Cedric's Christmas Adventure
(Click on links for more info).
Last Tuesday, in the middle of an otherwise uneventful morning, a message from Cedric, the Forgotten Footpath Society’s keenest (and most in need of supervision) young member, popped into my inbox.
It read:
“URGENT CHASE BUSINESS. Need to meet. Idea for newsletter. Important. Also festive.”
Cedric
Naturally, I assumed he’d stumbled across a new path, or broken one, or accidentally awakened an old one by humming the wrong song near a sentient stile. He wanted to meet in the café at Cranborne Garden Centre.
So I went.
The meeting
Cedric arrived on time but dishevelled, as if he’d sprinted through a hedge on the way there.
He ordered a large hot chocolate, sat down, and pulled out a notebook decorated with stickers of birds, constellations, and at least one cartoon badger.
Then he leaned in with the air of someone about to confess something slightly embarrassing.
“I’ve got your Christmas edition sorted,” he announced in a stage whisper.
Then he flipped open the notebook, pulled out a loose sheet of paper, and plonked it on the table between us.
Across the top in bold felt-tip capitals, were these words:
THE CHASE WINTER PLAYLIST
It had a subtitle too.
A musical survey of local people and other entities.
“I asked them all their favourite Christmas songs,” he said.
Looking down the list, amongst the unsurprising presence of some of his fellow FFS members, I saw some unexpected and, in some cases, frankly terrifying names. And I don’t mean Mariah Carey and the Darkness. I asked how he had got this information.
He looked very pleased with himself, then we commenced a conversation that included one or two things that will probably appear in a disciplinary report, if I dob him in to the FFS committee. I’m undecided on that one.
“It started after we did the Wraith’s Way walk” he began.
"You made yourself bit unpopular on that one" I reminded him.
“Mmm, things seemed a bit frosty on the walk back to the car, the others did seem a bit off with me for some reason. So to break the ice, I thought I’d ask them to name their favourite Christmas song”.
“They were a bit stony-faced at first, but did give me their answers in the end, even had a bit of a debate about it. Geoff said that some people had odd ideas about what a Christmas song is, some so-called ‘Christmas songs’ have nothing to do with Christmas. Maggie told him to stop being a grumpy old pedant, if someone likes it as their Christmas song that should be good enough. Els said he should mind his own business; people can choose what they like.
"Then they tossed a few ideas around and by the time we got back to the car they’d settled on one each.
"It worked quite well, I had thought they were going to make me walk home but they gave me a lift, so all good”.
He took a triumphant sip of hot chocolate.
“But that gave me the idea. What if I got some others to add to the list? You know, the people (and other things) in your newsletter? Then make a feature of it in the Christmas edition.”
“So I started with the easy bit, the humans, you know what I mean?”
“Indeed I do” I lied, and he went on:
”Isla was first. She knows my mum, comes round every Thursday to do a bit of mystic cleaning.”
I raised an eyebrow. Isla’s our folklore expert, investigates stories like the sundial glade, but I didn’t know she had a side hustle in arcane domestic maintenance.
Cedric continued, “You know, tidying up any uncanny manifestations or stray phenomena that have drifted in. Anyway, she’d just finished checking the integrity of the apotropaic marks over the fireplace and I asked her about her favourite, and she gave me her answer straight away, like she’d been waiting for the question all along. Said it belongs to winter like a falcon to the glove.”
“Next I went looking for Rufus, caught up with him in the Queen’s Head and asked him.”
I felt that Rufus would have little interest in indulging Cedric. He contributes wildlife expertise to the newsletter, with a mystical twist, like the story of the birthday owl.
“How’d that go?” I asked,
“He told me to go away.”
“But you got an answer?”
“Yes. After I went away and came back with a pint of Guinness.”
“Hubert was tricky,” he went on. Ah yes, Hubert, that secretive, grim emissary of sarcasm who writes our weekly guide.
“I’m not supposed to know who he really is, but I do. I found his dropbox up on Faulston Drove, staked it out, and saw him doing his weekly drop. I recognised him, he comes on the FFS walks sometimes. Always moaning. Told me off for licking mushrooms. Doesn’t go by Hubert though. Calls himself…” He stopped. “Can’t say. Never mind. Anyway, next time I saw him on a walk, I asked him. He said he hates Christmas songs. And Christmas.”
“Did you believe him?”
“No. So I bided my time. Kept an eye on him. He cracked eventually.”
I pictured Cedric lurking around the Chase, tracking Hubert like a badly trained puppy. I pictured Hubert, wondering what the heck Cedric was up to.
“How did he crack?” I asked.
“It was in the café at Broad Chalke. I was disguised as a cyclist. Kept my helmet and shades on, just in case. They had a Christmas playlist going in the background, and he sighed when this song came on. That counts." He pointed to the list. "I think that’s got to be his favourite."
"And it was quite handy following him around, because he gave me a way in to Ebble.”
“Really? Do tell”. This was going to be interesting. Ebble is the goddess of the river by the same name, famous for the ill-fated affair she had with Hubert when she took human form as Mary, a woman who once lived by the river in Bishopstone. Needless to say, it didn’t end well (see issues 1 to 9 for more).
“Well he leaves her things, always in the same place. Flowers, mainly. I saw where. Went there and left an offering, a flat stone with ‘Hey Ebble, what’s your favourite Christmas song’ written on it in chalk”.
“Bold move. Did she write back?”
“Oh no. She told me herself. Seemed quite excited about it, certainly more enthusiastic than most of the humans”.
