Brother Dusty-Feet by Rosemary Sutcliff

Jonathan was the story-teller of the Company, as well as the Doctor and the Playwright and the Tumbler between scenes, and the one who did most of the mending, and his stories were always worth listening to.
    Even Hugh pricked up his ears, because he loved Jonathan’s stories.
    Then, ‘I’ll tell you a Christmas story, my masters,’ said Jonathan’s deep, quiet voice out of the darkness. ‘I will tell you about the fourth guest who came behind the shepherds to the Bethlehem stable, that first Christmas.’
    ‘Wasn’t it a shepherd boy?’ put in Nicky’s voice, muffled in the straw.
    ‘Be quiet an’ let him get on wi’ th’ story,’ said Jasper Nye; and Nicky gave an apologetic grunt, and held his peace.
    ‘People said it was a shepherd boy, after they had forgotten the truth,’ said Jonathan. ‘But I
have
heard that it was Pan, the master of all furred and feathered things, who followed the Star that night.’ And he told them this story:
    One autumn, when the field-mice and the tiggyhedgehog and Brock the Badger were all making places for themselves to sleep in through the winter, Pan made a warm place for himself deep under the roots of an ancient tree. He lined it with rushes and fern, and curled himself up there to sleep through the dark, cold months until spring came again: justas though he was a harvest mouse, instead of the lord of all fur and fin and feather.
    He fell asleep, and dreamed the things that the animal-kind do dream in their long winter sleep; until one night he awoke with a start. There was a tingling in his finger-tips like the tingling in the twigs of a withy when the sap rises, and something seemed to be calling him out into the world beyond his hole. At first he thought it was the spring, and he remembered the sun’s warmth and young lambs crying and hawthorn smelling of cream and honey, and the long, hot days of summer to follow after. But the earth was still cold to his touch, and there was no whisper of seeds shooting and sap rising all around him; the mouth of his hole was narrowed with banked-up snow, and the stars that looked in at him through the gap that was left were bright with frost. It was still mid-winter, and Pan turned round again and tried to sleep.
    But still something called to him, called and called from the world above, and Pan turned round once more, and looked up through the mouth of his hole; and suddenly all the brightness of the stars was gathered up into one great Star that shone straight into his eyes with a piercing golden light that made him blink. Now he knew what was calling to him; it was something to do with that Star, and he knew that he must answer the call.
    So he gathered his hairy goat legs under him, and took his pipes, which had lain in the curve of his arm while he slept, and scrambled up through the opening of his hole, pushing his way through the snow that had drifted round it. All the world lay quiet, sleeping under the stars; the hills lookedstrange in their covering of snow, and the wind cut like a knife; but still something was calling, as joyously as spring, and still the great Star burned and pulsed, hanging low out of the sky just over the scattered lights in the valley below, which he knew were the lights of Bethlehem. ‘Whatever it is,’ said Pan to himself, ‘it must be in Bethlehem.’ And he set out, leaping along over the snow, his great round hooves leaving a track behind him as though a huge goat had passed that way, and the golden light of the Star shining on the splendid sweep of his curved horns.
    But he had not gone far when he heard a pitiful bleating and turned aside to see what it might mean; and in a hollow of the hillside he found a flock of sheep all huddled close together, outside their stonewalled fold, their eyes like green lamps in the light of the Star, and the mist of their breath hanging like smoke above them.
    ‘What is the matter, my children?’ asked Pan.
    And the old scarred bell-weather pawed the