A Christmas Tale II: Part 1
Christmastide carries a certain magic of it’s own that strikes with peculiar at particular times. The first rays of the sun of Christmas Day, obviously, but also the tremendous sense of delicious anticipation that builds up as Father Time slowly trudges around the world and Christmas Eve winds its way towards the climactic morrow. There is almost a crackle of energy in the air and a whisper of something in the trees, or at least there was on this particular Christmas Eve in the small village of Ashford. Little sets it apart from a thousand other small hamlets across the rolling hills and plains of England. The predominant first impression it gives is of a palpable solidity and peace. It seems the most unlikely of places for anything strange or out of the ordinary to occur, an impression that would be sorely mistaken in recent times.
And this time.
The snows had come early this year and the white blanketed landscape that covered most of the village square would have been rather uninviting to most denizens and esteemed visitors, but theirs would be the eyes of the adult world. Through them, everything is viewed in terms of practicality and logic and something of the wonder of the world has slipped away back beyond the veil of sleep into the forgotten realms of dreams. The eyes of a child, on the other hand, saw all manner of possibilities and signs that their elders had long forgotten – the footsteps of fairies, the trails of trolls, the gossamer webs of wizards and a thousand other marvels of the imagination.
Thus, to most of the grown-ups who hurried across the square to this or that shop, huffing and puffing their misty breath out into the freezing morning air, little looked different or of any direct interest. This was a perfect opportunity to strike for the dastardly Hole in the Wall gang, who were currently ensconced in their forward observation den in the old hollow chestnut tree at the edge of the cricket oval. They were a quite terrifying crew, sporting eye-patches, ferocious scimitars, shining six-shooters and fetching black cowboy hats kept in place with elastic kindly supplied by the mother of their villainous leader, the Webley Kid.
“So, Texas Bill, we have you at last! Time to cough up where you took that Mexican gold you done stole from our hideout, or I’ll get Chief Poncho here to make you talk.”
The Webley Kid’s words were as chilly as the weather as he curled his quite realistic moustache and pointed his eponymous pistol squarely at the chest of their captive lawman. Chief Poncho nodded enthusiastically and flashed a blood-curdling grin as he juggled his nasty wooden scalping knife from hand to hand.
“You can torture me, you can kill me, but I’ll never tell you nothing, Kid! You ain’t nothin’ but a low-down, sneaky, dirty, rotten villain!”
“Right, Bill, you asked for it.” The Kid drew himself up to his full, imposing height and placed his hands on his gunbelt. “He’s all yours, Chief.”
The Chief stalked forward through the leaves, comic books and debris that littered the floor of the gang’s hideout, raised up his terrible blade and –
“I say, is this going to take much longer? I’m jolly uncomfortable tied up here like this.” piped up Calamity Cocoa, who sat shivering on a stump towards the back of the hollow, arms lashed securely behind her back with imaginary rope and her hair ribbon knocked akimbo by a falling leaf. The Hole in the Wall Gang ceased their impending slaughter of the helpless lawman and rounded on their other hostage.
“Susan! Why did you have to go and ruin everything again?!” complained the Kid (better known to the world in general as Philip Cavendish) as he tore off his cowboy hat in frustration and hurled it into the corner, where it knocked over the remnants of yesterday’s feast of chocolate, ham sandwiches and lashings of ginger beer.
“Yeah, you’re such a girl sometimes!” chirped in Chief Poncho as he rubbed at his skinny blue-tinged torso, which had only been provided minimal protection by the Red Indian war paint he had borrowed from his older sister’s dresser and fully intended to ask her for it when he remember later on.
At that, Susan Bailey rose up from her seat and started forward, looking just as calamitous as her namesake as angry, outraged blood rushed to her face and she raised a shaking fist.
“You take that back! You take that back right now, Carey Dalben, you beastly boy, or I’ll box your ears!”
Carey and Philip slunk back slightly, not willing to risk another tousle with the toughest of all the eight-year olds in the village. They had gone down that path before and it was one journey they would rather not repeat.
“Sorry. It just slipped out.”
“Hmph.” Honour momentarily satisfied, Susan contented herself with an angry glare at Carey, imagining just what tortures she could put him through.
“Does this mean I’m still to be killed, or can I move now? Only my leg is starting to get a dashed nasty cramp like this.” William ‘Texas Bill’ Fletcher cocked his head as he made his hopeful inquiry.
Philip nodded wearily. “Yes, you might as well. Not much point carrying on now that someone decided that they wanted to interrupt.”
“Shall we play something else? I like hide and seek.” Carey’s voice was somewhat muffled as he shrugged on his shirt and pullover; he didn’t quite know why he had to wear the latter garment and generally regarded it as something he was forced to put on when his mother felt cold.
“We played that yesterday. And you always win.” William said bitterly.
“I can’t help being super.”
“Really? Is that what your Mother tells you?” grinned Susan.
“I’ll get you for that, Bailey!”
“You’ll have to catch me first!”
Susan took off across the square with Carey in hot pursuit and William jogging along in vague interest, leaving Philip to put away his things in the carefully carved chest that Edward had dragged here all the way from home last Christmas. There wasn’t going to be another surprise visit this year, Father had explained. Ed was on the other side of the world in the Far East off some strange country called Hindoo-China. He had nodded and said he understood, but it was jolly silly and unfair. Why did he have to go there and miss Christmas? Didn’t the stupid French have their own battleships?
Still, at least it was Christmas. There would be the feast and games and films and the tree. And presents of course. He had saved up all his pocket money for months now, but still hadn’t got anything for Matthew. Normally, this wouldn’t have been a problem, as he always used to be so mean and silly, but things had changed over this last year. Matt had been jolly decent, letting him borrow his books and swords, playing with him and generally treating him like a brother instead of a disease. He wasn’t quite sure as to the cause of this rapid change in behaviour, but careful examination of the Children’s Encyclopedia had drawn him to the conclusion that it was either the onset of senile decrepitude or demonic possession. Either way, it was a good outcome.
He trudged slowly across the square towards the shops, the mid-morning sun having done comparatively little to melt away the previous nights’ snow. Perhaps the Mercantile Emporium might have a new set of pencils or Dan Dare cards that would suit his purposes and come out as less than the princely sum of 1/6d…
Then he saw it.
It was a most remarkable sight. A large gypsy wagon painted in swirling rainbow colours and rippling patterns was sitting right outside the Post Office. Philip had been quite sure it wasn’t there earlier that morning when he had ran out to meet the gang and play. This was quite a turn-up and rather exciting. A strange-smelling smoke wafted out from the curved iron chimney ontop of the ramshackle wooden roof and the little red door was invitingly open. He stopped dead in his footsteps, unsure of what to do. This could be exactly what he was after.
“Well, are you coming in, young master?” said a thickly accented foreign voice.
Philip looked up to see who was addressing him. It was a wizened and weatherbeaten old pedlar dressed in green and purple robes and a blue turban. He was smiling keenly and kindly and waved his hand to usher the boy into his caravan. Behind him lay shelves and tables packed nearly to overflowing with shining folderols, curious curios and glowing gew-gaws, all framed by a toasty cast-iron stove.
“I’m not sure, sir.”
“After a special gift, aren’t you? Something for a friend or close relative. Something they’ll always remember?”
“Why yes, yes I am. How did you guess?”
“It is Christmas Eve and you look as if you have much on your mind, my boy.”
The old man delicately brushed his top lip as if to give some sort of signal while smiling crookedly. Philip felt his own lip and, to his utter horror and mortification, quickly realised he had left half of his moustache stuck on. Hot tears and humiliation welled in his eyes as he pulled it off and dashed it uncaringly on the ground.
“Now, now, my dead child, don’t cry – “
“I’m not crying! I’m not! I…I just got some moustache in my eye, that’s all.”
“But of course, young master, but of course. It happens to us all sometimes. Now, come inside and we shall see about that gift.”
“Well…”
“I have baubles and trinkets.”
Philip perked up. Matthew had always seemed quite fond of baubles. Stepping into the caravan, he was almost overcome by a hot wave of exotic smells and tendrils of aromatic smoke slowly winding their way from half a dozen brass lamps up towards the painted ceiling. The pedlar bustled over to a wooden chest in the corner and muttered to himself as he pawed through its contents before triumphantly brandishing a small green sphere aloft so Philip could get a good look at it. It was simply mesmerising, colours moving and shifting about like a living kaleidoscope that shied away from the touch of the holder’s fingers.
“Here we go. Something for you.”
“Sir, I can’t possibly afford something like this -”
“Nonsense, nonsense, my boy! For you, today, it is only one shilling. As its Christmas.”
As we well know, things that look too good to be true almost always are too good to be true. Philip was usually a sensible boy, but whether it was the strange smoke, or feeling upset over the moustache incident or something else deeper inside him, he decided for some reason to go for it. He scrabbled through his pocket and pulled out a carefully folded shilling note and passed it to the man.
“Thank you so very much, Master –“
“Philip. Philip Cavendish.”
“Now, Philip Cavendish, one last thing before you go. This is, as you no doubt suspect, a slightly magical globe. If you want the recipient to see its full trick, then you must tell them these special words to say: Clek, Clak! Paster, Vaster! Sinaruat Elleg! Do you think you can remember that?”
“Oh yes, sir! Thank you so ever much! This is the most wizard thing I’ve ever seen!”
With that, Philip ran off back out of the caravan, not pausing to see the smile on the pedlar’s lips broaden, revealing a set of very white teeth.
“Oh, you don’t know how right you are, my dear Philip. Very right indeed.”
Philip scampered off across the square to where he could see his friends waiting by the bridge, their chase and vows of revenge now fulfilled.
“Hello Philip!” they chorused happily.
“You’ll never guess what I’ve got!”
“A giant crocodile that is so big you can actually go inside it and drive it around like an army tank?”
“William, when people say that you’ll never guess, you do know you’re not meant to actually guess.” Carey said earnestly, his sage advice only being slightly obscured by the gap left by his missing front teeth.
“Oh. Sorry. I always get that one mixed up.” William Fletcher blushed in chagrin, his face now bearing an even closer resemblance to his wavy red hair.”
“Will you two be quiet so Philip can show us what he’s got! Honestly, you’re such children sometimes.” scolded Susan, taking care however not to sound in any way like a girl after the earlier incident.
“I can do better than show you. Watch this! Clek, Clak! Paster, Vaster! Sinaruat Elleg!”
As Philip said the last words, the bauble rose suddenly up out of his hands and began to race around his head and body at tremendous speed. A strange green mist began to rise from the ground and then, with a flash of light and a sharp crack, he was gone!
The other three children looked around and at each other in bewilderment. The bauble then fell down on the ground before them, as if from a great height. Susan immediately picked it up and carefully stared into it.
“Is he inside there?” Carey asked in great concern.
“I’m not sure. There seems to be something in there. Well, boys, there is only one thing for it. We’ve got to get Philip back.” Susan looked up in grim determination and the others nodded in agreement. No magic or cursed artifact was going to kidnap their leader and get away with it.
