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“You’ll spend the summer with your Gran,” Mum said. She looked at them in a way that meant don’t argue.
“Why?” asked John. He remembered an old lady who smelled of lilac and mentholated drops. Ginger biscuits, he remembered, and cats. “I wanna stay here, with you.”
Instead of smacking his ear for arguing, she looked sad. “Your father and I have some things to take care of. And your Gran is a lonely old woman who could use a couple of kids to keep her on her toes.”
Harry was excited; she talked of nothing but the cats and the vegetable garden and the jam tarts. John didn’t want to go, but his mum said it would be fine. There would be plenty to keep him busy in her cottage.
As soon as school ended, his mum packed them up and put them on a train going north. To his four-year-old eyes, the country seemed wild, and he imagined what strange beasts and birds might live in the forests they passed.
Gran lived outside of town. She met them in her car and drove them out into the country, past farms and fields. Having lived in the city for his entire life, John thought it all looked like a paradise. When they pulled up to the cottage, he could not see another house. Surrounding the cottage were fields full of flowers and bees and birds and small rodents. A lazy stream ran through the middle of the fields, leading straight into the loveliest woods John had ever seen.
“I want to go there,” he told his grandmother. “Can I?”
“Johnny, my love,” she said, stooping down and putting her hand beneath his chin. “Those woods are magic. Strange creatures live there, ones that might whisk you away from your Mum and your Da and your sister. You must never leave the yard.”
While he might have missed Mummy, his Da was almost always cross, and they often yelled about things he didn’t understand. The prospect of not having to share a bed with Harry or listen to her teasing was tempting.
But Gran had spoken. And so the days were boring and long. Though the sun never seemed to set, they were never allowed to run through the fields and play in the small stream that ran into the woods, and Gran put them in bed as soon as the sun began to sink behind the woods. They lay in their little bed, listening to her humming and rocking in her chair downstairs.
“Don’t you want to go to the woods, Harry?” he asked his sister.
Harry laughed at him. “It’s just a bunch of trees,” she said with all the superior scorn of a seven-year-old girl. She liked playing with the cats and picking vegetables and helping Gran make jam tarts. But John wanted to run and climb and get dirty in the fields.
He found it hard to sleep with sunlight still pouring through the curtains. Harry, being older, was allowed to read a book, as long as she didn’t talk to her brother and keep him awake.
At night, when Harry and Gran were asleep, John would crawl out of the bed he shared with his sister and sit at the window. He stared longingly at the woods, imagining the strange, magical creatures he might see there.
One night, when the moon was full and bright, he looked across the fields towards the woods, feeling the magic emanating from them. As he scanned the moonlit fields, he thought he saw something moving at the edge of the woods. And he heard music. It drew him.
He crept down the stairs, trying not to make them creak. He was small, and the stairs were quiet. The door made a small click as it closed behind him, and he ran for the woods.
The grasses in the fields came up to his chest, and he waded through them as if they were an ocean, imagining himself swimming. The stream gurgled beside him. He thought of putting his bare feet in the water, but decided to head straight into the woods.
As he drew near, the trees seemed to loom higher, and the way between the them grew darker. It might be like the forest where Hansel and Gretel had gotten lost, or where the Three Bears lived. Maybe there was even a castle inside where he would find a king living.
Hearing a sound, he halted, breathing deeply. Running had worn him out, and he was tempted to sit down for a while and rest. But something was moving among the trees.
“Hello,” he said softly. “Let me see who you are.”
The creature flitted between the trees, a seeming shadow.
“Do you want to play with me?” he asked.
The shadow piped a few notes on a flute.
“Don’t be afraid,” he told it. “I’m just a boy.”
As he was saying this, he wondered if it could be a bear or a wolf. Maybe he would be eaten alive. Maybe a woodcutter would have to be called in to open the wolf’s belly and let him out. That might be scary.
But he didn’t feel scared. The creature, whatever it was, seemed shy of him.
“I’m just a boy,” he said again. “Why won’t you play with me?”
The creature drew closer. It was about John’s size, child-shaped with wild, curly hair. It cocked its head and asked, “What is a boy?”
