The Man who found Pan
By: Tobias Foxx
I didn't know why I was even bothering, taking on another case when I was already overburdened. Seven people had disappeared from this forest and all of them from just about this same time of night too. I sighed, "Well I'm here now, I did owe Mark that favor, so I might as well look around." Mark was the Police officer who had spotted the connection, the only one who had, but his superiors had dismissed his observations as coincidental. That’s why he called me, the Ex-Cop turned private investigator.
A series of beeps came from my jacket pocket just as the sun began to set, "Wonderful," I thought to myself; I'm out of service range. I pulled the blasted thing from my pocket and thumbed it open, intending to shut it off to save the battery, but for some reason I hesitated, I hadn't been without my phone on in days. I could see the last streamers of sunlight stretching across the tops of the trees and filtering down to the path. I should have come earlier in the day but, like most days I was too busy. The soothing call of birds ending their day and the waking chirps of crickets worked its magic on me. A paradoxical song that energized me with an intoxicating desire for something I hadn’t known I was missing. The desire to abandon everything and follow where the song might lead.
It was then I saw him, he could have been a man, an old, very old man out walking his dog. But, then, "That cant be a dog, its huge.." I thought to myself. As I approached and got a better view of it I realized what it was, it was a cat, some kind of big wild cat with long gleaming fangs, sandy colored fur and glinting yellow-green eyes. My mind screamed at me to turn and run but my feet walked on, something in my heart told me that while dangerous, the cat would not harm me, and the man had words for me.
As I approached the old man, I saw he had a long shaggy mane of white hair; not grey but snow-white, it was caked with mud and dirt in some places with bits of twigs and branches. It didn’t look dirty but rustic and wild. He had no beard but it appeared that he might have had at one time. His eyes had no whites; they were simply deep pools of brown, liquid and sorrowful. When he smiled, his wrinkles crackled and crisscrossed his face. The cat looked up at me and growled, an echoing rumble deep in its chest, and disappointment flooded me. I had done something wrong, I was lacking…
“My friend does not like city things,” the man spoke to the air, “put them aside.”
My cell phone slid from my fingers before I could even think. It clattered on the ground and the battery popped out. Some part of me wanted to rush to it, to make sure it was undamaged, but I simply slipped my hand into my pocket, I brought out my PDA and dropped that to the side as well. Last, to go was a watch, a very expensive Rolex that had been a birthday gift. I cannot explain why I did those things, I simply obeyed the silent force that clutched at me.
“Good,” the man said, “my name is Pan; you have been seeking me.”
“Seeking you?” I asked, highly confused.
“Yes. You are outside the cycle.” The old man said cryptically, gazing down at his companion wistfully.
“I’m sorry I don’t understand.” I tried to clear my thoughts, but the song of the forest nightlife seemed to thunder in my blood. I knew, as crazy as it sounded that this man was at the center of it all.
The man continued speaking, “oh not just for those missing people, who are not truly missing; they have returned to the cycle.”
A memory tickled at the back of my mind, from high school Latin class and Greek mythology. The names of the ancient Greek Gods.
“Pan? You think you are the God Pan?” My words held skepticism and the cat growled at me, but Pan just sat there eyes twinkling with amusement.
“Yes child, God of the Wild Places, Lord of the Satyrs.”
The power if this, god if he really was one and not some old crazy with an escaped zoo animal, seemed to drain away. My mind cleared, and he seemed even more aged than before.
“I’m looking for information on…” I started to ask, trying to ignore the crazy idea that this one couldn't be a Greek God.
“On eight missing persons,” he smiled warmly, “I know, though you are the first to seek me out in… Oh ages and ages…” He placed one of his gnarled hands on my chest and grimaced. The cat looked up at his master as if to ask, Why bother with this one? And I wondered the same.
“You are lost, your heart caught between two worlds. You are not ready to learn and yet SYMBOL 8212 \f "Times New Roman" \s 10 yet there is so little time left.
I could feel his deep sadness, and the buzzing in my head was back making it hard to think. The forest song, the lifeblood of nature was a roar in my ears, something I could not understand. And yet, I felt some choice was being offered. Pan gestured back to the path and to the scattered remains of my technological baggage; the cell phone, PDA and watch.
Pan nodded solemnly. “You understand?”
I shook my head. The cat growled. The old man sighed, “We must show you then.”
