SAMTSIRHC

There once was a wicked warlock, named Samtsirhc, who hated Christmas time. He hated it so much that he did everything that was in his dark power to destroy it.

First of all, using the magic of the black horn which grew at the centre of his forehead, he killed all the Christmas trees in the world. Entire forests of Christmas trees withered and died because of his evil spell.

But it did not stop Christmas, because the people made artificial Christmas trees to put their presents under and Christmas carried on.

So, then he sent another plague, with the power of his black horn, to kill all the turkeys. Thousands of poor turkeys suddenly keeled over and died, all across the world. Even infant turkeys in their eggs could not hatch and they too died.

But it did not stop Christmas, for the people just ate goose or roast pork or some other thing instead, and Christmas continued.

And so, the warlock tried again. He cast a spell, by the power of his black horn, that ripped December 25th itself from the cosmic calendar of time. “If there is no December 25th then surely there can be no Christmas”, he thought.

But it did not stop Christmas, for the people started to celebrate Christmas on December 26th and Christmas continued.

So the evil warlock spoke to his sister, Loriana, a good witch who he had long ago imprisoned within a stone cell that was inside a walnut that was inside a goose’s egg which he kept in one of the 99 pockets of his black, velvet, magical coat.

“Loriana”, he said, holding the egg in his skeletal left hand and gazing through egg shell and nut shell; stone wall and skull, into her very mind, “Tell me what is the essence of Christmas so that I may destroy it forever”.

“Never”, said his sister, “Not even if you fried me in the oils of hell would I ever tell you”.

But her wicked brother pushed deeper and harder into her mind and into that golden room where her heart was kept. “My mind is much stronger than yours, sister”, he said, “And I know that you know the essence of Christmas because you’ve always loved Christmas time. It is kept within your heart”.

And, inside her heart, he saw these words written in gold, “Children are the essence of Christmas time”.

Tears poured out of Loriana’s eyes and she screamed but there was nothing she could do.

“So, Children are the essence of Christmas time”, said the black warlock, “then I shall steal away all the children”.
Then, speaking through his black horn, his voice was heard throughout the world, “I am the warlock, Samtsirhc”, he said, “It was I who killed all the Christmas trees and all the turkeys too and made the 25th of December disappear, but you kept Christmas all the same. Now, as a punishment, upon the stroke of midnight on Christmas Eve,
I will take away all the children in the world”.

When the last of his words were heard spoken, the whole world cried in panic. Parents everywhere locked their doors and kept their children inside, hugging them close to their hearts, terrified of losing them. But what could they do against the power of the evil warlock? No matter how hard they held onto their children, when the hour hand and the minute hand converged upon twelve, then their children vanished from their arms and even from inside the bellys of expectant mothers.

The warlock was happy atlast. With their children gone, the people of the world did not want to celebrate Christmas anymore. Instead, they wept and turned Christmas into a time for weeping and mourning. Instead of singing Carols they wailed and sobbed and instead of putting lights upon their artificial trees, they smashed and buried and burned them as hated, painful reminders that their children were missing.

But, deep inside her stony cell, inside its walnut shell, inside its goose egg, the good witch, Loriana was watching the evil thing that her brother had done.

“I have to restore the children of the world to their parents”, she said, “But, before I can do this, I must be rescued from my prison”.

So she took a stone that was lying on the floor of her cell and scratched out a spell on the floor.

She drew a picture of a man hanging from a gallows and underneath she wrote the name Marvello.

Far off in the kingdom of Lovingia, a man named Marvello was standing on the gallows waiting to be hung.

“Your crime is shouting Merry Christmas, drinking mulled wine and singing Christmas songs”, the judge had said, “For, ever since the children of our beloved king disappeared, the happy celebration of Christmas has been a most grievous crime, punishable by hanging”.

“I’m sorry, your honour”, Marvello had pleaded in his defence, “But the world has become so dark, gloomy and miserable now that I thought it needed some good cheer”.