“I am,” he replied. “What are you? Can I see you?”
“I’m the Pan,” it said, stepping into the clearing. Moonlight poured down on the creature, who also looked like a boy. “What shall we play, Boy?”
“My name is John.” He stepped towards the Pan. It was a lovely creature, with pale skin and eyes like glass. There were quite a few leaves stuck in its curly hair. He noticed that it also had horns, like a goat, and its legs were covered with fur. On top it was a boy, he saw, while its bottom half was definitely a goat.
“What happened to your feet?” he asked. “You have hooves.”
“What happened to yours?” the Pan replied. “You have feet like a rat.”
He looked at his feet. They were quite dirty after his run across the fields. He giggled. “But I don’t have a tail, so I’m not a rat.”
The Pan smiled and came closer. “Make that sound again.”
“What sound?”
“The bird-sound. Ha-a-a-a.”
John giggled again. The Pan tried to giggle, too, but it came out, Ba-a-a-a-a!
“You sound like a goat,” he told the goat-boy. “Where do you live?”
“Here, in the woods.”
“All by yourself?”
The Pan nodded. “But now you can live here, too. You can live with me.”
“Really?”
The Pan nodded. “Only at night time, though. In the day, my magic disappears and I have to hide.”
“I didn’t know magic was only at night,” he said.
The Pan nodded. “At night, anything you can imagine can happen here, in the woods. During the day, it’s just trees.”
They played. For hours, they chased one another among the trees. Occasionally a tree would reach out and trip John, and another tree would make a tsking sound and lift him up, dust off his bottom, and put him back on his feet. He giggled, and the Pan said ba-a-a-a, and before they knew it, the sun was about to rise.
“Oh, no!” John said. “Gran will be angry with me for staying out all night. She told me not to go into the woods.”
“Wait,” said the Pan. He pulled John towards him and placed a kiss on his lips. “That will stop time for a few minutes, long enough for you to run home. Will you come back?”
“Yes!” He ran, turning at the edge of the woods to wave goodbye. “I’ll see you tonight!”
He managed to get into his bed before anyone woke up. The sun was just beginning to peek through the curtains. He snuggled under the counterpane and instantly fell asleep.
“Wake up!” Harry was shaking him. “Breakfast’s ready.”
He ate his porridge and drank his tea and tried to keep himself from telling them about the woods and the Pan. But the words just kept wanting to come out. He ran into the garden and began pulling weeds from between the carrots and parsnips. All day he tried to stay busy so he wouldn’t remember to say where he’d been all night.
By the time supper was over and all the dishes had been cleaned, he was ready to sleep. But once the moon rose and he could hear Harry and his grandmother breathing deeply, he woke and went to the window. There he saw a shape dancing on the edge of the woods and heard the pipe making a melody. He crept outside and headed for the trees.
As the weeks passed, they made up new games. They climbed the trees and tried to touch the moon. When it was just a sliver moon, the Pan leaped up and caught it. Swinging back and forth from his backwards goat knees, he called, “John! John! Grab my hands!” And John jumped, grabbing onto his hands. They swung like that until their weight pulled the moon closer to the ground, then jumped free, falling into the fields, tumbling together on the ground.
They splashed in the stream, followed it until it turned into a deep pool. Moonbeams darted like minnows in the pool, and they dove down, trying to catch them. Seeing the stars reflected in the pool, they looked up, traced patterns in the sky with their fingers, and watched as the animals they made came to life and danced across the sky.
Sometimes they lay on the bank of the stream, their arms winding around one another. His fingers touched the small horns that poked out of the Pan’s hair, and he wished he could have horns and hooves, too. No sooner had he thought it than it became a reality. Gingerly, he felt his own horns. Smiling, he stood and ran his hands over his legs, stomped his hooves in the soft grass of the bank.
The Pan smiled back at him. “See, your imagination is growing. Now you can be whatever you want.”
Some nights he became a dog and dug holes, looking for rabbits. On other nights, he was a bear or a tiger, and the Pan might be a dragon or a lion. In the moonlight, they both grew wings and flew around the treetops, chasing the fairies.