“And there is only one person who can help us. Matthew.”
A Christmas Tale II
-
Simon Darkshade
- Posts: 1049
- Joined: Thu Nov 17, 2022 10:55 am
Re: A Christmas Tale II
A Christmas Tale II: Part 2
The air seemed much chillier as the three children ran breathlessly down the lane towards the Cavendish house and the wan shine of the sun was just a tad more sickly. Speed was of the essence, given the uncertain fate of their comrade in arms. They barely paused as they slipped through the loose plank in the back fence that served as their primary means of ingress and egress and slipped and slided their way across the back garden and up the steps into the warm kitchen. Mrs Cavendish was busy over her baking and spared them only the briefest of glances.
“Hello there, children. Philip isn’t in at the moment, I’m afraid.”
“That’s alright, Mrs. Cavendish. We just needed to see Matthew about something.”
“Oh, righto. He’s just up in his room, no doubt with his nose stuck in another book.”
Matthew Cavendish was indeed reading at that point in time, but the text in question was rather different from his previous preferences. His travels of the previous Christmas had given him a taste for real adventure and life , most certainly, but chief among the reasons for his new material were the neat bundle of neat letters that had arrived several weeks after he sat his 11-Plus tests. Several schools had been quite interested in offering him a scholarship after seeing the results of his English, history and magic exams and so he found himself swotting up over Christmas from an old copy of A History of English Magic in order to kill three birds with one stone. The details of the 17th century changes to styles of conjuration had passed peak boredom, rocketed through the suburbs of sluggish ennui and were now approaching the juncture of utter lassitude and profound accidie, which made any interruption a welcome one.
With nary a knock, his door burst open and three distressed children bowled into his room, skidding across the room and ending up in a very vocal ball on the rug before him.
“What ho, gang! Where’s Philip?” There was barely time for his cheery inquiry to pass his lips when Carey began blubbing, which was most uncomfortable and quite out of character.
“What’s going on?” Matthew instantly became serious, putting aside his book and rising from his bed.
“He’s…he’s…he’s been taken into this, somehow!” cried Susan, thrusting the strange bauble into Matthew’s hands and babbling the whole story to him in choking sobs. He quickly calmed them down, feeling as uncomfortable with such emotion as any good English boy would and sat back down to think. There was no immediate sign of anything inside the globe and it felt normal to touch.
The responsible thing to do would have been to tell Mother or Father at once, but he didn’t know how that could get Philip back home and, even if it did, he would be in a world of trouble for taking suspicious magical objects from foreign strangers. That would be a terrible fate at Christmas time. He on the other hand had a little bit of experience with this type of thing that he’d never told anyone about, apart from Philip. He’d even tried a few of the spells in the books Father had bought, albeit without any great success. The least he could do was try and fix things up first; he owed the little goblin that much.
He got up, went over to his desk, grabbed a few useful items from his drawer and beckoned to the younger children. “We’ll head on out to the back lane and try something there.”
Once they had made their way out into the cold, cobbled lane, Matthew tried all the standard methods of arcane release – chanting the words backwards, calling on it to release its secrets and trying all of the words of command that came to mind; apparently ‘Izzy Whizzy, let’s get busy’ didn’t work without a wand for some reason.
There was nothing else for it. He held aloft the strange green bauble as Susan, Carey and William crowded in front of him and loudly declaimed the magic words that his brother had uttered so very recently to disastrous effect.
“Clek, Clak! Paster, Vaster! Sinaruat Elleg!”
Nothing seemed to happen for an instant and then the ground fell out from underneath them and they went hurtling away through the air as if caught on a gigantic invisible waterslide. The familiar landscape of the back laneway stretched and then gave way to a blaze of starlight and a roaring whoosh like the explosion of a thousand fireworks. Matthew found himself screaming along with the others, but was careful to try and note exactly what he was feeling and seeing and which direction they seemed to be sucked towards.
With an anticlimactic squelch, they landed on something very soft and wet. On the bright side, the incantation had apparently been successful in transporting them elsewhere, as this certainly wasn’t the back lane behind the Cavendish residence, or even Ashford. It was an impossibly large yet dank great hall, lit only partially by flickering torches that lined each of the muddy walls, interspersed with crude paintings and rotting tapestries. They sat in the middle of a huge bowl filled some sort of horrific ichor, itself positioned in pride of place on a gigantic wooden table in the centre of the hall. On the not-so bright side, any satisfaction as to their journey swiftly evaporated as their spinning vision began to return to normal and they fully took in their surroundings and the small matter of being surrounded by several hundred rather shocked goblins.
“’Ere! Wots those yoomans doing in the trifle?! They’ll go and ruin it all!” growled a particularly large specimen, whose bestial visage, fanged maw and frighteningly sharp cleaver was only slightly offset by a neatly coloured label pinned to his jerkin identifying him as Graknak.
“Oooh, and after all those hours I spent shaving all them rats! It’s a bleedin’ liberty, it is!” replied his off-sider Krenzag, a small, wheedling goblin labelled with long curly ears, bright red eyes and a nice little checked handkerchief secured around his neck so that he didn’t get his good top all messy.
“To the boss with them!”
“YEAH!”
With a roar, the goblins charged and seized the four children before they could even cry out, held them aloft by their limbs and carried them out of the disgusting dining hall through a short, cleaner passageway and into a much cleaner and evilly-lit throne room dominated by a granite dais. A black robed figure ceased playing a hauntingly creepy tune on his skeletal pipe organ and whirled about swiftly, fixing the goblins with an angry stare.
“STOP! Did you remember to wipe your feet?”
“No, boss, but –“ The shrill explanation provided by Zenghi, a small, pale goblin, was cut short as the figure gestured imperiously with a glowing green wand he produced from his sleeve. A fizzing emerald ray shot out and enveloping the wretched monster in a crackling halo of sorcerous power as he seemd to shrivel up from the inside, leaving only a pile of clothes on the floor. Susan involuntarily gasped at the horror of it and William hid his eyes but, a second later, a small mouse wriggled out from Zenghi’s sleeve and streaked away towards the relative safety of the side of the hall, eyed hungrily by more than a few of his former comrades.
“Feet first. Explanation about the captive children second.” intoned the black robed figure coldly, making Carey briefly wonder if he was somehow related to his mother, given their similarly strict policies on cleanliness. The goblins sheepishly obeyed and then desposited the children in front of their master.
“They came out of midair and landed right in our dinner, boss! It’s not normal, begging your Magnificence’s pardon, and certainly not healthy – we could catch anyfing from them lot!”
“Yeah, I read somewhere vat they takes a bath more than once a year. It’s bleedin’ dangerous!”
“Silence, Krenzag, you disgusting little creature.” This compliment seemed to please the goblin, as he squared his shoulders and looked around smugly at his impressed fellows. “Simply add some more mule essence and powdered bat’s droppings to your dessert and you will be fine. Now, what am I to do with you?” The wizard, for such he must be, turned towards Susan, Carey, William and Matthew and eyed them carefully from deep within his shadowy cowl.
Matthew had recovered the quickest of all of them and saw that it was his responsibility to take care of the younger ones, as he was the oldest and had got them here in the first place. He looked straight at the wizard without any sign of fear and spoke politely yet defiantly.
“I’ll tell you what you are to do, sir. You can start by giving us back my brother Philip and then you can send us back home. Or else.”
“Or else what, you charmingly brave little tyke?” The wizard seemed quite amused.
“Or else we’ll cast you down and get the Army and the Royal Navy and the RAF to come here and destroy you until it jolly well hurts!” As the threat left his lips, Matthew felt somewhat chagrined; it was pretty banal as heroic promises of retribution went, but he was making it up as he went along, after all.
“You? Cast me down? Ahahahahaha!” The wizard threw his head back and erupted into a ringing burst of stereotypically evil laughter, joined by the goblins and a conveniently timed peal of thunder from outside the throne room. After a short while, he stopped, thinking to see an intimidated gaggle of children huddling together on the floor, despairingly clinging to their last vestiges of their sanity as the hopelessness of their situation struck home. Instead, Matthew looked at him with a cocked head and an expression of distinct disappointment.
“You…you really think that you could do it? You, a mere English boy, foil the carefully laid plans of Tauranis Gelle, Supreme Master of Wizardry and Dread Lord of Schloss Tarlenheim? You think that you could undo my masterly scheme to capture thousands of children from all over Europe and America on the eve of your pathetic celebration and, in doing so, destroy Christmas once and for all?!” Gelle stalked over to the other side of his platform, raising his arms in the air in fiendish exhultation as he gloried in the sheer nastiness of his scheme and how the convenient lightning framed him through the leaded windows of his lair.
“Let me guess, you want to destroy Christmas as the first step towards taking over the world?”
“OF COURSE!” Tauranis Gelle whirled around, cowl falling back on his shoulders. He was a fairly young fellow for an evil mastermind and not that bad-looking apart from a hideously twisted nose. “Take them away, my goblins! Take them away to the dungeons, lock them up, throw away the key and then throw away the last one to touch that key! Nothing can stop me now!” He turned back to engage in more evil plotting, not even stopping to notice the fleeting flash of happiness in Matthew’s eyes.
The goblins picked the children up once again, none too gently, as they had no love of humans, but not exactly cruelly either, as none were too keen on throwing their backs out at work, and carried them off down the stone corridors of Gelle’s castle. As they went, they began singing a horrible little song in their horrible little voices.
Grab them! Nab them! Pick them up!
Take them down where frogs do sup!
Beat them! Cheat them! Carry them away!
Lock them down for many a day!
Chew them! Hew them! Make them cry!
Grind them up in a great big pie!
This awful tune was very frightening to all three of the younger children, although Matthew had gathered that these were not exactly the garden variety evil goblins one might read about in National Geographic and was thus able to spend the journey working on his plan, when bumps, lurches and scrapes would permit, naturally.
At last, the goblins threw open a wooden door and entered a small room with a cage across the back. They marched over to it, dumped the children inside and carefully locked the huge iron door. As they marched out, they heard the sound of a key being hurled away down a well, followed by a short scuffle and then a long goblin scream that ended in a distant splash. Their horrid song began again and faded gradually away.
There was a sniffling sound from a bundle of blankets at the back of their cage and the children rushed over to investigate. Pulling them back, Matthew gave a great cry of joy as there, of all the goblins cages in all the evil wizardly castles in all the world, was his little brother Philip! They all pulled him up and hugged him and shook him by the hand vigorously, somehow cheered that at least part of their quest had been successful.
“However did you get here?” Philip asked in amazement. “One moment I was showing the others my new bauble and the next moment I was in this dungeon.”
“We said the words while holding it. I think it must have been some sort of cursed teleportation device. Those things are illegal for a dashed good reason.” Susan blanched at Matthew’s strong language, but figured that this counted as one of those stressful occasions when one could understand such verbal excess.
