as told by Kaisha, one evening last fall ...

As I pass hurriedly between the rush hour crowds, a burst of cheer in the grey draws my eyes and at last gives me cause to slow, a reason once more to smile. There are two children some way in front of me, one of them is dressed up like a panda and the other like a wizard. From this distance at least, the costumes look fantastic, well made. Maybe their mom’s are costume makers, I think, but that’s a rather specific assumption, isn't it?

The wizard kid has a long, flowing, deep purple robe with glittering stars and planets decorated upon it, just as you would expect. The hat is tall, crooked and pointed, same colour, same patterns; the whole outfit has a bright yellow or gold trim, a perfect wizard outfit. But then the bottom of the robe is slightly dirty and wet looking, typical kid, and looks like he has been walking about for days in it. The other kid’s panda outfit is wonderful! Thick, teddy bear fur, sharp, contrasting black arms and legs with a white body and an enormous white head, the legs end in large, round feet circled by a ring of fifthly, matted fur. A long, striped tail drags along behind him, as dirty as the bottom of the wizards robe. I have a cheeky temptation to speed up and stand on the tail! The head of the panda costume looks ludicrously large in comparison with the size of the child. It has small round ears stuck to the sides of it.

No one is paying any attention to the two of them which says a lot more about city people than it does about their costumes.

As I catch up with them I begin to hear that they are arguing, the wizard’s arms wave around as he talks (I think it’s a boy, but the voice is quite high) while the panda shrugs and moans a few words back at him. When I manage to take my eyes away from them I notice that in fact, no one is looking at them at all, no one appears to see them.

I begin to hear their voices, and yes, they are definitely arguing; the wizard poking the panda in the side as he talks. It’s definitely two boys, they must be around seven or eight years old.

“It looks stupid,” the wizard is shouting, “and you’ve made us look dumb.”

“It is not stupid, that’s what it looked like in the book. It’s your stupid wizard hat that makes us look dumb.” He reaches behind him and scoops up the dirty tail and looks down at it as it lies limply in his hand.

“Excuse me,” I can’t stop myself, “I just love your costumes! Did you make them yourselves?”

The wizard looks up at me as if I have just spoken in a language he doesn’t understand, his mouth all curled up at one side, the eye on that side of his face squashed shut. “Made them?” The panda is still holding his tail and looking at me, just as confused. His face looks tiny, set in a round hole in the front of the panda head, his forehead is wrinkled and he looks very pink, as if he is about to overheat.

“Um,” I say, “maybe I’ll just leave you two alone. Sorry, I just love your costumes.”

“Have you ever seen a panda in real life?” the panda-boy asks me.

For some reason I give this a moments thought, but obviously the answer is no. “No,” I reply. The panda’s shoulders drop. “But I knew you were a panda,” I continue, “so I must have seen one somewhere before.”

The wizard then snatches the panda’s tail out of his hand and holds the muddy end of it up between us. “Do you know if this is that what a panda’s tail looks like then?” he asks, almost poking my eye with it.

The panda snatches it back out of his hand and yells into the wizards face, “I don’t care anyway! It’s my tail. I like it. I don’t care if it’s all wrong!” The wizard snatches it back again and tugs on it sharply, making the panda yelp loudly as he spins around and falls onto his hands and knees.

I find myself caught between a laugh and a shout of surprise and have to hold myself back from involving myself in their dispute.

That is until, like the resurfacing of a horrible memory, I begin to sense that far behind me, the man Jaw is standing, waiting in the middle of the pavement as he lights a cigarette. The sun is beginning to set, and I know that if I turn around right now he will be a simple silhouette to me from this position. I could watch his head tilt, his hat point downwards as he holds a lighted match up to his face. He’ll freeze in that position for a moment and then straighten up as a cloud of smoke issues from his mouth and streams from his nose in a jet. I’ll notice a flicker of a highlight shine in his eyes, the individual shadows of each hair in his unshaven face, and then he’ll turns away from me and begin to walk and I’ll know I have no choice but to follow.

I look at the ground and watch a couple of big, fat tears drop from my eyes and splatter upon the pavement between my feet, but I prevent anymore from spilling out by squeezing my eyes tight and wiping them with the back of my hand. I look back up at the wizard and the panda and begin to apologise, telling them I have no choice but to leave now, but it turns out that they are not listening to me anyway. They are still fighting. As I open my mouth to say goodbye, they fall back onto the ground and begin rolling around, shouting and pulling at each other. There is a barely visible cloud of dust forming around them as they scuffle so.

As I walk with lead-like legs back up the road to catch up with the man, I take a second to look back over my shoulder, and see the wizard and the panda once more. The panda is on all fours on the ground, but the wizard, with one pointed shoe braced against the panda’s back end, is standing upright once again, pulling at the panda’s tail with both hands to try and tear it off. I sniff a couple of times while I giggle to myself at this image, and feel glad that there is no one else who can see them.