After dinner and on the second bottle of white wine, the nutmeg jar still containing all five apples shoved to the side of the table, the conversation had lost all graveness. Glasses in hand we walked out into Neverland one more time, now lit up by lights and lanterns as the sun had set. The air still had the same warm, velvet quality, but without the hot sting of the sun. Michael, carrying his glass in one hand and the bottle by its neck in the other, tilted his head back spreading out his arms in a Man in the Mirror-fashion grinning at the night sky - and spilling half of the wine in his glass onto the flag stones of the path. Swearing under his breath he shook his wet hand. I took both bottle and glass from him, so he could wipe his fingers on a handkerchief.

"There's still enough wine in that bottle to last us the night," I said refilling his glass. "Especially regarding the fact that I'm supposed to drive home tonight..." I started to estimate how much alcohol would be in my blood after we had finished the second bottle regarding the time since we had started and thought that driving probably wouldn't be illegal altogether, but... "What's the rule for blood alcohol and driving in this country?"

Michael took his glass and the bottle from me. "I'd much rather you wouldn't drive!"

"Well, I much rather wouldn't myself, to be frank," I admitted.

"Then that's settled. You can either stay here - there are plenty of guest rooms - or I'll have someone drive you home and return your car tomorrow."

"Yes, well, let's see about that later," I answered evasively as we resumed walking towards the fairground area north of the house, following the lights of the rides shimmering through the trees. It seemed a little inappropriate both to spend the night at his house and to have someone drive me back to LA, having to return my car the next day. I thought the serious decision-making could be put off for later. So we set to finishing the bottle, teasing and playing around, laughing at everything and nothing.

At the fairground the trees were lit by light chains tracing the individual branches with warm illumination. I admired the carousel. It was an old-style one, like the ones I remembered from when I had been a child, with white wooden horses, one more beautifully painted than the other, made to move up and down on a pole going through their back.

"I loved those then I was a child. And my mom would let me ride on them 'till she ran out of coins, round after round after round." I laughed. "And my mom would stand there and watch me ride the same horse over and over again, though it was freezing cold winter!"

"That was very nice of your mom!"

"It was!"

"You wanna ride this one now?" he offered.

I looked at him to see if it was a serious offer. "Can we?"

"Sure!" he seemed delighted. "Just you get yourself a horse, and I'll go and start it."

We both got onto the wooden floor, and while Michael disappeared into the colourfully painted center, I started walking around between the horses trying to choose one. The lights came on making them sparkle in their studded bridle and shining armour.

"You ready?" I heard him call from within the little chamber in the middle of the carousel.

"Yes!" I called back, taking hold on one of the horses, and a moment later the music set in, the floor began to roll beneath my feel, and the horses started to move. It was delightful. I looked at their faces, eyes wild, nostrils flared, mouths open and painted pink, ears turned back in - I never knew what - fury? One was more glorious than the one before had been. The music was the loud music box jingle that normally accompanied such fairground rides.

Walking on the moving ground with the creature on my right going up while the one on my left went down wasn't easy at first, but after a moment I got used to holding on to the fixed poles between them, that connected top and bottom. The carousel came round to the start and Michael got on.

"Why didn't you mount?" he asked loudly over the music.

"I couldn't decide," I returned and then just decided to take the one right in front of me, a beautiful steed with a red and golden bridle. Being in a skirt I couldn't swing my leg over its back, and with one hand still holding the wine glass, mounting proved more difficult than I had thought.

Michael put his glass down by the side of the moving platform where the hot wine mugs are usually placed on winter fairs, and swaying between the steady poles, he came up to me.

"Let me help," he offered.

I emptied my glass. "I was a bit worried I might break it," I admitted, holding on to the moving pole in the back of the horse in question.

Michael took the glass from me, and in the moment he turned and set it down, I took off my shoes, slipped my foot in the stirrup and sat sideways on the horse. He smiled and mounted the one next to it.

But he had hardly sat down when I slipped off mine and mounted another.

"Hey! Wait!"

And then another. And yet another after that, feeling a childish joy at moving swiftly in this labyrinth of white creatures with Michael at my heels.

"Be careful, please!" Michael said when he finally caught up with me, holding me by my upper arm. "Don't fall."

I laughed at him, "I can ride a real horse, Michael, an animal of flesh and blood. I sure won't fall off a wooden one! Those days are over!" wound loose of his fingers and flitted along between the moving beasts with my dress flying.

"I just hope she's right!" I heard his slightly exasperate voice behind me and turned to face him.

"I heard that!"

I saw him raise his palm to heaven just as I turned and then disappeared out of sight of him around the bent of the carousel. There I hid behind a horse.

A moment later, Michael's legs and feet came in sight. Then he crouched low and smiled at me through the moving legs. "Look here! How old are you?"

I rose up, and so did he.

