Despite his elaboration on the party, I wasn't much the wiser afterwards. The cabin belonged to a woman whom Michael called a friend and who had in one way or another contributed to his career – he elaborated on that, too, but I knew too little about the music business so I could make neither head nor tail of it. And although I had no doubt that he was indeed friends with her, there was still an air of business obligation about it. Maybe that made it easier for him to accept the idea of a Christmas party. Just like the song he had sung as a child, this endeavour had a moral safety clause: It could be argued to be business.

We passed the train stop at the height of the amusement park. Trees grew along the narrow tracks, and through them, past the cinema outbuilding, colourful flecks of striped tarpaulin could be seen. And where the trees stood back, they gave a stunning view of the long, green slopes of the hills that formed the Neverland Valley. Not all trees had kept their leaves and so the landscape was flecked with grey from stony ground and bare trunks and branches.

The leaves of evergreen trees around us rustled in the breeze that came and went, somewhere far off a bird was chirping, but other than that and the crunching of our feet on the roadbed, the world was quiet. Wonderfully, peacefully quiet. Michael had fallen silent, too, and I didn't mind. I walked with my head against his shoulder, holding on to his arm and feeling his hand in mine, watching him smile, occasionally at me but mostly at the world around us.

When we came closer to the end of the Neverland Valley, we left the tracks and cut through the trees and across a meadow. While the land had been largely evened out around the main house and the amusement park, here it still had its natural shape of smooth, wavy hills. The meadow nestled in a small depression in which the spirit of the original design of the ranch for horses and cattle seemed to have been preserved – a patch that didn't feel like undisturbed nature but like free countryside. Then we came out from under the trees to find the zoo in front us, separated from us only by a stretch of grass, a road coming from the fairground and another narrow train track that ran alongside the road.

While we had walked through the meadow, Michael's quiet had taken on a different quality. Now he looked at the wooden buildings and the white fences of the petting zoo with an almost wary expression. I gently squeezed his hand that was warm and firm in mine, and he looked up, then sighed and weighted the pack of bread in his other hand.
"You know," he said carefully and without that I had to ask, "I don't think Jesus was born today."
"Oh!" I rested my chin on his shoulder. The outside of his down jacket was cool to the touch. "No, Jesus wasn't born today."
"You don't think so?"
"Well, the story goes as follows, doesn't it: 'And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night'?"
Michael nodded.
"Well, winter nights are cold in the area of Bethlehem – too cold for sheep. Therefore they are in their stables at night, today as much as 2,000 years ago. So, if we believe that the story of Bethlehem and the shepherds is true, than it can't have been December."
Michael sighed. We crossed over to the zoo and sat down on a wooden bench of the train stop there, an open construction of white-painted wood with a roof overhead. Michael rested the pack of bread on his knees. "If you know it's not true, why do you celebrate it?"

I looked down the tracks along the outside fence of the petting zoo behind us and towards the rides, colourful dots in the grey-green that surrounded us. At the end of the fence I saw the sign that I knew read Neverland Zoo. But not only did it face away from us, it was also covered in red lining, possibly against the weather. I'd known this conversation would come.

"Nobody really claims the historical Jesus was born today, Michael. As far as I know the story, Christmas was invented by the Roman Emperor Constantin in the 3rd century. The Roman Empire was dying and his army consisted of men of all kinds of different religions from all over Europe. For an army to function well it's important that the soldiers stick together, and what better way is there for bonding than to celebrate together? Most nature-based religions celebrated the winter solace, the longest night of the year, which in the Roman calendar was the night from the 24th to the 25th of December. The Romans had celebrations around that time, too. So Constantin invented a celebration for the Christians – the birth of their Redeemer – and placed it at the same time. His soldiers weren't all celebrating the same thing, but at least now they could all celebrate something. Turned out his invention was a total success, and in the last 1,700 years Christmas has spread all around the world. The celebration of love. A day families and friends come together; a day people come together to celebrate their love for God but also for each other, and I think that's remarkably close to what Constantin originally wanted.

"There was a celebration called Sol Invictus – which means as much as The Undefeated Sun – in the night from the 24th to the 25th of December. The church argued that The Undefeated Sun could only be Jesus Christ, because he's the true light that came to the world with his birth. I don't know if Constantin even thought about that. Actually, in Germany we still celebrate Christmas in the night of the 24th. But anyway, no, it has nothing to do with the Bible or the historical Jesus."

For a while we sat in silence. Michael's features weren't hard but there was a tension in them, like in someone who's standing on a 33ft diving platform for the very first time. Resolve and some kind of longing had driven him up but now that he stood at the brim every sense of his body told him that to jump would be madness. The conflict was straining him, and I wondered what it was he had been told as a child – what message could be so terrible that it would leave a grown man torn over something that seemed so small to me.

I pulled my legs up and knelt on the bench, resting one arm on its back. "You don't have to do this, Michael. None of it. We can just go back and make sandwiches." I nudged the bread. With a little smile Michael caught it before it could tumble off his knees.
"If I don't, then I'll never know what Christmas feels like."
I shrugged. "There are worse things in life."
"And what about my children? Should I raise them the way I was raised? Without birthdays? Without Christmas? There's something wonderful in it. Something magical. I can sense it. I see the sparks it puts in the eyes of kids, you know? Should I raise them without all that? To nothing but work and prayer?"