“Do you know if anyone else is being held down here?” asked Carey.
“I haven’t seen anyone, but I have heard a fair bit of crying through the walls.”
“The beast. He’ll pay for this.” Matthew promised coldly. He stood up and walked to the cage door. Locked securely. The bars were out as well – almost two inches thick. Looking out to the rest of the room, he spied exactly what he needed – a sturdy bakelite telephone sitting on a crude wooden table up in the far corner, seemingly well beyond the reach of any prisoners. He smiled.
“Righto, all, turn out your pockets. It is time to give this nasty Ruritanian wizard a good old British style thrashing!”
“How do you know he is Ruritanian?” asked William in wonderment.
“He mentioned the name of this place – Schloss Tarlenheim, or Castle Tarlenheim to use its proper English name. Unless I’m very much mistaken, we are only 12 miles away from the German border.”
They all looked down at the pile of their collective possessions. Five penknives, twelve pebbles, six marbles, three handkerchiefs, one rather old and furry boiled sweet, two battleship cards and a grand total of ten pennies.
“Well, look’s like bribery is out of the question.” sighed Philip. Then he looked up at his brother, then over at the telephone, then back at Matthew. Now he understood.
Using handkerchiefs and shoelaces, they carefully put together a makeshift rope and fastened one end to one of the penknives and made a lasso out of the other. Matthew proceeded to swing it round and round through the bars and cast it across the room at the telephone. All those long hours playing at cowboys and Indians paid off as, on the seventh attempt, he managed to get the telephone, pulled it off the table (wincing as it hit the floor) and dragged it towards them.
“Well, we’ve got a telephone, but who could we possibly call, Matthew? The police?” Susan asked worridly.
“No, I’m afraid we’re out of range of the British police for the moment. But there is one thing I’m going to try. Wish me luck.”
Matthew closed his eyes and thought back carefully, making sure he remembered the long number exactly as he had been told. It had been emphasised that this was strictly for emergencies, but he thought that this probably counted as one. He dialled in numbers one at a time, all twenty-five of them, and then listened as the telephone whirred and hummed in a most unconventional manner.
After almost thirty seconds where none of them scarcely dared breath, someone finally picked up at the other end.
“Father Christmas speaking.”
The air seemed much chillier as the three children ran breathlessly down the lane towards the Cavendish house and the wan shine of the sun was just a tad more sickly. Speed was of the essence, given the uncertain fate of their comrade in arms. They barely paused as they slipped through the loose plank in the back fence that served as their primary means of ingress and egress and slipped and slided their way across the back garden and up the steps into the warm kitchen. Mrs Cavendish was busy over her baking and spared them only the briefest of glances.
“Hello there, children. Philip isn’t in at the moment, I’m afraid.”
“That’s alright, Mrs. Cavendish. We just needed to see Matthew about something.”
“Oh, righto. He’s just up in his room, no doubt with his nose stuck in another book.”
Matthew Cavendish was indeed reading at that point in time, but the text in question was rather different from his previous preferences. His travels of the previous Christmas had given him a taste for real adventure and life , most certainly, but chief among the reasons for his new material were the neat bundle of neat letters that had arrived several weeks after he sat his 11-Plus tests. Several schools had been quite interested in offering him a scholarship after seeing the results of his English, history and magic exams and so he found himself swotting up over Christmas from an old copy of A History of English Magic in order to kill three birds with one stone. The details of the 17th century changes to styles of conjuration had passed peak boredom, rocketed through the suburbs of sluggish ennui and were now approaching the juncture of utter lassitude and profound accidie, which made any interruption a welcome one.
With nary a knock, his door burst open and three distressed children bowled into his room, skidding across the room and ending up in a very vocal ball on the rug before him.
“What ho, gang! Where’s Philip?” There was barely time for his cheery inquiry to pass his lips when Carey began blubbing, which was most uncomfortable and quite out of character.
“What’s going on?” Matthew instantly became serious, putting aside his book and rising from his bed.
“He’s…he’s…he’s been taken into this, somehow!” cried Susan, thrusting the strange bauble into Matthew’s hands and babbling the whole story to him in choking sobs. He quickly calmed them down, feeling as uncomfortable with such emotion as any good English boy would and sat back down to think. There was no immediate sign of anything inside the globe and it felt normal to touch.
The responsible thing to do would have been to tell Mother or Father at once, but he didn’t know how that could get Philip back home and, even if it did, he would be in a world of trouble for taking suspicious magical objects from foreign strangers. That would be a terrible fate at Christmas time. He on the other hand had a little bit of experience with this type of thing that he’d never told anyone about, apart from Philip. He’d even tried a few of the spells in the books Father had bought, albeit without any great success. The least he could do was try and fix things up first; he owed the little goblin that much.
He got up, went over to his desk, grabbed a few useful items from his drawer and beckoned to the younger children. “We’ll head on out to the back lane and try something there.”
Once they had made their way out into the cold, cobbled lane, Matthew tried all the standard methods of arcane release – chanting the words backwards, calling on it to release its secrets and trying all of the words of command that came to mind; apparently ‘Izzy Whizzy, let’s get busy’ didn’t work without a wand for some reason.
There was nothing else for it. He held aloft the strange green bauble as Susan, Carey and William crowded in front of him and loudly declaimed the magic words that his brother had uttered so very recently to disastrous effect.
“Clek, Clak! Paster, Vaster! Sinaruat Elleg!”
Nothing seemed to happen for an instant and then the ground fell out from underneath them and they went hurtling away through the air as if caught on a gigantic invisible waterslide. The familiar landscape of the back laneway stretched and then gave way to a blaze of starlight and a roaring whoosh like the explosion of a thousand fireworks. Matthew found himself screaming along with the others, but was careful to try and note exactly what he was feeling and seeing and which direction they seemed to be sucked towards.
With an anticlimactic squelch, they landed on something very soft and wet. On the bright side, the incantation had apparently been successful in transporting them elsewhere, as this certainly wasn’t the back lane behind the Cavendish residence, or even Ashford. It was an impossibly large yet dank great hall, lit only partially by flickering torches that lined each of the muddy walls, interspersed with crude paintings and rotting tapestries. They sat in the middle of a huge bowl filled some sort of horrific ichor, itself positioned in pride of place on a gigantic wooden table in the centre of the hall. On the not-so bright side, any satisfaction as to their journey swiftly evaporated as their spinning vision began to return to normal and they fully took in their surroundings and the small matter of being surrounded by several hundred rather shocked goblins.
“’Ere! Wots those yoomans doing in the trifle?! They’ll go and ruin it all!” growled a particularly large specimen, whose bestial visage, fanged maw and frighteningly sharp cleaver was only slightly offset by a neatly coloured label pinned to his jerkin identifying him as Graknak.
“Oooh, and after all those hours I spent shaving all them rats! It’s a bleedin’ liberty, it is!” replied his off-sider Krenzag, a small, wheedling goblin labelled with long curly ears, bright red eyes and a nice little checked handkerchief secured around his neck so that he didn’t get his good top all messy.
“To the boss with them!”
“YEAH!”
With a roar, the goblins charged and seized the four children before they could even cry out, held them aloft by their limbs and carried them out of the disgusting dining hall through a short, cleaner passageway and into a much cleaner and evilly-lit throne room dominated by a granite dais. A black robed figure ceased playing a hauntingly creepy tune on his skeletal pipe organ and whirled about swiftly, fixing the goblins with an angry stare.
“STOP! Did you remember to wipe your feet?”
“No, boss, but –“ The shrill explanation provided by Zenghi, a small, pale goblin, was cut short as the figure gestured imperiously with a glowing green wand he produced from his sleeve. A fizzing emerald ray shot out and enveloping the wretched monster in a crackling halo of sorcerous power as he seemd to shrivel up from the inside, leaving only a pile of clothes on the floor. Susan involuntarily gasped at the horror of it and William hid his eyes but, a second later, a small mouse wriggled out from Zenghi’s sleeve and streaked away towards the relative safety of the side of the hall, eyed hungrily by more than a few of his former comrades.
“Feet first. Explanation about the captive children second.” intoned the black robed figure coldly, making Carey briefly wonder if he was somehow related to his mother, given their similarly strict policies on cleanliness. The goblins sheepishly obeyed and then desposited the children in front of their master.
“They came out of midair and landed right in our dinner, boss! It’s not normal, begging your Magnificence’s pardon, and certainly not healthy – we could catch anyfing from them lot!”
“Yeah, I read somewhere vat they takes a bath more than once a year. It’s bleedin’ dangerous!”
“Silence, Krenzag, you disgusting little creature.” This compliment seemed to please the goblin, as he squared his shoulders and looked around smugly at his impressed fellows. “Simply add some more mule essence and powdered bat’s droppings to your dessert and you will be fine. Now, what am I to do with you?” The wizard, for such he must be, turned towards Susan, Carey, William and Matthew and eyed them carefully from deep within his shadowy cowl.
Matthew had recovered the quickest of all of them and saw that it was his responsibility to take care of the younger ones, as he was the oldest and had got them here in the first place. He looked straight at the wizard without any sign of fear and spoke politely yet defiantly.
“I’ll tell you what you are to do, sir. You can start by giving us back my brother Philip and then you can send us back home. Or else.”
“Or else what, you charmingly brave little tyke?” The wizard seemed quite amused.
“Or else we’ll cast you down and get the Army and the Royal Navy and the RAF to come here and destroy you until it jolly well hurts!” As the threat left his lips, Matthew felt somewhat chagrined; it was pretty banal as heroic promises of retribution went, but he was making it up as he went along, after all.
“You? Cast me down? Ahahahahaha!” The wizard threw his head back and erupted into a ringing burst of stereotypically evil laughter, joined by the goblins and a conveniently timed peal of thunder from outside the throne room. After a short while, he stopped, thinking to see an intimidated gaggle of children huddling together on the floor, despairingly clinging to their last vestiges of their sanity as the hopelessness of their situation struck home. Instead, Matthew looked at him with a cocked head and an expression of distinct disappointment.
“You…you really think that you could do it? You, a mere English boy, foil the carefully laid plans of Tauranis Gelle, Supreme Master of Wizardry and Dread Lord of Schloss Tarlenheim? You think that you could undo my masterly scheme to capture thousands of children from all over Europe and America on the eve of your pathetic celebration and, in doing so, destroy Christmas once and for all?!” Gelle stalked over to the other side of his platform, raising his arms in the air in fiendish exhultation as he gloried in the sheer nastiness of his scheme and how the convenient lightning framed him through the leaded windows of his lair.
“Let me guess, you want to destroy Christmas as the first step towards taking over the world?”
“OF COURSE!” Tauranis Gelle whirled around, cowl falling back on his shoulders. He was a fairly young fellow for an evil mastermind and not that bad-looking apart from a hideously twisted nose. “Take them away, my goblins! Take them away to the dungeons, lock them up, throw away the key and then throw away the last one to touch that key! Nothing can stop me now!” He turned back to engage in more evil plotting, not even stopping to notice the fleeting flash of happiness in Matthew’s eyes.
