From mrspencil - include geese, a Christmas tree and a sledge in a festive tale
It was, if I recall, a winter's morning sometime in 1920, when I was awakened by the sound of my friend Sherlock Holmes stomping around the floor of the little cottage we now shared in Sussex Downs. Once awake, I could hardly understand how I had remained asleep with the bright winter's light streaming through the windows. It reflected off the newly-fallen snow so that I could barely open my eyes even indoors.
"Holmes?" I asked, venturing downstairs. "What the devil is going on?" It reminded me of years gone by, when I would often find myself woken up at some ungodly hour to chase some criminal or another through the streets of London. I confess, I did think that as a retired gentleman, Holmes might be less inclined to insisting we be out of our beds before ten o'clock in the morning.
Evidently, I was mistaken.
"Ah, Watson, there you are!" my friend said with a broad smile. "Come, it is the perfect day for the start of the Christmas festivities."
"Christmas…Holmes, it is only the 14 of December!" I said, eyeing him warily. "Are you feeling alright?"
Holmes laughed. "Yes, of course, Watson. What better way to begin the Christmas season than with cutting down our own Christmas tree? I often used to do the same with my father when I was a boy, and well…it has been quite a long time since I have had the opportunity to do so again."
Of course. I quite understood. Last year, neither of us had much stomach for celebrating, the memories of the war still too close. The previous five years had been those awful years of the war itself, and the two before that Holmes was undercover in America. My eyes widened in some shock. Had it really been eight years since we had celebrated Christmas together? "Very well, Holmes, lead on!" I said gaily.
"Excellent," Holmes said. "There is a useful little copse of trees several miles north of here and we should have an easy time of it by sledge today." He led me outside where a sturdy sledge and a pair of strong, brown horses stood waiting.
"Holmes?" I asked. "Where did you get the sledge?" He owned no such thing, I was sure. We did not even have a stable.
Holmes laughed. "They are all Stackhurst's, Watson. I begged the use of them today in exchange for some of my best jars of honey."
I smiled. "You will have to invite him for dinner sometime, Holmes. He is a very nice neighbor." He was our only real neighbor; the rest all lived several miles away. Even Stackhurst's farm was a walk of about thirty minutes away from the cottage.
"I shall," Holmes said. "But first, our tree!" he gave the reins a snap and the horses took off, the sledge flying over the snow with ease. It was a most enjoyable trip, wrapped as we were in scarves, mittens and our heaviest coats. The day was perfectly clear, and in no time at all, we had reached a small copse of pine trees.
"Any of these will work well," I said. The ceilings of our little cottage were small, and could not have taken a tree with much more height than those we saw here, which were al short and squat. I breathed in the pine scent and smiled.
"I think that one will work," Holmes said, pointing toward a tree in the middle. "Shall we cut it down?" he brandished a saw that was nearly half his height in length and I stepped back.
"Holmes, are you handy with a saw?" I had never seen him use one, but memories of his cavalier attitude towards firearms rose up in my mind.
My friend gave me a peevish look. "Come, Watson, with both of us, we should have the tree down in no time!"
"Very well," I said. I held the tree steady while Holmes began to saw at its base. Very little time had passed before he was breathing heavily. I smiled down at him. "Perhaps we should have asked Stackhurst to come with us," I suggested.
Holmes looked up at me with annoyance. "Watson, between the two of us we are surely still capable of cutting down our own Christmas tree!" He went on with his sawing, and I sighed good naturedly. He often stubbornly refused to see our advancing ages, although he and I were both in better health than I would have believed possible, given all that we had been through.
I turned my head and spied a small flock of birds moving towards us. "Look, Holmes, I daresay we may have found our Christmas goose as well," I said.
Holmes turned to look at the geese, and as I looked in the other direction, I soon realized that we were surrounded. "Watson, have you ever seen geese act like this?" Holmes asked, as the flock of geese advanced on us. He stood up and we instinctively moved closer together.
"How should I know? Until last year I spent most of my life in cities," I said. Holmes was brandishing his saw again, as if it was a sword, and I said, "What are you going to do, saw them in half as they attack us?"
"They are not going to attack, Watson, and if they did-" Holmes broke off as one of the geese flapped its wing and came soaring at him.
I could not help but laugh heartily and Holmes glared at me as he cautiously stepped out from behind the tree where he'd hidden. "Oh, come now, it's funny!" I said. "You were not so scared when you went to face Moriarty!"
"Moriarty did not have wings, Watson," Holmes said, annoyed, which only made me laugh harder. Perhaps he realized what was funny, because he began to smile as well.
"Oof!" I cried out as a goose came at me from behind and knocked me forward. I tried to get up and no fewer than five geese were soon flapping their wings and pecking on top of me. Holmes, from what I could see of him, was laughing uncontrollably. "For heaven's sake, Holmes, will you help me?" I said sharply.
"Yes, of course. I'm sorry, Watson," Holmes said, although he was still laughing. "Get off him, birds. I said, get off!" No sooner did he push one bird away than another took its place, but after several minutes I managed to push the rest aside and stand up. I brushed the snow off of myself and glared at the geese, now watching us innocently.
"Shall we finish chopping down this tree and get out of here?" I asked.
"I think so," Holmes said. "Keep the geese away, will you, Watson?" He went back to sawing the tree down, and I watched the geese warily. A few times, one would nip at my hands, and I had to shoo it away angrily. The longer I watched the geese, the more I became convinced that they were conspiring among themselves to make our task harder.
"Holmes, are you almost done?" I asked over my shoulder, not taking my eyes off the geese.
"Yes, I think I'm about there!" Holmes called. A second later, I heard the telltale thump of the tree hitting the snow. "Excellent. Watson, come here and help me drag it to the sledge."
"Alright," I said. No sooner had I turned my back than I heard a swarm of honking and I looked behind me to see all the geese flapping their wings and coming toward us. "Holmes, come on, let's go!" I said. The entire flock numbered about twenty geese and I had no desire to be attacked by so many.
"Not without our tree!" Holmes said, and I grabbed several branches on one side, while he took the other. We started to run, dragging the tree behind us, hearing the flapping of wings that meant the geese were gaining on us. "Hurry, Watson!" he said, urging me on.
We at last made it to the sledge and hurriedly pushed the tree up onto the floor, leaving pine needles all over the snow. We hastily climbed up into our seats and Holmes gave the reins a snap. We left the entire flock of geese standing there, looking confused and honking after us, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
"Well," I said. "I have been chased by many things in all the years I've known you, Holmes, but none so strange as that."
"Yes, I wonder what it was that made them act that way," Holmes mused, taking a Christmas cookie out of his pocket and munching on it with one hand. I stared at him.
"Holmes, did you have cookies in your pocket the entire time?"
"Why, yes. Christmas cookies that young Hopkins' wife sent us, don't you remember?" he answered.
"Holmes, do you not realize that those geese were trying to get at those cookies?" I asked, somewhat annoyed.
"Oh," Holmes said, turning red. "No, I did not realize…Watson, I am sorry."
I looked at him, and then, unable to remain annoyed, began to laugh at the sheer absurdity of it, and after a few moments, he joined in. "It certainly is an interesting start to the Christmas season," I said. I was rather glad, at the end of it all, that our being retired in the country did not mean an end to the strange and odd things that always happened to us. It seemed that living with Sherlock Holmes would always have a way of bringing the oddities of life right to us, or in this case, of bringing us to them.