Fairy Tale Sleep Stories · 11 Hour Compilation Part 1 · Scheherazade to Alice in Wonderland

Welcome to The Sleeping Almanac.
Before

the lamp is lit, one small thing. If these stories carry you to sleep, subscribe now, while your eyes are still open, and tomorrow night's tale will be waiting for you. A like helps other tired souls find this room. That is all. Let's light the lamp together now.
Tonight we begin something new. For two seasons we have walked among gods, first in the cold north, then along the Nile. Tonight the gods rest, and the storytellers take their turn. This is the first night of the Storybook Season, twelve of the most beloved tales ever told, told the old way, the true way, slowly, for sleep.
And every season needs a door. Tonight is the door.
Chapter One. The Lamp Is Lit.
Somewhere, at the quiet edge of everything, there is a room.
It is not a large room. It has one window, shuttered now against the dark, and one chair that has learned the shape of whoever sits in it. There is a table. On the table there is a book, an old one, thick as a loaf of bread, its cover worn soft as a riverbed stone. And beside the book there is a lamp.
Tonight, for the first time, someone lights it.
A small flame. No larger than a thumbnail. It leans one way, then the other, then settles, the way a cat settles, and the room turns the color of honey held up to the sun.
The book deserves a word of its own. It is heavier than it looks, and it looks heavy. Its spine has been mended three times, in three different centuries, by three people who each believed they were the last who would need to. Its page edges have gone the color of weak tea. It smells the way all the best rooms of your life have smelled, of paper and dust and something faintly sweet that no one has ever identified, and closed, it holds the warmth of hands a long time, like a stone from a fire.
A hand rests on the cover of it now. The hand of a storyteller.
She has been waiting for you.
Not impatiently. Storytellers do not wait that way. She has been waiting the way a garden waits for evening, certain that it will come, in no hurry to meet it. And now that you are here, there is a chair for you, and a blanket, and a whole night with nothing in it but a story.
You may wonder how you came to be here. It does not matter. The room is at the edge of everything, which means it is close to everywhere, and every tired traveler finds it eventually, on the night they need it most.
The storyteller opens the book to the very first page.
And because this is the first night, before any tale can be told, she will tell you how the lamp came to be lit at all. It is her own story. It is the story of the woman who told stories so that morning would keep arriving, the story of one thousand nights and one night more.
You do not need to do anything now.
Settle in. Let the chair hold you. Let the blanket be heavy in the good way, the way snow is heavy on a roof that has nothing to do until spring.
Close your eyes, if they want to close. This story does not need to be watched. It only needs to be near you, the way the lamp is near you, the way rain on the window is near you when you are already half asleep.
You do not have to follow every word. You do not have to remember any of it in the morning.
If you drift, the story will go on without you, quietly, and it will not mind at all. Drifting is not leaving. Drifting is how a listener says thank you.
A word, before we begin, about where these tales come from. Everything told in this room this season is old. Older than the lamp, older than the room, old the way rivers are old. These are the tales as the first tellers left them to us, in the old books, before anyone tidied them for the nursery or dressed them up for the theater. You may find, some nights, that the story you thought you knew has a different face by lamplight. The shoes are silver here, not ruby. The mermaid is braver than you were told, and the ending kinder in its own strange way. That is not a mistake. That is the pleasure of this season. The old way is the deep way, and the deep way is the way down to sleep.
And one more thing, whispered like a secret between us: nothing in this room will ever startle you. That is a promise that holds all season long. Whatever storms blow through these tales, they blow themselves out well before the end, every night, and every ending is a soft landing. You can trust this room. That is what it was built for.
The flame leans, and settles.
We begin.
Chapter Two.

The City at Dusk.
Long ago, and far from here, there was a city that the evening loved.
All cities have an hour when they are most themselves. Some belong to the morning, all bells and bread and shutters opening. But this city, this old city of towers and gardens between two slow rivers, belonged to the last hour of the light, when the sun went down behind the date palms and every wall turned the color of apricots.
At that hour the heat of the day finally loosened its grip. At that hour the fountains in the courtyards seemed to speak more softly, and the swifts came down over the rooftops in long sliding arcs, and the smell of the city changed, stone cooling, bread finishing, jasmine opening somewhere over a wall, the green smell of the river reaching up into the streets like a tide.
In the great market the stalls were closing with the unhurried ceremony of stalls that will open again tomorrow. The spice sellers drew soft cloths over their hills of color, saffron and cinnamon and the deep red pepper, putting the reds and golds to bed. The cloth merchants rolled their silks the way you roll up a sunset. The bird sellers hooded the cages one by one and the little markets of song went quiet inside them, and the melon seller, who had shouted cheerfully all day about the virtues of melons, said nothing at all now, only stacked the last of them in a cool corner, round and pale as sleeping moons.
Lamps were lit in the doorways, one by one, unhurried, a city's worth of small flames answering the first stars. Merchants rolled their carpets closed. The last donkey carts creaked home. On the flat rooftops, families spread mats and cushions to sleep in the open air, because the nights were warm, and the sky in that country was so thick with stars that sleeping under it felt like sleeping under a blanket that someone had shaken out over the whole world. Grandmothers claimed the corners, by right. Children were laid in the middle, where they could not wander, and lay looking up, counting, losing count, starting over, sliding into sleep somewhere in the low hundreds. And the murmur of all those rooftops talking itself down for the night rose over the city like a second river, this one made of voices, running slower and slower until it stood still.
And through the middle of all of it moved the river, doing what rivers do at that hour, which is to gather the day and carry it off. The washing places stood empty, their stones still damp. The reed cutters poled home along the margins, their flat boats stacked green. A boy drove six geese along the bank with a stick he did not need, because the geese knew the way, and had known it longer than the boy had been alive, and tolerated him the way the old tolerate the young. And the first fishing lights came out on the far water, one, then three, then seven, small and orange and patient, and they would burn there half the night, the city's outermost lamps, the ones that hold the border between the world of rooms and the world of dark water.
In the middle of the city, on a low hill, stood the palace.
It was the kind of palace that takes several lifetimes to build, courtyard opening into courtyard, arch after arch after arch, until a visitor could not say where the building ended and the gardens began. There were pools there that held the moon on their still black water like a coin at the bottom of a well. There were peacocks asleep in the orange trees. There were long corridors of blue and white tile where a person's footsteps went ahead of them like a servant announcing their name.
And at the very heart of all that beauty, in a room that opened onto a garden of flowers that opened only at night, there lived a king who could not be comforted.
His name was Shahryar.
Once, he had been a good king, generous and easy to laugh. But a great sorrow had come to him, the kind of sorrow that does not knock at the front gate but climbs over the garden wall, and it had broken something in him, some small hinge of the heart that lets a person close the door on a bad day and sleep.
We will not stand long in the king's sorrow. It is enough to say that he had been badly hurt, and that he had decided, the way the badly hurt sometimes decide, that the safest thing in the world was to never let the world near him again.
So the king did not sleep.
Night after night he sat awake in his beautiful rooms while the palace breathed around him, and his heart walked in circles like a sentry on a wall, and nothing, not the fountains, not the nightingales, not the softest cushions in the kingdom, could quiet it.
A palace is a village wearing jewelry. Everyone in it knows everything. The cooks knew, and the gardeners knew, and the guards on the gates knew, that the king had forgotten how to rest. And the sadness of a sleepless king settles over a city the way weather does. The whole beautiful city at the hour of apricot light held its breath a little, those years, waiting for its king to be well.
In that city there lived a man whose work it was to stand beside the king. His title was vizier, which is an old word for the person who carries the keys and the worries. He was a careful man, gray at the temples, gentle with his servants, and he had carried the king's worries so long that his shoulders had taken a permanent, thoughtful stoop, like a man forever passing under a low doorway.
And the vizier had two daughters.
The younger was called Dunyazade, and she was young enough that the world still seemed to her a series of wonderful rooms to run through.
The elder was called Scheherazade.
Remember the name, the way you would remember the name of a friend you have not met yet.
Because the whole of this night belongs to her.
Chapter Three.

The Vizier's Daughter.
In the garden of the vizier's house, under a lamp mobbed by patient moths, a young woman sat reading with her bare feet tucked beneath her, and this was Scheherazade.
What can be said about her?
The old book says she had read a thousand books. It says it plainly, the way you might say a person was tall, as if it were simply one of her measurements. A thousand books of poets and kings, of medicine and stars, of the sayings of the wise and the deeds of the peoples who came before.
But a person can read a thousand books and only become heavy, the way a ship overloaded sits low in the water. That was not Scheherazade. Everything she read became lighter in her, not heavier. Facts turned to stories in her keeping the way grapes turn to wine in a cool dark room, slowly, sweetening, becoming something that warms.
It had begun, as these things do, with a nurse. An old woman from the marsh country in the south, who had minded her as a baby and stayed on past all usefulness because no one could imagine the house without her, and who told stories the way other people breathe, constantly, and to live. Every ailment of Scheherazade's childhood had been treated twice, once by the physician, once by the nurse, and the nurse's treatments were tales, administered at bedside, and it is a matter of record in that family that the tales worked faster.
She was the sort of person who remembered the exact blue of a story's evening sky told to her once, by that nurse, twenty years before. She knew how every tale in the city ended and, better, she knew where every tale in the city liked to rest along the way, the shaded spots, the wells, the long views. She knew stories the way a river pilot knows a river, not from a map, but from having traveled every mile of it in every season, in flood and in drought, by day and by night.
In the evenings she read in the garden of her father's house, sitting with her legs crossed on a cushion by the fountain, a lamp at her shoulder, while the moths made their small devotions around the flame. Dunyazade would lie with her head in her sister's lap and say, tell me the one about the fisherman, and Scheherazade would close the book she was reading, because the story a listener asks for is always more important than the story on the page, and she would begin.
Her voice, they said, was low and even, like water moving under ice. Nothing in it hurried. Nothing in it doubted. When Scheherazade said once, long ago, and far from here, the words worked on a listener the way a key works in a lock kept oiled and true, something in the chest turned over, softly, and a door swung open onto somewhere else.
Now, the vizier loved his daughters the way careful men love, quietly, thoroughly, with contingency plans. And in those years of the king's long sleeplessness, the vizier came home each evening grayer than the evening before, because a kingdom whose king cannot rest is a boat whose captain will not leave the wheel, and everyone aboard feels the drift.
One evening Scheherazade set down her book in the garden and looked at her father a long while.
Father, she said at last, I want you to bring me to the palace.
The vizier's heart dropped through him like a stone through still water.
He said no. Of course he said no. He said no the way fathers say it, first loudly, then quietly, then with his head in his hands. He reminded her of the king's sorrow, of the heaviness of that house, of the hundred good reasons a wise young woman should stay in her father's garden with her books and her fountain and her sister and her whole long life.
And Scheherazade listened, because she was a good listener before she was anything else. She let all of his worry finish saying itself. The fountain spoke into the silence for a while.
Then she said, gently, Father. Someone must sit with him.
That was the whole of her argument. She did not claim to be brave. She did not claim to have a plan, though she had one, folded small inside her the way a sail is folded before a voyage. She only knew what every storyteller knows, and what she knew better than anyone alive: that no one heals alone, and that there has never yet been a night so locked that a story could not slip beneath the door.
The old book does not tell us how long they sat in that garden, the worried father and the certain daughter, while the lamp burned down and the moths kept their small vigil. It tells us only how it ended.
It ended the way it always ends, in the old stories, when a daughter has decided.
The vizier went up the hill to the palace, walking slowly, like a man carrying something breakable. And he told the king: my daughter Scheherazade asks to come, this evening, and keep you company through the night, for she is a teller of tales, and it may be that a story will do what the fountains and the nightingales could not.
And the king, who had long ago stopped believing that anything could help him, but who was too tired that evening to refuse, said: let her come.
Chapter Four.

One Thousand Books.
Her father's library was a long room with a ladder on brass rails, and in the days before she went up the hill, Scheherazade climbed it the way sailors climb rigging, without looking down. Preparation is a quiet kind of magic, and she prepared.
In the days before she went up the hill, she walked the rooms of her father's library the way a general walks the walls of a city, though there was nothing warlike in her. She was simply taking account of what she had. Here were the shelves of the poets. Here were the travelers, the ones who had crossed deserts of salt and seas the color of green glass and come home to write it down. Here were the books of the stars, with their diagrams like spiderwebs strung between the planets. Here were the animal fables, the wise fools, the kings in disguise, the lamps, the rings, the gardens, the ships.
She did not choose one story to bring. That was the heart of her plan, and it is worth understanding, because it is the reason there is a season of nights ahead of us and not just one.
A single story, however fine, comes to an end.
But Scheherazade had noticed something about stories that the people who fear the dark have never noticed. She had noticed that every story, if you tell it truly, opens a small door in its side, and through that door you can see the beginning of another story. The fisherman in one tale walks past a tower, and the tower has its own tale. The tower's tale mentions a garden. The garden has a gate, the gate has a keeper, the keeper had a grandmother, and the grandmother, once, long ago, found a lamp.
Stories do not end, she knew. They only rest, and hand the lantern on.
She spent one whole evening with the maps. Not because she meant to travel, but because a storyteller must know the roads her tales walk in from. Here was the road the silk came down, through passes so high the snow never left them. Here were the sea lanes, drawn in faded ink, with little penned monsters in the empty places, which the mapmaker had included, her father said, not because he believed in them but because a map with no monsters is a lie of a different kind. Here was the whole world, pressed flat, folded eight times, smelling of cedar and dust, and every inch of it, she thought, was somebody's long ago and far away.
She spent one evening with the poets, because a storyteller must carry some poetry the way a traveler carries coin, small and bright and ready. She read the desert poets, who could make three lines hold a whole lost encampment, the cold firepit, the cropped grass, the beloved gone, and she read the garden poets, who were gentler, and the mystic poets, who wrote about the beloved in such a way that no one could ever prove whether they meant a person or the moon or something larger than both, which she decided was the whole point, and stored away for later.
And she spent the last evening with the oldest book in the house, which was not a book of stories at all. It was a book of remedies. Her grandfather had written it, a physician, in a small upright hand, and at the very end, after the fevers and the salves and the setting of bones, he had written one line that she had loved since she was a girl too small to reach the shelf it lived on.
For the sickness of the heart, he had written, a true tale, warmed, taken nightly, until the dark is friendly again.
So she did not pack a story. She packed the whole country of them, in the only luggage that matters, which is a well loved memory. And in the evening, when the light had gone the color of apricots and then the color of doves, she called her sister.
Dunyazade, she said. I need you to do something for me, and it is very small, and it is the most important thing anyone will do in this kingdom tonight.
Tell me, said Dunyazade.
When the palace has gone quiet, said Scheherazade, and the lamps are low, come to the door of the room where I am, and ask me for a story. That is all. Ask the way you used to ask in the garden, when you were small. Say, sister, tell me the one about, and then name anything you like. A horse. A lamp. A city of brass. Whatever comes to you.
And then, said Dunyazade, who knew her sister, and was beginning to smile.
And then, said Scheherazade, I will do the rest.
They practiced it once, that evening, in the garden, under the lamp, with the moths attending. Dunyazade knocked on the garden gate as though it were a palace door, and made her voice small, and said, sister, may I come in, I cannot sleep, tell me the one about the horse, and burst out laughing halfway through, and had to begin again. Three times they rehearsed it, until the asking sounded the way asking sounds when a child does it at midnight, which is to say, unanswerable.
The fountain listened. The moths kept their counsel. Somewhere in the house their father lay awake staring at the ceiling, doing the arithmetic of fear, and could not have known that in the garden below, by one lamp, the two smallest people in the kingdom were quietly rehearsing its rescue.
Chapter Five.

The First Night.
The palace at night was a different country than the palace by day.
By day it was all announcements and errands, boots in the corridors, the business of a kingdom being carried from room to room on trays. But at night the palace remembered that it was, underneath everything, a house. A very large house where a family had once been happy. The fountains talked quietly to themselves in the empty courtyards. The peacocks tucked their heads beneath their wings. Somewhere far off, a guard hummed three notes of a song and stopped, embarrassed by the size of the silence.
The kitchens had banked their fires, and the great copper pans hung in ranks on the wall, each one holding a little of the lamplight, a row of dim moons. In the stables the horses stood asleep on their feet, in that way horses have, trusting their own bones to hold them, and the stable cat moved along the beam above them like a slow thought. In the record rooms the ledgers slept standing up, shoulder to shoulder, all the taxes and the tides and the shipping of a kingdom gone quiet for the night, resting their numbers.
Through this hush, in the hour after the evening meal, Scheherazade came up the long stairs with a lamp in her hand.
She was not afraid. Or, to tell it truly: she carried her fear the way she carried the lamp, out in front of her, where she could see it, where it could do some good. Only a fool feels nothing on such a night. A storyteller feels everything, and then chooses what to do with it, which is the entire difference.
The king received her in a room that opened on the garden of night flowers. He sat where the shadows gathered, away from the lamplight, the way hurt people sit, and he did not look at her for a long time.
You are the vizier's daughter, he said at last.
I am, she said.
You asked to come here. His voice had rust in it, from disuse. No one asks to come here.
I did, she said. And then, because honesty was the first of her gifts and the deepest, she said: you have been alone in the dark a long while, and I know some things about the dark that you may not have heard.
The king said nothing. But he did not send her away.
The lamps were trimmed low. The palace settled around them, beam by beam, the way old houses do, like a great animal lying down. And in the quietest part of that quiet, there came a small knock, and a small voice at the door.
Sister, said Dunyazade, exactly as she had promised, may I come in? I cannot sleep. Tell me the one about the horse. The horse that flew.
And Scheherazade looked at the king, and the king, after a moment, made a small motion with his hand, the first hospitable thing that hand had done in years.
Sit down, little one, said Scheherazade.
And there was a small ceremony of settling, the kind that matters more than it looks. A cushion found. A lamp moved a hand's width closer. Dunyazade arranging herself against her sister's shoulder with the thoroughness of a cat, and the king, in his shadows, shifting once in his chair, not nearer, exactly, but no longer farther either. Outside, the fountains kept the night. Inside, the lamp made its small gold room within the room, and everyone who mattered was inside it.
Yes, said Scheherazade. The horse that flew.
And she began.
Chapter Six.

The Tale of the Ebony Horse.
Long ago, and even farther from here, said Scheherazade, in the land of Persia, there was a king who loved wonders.
He was not a greedy king. He did not collect wonders the way misers collect coins, to lock away. He collected them the way children collect smooth stones and interesting feathers, for the pure pleasure of turning them over. His palace was full of clever things. A water clock that told the hour with little brass birds. A garden where fountains played music. A chessboard whose pieces were carved so finely that the pawns had individual faces, every one of them worried.
Twice a year, at the turning of the seasons, this king held a great festival, and inventors and craftsmen came from every corner of the world to show him what they had made, because he was known to be generous, and kinder still, he was known to actually look at what you had brought, closely, with his hands behind his back, asking good questions.
The festival mornings began before light, with the striking of the awning poles, a sound like a wooden orchestra tuning, and by the time the sun was up the square had grown a second city of canvas and rope. There were sellers of colored ice from the mountains, packed in straw, sold in slices like melon. There were men who could pour tea from a height of six feet into a cup the size of an egg and spill not one drop, and did so all day, with the expression of men doing something ordinary. There were parrots that recited poetry and one, famously, that criticized it.
And at one such festival, when the pomegranate trees were in flower and the whole city smelled faintly of sugar, three sages came before the king with three marvels.
The first brought a trumpet of gold that would sound of its own accord if an enemy entered the city, so that no watchman need ever fall asleep at his post again. The king asked, sensibly, how one tests such a thing without an enemy, and the first sage, who had prepared for the question his whole journey, had a palace guard dress in the armor of the eastern kingdoms and walk in through the water gate. The trumpet sounded, low and golden, a sound like a mountain clearing its throat, and every pigeon in the city stood up into the air at once, and the king was pleased, and the guard was given the rest of the day off, for being, briefly, the most startled man in Persia.
The second brought a basin of pure silver, and standing in the middle of it a peacock of gold. At every hour of the day and the night, the peacock spread its shining tail and turned itself once around, slowly, with great dignity, so that the palace need never lose track of the hours again. The king watched it a long while, until the hour came and the peacock turned, and the whole court held its breath, and the king said mildly that it was a fine thing, to see time pass and feel no worse for it.
But it was the third sage who brought the thing this story is named for.
He led it in by the bridle, and at first the court laughed, because it seemed to be only a horse. And then the laughter stopped, one voice at a time, the way lamps go out along a street, because it was not only a horse. It was a horse made entirely of ebony and ivory, black wood and white bone, with a saddle of worked leather and eyes of dark amber, and it stood without breathing, without stamping, in the perfect stillness that only made things have.
It flies, said the third sage, simply.
The court laughed again, but more carefully this time.
On its neck, said the sage, there is a peg of ivory. Turn it, and the horse will rise into the air, as high as you dare, and carry its rider wherever he wishes to go, faster than any bird, higher than any arrow, smooth as a boat on a slow river. There is a second peg behind the saddle. Turn that one, and it descends, soft as a leaf finding the ground.
Now the king of Persia had seen many wonders, and he had learned the first rule of wonders, which is that the ones that sound too good to be true usually are. But he had also learned the second rule, which is that once in a great while they are not, and those are the ones you remember on your deathbed, smiling.
Prove it, said the king, politely.
But before any proving, there was the matter of the price, because the third sage, unlike the first two, had not come for gold. When the king asked what he wanted for such a marvel, the sage looked across the court, slowly, to where the king's daughter sat among her ladies, and named her.
The court went very still. The princess's face did not change, which in a court is its own loud answer. The king, caught between a wonder he wanted and a bargain he hated, did what kings do, which is to say he postponed. Let the horse be proven first, he said. And it was in that unhappy pause, with the bargain hanging in the air like weather about to turn, that the prince, who had watched his sister's stillness and understood it perfectly, decided the horse wanted testing at once, and strode across the court, and up into the saddle.
The old book is honest about this. It was not only youth in him. It was also a brother's temper, dressed as curiosity.
Chapter Seven.

The Night Ride.
Now the king of Persia had a son, and the son's name was Kamar, and he was at the age when the blood runs quick and the patience runs short.
Before the wise men of the court could finish their careful questions about pegs and saddles and the principles of flight, the prince had swung himself up onto the ebony horse the way he would mount any horse in his father's stables, half showing off, half simply young.
He found the ivory peg on the neck. He turned it.
And the world let go of him.
There was no lurch, no leap. That was the strangest part, he said afterward. The ground simply excused itself and stepped away, politely, like a servant leaving a room. The palace courtyard became a pattern of tiles. The pattern became a garden. The garden became a green square stitched into a city, and the city became a handful of lamplight scattered on dark cloth, and still the horse rose, smooth as a bubble rising through honey, into the enormous blue evening.
The prince, to be honest, spent the first while shouting. The tellers pass this on without judgment, and so do we. Most of us would shout.
And there was, we should be honest, one bad quarter of an hour up there, when the shouting had stopped because the shouting had changed to thinking, and the thinking ran like this: there was a peg to go up, and he had turned it, and he did not know how to go down.
He searched that horse the way you search your own pockets at a locked door, at first casually, then thoroughly, then again, the same places, as though the answer might have grown there since. And at last, behind the saddle, small and smooth and waiting, his fingers found the second peg, and he turned it the smallest amount a peg can be turned, and the horse eased downward like a sigh, and leveled when he turned the peg back, and the prince sat still for a long moment, high over the sleeping world, being very honest with himself about how frightened he had been.
Then he laughed, alone, at the top of the sky, the laugh of the safely terrified, and it is recorded that the stars did not mind.
After that the fear had nothing left to hold, and the holding on relaxed into riding, and the prince began, cautiously, and then not cautiously at all, to look.
He saw the desert by starlight, silver and endless, combed into long waves by winds that had died before his grandfather was born. He saw the caravan fires strung along the trade roads like beads on a thread, and around each fire, though he could not see them, men were telling stories to keep the dark friendly, and some of those stories were about a horse that could fly.
He saw rivers lying in their valleys like dropped ribbons, holding the starlight. He saw mountains asleep under snow that never melted, and high cold lakes like coins of black glass. He crossed a sea. It announced itself first as a change in the dark below, the land's scattered lamps giving way to one vast unlit breathing, and then as a smell, salt and cold and enormous, rising to meet him. For a long while there was nothing below him but the patient sound of water and the moon lying on the swells, folding and unfolding, folding and unfolding. Once he passed over a ship, a single lantern at its stern, and he heard, very faint, a sailor singing to keep the watch awake, and he hung there a moment in the dark above the mast, listening, unseen, the way we are sometimes permitted to hover at the edge of other lives, and then the wind took the song and he flew on.
And the prince grew quiet inside, in a way he had never been quiet in his life.
He passed over a city where a wedding had run late, one courtyard still lit gold among a thousand dark ones, the music too far below to hear, so that the dancers seemed to be swaying to the sound of the stars. He passed over shepherd country, the flocks folded pale in the folds of the hills like patches of last winter's snow, one dog awake among them all, who looked up, and saw him, and decided, with the wisdom of working dogs, that it was none of his business.
He passed a mountain monastery where one window burned amber, some scholar up late among his inks, and the prince, high over him in the dark, wished him well, one wakeful soul to another, and the wish fell like dew, and the scholar, feeling nothing, dipped his pen.
It is a known fact, said Scheherazade to her sister, that no one can be proud on a flying horse at night. The sky is too large. Whatever you were so certain of on the ground gets smaller and smaller below you until it is just one more lamp among the lamps, and what is left of you up there is something lighter and better, a pair of eyes, a heartbeat, a gladness with no name on it.
And Dunyazade, who was already half asleep against her sister's shoulder, in the warm room, in the lamplight, with the king listening in the shadows and pretending not to, said, mmm.
Here the storyteller's voice dropped a register, because in the warm room in the palace, against her shoulder, Dunyazade had gone from listening to breathing, the oldest compliment there is, and a good teller adjusts for it without stopping, the way a rider adjusts for a sleeping child in the saddle. The king noticed. The king, by then, was noticing everything. Scheherazade met his eye over her sister's head, and neither said anything, and the tale went on, softer.
All night the prince rode the wind southward, not steering, in the way of young men letting the road decide, and the stars turned slowly over him like the ceiling of a very old house.
And a little before dawn, he saw below him a white city asleep among gardens, and at the heart of it a palace with a flat roof of moonlit marble, and something in him said, there, and he leaned to the ivory peg behind the saddle, and the ebony horse came down through the last of the night as gently as a leaf finds the ground.
Chapter Eight.

The Palace on the Roof of the World.
The city was called Sana'a, and it was the kind of city that sleeps well.
Its houses were tall and white and brown, with windows of colored glass, so that on feast nights the whole town glowed from inside like a shelf of lanterns. Its gardens were watered by channels that ran with a sound like quiet conversation. And its palace, where the ebony horse now stood cooling on the moonlit roof, its palace was famous for one thing above all the marble and the fountains.
The king of that city had a daughter, and she was said to be the most beautiful person in the southern half of the world, though the ones who said it always added, in fairness, that they had not seen the northern half.
The old book gives her a name in its own tongue, and the name means the sun of the day, and the tellers ever after have called her only that. And she was asleep.
The prince came down the stairs from the roof softly, not as a thief, the tellers are careful about this, but as a guest who has arrived before his welcome, which in those lands was accounted a serious thing but a mendable one. And the palace slept around him. Guards slept at their posts, leaning on spears that had learned to hold them up. A cat slept in a window full of moonlight, poured out like syrup. The fountains had turned themselves down for the night to their softest setting, a sound like rain remembered rather than falling.
He passed a hall where the evening's feast had ended, the cushions still holding the shapes of the guests, a lute laid down mid song on a low table, one candle sighing in a niche over the wreck of a honey cake. He passed the library, where a scholar had fallen asleep over an open book with his finger still keeping his place, so that even sleeping he was mid sentence, and would wake exactly where he left the world. He passed a courtyard where the fountain had been turned down to its night voice, and a white cat sat at the rim with one paw raised over the water, motionless, engaged in the great feline project of deciding not to bother.
He should not have gone farther. He knew it, and every teller of this tale knows it, and Scheherazade, telling it, let a little smile into her voice, because the mistakes of the young are half the furniture of the world's stories.
But he came to a door of carved cedar, open on a courtyard where jasmine climbed a trellis, and beyond it he saw the princess asleep on a couch under a lamp turned low, one hand beneath her cheek, her dark hair spread on the pillow like spilled ink, and the prince of Persia, who had that night learned smallness among the stars, learned the second lesson, which is wonder, and stood very still in the doorway with his heart lit up like a paper lantern.
The night was thinning by then. Not morning yet, but the hour that knows morning is coming, when the stars in the east begin to step back politely, one by one, like servants when the master stirs. In the room in the palace, the lamp had burned down to its wisest size. Dunyazade slept entirely. The king had left his shadows without noticing he had done it, and sat forward now in the lamplight like any listener anywhere, a thousand years of tales falling asleep against ten thousand such lamps.
And here, said Scheherazade, is where it becomes important to know about the pegs. Because a horse of ebony does not eat, or drink, or tire. But a story, little sister, a story must breathe. And this one is only now taking its first full breath. For the princess is going to wake. And what she says when she wakes is not at all what you expect. And what her father says is worse, and what happens to the horse is worst of all, and none of it, not one hoofbeat of it, goes the way you think.
She paused.
And at just that moment, through the tall windows of the king's room, past the garden of night flowers, the sky went the color of a peach.
Chapter Nine.

Dawn, and the Tale Unfinished.
Morning in that country did not creep. It arrived like a guest of honor.
First the sky over the river went pale, then pink, then a gold so frank and so cheerful that it was impossible to take the night seriously anymore. The swifts woke first and went up like thrown handfuls of grain. Then the doves began in the eaves, that round soft sound, like a question asked kindly over and over. Then bread. You could smell it from the palace hill, the whole city baking at once, and hear the first carts, and the first calls of the sellers, and under it all the fountains turning themselves back up to their daytime voice.
On the river the first fishing boats were putting out, unhurried, their sails the color of moth wings, and the fishermen spoke in low voices, not because anyone slept nearby but because the hour asked for it, the way certain rooms ask you to walk softly. A heron lifted from the reeds, unfolded itself into the pale air, and rowed away upstream with that slow wingbeat that always looks like the first, and somewhere in the palace gardens a gardener began raking the gravel paths, a sound like patient tide.
In the kitchens, far below, the banked fire was being woken, gently, with small wood and smaller words, the way you wake anyone you depend on. The water carriers were on the stairs. In the mews the falcons were unhooded one by one and sat blinking at the morning with the affronted look falcons keep for every morning, as though dawn were an appointment no one had cleared with them. The whole great house was performing the oldest play there is, the one where night hands the keys to morning and swears it was all quiet, all quiet, nothing to report.
Scheherazade stopped in the middle of a sentence.
Not at the end of one. This matters, and she did it the way a musician lifts the bow while the note is still rising. The princess had just opened her eyes. The prince had just opened his mouth. And,
It is morning, said Scheherazade, in a completely different voice, a plain daytime voice, and she stood, and smoothed her dress, and began to trim the lamp.
The king sat forward in his shadows.
The tale, he said.
It is morning, said Scheherazade again, gently, as if reminding him of a rule they had both agreed to long ago. Tales are for the night. A tale told by daylight goes stale, everyone knows that, like bread left uncovered. And this one is just getting to the part worth hearing. If I tell it now, tired, badly, I will spoil the horse and the princess and the whole of it, and neither of us will ever forgive me.
Silence. The fountains talked. The doves asked their kind question.
Then come back tonight, said the king. His voice, doing this, sounded like a door that has not been opened in years, which is to say, it complained, but it opened.
Tonight, agreed Scheherazade, as though it were nothing, as though it were not the sun rising in the middle of the night's dark heart, as though the whole world had not just quietly changed direction in that room. Tonight, and I will tell you what the princess said. And when that tale is done, there is a better one behind it. There is always, she said, picking up her lamp, one more story than there are nights to tell it in. That is the first thing a storyteller learns, and the last thing, and the only thing, truly.
And she bowed, and she went home, down the hill, through the waking city, and the city did not know yet what she had begun, though it would. She bought bread on the way, from the first stall to open, because rescuing a kingdom is hungry work, and the baker, who had known her since she was small, gave her the loaf too hot to hold and told her she looked tired, and she agreed that she was, and ate the bread walking, tearing it the way you do when it is too hot, in the blue and gold morning, with the swifts going up like grain overhead.
And she slept the sleep of the very brave, straight through the bright of the day.
And the king of that city, for the first time in years beyond counting, stood a long while at his window looking out at the morning, thinking not of what he had lost, but of a horse of ebony, hanging in the southern sky, and a princess about to speak.
That evening, when the lamps were lit, Scheherazade came up the stairs again.
And so it began.
Chapter Ten.

A Thousand Nights and One.
She came back that evening, as promised. And the tale of the ebony horse took up its breath exactly where it had been holding it.
The princess woke, and did not scream, which surprised the prince very much. She looked at him for a long moment, the way you might look at a person who has appeared in your courtyard out of a clear night sky, and then she said, with the calm of someone who has read a great many stories herself, you are either a thief, a dream, or a prince, and you do not stand like a thief.
I may be a dream, admitted the prince, who was honest by nature. I have had a strange night.
Dreams, said the princess, sitting up unhurried, arranging her hair with the composure of a person who has read about exactly this situation and always suspected the books were exaggerating, dreams do not usually look so worried. What are you called, and how did you come to my roof.
So he told her. The festival, the sage, the peg, the shouting, which he admitted to, and she approved of the admitting. The sea by moonlight. The sailor's song. The city that had said, there, and the roof that had risen to meet him like a hand held out.
That is either the truth, said the princess, when he had finished, or the best lie ever told on this roof, and there have been some good ones, my aunts sleep up here in summer. Either way you had better sit down.
They talked until the birds began, and it was the kind of talking that decides an entire life without either person noticing, and there is no need to repeat the rest of it here, because everyone who has ever been young knows the whole of that conversation by heart already.
But the course of it did not run smooth, said Scheherazade, and here the tale opened its side door, the way her tales always did.
For the princess's father woke, and found a stranger in his palace, and was not calm at all. And it took the better part of an evening, and a good deal of courtesy on all sides, and one very diplomatic breakfast, before it was agreed that a prince who arrives by flying horse, however irregular his entrance, is still a prince, and might in time be considered a suitor, provided he could prove the horse.
And that was where the trouble truly began. Because the third sage, the maker of the horse, had followed his marvel south with a grievance in his chest. He had built the finest thing in the world, and the world had given the glory of it to a boy who merely sat on it and turned a peg. Grievance, said Scheherazade to her sister, is a seed that only grows in the dark, and that man had been watering his for a long while.
So on a bright morning, by a lie told kindly, the sage got the princess onto the saddle before the prince, saying the horse must be exercised, and the prince's father wished it, and a dozen other soft false things. And then he mounted behind her, and turned the ivory peg, and the ebony horse went up like a swift into the wide blue day, and did not circle back.
North he took her, over the sea, over the mountains, to a far cold country, believing that a stolen princess and a stolen horse together would make him at last the owner of his own story.
He was wrong, of course. Thieves of stories always are.
For the princess, the one they called the sun of the day, was not a lady in a tower by temperament. She had read as many books as the storyteller telling of her, nearly, and she knew exactly what a clever person does when captured, which is this. Nothing. Nothing, done beautifully, at great length.
When the king of that cold country came to marry her, she declared herself mad. And here, said the storyteller, you must understand that this was not the wild madness of stories told badly. This was a scholar's madness, built the way a mason builds a wall, stone by considered stone.
She wailed at meals, but only at the fish course, and never twice in the same key. She spoke to the curtains, courteously, asking after their health, and paused for their answers, and thanked them. She insisted the moon had been stolen and sewn into the hem of her gown, and she walked carefully because of it, in small steps, so as not to bruise the moon, and the whole court found itself walking carefully behind her, in small steps, without quite knowing why.
She addressed the northern king as Grandfather, which he minded, and occasionally as a large blue heron, which he minded more.
The court physicians came first, of course. She diagnosed them back. She felt the first one's forehead and prescribed him a broth for excessive certainty. She looked at the second one's tongue and told him, gravely, that he had swallowed a false conclusion, and that it had gone to his liver. The physicians retreated in reasonably good order, and the northern king, who wanted a bride and not a puzzle, sent word through all the lands for anyone who could cure her.
Weeks, this took. Weeks of walking softly to spare the moon in her hem, of befriending curtains, of keeping her face a locked room with the lamp burning far inside it where no one could see. And every one of those days, said the storyteller, she woke not knowing whether her prince was alive, and chose, each morning, to believe he was, which is the hardest scholarship there is.
And this, said Scheherazade, settling back, is where the tale turns kind again.
Because word travels. Word always travels. It goes with the caravans and the pepper ships, and it reached, in time, a dusty young man walking the market roads half the world from home, who had asked in eleven cities after a horse of ebony and ivory and been laughed at in every one of them, and who did not stop, because love and stubbornness are the same coat worn on different days.
But before that word reached him, there was the searching, and the searching deserves its due, because it is most of what love actually is.
He had come down out of the sky with nothing, in a country whose language he half knew, and begun to walk. He asked in the horse markets first, logically, describing a horse of ebony and ivory to men who dealt in horses of meat and bone, and they looked at him the way you look at rain in the wrong season. In the second city they laughed at him outright, and he learned to ask more carefully. In the fourth city a carpet dealer, kindly, offered him work carrying rolls, and he took it for a month, and ate, and listened, because markets are where the world empties its pockets, and every rumor in the world comes to rest at last beside a carpet dealer's tea.
In the seventh city he heard of a wonder in the east that turned out to be a very large turtle. In the ninth, a wonder in the north that turned out to be two men and a painted kite. He walked on. His boots thinned. His beard arrived, unasked. He learned the constellations of the northern sky, which are different, and colder, and he gave them his own names, and one of them he named for her.
Eleven cities, said the storyteller. Eleven cities laughed at the man asking after a flying horse. It only ever takes the twelfth.
For in the twelfth city he heard of a mad princess in the north who spoke to curtains, and had a stolen moon sewn into her hem.
And he smiled for the first time in a season, and sold what remained of his good boots for passage, and went north as a physician, in a borrowed robe, with a beard he had grown mostly out of neglect.
She knew him the moment he bowed. He knew that she knew by the particular stillness of her hands. And neither face showed one flicker of it, because both of them had read the same books, and both of them knew the oldest rule of rescue, which is that it is a duet played slowly.
He was shown in at evening. The princess looked at the dusty young physician with the untidy beard, and asked the curtains, politely, whether they had seen a taller version of this man once, in a dream, on a roof. The curtains, she reported, had.
The treatments, the young physician announced, would take some days, and must not be rushed.
On the first evening he took her pulse, holding her wrist the way you hold something you have crossed half the earth to hold, and prescribed warm milk with honey, and the whole court marveled, because the princess drank it without addressing anyone's ancestors even once.
On the second evening he sat with her an hour and spoke of nothing but weather, southern weather, the kind that is kind to gardens, and the princess was observed to be calmer, though she did remark to a curtain that the moon in her hem felt lighter.
On the third evening he read to her, some dry southern text on the treatment of moon sickness, which no one else was permitted to examine, and which was not a medical text at all, but the beginning of a plan, read aloud in the flattest doctor's voice a man in love has ever managed.
The cure, announced the young physician gravely, when the court asked, was complicated. The madness, he explained, had entered the lady on the back of an enchanted horse, and could only leave the way it came. Let the horse of ebony be brought to the great square. Let the lady be seated upon it. Let braziers be lit and let everyone stand well back, for the going out of such a spirit is no small weather.
The northern king, delighted to be rid of a mystery he had never enjoyed, agreed to all of it.
And so, on a gray bright morning, in the great square of that cold city, with the whole town watching from a respectful distance and the braziers smoking like small volcanoes, the physician handed the mad princess up onto the ebony horse, and then, checking one last strap, swung up behind her.
You can see it coming, said Scheherazade. The whole square could see it coming, one heartbeat too late.
His hand found the ivory peg. The horse rose like joy itself. And this time the ride was made the right way, the old way, the way the first ride should have been. They flew south through the whole of that night, the two of them, and the world turned its dark pages beneath them, the cold kingdoms giving way to the passes, the passes to the plains, the plains to the first warm wind off the desert, which reached up to meet them like the smell of home itself.
They did not talk much, up there. There is not much need, above the world, with the stars close enough to read by and the lands of the earth asleep below in their long dark beds. Once she pointed, and he looked, and it was the sea, holding the moon. Once he pointed, and she looked, and it was a line of caravan fires, red beads on the black, and around every one of them, though neither rider said it aloud, somebody was surely telling a story.
As for the horse of ebony, the old book gives it a hard ending. When the wedding was done, the prince's father, who had seen for himself what a door that opens onto the whole sky can carry off, ordered the horse broken, and it was, and the old book does not apologize for him. But storytellers have argued with that ending for a thousand years, gently, the way you argue with weather. And the tellers I trust add only this. That in every stable in every kingdom that tale has ever reached, there has been, ever since, one stall left swept and empty, just in case, and that horses dream of it, which is why they stand so still at night, listening upward. Behind them, in the great square, the smoke of the braziers swirled where the horse had stood. And the north kept its own story of that morning forever after, the story of the day the madness flew away and took the physician with it.
And here the tale remembers, as good tales do, the person we left grieving. For all this while, in Persia, an old king who loved wonders had stopped loving them. His son had gone up into the sky off the back of a festival morning and never come down, and the king had the trumpet of gold and the peacock basin carried to a storeroom, because he could not look at marvels anymore, and the palace of clever things went quiet, and the water clock's little brass birds sang the hours to rooms that no longer counted them.
So you must imagine the morning, said the storyteller, when a shape came out of the southern sky. How the word ran up through the palace like water running uphill, which it only does for joy. How the old king came out onto the terrace with his heart in his mouth, and watched the ebony horse descend as gently as a leaf finds the ground, exactly as a sage had promised him a lifetime of mornings ago, and how it carried not one rider but two.
The tellers say the king wept on his son's neck, and then, being a king, apologized to the princess for weeping, and she, being who she was, said that in her country it was considered the correct response to flying horses, and wept too, to keep him company, and they were friends from that hour.
They were married in the warm country, in the spring, at a wedding that lasted a week and cost a year of taxes, and the old king of Sana'a came north for it and wept the whole time, partly for joy and partly for the state of the treasury.
Night after night, Scheherazade told it. And this is the part of her own story that matters most, so listen with whatever is still awake in you.
Each dawn she stopped with the tale unfinished, and each evening the king said, come back tonight, and it was not many nights before the words changed, all by themselves, without either of them remarking on it, from come back tonight to what happens next, which are, if you listen closely, entirely different words. The first is a bargain. The second is a boy at his grandmother's knee.
And when that long tale finally ended, in the pale first blue of a morning, the king let out a long breath, and Scheherazade, before the breath was finished, said, of course, that is nothing beside the tale of the fisherman and the bottle, and the king said, the what, and she said, tonight, and went home to sleep.
And after the fisherman it was the merchant, and after the merchant the porter, and after the porter the three ladies of the city, and the tailor, and the barber, and the barber's six brothers, each one leading to the next the way rooms lead to rooms in a great house, the way one lamp is lit from another until a whole street is warm.
There was one tale the king asked for twice, said the storyteller, and it is worth telling you why.
It was the tale of the sleeper awakened. A good natured man of Baghdad, Abu Hassan by name, who liked his comfort and his supper, fell asleep one evening and was carried, as a jest, sleeping, into the palace itself, and laid in the royal bed. And when he woke, the whole palace had been instructed to treat him as the ruler of the faithful. The servants bowed. The musicians played at his nod. The cooks asked what he wished for breakfast, and meant it.
And the wonder of the tale is not the jest. The wonder is how gently Abu Hassan took to it. He did not shout or panic. He looked at the ceiling a long while, and at his own hands, and then he decided, sensibly, that if this was a dream it was a well made one and deserved his cooperation. He ruled for a day, kindly, better than some who have done it for forty years. He settled a quarrel between two gardeners. He sent a purse to a poor man he remembered from his own street. He ate an excellent lunch.
And when he fell asleep that night and was carried home again, and woke in his own plain bed, he was not bitter. That is the part the king asked to hear twice. Abu Hassan stretched, and looked at his own familiar ceiling, and said, well, it was a fine day, wherever it happened.
No tale in the whole book, said the storyteller, is better for falling asleep inside. Because it keeps its promise, which is the promise of this room too. Wherever you go when your eyes close, you will be treated kindly there, and carried home after, and the waking will be gentle.
The fisherman's tale, since you are wondering, went like this, in small. A poor fisherman, gray in the beard, casts his net four times into the sea, which was his custom and his ceremony, and three times draws up sorrow, a dead donkey, a jar of sand, a basket of broken glass. And the fourth time he draws up a bottle of brass, stopped with a stopper of lead, and inside the bottle, folded up the way smoke folds when it has nowhere to go, is a spirit as old as the mountains and in a very bad temper about the whole arrangement.
The spirit rose out of the bottle the way smoke rises when the wind cannot decide, and gathered itself into a shape as tall as a minaret, and informed the fisherman, with the courtesy of the very old, that it intended to repay its long imprisonment unkindly, and that the fisherman, having done the freeing, would do the repaying.
And the fisherman, standing in his patched boat with his empty net, an old man at the end of an unlucky morning, looked all the way up at the towering spirit, and stroked his beard, and said that before any repaying happened, he had one small question, as a fisherman, a practical man, about the bottle.
Surely, said the fisherman, a spirit of such magnificence was never in that little bottle at all. The bottle would not hold one of the spirit's feet. He meant no offense. He only could not believe it, and did not wish to die believing a lie.
And the spirit, who was old and proud, and who had spent several centuries with no company but its own grievance, drew itself up and said, of course I was in the bottle, and the fisherman said, forgive me, I am a simple man, I would have to see it, and the spirit, muttering about the skepticism of the age, made itself into smoke, and folded itself, wonder of the world, back into the bottle to prove the point.
And the fisherman put in the stopper.
What was said next, between the bottle and the old man, and what bargain they finally came to, and how it made the fisherman's fortune and the spirit's peace, that took Scheherazade the rest of the night to tell properly, and the king never once leaned back.
And the city of brass, ah, said the storyteller. That one she saved for a night of full moon, and she told it the bedside way, the way it has always been told to the drowsy, with its shadows folded up small and left inside the book. A company of travelers crossing an empty quarter of the world finds a city all of brass, gates open, lamps ready, tables laid, and every soul in it asleep so long ago that even the dust has finished settling. Nothing sad happens in it, and nothing loud. The travelers walk its shining streets all one afternoon, reading the courteous signs its people left behind, take nothing but water, and ride away at evening a good deal quieter and kinder than they came. The king liked that one so well he had the lamps in the east wing polished the next day, in case, he said, of guests.
There were the sea tales, told on the hot still nights when the palace wanted wind. The old sailor of Baghdad, rich and safe at last in his garden, who kept a table for anyone who cared to listen, and told his seven voyages one by one to a poor man who happened to share his name. Islands that turned out to be sleeping whales. Valleys floored with diamonds. A bird so large its egg was mistaken for the dome of a temple. And after every ruin and rescue, the same quiet homecoming, the same garden, the same table, the old sailor proof in himself that the sea gives back, eventually, with interest, everyone it borrows. The king liked the sea tales best in summer, and would sometimes ask, at the shipwreck, are we near the garden yet, the way children ask are we near home, wanting the answer to be no, not yet, a little more sea first.
And there was the porter, of course, the one the king had liked, the young man of the city who was hired one morning to carry a basket, and followed its owner from stall to stall as it filled with wine and apples and almonds and wax candles and rosewater, growing heavier and more fragrant with every stop, until the ordinary errand had become, by pure accumulation, an adventure, and the door it all arrived at opened on the strangest and most wonderful evening of his life. The lesson of the porter, said the storyteller, is one of the kindest in the book. You do not have to seek your fortune. Sometimes you only have to carry the basket, and stay polite, and see where the evening goes.
There was a tale for every kind of night. She told them in the order the nights asked for them, which is not always the order of the book, and no storyteller in the history of lamplight has ever apologized for that. Tales with ships in them for the restless nights, because a ship is a bed that goes somewhere. Tales with gardens in them for the hot nights, all shade and water sound. And for the nights when the king's old sorrow came back to sit in the corner, as old sorrows will, she told the quietest ones she had, tales where nothing happens at all except that somebody far from home is taken in, and fed, and given the good bed by the fire, and wakes to find their road home shorter than they feared. Those, said the storyteller, are the oldest tales of all. Every country in the world tells them. They are all true.
And the wedding, when it came at last, after the thousand nights and the one night more, was not the loud kind. It was held at evening, in the garden of the night flowers, with the fountains talking and the peacocks pretending they had not come to watch. Dunyazade stood beside her sister. The old vizier wept in the respectable manner, into his sleeve, sideways. And when the king was asked would he take this woman, he said, tell them what I said, and Scheherazade said, he says yes, and the garden laughed softly, and even the old vizier smiled sideways into his sleeve.
The old book says it went on for one thousand nights and one night more. The old book also winks when it says this, because a thousand and one did not mean a count you could tally on a string of beads. It meant more nights than anyone would bother to number. It meant, for as long as it takes.
And here is what the counting missed, said the storyteller, turning a page very slowly.
Somewhere in the middle of those nights, without ceremony, without anyone writing down the date, the king began to sleep again.
It did not happen the way healing happens in lesser stories, all at once, with trumpets. It happened the way it actually happens. One night, in the middle of a tale about a city of brass, his breathing went long and slow before the tale was even half done, and Scheherazade, who missed nothing, lowered her voice and kept telling it anyway, softer and softer, all the way down to the bottom of the hour, and then sat a while in the lamplight, watching him the way you watch a fire you have finally, after long work, coaxed alight in wet wood.
She did not wake him to tell him he was asleep. Storytellers know better than anyone: you never point at sleep. You let it be.
The sorrow did not vanish. Sorrows do not, and this story does not insult you by pretending otherwise. But sorrow kept company is a different creature from sorrow locked in a room. Night by night, tale by tale, the dark hours of that palace filled up with lamplight and voices and the sound of fountains behind a story, and the king's heart, which had walked in circles for so long, began to walk in lines again, and then to stroll, and then, some evenings, listening to the adventures of a woman made of moonlight or a porter who asked one question too many, simply to sit down in the grass and rest.
In time, the king and the storyteller were married, and reigned long and quietly, and the kingdom was known for two things: the soundness of its sleep, and the number of its lamps.
The old vizier lived to see it, and retired at last from carrying the keys and the worries, and took up a small garden of his own, where he grew quinces, and was frequently found asleep in a chair in the afternoon sun with his mouth open, which after such a life is not laziness but wages.
Dunyazade grew up, as little sisters insist on doing, and became, to no one's surprise, a teller of tales herself, in a court across the sea, where they say her voice was like her sister's, only quicker to laugh. The two of them wrote letters all their lives, and it is recorded that each letter ended the same way, with the old signal, tell me the one about, and some small thing named, a horse, a lamp, a bottle, so that every letter was also an asking, and every reply was also a tale.
As for the king, he woke early in those years, which surprised him. He had feared sleep so long that he had never met the mornings that live on the far side of it, and he found he liked them. He took to walking the garden of night flowers at dawn, when they were closing, to thank them for their shift, he said, and the gardeners pretended this was ordinary, and loved him for it.
And if you have wondered, some night, why the last lamp in a house always seems to burn a little past everyone's bedtime, as though someone somewhere were still listening, now you know the reason.
It is hers.
Chapter Eleven.