Something dropped through me. I wasn't sure if it was hot or cold. The world seemed to grow tight around me and at the same time I felt strangely separated from it. Was it possible that he had a child? Of course it was. He had grown up early, had established a career as a teenager and risen to enormous fame in his early twenties. With his professional life sorted out, wouldn't he have started to turn his attention to his private life? It wasn't unthinkable that a child had been the result of that. For goodness sake, I'd been with him twice in the less than 18 hours since I'd come to Neverland; and contraception never seemed to concern him. Of course it wasn't unthinkable! And he had told me about children that had been around to visit Neverland. In my head I tried to recall their names but wasn't successful. Had one of them been his? Would he have told me? Wasn't that something you told people? Maybe not if he didn't want the world to know. A child changed everything. It was a fixed point in life, a commitment that never went away. And neither did its mother.

Michael was looking at the trees we had come from and preoccupied by his thoughts didn't seem to notice my silence. If he was a father, then the light I'd seen him in had been wrong – then somehow he was someone else than I had taken him to be.
"You could still cross that bridge when you get to it," I said intending to brush the subject without really touching it.
He only pressed his lips together and said nothing.

I told myself it made no difference. It didn't, did it? I was here with him because he wanted me to be. If there was another woman with his child, then he still chose to be with me. But I also knew it was too big an issues to leave it pending. I could feel my heartbeat in my throat.
"Do you have children, Michael?" I asked quietly.
He turned obviously surprised by the question. "No," he said oblivious of my wild thoughts.
"Are you certain?"
A smile crossed his face. "Yes, I'm certain. Unless," his eyes became careful, "you had a child and didn't tell me."
"Oh God, Michael! Of course I would have told you that!"
"Then I am certain. But I really want children. My life wouldn't be complete without children. So–"
I leaned forward and kissed him. His response was immediate and soft, but his surprise was so evident I could almost taste it in his mouth.
The same innocent, vulnerable expression, that I had seen on him the previous day, had returned to his face. "What was that for?"
"Because I'm happy to be here with you," I said putting another light kiss on his lips and leaving my mouth close to his.
"Are you?"
I nodded, closing the distance between us again.
"And although right now at least I won't have your child, I'm happy about what we did this morning."
He laughed, low and endearing. The ghost had dissolved into thin air and like most ghosts had proved to be nothing but a fog tail.

With my arms crossed on the back of the bench I watched the clouds covering the sky over the zoo. "Michael," I said gently, "if you give an animals a piece of bread you'll make it happy. Can it be bad if you do it in the name of Jesus Christ? Can it be bad if you do it because he was born – not today, but because he was born at all?"
"Jesus told his disciples to celebrate his death. He didn't tell them to celebrate his birth, the Bible doesn't say that he celebrated his birthday and the early Christians didn't celebrate it, either. It's a pagan celebration."
"He didn't tell his disciples not to, either. The Bible tells us almost nothing about Jesus' youth, but it tells us about his birth, so it must be important. Otherwise, why bother? Besides, for Jesus to be able to die for us, he had to be born first. One wouldn't be possible without the other. And while the early Christians didn't celebrate Christmas, the Witnesses actually used to. Until 1926."
Michael took an audible breath and held it for a moment before exhaling with a sigh. "You looked that up."
"M-hm."
"You know that I could say a lot about that, don't you?"
I looked at him sitting next to me still facing forward, then touched his skin, lightly stroking the back of his neck. "I know. But that's exactly the point: You're no longer a member of that club. You don't have to argue their case anymore. You're free to argue your own. And yes, there were lots of pagan celebration around and at what's our Christmas today. But we don't celebrate them. And it doesn't matter what other people hundreds of years ago used to celebrate. All that matters is what's in your heart. So don't ask yourself what other people long gone used to do or what your former church claims is right. Ask yourself what's in your heart, Michael."
He let his head sink back over the back of the bench looking up at the same sky I did. I ran my fingers over his cheek and under his upturned chin and his eyes switched to me. He took a deep breath and let it out. "Kiss me and I'll do it!"
Looking up at me with his head fallen back his African eyes seemed big and round. "No, Michael. This is something you were brought up with. I don't think... I think you should decide that for yourself."
"I'll do it. Kiss me now!"
"I'll kiss you whether you do it or not. The one thing has nothing to do with the other."
His hand touched my leg, slowly rubbing up and down my thigh. His fingers squeezed my knee. "Girl..."

The collar of his shirt had a button undone and I could see his chest rise and fall in the soft cloth. I touched him, stroked his hair and let my fingers glide up his over-stretched throat, exposed and vulnerable. The skin was warm. Under my hands he closed his eyes. I held his head and Neverland was quiet except for that one forlorn bird chirping in the distance and the sound of an animal somewhere behind us – feet walking across the sandy ground. The moment was peaceful. Warmth radiated from his mouth. A smile started to soften his expression when my breath touched his face. And then I closed my own eyes and the world fell away.

Michael leaned up and into me – and with an angry thud the bread in its cellophane packaging hit the ground. Caught out, we both stared at it. Michael released a breath and bent down to pick it up, weighing it on his knees.

"Okay," he said looking at me. "Let's do it."
I smiled and nodded, my fingers still touching the side of his neck, lightly stroking the skin that was warm from the collar.
And in getting up Michael leaned towards me and kissed the corner of my mouth.

~~~~~
Want to be my Valentin? :)

Writing this chapter I learnt that there are different ways of struggling with a story. It almost felt like what I imagine writers block to be: I knew where this was going and it still... wouldn't... go there! Why not? No idea. Just didn't want to, it seems. Anyway, here it is. Consider it a... erm... Valentin's present. Like a chocolate heart! <3 Yes... ;)

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What's the matter with me tonight? :P

I'm going to a Chinese New Year's party tomorrow. Whatever you do, I hope you'll have fun. You can also use the comments to tell me what you're up to. :D Thank you for reading!

Cisses and Kookies, Birdie :P