"Oh," I said looking at him over the horse's back, "out of your mouth that's a joke!" I put my foot in the stirrup, sat sideways on the horse and, swinging my legs over its tail end, came to sit politely in front of him.

He leaned on the pole that moved the horse next to mine. He had given up mounting, it seemed. Neverland swirled past behind him.

"You've been giving me quite a ride here!" he stated not without amusement. As my horse moved up, his went down. As it went down, he leaned back away from me, then was moved forward again as the horse came up. "You are truly enjoying yourself, aren't you?"

I smiled whimsically. "Hm! I am. Never thought I could have that much fun on a ride like this!"

"You know, we can stay here all night, and you can ride every single horse on the carousel! So why don't you slow down a bit?"

"Can we really?"

He laughed. "Well, it's mine, so, yes, we can!"

I elegantly slipped off my horse and under his eyes made for mounting the one he was leaning against. He moved backwards slightly making space for my knees, supporting himself against the creatures curved neck.

"Nobody else around we'd keep up and busy?"

"No," he smiled. "There's no-one here, just you and me and five dozen wooden horses."

"Do you know how many exactly?"

He nodded looking around his carousel. "Sixty."

"Sixty? Really? Wow..."

I looked at Neverland as it moved by, a surreal glitter in the warm night air, and at the hills beyond, black outlines against the dark sky.

"What about up there? Could someone be there watching us?"

He leaned forward on the horse's withers because its neck with the sculptured mane kept rising over his head, and looked in the direction I had indicated.

"As all the hills you can see from here belong to me, it's unlikely!" he grinned.

I leaned around the pole in the horse's back and came close to him. "Tressspassers?" I asked with a bright smile, hissing and prolonging the "s".

It made him laugh. "Well, it's in the nature of the thing that I wouldn't know that. But no, so far that has never happened. It's rough terrain up there. People have gone to great lengths to invade my privacy, but to my knowledge no-one has ever tried to invade my land over those hills."

"That's what the Romans thought, too, until Hannibal and his elephants came over the Alps."

"Well, I'm lucky, then, that the people who come after me don't have your education!"

"And an indisputable lack of elephants!"

He looked up at me. His smile seemed to cover his entire face. "That too!"

Leaning with his arms on the withers of my horse he was unsettlingly close. When the horse came up I could feel his shirt on the side of his body against my knees. It was hard to imagine that he hadn't noticed it. I watched him there, smiling at me and enjoying the night.

"You have beautiful teeth," I said after a moment of silence.

"That comes with the profession. You know, people look at my mouth a lot..."

"Yeah, they do. I bet, they do..."

I bent down towards him. He watched me. Then his smile died, but he made no attempt to move away. He kept looking at me, lips slightly parted where his smile had been. I could feel his breath on my face, felt more than I saw him tilting his head slightly to one side, brushed my lips against his, kissing him, just lightly at first, then deeper. The horse moved us both in an endless rhythm, the music played, I had my eyes closed, a little unsteady in my silk dress sitting sideways on the lacquered wood.

When I retreated he came forward in an attempt to follow me, losing contact with the horse and its motion. It lifted me up high above him. For a moment he just stood there watching. Then, in one swift movement he took me round the waist and with strength that I was unprepared for he pulled me off. I gave a small scream of surprise, grabbing his upper arms to steady myself. He put me down with my back against the moving creature, and supporting himself with both hands on its back, he fenced me in.

"Why did you ask if there was anyone here to see us?"

The horse's steady rising and falling moved us up and down.

"I don't know," I whispered, still holding on to him.

I touched his shoulders, the buttoned panel of his shirt. Looking at his face I opened the first button right under his collar. He said nothing and didn't move. My fingers glided over the cloth to the next one. He looked down at my hands on his chest. So did I. With the t-shirt underneath, undoing the buttons had no real effect. At the third button I heard him exhale sharply. "Here?" His face was bewildered as realization hit home, his eyes searching mine, yet still he didn't move.

"You said I could have every horse on the carousel," I said just loud enough for him to hear me over the ever-repeating jingle as the forth button gave way.

"But I'm not a horse!"

I opened the last button before the button band disappeared in his pants. "No, you're not," I breathed.

Carefully slipping my hand into his shirt, I touched the cloth of the t-shirt over his stomach, heated by the body underneath. The music drifted away from me. Over the rushing in my ears, I loudly heard his fast, shallow breaths coming through parted lips, his stomach under my hand rising and falling in time.

Then I moved into him, my right hand sliding around his waist, diving deep into his clothes, pulling the left hem of his shirt from his pants in the process. I felt him let go of the horse behind me. His eye lids flickered shut. His mouth was dry both from arousal and from drinking wine; he still tasted of it, sweet and bitter. Arms closed around me.

And then I pulled him down with me.

~~~~~

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