“Good cheer has no place in the world anymore”, said the judge, banging his gavel.

A black bag was placed over Marvello’s head infront of a hateful, jeering crowd of childless parents; a noose of hemp was placed around his neck and pulled tight as dark drums of death were slowly beaten and a masked executioner stood with his hand upon a lever which would open a trapdoor beneath Marvello’s feet.

But, all of a sudden, the gallows began to rise up into the air and both the masked executioner and the priest reading out the prisoner’s last rites lost their balance and tumbled off the floating gallows onto the dusty earth below; then the ropes that had bound Marvello’s hands behind his back broke in two like dry cobwebs.

“Hang on to the noose, Marvello”, said a voice, speaking from inside the man’s head, “or you will fall off of the flying gallows”.

“What?!”, asked the panic stricken Marvello, hanging on tightly to the noose and looking down upon the prison yard that was now getting very, very far below, “What is going on?”.

“You alone have kept christmas in your heart, while the rest of the world has gone into mourning”, said the voice, “that is why you alone can free me from my cell and help me to defeat my wicked brother”.

“But where are you taking me?”, he asked, white clouds getting in his eyes as the gallows flew through the December sky.

“To the top, or rather the bottom, of the topsy turvy mountain”, said the voice, “It is where the castle of my brother is”.

And then Marvello saw, although his eyes could scarcely believe what they were seeing, a giant mountain that was turned upside down and resting steadily upon its narrow mountain peak; its base sticking high up in the air like a wide plateau and, flying over that plateau, he saw the grim and forbidding castle of Samtsirhc, hewn out of a strange stone that was so black that the castle was almost indistinguishable from its own shadow.

Landing infront of the castle, but hidden among the clouds, Marvello stepped down from the platform of the gallows and he saw that, round about the castle walls, was a moat of fire and churning, bubbling, orange molten lava and, swimming through the molten lava were snapping lizards and hissing serpents with skin of shining metal.

“How am I to get across such a moat?”, asked Marvello, his confidence dwindling, “unless they lower the drawbridge of the castle?”.

“You must hide among the clouds and wait. The drawbridge will open when the castle yawns”, said the voice in his head, “And it yawns quite often because the life of a castle can get very boring”.

“Ho hum!”, thought the warlock’s Castle, it’s windows gazing off into the clouds, “Another boring day of standing still and staring into space. We’re so high up on the top of this mountain that not even birds come for a visit. If only I were a gypsy caravan instead of a castle, I would see the world! But there’s not much chance of that happening”.

Suddenly, the castle felt a nice big yawn coming on. It liked yawning because it broke the monotony of its days but, just as it was in the middle of a really long and satisfying yawn, with its drawbridge completely lowered, out of the clouds where he had been hiding, came Marvello, running quickly across the drawbridge and into the castle.

“Alright”, said Marvello, feeling proud that he had made it safely inside the castle, “Now what should I do?”.

“Just follow my directions”, said the voice, “but be careful not to step on any cracks because they bite and beware of the bats and the rats and the spiders; they bite too and watch out for the ghosts…”.

“Ghosts?”, asked Marvello, starting to lose his nerve, “Do they bite too?”.

“Only the less scary ones”, said the voice, “But don’t worry. Just follow my directions and you’ll be safe”.

As Marvello made his way along the darkened corridoors of the warlock’s castle, he began to become aware of just how frightening a place it was. All around him and underneath him he could see dark cracks grinning and groaning, snapping or grinding their craggy, stone jaws together and there were quite enormous bats, hanging upside down from the ceiling, wrapped in their own black, jagged, leathery wings and rats, as big as wolves, with buck teeth the size and shape of daggers and slithering, slimy pink tales aslong as boa-constrictors and spiders with a hundred glaring red eyes, as large as crystal balls, and mandibles so large that they could snip a tree trunk in half and six, spindly, hairy legs as long as fishing rods, each with a hairy, clawed foot at its end.