The goblins picked the children up once again, none too gently, as they had no love of humans, but not exactly cruelly either, as none were too keen on throwing their backs out at work, and carried them off down the stone corridors of Gelle’s castle. As they went, they began singing a horrible little song in their horrible little voices.
Grab them! Nab them! Pick them up!
Take them down where frogs do sup!
Beat them! Cheat them! Carry them away!
Lock them down for many a day!
Chew them! Hew them! Make them cry!
Grind them up in a great big pie!
This awful tune was very frightening to all three of the younger children, although Matthew had gathered that these were not exactly the garden variety evil goblins one might read about in National Geographic and was thus able to spend the journey working on his plan, when bumps, lurches and scrapes would permit, naturally.
At last, the goblins threw open a wooden door and entered a small room with a cage across the back. They marched over to it, dumped the children inside and carefully locked the huge iron door. As they marched out, they heard the sound of a key being hurled away down a well, followed by a short scuffle and then a long goblin scream that ended in a distant splash. Their horrid song began again and faded gradually away.
There was a sniffling sound from a bundle of blankets at the back of their cage and the children rushed over to investigate. Pulling them back, Matthew gave a great cry of joy as there, of all the goblins cages in all the evil wizardly castles in all the world, was his little brother Philip! They all pulled him up and hugged him and shook him by the hand vigorously, somehow cheered that at least part of their quest had been successful.
“However did you get here?” Philip asked in amazement. “One moment I was showing the others my new bauble and the next moment I was in this dungeon.”
“We said the words while holding it. I think it must have been some sort of cursed teleportation device. Those things are illegal for a dashed good reason.” Susan blanched at Matthew’s strong language, but figured that this counted as one of those stressful occasions when one could understand such verbal excess.
“Do you know if anyone else is being held down here?” asked Carey.
“I haven’t seen anyone, but I have heard a fair bit of crying through the walls.”
“The beast. He’ll pay for this.” Matthew promised coldly. He stood up and walked to the cage door. Locked securely. The bars were out as well – almost two inches thick. Looking out to the rest of the room, he spied exactly what he needed – a sturdy bakelite telephone sitting on a crude wooden table up in the far corner, seemingly well beyond the reach of any prisoners. He smiled.
“Righto, all, turn out your pockets. It is time to give this nasty Ruritanian wizard a good old British style thrashing!”
“How do you know he is Ruritanian?” asked William in wonderment.
“He mentioned the name of this place – Schloss Tarlenheim, or Castle Tarlenheim to use its proper English name. Unless I’m very much mistaken, we are only 12 miles away from the German border.”
They all looked down at the pile of their collective possessions. Five penknives, twelve pebbles, six marbles, three handkerchiefs, one rather old and furry boiled sweet, two battleship cards and a grand total of ten pennies.
“Well, look’s like bribery is out of the question.” sighed Philip. Then he looked up at his brother, then over at the telephone, then back at Matthew. Now he understood.
Using handkerchiefs and shoelaces, they carefully put together a makeshift rope and fastened one end to one of the penknives and made a lasso out of the other. Matthew proceeded to swing it round and round through the bars and cast it across the room at the telephone. All those long hours playing at cowboys and Indians paid off as, on the seventh attempt, he managed to get the telephone, pulled it off the table (wincing as it hit the floor) and dragged it towards them.
“Well, we’ve got a telephone, but who could we possibly call, Matthew? The police?” Susan asked worridly.
“No, I’m afraid we’re out of range of the British police for the moment. But there is one thing I’m going to try. Wish me luck.”
Matthew closed his eyes and thought back carefully, making sure he remembered the long number exactly as he had been told. It had been emphasised that this was strictly for emergencies, but he thought that this probably counted as one. He dialled in numbers one at a time, all twenty-five of them, and then listened as the telephone whirred and hummed in a most unconventional manner.
After almost thirty seconds where none of them scarcely dared breath, someone finally picked up at the other end.
“Father Christmas speaking.”
-
Simon Darkshade
- Posts: 1049
- Joined: Thu Nov 17, 2022 10:55 am
Re: A Christmas Tale II
A Christmas Tale II: Part 3
“I see. I see. Very well, Matthew, sit tight and we shall get someone along to you as soon as possible.”
Father Christmas sat back. This was most concerning. Dark wizards could not go around kidnapping innocent children at any time of year, let alone Christmas Eve. The rules were very specific about what he could and could not do, but they were a bit more fluid with regard to what he could say to certain others.
So he put on his glasses, picked up the telephone once again and called the Queen. She was very concerned indeed and called the Prime Minister, who was also quite worried and rubbed his head as he heard. The Prime Minister then telephoned the Cabinet Secretary, who jumped off his perch when he heard the news. The Cabinet Secretary then flew over to his special golden telephone and called the Head of the Secret Intelligence Service, who was more than a little perturbed at the whole series of events and promised to get some of his best agents right on it.
Ten minutes and twenty-six seconds after Matthew had finished speaking to Father Christmas, there was a crackle of magic in the air, an abrupt flash of purple light, a smell like gunpowder and then four figures tumbled out of a hole in the air next to the locked door of the room. They got up, brushed themselves off and waved towards the caged children in greeting. Their intended rescuers were clad in the typical accoutrements to be expected for such purpose and armed to the teeth and beyond, but appeared to have a mean age only a little more than that of Matthew, Susan, Carey and William.
“Hallo there! We’re here to help. In a spot of bother, I gather?” spoke a somewhat wee bairn wearing chainmail and a labcoat and holding a quite brutal double-headed warhammer. He was flanked by a tall, brown-haired boy clad in the conical hat and purple robes of an apprentice wizard, a smiling fellow in chainmail and whites who clasped a spiked club that looked suspiciously like a converted cricket bat and a wiry, earnest lad carrying a brace of large revolvers and a shining broadsword.
“Who on earth are you?” asked Matthew on behalf of the other children and the wider audience.
“I am Jebediah the Magnificent, this is Rylé, Harg and Riain and together, we are the famous Fabulous Four!” The wizarding sort proclaimed with a flourish, pushing his way impatiently to the front.
“If you’re so famous, then why haven’t we ever heard of you?” asked a sceptical Philip, raising one eyebrow successfully after having practiced the look for quite a few months previously.
“Well, we’re rather new in the heroic adventuring business, to tell the truth.” admitted Rylé, the hammer-wielding ostensible leader of the Four. “We’ve only been operational for six months or so. Before that we were with Ratcliffe’s Irregulars.”
“With all due respect, gentlemen, why didn’t the authorities send through some other grown-ups?” asked Matthew.
“That was their first option, actually. They tried some fellow in a black suit with a bunch of weird gadgets, then some fellows from the S.A.S. when that didn’t work, but it seems there is some enchantment over the castle stopping the magical entry of anyone over the age of fifteen.” explained Riain.
“And so they sent for us! Don’t worry, we’re actually the best! Just last week, we got paid a whole five pounds for clearing out a cellar of rats.” Harg blurted out enthusiastically.
“Rats.” Carey did not seem particularly impressed.
“Huge ones with great big nasty teeth!”
“And just the other day, we foiled a plot to steal the Corgis and freed a baron’s daughter from a wicked curse!”
“Alright, you’ve got some experience. That’s all well and good. But how are you going to get us out of here and back home?”
Jebediah pushed back his sorcerer’s apprentice hat and smiled confidently. “Ah. That would be my area. You know, there are few no problems in the world that can’t be solved with the correct amount of explosive energy.” He drew out his battered wand and pointed it at the cage door.
“Torzu Pregel! Ooge Odo! Salmay, Dalmay, Adonay!”
The imprisoned children threw themselves down at the back of the cage as first the lock and then the door began to glow a cherry red, then a brilliant white. It exploded with a ringing sound that sent everyone sprawling on the floor, but succeeded in blasting the cell door right off its hinges and embedding it in the wall. Matthew had been standing there just instants before and gulped in worry.
“Thank you! Now we need to get out of the dungeons to the surface. Can you do the same to that door?” William indicated the locked wooden door that they had been carried through only a short time ago.
“Ah. Ah. I’m afraid that was sort of the only explosive spell I have memorised for the day.” Jebediah looked rather sheepish and Philip could have sworn that the other members of the Four rolled their eyes at him behind his back.
“Well I’m sure you have other magic prepared, don’t you?”
“Sure! I can summon up some a ravenous horde of chickens, conjure itching dust to subdue an enemy, and create an invisible shield of force. It’s just that…”
“…None of those are of any direct use to us right now.” completed Rylé. “Never fear, this hammer is a lot stronger than it looks.”
“I think it already looks fairly strong.” said Susan to herself.
“Exactly. Clear the way.”
They all once again fell to the floor and covered their heads as he began to spin around and around and around before releasing the great warhammer at precisely the right moment. It flew through the air and crashed right through the door, splintering it into matchwood and smashing aside much of the brickwork on either side.
The children traipsed through into the corridor and began to follow the trail of dirty footprints that the goblins had left behind. They wound their way through seemingly endless stone passageways for ages until they finally turned a corner and came upon a broad chasm where the floor had fallen away. A cruel wind whistled through the dungeon corridor, chilling them to the bone, as did the flapping of unseen wings far above.
“I don’t remember this on the way down!” exclaimed Carey.
“Wizard’s castles. They often have shifting passageways.” Riain nodded sagely and studied the edge of the rift, running his hand along it carefully and gauging the width of the rift, the height of the roof and the cross breeze in a few seconds of professional squinting. “Looks like the goblins retracted the floor on the way up. There’s bound to bea button on the other side. If someone could get across, they could activate it and allow the others to cross safely.” However, Matthew’s heart sank as a careful examination of all their pockets and possession revealed no rope, twine nor any other immediate means of crossing the great divide before them.
“Can you do the honours?” An unconcerned Rylé turned to Riain, who was already unholstering a Webley .577 and pointing up into the inky blackness.
He fired a single, deafening shot into the air and, with a fluttering squawk, a huge bat fell stone dead on the floor before them. Without the need for any further encouragement, Harg hefted the stiffened carcass over his head and hang-glided across the void before him, cheerfully cackling in delight along the way.
"Wheeeeee!!"
A few seconds later, he had found the requisite button to release the retractable floor-bridge and the others safely traipsed their way across to join him. The short passageway that followed eventually opened up into a brightly lit antechamber. On one side, a bloodied and wretched prisoner was chained up again a wall and on the other, a door stood wide open, revealing a steep grassy hillside bathed in sunlight.
Freedom!
Philip and Carey started forward, fully intent on darting straight out the door as soon as humanly possible, leaving the weird horrors of Schloss Tarlenheim behind them, but were stopped by Matthew’s outstretched arm.
“Steady on, boys. It would be rather poor form to try and get away without helping that poor chappy, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes, you’re right.” The boys chorused with bowed heads, their eagerness to escape having temporarily knocked their moral compass akimbo.
