Time stops.

A voice bigger than John’s body screams inside him. No! Please. No.

He curls his body up as small as he can.

I am not here. I am not here.

He stares desperately at the hobgoblin. If the man tries to grab him, will the faerie open the other side of the hedgerow and allow John to escape? Possibly? Most likely not. Faeries usually intervene in human lives with mischief rather than aid. He’s already received more help than can be reasonably expected. If John gets caught now, he is on his own.

Should he try to crawl out now? Is that his only chance of escaping these strangers?

Yet he remains silent and still. After all the running, now he is incapable of any movement.

‘Come down from your horse,’ the man called Harry cheerily shouts out. ‘Together we will find her in no time. She’s in the hedge, I’m sure on it.’

The other man has no cheer in his words. ‘Only if she’s transformed into a mouse. No human could fit through there without being scratched to death. Let us go. You’ve had your fun.’

‘That’s the problem, I haven’t.’ Harry’s voice is playful, honeyed, as if reminiscing about a long-lost sweetheart. ‘She was small, though, wasn’t she? You don’t see many as finely made as she was. And how fast she ran - like a sweet startled deer.’

‘Enough of this nonsense! I’m not spending the day chasing wisps with you. If my horse can manage it, I plan to make London before they close the gates tonight. You may do as you wish.’

‘My good friend, you fright too easily. But as that fair girl has escaped, you’re the only companion I have, and I suppose it’s my lot to protect you from highwaymen, witches, wisps and maidens too pretty for belief.’ Harry chuckles as he climbs back into the saddle.

They trot away back in the direction they came from.

When the only sounds are birds and the rustling of the wind, John’s heart begins to beat again. He holds his hands in front of his eyes, his fingers are shaking. He opens his mouth to take a calming breath, but instead his lips start to move through a recitation of the words he’s just overheard, a whispered copy of their booming certainty. After a while he listens to his own voice, the only human sound disturbing nature, and realises he is just repeating the same phrases again and again.

‘Come now, my pretty maiden, show yourself. Don’t be shy. We will use you well.’

‘Come now, my pretty maiden, show yourself. Don’t be shy. We will use you well.’

‘My pretty maiden.’

‘My pretty maiden.’

‘We will use you well.’

His hands form tight fists and he squeezes his eyes shut. London.

The elders spoke of it in hushed voices, somewhere forbidden to be avoided, not for the likes of the villagers. But he knows how to listen and he’d heard the important words: ‘gold’, ‘riches’, and ‘Queene’.

Whenever Da had dragged him across the room and kicked him into silence, John didn’t see the dank straw matting that his face was ground down into, or smell the animal stink of his father, or even taste the blood in his own mouth. He was faraway in London.

Trees towered far above his head, their tops kissing the clouds. They were dressed in glittering bark and their branches bowed under the weight of spring blossom magically mixed with the plenty of autumn fruit. In the shade of the trees, foxes and rabbits dined together on green grass and greeted him with twinkling eyes when he walked by. There were more faeries than he could count and his own hobgoblin played with them through the day and then came grinning back to him at night. John’s fingers were permanently stained purple and tasted of sweet juices from the baskets and baskets of berries he gathered to keep all the faeries fed and happy.

Those men might ride as hard as they like for the beautiful city, but the gates won’t open for them, the Faerie Queene won’t allow it. They are men, ordinary men, there’d be no space for men who tried to…for men like that, in the most magical place in the whole kingdom.

In London everything will be perfect. Nothing can be wrong. Not even John.

He opens his eyes and smiles at the hobgoblin dancing carefree around the small clearing in the hedgerow.

‘The Faerie Queene will keep us safe, and no one’ll ever hurt us…me again.’ His mouth becomes a straight line.

The hobgoblin meets John’s gaze, its eyes flowing through all the colours of nature before finally settling on the fresh green of spring grass. It climbs into John’s lap and curls up into a tight ball, as if to sleep. But the hobgoblin never needs sleep, not like humans. It is a sign for John.

‘It’s safe to stop here?’ he asks.

He is tired. Escaping the horsemen has used the last of his strength. And if they hadn’t seen him when they’d been so close, that has to mean that no one else out searching will spot him, either. His head droops and he closes his eyes. ‘Just a few more days… a few more days,’ he murmurs.

In his dreams, he dances through a forest of silver and gold trees. A figure appears, a body made of spring’s earliest buds, a face of snowflakes, and eyes green like grass freshly touched by dew. Hair flows down to the ground and is the orange and yellow crackle of autumn leaves. He skips afterwards knowing he will never catch up, but it doesn’t matter, he has to follow.

His slumbering body twitches and he cries out. The hobgoblin’s eyes turn grey, and it strokes John’s hair until he is peaceful again.