At the end of each night, the Pan would place a kiss on his lips and tell him to run home.
One morning, Gran said, “Your mum will come for you tomorrow. You’d best sleep well tonight. It’s a long trip home.”
John ran to the woods as soon as it was dark and Gran slept, calling for his friend. “I have to go home,” he said. Though everyone said he was a big boy, he couldn’t help the tears that ran from his eyes. “I don’t want to leave you.”
“These woods are your home now,” the Pan said. “You can always come here. But you have to promise me.”
“Promise what?”
“You must promise never to grow up.”
He did not hesitate. Being a grown up seemed boring and hard. Adults worried about money and thought it necessary to eat vegetables and did not like it when children ran into the woods and played all night. “I promise. I’ll never grow up, Pan. But how do I get back here? I have to take a train to get from my house to the town and ride in a car to Gran’s cottage. I’m not big enough to do those things by myself.”
The Pan took his hand. “At night time, when you see the moon, you can run here. I’ll be waiting for you.”
He and Harry rode the train back home. Mum met them at the station and they went back to their boring small house in the suburbs where there were only small trees and no stream. She and Da didn’t yell any more. Now the house was filled with silence.
Gran died that winter. They took the train north to see her buried in the church yard, but the cottage had been sold and Mother didn’t want to see the woods, even though John begged.
He started school the next fall, and rode a bus every day with other children. His classmates talked about playing games and what they watched on the telly and all the things they would put on their Christmas lists. John didn’t say much.
Most nights, he went back to the woods and played with the Pan. They didn’t talk about the telly or school or toys. They played their own games and ran through the trees giggling. The Pan imagined a pirate ship, and for several nights they sailed in the sky, using spyglasses to see the islands that were hidden there. Sometimes they found strange animals or savages living on those islands. Sometimes they swam with mer-people and looked for sunken treasure. Sometimes they met fairies, who giggled and flitted about their ears, chattering in their strange language. The Pan said that language was called Kuruva, and that it was the language for telling secrets.
And every morning, just before the sun peeked over the horizon, the Pan would place a kiss on John’s lips and remind him not to grow up. And John would promise.
Zvilas to, said the Pan. In Kuruva, it meant I love you.
After a few years of school, John noticed he was getting taller and bigger. This was good because bigger boys didn’t pick on him any longer. But he felt bad because he was breaking his promise. He still went back, though, and sailed in the stars with his friend. If the Pan noticed he was growing up, he never mentioned it. Zvilas to, he said as he kissed John each dawn. I love you. Ba beni. Come back to me.
John learned to read, and found books about pirates and dragons and strange animals. He read about a boy living in the jungle. “We should go to India,” he told the Pan. “And maybe Australia.”
And from the little clearing in the magic woods, they went to those places and other places. They rode on elephants and learned to charm snakes and built tree houses and mud huts.
While they were sailing back from India, John asked, “What’s so bad about growing up?”
The Pan looked sad. “Growing up makes you forget.”
“What does it make you forget?”
“How to play, how to hang on the moon and sail among the stars. You won’t want to climb trees if you grow up, and you’ll never ever see another fairy.”
John thought the fairies were annoying, but it would make him sad never to see another one. “I’ll never grow up,” he promised.
But it was already happening. He thought more about girls than fairies, and almost never climbed a tree. His father left when he was thirteen. They had never been close, and it didn’t make much difference in work or school or arguing with his sister about whose turn it was to do the dishes. But his mother said, “Now you’re the man of the house, Johnny.” And that was the last time she called him Johnny.
He played clarinet in the school band and rugby after school. He got a job delivering newspapers, then another job pushing trolleys at the market. He saved up and bought a bicycle, then started saving for a car.
And one night, when he was lying in bed, looking at the moon, he saw a shape moving through the sky. It was a pirate ship, and the Pan was at the helm.
He had long ago figured out that all of his adventures with the Pan were merely dreams, and that growing up was inevitable and unstoppable, and that men don’t climb trees or sail through the stars.