“Are you alright sir? Sir?” Susan ran forward to try and shake the man to his senses and was gave a shocked and perplexed gasp when her hand passed right through him. The illusion faded away, revealing a wooden door where the unconscious man had been and a large and rather smelly pit where freedom had beckoned. The boys gulped in relief at the fate they had narrowly escaped.
“The old test of virtue. Get’s them every time.” chirped Jebediah knowingly.
A cursory examination of the door revealed it to be open and, after easing it ever so slightly ajar, they gazed down upon an amaxing sight. They were positioned on a high balcony overlooking a huge room filled with hundreds and hundreds of drab, miserable children chained to the floor. Here were the victims of Tauranis Gelle’s dastardly plan to inflict global misery and destroy Christmas and, by the looks of them, they came from dozens of countries. There were clusters of British children, Americans and Canadians alongside French and Dutch peasant girls, colourfully costumed Swedes, Danes and Norwegians and tall Austrians and Germans. All in all, it was truly a shocking sight.
“Truly, I’m shocked.” murmured Riain.
“We’ve got to get them out of here as well.” said Matthew determinedly.
“Not a doubt about it.” replied Rylé, who was gripped his warhammer so tightly in anger that he was shaking. “And I think we’ve got just the way to get down. Or rather, our magnificent mage has got it.”
Jebediah cottoned on in an instant. “Chickens. You want my chickens.”
It took only a paltry modification to the poultry-conjuration spell to achieve their intended goal of a mass of chicken feathers to cushion their impact on the floor below and all eight children quickly moved around the hall, smashing loose the chains of the captives with whatever came to hand. An angry buzz spread around the hall once the full detail of Gelle’s plan was passed around, growing into a racous din.
Matthew jumped up onto a small alcove at the side of the room and shouted for silence. Within a few seconds, the crowd turned to look at him.
“Now look here! We all want to be free and to get back this rotter for what he has done to us, but we’re going to need a plan to deal with his magic and his goblins if we are to have any chance of success.”
“Ja, this is true!” shouted a plump German boy named Augustus. “But you are to be telling us what this plan is!”
And so Matthew told them.
“I see. I see. Very well, Matthew, sit tight and we shall get someone along to you as soon as possible.”
Father Christmas sat back. This was most concerning. Dark wizards could not go around kidnapping innocent children at any time of year, let alone Christmas Eve. The rules were very specific about what he could and could not do, but they were a bit more fluid with regard to what he could say to certain others.
So he put on his glasses, picked up the telephone once again and called the Queen. She was very concerned indeed and called the Prime Minister, who was also quite worried and rubbed his head as he heard. The Prime Minister then telephoned the Cabinet Secretary, who jumped off his perch when he heard the news. The Cabinet Secretary then flew over to his special golden telephone and called the Head of the Secret Intelligence Service, who was more than a little perturbed at the whole series of events and promised to get some of his best agents right on it.
Ten minutes and twenty-six seconds after Matthew had finished speaking to Father Christmas, there was a crackle of magic in the air, an abrupt flash of purple light, a smell like gunpowder and then four figures tumbled out of a hole in the air next to the locked door of the room. They got up, brushed themselves off and waved towards the caged children in greeting. Their intended rescuers were clad in the typical accoutrements to be expected for such purpose and armed to the teeth and beyond, but appeared to have a mean age only a little more than that of Matthew, Susan, Carey and William.
“Hallo there! We’re here to help. In a spot of bother, I gather?” spoke a somewhat wee bairn wearing chainmail and a labcoat and holding a quite brutal double-headed warhammer. He was flanked by a tall, brown-haired boy clad in the conical hat and purple robes of an apprentice wizard, a smiling fellow in chainmail and whites who clasped a spiked club that looked suspiciously like a converted cricket bat and a wiry, earnest lad carrying a brace of large revolvers and a shining broadsword.
“Who on earth are you?” asked Matthew on behalf of the other children and the wider audience.
“I am Jebediah the Magnificent, this is Rylé, Harg and Riain and together, we are the famous Fabulous Four!” The wizarding sort proclaimed with a flourish, pushing his way impatiently to the front.
“If you’re so famous, then why haven’t we ever heard of you?” asked a sceptical Philip, raising one eyebrow successfully after having practiced the look for quite a few months previously.
“Well, we’re rather new in the heroic adventuring business, to tell the truth.” admitted Rylé, the hammer-wielding ostensible leader of the Four. “We’ve only been operational for six months or so. Before that we were with Ratcliffe’s Irregulars.”
“With all due respect, gentlemen, why didn’t the authorities send through some other grown-ups?” asked Matthew.
“That was their first option, actually. They tried some fellow in a black suit with a bunch of weird gadgets, then some fellows from the S.A.S. when that didn’t work, but it seems there is some enchantment over the castle stopping the magical entry of anyone over the age of fifteen.” explained Riain.
“And so they sent for us! Don’t worry, we’re actually the best! Just last week, we got paid a whole five pounds for clearing out a cellar of rats.” Harg blurted out enthusiastically.
“Rats.” Carey did not seem particularly impressed.
“Huge ones with great big nasty teeth!”
“And just the other day, we foiled a plot to steal the Corgis and freed a baron’s daughter from a wicked curse!”
“Alright, you’ve got some experience. That’s all well and good. But how are you going to get us out of here and back home?”
Jebediah pushed back his sorcerer’s apprentice hat and smiled confidently. “Ah. That would be my area. You know, there are few no problems in the world that can’t be solved with the correct amount of explosive energy.” He drew out his battered wand and pointed it at the cage door.
“Torzu Pregel! Ooge Odo! Salmay, Dalmay, Adonay!”
The imprisoned children threw themselves down at the back of the cage as first the lock and then the door began to glow a cherry red, then a brilliant white. It exploded with a ringing sound that sent everyone sprawling on the floor, but succeeded in blasting the cell door right off its hinges and embedding it in the wall. Matthew had been standing there just instants before and gulped in worry.
“Thank you! Now we need to get out of the dungeons to the surface. Can you do the same to that door?” William indicated the locked wooden door that they had been carried through only a short time ago.
“Ah. Ah. I’m afraid that was sort of the only explosive spell I have memorised for the day.” Jebediah looked rather sheepish and Philip could have sworn that the other members of the Four rolled their eyes at him behind his back.
“Well I’m sure you have other magic prepared, don’t you?”
“Sure! I can summon up some a ravenous horde of chickens, conjure itching dust to subdue an enemy, and create an invisible shield of force. It’s just that…”
“…None of those are of any direct use to us right now.” completed Rylé. “Never fear, this hammer is a lot stronger than it looks.”
“I think it already looks fairly strong.” said Susan to herself.
“Exactly. Clear the way.”
They all once again fell to the floor and covered their heads as he began to spin around and around and around before releasing the great warhammer at precisely the right moment. It flew through the air and crashed right through the door, splintering it into matchwood and smashing aside much of the brickwork on either side.
The children traipsed through into the corridor and began to follow the trail of dirty footprints that the goblins had left behind. They wound their way through seemingly endless stone passageways for ages until they finally turned a corner and came upon a broad chasm where the floor had fallen away. A cruel wind whistled through the dungeon corridor, chilling them to the bone, as did the flapping of unseen wings far above.
“I don’t remember this on the way down!” exclaimed Carey.
“Wizard’s castles. They often have shifting passageways.” Riain nodded sagely and studied the edge of the rift, running his hand along it carefully and gauging the width of the rift, the height of the roof and the cross breeze in a few seconds of professional squinting. “Looks like the goblins retracted the floor on the way up. There’s bound to bea button on the other side. If someone could get across, they could activate it and allow the others to cross safely.” However, Matthew’s heart sank as a careful examination of all their pockets and possession revealed no rope, twine nor any other immediate means of crossing the great divide before them.
“Can you do the honours?” An unconcerned Rylé turned to Riain, who was already unholstering a Webley .577 and pointing up into the inky blackness.
He fired a single, deafening shot into the air and, with a fluttering squawk, a huge bat fell stone dead on the floor before them. Without the need for any further encouragement, Harg hefted the stiffened carcass over his head and hang-glided across the void before him, cheerfully cackling in delight along the way.
"Wheeeeee!!"
A few seconds later, he had found the requisite button to release the retractable floor-bridge and the others safely traipsed their way across to join him. The short passageway that followed eventually opened up into a brightly lit antechamber. On one side, a bloodied and wretched prisoner was chained up again a wall and on the other, a door stood wide open, revealing a steep grassy hillside bathed in sunlight.
Freedom!
Philip and Carey started forward, fully intent on darting straight out the door as soon as humanly possible, leaving the weird horrors of Schloss Tarlenheim behind them, but were stopped by Matthew’s outstretched arm.
“Steady on, boys. It would be rather poor form to try and get away without helping that poor chappy, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes, you’re right.” The boys chorused with bowed heads, their eagerness to escape having temporarily knocked their moral compass akimbo.
“Are you alright sir? Sir?” Susan ran forward to try and shake the man to his senses and was gave a shocked and perplexed gasp when her hand passed right through him. The illusion faded away, revealing a wooden door where the unconscious man had been and a large and rather smelly pit where freedom had beckoned. The boys gulped in relief at the fate they had narrowly escaped.
“The old test of virtue. Get’s them every time.” chirped Jebediah knowingly.
A cursory examination of the door revealed it to be open and, after easing it ever so slightly ajar, they gazed down upon an amaxing sight. They were positioned on a high balcony overlooking a huge room filled with hundreds and hundreds of drab, miserable children chained to the floor. Here were the victims of Tauranis Gelle’s dastardly plan to inflict global misery and destroy Christmas and, by the looks of them, they came from dozens of countries. There were clusters of British children, Americans and Canadians alongside French and Dutch peasant girls, colourfully costumed Swedes, Danes and Norwegians and tall Austrians and Germans. All in all, it was truly a shocking sight.
“Truly, I’m shocked.” murmured Riain.
“We’ve got to get them out of here as well.” said Matthew determinedly.
“Not a doubt about it.” replied Rylé, who was gripped his warhammer so tightly in anger that he was shaking. “And I think we’ve got just the way to get down. Or rather, our magnificent mage has got it.”
Jebediah cottoned on in an instant. “Chickens. You want my chickens.”
It took only a paltry modification to the poultry-conjuration spell to achieve their intended goal of a mass of chicken feathers to cushion their impact on the floor below and all eight children quickly moved around the hall, smashing loose the chains of the captives with whatever came to hand. An angry buzz spread around the hall once the full detail of Gelle’s plan was passed around, growing into a racous din.
Matthew jumped up onto a small alcove at the side of the room and shouted for silence. Within a few seconds, the crowd turned to look at him.
“Now look here! We all want to be free and to get back this rotter for what he has done to us, but we’re going to need a plan to deal with his magic and his goblins if we are to have any chance of success.”