And then he saw all the ghosts; skeletal brides wearing cobweb dresses and veils who,
if they ever caught hold of a living man would never let him go; headless beefeaters with long sharp pikestaffs and grinning, moustached heads under their arms; little boy ghosts playing football with a screaming human head and a little girl ghost, singing about murder and skipping with a hangman’s noose.

“I’ve been too close to one of those already”, thought Marvello.

Eventually, though, they came to the room of the warlock.

“Here it is”, said the voice in Marvello’s head, “This is the door to my brothers chamber” and, infront of him, the door creaked open.

“Won’t he be in there?”, asked Marvello, pointing into the darkened room with a trembling finger.

“He won’t be but something else might be”, said the voice, “ If the sun has not yet set,
then my brother should still be fast asleep but, whenever my brother sleeps, he becomes whatever he is dreaming about”.

“Well, I hope he’s not dreaming about lions and tigers”, said Marvello, entering the room and seeing that, inside, it was snowing and a little boy was kneeling on the floor crying.

“Who is that?”, asked Marvello, pointing to the weeping child, “Is that him?”.

“That is him when he was a boy”, said the voice, “He is dreaming of the Christmas when our parents died. From that day onwards he hated Christmas, that is why he turned his name back to front, Samtsirhc is Christmas backwards”.

Then Marvello saw the warlock’s magic coat with its 99 pockets, hanging up on a coat rack made of human bones.

“Be careful”, said the voice, “Because 98 of the pockets in that coat are lethal, magical traps that can swallow you whole or which you can fall into and never reach the bottom of.

“Well, how will I know which is the right pocket?”, asked Marvello, exasperated.

“I shall sing”, said the voice, “From inside the pocket. Listen to all of the pockets and, when you hear the one that has singing inside, you will know it is the right one”.

So Marvello listened to all 99 of the pockets in the warlocks black velvet, magical coat and he heard all kinds of strange noises coming from within each one; the sound of foghorns and steam trains and roaring lions and thunderstorms, but only one of the pockets contained the sound of singing and, when he heard that, he put his hand into the pocket and, rather than being swallowed whole or falling into a dark abyss, he pulled out a snow white goose’s egg.

“Crack open the egg, quickly”, said the voice, “And break open the nutshell that’s inside with the heel of your boot”.

Marvello did as he was instructed, cracking open the goose’s egg aswell as the walnut shell inside and then he found himself standing outside of a prison cell and, inside the prison cell, was a beautiful woman with long, flowing blonde hair.

“Are you the voice that was in my head?”, he asked, dazzled by her enormous beauty.

“I am Loriana. A maid servant of the light and polar opposite of my brother who is a
Butler for darkness”.

Loriana’s reply went completely over Marvello’s head but it didn’t matter for, as soon as he opened her cell door, she was free.

Then she worked another spell and turned her wicked brother into a story in a book,
“For aslong as no one believes in him, he shall never become real again”, she said, closing the book and locking it with a golden key.

Then, merely by taking hold of his hand, she took Marvello back to his home in Lovingia and, waving goodbye to him, flew round and round the world and, as she flew over each town and city in each country in each continent, the children of that place began reappearing.

“Oh my son, my precious son!”, exclaimed the mother of one child, weeping as she embraced him joyfully, “What happened to you? Where have you been?”.

“I was here all the time, mother”, he said, “You just couldn’t see me or hear me or feel me when I tried to hold onto you”.

When all the children of the world had been reunited with their parents and all were happy and smiling again, they began celebrating Christmas once more and, when they did, the spirit of Christmas flew out of their hearts and turned the black castle of the warlock into one of golden light and its fiery moat into one of purest, sapphire blue water and it drove out all the horrid bats, rats, spiders and ghosts and Loriana sat within the castle upon her golden throne attended by fairies and angels and said to all, “Now that the spirit of childhood has returned to this world, may all the people celebrate Christmas in peace, friendship and joy forevermore”.