The Moon Ferry

I

Pip could not sleep. He had tried lying on his left side, and on his right side, and briefly on his nose, which is not a real way to lie down, but he was running out of ideas. Then, from the bottom of the hill, the harbor bell rang once — a low, round sound, like the town clearing its throat before saying something important.

Pip's ears stood straight up. The last ferry, he thought. He had never once seen the last ferry. He wound his scarf around his neck three times, because his mother always said three, and padded out into the blue dark.

II

The town was asleep. The bakery was asleep. Even the puddles were asleep, holding their little spoonfuls of starlight very still. At the end of the dock floated a ferry about the size of a bathtub and a half, painted the color of old spoons, and at the wheel stood a tall heron in a captain's cap. The sign on the piling said:

"The moon," said Pip. "Is that the little town past the lighthouse?"

"No," said the heron. "It is the moon."

III

"Fare is one yawn," said the heron, holding out his cap.

Pip did not feel like yawning, so he thought about warm milk, and about waiting for toast, and a yawn arrived all by itself — a good wide one, roomy as a mailbox. He paid it into the cap. The heron shook the cap out over the harbor, and the yawn drifted away across the water, looking for somebody who needed it.

"Mind your whiskers," said the heron. "The first bit is uphill."

IV

The ferry did not so much sail as decide, very gently, that the sea was finished. The water beneath them grew darker and softer, and then it was not water at all. Pip looked over the rail and saw the lighthouse below, small as a birthday candle. The wake behind the boat had turned from foam into stars, trailing after them like a long white scarf.

"Don't dangle your paws over the side," said the heron. "The sky is ticklish."

V

There were two other passengers. A moth in a knitted hat, on her way home from visiting her four hundred cousins. ("Lovely cousins," she said. "So many. So very, very many.") And an old tortoise called Mr. Alba, who rode the ferry on the first of every month, for the quiet.

Nobody talked much after that. The boat creaked. The stars slid by. Somewhere far below, the sea practiced its hush, hush, hush.

VI

The moon came up slowly, the way a big friendly thing should. The ferry bumped a dock of pale stone, and Pip stepped off into dust as soft as flour. Each step made a tiny, slow pff. When he hopped, he floated for a moment before coming down, so that walking felt like one long, polite bounce.

Everything was silver-quiet. Everything was slow. It was very hard, on the moon, to be in a hurry about anything.

VII

"Rule of the ferry," said the heron, leaning on the rail. "Everyone brings home one small thing. One. It must fit in a paw."

"Why only one?" asked Pip.

"Because that is how pockets work," said the heron. "And hearts, more or less. You have until the bell."

VIII

Pip went looking the way you look when everything is free and nothing is for sale. He found pebbles that hummed old songs to themselves, very quietly, in case anyone was sleeping. He found a ribbon of moonlight that curled around his paw like a friendly worm. He found a whole hill of silver dust and tried to pick up all of it, just to check, and it slid through his paws like water — which is exactly what hills do when you get greedy.

IX

The moth chose a thimbleful of hush, for her four hundred cousins. Mr. Alba chose nothing, which he said was the best thing on the moon, and the hardest to carry.

And Pip chose a small white stone, round as a blueberry, that glowed a soft, sleepy glow. It was warm — which surprised him. It held its light the way bread holds its warmth: quietly, from the inside.

Far across the dust, the ferry bell rang once. Time to go home.

X

The way home was downhill the whole way. The moth slept. Mr. Alba slept too, or was very quiet, which for a tortoise is nearly the same thing. Pip held his stone in both paws and watched the stars thin out, one by one, until the sea came back below them, saying hush, hush, hush.

Then the dock. Then the hill. Then the den, warm as a held breath. Pip set the moon-stone on the windowsill, where it glowed just enough — not enough to keep anyone awake. Just enough to say: still here.