Looking back, I guess we were just ordinary kids from an ordinary town. There was no reason at all why it should have happened to us in particular.

December 17th - almost at the end of that long dark tunnel between Hallowe'en and Christmas. In another week, term would be over and the holidays begun, a time when days and nights didn't matter, and dreams, for a time, came true.

The four of us were playing out on the embankment after school one afternoon, with the sky darkening slowly all around us. Right now, it was exactly the colour of Sarah Jane Smith's eyes, that never seemed to look in my direction, but whose shade and sparkle I knew so very well. In another forty minutes it would have dimmed to the deep violet of night, and our game would be over ...

The four of us; me - Ross Wale - Carl Webley, Jeff O'Connor and Duncan Smith whose nickname was Donuts, though he pretended not to know why: playing at sliding down the north-facing bank on the skim of frost that the sun had not touched out of existence that day. Once, before my time, railway lines had run along this valley-in-miniature: and when Dad was a boy they had carried steam trains across town, over the main road and right past the bottom of our garden. I used to dream of that sight on summer afternoons, and could at such times almost smell the ghostly sooty smoke in the air, and hear the shrill phantom whistlings thread their way down many forgotten years.

Now the rails were gone and the trains ploughed no more like stegosaurs through the landscape of walls and chimneys and tidy gardens, all fenced off. There was not even a trace of the bedding gravel where the sleepers used to lie. Just a long furrow of grassy wasteland that the council had set aside for building: but no buildings had appeared here yet, and so we took advantage while we could of this wilderness smack in the middle of Wattstown.

We'd all brought along our own home-made versions of sledges. Carl's was no more than a torn-off section of cardboard box . I'd pinched a big plastic tray from the kitchen. Jeff had had the same idea, although his tray was tin, and he beat a rough and raggedy rhythm each time he clambered up the bank for another go. Duncan's sledge was fancier; a proper affair of wood with a grabstrap and runners that he'd actually waxed with the stuff his dad used to wax up his skis. But for all his showing off with it, Dunk's sledge went no faster than my plastic tray or Carl's bit of cardboard - and didn't we let him know it.

We'd have bursts of speeding and skimming down the bank, to land in a sprawl of bracken we'd piled up at the end of the run. The air trembled brittle with our screams and shrieks, and we laughed and joshed ourselves to exhaustion.

Then we'd rest, with the cold clenching round us like a metal fist: and we'd talk of the future and of our dreams of it - angel dreams, demon dreams: dreams of girls and glory, of being grown up and changing the world - Like candyfloss, melting to nothing really as soon as the words were in your mouth. But for those few moments on that afternoon so long ago now, they tasted good; sweet with promise.

" If only," Jeff said, staring skywards as he spoke the most important words in the world..." If only I was King, I'd put an end to misery. I'd make everybody equal and - "

" Paradox," broke in Duncan, who'd learned that word lately from Mr Buck our English tutor. " Everybody can't be equal if only you have the power to do it. And equal in what way? All equally good looking or bad? All equally clever or dull?"

" If all girls looked like Sarah Jane Smith," I mused, half sad and half excited, " I wouldn't look at Sarah any more."

" And if all boys looked like you," Carl added, attacking me in my instant of vulnerability, " no girl would ever want to get married..."

" That's so funny Carl," I snapped back. " And if all people everywhere had your sense of humour, we'd commit mass suicide!"

" Let it go," Jeff said, realising his vision was ruined.

" I only want folk to be happy..."

" Nothing's ever that simple," I told him. " Reality always gets in the way."

So we talked a while about Christmas presents, and made plans to see each other over the holiday period. Then we went back to sliding, four cutout shadows against the glowing sky. The noise we made, the speed we flew! We lost ourselves so much we didn't notice the new kid arriving. Duncan almost smashed into him, though, at the end of a record breaking skim. The rest of us braked with our heels, stood up and brushed down, and stood facing this kid in a mildly hostile silence, because he`d invaded our playing-place.

Seconds passed and it was clear this kid wasn't going to speak. Frightened probably, because he was skinny, short, a real wimp: he had hair tufted and bleached yellow like the grass on the bank, and a frayed and scruffy jacket, and grubby jeans. He was shivering slightly and his hands were jammed in his pockets.

" Wadda you want?" Carl said at last, in that rough tone he thinks makes for tough street-speak.

The kid just shrugged, looking like one of those urchins in the Dickens novels our English teacher reads to us at this time of the year. I almost expected him to produce an empty bowl and ask for more...

" I just wanted to join in - it looks like fun..."

" It is fun," Carl came back, squaring up as though the skinny kid was making some conflict out of this. " But - four sleds; one, two, three, four of us...So bad luck, squirt. Why don't you push off?"