“Ja, this is true!” shouted a plump German boy named Augustus. “But you are to be telling us what this plan is!”
And so Matthew told them.
-
Simon Darkshade
- Posts: 1049
- Joined: Thu Nov 17, 2022 10:55 am
Re: A Christmas Tale II
A Christmas Tale II: Part 4
To say that the goblins of Castle Tarlenheim had experienced a busy day would be to understate the matter profoundly. There had been the regular chores that pile up in every evil lair, the continual child deliveries courtesy of the master’s Great Big Plan and the unscheduled interruption to their feasting. Goblins are of course creatures of habit and any disruption to the approved schedule is bitterly resented.
“I bitterly resent all this fuss and bovver! It’s not normal!” shouted Graknak as he stood on the upturned chair at the head of the messy mess hall.
“YEAH!” chorused his fellow goblins, pumping their clawed fists in the air and scowling.
“We deserves better!”
“YEAH!”
“I propose we form a committee to take our grievances to the Master. We wants more rats and less yoomans in our trifle!”
The other goblins were about to reward him with a resounding endorsement of his fist-waving industrial militancy, but were somewhat distracted as, at that very instant, the roof above them began to warp and twist. Something seemed to be dripping down with ever increasing urgency upon them. Krenzag put out a finger and caught a drop in midair.
“Ere! Why’s there jelly comin’ down off the roof on us?”
Any answer was sadly not forthcoming as the roof gave way and a huge flow of raspberry jelly filled the room, sending many of the goblins surfing away into the walls or out of the open door, whether it be to a sticky end or merely their just desserts.
Matthew’s plan had been quite ingenious, involving using the smallest children as scouts to find the kitchen storeroom and the mess hall, the medium sized children to pass up the supplies of jelly and the oldest children to help the Fabulous Four to saw away the beams of the attic above the mess hall. He allowed himself a brief smile of satisfaction at the sight of the gelatinous sea below him and then turned back to his friends and the cheering children.
“Now, the throne room must be somewhere close by, based on how long it took the goblins to bring us there earlier on. We’ll go through and deal with Tauranis Gelle and teach him not to mess with Christmas!”
Alas, all their initial forays did not reveal any throne rooms, but simply a circular series of passages. Their sorcerous opponent must have sealed himself off from normal means of access so he could enjoy a good old fashioned fiendish gloating session. All of the exits to the outside world were fused solidly shut and defied all belabouring attempts to open them. A more careful search did give them something to get rather excited over in the form of the discovery of a secret door leading to a dusty staircase. They crept down the stairs and found themselves before an immense oak door that seemed cold to the touch. This, they thought, must be the threshold of Gelle’s inner sanctum of wickedness. Unfortunately, to their great disappointment, it lead not to the spooky throne room they had expected, but to a large room filled with mirrors arranged in an ingenious pattern.
“A mirror maze!” shouted Harg in delight.
And what a maze it was. It would around and around, leading to dead ends, false paths and convoluted circular routes right back to where they started. Frustration began to creep in and gnawed away at the sinews of hope. Rylé stood back thoughtfully, observing each failed attempt to solve the puzzle. Finally, he spoke in a quiet voice.
“This isn’t a maze. It is a decoy. We shouldn’t be trying to get through the maze, we should be trying to get through it.”
The others looked at him blankly.
“We’ve got to smash every mirror that can be smashed and the one remaining should be the portal through to Gelle.”
They took to their task with great gusto, breaking, smashing and shattering their way through the room. Only one gold rimmed mirror resisted their tender attentions and, when Harg thrust his cricket club at it, is passed right through the rippling surface as if it had been thrown into a crystal clear pond. This was the way forward.
Matthew went to go first. As he stepped through the looking glass, he felt like he had been doused with a bucket of icy cold water and a beehive tipped on his head. The others proceeded to pile through and join him in a pile on the floor. Once the shock wore off, they discovered they were in a small storeroom. Seated on an empty jelly barrel was a transluscent child-like figure that looked rather thin and morose.
“Oh, hello there.”
“Are you a ghost?” asked William in a mixture of fear and fascination.
“Yes. I’m the Ghost of Christmas Past.”
“I’ve read about you! You visited Scrooge!”
“Did I? Sorry, I can’t really remember; I’ve been here so long. Wouldn’t put it past me, though.” The ghost gave a pained snort that the children realised was meant to be a laugh, which they responded to with a perfunctory titter.
“How long have you been here?” asked Riain, eyes wide with sincere concern.
“I’m not really sure. I think it was shortly after the war finished.”
“Oh my goodness! Since the end of the Second World War?”
“Eh? What’s that? No, I mean the one with all those big three-legged walking machines from Mars. What one are you talking about?”
Gosh. The ghost had been trapped in the castle since the War of the Worlds over sixty years before. All the children were quietly shocked, apart from Harg, who was busy trying to walk like a Martian war machine.
“Never mind the history lesson for now, Mr. Past.” Philip’s interjection was urgent. “What is more important is how and why you were trapped here!”
Matthew raised an eyebrow, quietly impressed with his brother’s grasp of what was really important.
“I had been sent off from headquarters for a Christmas evening haunting - pretty standard for the time. Our quarry was a young wizard named Tauranis Gelle who looked to be on the downward path to perdition. I was supposed to set him right and show him what was really important.” The ghost moaned pathetically as he relived the memory for the two hundred and eighty-sixth thousandth, four hundred and seventy-ninth time, not that he’d kept count or anything.
“Didn’t he react in the right way?” Jebediah showed hithertofore uncharacteristicly genuine concern at the plight of the depressed spectre.
“He got very angry and shouted a lot and trapped me inside this spirit level.”
“Can you show us what you showed him, by any chance?” asked Susan.
“But of course! Wooo! Wooo! Wurtle, wurtle, wubble, wubble, wooo!” The Ghost began to dance around waving his arms in wild, swinging circles as the room faded away before their very eyes. There was a tinkling of bells and then a flash of light…
They were standing on a snowy hillside in what appeared to be some sort of school. A small boy barely seven summers old dressed in rather old-fashioned clothing stood crying under an old oak tree, surrounded by a vicious circle of jeering children.
“Big Nose!”
“Big Nose Gelle!”
“You’ve got a big nose, Tauranis Gelle!”
“What are you getting for Christmas, Gelle? Handkerchiefs?!”
“Who nose what he’ll get?”
“Perhaps that explains why he smells so much!”
The tormentors burst out in laughter, knocked the crying boy to the cold, hard ground and then rushed off towards the warm, inviting glow of the school room. The young Gelle lay down in a heap weeping loud, shuddering sobs for a few moments, before unsteadily raising himself to his feet and staring off at the sight of the disappearing bullies with complete and utter malice.
“I swear that one day, somehow, I’ll get my revenge. Let’s see how they like what they’ll get for Christmas!” He fairly spat out the last word with pure venom.
Their vision began to swim and then they found themselves back in the room with the Ghost of Christmas Past, who had just finished wubbling as he saw them return. Matthew looked around at his friends and cocked his head confidently.
“I think that gives us something to work with, don’t you?”
“Rather!” they chorused, particularly Jebediah who had a wicked twinkle in his eye.
“Mr. Christmas Past, would you be able to send us on to Gelle’s throne room, by any chance? We might be able to help you leave here, at long last.”
“Oooh, oooh, that would be a dream come true! I can’t remember if I left the window open.” The ghost began dancing around and around and wubbling once again and they felt themselves being sucked elsewhere, landing right in front of a very surprised Tauranis Gelle.
“What is this?! How dare you interrupt me at the moment of my triumph? I’ll blast you to smithereens!” shrieked the enraged wizard, raising his wand threateningly until Jebediah tapped him politely on the shoulder.
“Excuse me, sir. Sorry to interrupt your big vengeance, but, just before you do kill us all effortlessly, can you do my one last good turn, from one magician to another.” The boy sounded utterly sincere as he gazed up at the black robed instrument of his destruction.
“Very well, professional courtesy and all that. What is your last request, craven child?”
“Smell these.” He produced a tatty bunch of flowers from deep inside one long, purple sleeve and thrust them right up in Gelle’s face.
“What is this?! Wait – AH-CHOO!!” He let loose with a mighty sneeze, scattering arcane itching dust all over himself. There followed a most undignified display of scratching, howling and rolling about on the floor, enabling the children to relieve him of his wand and bind his arms tightly to his side with shoe laces. He finally stopped wriggling and sneezing and sat on the steps of his vacant throne under the watchful weapons of the Fabulous Four, tears of humiliation openly running down his face.
“Ha! Your evil plan to wreck Christmas is at an end, Tauranis Gelle!” Philip proclaimed triumphantly.
“Yes, and I would have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for you pesky children!”
“Wait.” Matthew walked forward quietly. “There is another way this could end.”
“What do you mean, infernal boy?”
“We saw how those children treated you back when you were little.”
“Oh.”
“It was simply awful. They were real rotters!” piped Susan.
“Yes, you did nothing to deserve all those horrid names. It was very wrong indeed.” agreed Carey as the others all nodded their concurence.
“I don’t even think it is that bad a nose at all.” said Harg sympathetically.
“You…you…you really think so?” Gelle looked up with new tears welling in his eyes as, for the first time in more than a century, he felt a faint glimmer of long-forgotten hope and happiness flicker in his soul.
“Of course we do. It is never right to be cruel and beastly to someone just because of something they can’t help.” Matthew laid a kindly hand on Gelle’s shoulder. “What they did was very wrong indeed, just as what you’ve done in return is wrong. But it doesn’t have to end like this.”
“Yes, you’re right.” Gelle rose unsteadily to his feet, arms still pinioned to his sides. “There is so much I could have done and so much I wish I had said to so many people over all these long years. All lost, so that I could pursue a hollow quest of revenge.” He now wept silently, thinking of his long-lost family and friends, of decades of life and love.
“You can change that, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re getting the greatest gift of all, Master Gelle. The gift of a second chance.”
At that, Matthew cut open the wizard’s bonds and stepped back.
Tauranis Gelle looked at the children in bewilderment and then up at the roof. He shook his head in wonder as all the magic of memory and the myriad ghosts of Christmases past flowed back into him. He saw them all now in his mind’s eye. He remembered a time before the taunts, felt once again the warmth of the fire and the sound of their happy voices and remembered love and joy and hope. He let loose with a long, rich laugh, not evil and cackling, but high and resounding. He pointed at the wall with his hand and blasted it asunder with a bolt of lightning, then spoke a word of command that opened all the doors of the castle. The light of the sun now streamed in through the windows, bright and pure and the sound of cheering children rushing outside to freedom echoed into the sundered room.
“Yes! I shall use this second chance! I will do more than release all of the children – I’ll give all of my treasures to the miserable peasants of this valley! All of my potions and research shall go to help those in need and all the stores of my kitchens shall be put into a grand Christmas feast!”