The Pan parked his pirate ship at the roof, climbed right through the window and sat on John’s bed. “Come with me,” he said. “We need to play.”
He saw that the Pan was still part boy, part goat, but that he was bigger as well. John frowned a bit and asked, “Are you growing up, too?”
The Pan looked sad. “I’m trying not to. That’s why I’m here. I think that if we play some more, we’ll stop growing.”
John thought about this. “I don’t know if I can,” he said. “I want to, but I think I’m already forgetting how to play. My imagination seems to have shrunk.”
The Pan pulled on his hands. “Please, John. Let’s go to the woods and play.”
When he was a little child, John always thought time moved slowly. The days and nights were endless, and there was always time to play. Now, he noticed how quickly the sky was growing light, and he realised that time was speeding up. His mother had bills coming due, and he had homework assignments and rugby practice and overdue books and a job. It was as his father had always said, Time flies. He’d never understood that, but now he could actually see it flying by. All the minutes had tiny wings and were beating them as hard as they could to escape from the past.
He pulled the Pan towards him, put his arms around his shoulders. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve forgotten how to get there.”
The Pan wept. “I have to go back now. Please, don’t forget me. When you see the crescent moon hanging low enough to grab, come and find me.”
They kissed. It was a much longer kiss because it was harder to freeze time now that they were growing. For a moment, they felt time stop. He ran his fingers through the Pan’s hair and felt his horns. Their tongues touched and John smelled the woods and heard the insects singing in the darkness. He could have found his way there with his eyes closed. He could have followed the stream into the woods and sat in the clearing, gazing up at the stars.
Zvilas to, the Pan whispered. I love you.
Ba beni, he relied. Come back to me.
Once, he tried to go back.
It was after his mother died. He was in college then, studying biology and chemistry and anatomy. He had girlfriends, but none of them lasted long. He came home alone when he got the news.
John arranged the funeral, talked to the lawyers, and went through his mother’s papers to made sure all the bills were paid. He put his arm around Harry as they watched their mother’s casket lowered into the ground. He brought her home and opened the bottle of scotch they had bought on the way back from the cemetery. They sat on their mother’s sofa and looked at each other.
“Do you remember the woods?” he asked her after he’d emptied half his glass. “When we were kids, at Gran’s cottage?”
She frowned. “We never went into the woods, Johnny. Gran said no.”
“Because of the creatures,” he said, smiling. “I met one of them, you know.”
She laughed. “Was it a pink elephant? I’ve seen a few of those in my time.”
“No, it was a goat-boy,” he said. “A faun, I suppose. He was my friend.”
“I remember Gran’s goats. Neither of them was part boy, as far as I can recall.” She shook her head. “You always had an imagination, Johnny.”
John didn’t remember the goats, which was oddly disturbing. “I thought he was real.”
“When did you figure out that he wasn’t?”
He shrugged. “Just recently.” He took another swallow of the scotch. “I miss him, though.”
She chuckled. “Goat-boy.”
She had a few more glasses and finally passed out. He stretched Gran’s afghan over her and went up to his old room.
He looked out the window as he pulled his clothes off. The moon was shining on the trees, and he listened for the sound of a pipe. Silence filled his ears. “What I wouldn’t give to see a fairy now,” he said. “Or a pirate ship sailing through the stars.”
He sighed and stretched out on the bed, still gazing through the window. “Zvilas to, Pan,” he said. “Ba beni.”
He finished medical school and became a surgeon. He thought of all the places he meant to visit when he was a child — Africa, Australia, India, China — and joined the army. They sent him to Afghanistan, where he slept in the desert and looked up at the moon. Sometimes it felt so close he could almost touch it.
He saw the beauty of the mountains and the desert and the light-eyed people who lived there. It could have been a magic place, but it was full of war and death and destruction. He fought against those things, and sometimes he had to work hard to remember the woods, and the fairies that tickled his ears, and the trees that chuckled when they tripped him up. He tried to visualise a pirate ship docking at an island in the Milky Way, but found that even his dreams had deserted him.