The ancient God brought two fingers up to his lips and whistled, a sharp piercing sound that cut through the forest. It ended all sound as though he had commanded the world to be silent. Fear gripped my heart, the fire of the wild went out. No birds, no crickets, no rustling of leaves on the wind, no wind at all; the forest itself seemed to have died.
“As the Lord of the Wild, I can ask nature to halt itself for a time. It is painful, this small place is empty.” As he spoke a small sound echo across the dried mast of the silent wood, the double-heartbeat of hooves. A single beautiful stag trotted to a stop near the one who called himself Pan.
“One of your missing persons,” Pan stated with a smile.
Something in my heart shuddered as I saw the stag; he was beautiful, strong muscles rippled under his coat of browns and grays. The large rack of antlers told me he was a lord of this realm.
“Would I want this?” I whispered into the still silent forest; the absence of all life sounds around made me even more aware of the four of us who were present. It was then that I realized that it was the same feeling I experienced everyday driving to work in my expensive luxury car. The void, the empty purposelessness of my former existence.
“I could offer it to you.” Pan replied with a smile.
“But magic isn’t real, you can’t be saying that you could-ld-d…” My voice trailed off at his gaze.
“Magic,” he tossed his hands in the air in exasperation, “it is true, that all but the little I have has fled the world." He laughed and it was young and happy, trilling. The sound was out of place for how Pan appeared.
“But…” My protests were empty. Made only because my mind still wanted to deny what my heart believed, because my mind wanted to keep me neatly in my place.
“Can you not find magic in the birth of each sunrise? In the changing of the leaves when the seasons die to begin again? In the love one has for the next generation of life? All of these things have magic.”
It was in that moment my heart missed a beat, something he'd said, I couldn't describe and yet it pulled at something. I reached over to my PDA and picked it up; it seemed just a weight in my hand. Not as dear to me as it had been just an hour ago. The cat growled at me and I tossed the dead weight aside.
“Help me understand,” I pled, and the God Pan, smiled.
“What you must understand is that this is not a lesson you can learn in a single night; and walk away. It takes months, sometimes years to learn. And until it is, you can never return to what you had before. Some never learn. Some never can.”
“I understand.” The eagerness in my voice pleased him and I knew that it didn’t matter anymore, because I had found what I was looking for.
Pan stood slowly, leaning on the stag a little for support.
He walked over and placing a hand on my shoulder and spoke a few words. I couldn't understand them but the power of life rushed through my veins. Blood pounded in my temples and I gasped falling over, the ground was cold under my fingers; they dug into the soft soil. My entire body tingled, but it was in my hands and feet that the changes first began. Fingers merging by pairs, they darkened, shortened and became hooves; I knew from the feeling of shoes ripping apart that the same thing was happening to my feet. The muscles in my body bunched and corded under my too tight clothing, painfully and making it difficult to breathe.
Pan gazed down with a mischievous grin on his old face and spoke in ancient Greek, or perhaps Latin. Every stitch of my clothing fell away; every seam unpicked every button, strap and zipper clattering to the ground.
The warm feeling of change continued as my knees locked and straightened. As my wrist and ankles became my new knees. Blossoming pressure at the base of my spine told me I had a new tail. I couldn't see myself but I didn't need to.
My body was itching everywhere, brown and white fur rippling across my skin. The sound of my bones popping and creaking sent a wave of brief pain through me. My entire body lurched forward locking me on all fours as my arms shifted and grew to meet the length of my hind legs. I felt my face pushing out, eyes blurring for a moment, nose going dark and cold. The warm glow filled my insides as my shoulders slid back and my neck reached forward. An icy fire rippled through my insides as my organs stretched and distended rearranging themselves. A wash of intense and unusual pleasure on my belly fur and between my legs.
I could hear new sounds as my ears twitched, stretched, and grew off to the side of my head. The force of the changes that had moments ago ripped through me with the force of new growth in the spring had my mind spinning.
I was nearly as tall as the stag who nuzzled my shoulder. The contact sent waves of contentment through my entire body, new sensations and instincts.
I wobbled taking a step forward, the first step of a strange new life. It was only then that my mind, in its drowsy post-change stupor realize several important things. First, I could remember my life, but only as a distant dream. The second, I belonged to the stag. I was his, I was… My entire body stiffened in surprise. Pan reached over and stroked my soft back fur.
“Even Gods have to be indulged once and a while,” the humor in his voice told me he knew very well what had caught me by surprise, “you make a lovely doe.”
I did not care. For I understood, I was a part of the cycle.