And at that moment, a most peculiar thing happened that left the children astounded. A shimmering light surrounded Gelle’s face and his twisted snout began to shrink and change. An instant later, it had finished and there was a new, perfect nose! Matthew looked up to see the Ghost of Christmas Past flying off through the hole in the wall, giving them all a little wink as he went.
Once they made their way outside the keep, Rylé and his fellow agents were met by a very official-looking party of British, Ruritanian, American and German soldiers, wizards and policemen.
“Well done, boys! You’ll all get medals for this!” said a white-moustached colonel as he pumped them vigorously by the hand.
“Can I have mine in the shape of a dead bat?” asked Harg, thoroughly confusing his audience.
“Whatever shall happen to the goblins, sir?” Matthew asked the British Ambassador.
“I believe we shall be able to find suitable employment for them with one of our American contacts; I believe his name is Mr. Jareth or something like that.”
“Look!” Susan pointed back behind them, where a smiling Gelle was being lead away by four Ruritanian secret policemen towards a Black Maria. “What are you doing with him?”
“He must answer for his many crimes against our land. The King himself has ordered it.”
“What will happen to him?” Philip said, taken aback.
“The traditional treatment for dark wizards in our land – his hands and feet will be hewn off and he shall be cast into a leaden cell for ten years.”
“That’s horrid! You can’t do that to him, not now he’s come good!” cried William.
Gelle turned around with a kindly and wistful smile “Now, now, children. You have done me a great service this day and taught me that it is important to keep Christmas in your heart. What is a bit of justly-earned time in prison compared to that? Although, if it were up to me, I’d prefer to keep my appendages – they’re just so handy.”
The senior Ruritanian secret policeman looked intently at Gelle as he spoke, then pulled out a small radio and moved away behind the Black Maria to speak into it. He returned two minutes later, the hint of a smile playing around the edges of his stern face.
“I have spoken to the King’s chief minister. We are not a people who set no stead by redemption nor without mercy. Tauranis Gelle, your penance is to serve the people of Tarlenheim for twenty years, using your magery to do good instead of evil.”
“This I accept.”
“Very well. Men, take him away. And hew off his nose for good measure!”
After the loud objections of the children to this act of amputative justice were received and the wizard departed, all limbs and protuberances intact, it was time for the children to say goodbye to their new friends. The boys all shook hands and clapped each other on the back like jolly good chaps and did so somewhat more awkwardly with Susan.
“Goodbye! Thank you for coming to save us! Goodbye Riain! Goodbye Harg! Goodbye Rylé! Goodbye Jebediah!”
“Goodbye! Merry Christmas!”
After they had ran off to their British government supplied steam powered flying machine, Matthew turned around to the others, who all looked very tired and overwrought from a most busy day.
“What time is it, Philip?” asked Carey as they walked down the hillside towards the gathered cars, tanks and carriages that had been bought in to return the children to their homes.
He looked at his watch and blanched in horror. “Eight o’clock! We’ve missed tea and dinner!”
“Oh no! We’re going to be in ever so much trouble!” cried Susan, aghast at the thought of missing the festivities of Christmas Eve.
“Hold your horses, everyone. I know just the fellow who can get us back home in time.” said Matthew with a knowing smile as he walked towards a radio telephone.
Professor Glimpuddle was ever so pleased to hear from Matthew and more than happy to fly up to Ruritania in the Shalimar. As they raced through the skies around the world, Susan, Carey and William squealed with delight and wonder, picking out all the magnificent sights and features far below them. As they passed over Burma, Matthew thought he heard the jingling of sleigh bells somewhere above them and felt a warm sensation of happiness course through his bones.
They all made it back to Ashford just in time for the clock in the village square to tick over to 11:00 in the morning of Christmas Eve. Nothing seemed to have changed and no-one noticed their absence as they jogged back to the laneway behind the Cavendish house. All four children exchanged a few knowing glances and grins that night at the Christmas Eve church service as the choir sang their hearts out.
Trudging back home through the snow, Philip and Matthew had a chance to talk at last.
“Thanks for coming to save me, Matt.”
“What else could I do, Philip? You are my brother after all; blood is thicker than water.”
“So is jelly.”
Matthew laughed out loud at that, white frost spreading in front of his mouth.
“No, but I really mean it. I’m certainly not going to be going accepting any gifts from foreign strangers again any time soon. Come on, I’ll race you back home!”
“In a minute, I just dropped something. You get a head start; you’ll need it, my little goblin.”
“Says you.” Philip then took to his heels and dashed off through the snow along the path towards home.
Matthew turned around to the trees that lay beside them and saw who he knew would be there.
“Good evening, sir.”
“Good evening, Matthew Cavendish. It is good to see you once again.” replied Father Christmas. “Your brother seems to have learned his lesson well enough.”
“I think I have as well, sir.”
“And what was it?”
“I should have been more responsible and told Mother and Father what happened to Philip. I thought I was all grown-up and could handle it on my own. I was wrong.”
“Then truly, you have received a precious gift this day, that of wisdom. And you have done more than that.” The old man smiled with infinite kindness. “You helped save someone else. That was a noble deed.”
“Thank you, sir. Merry Christmas.”
“You are most welcome, Matthew. Merry Christmas.”
As the two brothers lay in their beds later that night, all the outside world enveloped in a silent wonderland, Philip rolled over and looked across the room at Matthew, who was lying back and staring at the roof.
“Matt?”
“Yes, Philip?”
“That was the best Christmas ever.”
“It has hardly begun, Philip. And there will be many, many more. Good night.”
“Good night.”
To say that the goblins of Castle Tarlenheim had experienced a busy day would be to understate the matter profoundly. There had been the regular chores that pile up in every evil lair, the continual child deliveries courtesy of the master’s Great Big Plan and the unscheduled interruption to their feasting. Goblins are of course creatures of habit and any disruption to the approved schedule is bitterly resented.
“I bitterly resent all this fuss and bovver! It’s not normal!” shouted Graknak as he stood on the upturned chair at the head of the messy mess hall.
“YEAH!” chorused his fellow goblins, pumping their clawed fists in the air and scowling.
“We deserves better!”
“YEAH!”
“I propose we form a committee to take our grievances to the Master. We wants more rats and less yoomans in our trifle!”
The other goblins were about to reward him with a resounding endorsement of his fist-waving industrial militancy, but were somewhat distracted as, at that very instant, the roof above them began to warp and twist. Something seemed to be dripping down with ever increasing urgency upon them. Krenzag put out a finger and caught a drop in midair.
“Ere! Why’s there jelly comin’ down off the roof on us?”
Any answer was sadly not forthcoming as the roof gave way and a huge flow of raspberry jelly filled the room, sending many of the goblins surfing away into the walls or out of the open door, whether it be to a sticky end or merely their just desserts.
Matthew’s plan had been quite ingenious, involving using the smallest children as scouts to find the kitchen storeroom and the mess hall, the medium sized children to pass up the supplies of jelly and the oldest children to help the Fabulous Four to saw away the beams of the attic above the mess hall. He allowed himself a brief smile of satisfaction at the sight of the gelatinous sea below him and then turned back to his friends and the cheering children.
“Now, the throne room must be somewhere close by, based on how long it took the goblins to bring us there earlier on. We’ll go through and deal with Tauranis Gelle and teach him not to mess with Christmas!”
Alas, all their initial forays did not reveal any throne rooms, but simply a circular series of passages. Their sorcerous opponent must have sealed himself off from normal means of access so he could enjoy a good old fashioned fiendish gloating session. All of the exits to the outside world were fused solidly shut and defied all belabouring attempts to open them. A more careful search did give them something to get rather excited over in the form of the discovery of a secret door leading to a dusty staircase. They crept down the stairs and found themselves before an immense oak door that seemed cold to the touch. This, they thought, must be the threshold of Gelle’s inner sanctum of wickedness. Unfortunately, to their great disappointment, it lead not to the spooky throne room they had expected, but to a large room filled with mirrors arranged in an ingenious pattern.
“A mirror maze!” shouted Harg in delight.
And what a maze it was. It would around and around, leading to dead ends, false paths and convoluted circular routes right back to where they started. Frustration began to creep in and gnawed away at the sinews of hope. Rylé stood back thoughtfully, observing each failed attempt to solve the puzzle. Finally, he spoke in a quiet voice.
“This isn’t a maze. It is a decoy. We shouldn’t be trying to get through the maze, we should be trying to get through it.”
The others looked at him blankly.
“We’ve got to smash every mirror that can be smashed and the one remaining should be the portal through to Gelle.”
They took to their task with great gusto, breaking, smashing and shattering their way through the room. Only one gold rimmed mirror resisted their tender attentions and, when Harg thrust his cricket club at it, is passed right through the rippling surface as if it had been thrown into a crystal clear pond. This was the way forward.
Matthew went to go first. As he stepped through the looking glass, he felt like he had been doused with a bucket of icy cold water and a beehive tipped on his head. The others proceeded to pile through and join him in a pile on the floor. Once the shock wore off, they discovered they were in a small storeroom. Seated on an empty jelly barrel was a transluscent child-like figure that looked rather thin and morose.
“Oh, hello there.”
“Are you a ghost?” asked William in a mixture of fear and fascination.
“Yes. I’m the Ghost of Christmas Past.”
“I’ve read about you! You visited Scrooge!”
“Did I? Sorry, I can’t really remember; I’ve been here so long. Wouldn’t put it past me, though.” The ghost gave a pained snort that the children realised was meant to be a laugh, which they responded to with a perfunctory titter.
“How long have you been here?” asked Riain, eyes wide with sincere concern.
“I’m not really sure. I think it was shortly after the war finished.”
“Oh my goodness! Since the end of the Second World War?”
“Eh? What’s that? No, I mean the one with all those big three-legged walking machines from Mars. What one are you talking about?”
Gosh. The ghost had been trapped in the castle since the War of the Worlds over sixty years before. All the children were quietly shocked, apart from Harg, who was busy trying to walk like a Martian war machine.
“Never mind the history lesson for now, Mr. Past.” Philip’s interjection was urgent. “What is more important is how and why you were trapped here!”
Matthew raised an eyebrow, quietly impressed with his brother’s grasp of what was really important.
“I had been sent off from headquarters for a Christmas evening haunting - pretty standard for the time. Our quarry was a young wizard named Tauranis Gelle who looked to be on the downward path to perdition. I was supposed to set him right and show him what was really important.” The ghost moaned pathetically as he relived the memory for the two hundred and eighty-sixth thousandth, four hundred and seventy-ninth time, not that he’d kept count or anything.
“Didn’t he react in the right way?” Jebediah showed hithertofore uncharacteristicly genuine concern at the plight of the depressed spectre.
“He got very angry and shouted a lot and trapped me inside this spirit level.”
“Can you show us what you showed him, by any chance?” asked Susan.
