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 13
The animals of Hexwood did not understand the radio. They didn’t understand it in several ways. They didn’t understand the object itself, with all its dials and buttons and indicators. They didn’t understand -- at all -- how radio worked. And they had absolutely no notion that programmes might be broadcast to the radio across the air, from hundreds of miles away.
Greta had no idea about any of this either. But she was not going to admit to such ignorance. And so she convinced the animals that there were little people inside the radio. This did not help, because many of the animals were then determined to get inside the radio to see these miniscule humans, who must be even smaller than they were. In the end, Urchin had to set a guard of incurious dormice around the device to stop the animals from trying to dismantle it.
But it was the actual broadcasts that utterly flummoxed them. The modern human world was largely a mystery to them anyway, so the financial advice programmes and film reviews and political call-ins were all utterly incomprehensible. And then, the animals further couldn’t understand why humans would want to listen to such things. Even if these were activities that humans took part in, why would they want to listen to other people talking about doing them?
Mind you: this wasn’t to say that they didn’t like the radio. The fact that they didn’t know much about humans meant they were fascinated to learn more about them. Even if all they were learning was how confusing humans were.
And a few of the programmes actually did make sense. There was one that featured gardening advice, which Buck was extremely taken with. Cuwert the Hare was very interested in something called ‘Parliament’, which apparently involved a lot of committees and shouting. And there was a song about ‘Last Christmas’ that the animals all took very personally: this being, quite possibly, the last Christmas they would ever consciously experience.
One person who didn’t like the radio was Greta. Apparently Reynard had been very wrong about the pictures being better on the radio. Greta was very much of the opinion that radio was for old people. And she wanted television. Moreover, she didn’t want real things. She didn’t want to know what the weather was like at sea, or the right time to pick whinberries. She wanted made-up stories. She wanted exciting and improbable tales full of adventure and explosions. She didn’t want the stories on the radio. She wanted stories about -- as she tried to explain to them all -- a man in a vest, who had no shoes but did have a machine gun, ho, ho, ho.
“What’s a machine gun?’ asked Mr Cork, the vole. Cork ran the toy shop in the village, and made all the toys himself out of painted wood and ingenious clockwork.
“A gun that spits out machines,” said Terry the Squirrel. “A glue gun spits out glue, so a machine gun spits out machines. Stands to reason.” Terry was a carpenter and knew about such things.
“Ah, but what kind of machines?” said Mr Cork.
“No,” said Greta, “It’s a gun and it goes ack, ack, ack, ack.”
“Ah,” said Mr Cork, “A sort of rattle.”
“Hold on,” said Reynard, “I’m still trying to puzzle this out. Why’s he climbing down the outside of the building? What’s wrong with the stairs?”
“I think the baddies were on the stairs,” said Miss Sleekit.
“And who are the baddies again?” asked Reynard, “And what makes them baddies anyway?”
“They’re holding all the people prisoner,” said Greta. “Like you’re holding me.”
“So we’re the baddies?” said Reynard.
“Yes,” said Greta, “And I’m trying to escape like the man in the vest. And there’s a baddie in charge called Hans, who’s got a plan.”
“Like Urchin!” said Reynard, the light dawning. “This is starting to make sense. So Urchin’s the, what did you call him? Hands?”
“Hands Grubber,” said Greta, decisively.
“So Hands Grubber and all his animals have got the man in a vest prisoner in a big building,” said Reynard. “But why?”
Greta, it turned out, did not have a firm grasp on the plot of the story, and she was even worse at explaining what she could remember. One thing the animals had grasped, though, was the idea of acting.
There were plays on the radio, which had quite confused them at first. They had assumed they were just different kinds of discussion programme. Finally Greta had got them to understand that these were fictional stories, and the little people performing them were pretending to be different, imaginary little people.
This had been extraordinary enough, but then they had slowly grasped that the film Greta was trying to recount to them was one of these made-up stories that was performed in person. That actors dressed up as made-up characters and then acted out the story for an audience.
The Hexwood animals were already very keen on holding meetings and entertainments and parties. This, it struck them, was all three rolled into one. It would take endless planning and organising and rehearsal, to begin with. Then everyone would get to show off and do their party piece and everyone else would have enormous fun watching it all. And quite probably interrupting and throwing things.