The Library of Night.
The storyteller closes the old book for a moment, here, and looks at you.
Not to check on you. Checking is for sentries. She looks at you the way a gardener looks at a bed at dusk, to enjoy it, quietly, the way things growing are enjoyed.
You may be wondering what became of all those tales, the thousand and one of them, after they had done their work and healed a king.
They went where tales go. Out.
They left that palace the way swifts leave an eave, one and two and then hundreds, over the walls, down the trade roads, aboard the pepper ships, folded into the packs of pilgrims, carried by nurses into other kingdoms and by sailors into other languages, changing their clothes at every border the way travelers do, until there was no country on the round earth that did not have a lamp burning somewhere over a listener and a low voice saying, long ago, and far from here.
Some of them you will meet this season, in this room, under this lamp.
There is a shelf here, just at the edge of the light. You cannot quite see it, but you can hear it, the way you can hear a garden through an open window at night. Everything on that shelf is waiting its turn, and it can wait patiently, because waiting is what stories do best. They are immortal precisely because they are in no hurry.
On that shelf there is an old brass lamp with a dent in its side, and inside the lamp, folded up impossibly small, is a palace, and a wedding, and a very embarrassed magician.
There is a glass slipper, resting on a cushion of velvet, with a road of midnight and pumpkin still shining faintly inside the heel.
There is a small pot of paint from a nursery in London, and a thimble beside it, which was once mistaken for a kiss, or a kiss which was once mistaken for a thimble, the shelf cannot remember which, and refuses to choose.
There is a pair of silver shoes, scuffed at the toes from a long road of yellow brick.
There is a rose from a roof gutter in the far north, pressed between two panes of window ice by a boy and a girl who will need most of a winter to find each other again.
There is a longbow of yew, smelling of green leaves and rain, and beside it one arrow fletched in gray goose feathers, and a horn.
There is a comb of pale coral from the bottom of the sea, with one long copper hair still caught in its teeth.
There is a spindle, wound with a hundred years of the softest sleep ever spun, which the shelf keeps well back from the edge, for obvious reasons.
There is a wooden loom shuttle from a house by the Yellow River, worn smooth by a daughter's hands, and a soldier's whip lying quiet beside it, retired.
There is a stalk of green bamboo, sealed at every joint, and from inside it, if the room is very dark and you are very drowsy, comes a light like the moon through paper. The shelf keeps that one for last in its own ordering, whatever order the nights choose, because the shelf is sentimental, and knows how this season ends, under a full moon, with the whole sky watching.
There is a mirror, or most of one, its splinters gathered in a velvet bag and counted often, all but two, which are out in the world doing mischief in a boy's eye and a boy's heart until a girl with worn red shoes comes to fetch them home.
And there is a small bottle of tears, and a watch that is always at teatime, and a napkin from a tea party that has, in the strictest sense, never actually ended.
And the shelf, you should know, is only the nearest one. The room is larger than it looks from the chair. Behind the storyteller there are other shelves, going back, and back, into a soft dark that smells of paper and sandalwood and rain on stone.
There is a shelf of sea tales, kept slightly damp, where you can hear gulls if you lean in, and the deep green sound of water over a hull. There is a shelf of winter tales, cool to the touch, that keeps the summer rooms comfortable, the way one cold window cools a warm house. There is a shelf of tales for children who are now old, and it is the warmest corner of the room, and the books there are soft at the corners, like river stones, from being held.
There is a small locked case of tales too sad to tell at night, and the key was lost on purpose, a long time ago, by someone kind.
And there is a ladder on brass rails, like the one in a garden library far from here, and it glides when it is pushed, with a sound like a long hush, and if you ever cannot sleep in this room, which has never yet happened, the storyteller would push that ladder down the dark rows slowly, just for the sound of it.
And further back, on shelves whose turn has not yet come, other things are waiting without impatience. A glass mountain, very small, in a bell jar. A spinning wheel with one strand of straw still in it, gone half to gold. A single feather from a golden goose that made everyone who touched it stick fast to their neighbor, which the shelf keeps well away from everything else, on advice. They can wait. Seasons of nights are long, and the room is patient, and so, now, are you.
The storyteller runs her hand along the edge of that shelf, once, softly, the way you would touch the spines of books in a house you loved as a child.
Listen, and you can hear the room itself. Paper settling, which is a sound like the smallest possible tide going out. The beams overhead easing their shoulders. The lamp using its oil, a sound too small to have a name, though if it had one it would be a word meaning golden and patient and almost gone. Libraries at night are the quietest loud places in the world. Ten thousand voices, all of them holding their breath, all of them keeping until morning.
All of it can wait, she says. Tonight was the door, and the door is open now, and it stays open. That is the whole trick of this room. The lamp goes out, but it is never far from the match.
Chapter Twelve.

Goodnight. And the Lamp at the Edge of Morning.
The night is deep now, even at the edge of everything.
The city of towers and gardens has gone quiet between its two rivers. The last cart reached home hours ago. The rooftops are full of sleepers under that thick blanket of stars, and the river slides by below them, patient as ever, carrying the moon downstream a mile and giving it back, carrying it down and giving it back, all night, an old game between old friends, and neither of them keeping score.
In the palace on the hill, the fountains have turned themselves down to their softest voice.
The peacocks are asleep in the orange trees. The guards lean on their patient spears. In the kitchens, the banked fire breathes under its blanket of ash, keeping tomorrow's warmth like a secret. The corridors of blue and white tile lie in long stripes of moonlight, and no footsteps trouble them, and the tiles rest too, in their way, cool and clean, holding up nothing but the quiet.
In the garden, the flowers that open only at night are open now.
They are pale as paper lanterns, and they lean together in the dark, and their scent goes wandering down the paths alone, past the pools that hold the moon, under the arches, through the door that someone left ajar, up the long stairs, into the room where a king is sleeping.
He sleeps well these years. The whole palace can feel it, the way a ship's crew can feel a good captain at the wheel even from below decks, and the whole palace sleeps better around him, and the city around the palace, and the fields around the city, rings within rings of rest, spreading out from one quiet room the way circles spread on slow water.
Down in the city, in a house near the river, a nurse has finished the tale she was telling, some small tale about a clever sparrow, and the child is asleep before the ending, which is the highest compliment children pay. The nurse sits a moment longer anyway, finishing it in a whisper, because a tale deserves its ending even if only the lamp is listening.
On the rooftops the sleepers have turned over once, all the city like one slow tide, and settled again. A late cat crosses a wall, pours itself down a stair, and is gone about its silent errand. The stars have shifted their whole silver furniture one hour westward, without a sound, the way they do, the way they have always done, over this city and every city, over every sleeper who ever trusted the night to hold until morning. It has always held.
And beside the bed, on a table of cedar, a lamp is burning low.
It has been trimmed for the night. Its flame is the size of an almond, and it is in no danger of going out. It leans a little, and rights itself, and goes on with its small golden work, which is the oldest work there is: keeping the dark kind.
Down at the river, the fishing lights are still burning, one, then three, then seven, patient and orange on the black water. A late boat slides between them without a sound, someone's son coming home from somewhere, and the lights let him pass and close their ranks of reflection behind him, and the river carries the small event away and files it with the others, under night, under water, under years.
The geese are asleep on the bank in a pale heap, the boy long since carried home over a shoulder. The reed boats are drawn up and tied. On the far shore a jackal says one thing to the dark, and thinks better of the rest, and the silence closes over it like water over a dropped stone.
Somewhere in the palace, a voice is still telling a story.
It is very soft now. You could not make out the words if you tried, and there is no need to try. It is the sound a house makes when it is loved, the sound of a tale going on without you, comfortably, the way rivers go on, the way stars do, the way the world does, all through the night, whether or not anyone is awake to mind it.
And the lamp beside the bed burns on, minding its one small acre of the dark. If a lamp can be said to think, and on nights like this it is hard to be sure it cannot, it thinks the way the tide thinks, in long slow returns. It has outlasted every trouble ever brought into this room. It expects to outlast tonight's, which is only sleep, the friendliest of the dark things, the one that always gives back what it takes.
The words have stopped being words. They are just warmth with a rhythm in it now.
Like a heartbeat through a wall.
Like rain, far off.
Like someone humming in another room, who will still be there in the morning.
The storyteller closes the book, but slowly, the way a door is closed on a sleeping house.
The lamp is turned low.
Whatever became of them after, they are safe now, and so are you.
The lantern will be lit again. There are more tales in the old book than there are nights in a year.
Goodnight.

Welcome to The Sleeping Almanac.
Before the lamp is lit, one small thing. If these stories carry you to sleep, subscribe now, while your eyes are still open, and tomorrow night's tale will be waiting for you. A like helps other tired souls find this room. That is all. Let's light the lamp together now.
The lamp is lit again.
The same small flame as last night, in the same quiet room at the edge of the world.
The storyteller is already here. She was here before you arrived. She will stay until you sleep.
There is a chair for you. There is a blanket. The night outside is doing all of its slow, dark work, and none of it is yours to carry until morning.
The storyteller opens the old book, and turns past the tales already told, to a page that waits for tonight.
Tonight, she says softly, we go far to the east, to a city in China, where a boy called Aladdin carries an old brass lamp up out of the dark, with dust on his hands and the light of buried jewels still in his eyes.
And there is no hurry at all as she begins.
Settle in, now. Let the chair take your weight, all of it, even the weight you have been carrying without noticing. Let the blanket be heavy in the good way, the way snow is heavy on a roof that has nothing to do until spring. Whatever the day asked of you, it has stopped asking. You do not have to watch this story. You do not have to remember any of it in the morning.
You may believe you know this tale. You know a version of it, the way you know a photograph of a garden. Tonight you are given the garden itself, the old one, the true one, from a book older than any film, and it is stranger and slower and kinder than the one you remember. There are two genies in it, not one. There is a princess whose name means the full moon of full moons. There is a palace built between midnight and morning, and a bargain cried aloud in the street one morning so foolish that a whole city came out of its doors laughing, though only one man in that street was not joking, and every one of these things is exactly as the old book tells it.
If you drift, drift. The storyteller will not mind, and neither will Aladdin. Tales like this one were told aloud in the dark for centuries before anyone wrote them down, told to rooms full of people breathing slowly, and half of every audience this story has ever had was asleep before the palace was built. You will be in good company. We begin.
Chapter One.

The Tailor's Son.
Long ago, and very far from here, at the eastern edge of all the maps, there was a city in China.
That is what the old book says, and the storyteller reads it as it is written. A city in China. The book does not tell us the city's name. It was written down by tellers who lived a year's hard travel from China, and had never seen it, and so their China is a wonderful place, with bazaars in it, and a sultan, and sellers of dates and sweet water, a city very like their own city, only farther, and shinier at the edges, the way places are when we have only dreamed them. When those tellers wanted a story to feel as far away as a story can be, they set it in China, the way you or I might set a story on the far side of the moon.
So. A city in China, at the hour when the lamps come on.
Give it walls the color of weak tea. Give it a river gate and a mountain gate. Give it a thousand small courtyards where supper is cooking, and washing strung between the windows like flags of a very modest kingdom, and swallows turning over the rooftops in the last of the light. Give it a bazaar that is putting itself to bed, awning by awning, and a night watchman who knows every stone by the sound his sandal makes on it.
In that city there lived a poor tailor named Mustafa.
He was a good tailor and a gentle man. His shop was one room wide. He sat in the doorway of it from morning prayer to evening prayer with his legs folded and his needle rising and falling, and what he sewed held, that was his reputation, seams that outlived the garment and buttons that outlived the man. He had a wife who could make a supper out of very nearly nothing, and one son.
The son was called Aladdin.
Now the old book is stern with Aladdin, right at the start. It calls him idle. It calls him careless. It says he would not learn his father's trade or any other, that he was out the door at sunrise and back at dark, all day in the streets and the market squares with the other boys, playing at whatever the season offered, kites in the windy month, marbles in the dusty one, and no thought in his head that stayed longer than a sparrow stays on a windowsill.
The storyteller reads all that, and then she looks up from the book, and she is gentler than the book is.
Some people, she says, are born waiting for one particular hour, one door, one errand that belongs only to them. And until that hour finds them, they are no good at any other. It is a kind of patience wearing the costume of impatience. The old book calls Aladdin idle because the old book knows what is coming and is cross with him for not knowing it too. But no one knows what is coming. That is the whole arrangement.
What can be said for certain is this. Aladdin was quick, and he was friendly, and he was kind in the unplanned way of boys, which is the truest way. When he had two coins he bought two oranges and gave one away, usually to whichever child looked as though the day had been long. Every dog in the quarter knew him.
His father tried to teach him tailoring, and failed, and tried again, and grew sad about it, and then grew tired in a way that mending could not fix. And one autumn Mustafa folded his work in the evening, and slept, and did not wake. The old book says the grief of it had worn him through. We will say it that way, softly, and walk on, for this is a tale that is kind to its dead.
After that it was Aladdin and his mother in the little house. She spun cotton, and the spinning bought their bread, and their suppers were thin but they were suppers, and the roof was known by its leaks the way a friend is known by his laugh. Aladdin grew to fifteen in those narrow rooms, and still the streets held him all day, and still his one particular hour had not come to find him.
But it was coming.
For on an evening like this very evening, while the swallows turned over the rooftops and the bazaar folded its awnings and Aladdin's mother set two bowls on the table and listened for his step, not one soul in all that city knew, and Aladdin least of all, that far away to the west, across every desert the maps could hold, a man was walking toward the mountain gate with Aladdin's name in his mouth.
He had been walking, the storyteller supposes, the better part of a year, for the old book counts no miles.
He was not an uncle. Remember that, when he says otherwise.
Chapter Two.

The Stranger Who Called Him Nephew.
The man who came in at the mountain gate was a magician.
He came from Africa, from the far dry countries of the west, where the old book says the deepest magic was studied in those days, the patient kind, the kind that is mostly reading. He was not a magician of storms or of serpents. His art was quieter and stranger than that. He was a reader of sand.
He would smooth a tray of fine sand with a rod of brass, and make marks in it, and read the marks the way a merchant reads a letter, and the sand would tell him things. Where lost ships lay. Where water slept under a desert. And once, on a night he never stopped thinking about afterward, the sand had told him about a lamp.
An old lamp, of plain brass, in a hidden place under a mountain, at the eastern edge of all the maps. A lamp worth more than every treasury of every king alive, said the sand, because of what slept inside it. And then the sand had told him the part he liked least. The place would not open for him. The door in the earth would open for one person only, a boy in a certain city in China, an idle boy, a tailor's son, a boy called Aladdin.
Magic is strict that way, said the storyteller. It has rules older than the people who use them, and it does not make exceptions, even for men who have studied forty years. Especially, perhaps, for them.
So the magician had crossed the world on foot and by ship and by camel, a year of it, with the boy's name in his mouth like a stone he was afraid to swallow. And on his first evening in the city he walked the streets until he found a square where boys were playing in the last of the light, and he stood in the shadow of an awning, and he watched, and he listened, and presently he heard the other boys calling one boy Aladdin.
He looked at the boy a long time. Then he arranged his face.
This is a thing worth knowing about, the arranging of faces. The magician had practiced his the way musicians practice, alone, for years. He could put on kindness the way you or I put on a coat. And the coat was warm, and the coat was convincing, and there was nothing inside it at all.
He came out of the shadow, and he asked Aladdin his name, though he knew it, and his father's name, though he knew that too. And when Aladdin said, my father was Mustafa the tailor, but he died a long while past, the magician gave a soft cry and embraced the boy and let tears stand in his eyes, real tears, for he could do those as well.
Then I am too late, he said. Oh, my brother.
And he told Aladdin that he was his uncle. Mustafa's own brother, gone from this country forty years, trading and traveling in far places, come home at last with one wish in his heart, to see his brother's face again, and here was that face, he said, holding Aladdin at arm's length, here it was, alive again in the son. He pressed money into Aladdin's hands, real gold, and said, run to your mother, child, tell her your uncle will come tomorrow and eat supper with you, and buy meat and rice and candles.
Aladdin ran home the way boys run when they are carrying news too big for them.
His mother turned the gold over in her hand and was quiet a while. Your father had a brother once, she said at last. He died long ago, before you were born. I never in all our years heard of another.
And that, said the storyteller, was true, and the tale lets the mother say her doubt out loud on the very first evening, so that you, the listener, are never fooled for a moment, even while the little house is. You know the uncle is false. The story knows you know. It is a story about a boy walking toward his one particular hour, and the false uncle is simply the road the hour arrived by. There is no suspense gentler than watching a thing you already understand unfold exactly as it must.
The magician came to supper the next evening and wept at the empty place where Mustafa would have sat. He had studied where the empty place would be. He told long true sounding tales of his trading years, of cities of white stone and ships with cinnamon in their holds, and the little room filled up with the warmth of them, and the candles burned down, and the mother's doubt did not vanish, but it grew quiet and stood at the back.
And to Aladdin the magician said, tomorrow I will buy you a merchant's coat, and we will walk in the gardens outside the walls, and I will show you the world a little, nephew, for a boy cannot stay a boy forever.
The coat was bought. It was the finest thing Aladdin had ever worn. And for two days the magician was as good as his word, and better. They walked out by the river gate among the gardens of the rich, fountains behind lattice walls, pavilions with bells at their corners that spoke whenever the air moved. They ate melon in the shade. Everywhere the magician was generous and patient, full of plans for the shop he would open for Aladdin.
And each garden they walked to was a little farther from the walls than the last.
You will have noticed that, said the storyteller. Aladdin did not. Fifteen is not an age that measures its distance from home. Each day the fountains were finer, and the shade was deeper, and the city behind them was smaller, and on the third morning the magician woke him early, and they walked out through the mountain gate with bread and dates in a cloth, and this time they did not stop at any garden at all.
They walked all that morning, and somewhere on the path the magician stopped telling stories. Aladdin, who noticed everything and understood none of it yet, thought only that his uncle was saving his breath for the climb. Up they went, out of the gardens, into the bare brown country where the mountains begin.
Aladdin had never been so far from his own streets. It was quiet in a way he had no name for. The path went up between stones the size of houses, and the city fell away behind them until it was only a smudge of smoke and a shine of river, and the only sounds were their own feet, and the wind combing the dry grass, and once, very high up, an eagle saying the one thing eagles say.
They rested at midday in the shade of a rock, and ate the bread and the dates, and the magician told stories of the mountains of his own country. Then they went on, and in the middle of the afternoon they came to a narrow valley between two mountains, a quiet fold in the world where the wind did not reach and nothing grew but a few grey bushes.
This is the place, said the magician, and his voice had changed. The kindness was still on it, but stretched now, tight over something underneath, the way cloth stretches over a box you cannot see into.
Gather me sticks, nephew. We will make a small fire.
Aladdin gathered dry brush, glad of something to do, and the magician built the fire small and neat and lit it. And when it was burning he took from inside his robe a little box, and out of the box a pinch of grey powder, incense of a kind, and he stood over the fire, and he said two words that Aladdin did not know, in a language Aladdin did not know, and threw the powder on the flames.
The smoke went up white and sweet and sudden.
And the ground made a sound.
It was not a crack of thunder. The old book does not deal in thunder here, and neither will we. It was a low sound, far under their feet, like a door being tried in a distant part of a very large house. The dust jumped once, softly, all across the valley floor. And the earth in front of the fire opened along a straight seam, quietly, the way a book opens, and folded its dry soil back, and showed them what it had been keeping.
A stone lay in the ground. A square stone, flat, the size of a table for four, with an old shine on it as though many hands had once kept it polished, and in the center of it a ring of brass, green with a thousand years, made fast to the stone as a knocker is made fast to a door.
Aladdin stood very still. The fire snapped once. High up, the eagle turned.
Do not be afraid, said the magician, and for that one moment, oddly, he meant it, for a frightened boy was no use to him at all. Nothing here will harm you. Under that stone is a treasure that has been waiting a long time, and here is the strangeness of it, nephew. It has been waiting for you. Not for me. Not for any king. It will not open for me, I have known that for years. It opens for a boy called Aladdin, the son of Mustafa the tailor, and there is no other such boy in the world.
Take hold of the ring. It will not be heavy for you. Say your name as you lift, and your father's name, and your mother's name with them.
And Aladdin, who was afraid, and who was fifteen, and to whom no one had ever once said you are the only person in the world who can do this, stepped forward and took the brass ring in both hands.
It was warm. That surprised him. Warm as a kettle a long while off the fire.
Aladdin, he said, and his voice wobbled, and he steadied it. Aladdin, son of Mustafa the tailor and of the spinner his wife.
And the stone came up as lightly as a lid comes off a basket.
Under it, going down into the dark, there were steps. Clean stone steps, wide and shallow, without a grain of dust on them, and from somewhere far down at the bottom of them came a smell that was not the smell of a hole in the ground at all. It was green. It was the smell of a garden after rain, rising out of the earth in the middle of a bare brown valley.
The magician crouched by the opening, and his eyes had a lamplight in them that did not come from any lamp.
Listen to me now, nephew, he said. Listen as you have never listened. Go down these steps and you will come to a door, and past the door three great halls, one after another, with jars of bronze along the walls, full of gold and silver. Touch none of it. Gather your coat close about you and let not even the hem of it brush the walls or the jars, for everything in those halls belongs to the treasure, and the treasure knows its own. Walk through, touching nothing, and you will come out into a garden of trees, and past the garden, up a few steps, on a ledge in the wall, you will find a lamp. A small old lamp of brass, lit and burning. Take it down, pour out the oil, and put it inside your shirt, against your chest, and bring it to me. That is all. That is everything. On the way back, if you like, you may pick what grows on the trees, that much is allowed to you.
And here, he said, take this.
He drew from his own finger a ring, a worn silver ring with a dull stone, and he put it on Aladdin's finger, where it fitted as though it had been measured.
It was, said the storyteller, the single truthful gift the magician gave in the whole of this tale, and he gave it believing it was nothing, a trinket blessed for luck. Magicians read sand, but they cannot read what a gift will come to mean. Nobody can.
It will keep you from harm, said the magician. Now go down, nephew. Go down, and bring me the lamp.
And Aladdin went down the clean stone steps, into the smell of rain and gardens, and the daylight stayed behind him at the top like a friend who could come no farther. But the smell of rain and green leaves rose up the stair to meet him, and it was a kind smell, and he followed it down without fear.
Chapter Three.

The Garden of Jewel Fruit.
The steps went down farther than any cellar, and yet it never once grew dark.
That was the first strangeness, and Aladdin stopped on the stairs when he noticed it. There were no lamps, and there were no windows, and still the air held a soft grey shine everywhere, like the light inside a pearl, like the hour before sunrise when nothing has a shadow yet. Light with no source and no direction. The old book does not explain it. Deep places in old tales are lit that way, and the storyteller has always believed it is because the tales themselves need to see.
At the bottom of the steps stood a door of plain dark wood, unlocked, and past it the first of the three halls.
They were larger than the great mosque of his city, with ceilings lost in the pearl colored light. And all along the walls, just as the magician had said, stood jars of bronze, each one tall as a man, each one filled past its brim, and the gold in them did not glitter. It glowed. It lay there with the deep settled shine of things that have been asleep a very long time, coin over coin over coin, more in one jar than a sultan spends in a lifetime, and the silence over all of it was the thickest silence Aladdin had ever heard.
He gathered his coat close about him, both fists full of the cloth, and he walked down the exact middle of that hall like a boy walking a plank over deep water. Touch nothing. He said it to himself in his mother's voice, which is the voice most of us use for rules when we truly mean to keep them.
Through the first hall. Through the second, where the jars held silver, whiter than moonlight on snow. Through the third, where the jars held gold again, and where one coin lay alone on the floor near the wall, and Aladdin walked past it and did not so much as let his shadow linger on it. The old book pauses to say he obeyed exactly, and old books do not hand out such praise easily, so let it stand. In the deepest room of the world, with nobody watching, the idle boy did exactly as he had been told.
And then the third hall ended, and Aladdin came out through an arch of white stone, and stopped, and forgot his coat, and forgot the magician, and very nearly forgot his own name.
He was in the garden.
It lay under the earth in that same pearl grey light, wide as a field, quiet as a snowfall, and it was full of trees. Real trees, with bark and boughs and thousands upon thousands of leaves, and every leaf was silver on one side and green enamel on the other, so that when the still air moved at all, which it did, slowly, like breathing, the whole garden shimmered and whispered with a sound like far away rain.
And the trees were in fruit.
The fruit hung heavy on every bough, round and polished, in every color light can be. White fruit, with a soft deep shine to it, in clusters like enormous grapes. Clear fruit, bright as ice in the sun, that gathered up the grey light and gave it back in little rainbows. Red fruit, dark as pomegranate seeds and darker. Green fruit, deep as the deepest part of a wave. Blue fruit, the blue of evening exactly, as though each one held its own small piece of dusk.
Aladdin stood under those trees, and looked up, and laughed. One laugh, soft, astonished, and the garden took it and passed it from leaf to leaf until it came back to him as a whisper from the far wall.
He thought it was glass.
The storyteller lays the book down flat here, because this is the hinge of the whole tale, and it goes by in one line. The white fruits were pearls. The clear ones were diamonds. The red were rubies, the green were emeralds, the blue were sapphires, and any single one of them outweighed the treasury of the sultan of that country, and Aladdin, the tailor's son, who had never in his life held anything more precious than a copper coin and a good orange, looked up at the wealth of ten thousand kings and thought, glass. How pretty. My mother will like these.
He was allowed the fruit, the magician had said so. So he picked as boys pick, cheerfully, without ceremony. He filled his two purses. He filled the front of his shirt. He loaded the wide sleeves of his merchant's coat until they swung at his sides like saddlebags, choosing by color, plenty of the red and the green, the blue ones for his mother especially, because she kept one square of blue cloth from her wedding in a chest and took it out sometimes just to look at.
And when he could carry no more, he remembered the lamp.
It stood where the magician had said it would stand, past the last of the trees, up a flight of shallow steps, in a small arched hollow in the garden wall, the way a candle stands in a window. It was burning. A little tongue of flame, very calm, and by now Aladdin knew better than to ask what it burned, for there was no one to fill it, and there had been no one for a very long time.
It was small. It was brass. It was, next to the garden and the halls and all that sleeping gold, the plainest thing in that whole deep place. An old lamp such as any old woman keeps on any shelf in any lane of any city, dented at the shoulder, dark with years. Whatever in the world made it worth a year of walking, Aladdin could not see it.
But his uncle wanted the lamp, and his uncle had been kind.
So he climbed the steps and took it down, and the flame went out sweetly of itself, like a child allowed at last to stop pretending to be awake. He poured out the drop of oil that was in it. He tucked it inside his shirt, against his chest, where it sat with a small settled weight, warmer than brass ought to be, the way the ring in the stone had been warm.
Then he turned and walked back, down the steps, under the whispering trees, through the three great halls with his coat gathered tight, to the foot of the long stair, where far above him the daylight waited in a small blue square, with the shape of the magician's head and shoulders leaning into it.
Chapter Four.

The Ring Turned in the Dark.
Climbing stairs with your sleeves full of treasure is slow work, and Aladdin came up the long flight one careful step at a time, both arms cradled against himself like a man carrying firewood.
He stopped a few steps from the top. The stone doorway there was narrow, and he was wide with his cargo, and he needed a hand up.
Uncle, he said. Help me out. I am too loaded to climb.
Give me the lamp first, said the magician. Reach it up to me. It will lighten you.
And it would have. Only the lamp was inside Aladdin's shirt, packed down under a shirt front full of jewel fruit, and to dig it out he would have had to unlade every purse and sleeve on that narrow stair, and besides, in some hallway of his heart a door had quietly shut, one he did not even hear shutting. All at once he did not want to hand the lamp up into that reaching silhouette before he himself was standing in the daylight.
When I am out, uncle, he said. I cannot reach it now. Pull me up, and you shall have it that same minute.
The lamp, said the magician. First the lamp.
His voice, doing this, lost the last of its stretch, and what was under the cloth showed plain. Forty years of reading sand. A year of deserts. And one idle boy, one stair's length from his hand, saying no. Not even saying no. Saying, in a minute. The old book says his rage rose up like smoke. Greedy men, said the storyteller, trust no one, for they measure the whole world by the only heart they have ever examined closely, which is their own.
The magician stood. He threw the rest of his grey powder on the embers of the fire, and said his two words, and the earth sighed, and the stone sank back into its bed, and the seam of soil folded itself closed over the stone, and the valley lay bare and brown and quiet under the late sun, as though no door had ever been in it.
And the magician turned and began to walk west, back toward Africa, empty handed, a year of walking for nothing, leaving behind him the one thing he had crossed the world for. He believed he was leaving a boy shut in the dark. What he was in fact leaving, sealed safe underground like a seed in autumn, was a boy, and a lamp, and a ring, all three together, which was the very sum of everything he wanted in the world. There is a lesson in that about anger, said the storyteller, but the tale is wise enough not to say it out loud, and so am I.
Now.
We must speak of Aladdin in the dark, and we will do it honestly and gently, for this is the low place of the tale.
When the light at the top of the stairs went out, the dark that came was complete. He called, and no one answered. He climbed to where the stone was and pushed, and it was like pushing the mountain. He went down again, feeling each step with his foot, thinking to wait in the garden among the shining trees, but the door of dark wood at the stair's foot had shut with the stone, and would not open. So the stair itself was his lodging, a clean stone stair in a dry dark, and there he stayed.
The old book gives him three days there. The storyteller will not walk you through them hour by hour. Only know this much. He was not brave the whole time. Nobody is. He wept, and he slept, and he woke and forgot where he was, and remembered, and wept again, and slept again. He thought of his mother with the two bowls set out. And the dark, which was complete, was at least not cold, and the stair was smooth, and sleep kept coming back for him, the way it does, the way it will, sleep being the one visitor no door in the world can keep out.
And on the third day, Aladdin did the thing that people in trouble have always done. He put his hands together, and bowed his head, and prepared to pray.
And as he pressed his hands together, one hand chanced to turn the old silver ring on the finger of the other. Turned it. Rubbed it, just so.
The dark filled up with light, rose colored, soft, like dawn arriving indoors. And there was a being on the stair.
It was tall, taller than the stair should have held, and yet the stair held it comfortably, for beings of that kind bring their own room with them. It was made, as near as Aladdin could tell, of smoke and embers and courtesy. Its eyes were like lamps in the evening, and when it spoke, its voice was enormous and quiet at once, like a bell heard from underwater, and it said the words that its kind have always said.
I am the servant of the ring, it said. I serve the one who wears it. Ask what you will.
And Aladdin, three days in the dark, fifteen years old, his sleeves full of fruit he thought was glass, did not ask for gold, or for vengeance, or for a palace, or for any of the twelve clever things you or I would like to believe we would have asked for.
Take me out of this place, he said.
Ah, said the storyteller. There. That is my favorite moment in the whole of this tale. The old book gives the wish only those few plain words, take me out of this place. But watch what the boy does with his freedom. All the treasure of the deep earth on his back, and a spirit of the ring bowing before him, and he asks for no gold and no vengeance and no throne, and walks straight down the mountain in the dark, home to his mother's table with the two bowls on it. Keep that boy in your mind tonight. The tale is about to make him the richest man under the sun, and it matters, it matters more than anything, that when the ground first asked him what he truly wanted, the answer was, home.
The earth passed him upward through itself as easily as water passes a bubble up, and set him gently on the brown floor of the valley in the last light of day, and the rose colored glow paid itself out and was gone.
The evening air. The smell of dry grass. One eagle, or its granddaughter, high up, turning.
Aladdin walked down out of the mountains in the dark, following the river shine, and came to the gate at midnight, and came up his own lane past the sleeping doorways, and lifted the latch he had lifted all his life. And his mother, who had not slept in three nights either, met him at the door, and what they said belongs to them, not to us, and even the old book has the manners to close that door and let them have it.
He slept until noon of the following day, in his own corner, on his own mat, with the lamp under it wrapped in his coat, and all the jewel fruit heaped in a basket by the wall, glowing quietly in the dark of the little house like coals that give no heat, and no one in all the city knew that the poorest lane inside the river gate now held the greatest treasure on the face of the earth.
Chapter Five.

The Genie of the Lamp.
Hunger woke him, as it will, and hunger had beaten him to the cupboard, for there was nothing in the house at all.
His mother counted through her spinning, but the cotton was sold and the new was not spun. And then Aladdin remembered the lamp. We might sell it, he said, digging it out of the folded coat. Old brass fetches a little. It would buy today's supper, and tomorrow I will think of tomorrow.
His mother turned the lamp over. It was dark with years and dented at the shoulder, and no one buys a dirty lamp when a clean one stands beside it, so she sat down on the doorstep with a handful of fine sand, the way lamps were scoured in that country, and began to rub it bright.
She had rubbed exactly twice.
The air in the little room folded itself open, and there was a being in it, filling it, the way a tree fills a courtyard, made of the cousin stuff of the ring's servant but older, grander, its shoulders in the rafters, its eyes like two evening windows with lamplight behind them, and it bowed as well as the ceiling allowed and said, in a voice that came from everywhere in the room at once,
I am the servant of the lamp. I serve the one who holds it. Ask what you will.
Aladdin's mother fainted dead away, which the old book reports without unkindness, and so do we, for it is exactly what any of us would have done.
But Aladdin had seen a being of this kind before. Three days in the dark had left him, in this one narrow subject, the most experienced person in the city. He picked up the lamp from where it had rolled, and he stood as straight as he knew how, and he said the thing that was true.
We are hungry, he said. Bring us something to eat.
The being was gone and back between one breath and the next. And in the middle of the poorest room in the lane there stood a great tray of silver, and on it twelve dishes of silver with dinner in them, fresh bread that was still warm, and two cups, and two flasks of something cool. The smell of it filled the house. It was the smell of the kind of kitchen neither of them had ever so much as stood in.
And the servant of the lamp bowed and folded itself away into the air, and the room was only a room again, with a fortune in silver sitting on the floor of it, steaming gently.
Mother and son looked at the tray a long while before either of them could touch it. Then they ate, slowly and in silence and then not in silence, and the meal on those dishes lasted them two days.
His mother never touched the lamp again. She would dust the shelf below it and the shelf above it and leave the lamp its own dust, and once, the old book says, she begged Aladdin to sell it and have done with spirits forever. He smiled, and kept it, and she never asked again, though it may be noted that she moved her spinning to the far side of the room, and kept it there for years.
Now here the tale goes quiet for a stretch, said the storyteller, and it is one of the loveliest quiets in the old book, so we will keep it a while ourselves.
Because Aladdin did not race to the palace, and did not pour his jewels on a table, and did not become a great man by Friday. What happened instead is that when the food was gone, he took one of the twelve silver dishes to the market and sold it, and they lived on that. And when that was spent, he sold another. A dish at a time, a month at a time, the lamp resting quiet on its shelf, the basket of jewel fruit sitting in the corner covered with the old blue wedding cloth, because they still, mark this, they still thought the fruit was colored glass, and the true fortune of the house was, they believed, its dwindling stack of dinnerware.
The merchant who bought the dishes had quick eyes and a slow scale, and paid a fraction of their worth, and Aladdin, who knew no better, thanked him each time. Until the day an old goldsmith farther down the row called the boy over, and weighed the next dish honestly, and paid him honestly, which came to more than all the other dishes together had fetched, and told him plainly what such work was worth.
And something else happened in those quiet months, more slowly still. Aladdin began sitting among the merchants. It had begun as business and became a kind of school. He learned how cloth is judged, and how rumor is discounted, and how a man's word is weighed on scales you cannot see. He began to walk differently, not proudly, only certainly. And one afternoon, standing where the jewel sellers traded, watching stones a hundredth the size of his mother's covered basket change hands for chests of gold, Aladdin understood, all at once, in the middle of the street, with the sun on his back, what it was that grew on those silver trees in the garden under the mountain.
He walked home slowly that day, said the storyteller. You would too.
But he told no one, and he sold none of it, and the basket stayed in its corner under the blue cloth. His hour had found him, and he seemed to know now that the rest of it would come in its own season, the way he knew rain was coming by the smell of the wind.
And it came. It came on the day of the princess.
Chapter Six.

The Princess Badroulbadour.
The sultan of that country had one daughter, and her name was Badroulbadour, which in the old tongue means the full moon of full moons.
She had lived her whole life inside the palace walls, in the manner of princesses of that age and place, and the city had loved her its whole life without ever once seeing her, which is a strange kind of love but a real one. They knew her the way people know the sea who live one valley from the coast. By report. By weather. By the salt that reached them on the wind.
On certain days the princess went with her women to the great bath house, which stood apart from the palace among its own gardens, and on those days the streets along her way were cleared by proclamation, and the shutters were drawn, and the city turned its back politely while she passed, for it was the law that no man should look on her face, an old law the city was fond of, the way cities are fond of laws that make their princess feel like a secret they are all keeping together.
Aladdin had heard the proclamation cried that morning, and Aladdin, said the storyteller, closing one finger in the book, was fifteen no longer, but he had been fifteen recently enough to remember the way. He did not clear the street. He went quietly along the lanes to the bath house, and let himself into the shadow behind the great cedar door, and stood still as a hinge, and waited, curious for one look at the face the whole city had agreed not to see.
The street filled with the sound of the procession, soft drums and slippers and the rustle of a hundred veils. The princess came up the steps among her women like the moon among thin clouds. And at the threshold of the door, one step from where the world's most patient idle boy stood breathing as quietly as he had ever breathed, Badroulbadour reached up and put back her veil, because she was arriving indoors, and the day was warm, and she had no reason in the world to believe the street was anything but empty.
The old book spends its finest page here, and the storyteller will not race it. Her face was oval, says the book, and her eyes were large and dark and gentle, and her look was the look of someone thinking of something pleasant and far away, and her hair was blackness itself with lamplight in it. But what undid Aladdin was nothing a page can hold. It was that she was real. A real person, breathing, blinking against the warm air, a little tired, humming two notes of something to herself as she passed in out of the sun. The city had made her a legend, and legends do not need us. But this was a young woman with a life, and from that moment his own life bent toward hers the way a stream bends toward a valley, without argument, without noise, following the simple slope of the world.
He went home and did not eat, and did not speak, and sat with his back against the wall looking at nothing, until his mother, who had raised him and buried his father and fainted at a genie and was not to be frightened by a mood, put down her spinning and said, well. Tell me.
Mother, said Aladdin, I have seen the princess Badroulbadour, and I mean to ask the sultan for her hand.
His mother laughed, said the old book, until she had to hold the doorpost, and the storyteller loves her for it, and Aladdin only waited, because he had learned waiting from the best dark room in the world. And when the laughing was done she argued, and he waited through that as well. You, she said, the tailor's son, and what would you even carry to the palace, child, for no one comes before the sultan asking a favor with empty hands. What in this house could stand in front of a throne.
And Aladdin looked at the corner, at the basket, at the old blue cloth.
Mother, he said gently, I have not told you yet what it is you keep under your wedding veil.
He told her. He took out the fruits one by one into the lamplight, the moons of pearl, the coals of ruby, the drops of deep sea green, and he set them in a porcelain bowl, and this time nobody in that room called them glass, and the little house was as quiet as the underground garden, and the smallest stone in the bowl was worth the street they lived on.
His mother went to the palace in the morning, in her clean dress, with the bowl wrapped in a napkin, and stood at the very back of the great hall where the sultan heard petitions. And her courage failed her, and she came home with the napkin unopened, and Aladdin thanked her, and she went again. Six mornings she went, said the old book, and six mornings stood at the back holding her folded courage in a cloth, and the seventh morning the sultan himself, who had been noticing her longer than she knew, said to his grand vizier, that same quiet woman is here again. Bring her forward. Whatever she carries, she carries it patiently, and I will know what it is.
So she came forward, and knelt, and begged pardon in advance for the boldness of her son, which is what mothers do, and unfolded the napkin.
The hall changed color. The old book says the jewels filled the place with light, and flung little wandering stains of rose and green and violet up the pillars and across the ceiling, and the whole court leaned like grass in wind. The sultan looked a long time into the bowl. He had a treasury, and knew what was in it, and knew that nothing in it stood anywhere near the nearest of these.
And what does the sender of this ask, he said at last, quietly.
And Aladdin's mother, from the floor of the shining hall, in the smallest voice ever to fill it, said, the hand of the princess Badroulbadour, for my son Aladdin.
Chapter Seven.