" Come on Carl," I said gently; kind of carefully, because there was - something - a faint thrill in the air that put me on edge: not Carl's temper, that was just the result of it. But - something.

" Leave off him. What's happened to the Christmas spirit?" I looked at the boy properly for the first time. He was about our age, but seemed younger because...I suppose because he wasn't as well nourished as we were, and his eyes - his pale, pale blue eyes - held a sort of innocence; a kicked-puppy sadness that was endearing and infuriating at the same time.

" What's your name?" I asked, not particularly bothered to know.

" Christopher," he said, delivered with a faint smile that had no place here in this quiet abandoned embankment, here under this cold sky.

" I'm Ross. Mr Friendly here is Carl: then there's Jeff, and old Duncan Donuts, the kid with the big bag of sweets..."

" Since you're offering," Jeff grinned. Duncan tutted and hauled what was left of a half-pound bag of pick 'n' mix out of his anorak pocket. We all helped ourselves to a few sweets each: the new kid took a single mint imperial, popped it in his mouth and conjured up that smile of his again. I guess, in his mind if not in ours, we were all friends now.

" Might as well join in," I went on, keeping it casual and light. " I mean, I'm knackered for ten minutes. You can borrow my sled if you like - but really it's an old plastic kitchen tray."

He laughed at the silly joke; laughed loud and long as if it was the wisecrack of the year. We simply stared at him and wondered which planet he'd left to be with us here tonight.

" Thanks Ross. Thanks guys. Is this the bob-run?"

Before we could answer, he was off, scrambling, leaping aboard the tray-sled, whizzing down, tumbling in a bundle at the bottom. His yelps and giggles took me back to my much younger years, when God was in his heaven and all was well with the world...

" He's a pinbrain," Carl declared as we watched him running the cold out of his body. " The kid's a total jerk." And the others agreed with grunts or laughter that was cruel as knives. But I held back, knowing he was something more than what we took him to be.

Christopher played for ten minutes and then staggered back to us, dragging his scuffed shoes across the stony embankment bottom. The soles flapped like dogs' tongues; his socks were grey and threadbare.

" That was great! That was really brilliant." He was panting like an overworked pit-horse, but his eyes glittered more brilliantly than any star ever did, with a light that was farther away. " Thanks," he breathed, " thanks."

" Don't mention it," Dunk said, and offered him another mint imperial.

Christopher beamed at us fondly, even at Carl. " Look, I'd really like to pay you back for your kindness...I really would."

" Nice pair of shoes," Carl said, putting the knife in quickly. " Hey, and that nifty shirt..."

It was all over Christopher's head - or maybe beneath his contempt.

" Got any chocolate?" Jeff wondered; perhaps seriously except anyone could see that this gypsy kid had nothing but what he stood up in.

" Sure," he replied, to my mild surprise. And then he did something that I still do not understand, and still can't believe.

He held out his hand and produced chocolate. A Cadbury's bar which he offered to Jeff, who took it with his mouth already open, as if to eat.

It was done beautifully; suddenly - seamlessly. A turn of magic so smooth that none of us saw what happened, nor could detect the join between what was now and what had been a moment before.

And the world turned a fraction on its axis, and a little more light seeped out of the sky.

" Wha?" Carl said dully - not the most intelligent response I'd ever heard. He showed his teeth in an uneasy smile, or in a silent snarl of total confusion and fear.

" You - wanted - chocolate."

" Yeah, but..."

" That was pretty neat, Chris." Jeff slapped our new friend on the back. He chuckled like someone had waved a broken bottle-neck in front of his eyes. " I mean, stylish. How'd you do it?"

" I don't know," he replied quietly, so that I for one wanted to hit him; wanted to beat the mystery out of him in blood and screams. " I just - can."

" What else can you do, then?" Duncan pressed, thinking no doubt of two-ton bags of pick 'n' mix and swimming pools of foaming cola. Another shrug: nonchalance yet, at this gift that turned the universe inside out and gave us a glimpse of its guts.

" Whatever you like."

" Such as?"

I wanted to say no. Panic was setting in like frostbite attacking my fingers and toes, my tongue and my heart. A chocolate bar I could cope with - it was hardly proof of anything: sleight of hand, explainable ...

" Gimme a Christmas tree, man," Carl said with a big cheesy challenging sneer.

" With plenty of lights - flashing on and off. And decked with pressies. Go for it!"

" No," I said aloud at last, but a pitiful sound.

And too late. The air nearby was already thickening into a shadowy ectoplasm shot through with rainbow gleams and glints reflected on tinsel-wrapped shapes.

These things came, just as the boy had promised....And of course, we all knew what a Christmas tree and wrapped parcels looked like; they were part of the familiar mental background of Yuletide, clear in our dreams. And that had something to do with it, I realised then.