“But of course! Wooo! Wooo! Wurtle, wurtle, wubble, wubble, wooo!” The Ghost began to dance around waving his arms in wild, swinging circles as the room faded away before their very eyes. There was a tinkling of bells and then a flash of light…
They were standing on a snowy hillside in what appeared to be some sort of school. A small boy barely seven summers old dressed in rather old-fashioned clothing stood crying under an old oak tree, surrounded by a vicious circle of jeering children.
“Big Nose!”
“Big Nose Gelle!”
“You’ve got a big nose, Tauranis Gelle!”
“What are you getting for Christmas, Gelle? Handkerchiefs?!”
“Who nose what he’ll get?”
“Perhaps that explains why he smells so much!”
The tormentors burst out in laughter, knocked the crying boy to the cold, hard ground and then rushed off towards the warm, inviting glow of the school room. The young Gelle lay down in a heap weeping loud, shuddering sobs for a few moments, before unsteadily raising himself to his feet and staring off at the sight of the disappearing bullies with complete and utter malice.
“I swear that one day, somehow, I’ll get my revenge. Let’s see how they like what they’ll get for Christmas!” He fairly spat out the last word with pure venom.
Their vision began to swim and then they found themselves back in the room with the Ghost of Christmas Past, who had just finished wubbling as he saw them return. Matthew looked around at his friends and cocked his head confidently.
“I think that gives us something to work with, don’t you?”
“Rather!” they chorused, particularly Jebediah who had a wicked twinkle in his eye.
“Mr. Christmas Past, would you be able to send us on to Gelle’s throne room, by any chance? We might be able to help you leave here, at long last.”
“Oooh, oooh, that would be a dream come true! I can’t remember if I left the window open.” The ghost began dancing around and around and wubbling once again and they felt themselves being sucked elsewhere, landing right in front of a very surprised Tauranis Gelle.
“What is this?! How dare you interrupt me at the moment of my triumph? I’ll blast you to smithereens!” shrieked the enraged wizard, raising his wand threateningly until Jebediah tapped him politely on the shoulder.
“Excuse me, sir. Sorry to interrupt your big vengeance, but, just before you do kill us all effortlessly, can you do my one last good turn, from one magician to another.” The boy sounded utterly sincere as he gazed up at the black robed instrument of his destruction.
“Very well, professional courtesy and all that. What is your last request, craven child?”
“Smell these.” He produced a tatty bunch of flowers from deep inside one long, purple sleeve and thrust them right up in Gelle’s face.
“What is this?! Wait – AH-CHOO!!” He let loose with a mighty sneeze, scattering arcane itching dust all over himself. There followed a most undignified display of scratching, howling and rolling about on the floor, enabling the children to relieve him of his wand and bind his arms tightly to his side with shoe laces. He finally stopped wriggling and sneezing and sat on the steps of his vacant throne under the watchful weapons of the Fabulous Four, tears of humiliation openly running down his face.
“Ha! Your evil plan to wreck Christmas is at an end, Tauranis Gelle!” Philip proclaimed triumphantly.
“Yes, and I would have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for you pesky children!”
“Wait.” Matthew walked forward quietly. “There is another way this could end.”
“What do you mean, infernal boy?”
“We saw how those children treated you back when you were little.”
“Oh.”
“It was simply awful. They were real rotters!” piped Susan.
“Yes, you did nothing to deserve all those horrid names. It was very wrong indeed.” agreed Carey as the others all nodded their concurence.
“I don’t even think it is that bad a nose at all.” said Harg sympathetically.
“You…you…you really think so?” Gelle looked up with new tears welling in his eyes as, for the first time in more than a century, he felt a faint glimmer of long-forgotten hope and happiness flicker in his soul.
“Of course we do. It is never right to be cruel and beastly to someone just because of something they can’t help.” Matthew laid a kindly hand on Gelle’s shoulder. “What they did was very wrong indeed, just as what you’ve done in return is wrong. But it doesn’t have to end like this.”
“Yes, you’re right.” Gelle rose unsteadily to his feet, arms still pinioned to his sides. “There is so much I could have done and so much I wish I had said to so many people over all these long years. All lost, so that I could pursue a hollow quest of revenge.” He now wept silently, thinking of his long-lost family and friends, of decades of life and love.
“You can change that, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re getting the greatest gift of all, Master Gelle. The gift of a second chance.”
At that, Matthew cut open the wizard’s bonds and stepped back.
Tauranis Gelle looked at the children in bewilderment and then up at the roof. He shook his head in wonder as all the magic of memory and the myriad ghosts of Christmases past flowed back into him. He saw them all now in his mind’s eye. He remembered a time before the taunts, felt once again the warmth of the fire and the sound of their happy voices and remembered love and joy and hope. He let loose with a long, rich laugh, not evil and cackling, but high and resounding. He pointed at the wall with his hand and blasted it asunder with a bolt of lightning, then spoke a word of command that opened all the doors of the castle. The light of the sun now streamed in through the windows, bright and pure and the sound of cheering children rushing outside to freedom echoed into the sundered room.
“Yes! I shall use this second chance! I will do more than release all of the children – I’ll give all of my treasures to the miserable peasants of this valley! All of my potions and research shall go to help those in need and all the stores of my kitchens shall be put into a grand Christmas feast!”
And at that moment, a most peculiar thing happened that left the children astounded. A shimmering light surrounded Gelle’s face and his twisted snout began to shrink and change. An instant later, it had finished and there was a new, perfect nose! Matthew looked up to see the Ghost of Christmas Past flying off through the hole in the wall, giving them all a little wink as he went.
Once they made their way outside the keep, Rylé and his fellow agents were met by a very official-looking party of British, Ruritanian, American and German soldiers, wizards and policemen.
“Well done, boys! You’ll all get medals for this!” said a white-moustached colonel as he pumped them vigorously by the hand.
“Can I have mine in the shape of a dead bat?” asked Harg, thoroughly confusing his audience.
“Whatever shall happen to the goblins, sir?” Matthew asked the British Ambassador.
“I believe we shall be able to find suitable employment for them with one of our American contacts; I believe his name is Mr. Jareth or something like that.”
“Look!” Susan pointed back behind them, where a smiling Gelle was being lead away by four Ruritanian secret policemen towards a Black Maria. “What are you doing with him?”
“He must answer for his many crimes against our land. The King himself has ordered it.”
“What will happen to him?” Philip said, taken aback.
“The traditional treatment for dark wizards in our land – his hands and feet will be hewn off and he shall be cast into a leaden cell for ten years.”
“That’s horrid! You can’t do that to him, not now he’s come good!” cried William.
Gelle turned around with a kindly and wistful smile “Now, now, children. You have done me a great service this day and taught me that it is important to keep Christmas in your heart. What is a bit of justly-earned time in prison compared to that? Although, if it were up to me, I’d prefer to keep my appendages – they’re just so handy.”
The senior Ruritanian secret policeman looked intently at Gelle as he spoke, then pulled out a small radio and moved away behind the Black Maria to speak into it. He returned two minutes later, the hint of a smile playing around the edges of his stern face.
“I have spoken to the King’s chief minister. We are not a people who set no stead by redemption nor without mercy. Tauranis Gelle, your penance is to serve the people of Tarlenheim for twenty years, using your magery to do good instead of evil.”
“This I accept.”
“Very well. Men, take him away. And hew off his nose for good measure!”
After the loud objections of the children to this act of amputative justice were received and the wizard departed, all limbs and protuberances intact, it was time for the children to say goodbye to their new friends. The boys all shook hands and clapped each other on the back like jolly good chaps and did so somewhat more awkwardly with Susan.
“Goodbye! Thank you for coming to save us! Goodbye Riain! Goodbye Harg! Goodbye Rylé! Goodbye Jebediah!”
“Goodbye! Merry Christmas!”
After they had ran off to their British government supplied steam powered flying machine, Matthew turned around to the others, who all looked very tired and overwrought from a most busy day.
“What time is it, Philip?” asked Carey as they walked down the hillside towards the gathered cars, tanks and carriages that had been bought in to return the children to their homes.
He looked at his watch and blanched in horror. “Eight o’clock! We’ve missed tea and dinner!”
“Oh no! We’re going to be in ever so much trouble!” cried Susan, aghast at the thought of missing the festivities of Christmas Eve.
“Hold your horses, everyone. I know just the fellow who can get us back home in time.” said Matthew with a knowing smile as he walked towards a radio telephone.
Professor Glimpuddle was ever so pleased to hear from Matthew and more than happy to fly up to Ruritania in the Shalimar. As they raced through the skies around the world, Susan, Carey and William squealed with delight and wonder, picking out all the magnificent sights and features far below them. As they passed over Burma, Matthew thought he heard the jingling of sleigh bells somewhere above them and felt a warm sensation of happiness course through his bones.
They all made it back to Ashford just in time for the clock in the village square to tick over to 11:00 in the morning of Christmas Eve. Nothing seemed to have changed and no-one noticed their absence as they jogged back to the laneway behind the Cavendish house. All four children exchanged a few knowing glances and grins that night at the Christmas Eve church service as the choir sang their hearts out.
Trudging back home through the snow, Philip and Matthew had a chance to talk at last.
“Thanks for coming to save me, Matt.”
“What else could I do, Philip? You are my brother after all; blood is thicker than water.”
“So is jelly.”
Matthew laughed out loud at that, white frost spreading in front of his mouth.
“No, but I really mean it. I’m certainly not going to be going accepting any gifts from foreign strangers again any time soon. Come on, I’ll race you back home!”
“In a minute, I just dropped something. You get a head start; you’ll need it, my little goblin.”
“Says you.” Philip then took to his heels and dashed off through the snow along the path towards home.
Matthew turned around to the trees that lay beside them and saw who he knew would be there.
“Good evening, sir.”
“Good evening, Matthew Cavendish. It is good to see you once again.” replied Father Christmas. “Your brother seems to have learned his lesson well enough.”
“I think I have as well, sir.”
“And what was it?”
“I should have been more responsible and told Mother and Father what happened to Philip. I thought I was all grown-up and could handle it on my own. I was wrong.”
“Then truly, you have received a precious gift this day, that of wisdom. And you have done more than that.” The old man smiled with infinite kindness. “You helped save someone else. That was a noble deed.”
“Thank you, sir. Merry Christmas.”
“You are most welcome, Matthew. Merry Christmas.”
As the two brothers lay in their beds later that night, all the outside world enveloped in a silent wonderland, Philip rolled over and looked across the room at Matthew, who was lying back and staring at the roof.
“Matt?”
“Yes, Philip?”
“That was the best Christmas ever.”
“It has hardly begun, Philip. And there will be many, many more. Good night.”
“Good night.”
Re: A Christmas Tale II
Lovely to read this again Simon, Merry Christmas 
-
Simon Darkshade
- Posts: 1049
- Joined: Thu Nov 17, 2022 10:55 am
Re: A Christmas Tale II
You’re very welcome. I do look back on this pair of tales fondly and remain a bit chuffed that I managed to write them in ~2 days each.
Re: A Christmas Tale II
Hadn’t seen this one before. Great fun again.