“Really?” This was not what I expected.
“Yes, I went back next day to see if there was any sign of an answer, and there she was on the bank, waiting. Quite a shiny lady. A bit wavy round the edges. She laughed and said ‘I approve of your curiosity, little one’ (bit patronising, but hey, she is a goddess) then gave me two answers, one for her and one for Mary.”
“Then she started talking to herself. ‘Christmas ’94. Hubert wearing that terrible jumper. And the two of us pretending we weren’t in love yet’”.
“I didn’t know where to look, and said sorry. Ebble laughed, then kind of poured herself into the river. It was fun meeting her”.
“So...there are some other interesting names on this list. Tell me about the mirror-eyed fox? Where did you find him?”
“Ah, Faelen” said Cedric, taking a slug of chocolate from his mug, “He was sitting in a tree.”
“As one does”, I nodded, no longer surprised by anything, "if you're born out of flame and the spirit of smoke, anything goes".
“He just said ‘anything sung by foxes’ and went back to watching clouds. There's only one candidate for that tune really, so it's on the list.”
I glanced down the list, and saw Silas and Elowen's names. It made me wonder, would they understand the concept of a Christmas song, I'm not sure Faelen had; indeed, do they know its Christmas time at all?
“It looks like you’ve been to the Star and Lantern,” I said.
“Ah. Yes. That took some finding.”
Because, of course, the Star and Lantern is not the kind of pub one simply walks into. It has to want to be found.
Cedric, however, had a plan. (Not a good plan. A Cedric plan.)
“I tried being in need,” he explained, solemnly. “It took a lot of tries”.
I asked what that meant.
“I wandered along the Ox Drove looking forlorn; I stood at various crossroads with my hands in my pockets, shaking my head; I stared up at the night sky and sighed loudly; I did actually get properly lost a few times; and I whispered ‘I wish there was somewhere warm’ into the dark.”
And it worked. One afternoon on a path up by Old Wardour Castle, with an exaggerated limp and many a fake woeful whimper, he saw a warm glow between two sycamores. He limped through and there was the pub, sign swinging in a light wind.
Inside, there were a few patrons, just silhouettes that never quite came into focus, but he tried very hard not to stare. Silas the landlord and Elowen the barmaid were both there and instantly recognisable, being the only figures that seemed solid.
Silas stood behind the bar. Over by the hearth sat Elowen. He approached her first.
“Hello, I’m Cedric, and I’m asking people about their favourite Christmas songs. Would you tell me yours?”
“Not a person” she said. Then she smiled. “Songs are doors, Cedric. Be careful which ones you open”. She made a small, deliberate gesture, as though signalling to someone just beyond the edge of sight.
“She told me her song, then seemed to lose focus, fading slightly at the edges. I took this as my cue to move on and ask Silas.
“He was staring into the fire. He told me his choice quietly, as if naming it might summon something unwanted. Then he nodded and walked across the room to a door marked Not Yet, which opened for him and closed gently behind him.
“I was thinking about maybe asking some of the other folk in there, but when I looked round the pub was empty. Then it was gone altogether. I was standing under the sycamores alone”.
" So," I asked. "This Void you have here on the list. Is this the one from the Wraith's Way?"
"I don't know any other Voids. I don't think it has family, I get the impression it's an only...thing".
I asked Cedric how he found out it's favourite Christmas song.
“I just asked in the dream.”
Because, apparently, Cedric dreams of the Void. Often. He explained:
“I dream normally at first, you know, endless corridors, deadlines, falling off a bicycle, a tree speaking with my mum’s voice; and then something shifts. The Void arrives."
“We hit it off when I was on the Wraith’s Way, I was curious, it was pleased. Then it showed me a shortcut, very kind. Been dreaming of it ever since, not all the time, but most nights”.
So one night, while standing in that companionable inky blackness, Cedric simply said (or thought):
“By the way; do you have a favourite Christmas song?" There was a long pause. "Then it told me, in my head like. But it has to be the Nightwish version, or the deal’s off”.
“What deal?” I asked, slightly alarmed by the idea of Cedric making a deal with the infinite abyss of eternity.
“Um, err, nothing…by the way I also got Eva and Isolde”.
Despite the obvious attempt at deflection, and making a mental note to come back to this “deal” at a later point, I didn’t stop him because I was most curious indeed to know how on earth he got these two.
Eva is a woman who opened a door to the Otherworld and could only close it from the other side. And Isolde crossed the bridge between earth and sky and became a star.
“Well my nan always said if you get into trouble with fae or things from the other world, always sing to them, they like that”.
“So what trouble were you in?”
“Well none, but I didn’t know how else to find these two, so I just sang songs. I found Eva’s clearing, where her house used to be, tried a few tunes. One of them, I could hear bells and humming, faint in the distance, joining in with the melody. So that’s Eva’s. I got out of there quick mind, not sure I wanted to meet her just yet.”
Just yet? We need to keep an eye on Cedric.
“Then one night I went up onto Marleycombe Hill, sang a few tunes up there. A fox and an owl came to listen. I could see a star low in the sky, and when I sang this song,” he jabbed his finger on the list, “the star was flickering, so that was a sign. Isolde likes that one.”
At the end of all this, Cedric pushed the sheet of paper toward me with both hands, beaming.
“I think the Chase needs a Christmas playlist,” he said. “I think people should know what all these strange folk you write about like to listen to at this time of year. I’ve added my own favourite there at the bottom, you should add yours too!”
He’s right. Here's the list below.