Forty Basins of Gold.
Now the sultan was minded to say yes on the spot, jewels being a language sultans read fluently. But at his right hand stood the grand vizier, and the grand vizier had a son of his own, and had spent long months steering that son gently toward the princess the way a careful man steers a boat toward a private harbor.
Majesty, murmured the vizier, a bowl of stones, however fine, from a man no one at court has ever seen. Give it three months. If he is worthy, three months will not hurt him. If he is not, three months will show it.
Three months, said the sultan to Aladdin's mother, kindly enough. Let your son come to me in three months.
And she carried the answer home, and Aladdin heard it, and was glad with his whole heart, for three months is nothing at all to a boy who has waited in the dark. He began, quietly, to get ready.
But two months in, walking in the bazaar, his mother heard drums, and asked the oil seller's wife what feast it was. And the woman said, why, where have you been, it is the wedding. The princess Badroulbadour marries the son of the grand vizier tonight.
A promise had been broken. It happens in palaces as it happens in lanes. And Aladdin, hearing it at home with the dust of the bazaar still on his mother's shawl, sat still a long moment, and then he did not shout, and he did not despair. He went to the shelf, and took down the lamp, and rubbed it, and when the great courteous shape of its servant stood filling the room, Aladdin, it must be told, arranged a small and entirely gentle mischief.
What he asked, the old book tells with a straight face, and so shall I. That night, when the palace slept, the bridal bed itself, with the vizier's son in it, rose and floated out of the palace like a boat off its mooring, and came to rest in Aladdin's little house. The vizier's son spent his wedding night shivering in the lumber room among the spinning baskets, certain he was dreaming and hoping he was, while the princess, the old book admits, slept badly in a strange room, as anyone would, and the storyteller will not pretend otherwise. But the book also swears that no harm came near her, not once, not for a moment, and that is the part to carry. And Aladdin, says the old book, laid a drawn sword down the middle of the bed and slept on the far side of it, steel for a promise that she was as safe in that house as in her father's. And before first light, bed and sleepers sailed home again, and were found in the morning exactly where they ought to be, save that the bridegroom had somehow acquired a cold.
Two nights of this, said the old book, no more, and the vizier's son, who had never been consulted about the harbor his father steered him toward, went to the sultan of his own accord and begged to be released from the marriage, and was, to the private relief, one may guess, of everyone concerned including the bride, who had formed her own opinion of a husband who vanished into lumber rooms.
And the third morning, Aladdin's mother stood again at the back of the great hall, patient as furniture, and the sultan saw her, and remembered his promise, and had the grace to feel it.
But the vizier leaned close once more. Majesty, set a price no tailor's son can pay. Then the promise keeps itself.
So the sultan named his price, and it was this. Forty basins of beaten gold, every basin brimming with those same fruits of jewel, and the basins to be carried through the streets by eighty servants clothed in silk and gold, forty to bear and forty to attend, in procession, for all the city to see. That, said the sultan, or no wedding, and he said it in the voice of a man closing a door forever, and was sorry as he said it, for he had rather liked the look of that bowl.
Aladdin's mother came home walking like a woman who has been asked to fetch the moon in a bucket.
And Aladdin listened, and kissed her, and went in to the lamp.
What happened in the city that noon was talked of for three generations. Out of the poorest lane inside the river gate came a procession such as no capital has seen before or since. Eighty servants, tall and calm and beautiful, in silk the color of deep water stitched with gold, walking two by two, and every second one bore on his head a basin of massy gold, and the basins were heaped past their brims with pearl and ruby and emerald and sapphire, uncovered, blazing in the sun, a river of impossible wealth flowing slowly through streets lined with every soul who could stand, walk, or be carried. No guard went with the treasure. None was needed. There are sights that put even the idea of theft to sleep, and this was one. The procession crossed the whole city at a walking pace, in through the palace gates, up the length of the great hall, and the eighty set down their basins before the throne, and bowed once, all together, like a field bowing under one wind.
The sultan looked down the hall at forty basins of what no treasury on earth could match one basin of.
Send for the young man, he said, when he could.
And when Aladdin came, bathed and dressed as the lamp knew how to dress him, riding slowly so the city could look at him, scattering handfuls of gold to the children in the crossings because he remembered exactly, exactly, what it was to be a child in those crossings, the sultan came down from the throne itself to meet him, and found his hand taken, and kissed, respectfully, by a young man with a steady eye and no swagger in him at all, who had, everyone agreed, a way of seeming to have all the time in the world.
The wedding, said the sultan, may be as soon as you like.
Sire, said Aladdin, thank you. But first, if the princess is willing, I should like to build her a house.
Chapter Eight.

The Palace Built in a Night.
He asked the lamp for it that same midnight, standing in the little room where all of this had begun, and he asked not like a boy wishing but like a man who had spent months quietly deciding. This is what he asked.
A palace, facing the sultan's own across the great square, but set back, respectfully, with gardens between. Marble of every warm color, rose and cream and honey. Fountains in the courtyards, and stables, and kitchens, and a treasury, and windows placed to catch the morning. And at the heart of it one high hall with four and twenty windows, and every window's lattice to be worked not in iron but in diamonds and rubies and emeralds, so that the daylight coming in should fall through jewels and lie on the floor in colors, all day, moving with the sun, like the inside of the garden under the mountain.
All but one window, said Aladdin. The last window leave unfinished. Plain stone, empty, untouched.
And if the servant of the lamp was puzzled, it did not say so. Its kind ask what you will, not why.
The city went to sleep that night with a bare paved square outside the sultan's windows, and woke to bells and shouting and then to a most unusual silence, the silence of forty thousand people all leaning out of windows at once. Across the square, with the early mist still moving in its new gardens, stood a palace where no palace had been at bedtime. Rose marble and cream marble, courts and towers, doves already settled on its ledges as though they had lived there for years, fountains already speaking in its courtyards, and from its gates to the sultan's gates, laid across the whole square in the night, a carpet of velvet for the princess to walk on.
The sultan stood at his window a long time that morning. Then he began, hugely, helplessly, to laugh, and the laugh was heard in the square, and the city took it up, and that was the true beginning of the wedding, and the feasting ran on for days the old book does not trouble to count.
Of the wedding itself the old book gives us music and lamplight and the whole city fed at long tables in the streets, and gives us, better than any of it, one small hour. In the middle of the feasting, Badroulbadour and Aladdin, wife and husband now, walked out of the noise together onto a terrace of the new palace to breathe, and stood looking at the lit city, and had, for the very first time, a conversation. The old book does not follow them out there, and the storyteller would not dream of it. She will only tell you that they came back in an hour looking as though they had known one another a long time. She had been a legend to him at a doorway. He had been a procession to her, and a story her maids told. On the terrace, those two strangers put down the legend and the procession, and picked up something plainer and better, and it lasted them all their lives.
And the unfinished window. Ah, said the storyteller, this is a passage the old tellers polished like a stone they loved.
The sultan, touring his son in law's palace in the days after the wedding, came to the high hall and stood turning in the middle of it with his mouth open, jeweled light sliding over his robes, and then he saw the one plain window, and cried out as though he had found a wound. Aladdin, what is this. The workmen have cheated you. And Aladdin said gravely, no, sire. I left it so on purpose. I wished your majesty to have the honor of completing the palace, so that it should be our two houses' work, and not mine alone.
The sultan was so pleased he ordered it begun that same day. He sent for the royal jewelers, and they sent for the guild, and the guild sent for the whole city's stock, and for a month the finest hands in the kingdom fitted diamonds to that lattice from dawn to dusk. At the month's end they had finished less than half of one side of the frame, and used up every fine stone in the capital to do it, and the chief jeweler came before the sultan and confessed, ashen, that the window had beaten them, that all the jewels of the kingdom could not fill it.
Take out what you have set, said Aladdin gently, and give every stone back where it came from.
And when the workmen and their sacks were gone home, and the hall stood empty in the late light, he took out the lamp and touched it, and by morning the four and twentieth window matched its sisters so perfectly that no eye alive could say which one had ever stood empty. The sultan, seeing it, was quiet a long while. He was beginning to understand, without any name for it, the size of what had married into his family. If it troubled him, the sight of his daughter laughing in the jeweled light put an end to the trouble, and he chose, as wise men choose, to be glad of a mystery that was kind.
So the years came in, and they were good years. Aladdin wore his fortune the way his father had sewn seams, evenly, and made to last. And in the sunniest rooms of the new palace lived Aladdin's mother, who had a servant now for every task she had ever done alone, and who spun cotton anyway, most afternoons, by an open window, because her hands were happier working. Badroulbadour would come and sit among the spindles some evenings, more evenings than the court ever knew, and the two of them talked of Aladdin the way two people talk of a river they both live beside. He rode out among the people with his purse open, sat with merchants like a merchant and with porters like a porter, judged quarrels so fairly that men came out of the countryside to be judged by him, and was loved in that city as few kings' sons have ever managed to be loved, because the city could feel, without being told, that he was one of its own lanes come to glory. And Badroulbadour, who had married a bowl of jewels and a broken promise mended, found she had married the one man in the kingdom who knew exactly how lucky he was, and there is no better husband made than that.
The lamp rested in those years on a cornice in the hall of the four and twenty windows, plain and dark among the splendor, and was rarely touched now, for their days needed little that hands could not do. And far away, at the western edge of all the maps, in a dry country, at a table of smoothed sand, a man who was not an uncle sat down one morning to read, for idle curiosity's sake, the fortunes of a boy he was quite sure had been dead for years.
Chapter Nine.

New Lamps for Old.
The sand told him everything.
He had smoothed his tray that morning expecting the small sour satisfaction of reading a grave. Instead the marks said, alive. They said, married. They said, beloved of a princess, beloved of a city, rich past the counting of it, and living at his ease in a palace with four and twenty jeweled windows. The magician sat very still at his table for a long time. He did not ask the sand where such a palace had come from. Forty years of study can spare a man some questions.
What rose in him this time was not the smoke of rage. It was something slower and colder, and it packed his bags for him, and it kept him company all the long months of the second journey east. A year of travel is nothing at all, said the storyteller, to a man who is only carrying one thought.
In the city he took a room near the bazaar and did what he did best, which was listen. It was easy listening. The whole city talked of Prince Aladdin the way a garden talks of rain. On the third morning he learned that the prince had ridden out hunting with his men, eight days of hunting, three of them already spent. And the sand, consulted quietly that night, told him the last thing he needed. The lamp had not gone hunting. The lamp was in the palace.
The next day a coppersmith in the bazaar sold a dozen new lamps to a foreign gentleman who paid without bargaining. The foreign gentleman polished them brighter still, laid them in a basket, and traded his fine robe for the worn cloak of a peddler. He had worn kindness like a coat for years. Foolishness, it turns out, is an easier coat to sew. He put it on, took up the basket, and went out into the streets crying the most famous foolish bargain in the world.
New lamps for old. New lamps for old.
The children found him first, the way children find anything wonderful. Then the crowd. By the time he had worked his slow way to the great square, half the quarter followed him laughing, and battered old lamps came down off shelves all along his route, and bright new lamps went home in their place, and the city was delighted with its madman. He let them laugh. He walked at a peddler's pace, crying his cry, and his eyes never stopped working along the walls above him, where the four and twenty windows took the sun.
The princess Badroulbadour heard the laughter from the high hall and sent a maid to learn the joke. The maid came back laughing herself. An old peddler, she said, trading new lamps for old ones, straight across, and the street is emptying its cupboards at him. And another of the women said, why, mistress, there is that shabby old lamp on the cornice in the hall itself. The master left it behind when he rode out, for who takes a lamp hunting. Shall we see if the madman will truly trade.
Now the storyteller sets down the book a moment, and asks for gentleness.
Badroulbadour knew nothing. Aladdin had never told her what the lamp was. It was the one secret he had kept, not from mistrust, but because the right evening to tell it never quite seemed to arrive. You cannot guard a treasure that no one has told you is a treasure. She sent the old lamp down to the gate laughing, expecting a funny story to tell her husband when he rode home, and there is no more blame in her than in the doves on the ledges. The old book does not scold her. Neither will we.
At the gate, a hand came out from under a peddler's cloak and closed around the old brass lamp, and went still, the way a man goes still when a long fever leaves him.
The peddler did not even take up his basket. He left the whole shining dozen for whoever wanted them, and walked out of the laughing crowd at his same slow pace, and out of the quarter, and out of the gates, and into the empty country beyond the gardens. And at nightfall, in a lonely place, he set the lamp on a stone and rubbed it.
The servant of the lamp came, filling the dusk, and bowed. It serves the one who holds it. That is the whole of its law, and it is an old law, older than kindness, and it does not ask how the holding came about. Ask what you will, it said.
Carry the palace of Aladdin, said the magician, with all it holds, to Africa, and set it down outside my own city. And it was done that night, between midnight and morning, as quietly as the palace had first been built. The city slept, and heard nothing. Only a night watchman on his rounds felt a great shadow pass between himself and the stars, the way a cloud passes, and looked up, and the stars were back, and he walked on.
In the grey of morning the sultan came to his window as he had come every morning for years, to be glad of his daughter's house before breakfast.
The square was bare. Paved stone from edge to edge, and the early mist moving over it with nothing to move around, and above it a slow circling of doves with nowhere left to land.
We will pass quickly over the sultan's grief, because it was a father's, and it was real, and grief that is real is not for dwelling on tonight. Riders went out. Aladdin was found at his hunting and brought back, and the old book does not hide that he was brought back roughly, or that the grand vizier, at the sultan's ear, said, there stands your builder of wonders, majesty, and where is your daughter this morning. But when Aladdin was led through the streets, the city came out of its doors and filled the square, porters and merchants and children and the old goldsmith from the row, standing quietly, in their thousands. The sultan looked out at his whole city, standing there for one man. Some kings would have found anger in that sight, said the storyteller. This one, to his credit, found his senses.
Find her, he said to Aladdin. Bring her back to me. That is all I ask, and all the treasure of your wedding is nothing beside it. And Aladdin bowed, and asked for forty days to bring her home, and asked nothing else but a horse.
For three days he searched and asked, and no one could tell him anything, for what answer is there to the question, has anyone seen my palace. He rode until the horse was tired, and then he walked, and on the evening of the third day he came to a river at the edge of the wild country, and stopped on the bank, and knelt, and pressed his hands together to pray.
And as he pressed his hands together, one hand turned the old silver ring upon the other.
Rose light opened over the water, soft as dawn arriving indoors, and the servant of the ring stood on the riverbank, smaller than its cousin of the lamp, and older in its courtesy, and it bowed and said, as it had said in the dark under the mountain, I am the servant of the ring. I serve the one who wears it. Ask what you will.
Bring my palace home, said Aladdin. Bring me my wife.
That I cannot do, said the servant of the ring, and it said so gently, for the laws it lived by were not its own choosing. What the servant of the lamp has done, only the servant of the lamp may undo. But what I may do, I will. I can carry you to where your palace stands.
Then take me there, said Aladdin, and set me down beneath her window.
And the river and the reeds and the whole darkening world turned past him like a page, and he was set down on cool grass in a dry country at the western edge of all the maps, in the hour before sunrise, under high walls of rose and cream marble that he knew as well as he knew his mother's doorway. Far above him, one window showed the small warm light of a lamp kept burning by someone who could not sleep.
Badroulbadour had slept little in that stolen palace, and risen early each of its mornings, and it was one of her women, opening the shutters to the grey light, who looked down and put her hand over her mouth.
Mistress. Come and see who is standing in the grass.
The old book gives them their meeting at that window, she above and he below, in the last of the starlight, and this time the book leans close enough to hear a little of it, and what it heard was mostly each other's names, said over and over, the way you test a good thing to be sure it will hold.
Then she was weeping, telling him of the peddler and the basket and the laughing, blaming herself with every breath, and Aladdin stopped her as gently as a lamp is trimmed. The fault is mine, he said. I kept a secret where I should have kept none. We will not divide the blame, we will only mend the day. And between the two of them, in an hour, while the sky went from grey to pearl, the mending was planned. It was a quiet plan. It could not have been quieter. That is why it worked.
Aladdin went into the strange city with the morning crowds, and traded cloaks with a countryman on the road, and found among the sellers of herbs a certain powder, the kind that apothecaries in that age kept for those whose pain would not let them rest. A powder for sleep, the deepest kind there is. The old book is blunter about that sleep than we will be tonight. This tale ends, said the storyteller, as it began, with something small carried quietly against the chest.
That evening the princess sent word to the magician that she would sup with him.
He had waited weeks for such a message, and believed, because he measured every heart by his own, that she had weighed her fortunes and chosen sensibly. He dressed with care. He arranged his face. And Badroulbadour, receiving him among the lamps of the high hall, arranged hers, the one art he had carried into their lives, turned against him now, just once, at the last. She spoke of the city, and she had her women bring wine in two cups, and she pledged him according to the custom of her country, in which, she told him, host and guest exchange their cups for friendship's sake.
He took her cup, and was glad, and drank it to the bottom.
The sleep in that cup was deep, and it took him between one breath and the next, and he lay back among the cushions and was still. And here the old book, which walked beside this man across two deserts and forty years, does not wake him again, and neither will we. The tale is finished with him. He spent his life learning to read what was written in sand, said the storyteller, and never learned that nothing worth having can be taken. It can only be given. Let him lie among the cushions, out of the story. We will not be harder on him than that, tonight.
Chapter Ten.

The Quiet Restoration.
Aladdin came in from the terrace, where he had waited with his heart loud in his ears, and knelt, and drew the old lamp from where it lay against the sleeper's chest. He held it a moment in both hands, this small dented thing that had carried their whole lives inside it, up out of the earth and into the light and across the width of the world. Then he rubbed it, and the hall filled with the great courteous presence of its servant, and the words came down like the words of an old song. Ask what you will.
Carry us home, said Aladdin. Set this palace down where it stood, at the edge of its own square, and wake no one.
And of everything in this long tale, said the storyteller, here is the passage to fall asleep inside.
The palace rose through the dark with every lamp in it burning low. It rose with the maids asleep in their beds and the doves asleep on the ledges, with the fountains still speaking softly in the courtyards as they flew, with the kitchen fires banked and the bread set to rise for a morning that would arrive in another country. It sailed east over the desert with all its windows glowing gently, and the few travelers awake in that wilderness saw only a slow warm constellation crossing the sky, and made of it what travelers make of such things, a story for the next fire. Badroulbadour and Aladdin stood together at a window of the high hall and watched the dark world slide beneath them, mountains like sleeping cattle, rivers with the stars lying in them, and neither of them said very much, and by the time the palace settled onto its own square, as gently as a cup set down on a saucer, the princess was asleep on her husband's shoulder.
The doves came round once in the dark, and landed.
The sultan woke at his usual hour, and lay a moment in the grey light, and knew before he knew why that something was different. The light through his shutters had colors in it. He crossed the room in his slippers, an old man in a nightcap, no majesty about him at all, and opened the shutters on the four and twenty windows taking the sunrise, and the mist moving in the gardens, and the doves on the ledges, and his daughter's house standing where his daughter's house belonged.
What passed when he had crossed the square belongs to a father and a daughter, and the old book closes that door too. It tells us only that the drums of rejoicing were heard for ten days, and that the city fed itself at long tables in the streets all over again, gladder this time, for gladness is sweeter when you know what it costs. The grand vizier said nothing at all, and went on saying it, with great discipline, for years.
The old book has one more page before it lets the house rest, and the storyteller turns to it. The magician had a younger brother, of the same schooling and the same heart, and the news went west to him the way bad news travels, slowly, and all the way. He came east wearing a borrowed face. There was in that city a holy woman called Fatima, so loved that the streets went quiet where she walked, and the false brother took her veil and her slow way of walking for his own, and the old book is blunt about what that taking cost her, and we will say only that this tale is never kind to its villains because its villains are never kind, and walk on. Veiled and blessed at every corner, he was welcomed into the palace itself, for the princess had long wished to meet the famous Fatima. And the false holy woman looked up at the great jeweled hall and said softly, it wants only one thing. A roc's egg, the egg of the great bird itself, hung from the middle of the dome. And after that the princess could think of nothing else.
So Aladdin, who had never yet asked the lamp for anything it grieved to give, rubbed it and asked. And for the first and only time in all this tale, the great courteous servant did not bow. The hall went cold. You do not know what you ask, it said, and the enormous quiet voice was a bell rung once, hard. The roc is my own high master. That egg is the one thing in all the world I may not fetch you, and the wish was never yours at all. It was planted in this house by the brother of the man who sleeps in Africa, and he stands in your wife's rooms this hour, wearing a murdered woman's face. Guard your house. Then it was gone, and the lamp was only warm brass in his hands, and the cold was already leaving the hall, the way breath leaves a windowpane.
What Aladdin did then, the old book tells quickly and with a knife in it, and the storyteller tells it her own way. The false Fatima was sent for, to lay holy hands on a headache Aladdin did not have, and reached inside the borrowed robe for something that was no blessing, and Aladdin was young no longer, and was not slow, and that man's part of the tale was over in one line, as his brother's had been, and we will not be harder on either of them than that. The true Fatima's name was given back to her streets, and kept gently there, which is the only mending that page allows.
And that was the last shadow in the old book, and the storyteller smooths the page flat with her hand. There is no one left in the wide world, she says, who wishes this house anything but well. Every door of it can stand open now. Listen. The fountains have gone back to their night voices already.
Chapter Eleven.

The Good Years.
And the days closed over the whole matter the way water closes over a stone.
The lamp did not go back to the cornice. It was given a high shelf now, in Aladdin's own quiet room, behind a lattice of carved cedar, plain and dark among the splendor. But the lattice was not the true guard, and everyone in the house knew it. There were no secrets kept in that house anymore. Badroulbadour knew what she guarded, and the knowing sat lightly on her, as shared things do.
The ring stayed on Aladdin's finger, worn silver with a dull stone, and was never turned again except by accident, washing his hands, and if a rose colored light ever half woke in the water of the basin, it found nothing wanted, and went back to sleep.
After that the palace was left alone to do the slow work of palaces, which is mostly light and mostly weather. The seasons came through the four and twenty windows one after another. Winter light, low and long across the floor. Spring light with doves in it. Summer light strained soft through the gardens. Autumn light the exact color of the honey marble. Nobody in that hall was ever in a hurry again, and the hall, being patient, approved.
The old sultan crossed the square most evenings, with no procession at all, an old man and two lamps and a slow walk, to sit with his daughter while the palace was lit for the night. He never asked about the lamp, or the window, or the year of wonders. He had decided, once and finally, to be glad of a mystery that was kind, and gladness of that sort keeps a man young a long time, and it kept him.
In the sunniest rooms the spinning wheel still turned, most afternoons, unhurried, for reasons that had never had anything to do with cotton.
In time, when the old sultan's long life folded closed, Aladdin ruled that country after him, and ruled it the way he had always judged quarrels, evenly, and made to last, and Badroulbadour ruled beside him. The old book gives them years upon years, and says that after them came a long line of kings, each one lit from the last the way a lamp is lit from a lamp. And the city told their story to its children at bedtime while the two of them were still alive to hear it through the windows, which is the best fortune a story can have.
Chapter Twelve.

Goodnight. And the Lamp at the Edge of Morning.
The tale is told. But do not go just yet. Walk once around the palace with me, the way a night watchman walks, before we put out the light.
It is very late there now. The feast tables are folded away. The kitchen fires are banked to a red whisper. In the stables the horses stand asleep, dreaming whatever horses dream. The fountains have been lowered to their night voices. The doves are settled along the ledges, each one a small warm loaf.
In the hall of the four and twenty windows there is no lamp burning, and none needed. Starlight comes in through the jeweled lattices and lies on the floor in faint colors, moving as the sky moves, all night, with no one to watch it. The hall does not mind. Beautiful rooms are patient.
Far below, the city sleeps inside its walls the color of weak tea. Lane by lane its lamps have gone out. The bazaar is folded. The night watchman is passing the tailor's old street, where a small house is kept swept and whole, with two bowls on the shelf, because Aladdin never sold it, and never will.
And in her own quiet rooms of the new palace, Aladdin's mother is asleep, her spindle set down for the night, her door left open the width of a hand, out of old habit, for a boy who always came home late and always came home.
And far away, under a bare brown valley, the garden is shining with no one to see. The silver trees are whispering their sound of far away rain. The jewel fruit is glowing softly in the dark of the earth. It has waited a thousand years. It does not count the years. It is the most patient thing in this whole tale, and it wishes you the patience of stones and orchards tonight.
Badroulbadour is asleep, the full moon of full moons, with the actual moon standing over the square. Aladdin is nearly asleep beside her. The ring is on his finger. The lamp is on its shelf, behind its lattice, dark and dented and content. Once a year, perhaps, he takes it down and dusts it with his sleeve. He does not rub it. He only says thank you, quietly, and puts it back.
Two genies keep that house, and neither one is needed before morning. Nothing is needed before morning. Not from them. Not from you.
Let the story sit beside you now, like the lamp, small and warm and not going anywhere. If you are still awake, you have kept good company. If you are drifting, drift. The boy got home. The palace came back. Everyone in this tale is asleep now, and you are invited.
The storyteller closes the book, but slowly, the way a door is closed on a sleeping house.
The lamp is turned low.
Whatever became of them after, they are safe now, and so are you.
The lantern will be lit again. There are more tales in the old book than there are nights in a year.
Goodnight.

Welcome to The Sleeping Almanac.
Before the lamp is lit, one small thing. If these stories carry you to sleep, subscribe now, while your eyes are still open, and tomorrow night's tale will be waiting for you. A like helps other tired souls find this room. That is all. Let's light the lamp together now.
The lamp is lit again.
The same small flame as last night, in the same quiet room at the edge of the world.
The storyteller is already here. She was here before you arrived. She will stay until you sleep.
There is a chair for you. There is a blanket. The night outside is doing all of its slow, dark work, and none of it is yours to carry until morning.
The storyteller opens the old book, and turns past the tales already told, to a page that waits for tonight.
Tonight, she says softly, we go down beneath the waves, far out where the water is blue as the petals of the loveliest cornflower and clear as the clearest glass, down and down to a palace of amber and coral, for tonight is the tale of the little mermaid.
And there is no hurry at all as she begins.
Settle in, now. Let the chair take your weight, all of it, even the weight you did not know you were still holding. Let the blanket be heavy in the good way, the way snow is heavy on a roof that has nothing to do until spring. The day is over. It cannot be improved and it does not need to be. You do not have to watch this story. You do not have to remember any of it in the morning.
You may believe you know this tale. You know a version of it, the way you know a postcard of the sea. Tonight you are given the sea itself, the old tale, the true one, written down by a gentle and lonely man in Denmark almost two hundred years ago, and it is deeper and stranger and kinder than the one you remember. No one in it has a name. Not the mermaid, not the prince, not the witch. That is not a lack. That is how you know a tale is truly old. Names wear off things that have been loved for a long time, the way gilt wears off the edges of a book. And the ending, whispered here before we even begin, so that no part of you needs to brace for it anywhere along the way: the ending is not sad. It rises. You will see.
If you drift, drift. This story is mostly water, and water has never once minded being slept beside. We begin.
Chapter One.

Far Out, Where the Water Is Blue.
Far out at sea, the water is as blue as the petals of the loveliest cornflower, and as clear as the clearest glass.
That is how the old book begins this tale, and no one in almost two hundred years has found a better way, so the storyteller reads it exactly as it is written. And then she reads it again, more slowly, because it is a sentence like a view, the kind you walk past and then turn around and walk back to.
Far out. Farther than the fishing boats trouble to go. Farther than the gulls bother to follow them. Out where the last smudge of land has slipped below the edge of the world behind you, and the sea stops being a place you visit and becomes, simply, the place. The water out there is the exact blue of a cornflower petal held up to the light, and it is clear, the old book insists on this, clear as the clearest glass.
And it is deep. Deeper than any anchor rope has ever reached, deeper than any anchor. The old book measures it the only way a person of the land could understand. Many church steeples, it says, would have to be piled one upon another, spire upon tower upon spire, to reach from the bottom of that water up to the surface. Picture that a moment, drowsily, without effort. A tower of towers, standing in the dark blue, its lowest door resting on the clean sand and its highest weathervane still far below the keels of the ships. That is how deep. That is where this story lives.
It would be wrong to think that nothing is down there but bare gray sand. That is the first thing the old book wants corrected, right at the start.
Down there, the most wonderful trees and plants are growing. Their stalks and leaves are so fine and so supple that the least stirring of the water sets them swaying, as if they were breathing, as if they were alive, which, in their own way, they are. Fish large and small slip in and out among the branches, exactly the way birds slip among the trees up here in the world of air. A whole forest, swaying without any wind. A whole sky with no clouds in it at all, only fish, going about their silver errands.
And the light down there is not darkness. This surprises everyone. In very calm weather, the old book says, you can see the sun from the bottom of the sea. It looks like a purple flower, with all the light of the world streaming out of its cup. Day comes down softened, strained through fathom after fathom of blue, until it lies along the sea floor the way light lies through the windows of some vast quiet chapel, and everything it touches is gentled by it. Even time moves differently in light like that. Slower. Rounder. The way it is moving for you now.
In the deepest place of all stands the sea king's palace.
Its walls are of coral, grown rather than built, patient centuries of it, branching rose and white and every shade the sea knows between. Its long pointed windows are of the clearest amber, so that all day the light inside is honey colored, and everything in those halls, faces, hair, the drifting hems of garments, is warmed by it, the way lamplight warms a winter room. And the roof, the roof is made of mussel shells, thousands upon thousands of them, which open and close as the water breathes over them. In every open shell lies a shining pearl, any single one of which would be the chief glory of a queen's crown up in the world of air. The whole roof glimmers, opening, closing, opening. A roof that is also a treasury. A roof that is also, in its slow way, asleep.
The sea king who lived in that palace had been a widower for many years. His old mother kept house for him. She was a wise woman, and proud of her noble birth, and on her tail she wore twelve oysters, while the other great folk of the sea were allowed only six. But she deserved every honor she gave herself, the old book says, and chiefly for this reason, that she was endlessly fond of the little sea princesses, her granddaughters.
There were six of them. They were beautiful children, and the youngest was the most beautiful of them all. Her skin was as clear and delicate as a rose petal. Her eyes were as blue as the deepest sea. But like all the rest, like every one of her people, she had no feet. Her body ended in a fish's tail.
Remember her. She is small now, and quiet, the quietest of the six. All this deep blue country, the amber windows and the pearl roof and the swaying forests and the purple flower of the sun, all of it is her home. And of everyone in her family, she is the one who will love it most, and she is the one who will leave it.
But that is far off yet, years and years off, and nothing hurries down there. Tonight she is a child in the deepest, safest place in the whole world, and the water rocks the roof of shells above her, open, closed, open, and every shell holds its pearl, and every pearl holds a little of the light.
Chapter Two.

Six Small Gardens.
Outside the palace there was a great garden, and it was like no garden you have ever walked in, though it kept all the old kind habits of gardens everywhere.
The trees there were fiery red and deep blue. Their fruit shone like gold, and their blossoms like small flames, and their branches and leaves were never still, because water is a wind that never stops blowing, only slower. The ground was the finest sand, but blue, like the flame of burning sulfur, the old book says, a soft strange blue over everything, and over everything too lay a wonderful shimmer of light, so that on the clearest days you might think yourself standing high up in the air with only sky above you and sky below, instead of at the bottom of the sea.
Now, in that great garden, each of the six princesses had her own little plot, where she might dig and plant exactly as she pleased. Six little gardens inside the great one. Six small kingdoms of an armspan each.
One princess shaped her flower bed like a whale, because she thought whales were the grandest things that crossed her sky, and so they are. Another thought it prettier to shape hers like a little mermaid, a portrait of herself in flowers, and she did not mind at all who smiled at it. You could have walked the row of those gardens and named each sister without being told.
But the youngest made her garden round, perfectly round, like the sun. And she would have no flowers in it but flowers that glowed red like the sun. Round and red and warm at the edge of all that blue.
She was a strange child, the old book says, and it says it tenderly. Quiet, and thoughtful. Where her sisters decked their gardens with the wonderful things they had gotten from wrecked ships, and the sea in those years was generous with wrecks, chests and coins, carved chairs, ships' bells, all the sunken furniture of the upper world, the youngest would have nothing in her garden but her red flowers, and one thing more.
A statue.
It was the statue of a handsome boy, hewn out of white shining marble, and it had come down through the water when a ship was lost, turning slowly, and had settled on the blue sand, and she had claimed it. No one in the deep knew who he was. He was young, and his face was kind, and he looked always slightly upward, the way statues do, as if listening for something above the roof of the water.
Beside the statue she planted a rose red weeping willow. It grew splendidly, as everything grew in that garden, and it hung its fresh branches over the marble boy, down toward the blue sand, and its shadow lay upon the sand in violet, and moved as the branches moved, so that the treetop above and the roots below seemed to be playing together, gently, at kissing one another. The old book says exactly that, and the storyteller reads it exactly that way, because no one has ever described the bottom of the sea more beautifully than the man who wrote this tale, who lived his whole life beside the sea and never once saw the bottom of it, and gave it this instead.
The little mermaid tended her round red garden. She combed the sand of it. She turned her flowers toward whatever brightness came down. And when her work was done she would sit beside the marble boy under the rose red tree, with her tail curled beneath her, and look up.
Far, far above, the water ended. She knew that, the way you know the sky ends somewhere and the stars begin. Up there, the fish called the birds swam among trees that stood in air. Up there the sun was not a purple flower but a fire of gold too bright to look at. Up there were the ships, and in the ships were people, the two legged people of the dry world, who lived their whole short lives on top of the water and never once came down to see the roof of pearls.
Nothing was wrong with her world. Understand that, the storyteller says, looking up from the book a moment. Nothing drove her away. Nothing was ever unkind to her down there. It is only that some hearts are born with their windows facing another country. No one chooses it. No one is to blame for it. She was made with her face turned upward, that is all, the way her garden was shaped like the sun, which is not a thing that lives in the sea at all.
And in the long amber afternoons the little mermaid sat with the marble boy and the red flowers, and was quiet, and nobody minded, because every family keeps a chair by the window for its dreamer.
Her greatest pleasure in all the world, the old book says, was to hear about the world of human beings up above.
And for that, there was her grandmother.
Chapter Three.

Stories of the World Above.
The old queen mother of the sea knew more about the upper world than anyone in the palace, because she was old, and because in her long life she had risen many times to the surface and looked her fill, and because she was one of those grandmothers, they exist in every country, wet or dry, who keep everything they have ever seen arranged in stories, the way other people keep linen in a chest, folded, scented, ready.
In the evenings the six princesses would gather in her rooms, where the amber windows let in the last of the honey light, and the old lady would settle her twelve oysters comfortably and begin.
Ships, she told them about. Not the undersides, which the princesses knew, the long dark keels sliding over the garden, but the tops of ships, the part the sea never sees from below. White sails stacked up into the wind like towers of laundry. Ropes in patterns finer than any coral. And little people walking about on top, calling to one another in their air voices, which are rougher than sea voices, the grandmother said, but warm, like everything up there.
She told them about towns. At night, she said, a town on a shore looks like a hundred stars that have fallen in a heap and gone on burning, quite content. There is noise in a town, and rumbling, and bells in high towers that swing and sing. There is a smell of smoke and bread. The lights double themselves in the harbor water, which is the only piece of the sea that ever gets to live in a town, and is very proud of it.
She told them about the forests, which are green, a green the deep sea does not own, and about the little birds that sing in them. And here the old book keeps one of its most charming secrets, and the storyteller hands it to you now, softly, like something passed across a table at dusk. The grandmother called the birds fishes. The little fishes of the trees, she said, that swim in the air from branch to branch, and sing. She said it that way on purpose, because her granddaughters had never seen a bird, and a new thing can only be carried into a mind on the back of a known thing. Every teacher who has ever lived has done this. Every grandmother most of all.
The flowers of the land, she told them, have a gift the flowers of the sea are missing. They pour out scent. You can close your eyes in a garden of the dry world, she said, and still be in the garden. The roses go on telling you where they are, kindly, in the dark. A flower you could hear with your breath. The princesses thought about that a long time.
And the sun, up there, is not a flower. It is gold fire, and at evening it lays a road of gold across the water, straight toward whoever is watching. That is the way of every world, she said. The wonders are wasted on the residents.
When you have completed your fifteenth year, she told them, for this was the law of the sea king's house, you shall have leave to rise up out of the water, and to sit on the rocks in the moonlight and watch the great ships sailing by, and you shall see forests and towns.
Fifteen. The eldest sister would reach it first, of course. But they were each a year apart, one stair step of a sister after another, and so the youngest, the quiet one, had the longest of all to wait. Five whole years. And if you have ever been the youngest of anything, you know the particular length of a year that stands between you and the thing your heart is set on. It is the longest measure of time there is. Ask any child in any world.
But each sister promised the others to come back after her first day above and tell everything she had seen, and everything she had thought most beautiful. For their grandmother's stories, rich as they were, could never be enough. There is no story so good that it can stand in for the sky.
Many an evening the youngest stood at her open window of amber, looking up through the dark blue water, where the fish waved their fins and the currents turned over slowly in their sleep. She could see the moon and the stars from down there. They shone pale, and looked much larger through the water than they look to us, and when something like a black cloud slid slowly across them she knew it was either a whale swimming over her, or else a ship, full of human beings.
And the people on that ship never imagined, not one of them, that a lovely little mermaid stood far below in the dark, stretching her white hands up toward the keel.
They sailed on, and slept in their swaying beds, and never knew they were loved from below.
That is how this tale begins its real journey, the storyteller says, turning the page. With a child at a window, and five years to wait, and a whole roof of water between her and the singing fishes of the trees.
Chapter Four.

Five Sisters, Five Evenings.
The year came when the eldest princess turned fifteen, and rose.
She went up through the water in the evening, as the law allowed, and the whole palace waited below, and the youngest waited hardest of all. And when the eldest came home, in the first blue of the deep sea morning, she had a hundred things to tell.
But the loveliest of all, she said, was this. To lie on a sandbank in the moonlight, in the quiet sea, and look at the great town on the coast. The lights twinkled there like a hundred stars come down to keep house together. There was music, and the noise and rattle of carriages, and voices, so many voices, all woven together into one warm sound. And above everything stood the towers with their spires, and the church bells rang, and because she could not go into the town and be part of it, it was the town she longed after most of all. That is the way of first evenings. We long hardest for the room we cannot enter.
The youngest listened to every word. And after that, when she stood of an evening at her open window looking up through the dark blue water, she thought of the great town, and it seemed to her that she could hear the church bells ringing, faintly, all the way down where she was. It was not true, of course. It was only her heart, practicing.
The next year, the second sister had leave to rise. She came up out of the water just as the sun was setting, and it was the sunset she never stopped talking about. The whole sky, she said, was gold. And the clouds, she could not say enough about the clouds. They sailed over her head, crimson and violet, great slow ships of color bound for nowhere. And swifter than the clouds there flew across the water a flock of wild swans, in one long white line, like a veil trailed over the sea, away toward where the sun stood burning. She swam toward it, toward the sun, wanting to reach it before it went. But it sank, and the rose color went out of the sky and off the face of the water, gently, the way a light goes when nobody blows it out, and the first stars opened, and she came home.
The third sister was the boldest of them all, and the next year, when her evening came, she did the boldest thing. She swam up a broad river that ran into the sea. Fresh water, running the wrong way, full of the taste of land. She saw green hills covered with vines, and castles and farms looking out through the woods, and she heard how all the birds sang, the little fishes of the trees, singing till the whole warm air rippled with it. The sun was hot on her head. She had never been warm on top before.
In a little cove she came upon a crowd of human children, splashing about in the water, quite naked and shining, and she wanted to play with them. But they fled from her in fright, as though she were something to be afraid of, which she found very strange, and a little sad, and then a small black animal came down to the water and made a sound at her that no sea creature has ever made. It was a dog. She had never seen a dog. It barked so terribly that she turned for the open sea then and there. But she never could forget the green hills, and the singing in the trees, and the beautiful children who could swim, although they had no fish tails at all.
The fourth sister was not so daring, and her way of being wise was to stay far out in the wildest part of the open ocean, and it was she who came home saying that the open ocean was precisely the loveliest place. You could see for miles and miles all around you, she said, and the sky above stood over everything like an enormous bell of glass. She had seen ships, but so far off that they looked like resting gulls. The dolphins had turned somersaults for her, because dolphins cannot resist an audience, and the great whales had risen and spouted water from their nostrils, so that it looked, she said, as if a hundred fountains were playing in a ring around her, under the great glass bell of the sky, with nobody there to see it but her and the sun.
The fifth sister's birthday fell in the winter, and so she saw, on her first evening, what none of the others had seen on theirs. The sea was green, she said, a deep cold green, and everywhere on it floated great mountains of ice. Each one, she said, gleamed like a pearl, and yet was larger than the church towers that human beings build. They showed themselves in the strangest shapes, castles and swans and sleeping animals, and they glittered. She had sat down on the broadest of them and let the sea wind play with her long hair, and every ship that passed took one look at the mountain of ice with a maiden sitting on it and steered wide away, which suited her perfectly.
Late that evening there was weather far off, and the dark waves lifted the great ice mountains high so that they glittered against the sky. But she sat quietly on her floating mountain and watched the storm walk its own road away across the sea, the way storms do, busy and self important and gone by morning. To her people, you see, weather was a show put on above the roof. Nothing in this tale is ever quite what it is to us. Hold that thought gently. You will want it later.
So it went, sister after sister, year after year. And here the old book notices something true about all of us, and says it kindly. Each sister, the first time she rose, was enchanted by the new and beautiful things she saw. But when they were grown girls, and might go up whenever they pleased, the newness wore through, and they grew indifferent to it, and after a month of evenings they said that down below was loveliest after all, and it was so pleasant, they said, to be at home.
Many an evening hour, all the same, the five sisters would take one another by the arms and rise together in a row to the surface, just to sing. They had beautiful voices, lovelier than any human voice, and when a storm was blowing up, and ships were laboring, the sisters would swim before the ships and sing to the sailors, songs about how beautiful it was at the bottom of the sea, and how the sailors need not fear to come down. But the sailors could never understand the words. They thought the singing was the wind. And so the beauty of the deep stayed unseen by them, and the deep kept its kindness and its sorrow together, the way the deep keeps everything.
And when the five sisters rose up like that, arm in arm, singing, the youngest stayed below, all alone, looking up after them.
She would have wept, watching them go. But a mermaid has no tears, and so she suffers all the more. The old book says it in one short line, and the storyteller will not add another. But the waiting had an end, and the end of it is the very next thing that happens.
Chapter Five.

The Night She Rose.
Now I am fifteen, she said. Now I too may rise up out of the sea.
Her grandmother, the old dowager queen, dressed her for it with her own hands, for this was a great occasion, the coming of age of the last of the six. She set on the little mermaid's head a wreath of white lilies, and every petal of every flower was half of a pearl. And she had eight great oysters fasten themselves onto the princess's tail, to show her high rank.
But they pinch so, said the little mermaid.
Yes, said the grandmother. Pride must put up with a little pinching.
The old book means us to smile there, and we do. The little mermaid would gladly have shaken off all that grandeur and laid aside the heavy wreath. Her own red flowers from her own round garden would have suited her better. But she did not dare, because grandmothers are a weather of their own, and so she wore her pearls and her pinching oysters, and said farewell.
Up she went, past the roof of shells, past the swaying forests where the fish turned to watch her go, up through water that turned from deep blue to green gold, growing warmer and brighter, light and clear as a rising bubble, until at last she put her head up out of the sea.
The sun had just gone down as she lifted her head above the waves. That was the first thing she ever saw of the upper world with her own eyes, the after light of a sunset. The clouds still shone like roses and gold, and up in the pale pink sky the evening star stood, clear and beautiful, the first lamp of the night lit early. The air was mild and fresh on her face. The sea lay dead calm, without one ripple beyond her own.
And near her on that calm sea lay a great ship, with three tall masts.
Only a single sail was set, for not a breath of wind stirred, and the sailors sat idle in the rigging and on the yards, easy as the singing fishes in the branches of a wood. There was music aboard, and singing, and as the evening darkened, hundreds of colored lanterns were lit along the rails and up among the ropes, so many and so bright that it looked as if the flags of all the nations of the world were waving in the air. It was the loveliest thing she had ever seen, and she had grown up under a roof of pearls.
The little mermaid swam close, right up to the cabin window, and every time the low swell lifted her she could see in through the clear panes. There were many finely dressed people within, but the handsomest of them all was a young prince with large coal black eyes.
He was sixteen years old, or not much more. It was his birthday. That was the reason for all the splendor, the music and the lanterns and the singing. And when the young prince came out on the deck, where the sailors were dancing, more than a hundred rockets went up into the sky all at once, and broke, and turned the night as bright as day.
The little mermaid was so frightened that she dove straight down under the water. It was her first fireworks, after all, and even the bravest of us was frightened by our first. But she soon put her head up again, and then, oh, then it looked to her as if all the stars of heaven were falling down to her, gently, in showers of gold and green and rose, and great fiery suns wheeled and spun, and fish of fire swam in the blue air, and all of it doubled itself in the clear still sea below, so that the whole world, above and beneath, was light. She had never imagined that human beings, the short lived people of the dry world, kept festivals like this, and burned little suns for joy, just because someone they loved had been alive for sixteen years.
On the ship itself it was so bright that you could see every rope, and every face, and how much more the face she watched. The young prince stood among the light laughing, shaking hands with his people, smiling, while the music went out over the lovely night sea.
It grew late. But the little mermaid could not turn her eyes away from the ship, or from the beautiful prince. The colored lanterns were put out, one by one. No more rockets rose. The music fell quiet, and the sea began, very softly at first, to move.
The little mermaid stayed. She rocked on the swell by the cabin window, waiting for nothing, wanting nothing, only looking, the way you look at a lit house across a field at night and feel, without one reason, that you belong to it.
And far off, under the edge of the sky, the weather that the sailors had read in the falling glass was quietly getting to its feet.
Chapter Six.