Greta might have wanted television. But what she was going to get was a performance of the newly inaugurated Hexwood Dramatic and Entertainment Association and Dining Club, whether she liked it or not. Indeed, they didn’t care if she didn’t like it, just as long as they did.
While Greta knew little about film, she knew even less about theatre. The only theatrical productions she had ever attended were a school Nativity play -- in which she had played one of the wolves menacing the shepherds biding their flocks -- and a pantomime of Sleeping Beauty. She was not anxious to share her Nativity play experience, since she did not feel it had redounded entirely to her credit. Especially since she had managed to muff her one line of ‘Growl’. This meant that all the Dramatic and Entertainment Association had to go on to accompany some very garbled scraps from an action film were some badly-remembered and badly recounted bits of pantomime business.
This was, however, more than enough for them. Mayor Matagot immediately appointed himself producer and director, and then directed Reynard and Mrs Mouldywarp to produce a script. Reynard was to invent everything, and Mrs Mouldywarp was to write it all down. This was, of course, largely pointless. Few of the other animals could read, and a lot of them were incurable show-offs. So although Mrs Mouldywarp tried to teach them their lines, they had a tendency to improvise wildly. They would incorporate unprompted dance routines; break into song; and frequently instigate outbreaks of slapstick as they tried to stop their fellow performers muscling in on their act.
This did not contribute to the comprehensibility of the plot. Mind you, it could not have detracted from it much, either. Reynard was a fox of many ideas, and he was never happy with one for long. He would get distracted and dash off after something new and glittering halfway through a thought. This meant that the story had a habit of sprouting new plotlines that went nowhere, and got increasingly knotted up with each other as Mrs Mouldywarp tried to keep up.
Greta had only been able to remember the big action scenes and stand-out moments from the film she wanted to watch. So Reynard had had to fill in quite a lot from Sleeping Beauty and scraps he had picked up from the radio. The man in the vest, who appeared to be called ‘Jam’, was now trying to save a sleeping princess locked up in the tower by the evil Hands Grubber and his goblins. This did not, however, account for the scene in which the tower gardener delivered a long lecture on how to grow brambles in an acidic soil, or the bit in which two guards had a protracted argument about the small print on car insurance deals.
To be fair, this wasn’t entirely Reynard’s fault. Mrs Mouldywarp was trying to keep up with him and he was trying to keep up with Mayor Matagot. The Mayor, who was a consummate politician, was trying to find a role in the production for everyone who wanted one, which meant that Reynard was constantly having to come up with new songs for Brock to sing, new special effects for Mr Cork to devise, new costume changes for Miss Sleekit to outfit, and new scenes to show them all off in.
Not that it mattered, really. When it came to it, it was not as if anyone was really watching the show. The animals hadn’t properly understood what a stage was, or how it worked. So when they all gathered in the sitting room of the Witch’s house that evening to perform, things rapidly became confused, then devolved into a free-for-all, and finally -- in some corners of the room -- a near riot.
Animals were performing several jobs at once, rushing off mid-speech to operate a sound effect, or trying to accompany themselves on an instrument as they danced. Then, audience members started invading the stage to show to actors how it ought to be done, and actors started leaving to sit in the audience and try and see themselves performing.
What mattered -- to them, at least -- was that everyone was having a marvellous time. Apart from, noticeably, three people. One of them was Urchin, who was supposed to be playing the villain Hands Grubber, but who simply stood, confused and alarmed in the middle of the melee, wearing a tie and looking like he was about to start crying.
Another one was Buck Rabbit, whom Reynard found outside in the garden, trying to look like whatever was going on inside was nothing to do with him.
“I forgot to write you a part, Buck,” said Reynard.
“Well, at least I remembered not to ask for one,” said Buck.
“Never mind, old man,” said Reynard, “You’re not the only one who’s not enjoying it. By the look on Greta’s face, we’re going to have to think of a new entertainment for tomorrow.”
“That, I’m afraid,” said Buck, “Is not as reassuring as you seem to think it is.”
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