tuft. “We have to decide what to do.”
“Which is what this Emergency Action Planning Board meeting is for,” said Cuwert. “If you could just join us behind the curtain, Mr Tuft, Urchin has asked for you to be appointed to the Board.”
“Ah, well, in that case, then,” said Tuft, hopping up onto the stage and ducking behind the curtain that hung across it.
“Everything is all in hand, thank you, everyone,” said Cuwert as the squirrel disappeared from view. "If you could just bear with us one moment.”
But everyone had stopped listening to him. He jumped down from the stage and started squeezing through the throng, sidling up to certain individuals.
“Miss Sleekit, could you join us? You ladyship? Mr Fox?” And one by one, they made their way up to the stage and slipped in behind the curtain, almost entirely unnoticed by the panicked crowd.
On the bare stage behind the curtain, a trestle table had been put up with a tall stool at one end, and seats put out for Mr Tuft, Mrs Mouldywarp, Lady Ermine, Miss Sleekit and Reynard. Finally Cuwert came back himself, with Buck Rabbit in tow.
“Now,” he said, "here we all are.”
“And what are we, precisely?” said Buck, taking a seat.
“The Emergency Action Planning Board of the Special Committee for the Orchestration of the Ceremonies for the Departing of Ms Befana,” said Cuwert.
“Nonsense,” said Lady Ermine.
“Your ladyship?” said Cuwert, offended.
“All of it,” said Lady Ermine. "Nonsense. ‘Emergency’. So unbecoming. And ‘action’. No action is required. I am not leaving Stoat Manor and that is that. And neither is my son.”
“But you shan’t have a choice, your ladyship,” said Mrs Mouldywarp. “Will she?”
“As I understand it, no,” said Mr Tuft. “Once Madame Befana leaves, her ladyship will no longer be her ladyship but instead return to being an ordinary stoat.”
“How dare you?'' said Lady Ermine. “I did not come here to be insulted by a mere schoolmaster. No stoat of Stoat Manor has even been ordinary. We are quite extra-ordinary; we make a point of it.”
“You ladyship, please,” said Cuwert. “You have all been assembled as the, er, cream, shall we say, of our little town. The elders. The cleverest, the most inventive, the most resourceful. Urchin felt we needed the best minds on the plan.”
“Is it an emergency plan,” said Reynard, "or a plan of emergency action? Because they could be quite different. Are we coming up with a plan as a matter of emergency, or are we to undertake whatever we plan as an emergency?”
“Both, I think,” said Cuwert.
“Or are we planning what to do in the event of an emergency?” said Reynard.
“Stop babbling, fox, this is the event of an emergency,” said Buck. “So, Urchin: what’s the plan?”
“My plan,” said Urchin, hesitantly, "was for you to think of one. A plan, I mean, to deal with the emergency.”
“Start babbling again, fox,” said Buck. “This is your department.”
“As it happens,” said Reynard. "I do have a notion. Half of one, at least. Perhaps a quarter notion.”
“Well, what is it, man?” said Mr Tuft.
“Oh, he’s going to tell you,” said Buck. “I wouldn’t worry about that.”
“The witch said it herself,” said Reynard. “In her words: when she leaves, her magic will go with her, leaving us behind. So this, our enchanted state, will be annulled and we shall return to being mere brute animals.
“Strange, is it not, how the removal of a spell can seem like a curse, even though it is simply a return to the normal? The normal to us now seems strange. We wish to remain strange so that we can keep everything normal…
“Anyway: this struck me. The witch leaves, the magic leaves; the magic leaves, our enchantment leaves. So, if we wish the enchantment to stay…?”
“We need to stop the witch leaving!” said Mr Tuft.
“She did seem rather definite about it,” said Mrs Mouldywarp, warily.
“And how would we do this?” said Miss Sleekit. “Kidnap her, force her? Need I remind you she is a witch?”
“Exactly my train of thought,” said Reynard, "more or less. I did come up with a couple of plans to yes, kidnap her, and also to try and trick her; but she is, as Miss Sleekit pointed out, a witch, and we are just woodland animals, so I abandoned the plans. But not my train of thought.
“Remember what she said. If she leaves, her magic leaves. Two things are leaving the wood. The witch and her magic. And if we can’t stop the witch leaving…”
“We need to stop the magic leaving!” said Mr Tuft.
“Precisely my notion,” said Reynard. “We need to stop the magic leaving. If we don’t want to turn back into animals, we need to maintain our state of enchantment.”
“But how?” said Mr Tuft. “As you have pointed out, she is the witch. She’s the one that does the magic. It's her magic; of course it goes with her.”
“I said it was only a quarter notion, at best,” said Reynard.
“But I may have another quarter,” said Miss Sleekit. “After all, where does the witch get her magic from?”
“Her learning?” said Mr Tuft, hopefully. He was the schoolmaster, after all.
“Of course!” said Reynard. “Her books!”
“Her books,” said Miss Sleekit. "Quite so.”
“Which will be leaving with her,” said Mrs Mouldywarp. “Surely that’s what she meant, wasn’t it? She’ll be moving all her magical things away with her?”
“In Brock’s barrels,” said Buck, meaningfully.
Reynard caught his eye and smiled.
“And there’s our third quarter,” said Reynard. "And perhaps Buck, my friend, you can complete the whole plan for us?”
“That was a good plan of yours, Urchin, to get us to think of one for you,” said Buck, "because here it is. All we have to do is to make sure that at least one of Brock’s barrels, or at least one of Madame Befana’s books, doesn’t leave Hexwood.”
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