The Storm, and the Shore.
The sea got up in the night.
The storyteller tells this part the way the old sailors told weather, plainly, with respect, without one word of fright. The swell grew longer, then taller. The wind found the ship and leaned on it. The sailors took in the last sail, and the great ship flew along over the wild sea, and the waves rose up like dark mountains that wanted to look over the masts, and the ship dove down their far sides like a swan and rose again on the lifted, towering water.
To the little mermaid, remember, this was pleasure. Storms were a show put on above the roof of her world. She thought it a fine swift ride, this night. The sailors thought otherwise. And in time the ship itself thought otherwise. Its thick planks groaned under the heavy blows, and the mainmast snapped in the middle like a reed, and the ship lay over on her side, and the water came in.
Then, and only then, the little mermaid understood that the people of the ship were in danger. She herself had to mind the beams and broken planks that drove about on the water. For one moment it was so pitch dark that she could see nothing at all. Then the lightning opened the sky for a breath, and everything stood out clear, and she could see everyone on the drowning ship, each soul striving for its own life.
But it was the young prince she looked for. And just as the ship parted and went down, she saw him sink into the deep sea.
For one heartbeat, one only, she was glad. That is in the old book, and the storyteller keeps it, because it is the truest heartbeat in the tale. He is coming down to me, she thought. Down to my country, to the amber windows and the gardens. And then she remembered what her grandmother had taught them all. Human beings cannot live in the water. They are not made for the deep. He could only come down to her father's palace dead.
No, she said, to the whole dark sea. And she dove.
Down among the driving beams and planks she went, quite forgetting that they could have crushed her, deep down and high up again through the running waves, until she found him. His arms and legs had no more swimming in them. His beautiful eyes were closed. He would have died there, in the great moving dark, if the little mermaid had not come.
She held his head above the water. That was all. That was everything. And then she let the waves carry the two of them wherever the waves went, all the rest of that night, the storm walking itself out above them hour by hour, the sea slowly, slowly remembering how to be calm.
When morning came, the weather had passed as though it had never been. The sun rose red and shining out of the water, and its light brought something like life back into the prince's cheeks, though his eyes stayed shut. The little mermaid kissed his high fair forehead and stroked back his wet hair, and it seemed to her that he looked like the marble boy in her little garden at the bottom of the sea. She kissed his brow again, and wished, on the whole width of the morning, that he might live.
And then she saw before her the dry land.
High blue mountains stood far off with white snow shining on their tops, like a row of swans asleep on the sky. Down by the coast were beautiful green woods, and in front of the woods stood a building, a church or a convent, she could not say which, only that it was holy and quiet. Lemon trees and orange trees grew in its garden, and before its gate stood tall palm trees. The sea had made a little bay there, still as glass and very deep, that ran in to a cliff where fine white sand had gathered.
There she swam with the beautiful prince, and laid him on the sand, taking care that his head rested high, in the warmth of the sun.
The bells began to ring in the great white building, and a company of young girls came out through the garden. So the little mermaid swam a little way out, behind some high stones that stood up from the water, and covered her hair and her shoulders with sea foam, so that no one could see her small face, and watched to see who would come to the poor prince.
It was not long before a young girl came upon him. She seemed frightened, but only for a moment, and then she fetched the others, and the little mermaid watched as the prince came back to himself, and smiled at everyone around him.
But he did not send a smile out to sea. He did not know she was there. He did not know it was she who had carried him through the whole of the night. And when he was led away, up toward the white building among the lemon trees, the little mermaid felt a sorrow she had no name for, because it was her first, and she dove down under the water and came home to her father's palace, quiet, quieter than she had ever been, and she had always been the quiet one.
Her sisters asked what she had seen on her first evening above. Nothing, she said. Nothing they could make her tell.
Many an evening and many a morning after that, she rose again to the place where she had left him. She watched the fruits of the garden ripen and be gathered. She watched the snow melt off the high mountains. But the prince she never saw, and so she always turned home, each time a little sadder, down to her round garden. She let the garden go a little wild that year, the old book says. The flowers grew over the paths and wove their long stems in among the branches of the trees, until the whole place was a sweet gloom. And she sat in it, and grew inward, as quiet things do when they carry something alone.
At last it could not be carried alone any longer, and she told one of her sisters. And so, in the way of sisters in every world, all the rest of them knew it within the day, but no one beyond them, except a few other mermaids, who told no one, except their own dearest friends. And it was one of those friends who knew who the prince was. She too had seen the birthday festival on the ship, and she knew where his kingdom lay, and where his palace stood.
Come, little sister, said the princesses. And arm in arm, in one long row, they rose out of the sea together where the prince's palace stood, and showed it to her.
It was built of a pale shining stone, with great flights of marble steps, and one of those flights went straight down into the sea. Splendid gilded domes lifted above the roof, and between the pillars that ran around the whole building stood marble statues that looked almost alive. Through the clear glass of the high windows you could see into the noblest halls, hung with costly silk curtains and tapestries, and every wall covered with great paintings that were a pleasure just to glimpse. In the midst of the largest hall a great fountain played, its jets springing high toward the glass dome of the ceiling, through which the sun shone down on the water and on the beautiful plants that grew in the wide basin.
Now she knew where he lived. And now the nights of this tale change their shape, and become, for a long while, a very gentle habit.
Chapter Seven.

Three Hundred Years.
Evening after evening, while the amber windows went dim behind her, the little mermaid rose through the dark miles of water to the prince's palace.
She swam nearer to the land than any of her sisters had ever dared. She went right up the narrow canal beneath the fine marble balcony that threw its long shadow across the water, and there she sat, and watched the young prince, who believed himself all alone in the bright moonlight.
She saw him many an evening, sailing with music in his splendid boat where the flags waved. She peeped out from among the green rushes, and if the wind caught her long silver veil of hair, whoever saw it took it for a swan spreading its wings, and thought no more.
She heard the fishermen, many a night as they lay out with their torches on the water, speaking so much good of the young prince, and it made her glad, down to the bottom of her quiet heart, that she had saved his life when he drifted half dead on the waves. And she thought of how his head had rested on her, and how heartily she had kissed his brow. And he knew nothing of it at all, and could not even dream of her.
More and more she came to love human beings. More and more she wished she could rise and walk about among them. Their world, it seemed to her, was far larger than her own. They could fly over the sea in ships, and climb the high mountains above the clouds, and the lands they owned rolled on, in woods and fields, farther than her eyes could follow. There was so much she wanted to know, and her sisters could not answer the half of it. So she asked her old grandmother, who knew the upper world well.
If human beings are not drowned, the little mermaid asked, can they live forever? Do they not die, as we die down here in the sea?
Yes, said the old lady. They must die too. And their lifetime is even shorter than ours. We can live to be three hundred years old. But when we cease to be, we become only foam on the water, and we do not have so much as a grave down here among our dear ones. We have no immortal soul. We never live again. We are like the green rushes. Once they are cut, they cannot grow green anymore. But human beings have a soul that lives forever, that lives on after the body has become earth. It rises up through the clear air, up to all the shining stars. As we rise out of the water to see the lands of the earth, so they rise up to beautiful places unknown, which we shall never see.
Why did we not get an immortal soul? said the little mermaid, sorrowfully. I would give all the hundreds of years I have to live, to be a human being only for one day, and afterward to have a share in the heavenly world.
You must not go thinking about that, said the grandmother. We are far happier and far better off than the human beings up there.
Then I am to die, said the little mermaid, and float as foam upon the sea, and never hear the music of the waves again, or see the beautiful flowers, or the red sun. Is there nothing at all I can do to win an eternal soul?
No, said the old lady. Only if a human being loved you so dearly that you were more to him than father and mother. If he clung to you with all his thought and all his love, and let the priest lay his right hand in yours with a promise of faithfulness here and in all eternity, then his soul would flow over into your body, and you too would have a share in the happiness of humankind. He would give you a soul and yet keep his own. But that can never happen. The very thing that is thought so beautiful here in the sea, your fish's tail, they think ugly up on the earth. They know no better. Up there, to be counted lovely, you must have two clumsy props, which they call legs.
Then the little mermaid sighed, and looked sadly at her fish's tail.
Let us be glad, said the old lady. Let us leap and dance through the three hundred years we have to live. It is surely long enough. After that, one can rest in one's foam all the more contentedly. Tonight there is to be a court ball.
And what a ball it was. Nothing like it is ever seen on the earth. The walls and the ceiling of the great dancing hall were of thick clear glass. Several hundred enormous shells, rose red and grass green, stood in rows on either side, each holding a blue burning flame, and the flames lit the whole hall and shone out through the glass walls, so that the sea outside was lit far and wide. You could see the countless fish, great and small, come swimming to the glass, some with scales gleaming purple and red, some like shining silver and gold. Through the middle of the hall flowed a broad living stream, and on it the mermen and mermaids danced to their own singing.
No people of the land have voices so lovely. And the little mermaid sang most beautifully of them all. The whole court clapped their hands for her, and for a moment there was joy in her heart, full joy, because she knew that she had the loveliest voice of anyone on the earth or in the sea.
Hold on to that, the storyteller says softly, marking the place with one finger. The loveliest voice of anyone, anywhere. Remember it was true.
But soon the little mermaid was thinking again of the world above her. She could not forget the beautiful prince, nor her own sorrow at not having, as he had, an immortal soul. So she crept out of her father's palace, while everything within was song and gladness, and sat in her own little garden, in the sweet gloom of the overgrown flowers, beside the marble boy.
And down through the water came the sound of horns, far off and high above, where the evening was.
Now he is sailing up there, she thought. He whom I love more than father and mother. He to whom my heart clings. He in whose hand I would lay the whole happiness of my life. I would dare anything to win him, and an immortal soul.
While my sisters are dancing in my father's palace, she thought, I will go to the sea witch. I have always been so terribly afraid of her. But perhaps she can advise me, and help me.
And the little mermaid went out of her garden, toward the roaring whirlpools behind which the witch lived, holding her one small thought before her the whole way, the way a person carries a candle down an unlit stair.
Chapter Eight.

The House Beyond the Whirlpools.
The way to the sea witch did not pass through the gardens.
The little mermaid had never been that road before. No flowers grew along it, and no sea grass. Only the bare gray sand stretched away toward the whirlpools, where the water turned and turned upon itself like great rumbling mill wheels, drawing everything it caught down into the deep. Between those churning wheels the little mermaid had to pass, and beyond them the road ran through hot bubbling mud, which the witch called her peat bog. And behind all that stood her house, in the middle of the strangest forest in the sea.
The trees and bushes of that forest were polyps, half animal and half plant. They looked like snakes with a hundred heads growing out of the ground. All their branches were long slimy arms, with fingers like supple worms, and joint by joint they moved, from the root to the outermost tip, and whatever they seized in the sea, they wound themselves fast around, and never let go.
The little mermaid stopped at the edge of that wood, and her heart beat with fear. She nearly turned back. But then she thought of the prince, and of the human soul, and her courage came to her.
She bound her long flowing hair close about her head, so that the polyps might not seize her by it. She laid both her hands together over her breast, to make herself small. And then she darted, the way a fish darts through the water, in among the terrible trees, which stretched their reaching arms and fingers after her and closed on nothing but her wake.
She saw, as she went, that every one of them held something it had caught, held fast in a hundred small arms like hoops of iron. The old book tells what some of those things were, oars and chests and the white keepsakes of wrecks, and the storyteller turns that page gently, without reading all of it aloud. The little mermaid looked ahead and only ahead, and passed through quickly, and came out safe on the other side. That is all this room needs of that wood, tonight or ever.
Beyond it lay an open place in the forest, where great fat water snakes rolled about at their ease. In the middle of the clearing stood a house, built of pale smooth bones that the sea had gathered, over long years, from all its wrecks, and there sat the sea witch, letting a toad eat out of her mouth exactly the way a person lets a canary eat sugar. The ugly water snakes she called her little chickens, and let them wander over her as they pleased. She was, in short, the strangest hostess in this whole season of tales. But remember the promise of this room. Nothing here will startle you. Not even her. She keeps to her own chapter, and it is nearly over already.
I know well enough what you want, said the sea witch, before the little mermaid had said a word. And very foolish it is of you. But you shall have your way, for it will bring you sorrow, my pretty princess. You want to be rid of your fish tail, and to have two stumps to walk about on instead, as human beings do, so that the young prince may fall in love with you, and you may win him, and an immortal soul besides.
And the witch laughed, long and low, so that the toad and the snakes tumbled off her onto the ground.
You come just in time, she said. Tomorrow, once the sun is up, I could not have helped you for another year. I shall make you a drink. Before the sun rises, you must swim to the land, sit down on the shore, and drink it. Then your tail will part in two, and shrink into what humans call pretty legs. But it will hurt. It will be as if a sharp sword went through you. All who see you will say you are the loveliest human child they ever saw. You will keep your floating walk, and no dancer will move as lightly as you. But every step you take will feel as though you trod on a sharp knife. If you will bear all this, I will help you.
Yes, said the little mermaid, in a voice that trembled. And she thought of the prince, and of winning an immortal soul.
But consider, said the witch. Once you have a human shape, you can never be a mermaid again. Never again come down through the water to your sisters, or to your father's palace. And if you do not win the prince's love, so wholly that for your sake he forgets father and mother, and clings to you with his every thought, and lets the priest join your hands as man and wife, then you will win no immortal soul. On the first morning after he marries another, your heart will break, and you will be foam on the water.
I will bear it, said the little mermaid, and she was pale as a pearl.
But you must pay me as well, said the witch, and it is no small thing I ask. You have the loveliest voice of all who live at the bottom of the sea, and no doubt you think to charm him with it. That voice you shall give to me. The best thing you possess, for my precious drink. For I must put my own blood into it, that the draught may be sharp as a sword with two edges.
But if you take my voice, said the little mermaid, what will be left to me?
Your lovely form, said the witch. Your floating walk. And your speaking eyes. With those, a human heart can be won well enough. Come. Is your courage gone already?
It was not gone. The price was paid. The old book tells it in a single quick line, and the storyteller does the same, quietly, and then it is done and behind us: a mermaid carries her voice in her tongue, and so the witch took that, one small quick moment and then over forever, and from that hour the little mermaid could neither sing nor speak. It cost what true wishes always cost in the old tales, everything of one particular kind. She paid it with her eyes open.
Then the witch set her cauldron on to boil the magic drink. Cleanliness is a virtue, she said, and scoured the pot with the snakes, tied into a knot. She pricked her own breast and let her dark blood drip in, and the steam rose up in shapes so strange that no one has ever found names for them. Every moment the witch laid something new into the cauldron. And when the drink was ready at last, it was as clear as the clearest water.
There it is, said the witch, and gave it to her.
And the little mermaid went back the way she had come, through the wood, over the bog, between the roaring wheels of the whirlpools. The polyps, when they saw what shone in her hand like a glittering star, drew their arms and fingers in and shrank away from her, every one, and she passed through untouched.
She could see her father's palace. The lamps were all out in the great ballroom. Everyone within was asleep by now. She did not dare go in and look at them, now that she was voiceless and leaving them forever. It was as if her heart would break with sorrow. She stole into the garden instead, and took one flower from each of her sisters' little flower beds, five flowers, one for each sister, and blew a thousand kisses from her hand toward the palace, and rose up through the dark blue sea.
Chapter Nine.

Two White Feet.
The sun was not yet up when she came to the prince's palace and drew herself onto the lowest of the noble marble steps, the flight that went down into the sea.
The moon was still shining, clear and bright. The great building slept above her, all its windows dark, its statues keeping their patient watch between the pillars. The little mermaid sat on the cool marble with the sea holding her tail for the last time, and she drank the sharp burning draught down.
It was as the witch had said, like a sword passing through her, and she fainted, and lay as if dead on the steps while the sky grew pale.
When the sun came up over the sea, she woke, and before her stood the beautiful young prince. He fixed his coal black eyes on her, so that she cast down her own, and then she saw that her fish's tail was gone, and that she had the prettiest small white feet any girl could have. She had no clothing, so she wrapped herself in her long thick hair, and looked up at him.
He asked who she was, and how she had come there. And she could only look back at him, gently and sorrowfully, with her deep blue eyes. For speak she could not.
He took her hand and led her up toward the palace. And every step she took was as the witch had foretold, as if she were treading on the points of needles and the blades of knives. She bore it gladly. The little mermaid never said one word of it in her whole life, and the storyteller will follow her example. Hand in hand with the prince she went up the marble steps, light as a rising bubble, and he and everyone who saw her marveled at her graceful floating walk.
They dressed her in costly robes of silk and muslin. She was the loveliest person in all the palace. But she was mute. She could neither sing nor say. Beautiful slave girls, dressed in silk and gold, came out and sang before the prince and his royal parents, and one of them sang more sweetly than all the rest, and the prince smiled at her and clapped his hands. Then the little mermaid was sad inside, for she knew that she herself had sung far, far more sweetly, once. And she thought, oh, if he only knew that I gave my voice away forever, in order to be near him.
Then the slave girls danced, graceful and gliding, to the noblest music. And the little mermaid raised her beautiful white arms, and rose up on the tips of her toes, and floated across the floor, and danced as no one had ever danced. With every movement her loveliness showed clearer, and her eyes said more, and said it deeper into the heart, than all the singing of the slaves.
Everyone was enchanted, and most of all the prince, who called her his little foundling. And she danced again, and again. The prince said that she should stay with him always, and she was given leave to sleep outside his door, on a velvet cushion.
He had a page's suit made for her, so that she might ride out with him on horseback. They rode together through the sweet smelling woods, where the green boughs brushed their shoulders and the little birds sang among the fresh leaves, and she heard at last, with her own ears, the singing fishes of the trees, and knew that her grandmother's stories had all been true, and told gently at that. She climbed with the prince up the high mountains, and when they had climbed far enough they saw the clouds sailing along below them, like flocks of birds on their way to other lands.
And at night, in the prince's palace, when the others slept, she would go down the broad marble steps, and stand on the lowest one, and cool her feet, still warm from all the day's dancing, in the cold sea water. And then she thought of them, down there in the deep.
One night her sisters came up, arm in arm. They sang so sorrowfully as they swam upon the water that she beckoned to them, and they knew her, and came, and told her how she had grieved them all. After that they visited her every night. And once, far out, she saw her old grandmother, who had not been up to the surface of the sea for many years, and the sea king himself, with his crown upon his head. They stretched their hands toward her across the water. But they did not dare come near the land, as the sisters did. They only looked, the two old crowned heads in the dark water, and she looked back, and that was their whole conversation, and it said everything such conversations ever say.
Day by day the prince grew fonder of her. He loved her the way one loves a dear, good child. But to make her his queen, that thought never came into his head at all.
And on his marriage, remember, everything hung. The witch had said it plainly. If he wedded another, then on the morning after, the little mermaid would be foam on the sea.
Do you not love me best of them all? the little mermaid's eyes seemed to ask, when he took her in his arms and kissed her fair forehead.
Yes, you are dearest to me, said the prince, for you have the best heart of them all. You are the most devoted to me, and you are like a young girl I once saw, and shall surely never find again. I was on a ship that was wrecked. The waves carried me ashore near a holy temple, where many young girls serve. The youngest of them found me on the shore, and saved my life. I saw her only twice. She is the only one in this world I could truly love. But you are like her. You almost push her picture out of my heart. She belongs to the holy temple, and so my good fortune has sent you to me instead. We will never part.
Ah, thought the little mermaid, he does not know that it was I who saved his life. I carried him over the sea, to the wood where the temple stands. I lay behind the stones in the foam and watched until the girl came, and the girl he loves is only the second half of a morning that began with me.
And she sighed, deeply, for weep she could not.
The girl belongs to the holy temple, she told herself. She will never come out into the world. They will never meet again. But I am with him. I see him every day. I will care for him, and love him, and lay my whole life down at his feet like a path.
And for a while, a good long while, the tale rests there, and lets her be happy, and so will we. Evenings of music. Mornings on horseback under the singing trees. The sea on the lowest step at night, cool around her ankles, carrying up its old blue smell of home.
Chapter Ten.

The Bride From the Temple.
The palace heard it first as sound, a hammering down in the yards, day upon day, where a splendid ship was being fitted out. Then came the word itself, going quietly from room to room. The prince was to marry, and his bride would be the lovely daughter of the neighboring king.
The prince told his little foundling how it stood. My parents desire me to see this princess, he said. But they cannot force me to bring her home as my bride. I cannot love her. She will not be like the beautiful girl of the temple, whom you are like. If I ever had to choose a bride, I would sooner choose you, my silent foundling with the speaking eyes.
And he kissed her rosy mouth, and played with her long hair, and laid his head against her heart, and her heart dreamed of human happiness, and of an immortal soul.
You are not afraid of the sea, my quiet child, he said, when they stood together on the splendid ship. And he told her of storms and of calms, of the strange fishes of the deep, and of what the divers had seen down there. And she smiled at his telling, for she knew the bottom of the sea better than anyone who has ever stood on a deck.
In the moonlit night, when everyone slept but the steersman at his wheel, she sat at the ship's rail and looked down through the clear water. She thought she could make out her father's palace, far below, and her old grandmother standing on its highest tower, her silver crown on her head, gazing up through the moving currents at the ship's keel. Then her sisters came up out of the water, and looked at her full of sorrow, wringing their white hands. She beckoned to them, and smiled, and wanted to tell them that all was well with her, that she was happy. But a ship's boy came along the deck just then, and the sisters dove, and the boy believed the white he had seen was foam upon the water.
Next morning the ship came into the harbor of the neighboring king's city. All the church bells rang. Trumpets sounded from the high towers, and the soldiers stood drawn up with waving banners and shining steel. Every day held a festival. But the princess herself had not yet arrived. She was being brought up far away in a holy temple, they said, learning all the royal virtues. The little mermaid stood eager to see her.
And when she came, the little mermaid had to confess that she had never seen a lovelier being. Her skin was clear and delicate, and behind her long dark lashes smiled a pair of true, dark blue eyes.
It is you, said the prince. You. Who saved me, when I lay like one dead on the shore. And he caught his blushing bride in his arms. Oh, I am too happy, he said to the little mermaid. The best I ever dared hope has come true. And you will rejoice at my happiness, for you love me best of them all.
And the little mermaid kissed his hand. And it seemed to her that her heart was breaking already, quietly, ahead of time.
Here the storyteller lays her hand flat on the page a moment, and looks up. Remember the promise. No ending in this room is a fall. What is coming is not what you fear. Rest, and watch what the tale does.
The wedding was held that same day. The bells rang, and on every altar the sweet oil burned in silver lamps, and the bride and bridegroom joined hands and received the blessing. The little mermaid, dressed in silk and gold, held the bride's train. But her ears did not hear the festive music, and her eyes did not follow the holy ceremony. She was thinking of her last night in the world, and of everything she had given, and everything she had lost.
That same evening, bride and bridegroom went aboard the ship. The flags flew. A royal tent of gold and purple had been raised amidships, with the softest cushions, and there the wedded pair would sleep in the cool, calm night. The sails filled, and the ship slid lightly over the clear sea.
When it grew dark, colored lanterns were lit, and the sailors danced upon the deck. The little mermaid thought of the first night she had ever risen from the sea, when she had watched this same splendor from the water. And she gave herself to the dance one last time. She floated, the way a swallow floats at evening. She had never danced so wonderfully, and everyone marveled. Her feet ached, and she scarcely noticed, for she was saying goodbye. To him. To the lamps. To the sea wind. To all of it, in the only language she had left.
Past midnight the ship grew quiet. Only the steersman stood at his wheel. The little mermaid laid her white arms on the rail and turned her face to the east, where the sun would rise, and where, with its first ray, as she well knew, her life would end.
Then she saw her sisters rise up out of the sea. They were pale as she was. Their long beautiful hair no longer streamed on the wind. It had been cut off, every one of them.
We have given our hair to the witch, they said, to buy her help, so that you need not die tonight. She has given us a knife. See it. What the witch asked, the storyteller says once, in the smallest voice this room owns, and then it is said forever. Before sunrise the knife was for the prince, and if it was used, the little mermaid's tail would come back to her, and she could sink home with her sisters, and live out her three hundred years. Hurry, they said. One of you must die before the sun is up. Our old grandmother mourns so, her white hair has fallen away as ours fell to the witch's scissors. Come back to us. Do you see the red streak in the sky? In a few minutes the sun will rise. Hurry.
And they gave a strange, deep sigh, and sank beneath the waves.
The little mermaid drew back the purple curtain of the tent, and saw the lovely bride asleep with her head on the prince's breast. She bent down, and kissed his fair brow. She looked at the sky, where the light of morning was gathering brightness. She looked at the sharp knife. She looked again at the prince, who murmured his bride's name in his dreams. She alone was in his thoughts, that other she, and the knife trembled in the little mermaid's hand.
And then she flung it, far out over the waves.
The water shone where it fell, one moment of red gold, as if a drop of the sunrise had gone down early to wait. And the little mermaid looked once more at the prince, with eyes already half of another world, and let herself go from the ship's side, down into the sea, and felt her body loosen, and become foam.
And now the sun came up out of the sea.
Its light fell, warm and mild, across the cold foam on the water. And the little mermaid felt nothing of death.
Chapter Eleven.

The Daughters of the Air.
She saw the bright sun. And above her, in the air, there floated hundreds of beautiful transparent beings.
She could see, straight through them, the white sails of the ship and the rose colored clouds of morning. Their voices were pure melody, but so fine and so light that no human ear could hear them, just as no human eye could see them. They had no wings. They floated by their own lightness, the way scent floats, the way warmth floats. And the little mermaid saw that she had a body like theirs now, and that it was lifting, all by itself, higher and higher out of the foam.
To whom am I coming? she said. And her voice, her voice, sounded like the voices of the others, a music so gentle that no instrument of the earth could play it. It had come back to her finer than it ever was.
To the daughters of the air, they answered. A mermaid has no immortal soul, and can never win one, unless she gains the love of a human being. Her eternal life must be given her by another. The daughters of the air have no everlasting soul either. But they can make one for themselves, by good deeds, gently done, over long years. We fly to the hot countries, where the air lies heavy on the people, and we fan coolness over them. We spread the scent of flowers through the air, and carry refreshment and healing wherever we go. When we have striven for three hundred years to do what good we can, then we receive an immortal soul, and share in the eternal happiness of humankind. And you, poor little mermaid, you have striven with your whole heart for the same thing we strive for. You have suffered, and endured, and been lifted into the world of the spirits of the air. And now, by your own good deeds, you may make yourself an immortal soul, three hundred years from tonight.
And the little mermaid lifted her clear bright arms up toward the sun, and for the first time in her whole life, she felt tears.
They did not hurt. Nothing hurt anymore. Not her feet, which would never again touch any floor. Not her heart. A mermaid cannot weep, her people always said, and now she had everything her old world could not give. Lightness. Morning. Time. Her voice. And tears when she needed them, which is its own quiet mercy.
On the ship below there was life and noise again. She saw the prince, and his beautiful bride beside him, searching the water for her. They gazed at the drifting foam so sorrowfully, as if they knew what she had done. Unseen, she kissed the bride's forehead. She smiled at the prince, one long smile with no sadness left in it. And then she rose with the other children of the air, up onto the rose colored cloud that went sailing through the sky.
In three hundred years, said one of her new sisters, we shall float like this into the kingdom of heaven.
And we may come there even sooner, whispered another. Unseen, we float into the houses of human beings, wherever there are children. And for every day we find a good child, a child who makes its parents glad and deserves their love, our time is made shorter. The child never knows when we fly through the room. And when we smile over it, with joy, a whole year is taken from our three hundred.
Think of that, says the storyteller, closing her eyes a moment. All the sleeping children of the world, breathing slowly, each one shortening some invisible sister's road to heaven just by being loved and worth the loving. You were such a child once. Some daughter of the air is nearer home tonight because of you, and never told you, and never will.
And the little mermaid learned the new work quickly, because it was the work she had been doing all along, under another name. Carrying what was heavy. Cooling what was fevered. Loving without being seen. She flew with her sisters to the hot lands, and fanned the sleepers there, and spread the smell of orange blossoms through open windows, and wherever she passed, the air behind her was kinder than the air before.
Sometimes she crossed the sea she had come from, and always slowed there. Once, they say, she passed low over a sandbank where five mermaids lay in the moonlight, their short hair growing long again, singing, and she sang one soft note down into their song, and they all looked up, and saw nothing, and smiled anyway.
Chapter Twelve.

Goodnight. And the Lamp at the Edge of Morning.
The night is deep now, even at the edge of everything.
Far out at sea, the water is still as blue as the loveliest cornflower, and as clear as the clearest glass, and it is resting. The whole broad surface of it lifts and settles, lifts and settles, like something breathing under a quilt of stars.
Down below, at the bottom of everything, the sea king's palace stands in the dark blue country, and the palace is asleep. The amber windows are dim and warm. The roof of mussel shells has closed for the night, every shell shut softly on its pearl, the whole treasury tucked in. In the great glass hall the blue flames are out, and the fish that pressed their faces to the walls have drifted home into the swaying forests, fin by fin, the way lamps go out along a street.
The gardens are asleep. The whale of flowers is asleep, and the mermaid of flowers beside it. And the round little garden that was shaped like the sun is kept blooming still. The sisters tend it now, in turns, one evening each. The red flowers ring the marble boy, who looks upward through all the fathoms, patient as ever. He was always looking toward where she went. Of everyone in the deep, he alone was never surprised.
The old grandmother sleeps in her rooms, her twelve oysters set neatly by. She tells a new story now, on the long evenings, the finest in all her keeping. It is about a granddaughter who wanted the sky, and got it. She tells it slowly. No one hurries her.
On the far shore, the prince's palace is dark and quiet. The fountain in the great hall plays on alone under the glass dome, softer at night, a sound like rain remembered rather than falling. The prince sleeps, and his bride sleeps, and they are kind to each other all their days, and once a year, on a certain summer morning, they scatter flowers on the water, for someone they loved without ever learning her name. The sea takes the flowers gently. The sea knows exactly whose they are.
And the marble steps still walk down into the water, and all night the small waves come up the lowest step and back, up and back, the way a hand rests on the shoulder of a sleeping child. Nothing in this tale was lost, you see. It only moved higher.
Because above it all, in the mild high air where the last clouds are, the daughters of the air are going about the great slow night of the world. Over the hot lands, fanning. Over the gardens, carrying scent. Over the roofs of every town that looks like a hundred fallen stars. Over your roof. One of them, the youngest, with the loveliest voice in any world, pauses longest where the windows are dark and someone inside is almost asleep.
She is there now, for all anyone can say. The room you are lying in is full of air, after all. Every room is. We live at the bottom of a sea of it, and lightness swims above us all night long, unseen, humming, wishing us well.
Listen. The night is doing its slow, dark work. The waves lift and settle. The pearls sleep in their shells. The flame of the lamp leans, and rights itself, small and gold at the edge of morning.
The storyteller closes the book, but slowly, the way a door is closed on a sleeping house.
The lamp is turned low.
Whatever became of them after, they are safe now, and so are you.
The lantern will be lit again. There are more tales in the old book than there are nights in a year.
Goodnight.

Welcome to The Sleeping Almanac.
Before the lamp is lit, one small thing. If these stories carry you to sleep, subscribe now, while your eyes are still open, and tomorrow night's tale will be waiting for you. A like helps other tired souls find this room. That is all. Let's light the lamp together now.
The lamp is lit again.
The same small flame as last night, in the same quiet room at the edge of the world.
The storyteller is already here. She was here before you arrived. She will stay until you sleep.
There is a chair for you. There is a blanket. The night outside is doing all of its slow, dark work, and none of it is yours to carry until morning.
The storyteller opens the old book, and turns past the tales already told, to a page that waits for tonight.
Tonight, she says softly, we go to an old kingdom of clipped gardens and tall clocks, where a girl called Cinderella sleeps in the warm ash beside a kitchen fire, and out in the dark of the garden a pumpkin is quietly becoming the most famous coach in the world.
And there is no hurry at all as she begins.
Settle in, now. Let the chair take your weight, all of it, even the weight you did not know you were carrying. Let the blanket be heavy in the good way, the way snow is heavy on a roof that has nothing to do until spring. The day is over. It has been paid everything it was owed. You do not have to watch this story. You do not have to remember any of it in the morning.
You may believe you know this tale. Everyone believes they know this one. But what you know is a copy of a copy, and tonight the storyteller reads from the old book itself, written down in France more than three hundred years ago, and by lamplight it wears a different face. There are two balls in it, not one, on two nights running. The coachman, an hour before the coach rolls, is still a rat, and is rather proud of his whiskers. The footmen were six lizards, drowsing behind a watering pot. And the ending is kinder than the one you remember, kinder than almost any ending in any old book, and it is not the fairy who makes it. It is Cinderella herself.
If you drift, drift. This tale has been carrying listeners down to sleep for three hundred years, gently, on purpose, the way a slow coach carries a tired traveler home. It does not need you to finish it. Drifting is not leaving. Drifting is how a listener says thank you. We begin.
Chapter One.

The House with the Cold Hearths.
Long ago, and not so very far from here, there was a kingdom that loved order by daylight and candlelight after dark.
It was a tidy kingdom. Its gardens were clipped into green rooms and green corridors, so that walking in them was like walking through a house made of hedges. Its avenues ran straight as rulers between double rows of lime trees. Its clocks were the finest in the world, and it knew it, tall clocks in walnut cases that stood in hallways like patient grandfathers, each keeping its own private opinion of the hour. And in the heart of the capital stood the palace of the king, a palace with a hundred windows, and at dusk the hundred windows lit up one after another, so that the whole building seemed to be slowly remembering something pleasant.
In a good street of that capital, behind a gate of black iron, stood a tall stone house with a walled garden at its back.
A gentleman lived there. He was kind in the soft, unfinished way that some men are kind, which is to say that he wished everyone well and hoped this would be enough. He had married young, and his wife had been the gentlest soul in the parish, a woman who spoke to servants and duchesses in exactly the same voice, and they had one daughter, and for years that house was the kind of house where the fires are always lit and the bread never burns.
Then the gentle wife died, quietly, as she had done everything.
We will not stand long in that sorrow. The old book itself does not. It is enough to say that the girl was still young when she lost her mother, and that the best of her mother had already been given to her by then, the way the best of a candle is passed to the next candle before the first goes out. The girl had her mother's sweetness of temper and her goodness of heart, whole and entire, and whoever carries those is never quite alone in the world, not even when the world does its worst.
For a while, the father and the daughter kept the house together, and the house was quieter than before, but still warm.
Then the gentleman married again.
The old book is very plain about the second wife, plainer than it is about almost anyone. It says she was the proudest and most haughty woman that was ever seen. It does not say she was cruel in any interesting way, because pride is not interesting, and the old book knew it. Pride is only a cold room a person chooses to live in, with the door shut, and the curtains drawn, and a mirror on every wall.
She came to the tall stone house with two daughters of her own, and the two daughters resembled her in all things. That is the whole of their introduction in the old book, and, says the storyteller, turning the page, it is the tidiest sentence of warning ever written.
The wedding was a fine one, with white ribbon on the gateposts and a fiddler in the hall. And the wedding was hardly over, the ribbon hardly down, before the new wife let her temper out of its cage.
For she could not bear the goodness of the young girl. This is the true reason, the oldest reason, and the old book gives it straight. The girl was gentle, and the girl was lovely, and beside her the new wife's own daughters appeared exactly as agreeable as they were, which would never do.
So the girl was given the meanest work of the house. She scoured the dishes and scrubbed the tables. She carried the water and blacked the grates and washed the stairs. She cleaned the chambers of madam her stepmother, and the chambers of the two young misses her stepsisters, and when everything shone, she was told it did not shine, and she did it again.
And her father said nothing.
The old book is gentle with him, and so shall we be. It says only that he was governed entirely by his wife, and that the girl dared not complain to him, for it would have gone the worse for her. Some kind men are like lanterns with the shutter closed. The flame is in there. It simply never reaches the road, where it is needed.
But here is what pride never learns, and what this whole night is for. You can give a person the coldest room in the house, and the oldest dress in the chest, and every hard chore in the cupboard, and if the warmth is on the inside of them, you have taken nothing. You have only rearranged the furniture around a lit candle.
Evening after evening, when her work was done at last, the girl came to the kitchen, where the great hearth was, and the fire had burned down to its embers, and that is where we shall find her, in a moment, in her rightful place at the very center of this story.
Chapter Two.

Cinders, and the Two Names.
The kitchen of that house was below the street, half sunk into the earth, the way old kitchens are, and it was the one honest room in the building.
Everything in it did what it said it would do. The long table was scrubbed pale as bone and smelled of a hundred years of bread. The copper pans hung in ranks on the wall, holding the firelight, a row of small warm moons. Onions and dried herbs hung from the beams. A cricket lived somewhere behind the oven, and sang in the evenings, unpaid but reliable. And the hearth itself was wide enough to roast for a wedding, with a chimney corner at each end, two little alcoves of warm stone where a person could sit almost inside the fireplace itself, close to the embers, out of the drafts.
When the girl's long day was finally done, and the house above her had gone quiet, she would come down to that kitchen and sit in the chimney corner, in among the warm cinders, because it was the warmest place in the house, and the nearest thing she had to a room of her own.
For upstairs, under the roof, they had given her a garret with a wretched straw bed in it, at the top of a cold stair, where the winter came in around the window like an unwanted guest. While her two sisters, mind you, lay on the newest fashion of beds, in fine rooms with inlaid floors, with looking glasses so tall they could admire themselves in them from the buckle of the shoe to the ribbon of the cap.
So she sat in the cinders, in the evenings, where it was warm. And her sisters, seeing the gray ash on her apron and the smudge of it on her cheek, thought this the funniest thing in the world.
The elder, who took after her mother the most, called her Cinderwench.
The younger, who was not quite so rude, or not quite so brave in her rudeness, softened it to Cinderella.
And the name stayed, the way names do. The whole household used it. In time she answered to it as if it had been given to her at a font with godparents standing by, and the strange thing, the lovely thing, says the storyteller, is what the name became. They meant it to be a small cruelty, a name made of ash. But say it now, anywhere on earth, in any language, and every face in the room goes soft. It is one of the most beloved names in the world. The ash blew off it long ago. That is worth remembering, whenever you are given a name you did not choose. It is not the givers of a name who decide what it means. It is the wearer.
And the old book says one thing more, and says it without raising its voice. It says that Cinderella, in her old gray gown, with the ash on her hands, was a hundred times more lovely than her sisters, though they went dressed in the finest that money could fetch. The old book does not argue the point. It simply sets it down, the way you set down a fact of arithmetic, and moves on.
Her days were long, but they were not empty, because no day is empty to a person who pays attention, and attention was her particular gift.
She knew the house better than anyone in it. She knew which stair sighed and which stayed silent. She knew the mice that lived in the kitchen walls, and heard them at night, a small dry rustling, like someone turning the pages of a very little book, and she never had the heart to begrudge them the crumbs they found, for the crumbs were few and honestly swept. She knew the fat old rats in the cellar were down there among the cider barrels, living their low, comfortable lives. And she knew the garden.
The garden was her other kingdom. She had charge of the vegetables, since the cook would not stoop to them, and so the walled garden behind the house became, an hour here and an hour there, the one place her time was her own. She grew beans up strings. She grew herbs in a gray green row. And along the south wall, where the sun collected all day in the old bricks, she grew pumpkins, great slow golden creatures that lay in their leaves all summer, ripening without the least anxiety, and she was fond of them, the way you become fond of anything you have watched over from the beginning.
On that same warm wall, in the afternoons, the lizards came out to sit. Six of them, more often than not, small and green and solemn, lined along the brick like ornaments, or dozing in the shade behind the old copper watering pot. She took care never to startle them. Remember the pumpkins, and remember the lizards. This story remembers everything.
In the evenings, then, with the house asleep above her, Cinderella sat in the warm chimney corner, in the ember light, with the cricket singing behind the oven. Sometimes she mended by that light. Sometimes she only sat, with her arms around her knees, and watched the embers breathe, going brighter and dimmer, brighter and dimmer, the way embers do, as if the fire were sleeping too, and dreaming. And she told herself, very quietly, the stories her mother had told her, and in every one of them, somewhere, there was a door that opened when no one expected it, onto a bigger and kinder world.
She was not waiting. Waiting is anxious, and she had let anxiety go, the way you let a bird out at a window. She was only keeping warm, and keeping kind, which, in the arithmetic of the old stories, is the whole of the work.
The door was coming.
Chapter Three.

An Invitation Sealed in Red Wax.
It came on a bright morning, carried up the good street by a royal footman who walked as though the street were lucky to have him.
The king's son was giving a ball.
And here the storyteller lifts one finger, because here is the first thing the copies got wrong, and the old book gets right. It was not one ball. It was two. Two balls, on two nights, one following the other, the way one lamp is lit from another. Hold on to that. A single night can be an accident. A second night is a choice, and half of what happens in this tale happens because there was a second night in it.
The invitation went out to all persons of fashion and quality, and the two sisters were invited, for they cut a very grand figure in the town, whatever figure they cut at home. The letter was thick cream paper, folded three times, sealed with red wax, with the prince's own cipher pressed into the seal, and when it was opened in the morning room, the shriek of joy that went up frightened the pigeons off the roof.
And the tall stone house went, in an instant, from a quiet house to a ship fitting out for a voyage.
Oh, the councils that were held. The debates, the reversals, the treaties. For days the two sisters talked of nothing in the world but what they should wear, as though the ball were a battle and the gowns were the armies. Wardrobes stood open. Chests were emptied onto beds and sorted and emptied again. Ribbons lay in drifts on the floors like autumn in a very expensive forest.
For my part, said the elder at last, laying it down like a law, I shall wear my red velvet, with the French trimming. She said the words French trimming the way you would mention a personal friendship with the queen.
And I, said the younger, shall wear just my ordinary petticoat. She let that sit a moment, for effect, watching her sister brighten. But then, she went on, I shall put over it my mantle with the gold flowers, and my stomacher of diamonds, which is not to be met with every day. And her sister stopped brightening.
Do you know these words, or do they wash over you like water? Either way is right, at this hour. A mantle is a cloak of state, a cloud of cloth that goes over everything. A stomacher is a stiff piece for the front of a gown, shaped like the ace of spades turned point downward, and this one was sewn with diamonds edge to edge, so that walking toward a candle in it, you arrived a little before you arrived.
But gowns were only the beginning. There were heads to build.
They sent for the best tire woman in the city, which is the old word for a dresser of hair, an architect of hair, and she came with her own case of instruments like a surgeon, and stayed two days, to build the headdresses and to adjust the double pinners, the little lace caps with two long streamers that the old book is careful to mention, for no detail of that campaign was small to the two sisters. Hair in that kingdom, in that year, was not combed. It was constructed. It went up and up in rolls and towers, powdered white as a sugar loaf, until a lady stood a full head taller than the truth, and had to go through doorways with the caution of a ship entering a small harbor. And they had their red brushes, and their patches, from Mademoiselle de la Poche herself, the finest maker of patches in the town, whose name the old book keeps like a pressed flower. Patches were little shapes of black silk, moons and stars and hearts, that a lady wore on her cheek or her chin, one or two, placed with enormous strategy. An entire language of the face, spelled out in tiny black stars, and everyone at court could read it.
All this, you understand, took money and took noise. But it also took work, quiet work, needle work, iron work, and every stitch of that fell to Cinderella.
It was she who washed and starched and ironed the fine linen, till the lace lay like new frost. It was she who plaited the ruffles, goffering every fold with the hot iron, a hundred little waves in a row, exact as the sea. She sat late in the kitchen with the irons heating on the fire, two in the fire while one was in her hand, working her way down cuffs and collars by ember light, and the work was beautiful, because she did not know another way to do it.
And, says the storyteller, here is a small strange thing that the old book sets down without comment. The sisters, who consulted nobody about anything, consulted Cinderella about everything.
They called her up from the kitchen to their fine rooms, and stood turning before the tall glasses, and said, well, which. And she told them, honestly and well, for she had excellent taste, the best in that house and better than most in the palace. She had an eye. She could look at a gown, a ribbon, a shoe, and see the one small change that made it right, the bow moved two fingers higher, the second bracelet taken off. Where such an eye comes from, in a girl who owned one gray dress, the old book does not say. But you and I may guess that taste is only attention wearing its good clothes, and attention, as we know, was her particular gift.
So she advised them the best in the world. She meant it, too. That is the part that is hard to believe and true. She wanted the red velvet to look well. She wanted the diamonds to sit straight. It was work her hands were proud of, and they were her family, the only one she had, and kindness of her sort does not first check whether it is deserved.
And more than this. She offered, herself, to dress their hair for the great night.
They accepted at once. Of course they accepted. They knew what her hands were worth, none better, whatever names they called the rest of her.
And so the last day before the first ball arrived, and found the whole house upstairs at the mirrors, and Cinderella in the middle of it, with her sleeves rolled, and her combs and pins laid out in a row, like a small calm general before the only kind of battle she would ever fight.
Chapter Four.