He knelt in the desert, trying to save the lives of those who had fallen. The sky was filled with smoke and occasionally illuminated by an explosion. And then they were overrun, men with guns swarming over the lines and shooting. Shielding a fallen soldier, he saw the man’s chest darken with blood and realised that the bullet had passed through his own shoulder. Men were screaming, running, dying. He lay on top of his fallen friend’s body. The moon shone down on them, huge and impassive. Time slowed to a crawl.
He saw the woods up ahead and ran for it, hearing the door click behind him, as it had so many years earlier. The stream gurgled on his right, and the fields stretched out to his left. He could hear a flute playing. The trees loomed taller, darker as he entered that magic space.
In the shadowy clearing, he listened. He could hear no bombs now, no screams. Something rustled in the bushes.
“Hello,” he said. “Who’s there?”
He saw a child-shaped shadow among the trees. A voice spoke in the darkness. “Do you want to play?”
“Oh God, yes,” he said. “Please.”
The Pan stepped out of the shadows, a small half-goat, half-boy creature with horns. “You found your way back,” he said.
He felt tears on his face. “I’m not a boy. I grew up.” He realised that he was on the ground, looking up at the moon. The Pan knelt over him.
“Don’t be afraid, John,” he said. “I’m here.” Leaning over him, he kissed John’s parched lips and touched his forehead.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I didn’t mean to lose you.”
“You never lost me,” the Pan said. “I’ve always been with you.”
“I love you,” he whispered through his tears. “Don’t leave me.”
“John,” the Pan whispered. “Promise me.”
“What should I promise?” he gasped.
“Promise to live.”
“I can’t,” he said. “I’m dying.”
The Pan sat back on his goat knees and smiled. “Promise. If you do, I’ll tell you a secret.”
He nodded. Certainly, he would not be getting any older. His life would end minutes from now. He could live that long, perhaps. “I promise.”
The Pan leaned down and kissed him. He felt time freeze. “Here’s the secret,” the Pan said. “You won’t die.”
His mouth felt so dry. “I’m… I’m not going to die?” he rasped. “How? I’m bleeding out right now.”
“You will live,” the Pan said. “I will die so that you can live. But you must keep your promise this time.”
“You can’t die,” he cried. “I don’t want to live if you die. I love you.”
The Pan was no longer a small goat-boy, but a beautiful man with curly hair and translucent eyes. “I love you, John. Live.”
“I promise,” he whispered, shaking with sobs. “I love you, too.”
As they kissed the third time, he felt something childish and carefree flow into him. He looked one last time into the clear eyes and sensed time begin to move forward again.
He woke up in an army hospital. His shoulder was nearly destroyed, and his leg ached. He felt feverish and ill. For a long time he lay semi-conscious, listening to the coming and going of doctors. After a few weeks, he was invalided home and ended up in a rehab centre in London. Harry came to see him, gave him her old mobile, the one with the inscription from Clara.
Then it was a drab bedsit, a place where he could afford to stay. He often wished he had died, but did not forget his promise. Live. He didn’t know how much time had passed, but eventually he stopped thinking about death and began to figure out life.
When Mike Stamford called out to him as he walked through Russell Square, he stopped and talked, even though he’d almost forgotten how to have a conversation. All he wanted to do was go home and let another day end, but he remembered his promise. Live.
And when he came into the pathology lab and heard himself being introduced to the man staring into a microscope, his heart almost stopped. When the man raised his head, shook the dark curls off his forehead, and gazed at him with eyes like glass, his heart began to beat again. I promise.
And when he chased after him down alleys and across rooftops in the dark of night, he felt himself flying across the sky. When he shot the cabby, he wasn’t afraid. He had felt magic. He knew how to climb trees and hang from the moon. He had held the rudder of a pirate ship in his hand. He had talked to the fairies. He had learned the language of secrets.
And when they finally collapsed, giggling, in the stairwell, leaning against one another, he knew what he had to do to keep his promise.
The moon shone through the window. He pressed his mouth against Sherlock’s and kissed him, long and deep. Time stopped. Zvilas to, he whispered.
“I love you, John,” Sherlock whispered back.