Conversations
Once there was a small clearing in a wood where three impossible things happened on a snowy evening outside of time. The first impossible thing was that there was a lamppost in the clearing, shining brightly for no reason at all. It was not electric for it was not connected by wires to anything. It was not gas or oil, for it burned brightly day or night without anyone lighting it or refilling it, and had done so for as long as anyone could remember. It was almost as if it were a strange type of tree that had grown up there with all the pines and birches and oaks. This particular snowy evening its soft glow shown on two sets of footprints leading off deep into the woods. The first were little and human, as though a little girl, in Mary Janes, had been walking there, but Mary Janes are most unsuitable for walking in snow. The second set were made by tiny cloven hooves like a deer or a goat, but they were clearly made by a creature going on two legs. Curious? These tracks were rapidly filling up in the gently but insistent snow and had all but disappeared by the time the second impossible thing happened.
There was a great wheezing, grinding, bellowing sound as of a herd of asthmatic elephants being pulled through an electric laundry wringer by their tails, and with a rush of displaced air, a blue police box appeared next to the lamppost out of the cold air. In a strange way this second impossible thing made the first thing somewhat less impossible, in that it was not hard to imagine a blue police call box standing next to an iron lamppost, until you looked around and realized that they were not on a London Street, but still in a small clearing in a wood on a snowy evening and that the snow was as strikingly white and clean as in the distant countryside, not at all tainted with the soot and smoke and dust and debris of snow in the city.
The door of the police box opened, inwards, and a tallish, slender man in a green velvet frock coat, brocade waistcoat and gray trousers stepped out. His black boots crunched through the thin crust of the snow and great flakes of it landed in his wavy brown hair and caught the light of the lamppost, almost giving him a halo.
Looking about with a slightly puzzled frown on his long narrow face and a wrinkle of consternation forming above his aquiline nose he sniffed deeply as if the larger size of his nose gave him a better than average sense of smell. He caught a particularly large flake on his tongue and again an observer could have almost sworn he was analyzing its content. The air smelled cold and thin, full of the scent of pine needles like any winter's night in a wood but perhaps his sensitive nose could catch an exotic scent in the air, of almonds maybe or was it—yes, Turkish Delight. And yes, oh, so faintly, far, far off by foot, but not so far as the crow flies, clear in this fresh air that dampened sound and made the wood silent and deep, air untainted by modern machinery, the salty/wet-greenish taste in the air that signified the sea. Perhaps he could smell those things, perhaps not. Absently he pulled a crumpled white bag from his pocket and ate a few jelly candies from it. He walked into the little clearing and made tiny snow angels with his feet. Starting at the police box he marched around the clearing in great strides although his legs were not really that long, clockwise until he bumped into the lamppost. When he looked up at the glowing lantern at its top, he looked at first puzzled. It was, after all, an impossible thing. But then an incredulous smile spread across his face. While his face had been attractive and genial before, a smile transformed it into a face of absolute innocence and joy. It was as if his mind put aside everything else but the thing which delighted him at that moment and focused on it entirely.
Can any of us say that? That for one moment at any time since childhood we have been able to focus with all of our mind on one wonderful thing? Without nagging and flickering little thoughts of other unpleasant things intruding—bills, age, errands, do we look stupid, should we be wasting time? It is a talent lost in early childhood for most of us, and yet here he was clearly in full possession of it. At any point it would have been hard to pinpoint his age, perhaps late 30's perhaps a little older and his eyes which we have not yet taken note of always wore a much greater and sadder age, but even they became very young as the delicious happiness spread across them. "Impossible things before breakfast, indeed," he laughed, "Oh, Charles, if you only knew. If even you could only have imagined!"
This remarkable behavior was being observed by a small wood mouse out scavenging for food. He was somewhat more curious and alert than normal mice that you might know, but he is not the third impossible thing to happen in that clearing.
Suddenly there was a lion in the clearing, with the lamppost and the police box. When I say suddenly, I do not mean suddenly in the sense that he bounded up very fast, or leapt into place so fast that it seemed instantaneous, or even that he materialized as the police box had pushing out the air in its way. Rather, his presence was so magnificent and so completely right, that it was as though he had always been in the clearing and it merely took one noticing him to make him visible. He was at least twice as large as any lion in a zoo or habitat and his coat and mane were of such a magnificent gold it was hard to look at them even in the dim light of the lamppost. In full sunlight he would have been almost blinding.
The stranger in the green frock coat stopped absolutely still in the midst of his frolic. He gazed upon the lion for a moment and then lowered his head. "I am sorry," he said, "I never meant to intrude."
"Of course you are not intruding," said the lion in a voice that was terrible and soft at the same time. "Let us walk for a while. I think it will do us both good." The stranger looked up at him and in that moment an observer were have noticed a remarkable similarity between the eyes of the man in green and the lion. Both eyes seemed ancient and young, full of joy and sadness, for joy is sometimes like sadness in the way it affects us. The wood mouse could not observe this, for he was too low to the ground to really see their eyes.
And so they walked for a while into the woods and back into the clearing, and the wood mouse struggled to keep up and hear what was being said.
They talked of many things. Of things which everyone knows and things which people might know, or once knew and have since forgot. As they walked, had someone other than the wood mouse been watching, it might have been noticed that the man in green cast no shadow, and the lion left no footprints, which I suppose are more impossible things, but we will stop counting. They talked of some things which would no longer have happened and things that might have been. And when they had finished talking, and night had fully fallen and the snow lay in a sparkling and sharp blanket over the police box obscuring its light and lettering, the lion turned suddenly to the wood mouse and whispering soft and low said, "Forget." Then he licked the mouse so delicately with his great tongue, that the mouse's whiskers didn't even quiver and with that, the mouse scampered home, unsure why it had suddenly become so late and though she will become important in the lion's story, she is not important in this one.
"You make that look so easy," said the man in the green velvet coat with a rueful shake of his head and his brown waves of hair covered in snow.
The lion laughed at this, a warm, golden, great, deep throated laugh that made him throw back his beautiful head and mane and made the trees sway until the man laughed too and slipped inside his blue box. The roar of its disappearing was lost in the ringing of the lion's laugh.