Dressing the Sisters.
The dressing of the two sisters took the whole of the afternoon, and it is one of the quietest and strangest scenes in the old book, if you stand still in it. So we will stand still in it.
Picture the fine bedroom at four o'clock, with the low sun coming in over the garden wall and lying along the floor in long panes of gold. Picture the powder in the air, drifting in that light like the finest snow that ever refused to fall. There are gowns laid out on both beds like queens lying in state. There is a smell of hot iron and starch and violet water. And in the middle of it all stands Cinderella in her gray dress, with ash still under her fingernails, building, with her two hands, tower after tower of beautiful hair.
She worked slowly and surely, the way she did everything. Rolling, pinning, powdering. Stepping back to look, stepping in again. The younger sister's head first, then the elder's, and each one, under her hands, became a small white architecture, and the sisters watched themselves grow grander in the glass, and were happy, in their way, which was the only way they had been taught.
And while she was combing them, one of the sisters, watching Cinderella in the mirror, over the rim of her own reflection, said, Cinderella, would you not be glad to go to the ball?
Now, a question like that can be a door or it can be a pin, and this one was a pin, and everyone in the room knew it.
Alas, said Cinderella, you are laughing at me. It is not for such as I am to go to a ball.
You are quite right, said the sister, comfortably, settling back into her own reflection. Folk would laugh indeed, to see a Cinderwench at a ball.
And there it might have stung, and stayed stinging. But the old book tells us exactly what Cinderella did with it, and what she did was this. Nothing. She went on combing. And, says the old book, anyone else in her place would have dressed those heads awry, and who could blame the hands that did it. One pin, half an inch wrong. One curl let down out of a hundred. Nobody would ever have known. But she was good, and she dressed them perfectly well, to the last curl, to the last star of black silk laid on the last powdered cheek.
Hold that a moment, says the storyteller, and never mind the fairy for now. People speak of this tale as though the magic arrives later this evening, in the garden, with the wand. But the oldest magic in it is already in the room, right here, in a girl doing flawless work for two people who have just laughed at her. That is the hardest trick in this whole story. Pumpkins are nothing beside it.
As for the sisters, they were, the old book says, almost mad with joy. For two days they had scarcely eaten a thing, they were so transported. That detail is in the book, and it is somehow the fondest thing we know about them, that under all the velvet they were two girls too excited for supper. And in the lacing of them, that evening, more than a dozen laces were broken, snapped clean, one after another, in the pulling and the straining to give them each a fine slender shape, and a maid was kept running for fresh laces, and the sisters stood gripping the bedpost with both hands and instructed the pullers, between breaths, to pull harder. And from morning till the coach came, they were before their looking glasses, turning, and turning back, and asking the mirror the mirror's one great question, and hearing, as everyone hears, only their own hearts answering.
At last, at dusk, the coach stood at the door with its lamps lit.
Down the steps they came, the red velvet and the gold flowered mantle, enormous, glimmering, rustling like weather, each head of hair riding above its owner like a white ship under sail. Their mother went gleaming before them. The father came behind, in his quiet best, looking, as he always looked, like a man slightly surprised to find himself in his own life. The door of the coach shut with a rich little click that only money can buy. The coachman spoke to the horses.
And they were gone, down the good street, into the blue evening, toward the palace where a hundred windows were coming alight one after another.
Cinderella stood at the gate and followed the coach with her eyes as long as she could see it, down the whole length of the street, past lamp after lamp, until it turned by the church and the sound of it faded, and the street was only a street again.
And when she could not see it any longer, she fell to crying.
She went back through the quiet house, through the kitchen, out the low door into the walled garden, and sat down on the old stone bench by the south wall, among her pumpkins, in the last gray of the light. And she let the tears come, at last, all of them, the whole day of them, the whole year of them. And the garden, which was her kingdom, sat quietly around her and let her cry, the way old friends do, and the first star came out over the wall, and the warm bricks let go of the day's sun slowly against her back.
She did not hear anyone arrive. There was no gate sound, no footstep on the gravel.
But between one breath and the next, someone was sitting beside her on the bench.
Chapter Five.

The Godmother in the Garden.
She was an old woman, or she was dressed as one, in a cloak the color of dusk itself, so that where the cloak ended and the evening began was anybody's guess. Her hands were folded over the head of a cane that may not have been a cane. And she was looking at Cinderella with the particular expression of someone who has known you since before you could walk, because, as it happened, she had.
For this was Cinderella's godmother. The old book says it plainly, and then adds, in the most offhand way, as though mentioning that an aunt lives somewhat far out of town, that the godmother was a fairy.
The storyteller pauses here, to say the obvious thing softly. Where had she been, all those hard years. The old book does not tell, and three hundred years of listeners have wondered. But fairies, by every account we have of them, keep a different calendar than we do, and arrive neither early nor late but exactly at the turning point, the way spring does. However long the winter, no one ever accused spring of laziness once it was in the garden. And she was in the garden now.
My child, said the godmother, what is the matter?
I wish, said Cinderella, and the tears took the sentence. She tried again. I wish I could. And that was as far as it would go, twice, the wish too big and too old to fit through her voice all at once.
Her godmother watched her kindly, and finished it for her, the way you finish a stitch for a tired seamstress.
You wish you could go to the ball. Is it not so?
Yes, said Cinderella, with a sigh that had the whole year inside it. Oh, yes.
Well, said the godmother, and she stood up, and the garden seemed to stand up a little with her. Be but a good girl, and I will see to it that you shall go.
And then, because fairies waste no time on astonishment, she looked about the walled garden in the dusk, at the beans on their strings and the herbs in their gray green row, like a cook taking stock of a pantry, and she said the sentence that has made children sit up straight in their beds for three hundred years.
Run into the garden, she said, and bring me a pumpkin.
Now Cinderella, whatever she expected, and she can hardly have known what she expected, did not expect groceries. But hers was not a nature that argued with kindness. She went down the path to the south wall, where her great slow golden creatures lay in their leaves, and she chose the finest of them all, the queen of the bed, the one she had watched over since it was a blossom no bigger than her thumb, and she cut it free and carried it back up the path in both arms, walking carefully, the way you carry a sleeping cat, and set it on the bench beside her godmother. And she could not, the old book admits, for the life of her imagine how a pumpkin was to get her to the ball.
Her godmother took out a knife and scooped the pumpkin hollow, working quickly and neatly, leaving nothing at all but the rind. That is a detail to fall asleep on, the great fairy of this tale bent over a garden bench in the half dark, doing kitchen work with her sleeves pushed back, the smell of cut pumpkin rising sweet and raw into the evening air, the seeds set aside in a pale little heap on the stone. Even magic, in the honest old stories, begins with the chores.
Then she straightened, and she touched the hollow rind with her wand.
There was no thunder. Understand this about the magic in this garden. It was quiet magic, garden magic, the same power that turns a seed into an oak, only run at the speed of a held breath instead of a hundred years.
The pumpkin drew itself upward. The ribs of it stretched and smoothed and became carved panels, and the carving ran along them like frost growing on a pane, leaves and vines and blossoms of worked gold. The rind deepened from orange to a lacquered, glowing gold, gold all over, gold through and through. The stem arched high and curled and became the driver's seat with its lamp bracket. Windows opened along the sides and glazed themselves, catching the first stars. Wheels grew from nothing like water lilies opening, rimmed and spoked and delicate, and the whole of it settled on its springs with a creak of newness, rocked once, and stood still.
And there, on the garden path, between the bean rows and the herb bed, where no coach could possibly be, stood a fine coach, gilded all over with gold, glowing softly in the dark like a lamp made of autumn.
Cinderella walked around it once, slowly, with her hands pressed together at her mouth.
The inside smelled, faintly, and would always smell, of pumpkin, of October, of the sweet cellar smell of harvest. Persons at the palace, later that night, would find themselves thinking, without knowing why, of their grandmothers' kitchens, of pies cooling on deep windowsills, of being small and safe somewhere warm at the turning of the year.
Well, said the godmother, looking at her work with a gardener's satisfaction. A coach.
But a coach, she said, is furniture until something pulls it.
Chapter Six.

Six Mice, Three Rats, and Six Lizards.
Go and look in the mousetrap, said the godmother.
The mousetrap of that house stood in the pantry, and it was the old kind, the humane kind if we are honest about it, a little cage of wood and wire into which mice went for the sake of the cheese and then sat, comfortable and cross, waiting for morning. Cinderella fetched it out to the garden, and inside it that evening there were six mice, all alive, all well, all regarding the proceedings with the deep suspicion of the small.
Lift the door of the trap, said the godmother, and let them out to me one by one.
So Cinderella lifted the little trapdoor a finger's width, the way you open anything when you are not sure what will happen next. And the first mouse stepped out onto the gravel, whiskers first, one paw at a time.
The wand came down and touched it, lighter than a leaf lands.
And between one step and the next, without any fuss at all, the mouse simply continued upward. It rose and lengthened and gathered, gray into gray, until where a mouse had been walking there was a horse standing, a tall, fine horse, and it stamped once, softly, surprised at the new distance to its own feet.
Then the next mouse, and the next, and the next, and each one rose in its turn like smoke settling into a new shape, until six horses stood in harness on the garden path, a matched set, and their color, the old book takes care to tell us, was a fine dapple gray, mouse colored still, the loveliest of all the grays. They had kept, too, something quick and bright and small about the eye, and all their lives, whatever else they were, they would be gentle around pantries, and would never once step on anything little.
The godmother looked them over, and then she said, in the voice of a person consulting a colleague, and it is worth noticing that she said it to Cinderella as to an equal in the work, well. And what shall we do for a coachman?
And Cinderella, whose tears were quite dry now, and whose attention, that lifelong gift of hers, was awake in her from head to foot, said, I will go and see whether there is not a rat in the rat trap in the cellar. We may make a coachman of him.
You are right, said her godmother. Go and see.
Fetch that sentence up twice, says the storyteller, because the copies always leave it out. The rat coachman was Cinderella's own idea. The old book is quite clear. The fairy made the magic, but the girl was already learning to think in it, the way you learn a language by hearing it spoken well. Remember it whenever anyone tells you she was only swept along to her fortune. She helped build the coach that carried her.
She came back from the cellar with the rat trap, and in it were three huge rats, three barrel fed cellar rats of great age and dignity. The godmother looked the three of them over slowly, like a queen reviewing her guard, and she chose the one with the grandest beard, the longest and most sweeping whiskers of the three.
The wand touched him.
And up he came, unfolding out of himself, and stood on the path a coachman, a fat, jolly coachman, round as a barrel and pleased about it, in a great coat with rows of buttons, and on his lip, mark this, the finest pair of whiskers that any eye in that kingdom ever beheld, sweeping, silver, magnificent, whiskers with an entire opinion of themselves. He took up the reins as though he had driven six horses through fifty winters, and sat above the golden coach with the calm of a man at last given the position his soul had always held.
Then the godmother said, go into the garden again, and behind the watering pot you will find six lizards. Bring them to me.
And Cinderella went down the path to the south wall, to the old copper watering pot standing in its place by the pumpkin bed, and there behind it, sure enough, in the warm shadow of it, her six small green neighbors lay drowsing, the same six who had kept her company all the slow afternoons of that summer. She gathered them up gently in her apron, all six, and they hardly woke, and she carried them up the path and set them down before the fairy.
Six touches of the wand, soft as rain beginning.
And six footmen stood behind the coach, tall and straight in liveries laced with gold and silver, and they swung up onto the footboard one after another and stood there motionless, chins high, eyes forward, holding on exactly as if they had done nothing else in all their lives. The old book makes its one joke here, quiet as everything in it is quiet. No one, it says, would ever have guessed they had been anything but footmen. Standing very still in a warm place was, after all, their life's whole art. They had merely changed walls.
And then the garden was still. The coach glowed. The horses breathed. The coachman's whiskers stirred in the evening air. Cinderella stood in the middle of it all in her old gray dress with the ash on the hem.
Well, said the godmother softly, are you not pleased?
Oh, yes, said Cinderella. And then, looking down, in a voice that tried very hard to be no voice at all, but must I go in these clothes?
Her godmother did not laugh. She only touched her, once, on the shoulder, with the wand, the way you would wake someone gently on a winter morning.
And the gray dress turned to gold and silver as she wore it. It did not vanish. Understand it rightly. It became. The old wool turned to cloth of gold and cloth of silver, running with light like water at noon, and jewels gathered at the seams the way dew gathers on a web, thick and bright and trembling. The ash itself, they say, went to silver thread. She stood in the garden dressed as the daughter of a king, and under it all her own heart going like a bird.
Then the godmother stooped, and from under her dusk colored cloak she brought out the slippers.
Glass, both of them. Little slippers of true glass, clear as spring water, catching every star then out over the garden and keeping a little of each. No cobbler in this world has ever known what to make of them, and cobblers have thought about it, believe me, for three hundred years. Glass does not bend, and glass does not lie. A glass slipper fits its own foot and no other on the round earth, and that, as the whole kingdom was shortly to learn, was precisely the point.
She put them on. They fitted as though her feet had been the pattern all along, because they had.
Now, said the godmother, and her voice put on just enough weight that the horses turned an ear. Go, and be happy. But remember this, above all things. Do not stay one moment past midnight. Not one. For on the last stroke of twelve, the coach is a pumpkin again, the horses are mice, the footmen are lizards, the coachman is a rat, and the gown is the gown you cried in. All of it goes back at midnight. That is the shape of the gift.
I will remember, said Cinderella. And she said it, the old book tells us, with a joy so entire that there was no room in her anywhere for doubt.
She promised her godmother, above all things, to leave before midnight. The footmen handed her up. The door clicked its rich little click. The coachman spoke to the grays.
And the golden coach rolled out of the walled garden and down the good street, softly thundering, throwing warm light on the housefronts as it passed, and away toward the palace, where a hundred windows stood blazing now like a shelf of lanterns, every one of them, though the palace did not know it yet, lit for her.
Chapter Seven.

The First Ball.
The palace, that night, was full to its hundred windows.
Every coach in the kingdom stood in the forecourt, wheel to wheel, while the coachmen gossiped under the torches. Inside, the great hall ran with light. There were chandeliers like frozen fountains, and mirrors facing mirrors down the long walls, so that every candle burned a hundred times, and the violins were playing, and the whole bright field of the court turned and bowed and turned in the figures of the dance, velvet and silk and powder, like a garden set slowly spinning.
And into all of that, a little after the hour of ten, came a whisper.
It ran along the hall the way wind runs over standing wheat. A great princess is arrived, said the whisper, a princess nobody knows. Nobody had seen her coach enter, or everybody had, they argued about it afterward. Gold, said someone, gilded all over, with six dapple grays, and a coachman with the whiskers of a field marshal.
The king's son himself went out to receive her.
You may as well know him now, this prince, for the old book gives him no name, only a heart. He was young, and he had bowed that evening to every jewel in the kingdom and remembered none of them. He came out onto the great steps as her coach drew up, and one of the six footmen opened the door, and the prince handed her down himself, and the first the court ever saw of Cinderella was this, a girl all light, stepping down out of a golden coach into a blaze of torches, with her hand resting in the hand of the man who, though neither of them knew a thing about it yet, would love her all his life.
He led her into the hall.
And the hall stopped.
The old book says it as plainly as it says anything, and it never wastes a word. There fell, it says, a deep silence. The dancing stopped, mid figure, every dancer stilled where the music left them. The violins ceased playing, bow after bow drifting down like birds landing. The whole vast, bright, roaring room went quiet, all of it, at once, and every face in it turned one way, to the doorway, to her.
And in all that silence there was nothing to be heard, the old book says, but a confused noise, a murmur running low around the walls, hundreds of voices whispering one thing, the same thing, over and over, the way surf whispers.
Ah. How beautiful she is.
The old king himself, and he was old, and had seen every beauty of three reigns come and go under those chandeliers, could not stop looking at her, and he leaned to the queen and told her softly, under the murmur, that it was a long time since he had seen anyone so beautiful and so lovely. And all the ladies of the court, even as they gazed, were busy at the work of court ladies, studying her gown and her hair stitch by stitch and pin by pin, so as to have the same made up for themselves tomorrow, if any looms in the kingdom held such stuff, and any hands in it were able. They never found the stuff, of course. There was one loom for that cloth, and it stood in a walled garden, and its shuttle was a wand.
The prince led her to the most honorable seat in the hall.
And then he led her out to dance.
The violins began again, softly, as though asking permission. And she danced. She danced with so much grace, the old book says, that they all admired her the more, the whole court standing around the floor to watch, and the mirrors repeating her down their long silver halls a hundred times, and none of the reflections half so bright as the girl.
Where does a kitchen girl learn to dance so, at her first ball, in her first hour among the great. But you already know. Grace is not taught in ballrooms. Ballrooms only rent it. Grace is learned in long patience, in work done beautifully for its own sake, in a body that has carried water up four flights without spilling and swept a floor as though the floor were worth sweeping. She had been in training all her life, in the one school that never fails, and tonight the lesson simply put on gold.
Late in the evening a fine collation was served, a supper of a hundred dishes, and the young prince sat beside her and ate not one morsel of it, not a mouthful, so taken up was he with gazing upon her. That is in the old book too, and the storyteller has always loved it, the great feast of the season going cold on golden plates beside a boy who had forgotten food existed.
And what did she do, our Cinderella, at the top of the world, with the court at her feet and the prince beside her?
She went and sat down by her two sisters.
Think of it. Of all the seats in that glittering hall. She sought out the red velvet and the gold flowered mantle, and sat herself beside them, and paid them a thousand civilities, kind words, kind questions, all the small warm attentions of a great lady to two strangers, and she shared out to them with her own hands the oranges and citrons the prince had given her, which were the rarest sweets of that season, fruit of the south, worth their weight in compliments. And the two sisters were amazed, and flattered half out of their senses, at such notice from the unknown princess, and they never knew her. Her own family, at the distance of one gown, and they never knew her at all.
They knew her hands, if they had looked. The same hands had built the towers of hair they were wearing that very minute.
But no one at a ball looks at hands, says the storyteller. They had looked at that girl every day for years and seen nothing but the ash. Tonight they looked at the same girl and saw nothing but the gold. They never once saw her, and each mistake was the same mistake, worn first one way round and then the other. Only two people in this story ever look at Cinderella and simply see Cinderella. One is a fairy. You will meet the other in a moment, holding a small glass shoe.
The evening rose and turned like a slow golden wheel, dance after dance, and she was happy. Let the tale rest here a breath, for it has earned it, and so has she. A girl who cried in a garden at nightfall is dancing under a thousand candles, and the murmur of the hall is warm around her, and nothing in this night wishes her anything but well.
And then, far above the music, out in the stone throat of the clock tower, the great palace clock cleared its wheels and struck the three quarters past eleven.
She heard it. Through the violins and the voices and her own happiness, she heard it, the way you hear your name across a crowded room. Eleven, and three quarters. Fifteen little minutes stood between one world and the other.
She rose, made a great curtsy to the whole company, low and lovely, a farewell to every soul in the hall at once. And she was gone, as quick as she could go, so lightly and so suddenly that afterward half the court could not say which door had taken her, only that the hall was dimmer, all at once, in no way the candles could account for.
Chapter Eight.

The Day Between.
The golden coach came home through the sleeping town with a quarter hour to spare, wheels soft on the empty streets, and turned in at the walled garden as the clock of the near church was still gathering itself to strike.
And midnight came, and the gift went back, all of it, gently, in the garden, like a wave sliding back down the sand. The coach settled and shrank and was a pumpkin again, a hollowed one, resting on the path with the starlight on its rind. The six grays dwindled into six mice, who sat up, whiskered, entirely calm, and went off along the wall in single file. The footmen were six lizards in the cool grass. The magnificent coachman was a fat old rat with a very long beard, who groomed his whiskers once, as if to confirm that they, at least, had made the journey home intact, and waddled off with dignity toward the cellar. And on the stone bench by the south wall sat a girl in an old gray dress, in the dark, hugging her own shoulders, glowing like a banked fire.
Her godmother was there, as the last of it settled.
And Cinderella thanked her, with her whole heart, sitting beside her on the bench in the dark garden, telling it all over, the silence, and the violins, and the murmur along the walls, and the oranges, and the citrons, and the prince who would eat nothing. And then she asked, in a small voice, the great question of that night. Might she go again. Tomorrow. For the ball was to be given again tomorrow, and the king's son had begged her to come.
And her godmother smiled in the dark, and it may be that the smile had known this question was coming since before the pumpkin was cut. Yes. She might go again.
And while Cinderella was still in the middle of telling all that had passed, there came the sound of the sisters' coach in the street, and the knocker went on the house door, and the godmother was gone, the way dusk is gone when you look for it, and Cinderella was hurrying up through the kitchen to let them in.
She opened the door to them yawning.
Yawning, rubbing her eyes, stretching herself, blinking against their candle as though she had been asleep for hours, and saying, in the furred voice of the just wakened, how late you are. And the old book leans close here and tells us, with a perfectly straight face, that she had not felt the least wish for sleep since they left the house.
The sisters came in trailing powder and triumph, too full of the night to hold it.
If you had been at the ball, said one, you would not have been tired of it, I promise you. There came to it the finest princess. The most beautiful princess that ever eyes beheld. Nobody knows her. And, sister, she was gracious to us. To us above everyone. She sat by us and would talk to nobody else, and she gave us oranges and citrons with her own hands.
Cinderella asked, was she indeed so very beautiful. And who was she. What was her name.
Ah, said the sisters, that was the mystery of it, that was the cream of the whole affair. Nobody knew her name. Nobody knew anything. And the king's son was in such a state over it as never was, and would give all the world to know who she might be.
All the world, said Cinderella, from inside her own secret, which sat warm in her chest like a coal carried in a lantern. She smiled at the fire. She must be beautiful indeed. And how happy you both have been. Might not I see her, somehow. Oh, Miss Charlotte, and here she turned to the elder, lend me only the yellow gown, the one you wear about the house on common days, and I might go tomorrow and stand at the back, and see her too.
Now watch the elder sister closely, says the storyteller, for this is her one whole sentence of the evening, and it is all of her in a nutshell.
Truly, said Miss Charlotte, lend my gown. To a dirty Cinderwench. I should be quite mad.
And Cinderella bowed her head, and did not press it. The old book tells us why, and it is the finest little turn in the whole chapter. She had expected exactly that answer. She had counted on it. And she was very well pleased to get it, for what on earth would she have done, poor girl, if her sister had said yes, and pressed the yellow gown on her, and there had been nothing for it but to go to the ball dressed as her own shabby self, one night after arriving as the wonder of the kingdom. The refusal fit her plans as neatly as a slipper. There is a kind of cleverness, says the storyteller, that consists in knowing precisely how unkind the unkind will be, and letting them be it, at the moment it serves you best. She had learned it in a hard school. She used it like a feather.
The sisters went up to their beds and dreamed, we may suppose, of red velvet and unknown princesses. And Cinderella banked the kitchen fire and climbed to her garret, and lay on the straw bed with her eyes open in the dark, not minding it, hearing the church clock divide the night into quarters, and somewhere below in the walls, faint and dry, the small sound of mice, of six mice in particular perhaps, telling it all over again in whatever language the pantry speaks.
The day between the two balls was the slowest day that house had ever contained.
The sisters slept till noon and woke cross with excitement. The whole afternoon was lacing and unlacing, powder and patches, the tire woman sent for again, fresh ruffles wanted, and Cinderella in the middle of it all once more with her pins and her irons, dressing the two of them for the second night, perfectly, to the last curl, while they talked across her, over her head, through her, of the great unknown lady, and of where in the world such a person could come from, and of whether she would appear again tonight. She would, Cinderella thought, pinning a star of black silk to a powdered cheek. She had it on rather good authority.
And at dusk the coach came, and took them, and the street swallowed the sound of it.
And a girl walked out through a quiet kitchen into a walled garden, where the first star stood over the wall, and the pumpkin bed lay dim along the warm bricks, and an old woman in a cloak the color of dusk rose up from the stone bench to meet her, smiling, with a wand in her hand.
Everything was done again. And the gown, the old book says, was more magnificent than the first by as much as the first had been more magnificent than anything ever seen in that kingdom, so that no description of it survives at all. The tellers simply gave up, all of them, three hundred years running. Some things are only safe to look at through a story, and even then you must squint. The coach stood taller and brighter on the path. The six grays arched their necks like parade horses. The coachman's whiskers had, if anything, gained ground.
The glass slippers were the same. There was never anything to improve in those.
Do not stay one moment past midnight, said her godmother at the garden gate, one last time, gently, the way you say a thing you fear has already been decided otherwise by the stars.
I will remember, said Cinderella.
And the coach rolled, and the housefronts lit and dimmed one after another as the gold went by.
Chapter Nine.

The Stroke of Twelve.
The second ball was warmer than the first, the way the second night of anything is warmer, the strangeness gone, the gladness left.
The court had spent a whole day hoping she would come again, and when she came, the hall did not fall silent this time. It did something better. It brightened, all over, at once, the way a room brightens when the person it was waiting for arrives. The violins found her a melody. The old king smiled from his chair. The ladies had worn their nearest guesses at her gown, a hundred loving failures, and she was kind about every one of them.
And the king's son was beside her from the first dance, and stayed beside her, all evening long, and never left her side, and never stopped speaking to her, all the kind and pleasant things that a heart says when it has waited a whole day and a whole night to say them. The old book puts it simply. He said a thousand sweet things to her. And she, it says, was very far from being tired of it.
There it is, the whole of the matter, in the gentlest words the old French had. She was happy. She was so happy, and so deep in the evening, and the music and the voice beside her had so filled the hours, that time did what time does in the good hours. It folded itself small and hid in her pocket.
She forgot what her godmother had charged her.
Not carelessly. Never think it was carelessness. It was the opposite. It was the fullest attention of her attentive life, all of it turned for once on her own happiness, and no sentry left at the gate. When the great clock high in its tower began to strike, she counted it in her heart, as we all count clocks half heard, and made it eleven.
It was not eleven.
On the first stroke of midnight she knew, all at once, the way a sleeper knows the dream is ending even before the eyes open. She rose from the prince's side without one word, for there was no time for even one, and she fled.
She was as nimble, the old book says, as a deer. Down the long hall between the mirrors, a flash of gold repeated a hundred times, and gone. The prince sprang up and followed her, calling, but no living man was catching that girl across her own last minute. Through the anteroom, the second stroke. Out the great doors, the third. And down the wide stone stairs of the palace, flight after flight, with the torches streaming, the fourth stroke and the fifth, and it was there, on the palace stairs, at the turn where the torchlight was brightest, that one of the little glass slippers left her foot behind and lay where it fell, on the stone, shining, still.
She did not stop.
The prince, a moment behind, did stop. That is the difference between their two nights from here on, and the hinge of everything to come. He came down the steps and found the stairs empty and the forecourt a confusion of ordinary coaches, and no golden coach anywhere, and nothing in the world left of her at all but the little shoe of glass, catching the torchlight.
He took it up. The old book says he took it up most carefully, in both hands. And, holding it, he walked slowly back up the stairs into the light and the music, a young man carrying, as gently as if it breathed, all that remained of the finest evening of his life.
The guards at the palace gate were asked, that night and the next morning, whether they had not seen a great princess go out. The guards looked at one another. They had seen no princess. Nobody had passed the gate at the stroke of twelve, they said, but a young girl on foot, very poorly dressed, in a plain gray gown, who had more the air of a poor country girl than of a fine lady.
She heard the last stroke fall as she ran, and the gift went home all around her at a dead run, gold to gray, coach to pumpkin behind her in the dark, and she never broke stride. She came into the walled garden out of breath, barefoot on one side, laughing and gasping both at once, with her heart going like the church bells at a wedding.
No coach. No footmen. No gown. Only the night garden, and the mice gone into the wall, and the lizards in the grass, and, held tight against her, carried all that wild way home without a thought, one little glass slipper, the fellow of the one lying on the palace stairs.
She was sitting by the kitchen embers, in her old gray dress, breathing softly again, by the time the sisters' coach came home.
Had they been well entertained, she asked them, at the door, with a candle. Had the beautiful lady been there again.
Oh, she had been there, they said, both talking at once. More beautiful than before, if such a thing could be. But such an ending as it had. On the stroke of midnight she had leapt up and run from the hall as though the palace were afire, and dropped one of her little glass slippers on the stairs, the prettiest slipper in all the world. And the king's son had picked it up, and had done nothing, nothing at all, the whole remainder of the ball, but sit apart and gaze at it. It was perfectly plain, said the sisters, nodding together like two tall ships agreeing about the wind, that he was deep in love with the beautiful person to whom the little slipper belonged.
And Cinderella said, only, that the lady must be happy indeed. And she bid her sisters goodnight, and banked the fire, and went up the cold stair to her garret with her candle.
And under the loose board by the window, where her few treasures lived, a little slipper made of glass lay wrapped in a clean rag, with the candlelight inside it, waiting.
Chapter Ten.

The Slipper Tried Through the City.
The sisters, for once in this tale, had said a true thing. He was deep in love.
A few days after the second ball, the whole city heard it together. The king's son caused it to be proclaimed, by sound of trumpet, in every square and at every gate, that he would marry her whose foot the little glass slipper should exactly fit.
You can imagine the morning the trumpets went round. A prince, and a kingdom with him, to be won by a shoe.
But the prince knew, says the storyteller, what he was about, and so did the old tellers who kept this detail bright for us. Glass does not stretch, and glass does not lie, and glass does not care whose ambitions are pinned to it. A silk slipper can be crushed into. A leather shoe gives way and holds its tongue. But a slipper of glass fits the one foot it was made for, and no other in the wide world, and the prince had held it to the light, we may suppose, and understood what the fairy had understood before him. He was not searching for a size. He was searching for the only person on earth the gift had ever belonged to.
So the trying began, in proper order, at the top.
It was brought first to the princesses. It did not fit the princesses. Then to the duchesses, and it did not fit the duchesses, and then to all the ladies of the court, in their order, salon by salon, and it fit no one at all. The little shoe traveled through the great houses of that kingdom like a lantern carried down a long dark corridor, lighting proud face after proud face, and going out again, and everywhere it went, feet were soaked and powdered and pleaded with, and everywhere the glass said, gently, no.
And at last, in its patient circuit of the whole city, it came to the tall stone house in the good street, and was carried into the morning room, where the two sisters were waiting for it with their shoes already off.
They did all that could be done. The old book says they did their utmost, and lets us look away. They pointed their toes like dancers. They curled them like squirrels. They pushed, and winced, and rested, and turned the slipper the other way about, and tried again, each of them certain, to the very last push, that the glass would relent for her particularly. The glass did not relent. Glass never does. It sat on the velvet cushion between attempts, small and clear and perfectly calm, and waited to be taken to its owner.
Who was standing by the door of the room, in her gray dress, watching. For she had seen all this, and she knew her slipper, none better.
And Cinderella said, laughing, let me see if it will not fit me.
The sisters burst out laughing on the instant, and fell to mocking her, the old jokes, the cinders, the wench at a ball, all of it. Let the kitchen try the slipper. It was the best joke of a remarkable week.
But the gentleman of the court who had been sent about with the slipper, a careful man grown very tired of feet, did not laugh. He looked earnestly at Cinderella. The old book marks the look, so we shall too. He looked at the girl in the ash gray dress standing quietly under the mockery, and he found her very beautiful, plainly, right through the gray, and he said, why, it was but just that she should try. He had his orders, said he, to try the slipper upon every girl in the kingdom, and every girl meant every girl.
He set the chair himself. This small nameless courtier, who gets three sentences in the old book and honor in every one of them, handed the kitchen girl to the chair before her sisters' faces as though handing a queen to a throne, and knelt, and put the slipper to her foot.
It went on at a touch. Sweetly, easily, all the way home, the way a key turns in the one lock it was cut for. It fitted, says the old book, as if it had been made of wax upon her.
The room went very quiet.
And in the quiet, while the two sisters stood staring, and the courtier still knelt with her foot in his hand, Cinderella reached into the pocket of her gray dress, and brought out the other slipper, and put it on her other foot herself.
Chapter Eleven.

Forgiveness, and Two Places at Court.
And then, as if a second slipper had been a knock at some invisible door, the godmother was in the room.
No one saw her come in. No one ever did. She crossed to Cinderella and touched the gray dress once with her wand, and the gray went to gold and silver and gathered jewels as it went, richer, the old book says, more magnificent than either gown before it, and the girl in the kitchen dress stood in the morning room dressed as she had stood in the candlelight of the palace, and the last veil in the story fell away.
The two sisters knew her then.
They knew her for the beautiful lady of the ball. The lady of the oranges and the citrons. The lady who had sat by them and been kind to them above everyone, on the greatest evenings of their lives. And she was Cinderella. She had been Cinderella all along. The kindness at the ball and the kindness at home had been the same kindness, wearing first ash, and then gold, and they had returned the one with flattery and the other with mockery, and every morning of all those years came back to them now with its true name on.
They threw themselves at her feet.
Both of them, down on the floor of the morning room, red velvet and all, crying, and begging her pardon for all the ill treatment she had suffered at their hands, all of it, the garret and the cinders and the names. It was not dignified, and it was the first fully honest thing we have seen them do in this whole tale, and the old book, which never mocks anyone in its power, does not mock them now.
And now comes the ending that the copies traded away, and the reason the storyteller chose this tale for tonight.
Cinderella raised them up.
She took them up from the floor with her own hands, the same hands, and she embraced them. And she said that she forgave them with all her heart. And then she said the thing that no one in three hundred years has ever quite gotten over. She desired them always to love her.
Not to serve her. Not to be sorry forever. To love her. She stood there in the gown of a queen with every hurt of her life kneeling on the carpet in front of her, and the whole of her revenge was to ask for their love, and to hand them back her own with it. Some fairy tales end with a wedding, says the storyteller. The true Cinderella ends with this, and the wedding is only what comes after.
They took her to the young prince, dressed as she was, and the old book allows itself one smile here. He thought her more charming than ever. And a few days after, he married her, and the city put its lamps in every window, and where her coach passed, the smell of oranges and citrons went down the streets like a blessing.
And Cinderella, who was no less good than she was beautiful, and the old book has waited its whole length to weigh those two words for us in that order, brought her two sisters to live at the palace. She gave them apartments of their own, in the palace itself, under her own roof and her own protection. And that very same day, she matched them with two great lords of the court, and saw them settled, and honored, and provided for, all their lives long.
That very same day. She did not wait to be sure they had changed. She did not set terms. The girl who was given the coldest room in the house gave away two of the warmest rooms in the kingdom before her wedding flowers had wilted.
Of the stepmother, the old book says nothing more at all, and the storyteller will not guess where the book keeps its silence.
The old teller, when he had written down this tale, added a word at the end for the listeners, as the tellers of that age liked to do, and it has ridden along with the story ever since. Beauty, he said, is a rare treasure, and we will always admire it. But there is a rarer thing worth more, and it is the good grace, the kind and gracious heart, and that was the fairy's real gift to Cinderella all along. Without it, he said, nothing is possible. With it, anything. And then he added, more quietly, that gifts sleep in us, all of us, and are worth little until someone kind wakes them, a godmother, a teacher, a friend, one person who looks through the ash and sees.
Pumpkins go back to being pumpkins, says the storyteller. Gowns go back to rags. Everything the wand touched went home at midnight. But look once more at what never turned back. The love between the prince and the girl. The wisdom she carried out of the kitchen. And two sisters, raised up off a floor, forgiven, embraced, and asked for their love. What kindness transforms, midnight cannot touch. That is the deepest law in the old book, and it is the last thing this tale asks you to carry, and it is not heavy.
Chapter Twelve.

Goodnight. And the Lamp at the Edge of Morning.
The night is deep now over that tidy kingdom, and the kingdom is doing what it always did best. It is sleeping.
The palace of the hundred windows has gone dark, window after window, like a mind letting go of its thoughts one at a time. The great hall stands empty and vast in the moonlight, the mirrors facing the mirrors down the long walls with nothing to repeat but the quiet. The violins lie in their cases. The chandeliers hang still, a hundred candles cold and content, resting for the next festival, whenever it should please to come. There is no hurry about it. There is no hurry about anything, anywhere, tonight.
In the royal kitchens the fires are banked, breathing under their blankets of ash, keeping tomorrow's warmth the way a secret is kept. And the cooks asleep in their beds have left, on the long table, a little heap of crumbs, swept there kindly and left on purpose, for it is well known in that palace, from the queen's own example, that one must be gentle with mice. No trap has been set in those kitchens for years. The mice of that palace live like small honored pensioners, and if six of them, old ones now, gray as dapple, sometimes stand very still together in the pantry doorway at midnight, with their faces lifted, as though remembering the weight of harness and the singing of torchlit streets, the night cat has orders to let them dream.
In the palace gardens, down along the south wall, there is a pumpkin bed. The queen planted it herself, the first spring, with seeds saved in a twist of paper from a certain garden in a certain good street, and the gardeners tend it as though it were the crown jewels, and are not altogether wrong to. The great slow golden creatures lie out there now in their leaves under the stars, ripening, unbothered, and the starlight moves over their ribbed sides, and any one of them, you feel, looking at them, might be a coach only resting.
Behind the old copper watering pot, which came to the palace too, because she asked for it, the lizards sleep in a warm green row.
And in a coach house that smells of leather and hay, the palace coachman, an old man with the most magnificent whiskers the kingdom has grown since a certain famous night, for the queen would have no other kind, snores in the good bed above the stalls, and six dapple gray horses stand asleep below him, trusting their own bones, the loveliest of all the grays, for the queen chooses the palace grays herself, and everyone at court believes they know why. All of it together, wheels and whiskers and hooves, is home, and known, and kept.
The tall stone house in the good street sleeps too. Its garret window is dark and its hearths are swept, and it is only a house now, holding no one unkindly, and even the memory of those years drifts through its rooms like the smell of bread long after baking, faint, and getting fainter, and by morning it will be gone another little bit.
And in the palace, in a small room off the great apartments, on a cushion of velvet, under a dome of clear glass, the slippers stand together, the two of them, side by side, mended into a pair again, with the moonlight finding them from the high window. A road of midnight and pumpkin still shines faintly inside the heels, if you look, but no one is looking now. They are done with roads. Everything they were made to find has been found.
The queen sleeps. The prince sleeps. Down the corridor, in two warm apartments, two sisters sleep, and are loved, exactly as they were asked to be, and love back, better than anyone ever expected, which is often the way once someone has gone first.
The kingdom breathes slowly, all together, rings within rings of rest, out from the palace, over the clipped gardens black and silver under the moon, over the straight avenues and the sleeping lime trees, out to the far farms, where the pumpkin fields lie mile on quiet mile under the turning stars. And every clock in every hallway keeps its own opinion of the hour, softly, and nobody minds, because midnight holds nothing now, in the whole of that kingdom, that anyone needs to run from.
And here, at the edge of everything, in this room, the shelf at the border of the lamplight has its slipper back.
The storyteller sets it down without a sound, on its own small cushion, in its own place, between an old brass lamp with a dent in its side and a pair of silver shoes scuffed at the toes. The glass takes the lamplight and keeps a little of it, the way it kept the stars over a walled garden, the way it keeps everything it is given, being glass, which cannot lie, and cannot forget, and cannot be anything but exactly what it is.
The flame is small now. The size of an almond. It leans, and rights itself, and goes on with the oldest work there is, keeping the dark kind.
The words have nearly finished being words. They are mostly warmth now, with a rhythm in it.
Like embers breathing in a chimney corner.
Like mice turning the pages of a very little book, somewhere safe inside a wall.
Like a coach far off on a quiet road, carrying someone home, and in no hurry at all.
The storyteller closes the book, but slowly, the way a door is closed on a sleeping house.
The lamp is turned low.
Whatever became of them after, they are safe now, and so are you.
The lantern will be lit again. There are more tales in the old book than there are nights in a year.
Goodnight.

Welcome to The Sleeping Almanac.
Before the lamp is lit, one small thing. If these stories carry you to sleep, subscribe now, while your eyes are still open, and tomorrow night's tale will be waiting for you. A like helps other tired souls find this room. That is all. Let's light the lamp together now.
The lamp is lit again.
The same small flame as last night, in the same quiet room at the edge of the world.
The storyteller is already here. She was here before you arrived. She will stay until you sleep.
There is a chair for you. There is a blanket. The night outside is doing all of its slow, dark work, and none of it is yours to carry until morning.
The storyteller opens the old book, and turns past the tales already told, to a page that waits for tonight.
Tonight, she says softly, we leave a nursery window open in London for the boy called Peter Pan, who is coming back for his shadow, and who knows the way to an island that lies past the second star to the right, and straight on till morning.
And there is no hurry at all as she begins.
Settle in now. Let the chair take your weight, and the blanket take your warmth, and the night take everything else. You do not have to watch this story. You do not have to follow every word, and you do not have to remember any of it in the morning. It only needs to be near you, the way lamplight is near you, the way rain on a window is near you when you are already half asleep.
If you drift, the story will go on without you, quietly, and it will not mind at all. Drifting is not leaving. Drifting is how a listener says thank you.
And you should know, before we fly, that nothing in this room will ever startle you. There are pirates in this tale, but they are the politest pirates who ever sailed, and their captain is a gentleman before he is anything else, and the only crocodile in it ticks as gently as a clock on a mantel. Every storm in this story blows itself out long before the end, and every bed in it is filled by morning. You can trust this room. That is what it was built for.
Chapter One.

The Nursery at Number Fourteen.
All children grow up, except one.
That is how the old book begins, and the storyteller reads it just as it is written, because there is no better beginning on all the shelves of the world. You will meet that one soon. But every tale needs a doorway, and the doorway of this tale is a nursery, at the top of a tall house, at number fourteen, on a quiet street in London, long ago, when the streets were lit with gas lamps and the lamplighter came round at dusk with his long pole, leaving little moons burning all down the pavement behind him.
In that house lived the Darling family.
There was Mr. Darling, who went to an office in the city and knew about stocks and shares, or at least spoke of them in the voice of a man who knows, which in the city amounts to the same thing. He was gruff in the mornings and gentle in the evenings, and he wanted, more than he ever managed to say, for his family to be happy.
The old book pauses to tell how he won her, and the storyteller likes the telling. Mrs. Darling, when she was a girl, had many admirers, and one day they all discovered at the same hour that they loved her, and they all ran to her house to propose, all except Mr. Darling, who took a cab and nipped in first, and so he got her. He got all of her there was to get, except the innermost box of her mind, and the kiss in the corner of her mouth, and in time he stopped hoping about the box, and the kiss he spoke of, when he spoke of it at all, the way a man speaks of the far side of the moon. Present. Certain. Not his.
They were not rich, the Darlings. When Wendy came there was a long anxious evening of arithmetic over her, for a new baby is a joy, but a joy that must be fed and shod and eventually schooled, and Mr. Darling sat on the edge of the bed with a pencil and paper, adding up whether they could keep her, while Mrs. Darling held the small new person and watched his face, holding being an argument too, and the best one. He added it one way and the sum came out wrong. He added it another way, remembering to carry the one, and Mrs. Darling suggested small economies from the pillow, and at the very bottom of the page, with a little to spare if he cut down on his coffee, Wendy just came through. There was the same trembling arithmetic for John, and Michael was a nearer thing still, but both of them squeaked through as well, and there they all were. And some evenings, years later, Mr. Darling would do the sums again for no reason at all, just for the pleasure of getting the same answer.
There was Mrs. Darling, the loveliest lady in that part of London, with a romantic mind and a sweet mocking mouth. Her mind was like the tiny boxes that come from the puzzling East, one inside another inside another, so that however many you opened, there was always one more. And in the right corner of her mouth there was a kiss. Not a kiss she gave. A kiss she kept. It sat there plainly, and yet nobody could ever get it. Wendy tried. Mr. Darling tried for years and gave up honorably. It was not for them, and the old book keeps that small mystery folded away until the very last page, where it is opened.
And there were the three children. Wendy came first, the kind of child who knows where everything in a house belongs, including the people. Then John, who wore spectacles when he read and liked things to be fair. Then Michael, the littlest, still young enough that sleep sometimes came for him at the table, in the middle of pudding, like a tide coming in.
And there was Nana.
Nana was the children's nurse, and Nana was a dog. A prim Newfoundland, large and solemn and brown, and a treasure. She bathed the children and never got soap in their eyes. She walked them to school in good order, nudging them back into line with her nose, and on rainy days she carried an umbrella in her mouth. She knew a cough that mattered from a cough that wanted attention, and no nursery in London was kept so sweetly. Some of the neighbors talked, of course, about a family that kept a dog for a nurse, and Mr. Darling heard the talk and let it worry at him, the way a stone worries at a shoe. Remember that small stone. It has a part to play.
Nana's kennel stood in the nursery itself, so that she was never farther from the children than a mother's hearing, and she slept with one ear out of the blankets by lifelong habit. She had a genius for knowing which coughs are to be given no patience and which need a stocking wound around your throat, warmed first at the fender, and she believed to her last day in old fashioned remedies, like rhubarb leaf, and made low sounds of contempt over all this newer talk of germs. To watch her walk the children to school, the old book says, was a lesson in composure. She went sedately by their side when they were behaving, and if a child strayed toward the gutter she put it back in line with her nose, unhurried, the way a librarian straightens a book.
The household had one other member, and the storyteller gives her a sentence so that she is not lost. Liza was the servant, the whole staff of the house in one very small person, so proud of her long skirt and her cap that no one could imagine her without them, who considered the nursery a little beneath her dignity and secretly loved it, and who goes in and out of this tale mostly carrying things, and carries them well.
Now, it was the nightly custom of Mrs. Darling, after her children were asleep, to sit by the fire in the nursery and tidy their minds.
This is a thing all good mothers do, says the old book, though the children never know it. When you wake in the morning and find your naughtiness folded small and put away at the bottom of your mind, and your prettier thoughts laid out fresh on top, ready to wear, that is your mother's doing, done by lamplight while you slept.
A child's mind, tidied by lamplight, looks a little like a map. There are zigzag lines on it, very like your temperature chart on a fever card, and those are probably roads in the island. For the Neverland is always more or less an island, with astonishing splashes of color here and there, and coral reefs, and one small quick boat with a rakish look to her, and gnomes who are mostly tailors, and caves through which a river runs, and princes with six elder brothers, and a hut fast going to decay, and one very small old lady with a hooked nose. On these magic shores, children at play are forever beaching their little boats. We have all been there. Some of us can still hear the sound of the surf, on the right kind of night, though we shall land no more.
And in among the island things lie the plainer furnishings of a child's mind, the first day at school, the round pond, needlework, chocolate pudding day, three pence for pulling out your own tooth, say ninety nine, all of it folded together, island and mainland in the same small drawer, which is why the drawer never quite shuts, and why no mother has ever finished the tidying entirely, and why no mother has ever wanted to.
Of all the delectable islands, the old book says, the Neverland is the snuggest and most compact. Not large and sprawly, with tedious distances between one adventure and the next, but nicely crammed. When you play at it by day, with the chairs and the table cloth, it is not in the least alarming. But in the two minutes before you go to sleep, it becomes very nearly real. That is why there are night lights.
And one night, tidying, Mrs. Darling found something she did not recognize.
The name Peter was written all through her children's minds, in letters bolder than any others. She did not know any Peter. Yet the name had a cocksure look to it, standing there among the thoughts of school and puddings and one lost penny, like a boy standing on a garden wall.
She asked Wendy in the morning, and Wendy said, with mild surprise that it needed asking, why, Peter Pan, mother. He comes to the nursery at night, and sits at the foot of the bed and plays his pipes. He comes in by the window.
Nonsense, said Mrs. Darling. Nobody can come in by the window. The nursery was three floors up, with nothing below but a small tired garden.
But Wendy only pointed, in her tidy way, to the floor by the window, and there they were. Leaves. Small dry skeleton leaves, of no tree that grew in that square. And holding those strange leaves, she felt something turn over in the deepest of her nested boxes, because when she was a girl, she too had known of a boy called Peter Pan, who lived with the fairies and never grew up. She had believed in him then. Now that she was married and sensible, she doubted very much whether there was any such person.
There was. There is. And a few nights later, she saw him.
She had fallen asleep in her chair by the nursery fire, with her sewing in her lap, while the children slept and the night lights burned low. And while she slept, the window blew open, and a boy dropped lightly onto the floor. He was dressed in skeleton leaves and the juices that run in trees, he had all his first teeth still, every pearl of them, and beside him floated a light no bigger than your fist, darting about the room like a living spark.
Mrs. Darling woke, and saw him, and somehow knew at once that he was Peter Pan.
Then everything happened in a soft rush. Nana, coming in from her evening off, growled and sprang. The boy went out through the window in one motion, the way a swallow leaves an eave, and when Mrs. Darling looked down into the street there was nothing there, only the dark and the gas lamps and, far up, something like a shooting star going the wrong way.
And Nana stood at the window with something in her mouth.
It was the boy's shadow.
The window had snapped shut as he went, too quick for all of him, and the shadow had come clean away. Nana laid it on the floor, and it lay there, quite flat, quite dark, not sorry for itself at all.
Mrs. Darling looked at it a long while. It seemed rather ordinary, she thought, for the shadow of a legend. Then she rolled it up carefully, the way you roll a ribbon you mean to keep, and put it away in a drawer of the nursery dresser, until a proper opportunity should come for returning it.
She thought, once or twice, of showing the shadow to Mr. Darling, but she knew exactly what he would say. It comes of having a dog for a nurse, he would say, and then he would be worried in the wrong direction for a week. So she folded the knowing away with the shadow, in among the sensible contents of the drawer, handkerchiefs and hair ribbons and spare buttons, one impossible thing filed among the ordinary, and the dresser stood a little straighter for it, the way furniture does when it has been trusted.
Which is where a shadow ought to wait, in a quiet drawer, in a quiet house.
And which is why, of course, the boy was always going to come back.
Chapter Two.