In those few moments, our minds were changed in realising that the world is what our thoughts make of it - just like it says on the plaque above the entrance to our school.

But Jeff was hanging back, stepping away from the tree with its lights that burned without electricity, and its piled gifts that had no sender who was known to him.

" I think I'd better fetch my Dad," he told us quietly, and turned and ran away into the gathering gloom. The rest of us scratched our heads and got together the courage to touch the tree and even ask Chris how the heck those fairy lights worked. He didn't know, of course, though he was happy to make as many of them as we liked...

About five minutes later we saw the flare of a flashlight away up the embankment, and Jeff's silhouette and his father's larger shadow scuffling down towards us. Chris's face was pastelled in the soft colours of his Christmas tree as Mr O'Connor grabbed ahold of his jacket and asked him sharply what the heck he thought he was playing at.

I thought I saw Jeff wipe away some tears, and Carl made himself busy gathering up his sled and saying, well, he reckoned he ought to be getting back home now...Mr O'Connor was hauling Chris away, and I followed, not wanting things to go like this; half noticing Duncan in his curiosity and greed tearing open the wrapping on one of the boxes on the ground.

" Ross!" Chris called, maybe realising at last that his miracle was somehow an affront to the intelligence of the grown-up world - or had been taken as such, at least.

" Right behind you Chris!" I yelled back, and started running - distracted only briefly by doubt, as Duncan broke open his Pandora`s box and looked inside at his darkest dreams. And started screaming.

Things happened fast after that. We went to the O'Connors' house where Chris was told to sit down. Jeff's mum made him a mug of coffee while Mr O'Connor spent some time on the phone. Jeff and I were asked to stay around to verify what had happened.

Very soon, my parents arrived, and the Reverend Bright and Mayor Bailey who owned the best butcher's shop in town...Later the police came and Jeff and I were separated and the priest saw each of us and spoke to us for a long time...

But this was afterwards. Right then, my heart was beating and I felt that my face was hot and red. Jeff, conversely, looked pale, and his hand trembled as he wiped at the sweat above his lip.

The Mayor asked Chris lots of questions; and the Reverend kept saying that he had to think carefully about all of this, because lies would not help anyone...Chris didn't get upset or angry. He answered simply and honestly, telling it just as it had been. Then there was a long silence, and the air kind of tightened up in that room. I knew what was coming: I think we all did, in our heart of hearts.

" Christopher," the Reverend Bright said, a small voice in

that huge quiet. " We are going to need proof, you know, because this is very, very important. Will you please - "

" Whatever you like," Chris said, so matter-of-factly the laughter nearly spilled out of me before I could stop it.

" Well, just something - small, perhaps." The priest's face was hard and passionless; his voice hesitant. But there was another gleam in the Mayor's eyes, a light that was altogether greedier. I saw it there, and that's when I grew up and left my real childhood behind.

Chris opened his right hand and a rose bud lay in his palm: opened his left hand and a moth flew away. His right hand again, and there was a gold pocketwatch; left hand, and a ring just like the one the Mayor was wearing.

" Holy Mother!" said Bright, an exclamation torn from the core of him, a shudder of sound.

" Something else, son," Major Bailey was urging. " More of it - try something more!"

The air changed again. It was as though what was inside our heads was no longer private property: the room whirled with unborn ghosts of things.

" No," Reverend Bright whispered, moving forward with a surge of his robes. " For God's sake no - "

A larger object came into being; a stain at eye height between Christopher and me. Mr O'Connor, a cop for twenty years, gave a groan as the thing was birthed in the air and dropped to the carpet with a thud.

This was the fruit of all our crooked futures, writhing there, gazing emptily through upturned eyes as the universe poured in; oblivious and uncaring of its glistening nakedness, its throat gurgling soft chaos.

Mr O'Connor started shouting. He grabbed Bailey around the neck and clenched until the Mayor's face was purple. His wife dragged him off and then flurried us away and out of the room. Both Jeff and I were yelling, crying, begging to save all that we knew was about to be lost to us.

The adults threw us out and slammed the door. We ran around to the back of the house and hammered uselessly on the patio doors...

Bailey was slumped in a chair, his head in his hands. Mrs O'Connor had left. Jeff's father stood by and watched with horrified eyes. A thin moon was rising now, and the gentlest membrane of frost had covered the flagstones under our feet.

Chris would not have struggled, I knew, as the Reverend snatched up a cushion and moved towards him...But there was enough of the little boy left inside me to want his innocence saved.

So I wished - I wished with all of my heart -

And the Reverend's hands closed upon empty air.

     copyright Steve Bowkett 1999

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