The Boy Who Came for His Shadow.
The night it all began was a Friday. Mr. and Mrs. Darling were invited to dinner at number twenty seven, a few doors down the street, close enough that Mrs. Darling could stand at the gate and still see the light of the nursery window, which is a thing mothers measure without knowing they do it.
But before the dinner there was an upset, and the storyteller tells it gently, because it shames a good man, and good men shamed are to be handled like sprained wrists.
Before there was any medicine, there was a tie. Mr. Darling stood in the middle of the nursery in his fine evening clothes with a white tie in his hand, and the tie would not knot. Around the bed post it knotted beautifully. Around the bed post it tied like a ribbon on a present. Around his neck it turned to a wet rope, and after the twelfth attempt he came to Mrs. Darling half dressed, holding the thing out before him, and announced, in the voice of a man reporting a shipwreck, that unless this tie was around his neck they were not going out to dinner, and if they did not go out to dinner he could never show his face at the office again, and if he never went to the office again, he and Mrs. Darling would starve, and their children would be flung into the streets.
Mrs. Darling did not point out that this was a great deal of weather to hang on one strip of silk. She was not that kind of wife. She said, let me try, dear, which was exactly what he had come for, and with her cool hands she tied it in a moment, easily, while the children stood around in their nightclothes watching their fates being decided. Some men would have minded that she could do so easily the thing that had beaten them twelve times. Mr. Darling was far too fine a man for that. He thanked her carelessly, and forgot the abyss in an instant, and in another instant he was dancing around the nursery with Michael on his back.
The storyteller lets that romp run a moment longer than the old book does, because the family has earned it, and because of what is coming. It ended, as romps in that nursery often ended, with Nana joining in and Mr. Darling colliding with her, and a fresh coat of her hairs across his new trousers. And they were not only new. They were the first trousers he had ever owned with braid on them, and he had to bite his lip to keep the tears back. Mrs. Darling brushed him clean, but he began to talk again, low and injured, about a dog for a nurse, and the small stone in his shoe turned over.
And then came the medicine. Michael had to take his, a spoonful of something dreadful, and Michael was making the stand that small boys have made against spoons since spoons began. Won't, he said, from behind the entire fortress of his bed. Won't. And Mr. Darling, meaning to help, told him to be a man, and boasted that he himself took medicine far nastier without a murmur, and would take it this minute, to show how it was done, if he had not lost the bottle.
He had not so much lost the bottle as hidden it, for it was truly vile stuff, but Wendy, who lived to be useful, was out of the room before he could finish the sentence, and back in a breath with the bottle held high like a trophy. And so there stood Mr. Darling with his own glass poured, and the nastiness of it, he said faintly, was the kind that got worse with keeping. Wendy, brimming with fairness, proposed that father and Michael take theirs at the very same moment, on a count, and counted. Michael, on the count, swallowed his like a soldier. Mr. Darling discovered that his courage had stepped quietly out of the room, and put his glass behind his back.
Michael came up from his spoon betrayed, and the word went around the nursery, in the terrible level voice of children keeping score, that father had not taken his. So Mr. Darling did a silly thing, the kind fathers do when their children are watching and their pride is pinching. He made a joke of it, and declared it a splendid trick, and tipped his medicine into Nana's bowl.
Nana lapped at her bowl, trusting it, and stopped, and gave Mr. Darling a look. Not an angry look. Dogs of her quality do not do angry. It was quiet disappointment, which is a hundred times heavier, and she walked with great dignity into her kennel.
And Mr. Darling, feeling small, got bigger and louder instead of saying sorry. He declared that a nursery was no place for a dog, and he took Nana out into the yard, and chained her up for the night. He was sorry the whole time he was doing it, the old book is clear on this, sorry in his very fingers as he fastened the chain. But he did it. And Nana did not struggle. She only let the sad sound she was too polite to make sit low in her throat, because she knew what no one else in the house knew.
She knew tonight was the night.
Upstairs, Mrs. Darling tucked the children in and lit their night lights, three small flames standing guard by three beds. Michael asked, from inside his blankets, nothing can hurt us after the night lights are lit, can it. And Mrs. Darling said no, nothing. They are the eyes a mother leaves behind her to guard her children.
She went from bed to bed, singing a little, and kissed them, Wendy first, then John, then Michael, who held her hand as long as he could hold it. And then she went down the stairs and out into the street with Mr. Darling, toward the lit windows of number twenty seven, under a sky that was watching everything.
Because the stars were watching. The stars, says the old book, are beautiful, but they may not take part in anything. They can only look on. Not one of them has ever been inside a nursery at bedtime, and they wish they could, more than anything in the wheeling sky. So they crowd close over houses where children sleep, and on this night the whole broad heaven of them lay over one street in London, waiting, and the smallest star in the Milky Way could hardly hold still in its place.
The children slept. And then, one by one, in the space of a single breath, the night lights yawned, all three of them, and went out.
And there was another light in the room now, a thousand times brighter.
It was a fairy, no longer than your hand, darting into every drawer and wardrobe in search of a shadow. Her name was Tinker Bell, called Tink, because she mended the pots and kettles of the fairies, as a tinker does, and her voice was not a voice at all but the ringing of a little bell. She poked into the big jug on the washstand and liked it there, and for a moment the whole jug glowed like a lamp made of milk.
Then the window blew open, as it had before, blown by the breath of the small stars, and Peter dropped in.
In the drawer, he said to himself, and Tink rang yes, and he had the drawer open and the shadow out in a moment, so pleased that he shut Tinker Bell in the drawer without noticing, which tells you nearly everything about Peter that you will need for the rest of the night.
He sat on the floor and set his shadow against his feet, expecting it to join on, the way a thing ought to. It did not. He fetched soap from the bathroom and tried to stick the two of them together with that, which is not how shadows work, but nobody had ever taught him how anything works, and he had gotten remarkably far even so. The soap failed. The shadow lay flat. And Peter Pan, who was not afraid of anything under the moon, sat down on the nursery floor and cried.
His crying woke Wendy.
She sat up in bed, and she was not frightened, only interested and polite, for a boy crying on the carpet was new to her nursery.
Boy, she said, why are you crying.
Peter got up, and bowed to her beautifully. He had been to many fairy ceremonies, and his manners were finer than anything in London. Wendy, very pleased, bowed to him back from the bed.
What is your name, he asked.
Wendy Moira Angela Darling, she said, giving him the whole of it, because the whole of it was hers. What is yours.
Peter Pan.
Is that all.
Yes, he said, and for the first time it seemed to him a short sort of name, but she let it be. Where do you live, she asked.
Second to the right, he said, and then straight on till morning.
What a funny address.
Peter had a sinking feeling that perhaps it was, but he said, with dignity, no it isn't.
I mean, said Wendy kindly, remembering that she was the hostess, is that what they put on the letters.
Don't get any letters, said Peter.
But your mother gets letters.
Don't have a mother, said Peter. And he said it lightly, the way you would say you did not have an umbrella, but Wendy felt at once that here was a tragedy standing in her nursery, and she was out of bed in a moment.
She found out soon enough why he was crying, and she said, in her mother's own voice, how exactly like a boy, to try to stick it on with soap. It must be sewn on, she said. I shall sew it on for you, my little man, she said, though he was as tall as she was. And she got her needle and thread, and sewed his shadow to his feet, stitch by small stitch, while he shut his eyes and bore it, and Tinker Bell rang furiously from inside the dresser drawer, where nobody was listening yet.
When it was done, the shadow followed him everywhere he went, a little wrinkled at the edges, but his.
And did Peter thank Wendy, who had done the sewing.
He did not. He jumped about the nursery crowing like a rooster at sunrise, which was the sound he made when he was pleased with himself, and he cried, oh, the cleverness of me. There never was a boy so full of himself, and the old book loves him anyway, and so does the storyteller, because his boastfulness was not the kind that steals from anyone. He simply could not tell where he ended and the wonderful world began.
Wendy, however, could tell exactly, and she got back into bed and pulled the blanket over her face.
And Peter, discovering that his audience had closed, sat on the end of the bed and did the wisest thing he knew, which was flattery, and the terrible thing about Peter's flattery was that it was all true. Wendy, he said, one girl is more use than twenty boys.
Wendy came out from under the blanket by inches.
They talked then, sitting side by side on the edge of the bed, the sleeping brothers breathing around them, and everything that matters in this tale was decided in that hour, quietly, the way the big doors of a life always swing, on small hinges, without a sound.
Wendy, being a Darling, and hospitable to the bone, said that she would give him a kiss if he liked. And Peter, who did not know what a kiss was, held out his hand for it, politely, the way you hold out your hand for a parcel.
You must not laugh at him, and Wendy did not. She was the kind of person who, on discovering that a boy does not know what a kiss is, does not tell him so. She looked once around the nursery, and slid her thimble off her finger, and laid it in his open hand. There, she said. A kiss.
Peter examined it gravely and found it good, and said, fair being fair, that he would give her a kiss in return, and he picked from his garment of skeleton leaves an acorn button, and presented it. And Wendy, who understood more in a minute than most people understand in a year, said it was lovely, and threaded it onto the chain she wore around her neck, where it hung, small and brown and perfectly ordinary, just over her heart. Remember it hanging there. Of everything given and taken in this nursery tonight, that plain little button will turn out to be the treasure, though no one in the room can know it yet, except the storyteller, who has read ahead.
She asked him how old he was, which was a natural question, and it was the only one all night that made him shift his feet. I don't know, he said, but I am quite young. And that was the truth, and it was also the entire sum of his information on the subject.
He told her about himself. He had run away the day he was born, he said, because he had heard his father and mother talking about what he was to be when he became a man, and he did not want to be a man, not ever. So he ran away to Kensington Gardens and lived a long time among the fairies.
Wendy asked about the fairies, and what she learned she never forgot. When the first baby laughed for the first time, said Peter, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies. There ought to be one fairy for every boy and girl, but children know such a lot now, and they stop believing so soon, and every time a child says I do not believe in fairies, somewhere a small light goes quietly out.
And talking of fairies reminded Peter of something, and he looked about the room. Tink, he said. I cannot think where she has gone. He listened, and Wendy listened with him, and from inside the dresser there came a sound like small gold coins being shaken in a purse, furious ones. And Peter said, in honest wonder at himself, I do believe I shut her in the drawer.
He let poor Tink out, and she flew about the nursery ringing at the top of her bells, doing a fury the size of a teacup. Of course I am very sorry, said Peter mildly, following her with his eyes, but how could I know you were in the drawer. And Wendy, craning and delighted, cried, oh Peter, if only she would stand still and let me see her. They hardly ever stand still, he said. But for one moment Wendy saw her, a spark come to rest on the mantel clock, wings like cobweb, gowned most beautifully in a skeleton leaf cut low and square, and Wendy said she was exquisite, which was exactly the wrong thing to say aloud near a fairy in a temper, and exactly the right thing to be true.
Tink says she is my fairy, said Peter amiably. And then, because he was a truthful boy whenever he remembered to be one, he admitted that Tink was saying something else as well, something not at all polite, and he did not translate it, and neither will the storyteller. Fairies, remember, are so small that they have room for only one feeling at a time. Tinker Bell's one feeling had found its object that night, and the object was standing in the middle of the nursery in a white nightgown, being kind.
And Wendy asked, at last, the question the whole night had been leaning toward. But Peter, why did you come to our window.
To listen to the stories, he said.
He had no stories of his own, none of the lost boys did. But Wendy's mother, on the evenings when the window was open, told stories in the nursery, and Peter would sit outside on the sill in the dark and listen. That was what he came for, the treasure this house held without knowing it.
He had heard nearly the whole of one about a glass slipper. Cinderella, said Wendy, and Peter said, that is the one, and he had gone away before the ending, and it had troubled him for a season. Wendy told him. She and the prince, she said, lived happily ever after.
And Peter was so glad he stood straight up off the bed and made for the window.
Where are you going, cried Wendy.
To tell the others.
And then he turned, and looked at her, and the look had all of the night sky in it. Wendy, he said, come with me.
Come where.
To the island. To tell them stories. None of us knows any, he said. You could tell them stories every night, and tuck them in, you could tuck us in, Wendy, nobody has ever tucked us in. And you could darn our clothes, and make pockets for us. None of us has any pockets.
It was cunningly said, and he knew it, and the old book scolds him for it and forgives him in the same sentence. And Wendy stood in the middle of her own warm nursery, in her nightgown, and felt the window open behind her like the first page of a book.
There are mermaids, said Peter.
Mermaids, said Wendy, very slowly.
And that, as any storyteller will tell you, was that. She ran to the beds and shook her brothers. John, she said, Michael. Wake up. There is a boy here, and he is going to teach us to fly.
Chapter Three.

Second Star to the Right.
You cannot fly simply by being told to. John tried it first, from the end of his bed, with his eyes shut and his arms out, and arrived at the carpet in the usual way.
You just think lovely wonderful thoughts, Peter explained, and they lift you up in the air.
They thought their lovely thoughts. Toffee. Christmas. The seaside. Nothing lifted anywhere. And Peter, who had been teasing them a little, because he could no more resist showing off than a kettle can resist singing, at last told them the truth of it. No one can fly without fairy dust.
Tinker Bell was still ringing in her teacup of a temper, lighting the ceiling in flashes, and Peter, in the offhand way he did everything, took the fairy dust that was on his hands from handling her, and blew a little on each of the children, like a boy blowing the seeds off a dandelion.
Now, he said, wriggle your shoulders this way, and let go.
Michael let go first. He was the littlest, and the littlest have the shortest distance to fall and the least sense that falling is what usually happens. He rose off his bed and hung in the air above it, round and astonished in his sleeping suit, and he said, I flewed.
Then John let go, and met the ceiling somewhat, and his spectacles stayed on, which he mentioned. Then Wendy rose the way a note of music rises. They went round and round the nursery, over the beds, past the mantel, bumping softly and laughing low so as not to wake the house, three children in nightclothes swimming through the air of their own room as though it were a warm sea.
Peter watched them a while, greatly superior, flying with his hands in the places where pockets would have been if anyone had ever made him pockets.
And in the yard below, Nana pulled her chain tight and barked the truest barks of her honest life. Down the street at number twenty seven, Mrs. Darling heard, and knew the sound was not a nothing sound, and she and Mr. Darling rose from dinner and hurried out into the street without their coats, and above them the stars leaned close.
The stars did what they could, which was very little, for stars, as you know, may only watch. But the old book records that they blew the window wide for what came next, and that the smallest star in the Milky Way, who had waited the whole night for a part in the play, called out something high and urgent as the mother and father ran, a warning in star language, thrown down through the dark to a nursery that could not understand it. The stars have never been quite sure, since, whether they were helping the children or the parents that night. Neither has the storyteller. Perhaps, in the way of the best help, it was both.
In the nursery, Tinker Bell was ringing that the pirates would like Wendy, or something equally unhelpful, and Peter cried, come on, and went out through the window as easily as a word leaves a mouth.
Second to the right, he called back, and straight on till morning.
And out they went after him. Wendy first, then John, then Michael, each pausing one heartbeat on the sill, which is all the time such choices take when you are young. Out over the small garden, up past the roof of their own house, which none of them had ever seen before, solid and patient with its chimneys smoking gently, minding the family inside.
Mr. and Mrs. Darling and Nana, freed from her chain and faster than either, reached the nursery one minute later. The beds were warm. The window was open. The room smelled of night air, with the smallest possible sparkle of fairy dust still settling.
And if your heart has gone down the stairs with the mother and the father, let the storyteller lift it back up, for that is her work. The window they left by stays open in this story, open every night, until they come home through it. The old book promises it. So does this room.
And the children flew over London.
Oh, that flight. The old book hurries past it, but the storyteller never does. Below them the city lay asleep in its rings and rows of gas lamps, thousands of small flames all burning at once, streets of light laid out like necklaces on dark velvet. They flew over the rooftops, over forests of chimney pots still breathing their last warm smoke, over church steeples that stood up through the dark like patient gray grandfathers, each with its own sleeping bell.
They saw the river, going through the city the way silver braid goes through a dark sleeve, with the bridges crossing it in strings of lamps. They saw the great clock tower by the river, its lit face like a second moon, and as they passed it struck one single stroke, a round gold sound that rolled away over the roofs, and Michael said, hush, to it, and it said nothing further.
In a thousand nurseries under a thousand roofs, night lights burned beside sleeping children, and not one of those children knew what was passing over their houses, though a few of them smiled suddenly in their sleep, and their mothers, sitting up sewing, wondered why.
They passed over a great dark park, and Peter dropped low, for this had been Kensington Gardens, his first kingdom, where he had lived among the fairies before ever there was an island. He skimmed the round pond and touched the black water with one bare toe, for old times' sake, and a ring spread out across the whole pond, slow and silver, and the ducks murmured in their sleep and let it pass under them.
Then the houses grew fewer and the dark grew wider, and the river spread its arms and became the sea.
The sea at night, from above, is the biggest quiet there is. The children grew quiet along with it. Below them the gulls slept riding on the swells, in their hundreds, letting the whole ocean rock them. The moon laid a road of light along the water, and they flew above the road of light, four small travelers and one small spark, out and out.
They ate as they went, in the friendly manner of birds. Peter would swoop along a flock going somewhere on business of its own, and take bread from their beaks, or whatever a bird will part with midair, and the birds chased him for it, laughing in bird, and gave up, and circled back to be robbed again, for it was the best game going in that sky, and everyone in it knew the rules. Wendy was not sure it was a proper way of getting one's bread, but she was a guest in this sky, and she had noticed that the birds minded it far less than she did.
And once, the old book admits, Peter came swooping back to them with the look of a boy who could not quite place their faces. It lasted only a moment, no longer than it takes a lamp to steady after a door has opened, and then he knew them again, and was calling Wendy by name and showing off before she could be frightened. But the storyteller sets it down, small and honest, because it tells you what living without yesterdays is like, and why a boy with no stories in him flew all the way to London to sit outside a window where stories were kept.
John, who liked things to be fair, asked once how they would know when they had arrived, since nobody had a map. You will feel it, said Peter, which is no answer at all in geography and a perfectly complete one in the Neverland. And on they flew.
And ahead of them, low over the edge of the world, one star stood apart from all the others. The second to the right. It was brighter than its neighbors, and it flickered, not coldly, the way stars flicker in winter, but warmly, like a lamp put in a window on purpose, for someone expected.
Peter pointed at it with both hands.
There, he said. Straight on till morning.
Chapter Four.

The Island That Woke.
The way was long. They flew, and slept, and flew again, and there is no counting the nights and days of it, for in those airs the sun and the moon keep looser hours than they keep over London.
The children learned the knack of sleeping on the wind. You lean back on a slant of moving air, the way you lean back in a boat, and the wind carries you along its own road while you dream. At first, falling asleep, they would begin to drop, and Peter would dart down laughing and catch them and set them back on the airstream, and he was always in time, always, and the storyteller checked twice. After a while they could sleep as gulls sleep, rocking on the air, and they took their meals as birds take theirs, on the wing and without plates.
And then one evening, all at once, the island was there.
The strange thing, the thing the children never forgot, was that they did not find it. It found them. The Neverland came out of the dusk looking for them, and a million golden arrows pointed it out, all the arrows of the setting sun, which knew the way and was glad to show them.
And they knew it at once.
That is the sweetness of the Neverland, and the reason no map of it hangs in any schoolroom. Every child has already been there. It is the island of the games you played before you can remember playing, and so, coming to it, you do not arrive, you return. John saw the lagoon first, flaming below them in the last of the sun, and cried out that he remembered it. Michael saw a cave he knew. And what Wendy saw first was the smoke of small cooking fires rising through the trees, and she thought, with her practical heart already rolling up its sleeves, somebody down there has no one to mind the supper.
The island lay in the darkening sea like a sleeping animal, all coves and hills and deep woods, with the surf white around its reefs, and one lagoon already holding the first stars. There were flamingoes over the shallows, flying home pink through the gray dusk. And riding at anchor in a bay of black glass there was a ship, a brig with dark sails furled, and even furled, even at rest, you could tell the ship thought very well of itself.
Now the storyteller must tell you who lived on the island, and she does it while the children are still high and safe in the air.
There were the lost boys. They were boys who had fallen out of their prams while their nurses were looking the other way, and if they are not claimed in seven days, they are sent far away to the Neverland, where Peter Pan is their captain. There were six of them just then, living for the evenings and the games and the someday hope of a mother, and they wore the skins of bears, round furry boys padding through the ferns. There was Tootles, the humblest, who had somehow always just missed the adventures and stayed sweet about it, which is the rarest kind of bravery. There was Nibs, who was cheerful, and Curly, who owned up to everything whether he had done it or not, to save time. There was Slightly, who had been found in a pinafore with the words Slightly Soiled written on it, and had taken the first word for his name. And there were the Twins, who cannot be described, because we should certainly be describing the wrong one.
There were the island's own people, who had been there longest of all, a brave and handsome people who moved through the woods without stirring a leaf. They knew the island the way you know your own hallway in the dark, every root and stone of it by heart, and it was said their sentries could tell, from one snapped twig, the difference between a bear, a boy, and a pirate, and were seldom much troubled by any of the three. They fished the lagoon from slim canoes that made no more sound than a leaf makes landing on water, and their cooking fires smelled of cedar, and in the evenings there was singing in their lodges, low songs, older than the island, and the island liked to listen.
Their princess was Tiger Lily, daughter of the chief, and she was calm the way deep water is calm, and afraid of exactly nothing. She had refused every suitor on the island so far, kindly and completely, preferring her own good company, her canoe, and her knife, and her people were proud of her the way you are proud of a fine winter, respectfully, and from a small distance.
There were the beasts, lions and bears and one enormous crocodile, of whom more presently, and you may unclench about all of them now, for not one lays a paw or a tooth on anyone in this telling.
And there were fairies, whole neighborhoods of them, for the Neverland is thick with fairies the way an orchard is thick with bees. They kept their own roads through the wood, marked in lights too small for anyone's eyes but theirs, and they held revels on the nights between the moons, and any hollow log on that island might be a ballroom if you passed it at the right hour, with a whole orchestra inside it no louder than rain beginning.
And there were the pirates.
They belonged to the dark ship in the bay, the brig called the Jolly Roger, and a more villainous crew never flew the black flag, and yet, seen from a safe chair with a blanket, there was something of the pantomime about the whole boatload. There was Smee, the boatswain, an Irishman in spectacles, who did the mending aboard, and who was kind in a helpless sort of way, entirely by accident, and never knew it. There was Gentleman Starkey, once an usher in a school, dainty even in his villainy, who owned a tall hat of good silk that he minded more than his own head.
There was Cecco, the handsome Italian, who had, the tellers say, a song for every port he could no longer go back to, and sang them all beautifully on quiet watches. There was Bill Jukes, every inch of him tattooed, and there were a great many inches, so that off duty he was less a man than a gallery, and the younger pirates would ask him to roll up a sleeve the way you ask for a picture book. There was Cookson, said to be the brother of a far worse man, though nobody on board ever managed to prove it. And there was Noodler, whose hands were fixed on backwards, poor fellow, a thing he minded less than you are minding it now, for he had long ago learned to do everything in reverse and had become, by that road, the tidiest man aboard. Rough men, every one, with histories the old book only clears its throat about, and yet aboard that ship of an evening they mended nets, and argued recipes, and minded each other's watches, and were, among themselves, very nearly domestic. The storyteller does not excuse them. She only notes that villainy, seen at its own dinner table, is mostly elbows.
And there was the captain.
James Hook. The storyteller says the name the way you set down a heavy, handsome book. He was the only man the sea cook ever feared, and the sea cook was feared by everyone else, so you may work out the arithmetic of Captain Hook yourself. He was tall and dark, with long curls that hung like black candles about a face made for old coins, and eyes the deep blue of certain small spring flowers, and in the whole of him there was not one careless thread. He dressed with the elegance of an older, grander age, as though a portrait of a king had stepped down from its frame and taken up seafaring. In his cabin he kept a harpsichord, and played it beautifully in the evenings, slow old airs, with the doors open to the bay. He had a holder of his own design for two cigars at once, which he considered no more than a gentleman's due. His voice was low and cultivated even at his worst, and he thought a very great deal, more than he thought of anything else, about good form, about doing things the fine way, the way that would not have disgraced the famous school of his boyhood. The old book says he was most dangerous when he was most polite. It also says, and tonight we lean on this side of him, that he kept faith with his own strange code from first page to last, and went out of the story on its terms, like a gentleman.
For his right hand he had an iron hook, and that requires a history.
Long before our children came to the island, in a fight the old book mentions and this room declines to describe, Peter Pan cut off Hook's right hand, and it fell to a crocodile, who found it so much to her liking that she has followed Hook from sea to sea ever since, hopeful about the rest of him. And she would have had him long ago but for one lucky chance. The crocodile had at some time swallowed a clock, and the clock went on ticking inside her, so that she could be heard coming, tick tick tick, a soft dry patient sound, and whenever Hook heard it he simply went and stood somewhere else. That tick was the only thing in the world he feared. Some men are afraid of the dark, and some of the sea, and James Hook was afraid of a clock, which is to say, of time, which is only the fear of growing up wearing a different coat. Keep that in a corner of your mind, near sleep. It is why he and Peter could never have let each other alone.
Now. While Peter is away from the island, the old book says, everything on it goes quietly. The fairies take an hour longer in the mornings, the beasts attend to their young, and the whole island dozes like a schoolroom in summer.
But Peter was coming back.
And below the children, as they dropped down the last mile of evening air, the Neverland stirred and woke. Fires were lit. Drums spoke softly, hill to hill. The lost boys came out of hiding to look for Peter, and the pirates came out to look for the lost boys, and the island's people came out to keep an eye on the pirates, and the beasts came out to keep an eye on everyone, and all of them went round and round the island in the dark, each following the one in front, none of them ever quite catching up, like the hands of one great slow clock, and about as dangerous, most nights, as a clock is.
The island had missed its boy.
And Wendy, John, and Michael Darling came down through the warm dark toward the treetops of it, holding hands.
Chapter Five.

The Little House.
Now the storyteller must tell of a small wrong done in the dark, and she tells it the way it must be told at bedtime, with the mending already in her other hand.
Tinker Bell was jealous. She was a fairy, and fairies are so small that they only have room inside them for one feeling at a time, and all that evening the feeling in Tink had been jealousy of Wendy, filling her from wing to wing. So Tink flew ahead of the children, down to the island, in her brightest and most beautiful glow, and she told the lost boys a fib. The worst fib of her small shining life. Peter, she rang, wants you to shoot the Wendy bird.
The boys did not stop to wonder. When Peter wanted a thing, they did it. And Tootles, poor sweet Tootles, who so wanted to do something splendid at last, fitted an arrow to his bow, and shot at the white figure drifting down through the dark.
And here the storyteller lays her hand flat on the page, so that nothing on it can move, and tells you the ending of this part before she tells you the middle. Wendy is not hurt. Sleep on that. Now see how it happened.
Around Wendy's neck, on a chain, hung the acorn button Peter had given her in the nursery, his kiss, as he called it. The arrow struck the button squarely, and glanced away into the ferns, and Wendy, more startled than anything, fluttered down out of the air like a big white leaf and came to rest in the strange sleep of the very surprised.
The boys gathered round her in the dark, and took their bearskin caps off, and were afraid in the way you are afraid when you may have broken the best thing that was ever sent to you. Tootles saw his arrow lying by her, and understood, and stood forward and said, it was I, in a voice that had grown up several years in one minute.
And then Peter dropped down among them, crowing, crying, great news, boys, I have brought you at last a mother. And then he saw.
The old book gives this moment its full weight, and then it does a wonderful thing. Wendy stirred. She lifted her hand, the one nearest the acorn button. She was, as the storyteller promised you, only resting.
The boys, all talking at once with relief, wanted to carry her down to

the home under the ground. But Peter said no. You must not touch her. It would not be sufficiently respectful. And Slightly said, that is exactly what I was thinking. And then Peter had the idea of the whole night, the idea the island is still proud of. Let us build a house around her.
And that is what they did.
They built a house around Wendy where she lay sleeping in the ferns, and it went up as fast as belief itself. They ran for everything they had, branches and moss and boughs still sweet with sap, and they measured everything against Wendy herself, so that the house came out exactly Wendy sized. John and Michael, arriving last and half asleep on their feet, were put to work before they could finish yawning, and Michael was so tired that they leaned him gently against a tree in the manner of a spare plank until he was needed.
And as they built they sang, softly, so as not to wake her, a building song they made up as they went, asking the sleeping lady what kind of house she wished for, for it seemed only right that the house should be hers from the first nail. And the wonderful thing, the thing the island talked about for a season, is that Wendy answered. Without waking, from the deep middle of her sleep, she sang back to them, in a small drowsy voice, that she wished for a pretty house, the littlest ever seen, with funny little red walls, and a roof of mossy green.
The boys looked at one another as though a queen had spoken. By the purest luck the boughs they had brought were red with sap, and the ground of that hollow was moss to the ankles, and so the house that rose around her was red walled and green roofed to the last inch of it, her own house, ordered from inside a dream and delivered before she opened her eyes. And Wendy, still sleeping, sang one verse more, asking for roses peeping in at the windows, and babies peeping out.
Roses, whispered Tootles, we can manage roses. Babies, the boys felt, were more of an undertaking, and they exchanged the looks of builders who have just read the difficult page of the plans. But you shall hear how even that verse came true, in its own way, for the house filled up with boys by nightfall, and boys peeping out of windows were near enough to babies for anyone.
The house wanted a chimney. John's hat was taken from his head, the good black hat of a London boy, and set on the roof with the crown knocked out, and the house was so pleased with it that smoke began to rise from it at once, curling up soft and gray into the dark, exactly as though supper were already on inside.
Roses, said one of the boys, houses have roses. So roses were planted up the walls, make believe roses, and they climbed faster than any real roses ever dared, and bloomed on the instant, because make believe things on that island grow best of all, being watered from the deepest well there is.
Then they knocked, very politely, on the little door.
And Wendy opened it. She had woken inside a house that had grown around her like a shell around a pearl, and instead of being frightened, she was charmed to the soles of her feet, because it is not every girl who wakes up already home. And the boys swept off their caps and went down on their knees in the ferns, Tootles lowest of all, and said, O Wendy lady, be our mother.
Ought I, said Wendy, shining and doubtful. It is frightfully fascinating, but you see I am only a little girl. I have no real experience.
That doesn't matter, said Peter, as if he were the one person present who understood the whole subject. What we need is just a nice motherly person.
Oh dear, said Wendy. Very well. I will do my best.
And her best began that very minute. She had the whole flock of them inside, for it was that kind of house, and before she let one boy sleep she told them Cinderella, the whole of it, through to the ending, with the slipper fitting and the happily ever after in its proper place, and the boys received that ending the way dry gardens receive rain. Then she tucked them where they lay, in rows, furry and warm.
As for Tinker Bell, Peter was stern with her, and banished her from his company for a whole week, which in fairy time is close to a year. She rang very small and very far away for some days. And then she was herself again, bright and vain and quick, which is the way of fairies, and if we are honest by lamplight, the way of most of us. The island keeps no long accounts. Neither does this room.
And outside the little house, all that first night, Peter Pan walked up and down before the door with his sword drawn, keeping watch, while the roses that were not real breathed exactly as though they were.
Very late, a file of fairies came home through the wood from a revel, their small lanterns swaying, and their road home ran, as it had run for a hundred years, straight past the new front door. They found a boy with a sword standing in the middle of it. They were fairies, so they did not go around. They went between his feet and under the hem of his shadow, one by one, a procession of lights the size of sparks, and the last of them, who was young and full of the evening, flew up as she passed and tweaked his nose, and was gone before the tweak arrived. Peter took it as a compliment. It was one.
And the moon came around to that side of the island, and looked down at the one small house standing where no house had been that morning, with its red walls and its mossy roof and its hat for a chimney, smoking peacefully, and a sentry at the door already half asleep on his feet, and the moon, who has seen every house ever built, is said to have looked at this one a little longer than usual.
Chapter Six. The Home Under the Ground.
The days that followed settled into the shape that days take when a house has a mother in it, and the house in question was like no other house in this world or near it, for it lay entirely under the ground.
You entered it through trees. Seven hollow trees stood about that part of the wood, looking exactly as innocent as all the others, and each boy had his own, fitted to him the way a good coat is fitted. The fitting was a serious business, and Peter conducted it as carefully as a tailor. He measured you for your tree the day you arrived, and if you were bumpy in awkward places, or the tree was, something was done about it, either to you or to the tree. A change of clothing was generally enough for the one, and a little judicious whittling saw to the other, and after that you fitted, and going up and down became as easy as breathing, which in fact is what it was, for you rose in your tree by drawing breath and letting it carry you. Wendy and John and Michael were measured their first week, and three trees were found for them and made true, and Wendy privately considered the whole arrangement the most sensible thing about the island, a house where the front doors grew, and needed no polishing. You drew in your breath at the top, and down you went, sliding inside the trunk at exactly the speed of yourself, and arrived in the one great room below with your hair only slightly surprised. Michael's tree was the smallest, and nothing in his whole life so far had ever pleased him more.
The room below was the whole of the house, as a ship's cabin is the whole of a ship, and everything in it had learned to be two or three things at once. The floor was good brown earth, swept firm, and if you wished to go fishing of a morning you dug for worms right there in the parlor, which no house above ground has ever offered its children.
In the very middle of the room a tree tried to grow, a stubborn optimistic tree called the Never tree, and the household had long ago come to an arrangement with it. Each morning they sawed the new trunk level with the floor. By teatime it had always grown to the height of a table, whereupon they laid a great flat door on top of it, and that was the supper table. And when supper was cleared they sawed the trunk away again, so that there was room for games. One tree, patient as bread, becoming a table for them every single evening of its life.
The bed was let down at half past six, and it filled nearly half the house, and all the boys slept in it together, packed like sardines in a tin, with a strict rule against turning over until one gave the signal, when all turned together. Michael should have been in it too, but Wendy wanted a baby in the house, and Michael was the littlest, and so Michael hung from the ceiling in a basket, and swung a little all night in the warm dark, like a small moon in a small sky.
And in the wall, behind a tiny curtain, was Tinker Bell's own apartment, a private recess no bigger than a bird cage, and the grandest room, inch for inch, on the whole island. She had a couch, and quilts that changed with the fruit blossom seasons, and a looking glass before which a great deal of important work was done, and a chandelier kept for looks alone, since Tink lit her rooms herself. When her curtain was drawn and her light was on inside, the wall glowed in one small square, like the window of a dollhouse at dusk, and the boys fell asleep facing it as often as not.
Meals were sometimes real and sometimes make believe, and the law of the house was that you never knew which it would be until you were seated. Peter could eat a make believe meal so heartily that you could see him growing rounder as he ate, and to him the two kinds were exactly the same, and on the hungry evenings the boys found this hard, but they kept the rule, because it was his. And make believe pudding never once gave any boy a stomach ache, which is more than real pudding can claim.
In the evenings, when the meal was cleared and the tree sawed away, Wendy sat by the fire with her workbasket, and darned. Heels with holes in them, and knees worn through, every knee in the household worn through always, and she would exclaim over them exactly as her own mother had exclaimed, oh dear, children are more trouble than they are worth, and she said it glowing, the way it has always been said. She made them pockets, too, all the pockets a boy could wish, a whole tribe of boys sitting in a row while their bearskin coats were given pockets at last, with nothing yet to put in them but their own warm hands, which is enough, at first, for anyone.
Wendy's days were full in the way a kettle is full, busy to the brim and singing about it. There was the cooking, real or make believe as the evening decreed, the great pot swinging over the fire and needing opinions. There was the washing, and the airing of the one enormous bed, which had to be stood on its end by day, and the sweeping of a floor that grew its own dust in the friendly way of earth floors. Truly, she would say, with the mending stacked to her chin and every boy in the house needing something at once, spinsters are to be envied. And she said it glowing, and not one boy in the room believed her, and she did not mean one word of it, and everyone was satisfied, for that is one of the oldest songs a home knows, and it is always sung glowing.
Peter, in this household, was the father, and he played the part with tremendous conviction, sitting at the head of the table, calling the boys his sons, asking Wendy grandly whether the young rascals had been good while he was out hunting. But once, by the fire, when the boys were asleep, a small anxiety came over him, rare as rain in that room, and he asked her, in a voice not grand at all, Wendy, it is only make believe, isn't it, that I am their father. Oh yes, said Wendy primly, going on with her stitching. Peter let out his breath. You see, he said, it would make me seem so old, to be their real father. And Wendy said that it was quite all right, and that they were his make believe sons and her make believe sons, and the fire cracked companionably, and if her needle rested on one stitch a moment longer than a stitch requires, the old book is too much of a gentleman to say so, and this room is too sleepy.
And one more thing Wendy did, quietly, with the corner of her mind where a mother keeps the calendar. She had begun to notice that John remembered their father and mother now the way you remember people met once at a party, politely, and in pieces, and that Michael was coming to believe, in his warm swinging basket, that Wendy herself had always been his mother. It gave her a small cold feeling, like a draft under a well made door, and she met it the way she met everything, with organization. She set examination papers. Ordinary questions, written out fair. What was the color of mother's eyes. Which was taller, father or mother. Describe mother's party dress. Describe the kennel, and its inmate. If you could not answer, you were to make a cross, and it must be honestly told that Michael's papers were a good many crosses. But the questions did their work even unanswered, for they kept the old house standing in nine small heads, its door handles polished, its stair carpet held down with brass rods, and its window, you remember which window, always open.
And then, with the fire low and the basket shut, came the stories. That was the hour the whole island seemed to lean in toward one small glowing room under its floor. But the story the boys loved best of all the stories Wendy knew is a story this tale is saving, and it will be told in its right place, a few nights deeper in.
Sleep now came for the household in its fixed and pleasant order. The bed let down. The sardines arranged. The basket swaying. Tink's window bright, then dim. And the last thing every night was the night light the tellers say Wendy contrived out of a glow worm in a walnut shell, who considered himself, with some justice, the most important person on the island, and the fire settling, and above them all the great dark island turning peacefully under the stars, with the sea going round it, and, very far off, too far to trouble anyone, the small dry ticking of a clock that swam.
Chapter Seven.

The Mermaids' Lagoon.
The old book says that if you shut your eyes, and you are one of the lucky ones, you may see for a moment a pool of lovely pale colors floating in the darkness. Then if you squeeze your eyes tighter, the pool begins to take shape, and the colors grow so vivid that another squeeze would set them on fire. And just before that fire, the old book says, you see the lagoon. That is the nearest you ever get to it on the mainland, one heavenly moment. If there could be two moments, you might see the surf, and hear the mermaids singing.
The children had whole summer days of it.
The mermaids lived there in shining shoals, and by day they sunned themselves on Marooners' Rock, out in the middle of the lagoon, combing out their long hair in a lazy, showy manner. They were not kind to Wendy. They were not kind to anyone. If she came near the water they splashed her with their tails, and the boys considered this simply the weather of the lagoon. But oh, they were beautiful, and their games were the most beautiful things the children ever saw there. When it rained on the lagoon and the sun shone at once, the water filled with bubbles of a hundred colors, born in the rainbow, and the mermaids played at ball with them, striking them gaily from tail to tail across the water, keeping them in the air of the rainbow until they burst. Wendy watched a whole game once, lying on the rock with her chin in her hands, and it was the loveliest hour of her island life, and nothing happened in it at all, which she noticed was no accident.
The rock where they lazed had a name, Marooners' Rock, and an old dark history from the rough days of the sea, for sailors were once left upon it by their shipmates to wait for the tide, and that is all this room will say of that, except that the rock had long since retired from such work, and spent its days now warming children, the way some old soldiers end their days minding gardens.
And in the deepest part of the lagoon, the tellers say, there hangs a bell of pearl. At dusk someone rings it, no one has ever seen who, and that is bedtime under the sea. The mermaids go down through the darkening water to their bedchambers then, each trailing her own pale light, and the lagoon empties from the top downward, the way a tall house goes dark from the upstairs first, and the last thing you hear over the water is the bell's last note rounding itself off, and then the surf has the night shift to itself.
One drowsy afternoon they were all on Marooners' Rock after their midday meal, sleeping in the sun in a warm heap, while Wendy sat minding them with her sewing.
And the lagoon changed. A shiver crossed it. The sun stepped behind a veil, and the water went the color of pewter, and out of the dimness came a small boat, rowing softly.
In it were two pirates, Smee and Gentleman Starkey, and with them, sitting upright with her hands bound behind her, was Tiger Lily, the princess of the island's own people. She had been caught boarding their ship with a knife in her teeth, which was exactly like her, and the pirates meant to leave her on the rock for the tide to settle the matter. The sea people know what that means, and it is not kind, and that is the whole of what this room will say about it. Tiger Lily herself said less. She sat in the boat with her chin level, calm as deep water, for she was the daughter of chiefs, and the tide, her face said plainly, was welcome to try.
But Peter had woken, and was watching from the water, only his eyes above it.
And Peter could do a thing no other boy could do. He could take any voice on the island and wear it like a coat. So out of the darkness over the lagoon there came, low and cultivated and unmistakable, the voice of Captain Hook.
Set her free, said the voice.
The pirates sat up straight. Set her free, captain, said Smee, doubting his own ears.
Cut her bonds and let her go, said the voice, or it will be the worse for you.
At once, do you hear, said the voice, and it was so exactly Hook, down to the last polished inch of it, that Smee and Starkey did as they were told, fumbling in their haste. And Tiger Lily was over the side in a breath, sliding through the water like a seal through moonlight, gone, home, free. And under the surface of the lagoon Peter Pan was so pleased with himself that he nearly sank from the effort of not crowing.
He could never leave well alone. That was his flaw and his glory, and the old book will not have him without both. For the real Hook was abroad on the lagoon that night.
He came swimming out to the boat through the gray water, and his men helped him aboard, and the news he brought them was, by his lights, heavy. The boys have found a mother, he said, in the voice another captain would use for reporting reefs. Smee pushed his spectacles up his nose. Captain, he asked, what is a mother. For Smee had come motherless through the whole of his villainous life, and he asked it the way you ask the meaning of a foreign word, hoping it is something to eat.
And the lagoon itself answered him. Across the dim water there came drifting a great nest, riding the small waves as calmly as a ferry boat, and sitting in it was a bird, wings folded, eggs warm beneath her. Her nest had fallen out of its tree into the lagoon in some storm now long over, and rather than leave her eggs, she had simply settled deeper and learned to sail. There is a lesson in mothers for you, said Hook, watching her go by. The nest falls into the sea, but will the bird desert her eggs. No. And something crossed his face as he said it, some weather from very long ago, a window of his own perhaps, but it passed, the way weather does.
Mark that bird, drowsily, with the corner of one closing eye. She has business with this story yet.
And it was Smee, kind helpless Smee, who then had the idea. Captain, he said, brightening under his spectacles, could we not seize these boys' mother, and make her our mother. And Hook called it a princely scheme, and there in the mist the boat sat planning a kidnapping the way other households plan a picnic. Let them plan. You hold the ending already. Every bed in this tale is filled by morning, and the promise keeps.
It was then that they looked to the rock, and found it bare. Tiger Lily was gone. Starkey explained, with the confidence of a man about to lose it, that they had freed her, captain, on your own orders, called across the water not ten minutes since. I gave no such order, said Hook, very quietly, which was the most alarming volume he owned. And the little boat grew cold, for if the order had not come from the captain, then the lagoon had spoken in the captain's voice, and pirates are the most superstitious men afloat.
So Hook did the brave thing, for whatever else is said of him tonight, no one ever called him a coward. He lifted his face into the mist and addressed the dark water directly. Spirit that haunts this lagoon tonight, he called, have you a voice. And the voice that answered was his own, note for polished note. I have, it said.
And there followed, across that darkening water, the strangest game of questions ever played over the sea. Have you another name, called Hook. Ay ay, said the voice. Vegetable, called Hook. No, said the voice. Mineral. No. Animal. Yes. Man. No, said the voice, and the no had scorn in it. Boy. Yes. Ordinary boy. No. Wonderful boy. Yes, said the voice, and the old book catches Wendy listening from the water just there, and reports that her own heart answered with it, in the same breath.
Hook was running out of alphabet. Are you in England, he tried. No. Are you here. Yes, said the voice, from everywhere at once and nowhere twice.
And Hook, beaten at his own dark guessing game, on his own lagoon, in his own voice, said the only thing left to a man of his education. Who are you, stranger, speak. And the voice that answered could not resist its moment.
I am Peter Pan.
What happened then on Marooners' Rock, the old book tells with a good deal of splashing, and this room will tell with almost none. There was a scramble in the dark, wet and brisk and confused, boys and pirates all through the water, and it ended as such scrambles on that island always ended, with the pirates rowing off in a temper and everyone else swimming home laughing through the dusk.
Everyone but two. Peter had been knocked about in the scramble and had wrenched himself, and could neither swim well nor fly just yet, and Wendy had stayed by him. They were alone on the rock, and the rock was growing smaller, for the tide was coming in. Slow and patient, without malice, the way tides do.
And here the storyteller turns the page ahead one finger's width, because sleep must never wait on worry. On the next page, both of them are home and warm. Now watch how the lagoon managed it.
A kite came first. Michael's kite, sailing over the water with its long tail hanging down, and Peter caught the tail as it passed. It had lifted Michael off his feet once, and so it could carry one, and only one. Peter tied it about Wendy, and there was no argument, though she tried to make one, and the kite bore her up and away over the lagoon, over the reef, home, and set her down as gently as a mother sets down a sleeping child.
And Peter stood alone on the small rock in the wide water.
The moon came out. The water shone all around him, rising by inches, and the mermaids were going down to their bedchambers under the sea, and he heard, far off and sweet, the bell that rings there at dusk. He stood very straight. Something drummed inside his chest, and he let it drum, and he said to himself, in that bright curious way of his, that whatever came next would be an awfully big adventure.
But the lagoon, as it happened, had kinder plans. And they were already sailing toward him.
Chapter Eight.

The Never Bird.
What came across the moonlit water was a nest.
It was a great nest, riding the lagoon like a little round boat, and sitting in it was the Never bird. You marked her earlier, with one drowsy eye, when she sailed past a boatload of pirates and taught them, without meaning to, what a mother is. Now she comes into her own chapter, as patient things generally do. She was a large soft brown bird, and her nest had fallen from its tree into the lagoon some while before with her two eggs still in it, and rather than grieve, she had simply settled deeper and sailed on, sitting her eggs afloat, which tells you what kind of bird she was.
And she had seen the boy on the shrinking rock, and she had made up her mind.
She paddled toward him against the wind, working hard, and when she was near she called out to tell him what she had come for. Take the nest, she called. Get into the nest. And Peter called back, what do you want, and could not understand her, and she could not understand him, for birds and boys do not share a language, even on that island. So they grew louder, and then they grew cross, and they shouted the friendliest offers at each other in the most quarrelsome voices, both meaning purely well the entire time.
At last the Never bird gave up words altogether, and paddled her nest right up against the rock, and rose out of it, and hovered, with her wings wide, leaving her two great white eggs sitting in the nest before him.
And Peter understood at last, and understanding, he did the thing that made the bird his friend for life. He would not tip her eggs into the sea, not to save himself.
There was a stave standing on the rock, driven there by pirates in some older story, and hanging on it was the tall silk hat of Gentleman Starkey, left behind in the evening's scramble. Peter lifted the eggs, warm as fresh bread, and set them in the hat, and set the hat on the lagoon. It floated beautifully. It floated like a hat that had waited all its respectable life for this.
And so they exchanged ships, the boy and the bird. She settled onto the hat, over her eggs, and drifted one way. He climbed into the nest, and set the stave up in it for a mast, and hung up his shirt for a sail, and sailed the other. They called to each other across the widening water, no longer cross, in two languages neither could understand, and understood each other completely.
The wind took him home slowly, and he beached the nest where the boys were waiting, and everyone was in bed before the moon was high, and if Wendy had a look for him about staying out on rocks past bedtime, she had also kept his supper warm, and both were mother's justice, and he took the two together.
And the tellers this storyteller trusts say the hat suited the Never bird so well that Never birds have nested in hats whenever they could get them, from that day to this, which is why a hat left out overnight on that island is never quite empty in the morning.
As for Gentleman Starkey, when word reached him that his good silk hat was cruising the lagoon under new management, with a bird at the helm and a family in the hold, he had feelings, and the island gave him room to have them. He was seen more than once on the shore at evening, watching his hat go by with her head under her wing, and what he felt as he watched, the old book does not say. The storyteller suspects it was the closest thing to fatherhood the man ever brushed against, and that it improved him slightly, and forever.
The island settled. The lagoon smoothed itself over, holding the moon. And far out in the bay, on the dark and handsome ship, lamps burned in the stern windows, and Captain Hook sat late at his harpsichord, playing an old slow air from his school days, quite beautifully, to nobody. Smee sat on the deck outside the door at his sewing machine, and the storyteller must pause on that machine, because you did not expect it, and neither did the sea. It was a real sewing machine, the most domestic object ever carried aboard a pirate brig, come aboard in circumstances nobody could remember, and Smee treadled away at it by lantern light, hemming sailcloth and patching shirts, his spectacles down his nose, perfectly happy. It whirred under the rigging like a big tame insect, and the pirates in their hammocks below fell asleep to the sound of it, every man of them, and would have gone to the bottom of the sea before admitting so. The ship rocked. The music rose and fell over the whirring. Even villainy has its evenings off.
Somewhere across the water, mild as a mantel clock, something ticked.
And here is a strange thing to say about the most feared sound on that island, but it is true from where you are lying. Heard from a safe chair, with a whole lagoon between, it is not a frightening sound at all. It is only time, going about its rounds, wearing a crocodile. Everything on the island could hear it and know exactly where time had gotten to tonight, which is more than can be said for time anywhere else in the world. Tick, said the dark, unhurried. Tick. The mermaids slept under it, far below their bell. The Never bird rocked to it, at anchor on her hat. Because a clock in the dark, when you are warm and the door is locked and someone loves you, has only ever meant one thing. Somebody wound it. Somebody meant the morning to arrive.
And the music in the captain's cabin paused, and moved its chair a little farther from the window, and went on.
Chapter Nine.

Wendy's Story.
And now the story the boys loved best, the one this tale has been saving.
They begged for it every night, and some nights Wendy said yes. The boys packed themselves into the great bed early, just to be in place, Michael's basket was swung around to face her, and even Peter, who pretended stories were for the others, sat where he could hear.
There was once a gentleman, Wendy began.
I had rather he was a lady, said Curly. I wish he was a white rat, said Nibs. Quiet, said the bed.
There was once a gentleman, said Wendy, and a lady, and their names were Mr. and Mrs. Darling, and they lived at number fourteen.
I knew them, said the first twin, purely to be in the story somehow, and the other boys hushed him jealously, and Nibs said that he had known them too, which was met with the scorn it deserved.
They had three children, Wendy went on, serenely, sailing over the top of it all, for a storyteller learns to move through interruptions the way a swan moves through reeds. And they had a faithful nurse called Nana. And one night the three children flew away to the Neverland, where the lost boys are.
The boys loved this part, for they felt they knew the very island, and Tootles whispered that he did believe it was their island, and was so pleased by the coincidence that he had to hold his own feet.
And oh, said Wendy, think of the empty beds. Think of the mother and the father.
And the boys wallowed in the empty beds. That is the exact word the storyteller wants. Wallowed. Being sad about the empty beds was the most delicious part of the whole story, sorrow at no cost, grief with supper already eaten, and on nights when Wendy tried to hurry past the empty beds the boys asked for them by name. Sadness in a warm bed, the old book knows, is one of childhood's finest entertainments, and no child was ever harmed by it, and several have been improved.
But think now of the window, said Wendy. For the mother always, always left the window open for her children to fly back by. And now, dear boys, let us take a peep into the future. And the whole bed leaned forward, for peeping into the future is the best part of any story, and can only be done in stories.
Years have rolled by, said Wendy, in the story voice that makes years roll softly, like marbles across a carpet. And who is this elegant lady of uncertain age, stepping down from the train in London town. Can it be, cried Nibs, who knew perfectly well. It is, said Wendy. It is Wendy, grown quite tall, and her two grown brothers beside her. And see, dear brothers, says the grown Wendy in the story, pointing up through the dusk. See the window, still standing open.
And in they flew, grown as they were, for the window had never once been shut in all those years, and the mother and the father were waiting, and there was never a gladder house in London, and they all lived happily ever after.
That is where the story ended, every time, and every time the bed sighed with satisfaction.
But on this night, out of the shadows by the fire, came a small flat voice.
You are wrong about mothers, said Peter.
And he told them the only story he had, and it was short. Long ago, he said, he had thought as they did, that his mother would always keep the window open. So he had stayed away for moons and moons, and then flown home. And the window was barred, and there was another little boy sleeping in his bed.
Perhaps it was the wrong window. Perhaps it was a dream, or a night when a latch had slipped. The old book lets it stand as a mystery, and this room will not press on it, for some pages are tender to the touch. But Wendy looked at Peter's face, and then at Michael, who could no longer say for certain what Nana looked like, and she knew, the way mothers know, that it was time.
John and Michael were sitting up in the bed by then, for it had occurred to both of them, in the same breath, and seriously, for the first time, that windows are shut by hands, and Wendy gathered them in before the thought could finish.
John. Michael. We are going home. Tonight.
And the lost boys stood in a row in their bear skins, stricken, until Wendy held out her arms and said the thing that changed six lives in one sentence. Come with us. All of you. I feel almost sure my father and mother will adopt you.
The bed nearly came off its legs for joy. Only Peter stood apart, and took up his pipes, and said, airily, that he hoped they would have a pleasant journey, for he was not coming. No one, he said, was going to catch him and make him a man. He wanted always to be a little boy and to have fun. And he played a careless tune while everything he wanted in the world packed to leave, because that was Peter, and the old book loves him too much to pretend otherwise.
The packing was the quickest packing in the history of leaving home, for the lost boys owned nothing, which is the saddest kind of traveling light, and also the fastest. They put on their best leaves, and stood ready in a row before Wendy had finished saying the word ready. Tinker Bell, sulking magnificently at the honor, was appointed to guide them across the sea.
The farewells were said, and Wendy set out Peter's medicine on the ledge, one cup, and made him promise to take it at bedtime, every night, and he promised, in the lordly way that meant the promise was already half asleep in him. And she looked around the little room one long last time, at the great bed and the swinging basket, at the Never tree sawed level for the evening, at the small square of wall that glowed where a fairy kept her rooms, the way a woman looks around a room she has finished loving. Which is to say, thoroughly. And taking nothing.
Above their heads, in the dark of the wood, the pirates were waiting. Hook had not forgotten the idea born on the lagoon. But hold this as you drift. No one in this tale is hurt tonight. Every bed in it will be filled by morning. The old book keeps that promise, and so does this room.
Chapter Ten.

The Gentleman and the Clock.
It was done with terrible politeness.
For Hook had won the night above without a single stroke this room need describe, by tapping the great drum of the island's people himself, slow and steady, the signal of a victory that had not happened, so that the children came up their trees smiling, straight into the politest ambush in the history of the sea.
As the children came up out of their trees, one by one into the night wood, the pirates were simply there, courteous as ushers, and there was no battle and no shouting, only a quiet escorting away through the dark toward the ship. Michael was asleep on a pirate's shoulder before they reached the beach, which tells you the temperature of the thing. Aboard the Jolly Roger they were made fast, but gently, and Smee tucked a fold of sailcloth over the small ones, muttering that it was nothing personal.
Hook himself stayed behind. He found Slightly's tree, which had been whittled roomy, and went down it toward the home under the ground, and at the foot of the shaft a little door stopped him, a door made for boys, with its catch set too low for a gentleman's hand, so that all he could do was look over it at Peter asleep on the great bed, and all he could reach of that whole room was the small ledge beside the door, where the cup of medicine sat.
It was the cup Wendy had left.
And here the gentleman failed himself. From his coat he took a small dark bottle, and let fall into the cup five drops of something bitter that had no business near a boy's bedside, and climbed away up the tree, pleased and not pleased with what he had done, for even as he did it he suspected it was bad form, and the suspicion followed him all the way back to his ship like a gull.
And late that night, aboard his quiet ship, Hook paced his own quarterdeck, and the old book, in the middle of all his triumph, opens one window into him and lets us look. He was not happy. The night was fine, the prize was won, the ship rode easy at her anchor, and he walked up and down gnawed by the one thought that no victory had ever fed. No little children loved him. He had good form, and a beautiful coat, and a cabin full of old music, and not one soul on the wide sea who would be glad at the sound of his boots on a stair. Behind him Smee's sewing machine stood sheeted by the mast, off duty, like the small ghost of a gentler trade. You may spare the captain a little pity here, at the edge of sleep, where pity costs nothing and weighs less. The storyteller does. It changes nothing that happens. It changes the flavor of the dark, which at this hour is the more important work.
Tinker Bell woke Peter with her bells all ringing at once, and told him everything. Wendy. The boys. The ship. Peter seized his sword, and then, because he had promised Wendy, reached first for his medicine.
And Tink, who had seen what she had seen from the shadows, got between his lips and the cup, and drank it to the last drop, and hold the promise you were given, for this small dark minute ends well.
Her light began to go out. She settled on the pillow like a falling spark, and her bells came slow and small, and she told him, faintly, that she thought she could get well again if children believed in fairies.
There were no children in the room. But there were children everywhere, asleep and dreaming of the Neverland, which is nearer to any nursery than the next street is. And Peter called out to every dreaming child in every bed in the world. If you believe, he cried, clap your hands.
And the clapping came. It came from everywhere at once, like rain beginning on a broad roof, small hands in London and in every city under the stars, clapping in their sleep for a fairy they had never met. And Tink's light steadied. And grew. And then she was up and darting about the room, brighter than ever and twice as pleased with herself, and one minute later the two of them were out into the night, headed for the bay.
Peter crossed the dark water quietly. And here the old book tells a strange, fine detail. The ticking had stopped on the island that night. The clock inside the crocodile had run down at last, worn out, as every clock is in the end, having ticked its whole long spring empty in the patient service of one appetite, and for the first night in years the island lay in unmeasured time. So Peter, passing, took up the ticking himself, softly, tick tick tick, so that the beasts of the lagoon would let him by, and it carried him right up the side of the ship, for aboard the Jolly Roger every pirate froze at the sound of it, and looked to their captain, and their captain closed his eyes.
And the old book swears to one more thing, the finest of the whole night. Somewhere on that dark crossing, Peter forgot that he was making the sound at all, and ticked on without knowing it, and the storyteller likes to think that for those few minutes he was the nearest anyone has ever come to being time itself out for a swim.
What happened on that deck the old book tells with a great deal of clashing, and this room will tell with almost none, for the ending is the same either way, and it is the ending that matters at bedtime. The boys were cut free. The pirates, finding the night full of a boy they could not lay hands on, went over the side in ones and twos and swam for the shore, and, the tellers say, most of them gave up the trade for quieter work. Gentleman Starkey waded ashore and was taken in by the island's own people, who considered him carefully and set him to minding their smallest children, which the old book calls a comedown for a pirate, and the storyteller calls a promotion. Smee got away in the dinghy with his spectacles and his sewing, and spent the rest of his days telling anyone who would listen that he was the only man James Hook had ever feared, and nobody believed him, and he did not mind.
Which left, at the last, in the lantern light by the wheel, the boy and the gentleman.
They said the old formal words to each other, the way dancers bow before a dance, and what followed was brief, and Hook, who had lived his whole dark life by good form, saw in the middle of it the thing that finished him more surely than any blade. The boy had good form and did not know he had it, which is the best form of all.
So Hook ended it his own way. He stepped up onto the bulwark with the dark sea below, and he looked at Peter, and he invited the worst of him, and got it. Peter, being a boy to the very last inch, kicked instead of bowing. And James Hook went over the side of his own ship almost content, calling bad form as he went, having been right about boys at the very end, and a gentleman would rather be right than rescued.
The sea took him quietly. The old book says the crocodile was waiting, and the old book turns that page quickly, and so shall we. What is certain is this. The ticking never came back to the island. The lagoon keeps no grudges. Neither will we.
And when the sun came up, the Jolly Roger had a new crew, none of them taller than a doorknob. Wendy tucked the boys into the pirates' own bunks. Peter stood at the wheel in a coat of Hook's, far too big, with the cuffs turned back six times, and set the course they all knew by heart. They sailed her through one whole shining sea day, and when the wind knew the way, they rose off the deck together and flew the last of it, for home.
Chapter Eleven.

The Window Left Open.
All this while, London had been keeping faith.
At number fourteen, nothing had been moved. The three beds stood aired and turned down, every night, three small harbors waiting for three small ships. And the window was open. It was open in June and it was open in the rain, and when the wind came cold Mrs. Darling put on a shawl rather than close it, for it was not a window anymore. It was a promise, kept nightly.
Mr. Darling had taken the whole blame onto himself, in his own strange, faithful way. It was I who chained Nana up, he said, and Nana was wiser than I. And so, until his children came back, he had gone to live in the kennel. He was carried to the office in it every morning in a cab, and carried home at six, and if the neighbors talked now, he no longer minded, for he had stopped being able to hear any voice but three. And the city noticed, as cities do. It laughed first, being a city. Then the story of why the little gentleman rode in a kennel went around, the way true stories go around, quietly, over counters and garden walls, and the laughing stopped, and here and there along his daily route the hats began to come off as his cab went by. And Mr. Darling rode to his office through the raised hats of strangers, bowing gently from inside the kennel, and it is the opinion of the old book, and of this room, that there went more true dignity down those streets in that kennel than in most carriages. And Nana, who had been right all along, never once said so, which is the mark of the very best nurses.
On this last evening, Mrs. Darling sat at the piano in the nursery, playing softly to the open window, and fell asleep there, and dreamed of her children.
And Peter and Tinker Bell reached the window first.
Peter had flown ahead with a plan, and it was not a kind one. Bar the window, he told Tink, and when Wendy comes she will think her mother has forgotten her, and she will have to come back to the island with me. And then he looked in, and saw the dreaming lady at the piano, and the two tears that were on her face. She was fond of Wendy, he saw. He was fond of Wendy too. She could not have them both, and it was a hard arithmetic, and he stood on the sill a long time doing it.
Oh, all right, he said at last, to nobody, and swallowed hard, and opened the window wide. Come on, Tink, he cried. We don't want any silly mothers. And away he flew, which is how the greatest kindnesses of certain people always look exactly like flouncing.
So the window was open when the children came.
They gathered on the sill in a row, three travelers at the end of the longest journey ever made in nightclothes, and looked in at the lamplit room and the sleeping lady at the piano. John was for creeping up and putting their hands over their mother's eyes. Michael was for announcing themselves from the sill like a brass band. Wendy heard both plans out, in the way of chairwomen everywhere, and chose her own. Let us all slip into our beds, she said, and be there when she wakes, just as if we had never been away.
So they slipped in over the sill, Wendy, then John, then Michael. And Michael paused a moment in the middle of the room, and asked, in a very small voice, which is my bed. And Wendy showed him, and that was the last question of the whole long journey home, and the right person answered it. And there were their own beds, and they did the sweetest thing that was ever done in that nursery. They simply got in. They pulled their own blankets to their own chins, and waited, warm, for morning to notice them.
It was their mother who noticed first. She woke at the piano and saw the three beds filled, and she had dreamed it so many times that she said, softly, it is the dream again. And then Wendy said, mother. And John said it. And Michael said it. And Mrs. Darling knew, and opened her arms, and all three were in them at once, and Mr. Darling came up the stairs three at a time with Nana ahead of him, and there could not have been a lovelier sight.
And the only one who saw it was a small boy at the window.
He had more joys than any child could ever count, and he was looking in at the one joy he had decided, long ago, to do without. He did not knock. He watched a while, sitting on the sill, and then he played one very quiet tune, and only Nana lifted her head at it, and by the time she looked, the sill held nothing but night air.
The lost boys were brought up from the street, where they had been standing in a row rehearsing their manners, and Mrs. Darling counted six of them with her heart before her head could object, and Mr. Darling began doing sums aloud about bedrooms, which was his way of saying yes, and the house grew by six boys in a single evening, and never regretted it once.
And Peter came back, briefly, to settle accounts with the future. Mrs. Darling offered to adopt him too. School, she said gently, and then an office, and a grown life. Keep back, lady, said Peter. No one is going to catch me and make me a man. I want always to be a little boy and to have fun. And Mrs. Darling looked at him, and understood him better than he knew, and made the bargain his own size instead. Wendy would go to him once a year, each spring, for a week, to the little house, to do his spring cleaning. The fairies had carried the little house up into the treetops by then, and they lit it at night, and it was agreed.
And Peter took one thing with him when he went. You remember the kiss that Mrs. Darling kept in the right corner of her mouth, the one that Wendy could never get, nor Mr. Darling either, the kiss that was for nobody. Peter took it quite easily, as he flew past. It had been for him all along. The old book says she seemed satisfied, and the storyteller believes it, for some kisses are kept for years precisely so they can fly away.
Chapter Twelve.

Goodnight. And the Lamp at the Edge of Morning.
The night is deep now, even at the edge of everything.
In London the gas lamps burn low along the quiet street, and number fourteen is asleep, all of it, at last, every bed full and every heart accounted for. The nursery holds three children and the spare rooms hold six boys, washed and astonished, sleeping in real sheets for the first time in their lives, and finding them, on the whole, an improvement on bear skins.
Nana lies by the nursery fender, in her rightful place, one ear folded back. The kennel stands empty in the hall, retired with honors. Mr. Darling sleeps the sleep of a man whose house is full. Mrs. Darling sleeps with the corner of her mouth at rest, for the kiss that waited there so long has gone where it was always going, and keeping is over, and that is a kind of rest no one had thought to wish her.
The night lights burn beside the beds, three small flames, the eyes a mother leaves behind her. They have nothing to guard against tonight. They burn anyway. That is their work, and they are proud of it, the way small flames are.
And the window is open.
Not from carelessness. It will be open tomorrow night as well, and every night after, a hand's width of London dark kept on purpose at the edge of the room, because once a year a boy comes for a week's worth of spring cleaning, and because a house that has learned to leave a window open never quite unlearns it. The curtain moves a little. The night comes in, in its small allowed amount, and behaves itself.
And far away, past the second star to the right and straight on till morning, the island is going to sleep as well.
The lagoon lies smooth as the inside of a shell, holding the moon. The mermaids are in their bedchambers under the sea, and the last bell down there rang long ago. Out on the dark water the Never bird rides at anchor on a tall silk hat, her head under her wing, her eggs warm beneath her, the whole small household of her rising and falling with the breathing of the sea.
The little house sits high in the treetops now, where the fairies carried it. Its make believe roses are blooming in the dark, which is when make believe roses do their best work. Its one window glows, fairy lit, a lamp the size of a walnut, and it will glow like that until spring, when a girl comes to sweep its one room and scold its one chair and set everything one week right.
In the wood, the hollow trees stand empty, keeping the shapes of the boys who slid down them, the way boots keep the shape of walking. Underground, the great room is dark and tidy. The Never tree grows quietly in the middle of it, an inch by morning, two by teatime, patient as bread, becoming a table for nobody, and it does not mind. Trees are the best of all things at waiting. It will be a table again someday. Perhaps for the children of children. The old book only smiles about this, and turns.
The ship rides at anchor in the bay, empty and forgiven, rocking on the tide like a cradle that has run out of things to hold. The beasts are denned. The drums are quiet. The island's own people sleep in their lodges, and Tiger Lily sleeps the sleep of princesses, calm as deep water. No ticking anywhere. Only surf, and wind in the high leaves, and the small ringing, somewhere, of one fairy putting out her chandelier.
And on the highest branch of the tallest tree, a boy is sitting in the moonlight with his pipes in his lap, wide awake, the only wide awake thing on the whole round island, and perfectly content to be, for someone must mind the stars, and he knows all of them by name, and the second one to the right is burning steady, low over the sea, like a lamp put in a window on purpose.
He plays a little. The tune has no beginning and needs no end.
The island rocks. The sea minds it. The stars mind the sea.
And the old book has one more page. A quiet one, at the very back, in smaller writing, and the storyteller turns to it now, because it is the page this story likes to sleep on.
Peter came back for Wendy the next spring, exactly as agreed, and they cleaned the little house in the treetops together, and it was all as it had been. He came the spring after that as well. He never knew he had been away a year. To Peter, all time was about the length of an afternoon. Other people did his counting for him, or nobody did.
And once, when Wendy spoke of Tinker Bell, he could not remember her. There are lots of fairies, he said, comfortably. Wendy was shocked, until she understood, and this room will help you understand too. Fairies live short bright lives, the way dew does, gone by eight in the morning and never once sorry, and Peter's forgetting was not coldness. It was the way of a boy with no yesterdays, for whom the whole world is always just beginning. There are worse ways for a world to be.
Then there came a spring when he forgot to come at all. And another when he came, and had forgotten so much that Wendy did the remembering for both of them. Which is, if you think about it, what she had always done. Which is what mothers are for.
And the years went by after that the way pages turn under a drowsy thumb, several at a time, softly. Wendy grew up. You need not be sorry about it. She was one of the kind that likes to grow up, and she grew up gladly, of her own free will, a day quicker than other girls. And in time she had a daughter, and the daughter's name was Jane, and Jane slept in that same nursery, in the bed nearest the window, and asked questions about Peter Pan at all the right places in the story. And the window, of course, stayed open.
And one spring night, when Jane was small, the window blew wide, and a boy dropped onto the floor, exactly the same, all his first teeth still, dressed in skeleton leaves, expecting Wendy to fly away with him for the cleaning. And Wendy could not come. She had forgotten how to fly, the way grown people forget, gently, without ever noticing the day it happens. She could only sit by the fire, grown and warm in the firelight, while the boy on the carpet cried without understanding.
And Jane sat up in her bed, and said, boy, why are you crying.
Which is where you came in, a whole night ago, if you remember. The same words, at the same window. The old book smiles as it writes them down the second time, because it knew from the first page that this tale was round, a tale shaped like the turning of years, like a lamp relit each evening, like a window opening, and opening, and opening.
So Jane flew with him to the Neverland that spring, with her mother's blessing folded warm around her, and swept the little house, and came home safe, as promised, for the window promise held in that family now the way other families hold to a name or a nose. And when Jane grew up, in her turn, she had a daughter called Margaret, and every spring, except the springs when he forgets, Peter comes for Margaret, and Margaret tells him stories about himself, and he listens, the old book says, more eagerly to those than to any other stories in the world. And when Margaret grows up, she will have a daughter too. And so it will go on, spring after spring, window after window, so long as children are gay and innocent and heartless, which is the old book's own last word on the matter, and a gentler word than it looks, for it belongs to children, whose hearts are not missing, only brand new, and still learning what to carry.
But all of that lies many springs away from tonight, stacked and waiting, the way clean linen waits in a cupboard.
Tonight, there is only this.
And in London the nursery fire settles, softly, coal by coal, and Nana sighs in her sleep, and the three beds and the six spare beds rise and fall, rise and fall, slow as tides, and the night lights burn on, and the window stays open, and nothing comes in but the dark, in its small allowed amount, behaving itself, all night, at the edge of morning.
The storyteller closes the book, but slowly, the way a door is closed on a sleeping house.
The lamp is turned low.
Whatever became of them after, they are safe now, and so are you.
The lantern will be lit again. There are more tales in the old book than there are nights in a year.
Goodnight.

Welcome to The Sleeping Almanac.
Before the lamp is lit, one small thing. If these stories carry you to sleep, subscribe now, while your eyes are still open, and tomorrow night's tale will be waiting for you. A like helps other tired souls find this room. That is all. Let's light the lamp together now.
The lamp is lit again.
The same small flame as last night, in the same quiet room at the edge of the world.
The storyteller is already here. She was here before you arrived. She will stay until you sleep.
There is a chair for you. There is a blanket. The night outside is doing all of its slow, dark work, and none of it is yours to carry until morning.
The storyteller opens the old book, and turns past the tales already told, to a page that waits for tonight.
Tonight, she says softly, we follow a white rabbit with pink eyes down a hole in an English riverbank, into the dream a girl named Alice dreamed on a golden afternoon, where a bottle says drink me, a cake says eat me, and a cat can leave its smile hanging in the air like the last of the daylight.
And there is no hurry at all as she begins.
Settle in, now. Let the chair hold you. Let the blanket be heavy in the good way, the way a summer afternoon is heavy on a meadow.
You could not have chosen a safer story for tonight, and here is why, whispered before we even begin. The whole of this tale takes place inside a nap. A girl falls asleep on a riverbank with her head in her sister's lap, and everything that follows, every rabbit and queen and cup of tea, happens in the warm country behind her closed eyes. So however strange it grows, remember that it is only ever a sleeping child dreaming in the sun, and let it teach you its one great lesson, which is how to fall, slowly and comfortably, asleep.
You do not have to watch. You do not have to follow the logic, and in this tale especially, the logic would rather you didn't. You do not have to remember any of it in the morning.
If you drift, the story will go on without you, quietly, and it will not mind at all. Drifting is not leaving. In this tale, of all tales, drifting is how you arrive.
The flame leans, and settles.
We begin.
Chapter One.

A Golden Afternoon, and a White Rabbit with a Watch.
Long ago, on a summer afternoon in England, a river was doing its very best to put the whole world to sleep.
It was the kind of afternoon that seems to have been poured rather than made, slow and gold and thick as honey coming off a spoon. The bees had given up ambition and were merely visiting. Somewhere across the water a wood pigeon said the same soft thing over and over, as if it were rocking the whole countryside in its voice.
And on the bank of that river, in the shade, sat two sisters.
The elder was reading. The younger, whose name was Alice, was getting very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do. Once or twice she had peeped into her sister's book, but it had no pictures or conversations in it. And what is the use of a book, thought Alice, without pictures or conversations?
So she was considering, as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid, whether the pleasure of making a daisy chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies. Her eyes had begun to go soft at the edges, the way eyes do.
And that was when the White Rabbit ran close by her.
There was nothing so very remarkable in that. A rabbit in a meadow is furniture. Nor did Alice think it much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself, oh dear, oh dear, I shall be too late. It all seemed quite natural at the time, which is the first sign of being inside a dream.
But when the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its waistcoat pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet. For she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat pocket or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit hole under the hedge.
In another moment, down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again. That is the whole of Alice.
The rabbit hole went straight on like a tunnel for some way, and then dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that Alice had not a moment to think of stopping before she was falling down what seemed to be a very deep well.
Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had plenty of time as she went down to look about her. It was the gentlest fall in all of storybooks, less like falling and more like sinking through warm water.
It was too dark to see what she was coming to, but the sides of the well were filled with cupboards and bookshelves, with maps and pictures hung upon pegs, as if the whole inside of the earth were somebody's well kept study.
She took down a jar from one of the shelves as she passed. It was labelled orange marmalade, but to her great disappointment it was empty. She did not like to drop the jar, for fear of hurting somebody underneath, so she managed to put it into one of the cupboards as she fell past it. Even falling down a well, this child thinks of the people below, and a dream dreamed by such a person will hold no real harm in it anywhere.
Down, down, down. Would the fall never come to an end?
I wonder how many miles I have fallen by this time, Alice said aloud. I must be getting somewhere near the centre of the earth. Let me see, that would be four thousand miles down, I think. But then I wonder what latitude or longitude I've got to?
Alice had no idea what latitude was, or longitude either, but she thought they were nice grand words to say. Latitude. Longitude.
Presently she began again. I wonder if I shall fall right through the earth! How funny it will seem to come out among the people that walk with their heads downward! The Antipathies, I think. Please, ma'am, is this New Zealand or Australia? And she tried to curtsey as she spoke. Fancy curtseying as you're falling through the air!
Down, down, down. Dinah will miss me very much tonight, I should think. Dinah was the cat, fond of Alice beyond all reason. I hope they'll remember her saucer of milk. Dinah, my dear, I wish you were down here with me. There are no mice in the air, I'm afraid, but you might catch a bat, and that's very like a mouse. But do cats eat bats, I wonder?
And here Alice began to get rather sleepy, even inside her own dream, and she went on saying to herself, in a dreamy sort of way, do cats eat bats, do cats eat bats, and sometimes, do bats eat cats, for as she could not answer either question, it did not much matter. She had just begun to dream that she was walking hand in hand with Dinah, and saying to her very earnestly, now, Dinah, tell me the truth, did you ever eat a bat, when suddenly, thump, thump, down she came upon a heap of sticks and dry leaves, and the fall was over.
Alice was not a bit hurt, not one bruise, not one scratch, and she jumped up in a moment. Before her lay another long passage, and the White Rabbit was still in sight, hurrying down it. Away went Alice like the wind, and was just in time to hear it say, as it turned a corner, oh my ears and whiskers, how late it's getting!
She was close behind it when she turned the corner, but the Rabbit was no longer to be seen. She found herself in a long, low hall, lit by a row of lamps hanging from the roof, a warm row of small flames very like the one burning beside you now.
And there we will let her stand a moment, in the lamplight, while the story takes its first slow breath.
Chapter Two.

The Little Golden Key.
There were doors all round the hall, but they were all locked. Alice walked all the way down one side and up the other, trying every one, and then walked sadly down the middle, wondering how she was ever to get out again.
Suddenly she came upon a little table, all made of solid glass, with nothing on it except a tiny golden key. But alas, either the locks were too large, or the key was too small, for it would not open any of the doors. However, on the second time round, she came upon a low curtain she had not noticed before, and behind it a little door about fifteen inches high. She tried the little golden key in the lock, and to her great delight it fitted.
Alice opened the door and found that it led into a small passage, not much larger than a rat hole. She knelt down and looked along the passage into the loveliest garden you ever saw. How she longed to get out of that dark hall, and wander among those bright flowers and cool fountains. She could smell the roses from where she knelt. But she could not even get her head through the doorway. And even if my head would go through, thought poor Alice, it would be of very little use without my shoulders.
Oh, how I wish I could shut up like a telescope, she said. I think I could, if I only knew how to begin.
For, you see, so many out of the way things had happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible. Which is the correct frame of mind for this country, and for falling asleep in.
There seemed no use in waiting by the little door, so she went back to the table, half hoping to find another key on it, or at any rate a book of rules for shutting people up like telescopes. This time she found a little bottle on it, which certainly was not here before, said Alice, and round its neck a paper label, with the words drink me beautifully printed in large letters.
It was all very well to say drink me, but the wise little Alice was not going to do that in a hurry. No, I'll look first, she said, and see whether it's marked poison or not. For she had read several nice little histories about children who came to grief because they would not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them. And Alice remembered. The bottle was not marked poison anywhere, so she ventured to taste it, and finding it very nice, for it had a sort of mixed flavour of cherry tart, custard, pineapple, roast turkey, toffee, and hot buttered toast, she very soon finished it off.
What a curious feeling, said Alice. I must be shutting up like a telescope.
And so it was indeed. She was now only ten inches high, and her face brightened, for she was now the right size for the little door and the lovely garden. For it might end, you know, said Alice to herself, in my going out altogether, like a candle.
But alas for poor Alice, when she got to the door, she found she had forgotten the little golden key, and when she went back for it, she found she could not possibly reach it. She could see it quite plainly through the glass, and she tried her best to climb up one of the legs of the table, but it was too slippery, and at last the poor little thing sat down and cried.
Come, there's no use in crying like that, said Alice to herself, rather sharply. I advise you to leave off this minute. She generally gave herself very good advice, though she very seldom followed it, and once she remembered trying to box her own ears for having cheated herself in a game of croquet she was playing against herself, for this curious child was very fond of pretending to be two people. But there's hardly enough of me left, thought poor Alice, to make one respectable person.
Soon her eye fell on a little glass box lying under the table. She opened it, and found a very small cake, on which the words eat me were beautifully marked in currants. Well, I'll eat it, said Alice, and if it makes me grow larger, I can reach the key, and if it makes me grow smaller, I can creep under the door. So either way I'll get into the garden, and I don't care which happens.
She ate a little bit, and said anxiously to herself, which way, which way, holding her hand on the top of her head to feel which way it was growing, and she was quite surprised to find that she remained the same size. This is of course what generally happens when one eats cake, but Alice was so used to out of the way things by now, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go on in the common way.
So she set to work, and very soon finished off the cake.
Curiouser and curiouser, cried Alice. She was so much surprised that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English. Now I'm opening out like the largest telescope that ever was. Goodbye, feet!
For when she looked down at her feet, they seemed to be almost out of sight, they were getting so far off. Oh, my poor little feet, I wonder who will put on your shoes and stockings for you now, dears? I'm sure I shan't be able. But I must be kind to them, thought Alice, or perhaps they won't walk the way I want to go. I'll give them a new pair of boots every Christmas.
And how odd the directions will look, she thought. To Alice's Right Foot, Esquire, Hearthrug, near the Fender, with Alice's love. Oh dear, what nonsense I'm talking.
Just then her head struck against the roof of the hall. She was now more than nine feet high, and she at once took up the little golden key and hurried off to the garden door.
Poor Alice. It was as much as she could do, lying on one side, to look through into the garden with one eye. To get through was more hopeless than ever. She sat down and began to cry again, and being nine feet tall, she cried on a rather grand scale, until there was a large pool all round her, about four inches deep and reaching half down the hall.
You ought to be ashamed of yourself, said Alice presently, a great girl like you, to go on crying in this way. Stop this moment, I tell you.
After a time she heard a pattering of feet, and hastily dried her eyes to see what was coming. It was the White Rabbit returning, splendidly dressed, with a pair of white kid gloves in one hand and a large fan in the other, muttering to himself as he came, oh, the Duchess, the Duchess, oh, won't she be savage if I've kept her waiting.
When the Rabbit came near her, she began, in a low, timid voice, if you please, sir.
The Rabbit started violently, dropped the white kid gloves and the fan, and scurried away into the darkness as hard as he could go.
Alice took up the fan and gloves, and, as the hall was very hot, she kept fanning herself as she talked. Dear, dear, how queer everything is today. I wonder if I've been changed in the night. Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is, who in the world am I?
Ah, that's the great puzzle, she said.
And it is, said the storyteller, turning the page. But you, under your blanket, need not solve it tonight. You are the one being told a story, which is all anyone needs to be, at this hour.
Chapter Three.

The Pool of Tears and the Caucus Race.
As she fanned herself, Alice began going through all the children she knew of her own age, to see if she could have been changed for any of them.
I'm sure I'm not Ada, she said, for her hair goes in such long ringlets, and mine doesn't go in ringlets at all. And I'm sure I can't be Mabel, for I know all sorts of things, and she, oh, she knows such a very little. Besides, she's she, and I'm I, and, oh dear, how puzzling it all is. I'll try if I know all the things I used to know. Four times five is twelve, and four times six is thirteen, and four times seven is, oh dear, I shall never get to twenty at that rate.
However, the multiplication table doesn't signify, said Alice. Let's try geography. London is the capital of Paris, and Paris is the capital of Rome, and Rome, no, that's all wrong, I'm certain. I must have been changed for Mabel. I'll try and say How doth the little. And she crossed her hands on her lap, as if saying lessons, and began to repeat it, but the words came all different.
How doth the little crocodile improve his shining tail, and pour the waters of the Nile on every golden scale. How cheerfully he seems to grin, how neatly spreads his claws, and welcomes little fishes in, with gently smiling jaws.
I'm certain those are not the right words, said poor Alice. And she was right, they were not, the proper poem being about a busy little bee, but the dream had rewritten it, as dreams will.
As she said this she looked down at her hands, and was surprised to see that she had put on one of the Rabbit's little white kid gloves while she was talking. I must be growing small again, she thought. The cause was the fan she was holding, and she dropped it hastily, just in time to avoid shrinking away altogether.
That was a narrow escape, said Alice. And now for the garden. She ran with all speed back to the little door. But alas, it was shut again, and the little golden key lay on the glass table as before.
As she said this her foot slipped, and in another moment, splash, she was up to her chin in salt water. Her first idea was that she had somehow fallen into the sea, and in that case I can go back by railway, she said to herself. For Alice had been to the seaside once, and had concluded that the whole English coast was bathing machines, wooden spades, lodging houses, and behind them a railway station.
However, she soon made out that she was in the pool of tears which she had wept when she was nine feet high. I wish I hadn't cried so much, said Alice, as she swam about. Everything is queer today. But nobody sinks in that pool. It holds its swimmers up the way sleep holds a sleeper.
Just then she heard something splashing about a little way off. At first she thought it must be a walrus or a hippopotamus, but then she remembered how small she was now, and made out that it was only a mouse, that had slipped in like herself.
Everything is so out of the way down here, thought Alice, that very likely this mouse can talk. So she began, O Mouse, do you know the way out of this pool? I am very tired of swimming about here, O Mouse. For she remembered having seen in her brother's Latin grammar, a mouse, of a mouse, to a mouse, a mouse, O mouse.
The Mouse looked at her rather inquisitively, and seemed to wink one little eye, but said nothing.
Perhaps it doesn't understand English, thought Alice. I daresay it's a French mouse, come over with William the Conqueror. So she began again. Où est ma chatte? Which was the first sentence in her French lesson book, and means, where is my cat.
The Mouse gave a sudden leap out of the water, and seemed to quiver all over with fright. Oh, I beg your pardon, cried Alice hastily, afraid that she had hurt the poor animal's feelings. I quite forgot you didn't like cats.
Not like cats, cried the Mouse, in a shrill, passionate voice. Would you like cats if you were me?
Well, perhaps not, said Alice in a soothing tone. Don't be angry about it. And yet I wish I could show you our cat Dinah. I think you'd take a fancy to cats if you could only see her. She's such a capital one for catching, oh, I beg your pardon, cried Alice again, for this time the Mouse was bristling all over, and certainly really offended. We won't talk about her any more, if you'd rather not.
We indeed, cried the Mouse, who was trembling down to the end of his tail. As if I would talk on such a subject. Our family always hated cats. Nasty, low, vulgar things. Don't let me hear the name again.
I won't indeed, said Alice, in a great hurry to change the subject. Are you, are you fond, of, of dogs? The Mouse did not answer, so Alice went on eagerly. There is such a nice little dog near our house I should like to show you. It'll fetch things when you throw them, and it'll sit up and beg for its dinner, and it belongs to a farmer, who says it's so useful, and he says it kills all the, oh dear, cried Alice in a sorrowful tone, I'm afraid I've offended it again.
For the Mouse was swimming away from her as hard as it could go, and making quite a commotion in the pool as it went.
So she called softly after it, Mouse dear, do come back again, and we won't talk about cats or dogs either, if you don't like them. The Mouse turned round and swam slowly back to her, quite pale, and said, in a low trembling voice, let us get to the shore, and then I'll tell you my history, and you'll understand why it is I hate cats and dogs.
It was high time to go, for the pool was getting quite crowded with the birds and animals that had fallen into it, a Duck and a Dodo, a Lory and an Eaglet, and several other curious creatures. Alice led the way, and the whole party swam to the shore.
They were a queer looking party that assembled on the bank, draggled feathers, clinging fur, all dripping wet, cross, and uncomfortable. The first question of course was how to get dry again, and it soon seemed quite natural to Alice to be talking familiarly with them.
At last the Mouse, who seemed a person of authority among them, called out, sit down, all of you, and listen to me. I'll soon make you dry enough. They all sat down at once, in a large ring, the Mouse in the middle.
Ahem, said the Mouse with an important air. Are you all ready? This is the driest thing I know. Silence all round, if you please. William the Conqueror, whose cause was favoured by the pope, was soon submitted to by the English, and even Stigand, the patriotic archbishop of Canterbury, found it advisable.
Found what, said the Duck.
Found it, the Mouse replied rather crossly. Of course you know what it means.
I know what it means well enough, when I find a thing, said the Duck. It's generally a frog, or a worm. The question is, what did the archbishop find? But the Mouse did not notice, and hurried on with its history, which was every bit as dry as promised, and dried nobody.
At last the Dodo stood up, a large, solemn bird with the manner of a chairman, and said, I move that the meeting adjourn, for the immediate adoption of more energetic remedies.
Speak English, said the Eaglet. I don't know the meaning of half those long words, and, what's more, I don't believe you do either. And the Eaglet bent down its head to hide a smile.
What I was going to say, said the Dodo, with dignity, was, that the best thing to get us dry would be a Caucus race.
What is a Caucus race, said Alice, for the Dodo had paused as if somebody ought to speak, and no one else seemed inclined to.
Why, said the Dodo, the best way to explain it is to do it.
First it marked out a race course, in a sort of circle. The exact shape doesn't matter, it said. Then the whole party were placed along the course, here and there. There was no one, two, three, and away. They began running when they liked, and left off when they liked, so it was not easy to know when the race was over. However, when they had been running half an hour or so, and were quite dry again, the Dodo suddenly called out, the race is over. And they all crowded round it, panting, and asking, but who has won?
This question the Dodo could not answer without a great deal of thought, and it sat a long time with one finger pressed upon its forehead, the position in which you usually see Shakespeare in pictures. At last it said, everybody has won, and all must have prizes.
But who is to give the prizes, quite a chorus of voices asked.
Why, she, of course, said the Dodo, pointing to Alice with one finger. And the whole party at once crowded round her, calling out in a confused way, prizes, prizes.
Alice had no idea what to do, and in despair she put her hand in her pocket, and pulled out a box of comfits, small hard sweets, which luckily the salt water had not got into. She handed them round as prizes, and there was exactly one apiece, all round.
But she must have a prize herself, you know, said the Mouse.
Of course, the Dodo replied very gravely. What else have you got in your pocket, he went on, turning to Alice.
Only a thimble, said Alice sadly.
Hand it over here, said the Dodo.
Then they all crowded round her once more, while the Dodo solemnly presented the thimble, saying, we beg your acceptance of this elegant thimble. And when it had finished, they all cheered.
Alice thought the whole thing very absurd, but they all looked so grave that she did not dare to laugh, so she simply bowed, and took the thimble, looking as solemn as she could. A race with no start and no finish, where everybody wins, and your prize is a thing you already had. It is most afternoons, if you think about it.
When the comfits were eaten, they all sat down again in a ring, and begged the Mouse for something more.
You promised to tell me your history, you know, said Alice, and why it is you hate C and D, she added in a whisper, half afraid that it would be offended again.
Mine is a long and a sad tale, said the Mouse, turning to Alice, and sighing.
It is a long tail, certainly, said Alice, looking down with wonder at the Mouse's tail, but why do you call it sad?
And she kept on puzzling about it while the Mouse was speaking, so that her idea of the tale was something twisted and winding, like the tail itself. In the old book the story is printed just that way, wriggling down the page in a long curving line, and many a child has fallen asleep over it, which may be exactly what the man who wrote it intended.
You are not attending, said the Mouse to Alice severely, in the middle of its tale. What are you thinking of?
I beg your pardon, said Alice very humbly. You had got to the fifth bend, I think?
I had not, cried the Mouse, sharply and very angrily.
A knot, said Alice, always ready to make herself useful, and looking anxiously about her. Oh, do let me help to undo it.
I shall do nothing of the sort, said the Mouse, getting up and walking away. You insult me by talking such nonsense.
I didn't mean it, pleaded poor Alice. But you're so easily offended, you know.
The Mouse only growled in reply.
Please come back and finish your story, Alice called after it. And the others all joined in chorus, yes, please do. But the Mouse only shook its head impatiently, walked a little quicker, and was soon out of sight.
What a pity it wouldn't stay, sighed the Lory. I wish I had our Dinah here, said Alice aloud, addressing nobody in particular. She'd soon fetch it back.
And who is Dinah, if I might venture to ask the question, said the Lory.
Alice replied eagerly, for she was always ready to talk about her pet. Dinah's our cat. And she's such a capital one for catching mice, you can't think. And oh, I wish you could see her after the birds. Why, she'll eat a little bird as soon as look at it.
This speech caused a remarkable sensation. An old Magpie began wrapping itself up very carefully, remarking, I really must be getting home, the night air doesn't suit my throat. And a Canary called to its children in a trembling voice, come away, my dears, it's high time you were all in bed. On various pretexts they all moved off, and Alice was soon left alone.
I wish I hadn't mentioned Dinah, she said to herself in a melancholy tone. Nobody seems to like her down here, and I'm sure she's the best cat in the world.
But in a little while she heard a pattering of footsteps, and looked up eagerly, half hoping the Mouse had changed its mind, and was coming back to finish its story.
It was not the Mouse. It was the White Rabbit, trotting slowly back again, and looking anxiously about as it went, as if it had lost something.
Chapter Four.

The Rabbit Sends in Little Bill.
The White Rabbit came trotting along, muttering to itself, the Duchess, the Duchess, oh my dear paws, oh my fur and whiskers. She'll get me executed, as sure as ferrets are ferrets. Which she would not, and could not, and never did. Such words, in that country, were spoken the way we say I'll be in hot water, by people who have never been boiled. Where can I have dropped them, I wonder?
Alice guessed in a moment that it was looking for the fan and the white kid gloves, and she very good naturedly began hunting for them, but they were nowhere to be seen. Everything had changed since her swim in the pool, and the great hall, with the glass table and the little door, had vanished completely, the way rooms do change behind you in dreams.
Very soon the Rabbit noticed Alice, and called out to her in an angry tone, why, Mary Ann, what are you doing out here? Run home this moment, and fetch me a pair of gloves and a fan. Quick, now. And Alice was so surprised that she ran off at once in the direction it pointed, without even trying to explain the mistake.
He took me for his housemaid, she said to herself as she ran. How surprised he'll be when he finds out who I am. But I'd better take him his fan and gloves. Presently she came upon a neat little house, with a bright brass plate on the door, and the name W. Rabbit engraved upon it. She went in without knocking, and hurried upstairs, in great fear lest she should meet the real Mary Ann. How queer it seems, she thought, to be going messages for a rabbit. I suppose Dinah'll be sending me on messages next.
Upstairs she found a tidy little room, and on the table in the window, as she had hoped, a fan and two or three pairs of tiny white kid gloves. She took up the fan and a pair of the gloves, and was just going to leave, when her eye fell upon a little bottle near the looking glass. There was no label this time with the words drink me, but nevertheless she uncorked it and put it to her lips. I know something interesting is sure to happen, she said to herself, whenever I eat or drink anything, so I'll just see what this bottle does. I do hope it'll make me grow large again, for really I'm quite tired of being such a tiny little thing.
It did so indeed, and much sooner than she had expected. Before she had drunk half the bottle, her head was pressing against the ceiling, and she had to stoop to save her neck. That's quite enough, she said, I hope I shan't grow any more. I do wish I hadn't drunk quite so much.
Alas, it was too late to wish that. She went on growing, and growing, and very soon had to kneel down on the floor. In another minute there was not even room for this, and at last she put one arm out of the window, and one foot up the chimney, and said to herself, now I can do no more, whatever happens. What will become of me?
It was much pleasanter at home, thought poor Alice, when one wasn't always growing larger and smaller, and being ordered about by mice and rabbits. And yet, when I used to read fairy tales, I fancied that kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of one. There ought to be a book written about me, that there ought. And when I grow up, I'll write one. But I'm grown up now, she added in a sorrowful tone. At least there's no room to grow up any more here.
And so she went on, taking first one side of the argument and then the other, a girl filling a whole house, arguing gently with herself in the dark, perfectly safe the entire time.
After a few minutes she heard a voice outside. Mary Ann, Mary Ann, said the voice. Fetch me my gloves this moment. Then came a little pattering of feet on the stairs. Alice knew it was the Rabbit coming to look for her, and she trembled till she shook the house, quite forgetting that she was now a thousand times its size.
Presently the Rabbit came up to the door, and tried to open it. But as the door opened inwards, and Alice's elbow was pressed hard against it, the attempt failed. Alice heard it say to itself, then I'll go round and get in at the window.
That you won't, thought Alice, and after waiting till she fancied she heard the Rabbit just under the window, she suddenly spread out her hand, and made a snatch in the air. She did not get hold of anything, but she heard a little shriek and a fall, and a crash of broken glass, from which she concluded that it had fallen into a cucumber frame. And a cucumber frame, as falls go, is one of the kindest places in England to land, and the Rabbit came to no harm beyond a bruise to its dignity.
Next came an angry voice, the Rabbit's. Pat, Pat, where are you? And then a voice she had never heard before, sure then I'm here, digging for apples, yer honour. Digging for apples, indeed, said the Rabbit angrily. Come and help me out of this. Now tell me, Pat, what's that in the window?
Sure, it's an arm, yer honour. And he pronounced it arrum.
An arm, you goose. Who ever saw one that size? Why, it fills the whole window.
Sure, it does, yer honour, but it's an arm for all that. Well, it's got no business there, at any rate. Go and take it away.
There was a long silence, and then whispers. At last she made another snatch in the air, and this time there were two little shrieks, and more broken glass.
At last came a rumbling of little cartwheels, and a good many voices all talking together. Where's the other ladder? Bill's got the other. Will the roof bear? Mind that loose slate. Heads below. Who's to go down the chimney? Nay, I shan't, you do it. That I won't then. Bill's to go down.
Oh, so Bill's got to come down the chimney, has he, said Alice to herself. They seem to put everything upon Bill. I wouldn't be in Bill's place for a good deal. This fireplace is narrow, to be sure, but I think I can kick a little.
She drew her foot as far down the chimney as she could, and waited till she heard a little animal scratching and scrambling close above her. Then, saying to herself, this is Bill, she gave one sharp little kick, and waited to see what would happen next.
The first thing she heard was a general chorus of, there goes Bill. He went up the chimney and out at the top like a cork out of a bottle, sailing in a high, surprised, and entirely harmless arc against the evening sky, and the crowd below caught him, which is what crowds are for. Then a little feeble, squeaking voice. That's Bill, thought Alice. All I know is, something comes at me like a jack in the box, and up I goes like a skyrocket.
And they propped him up against a daisy, and fanned him with dock leaves, and Bill the Lizard, for that is who he was, lay looking at the sky with the happy bewilderment of a creature who has flown once, briefly, without ever asking to. He will cross our path again before the night is done.
We must burn the house down, said the Rabbit's voice, in the way of persons who say enormous things they have no intention of doing. And Alice called out as loud as she could, if you do, I'll set Dinah at you. There was a dead silence instantly, the name of Dinah being worth a whole fire brigade, and no match was ever struck.
After a minute or two they began moving about again, and Alice heard the Rabbit say, a barrowful will do, to begin with.
A barrowful of what, thought Alice. But she had not long to doubt, for the next moment a shower of little pebbles came rattling in at the window, and some tapped her, very lightly, on the face. Then she noticed with some surprise that the pebbles were all turning into little cakes as they lay on the floor, and a bright idea came into her head. If I eat one of these cakes, she thought, it's sure to make some change in my size. And as it can't possibly make me larger, it must make me smaller.
So she swallowed one of the cakes, and was delighted to find that she began shrinking directly. As soon as she was small enough to get through the door, she ran out of the house, past quite a crowd of little animals and birds, with poor little Bill in the middle, being held up by two guinea pigs, who were giving it something out of a bottle. They all made a rush at Alice, but she ran off as hard as she could, and soon found herself safe in a thick wood.
The first thing I've got to do, said Alice to herself, is to grow to my right size again. And the second thing is to find my way into that lovely garden. It sounded an excellent plan. The only difficulty was, she had not the smallest idea how to set about it. And while she was peering about among the trees, a little sharp bark just over her head made her look up in a hurry.
An enormous puppy was looking down at her with large round eyes, feebly stretching out one paw to touch her. Poor little thing, said Alice, in a coaxing tone, though to her, at that size, it was roughly the size of a cottage, and it meant nothing in the world but play, and that was exactly the danger. She held out a little bit of stick, and the puppy rushed at it with a yelp of delight, while Alice dodged behind a great thistle, feeling it was very like a game of play with a cart horse. At last the puppy sat down a good way off, panting, with its great eyes half shut, and Alice ran till its bark sounded quite faint in the distance, a small happy thunder falling asleep behind her.
And yet what a dear little puppy it was, said Alice, as she leant against a buttercup to rest herself. I should have liked teaching it tricks very much, if I'd only been the right size. Oh dear, I'd nearly forgotten that I've got to grow up again. I suppose I ought to eat or drink something or other, but the great question is, what?
The great question certainly was, what. Alice looked all round at the flowers and the grass, but saw nothing that looked like the right thing. There was a large mushroom growing near her, about the same height as herself, and when she had looked under it, and on both sides of it, and behind it, it occurred to her that she might as well see what was on the top of it.
She stretched herself up on tiptoe, and peeped over the edge of the mushroom, and her eyes immediately met those of a large blue caterpillar, that was sitting on the top with its arms folded, quietly smoking a long hookah, and taking not the smallest notice of her or of anything else.
Chapter Five.

Advice from a Caterpillar.
The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence, a very comfortable silence, made mostly of blue smoke and afternoon. At last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth, and addressed her in a languid, sleepy voice.
Who are you, said the Caterpillar.
This was not an encouraging opening. Alice replied, rather shyly, I, I hardly know, sir, just at present. At least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.
What do you mean by that, said the Caterpillar sternly. Explain yourself.
I can't explain myself, I'm afraid, sir, said Alice, because I'm not myself, you see.
I don't see, said the Caterpillar.
I'm afraid I can't put it more clearly, Alice replied very politely, for I can't understand it myself. And being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing.
It isn't, said the Caterpillar.
Well, perhaps you haven't found it so yet, said Alice. But when you have to turn into a chrysalis, you will some day, and then after that into a butterfly, I should think you'll feel it a little queer, won't you?
Not a bit, said the Caterpillar.
Well, all I know is, said Alice, it would feel very queer to me.
You, said the Caterpillar contemptuously. Who are you?
Which brought them back again to the beginning of the conversation. Alice felt a little irritated at such very short remarks, and she drew herself up and said, very gravely, I think you ought to tell me who you are, first.
Why, said the Caterpillar.
Here was another puzzling question. And as Alice could not think of any good reason, and the Caterpillar seemed in a very unpleasant state of mind, she turned away.
Come back, the Caterpillar called after her. I've something important to say. This sounded promising, certainly. Alice turned and came back again.
Keep your temper, said the Caterpillar.
Is that all, said Alice, swallowing down her anger as well as she could.
No, said the Caterpillar.
Alice thought she might as well wait. For some minutes the Caterpillar puffed away without speaking, and the blue smoke went up in slow rings that widened, and thinned, and became part of the sky. But at last it unfolded its arms, took the hookah out of its mouth again, and said, so you think you're changed, do you?
I'm afraid I am, sir, said Alice. I can't remember things as I used, and I don't keep the same size for ten minutes together.
Can't remember what things, said the Caterpillar.
Well, I've tried to say How doth the little busy bee, but it all came different, Alice replied in a very melancholy voice.
Repeat You are old, Father William, said the Caterpillar.
Alice folded her hands, and began.
You are old, Father William, the young man said, and your hair has become very white. And yet you incessantly stand on your head. Do you think, at your age, it is right?
In my youth, Father William replied to his son, I feared it might injure the brain. But now that I'm perfectly sure I have none, why, I do it again and again.
You are old, said the youth, as I mentioned before, and have grown most uncommonly fat. Yet you turned a back somersault in at the door. Pray, what is the reason of that?
In my youth, said the sage, as he shook his grey locks, I kept all my limbs very supple by the use of this ointment, one shilling the box. Allow me to sell you a couple.
There was a good deal more of it, and the old gentleman losing patience entirely at the end, as old gentlemen in poems will. Alice finished, and folded her hands again, and waited.
That is not said right, said the Caterpillar.
Not quite right, I'm afraid, said Alice timidly. Some of the words have got altered.
It is wrong from beginning to end, said the Caterpillar decidedly, and there was silence for some minutes.
And yet, between us, the wrong version is the better poem, and children have been asking for it, on purpose, for a hundred years and more. Dreams are good editors.
The Caterpillar was the first to speak. What size do you want to be, it asked.
Oh, I'm not particular as to size, Alice hastily replied. Only one doesn't like changing so often, you know.
I don't know, said the Caterpillar.
Alice said nothing. She had never been so much contradicted in all her life, and she felt she was losing her temper, and remembered, just in time, the one piece of advice she had been given, and kept it.
Are you content now, said the Caterpillar.
Well, I should like to be a little larger, sir, if you wouldn't mind, said Alice. Three inches is such a wretched height to be.
It is a very good height indeed, said the Caterpillar angrily, rearing itself upright as it spoke. It was exactly three inches high.
But I'm not used to it, pleaded poor Alice in a piteous tone.
You'll get used to it in time, said the Caterpillar, and put the hookah back into its mouth, and smoked.
This time Alice waited patiently. In a minute or two the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth, yawned once or twice, and shook itself. Then it got down off the mushroom, and crawled away into the grass, remarking as it went, one side will make you grow taller, and the other side will make you grow shorter.
One side of what? The other side of what, thought Alice to herself.
Of the mushroom, said the Caterpillar, just as if she had asked it aloud, and in another moment it was out of sight.
Alice remained looking thoughtfully at the mushroom, trying to make out which were the two sides of it, a very difficult question, as it was perfectly round. At last she stretched her arms round it as far as they would go, and broke off a bit of the edge with each hand.
And now which is which, she said to herself, and nibbled a little of the right hand bit to try the effect. The next moment she felt a violent blow underneath her chin. It had struck her foot.
She was a good deal frightened by this sudden change, but there was no time to be lost, as she was shrinking rapidly, and her chin was pressed so closely against her foot that it was all she could do to open her mouth and swallow a morsel of the left hand bit.
Come, my head's free at last, said Alice in a tone of delight, which changed into alarm when she found that her shoulders were nowhere to be found. All she could see, looking down, was an immense length of neck, rising like a stalk out of a sea of green leaves far below, which were nothing but the tops of the trees she had been wandering under. Her neck would bend about easily in any direction, like a serpent, and she had just curved it down into a graceful zigzag among the leaves when a sharp hiss made her draw back in a hurry. A large pigeon had flown into her face, and was fluttering about her indignantly.
Serpent, screamed the Pigeon.
I'm not a serpent, said Alice indignantly. Let me alone.
Serpent, I say again, repeated the Pigeon, but in a more subdued tone, and added with a kind of sob, I've tried the roots of trees, and I've tried banks, and I've tried hedges. But those serpents. There's no pleasing them. As if it wasn't trouble enough hatching the eggs, but I must be on the look out for serpents night and day. Why, I haven't had a wink of sleep these three weeks. And just as I'd taken the highest tree in the wood, they must needs come wriggling down from the sky. Ugh, Serpent.
But I'm not a serpent, I tell you, said Alice. I'm a, I'm a.
Well, what are you, said the Pigeon. I can see you're trying to invent something.
I, I'm a little girl, said Alice, rather doubtfully, remembering the number of changes she had gone through that day.
A likely story indeed, said the Pigeon, in a tone of the deepest contempt. I've seen a good many little girls in my time, but never one with such a neck as that. No, no. You're a serpent, and I suppose you'll be telling me next that you never tasted an egg.
I have tasted eggs, certainly, said Alice, who was a very truthful child. But little girls eat eggs quite as much as serpents do, you know.
I don't believe it, said the Pigeon. But if they do, why then they're a kind of serpent, that's all I can say.
This was such a new idea to Alice, that she was quite silent for a minute or two, and the Pigeon added, you're looking for eggs, I know that well enough. And what does it matter to me whether you're a little girl or a serpent?
It matters a good deal to me, said Alice hastily. But I'm not looking for eggs. And if I was, I shouldn't want yours. I don't like them raw.
Well, be off, then, said the Pigeon in a sulky tone, as it settled down again into its nest. And settle it did, deeply and gratefully, and far below Alice heard the small contented sound of a pigeon beginning, at last, after three long weeks, to sleep.
Then she remembered the pieces of mushroom still in her hands, and set to work very carefully, nibbling first at one and then at the other, growing sometimes taller and sometimes shorter, until she had brought herself down to her usual height. It felt quite strange at first, but she got used to it in a few minutes, as the Caterpillar had promised. Come, there's half my plan done now, she said to herself. The next thing is, to get into that beautiful garden. How is that to be done, I wonder?
As she said this, she came suddenly upon an open place, with a little house in it about four feet high. Whoever lives there, thought Alice, it'll never do to come upon them this size. Why, I should frighten them out of their wits. So she nibbled at the right hand bit again, and did not go near the house till she had brought herself down to nine inches high.
Chapter Six.

Pepper, a Pig, and a Grin Without a Cat.
For a minute or two she stood looking at the house, when suddenly a footman in livery came running out of the wood. She considered him to be a footman because he was in livery. Otherwise, judging by his face only, she would have called him a fish. He rapped loudly at the door, and it was opened by another footman in livery, with a round face and large eyes like a frog. Both footmen, Alice noticed, had powdered hair that curled all over their heads.
She crept a little way out of the wood to listen.
The Fish Footman began by producing from under his arm a great letter, nearly as large as himself, and handed it to the other, saying solemnly, for the Duchess. An invitation from the Queen to play croquet. The Frog Footman repeated, in the same solemn tone, only changing the order of the words a little, from the Queen. An invitation for the Duchess to play croquet.
Then they both bowed low, and their curls got entangled together.
Alice laughed so much at this, that she had to run back into the wood for fear of their hearing her. When she next peeped out, the Fish Footman was gone, and the other sat on the ground near the door, staring stupidly up into the sky.
Alice went up to the door, and knocked.
There's no sort of use in knocking, said the Footman, and that for two reasons. First, because I'm on the same side of the door as you are. Secondly, because they're making such a noise inside, no one could possibly hear you. And certainly there was a most extraordinary noise going on within, a constant howling and sneezing, and every now and then a great crash, as if a dish had been broken to pieces.
Please, then, said Alice, how am I to get in?
There might be some sense in your knocking, the Footman went on without attending to her, if we had the door between us. For instance, if you were inside, you might knock, and I could let you out, you know. How am I to get in, she repeated, aloud.
I shall sit here, the Footman remarked, till tomorrow.
At this moment the door of the house opened, and a large plate came skimming out, straight at the Footman's head. It just grazed his nose, and broke to pieces against one of the trees behind him. It grazed, you notice, and did not strike, for nothing thrown in that kitchen ever once hit anybody.
Or next day, maybe, the Footman continued in the same tone, exactly as if nothing had happened.
How am I to get in, asked Alice again, in a louder tone.
Are you to get in at all, said the Footman. That's the first question, you know.
It's really dreadful, Alice muttered to herself, the way all the creatures argue. It's enough to drive one crazy.
But what am I to do, said Alice.
Anything you like, said the Footman, and began whistling.
Oh, there's no use in talking to him, said Alice desperately. He's perfectly idiotic. And she opened the door and went in.
The door led right into a large kitchen, full of smoke from one end to the other. The Duchess was sitting on a three legged stool in the middle, nursing a baby. The cook was leaning over the fire, stirring a large cauldron which seemed to be full of soup.
There's certainly too much pepper in that soup, Alice said to herself, as well as she could for sneezing.
There was certainly too much of it in the air. Even the Duchess sneezed occasionally, and the baby sneezed and howled alternately without a pause. The only things in the kitchen that did not sneeze were the cook, and a large cat sitting on the hearth and grinning from ear to ear.
Please would you tell me, said Alice, a little timidly, why your cat grins like that?
It's a Cheshire cat, said the Duchess, and that's why.
I didn't know that cats could grin, said Alice.
They all can, said the Duchess, and most of 'em do.
I don't know of any that do, Alice said very politely.
You don't know much, said the Duchess, and that's a fact.
Alice did not at all like the tone of this remark. While she was trying to fix on another subject, the cook took the cauldron off the fire, and at once set to work throwing everything within her reach at the Duchess and the baby. The fire irons came first, then a shower of saucepans, plates, and dishes. The Duchess took no notice of them, even when they went past her, and the baby was howling so much already that it was impossible to say whether anything came near it or not, though nothing did, and nothing ever could.
Oh, please mind what you're doing, cried Alice, in an agony of alarm.
If everybody minded their own business, the Duchess said in a hoarse growl, the world would go round a deal faster than it does.
Which would not be an advantage, said Alice, very glad of a chance to show off a little of her knowledge. Just think of what work it would make with the day and night. You see the earth takes twenty four hours to turn round on its axis.
Talking of axes, said the Duchess, chop off her head.
Alice glanced anxiously at the cook, to see if she meant to take the hint. But the cook was busily stirring the soup, and no one else so much as looked up, and the words simply fell on the floor and lay there, meaning nothing. You will hear a great deal of beheading spoken of before this night is out, so let it be said once, and packed under your pillow. In the whole history of that dream country, no head was ever removed from anybody. The loud people there said such words the way other people slam drawers.
So Alice went on, rather relieved. Twenty four hours, I think. Or is it twelve? I.
Oh, don't bother me, said the Duchess. I never could abide figures. And with that she began nursing her child again, singing a sort of lullaby, all backwards, a song that scolded where other songs soothe, the kind an aunt sings when pretending to be a bear, and not one word of it was meant, and the baby howled and sneezed along, and the cook joined in at the chorus.
Here, you may nurse it a bit, if you like, the Duchess said to Alice, flinging the baby at her, though flinging is the dream's word for it, and Alice caught the little thing as easily as a cushion. I must go and get ready to play croquet with the Queen, said the Duchess, and she hurried out of the room. The cook threw a frying pan after her as she went, but it just missed her, as everything in that kitchen just missed everybody, always.
Alice caught the baby with some difficulty, for it was a queer shaped little creature, holding out its arms and legs in all directions. Just like a starfish, thought Alice. The proper way of nursing it, she found, was to twist it up into a sort of knot, and then keep tight hold of its right ear and left foot, to prevent its undoing itself, and so she carried it out into the open air. If I don't take this child away with me, thought Alice, they're sure to make nothing of it in a day or two.
The little thing grunted in reply. Don't grunt, said Alice. That's not at all a proper way of expressing yourself. It grunted again, and Alice looked anxiously into its face. It had a very turn up nose, much more like a snout than a real nose, and its eyes were getting extremely small for a baby. Perhaps it was only sobbing, she thought, and looked for tears. There were no tears. If you're going to turn into a pig, my dear, said Alice, seriously, I'll have nothing more to do with you. Mind now. And just as she was thinking, what am I to do with this creature when I get it home, it grunted again, so violently, that she looked down in some alarm. This time there could be no mistake about it. It was neither more nor less than a pig, and it would be quite absurd to carry it further.
So she set the little creature down, and felt quite relieved to see it trot away quietly into the wood, a small pink person entirely pleased with how things had turned out, off to a life of acorns and warm mud and no more pepper, ever. If it had grown up, said Alice to herself, it would have made a dreadfully ugly child. But it makes rather a handsome pig, I think. And she was just thinking over other children she knew, who might do very well as pigs, when she was startled by the Cheshire Cat sitting on a bough of a tree a few yards off.
The Cat only grinned when it saw Alice. It looked good natured, she thought. Still it had very long claws and a great many teeth, so it ought to be treated with respect.
Cheshire Puss, she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know whether it would like the name. However, it only grinned a little wider. Come, it's pleased so far, thought Alice, and she went on. Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
That depends a good deal on where you want to get to, said the Cat.
I don't much care where, said Alice.
Then it doesn't matter which way you go, said the Cat.
So long as I get somewhere, Alice added as an explanation.
Oh, you're sure to do that, said the Cat, if you only walk long enough.
Alice felt that this could not be denied, and neither can you. You are sure to get somewhere tonight, if you only breathe long enough.
So she tried another question. What sort of people live about here?
In that direction, the Cat said, waving its right paw, lives a Hatter. And in that direction, waving the other paw, lives a March Hare. Visit either you like. They're both mad.
But I don't want to go among mad people, Alice remarked.
Oh, you can't help that, said the Cat. We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.
How do you know I'm mad, said Alice.
You must be, said the Cat, or you wouldn't have come here.
Alice didn't think that proved it at all. However, she went on. And how do you know that you're mad?
To begin with, said the Cat, a dog's not mad. You grant that?
I suppose so, said Alice.
Well, then, the Cat went on, you see a dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad.
I call it purring, not growling, said Alice.
Call it what you like, said the Cat. Do you play croquet with the Queen today?
I should like it very much, said Alice, but I haven't been invited yet.
You'll see me there, said the Cat, and vanished.
Alice was not much surprised at this, she was getting so used to queer things. While she was looking at the place where it had been, it suddenly appeared again.
By the by, what became of the baby, said the Cat. I'd nearly forgotten to ask.
It turned into a pig, Alice quietly said, just as if it had come back in a natural way.
I thought it would, said the Cat, and vanished again.
Alice waited a little, but it did not appear, and she walked on toward the March Hare's. I've seen hatters before, she said to herself. The March Hare will be much the most interesting, and perhaps as this is May it won't be raving mad. At least not so mad as it was in March. As she said this, she looked up, and there was the Cat again, sitting on a branch of a tree.
Did you say pig, or fig, said the Cat.
I said pig, replied Alice. And I wish you wouldn't keep appearing and vanishing so suddenly. You make one quite giddy.
All right, said the Cat. And this time it vanished quite slowly, beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin, which remained some time after the rest of it had gone.
Well, I've often seen a cat without a grin, thought Alice. But a grin without a cat. It's the most curious thing I ever saw in all my life.
And there it hung, in the warm air over the branch, a wide white crescent with nothing attached to it, like the first sliver of the moon come early. Then it thinned, and softened, and became nothing at all, or became the afternoon. You may borrow that exit tonight. Leave your day the way the cat left the tree, a piece at a time, keeping only, for as long as you like, the smile.
She had not gone much further before she came in sight of the house of the March Hare. She thought it must be the right house, because the chimneys were shaped like ears, and the roof was thatched with fur. It was so large a house that she did not like to go nearer till she had nibbled more mushroom, and raised herself to about two feet high. Even then she walked up rather timidly, saying to herself, suppose it should be raving mad after all. I almost wish I'd gone to see the Hatter instead.
Chapter Seven.

The Maddest Tea Party in All the World.
There was a table set out under a tree in front of the house, and the March Hare and the Hatter were having tea at it. A Dormouse sat between them, fast asleep, and the other two were using it as a cushion, resting their elbows on it, and talking over its head.
Very uncomfortable for the Dormouse, thought Alice. Only, as it's asleep, I suppose it doesn't mind.
And let us pause on the Dormouse, the patron creature of this room, mostly tail and mostly asleep, the soundest sleeper in written literature. Regard him, all night, as an instruction.
The table was a large one, but the three were all crowded together at one corner. No room, no room, they cried out when they saw Alice coming.
There's plenty of room, said Alice indignantly, and she sat down in a large armchair at one end of the table.
Have some wine, the March Hare said in an encouraging tone.
Alice looked all round the table, but there was nothing on it but tea. I don't see any wine, she remarked.
There isn't any, said the March Hare.
Then it wasn't very civil of you to offer it, said Alice angrily.
It wasn't very civil of you to sit down without being invited, said the March Hare.
I didn't know it was your table, said Alice. It's laid for a great many more than three.
Your hair wants cutting, said the Hatter. He had been looking at Alice for some time with great curiosity, and this was his first speech.
You should learn not to make personal remarks, Alice said with some severity. It's very rude.
The Hatter opened his eyes very wide on hearing this, but all he said was, why is a raven like a writing desk?
Come, we shall have some fun now, thought Alice. I'm glad they've begun asking riddles. I believe I can guess that, she added aloud.
Do you mean that you think you can find out the answer to it, said the March Hare.
Exactly so, said Alice.
Then you should say what you mean, the March Hare went on.
I do, Alice hastily replied. At least, at least I mean what I say. That's the same thing, you know.
Not the same thing a bit, said the Hatter. You might just as well say that I see what I eat is the same thing as I eat what I see.
You might just as well say, added the March Hare, that I like what I get is the same thing as I get what I like.
You might just as well say, added the Dormouse, who seemed to be talking in his sleep, that I breathe when I sleep is the same thing as I sleep when I breathe.
It is the same thing with you, said the Hatter, and here the conversation dropped, while Alice thought over all she could remember about ravens and writing desks, which wasn't much.
And here is the truth about that riddle. It has no answer. The man who wrote it admitted, years later, that when he first asked it, it had no answer at all. Which makes it, of all riddles, the only one safe to fall asleep on.
The Hatter was the first to break the silence. What day of the month is it, he said, turning to Alice. He had taken his watch out of his pocket, and was looking at it uneasily, shaking it now and then, and holding it to his ear.
Alice considered a little, and then said, the fourth.
Two days wrong, sighed the Hatter. I told you butter wouldn't suit the works, he added, with an angry look at the March Hare.
It was the best butter, the March Hare meekly replied.
Yes, but some crumbs must have got in as well, the Hatter grumbled. You shouldn't have put it in with the bread knife.
The March Hare took the watch and looked at it gloomily. Then he dipped it into his cup of tea, and looked at it again, but could think of nothing better to say than his first remark. It was the best butter, you know.
What a funny watch, Alice remarked. It tells the day of the month, and doesn't tell what o'clock it is.
Why should it, muttered the Hatter. Does your watch tell you what year it is?
Of course not, Alice replied very readily. But that's because it stays the same year for such a long time together.
Which is just the case with mine, said the Hatter.
Alice felt dreadfully puzzled. The Hatter's remark seemed to have no meaning in it, and yet it was certainly English.
The Dormouse is asleep again, said the Hatter, and he poured a little hot tea upon its nose. The Dormouse shook its head impatiently, and said, without opening its eyes, of course, of course. Just what I was going to remark myself.
Have you guessed the riddle yet, the Hatter said, turning to Alice again.
No, I give it up, Alice replied. What's the answer?
I haven't the slightest idea, said the Hatter.
Nor I, said the March Hare.
Alice sighed wearily. I think you might do something better with the time, she said, than waste it in asking riddles that have no answers.
If you knew Time as well as I do, said the Hatter, you wouldn't talk about wasting it. It's him.
I don't know what you mean, said Alice.
Of course you don't, the Hatter said contemptuously. I daresay you never even spoke to Time.
Perhaps not, Alice cautiously replied. But I know I have to beat time when I learn music.
Ah, that accounts for it, said the Hatter. He won't stand beating. Now, if you only kept on good terms with him, he'd do almost anything you liked with the clock. Suppose it were nine o'clock in the morning, just time to begin lessons. You'd only have to whisper a hint to Time, and round goes the clock in a twinkling. Half past one, time for dinner.
I only wish it was, the March Hare said to itself in a whisper.
Is that the way you manage, Alice asked.
The Hatter shook his head mournfully. Not I, he replied. We quarrelled last March, just before he went mad, you know, pointing with his teaspoon at the March Hare. It was at the great concert given by the Queen of Hearts, and I had to sing, Twinkle, twinkle, little bat, how I wonder what you're at. Up above the world you fly, like a tea tray in the sky.
Here the Dormouse shook itself, and began singing in its sleep, twinkle, twinkle, twinkle, twinkle, and went on so long that they had to pinch it to make it stop.
Well, I'd hardly finished the first verse, said the Hatter, when the Queen jumped up and bawled out, he's murdering the time. Off with his head.
How dreadfully savage, exclaimed Alice.
And nothing whatever came of it, of course, no more than ever came of anything the Queen shouted. But ever since that, the Hatter went on in a mournful tone, Time won't do a thing I ask. It's always six o'clock now.
A bright idea came into Alice's head. Is that the reason so many tea things are put out here?
Yes, that's it, said the Hatter with a sigh. It's always teatime, and we've no time to wash the things between whiles.
Then you keep moving round, I suppose, said Alice.
Exactly so, said the Hatter, as the things get used up.
But what happens when you come to the beginning again, Alice ventured to ask.
Suppose we change the subject, the March Hare interrupted, yawning. I'm getting tired of this. I vote the young lady tells us a story.
I'm afraid I don't know one, said Alice, rather alarmed at the proposal.
Then the Dormouse shall, they both cried. Wake up, Dormouse. And they pinched it on both sides at once.
The Dormouse slowly opened his eyes. I wasn't asleep, he said in a hoarse, feeble voice. I heard every word you fellows were saying.
Tell us a story, said the March Hare. Yes, please do, pleaded Alice. And be quick about it, added the Hatter, or you'll be asleep again before it's done.
Once upon a time there were three little sisters, the Dormouse began in a great hurry. And their names were Elsie, Lacie, and Tillie. And they lived at the bottom of a well.
What did they live on, said Alice, who always took a great interest in questions of eating and drinking.
They lived on treacle, said the Dormouse, after thinking a minute or two.
They couldn't have done that, you know, Alice gently remarked. They'd have been ill.
So they were, said the Dormouse. Very ill.
Alice tried to fancy what such an extraordinary way of living would be like, but it puzzled her too much. But why did they live at the bottom of a well?
Take some more tea, the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.
I've had nothing yet, Alice replied in an offended tone, so I can't take more.
You mean you can't take less, said the Hatter. It's very easy to take more than nothing.
Nobody asked your opinion, said Alice.
Who's making personal remarks now, the Hatter asked triumphantly.
Alice did not quite know what to say to this, so she took some tea and bread and butter, and repeated her question. Why did they live at the bottom of a well?
The Dormouse again took a minute or two to think about it, and then said, it was a treacle well.
There's no such thing, Alice was beginning very angrily, but the Hatter and the March Hare went sh, sh, and the Dormouse sulkily remarked, if you can't be civil, you'd better finish the story for yourself.
No, please go on, Alice said very humbly. I won't interrupt again. I daresay there may be one.
One, indeed, said the Dormouse indignantly. However, he consented to go on. And so these three little sisters, they were learning to draw, you know.
What did they draw, said Alice, quite forgetting her promise.
Treacle, said the Dormouse, without considering at all.
I want a clean cup, interrupted the Hatter. Let's all move one place on.
He moved on as he spoke, and the Dormouse followed him. The March Hare moved into the Dormouse's place, and Alice rather unwillingly took the place of the March Hare. The Hatter was the only one who got any advantage from the change, and Alice was a good deal worse off than before, as the March Hare had just upset the milk jug into its plate.
But I don't understand, Alice began very cautiously. Where did they draw the treacle from?
You can draw water out of a water well, said the Hatter, so I should think you could draw treacle out of a treacle well, eh, stupid?
But they were in the well, Alice said to the Dormouse.
Of course they were, said the Dormouse. Well in.
This answer so confused poor Alice, that she let the Dormouse go on for some time without interrupting it.
They were learning to draw, the Dormouse went on, yawning and rubbing its eyes, for it was getting very sleepy. And they drew all manner of things, everything that begins with an M.
Why with an M, said Alice.
Why not, said the March Hare.
Alice was silent.
The Dormouse had closed its eyes by this time, and was going off into a doze. But on being pinched by the Hatter, it woke up again with a little shriek, and went on. Such as mouse traps, and the moon, and memory, and muchness. You know you say things are much of a muchness. Did you ever see such a thing as a drawing of a muchness?
Really, now you ask me, said Alice, very much confused, I don't think.
Then you shouldn't talk, said the Hatter.
This piece of rudeness was more than Alice could bear. She got up in great disgust, and walked off. The Dormouse fell asleep instantly, and neither of the others took the least notice of her going, though she looked back once or twice, half hoping they would call after her. The last time she saw them, they were trying to put the Dormouse into the teapot.
And before you worry on his behalf, a teapot, to a dormouse, is very nearly a bedroom, round, and snug, and still warm, and he was asleep before the lid was on, dreaming of treacle.
At any rate I'll never go there again, said Alice, as she picked her way through the wood. It's the stupidest tea party I ever was at in all my life.
Just as she said this, she noticed that one of the trees had a door leading right into it. That's very curious, she thought. But everything's curious today. And in she went. Once more she found herself in the long hall, close to the little glass table. Now, I'll manage better this time, she said to herself, and began by taking the little golden key, first of all things, and unlocking the garden door. Then she nibbled the mushroom from her pocket till she was about a foot high, and walked down the little passage.
And then, at long last, after all the growing and the shrinking, she found herself in the beautiful garden, among the bright flower beds and the cool fountains. The air smelled of hundreds and hundreds of roses, and somewhere across the lawns there was music of a stately, unhurried kind, played for people who are in no rush to be anywhere. She had reached the loveliest place in the whole dream, by patience, and smallness, and remembering her key. The roses, you will notice, are white ones, just here by the entrance.
And three gardeners are painting them red.
Chapter Eight.

Painting the Roses Red.
A large rose tree stood near the entrance of the garden. The roses growing on it were white, but three gardeners were at it, busily painting them red, each with a pot of paint and a dripping brush, working with the particular haste of people doing a foolish thing thoroughly.
Alice went nearer to watch them, and here is the first thing she noticed, for it explains everything that follows. They were not men. They were playing cards. Living playing cards, flat and oblong, about her own height, with their hands and feet at the corners. These three were the Two, the Five, and the Seven of Spades, and the whole court and army and royal family of that garden were the rest of the pack, everyone in it exactly as dangerous as a hand of whist.
Look out now, Five, said one of the gardeners. Don't go splashing paint over me like that.
I couldn't help it, said Five, in a sulky tone. Seven jogged my elbow.
On which Seven looked up and said, that's right, Five. Always lay the blame on others.
You'd better not talk, said Five. I heard the Queen say only yesterday you deserved to be beheaded. And I'll tell you what for. It was for bringing the cook tulip roots instead of onions.
Seven flung down his brush, and had just begun, well, of all the unjust things, when his eye chanced to fall upon Alice, and he checked himself suddenly. The others looked round also, and all of them bowed low.
Would you tell me, said Alice, a little timidly, why you are painting those roses?
Five and Seven said nothing, but looked at Two. Two began in a low voice, why, the fact is, you see, Miss, this here ought to have been a red rose tree, and we put a white one in by mistake. And if the Queen was to find it out, we should all have our heads cut off. So you see, Miss, we're doing our best, afore she comes, to.
At this moment Five, who had been anxiously looking across the garden, called out, the Queen, the Queen, and the three gardeners instantly threw themselves flat upon their faces. There was a sound of many footsteps, and Alice looked round, eager to see her.
First came ten soldiers carrying clubs, oblong and flat like the gardeners. Next the ten courtiers, ornamented with diamonds. Then the ten royal children, jumping merrily along hand in hand, ornamented with hearts. Next the guests, mostly kings and queens, and among them the White Rabbit. Then the Knave of Hearts, carrying the King's crown on a crimson velvet cushion. And last of all, the King and Queen of Hearts.
Alice was rather doubtful whether she ought not to lie down on her face like the gardeners, but she could not remember ever having heard of such a rule at processions. And besides, what would be the use of a procession, thought she, if people had all to lie down upon their faces, so that they couldn't see it? So she stood where she was.
When the procession came opposite to Alice, they all stopped and looked at her, and the Queen said severely, who is this? She said it to the Knave of Hearts, who only bowed and smiled in reply.
Idiot, said the Queen, tossing her head impatiently, and turning to Alice, she went on, what's your name, child?
My name is Alice, so please your Majesty, said Alice very politely. But she added, to herself, why, they're only a pack of cards, after all. I needn't be afraid of them. Which is the wisest thought any child ever had in any dream.
And who are these, said the Queen, pointing to the three gardeners lying round the rose tree. For as they were lying on their faces, and the pattern on their backs was the same as the rest of the pack, she could not tell whether they were gardeners, soldiers, courtiers, or three of her own children.
How should I know, said Alice, surprised at her own courage. It's no business of mine.
The Queen turned crimson with fury, and, after glaring at her like a wild beast, screamed, off with her head. Off.
Nonsense, said Alice, very loudly and decidedly, and the Queen was silent. One small girl had said nonsense, and the storm simply stopped, because the word was true, and everyone knew it, the Queen included.
The King laid his hand upon her arm, and timidly said, consider, my dear. She is only a child.
The Queen turned angrily away from him, and said to the Knave, turn them over.
The Knave did so, very carefully, with one foot.
Get up, said the Queen, in a shrill, loud voice, and the three gardeners instantly jumped up, and began bowing to everybody in sight.
Leave off that, screamed the Queen. You make me giddy. And then, turning to the rose tree, she went on, what have you been doing here?
May it please your Majesty, said Two, in a very humble tone, going down on one knee, we were trying.
I see, said the Queen, who had meanwhile been examining the roses. Off with their heads. And the procession moved on, three of the soldiers remaining behind to take charge of the unfortunate gardeners, who ran to Alice for protection.
You shan't be beheaded, said Alice, and she put them into a large flower pot that stood near. The three soldiers wandered about for a minute or two, looking for them, and then quietly marched off after the rest.
Are their heads off, shouted the Queen.
Their heads are gone, if it please your Majesty, the soldiers shouted in reply.
That's right, shouted the Queen. Can you play croquet?
The soldiers were silent, and looked at Alice, as the question was evidently meant for her.
Yes, shouted Alice.
Come on, then, roared the Queen, and Alice joined the procession, wondering what would happen next. So the whole affair ended in a flower pot, and in three minutes it was forgotten, which was the usual life span of the Queen's thunder.
It's, it's a very fine day, said a timid voice at her side. She was walking by the White Rabbit, who was peeping anxiously into her face.
Very, said Alice. Where's the Duchess?
Hush, hush, said the Rabbit in a low, hurried tone, and it whispered, she's under sentence of execution. She boxed the Queen's ears. Alice gave a little scream of laughter. Oh, hush, the Rabbit whispered in a frightened tone. The Queen will hear you.
Get to your places, shouted the Queen in a voice of thunder, and people began running about in all directions, tumbling up against each other. However, they got settled down in a minute or two, and the game began. As for the Duchess and her sentence, you will see her again before long, entirely whole, and fonder of morals than ever.
Alice thought she had never seen such a curious croquet ground in her life. It was all ridges and furrows. The balls were live hedgehogs, the mallets live flamingoes, and the soldiers had to double themselves up, on their hands and feet, to make the arches.
The chief difficulty Alice found at first was in managing her flamingo. Just as she had got its neck nicely straightened out, and was going to give the hedgehog a blow with its head, it would twist itself round and look up in her face, with such a puzzled expression that she could not help bursting out laughing. And when she had got its head down again, it was very provoking to find that the hedgehog had unrolled itself, and was in the act of crawling away. Besides, the doubled up soldiers were always getting up and walking off, and Alice soon concluded that it was a very difficult game indeed.
The players all played at once without waiting for turns, quarrelling all the while, and fighting for the hedgehogs. In a very short time the Queen was in a furious passion, stamping about and shouting off with his head, or off with her head, about once in a minute, and the garden absorbed each shout the way a lawn absorbs a watering can, and grew, if anything, slightly greener.
Alice began to feel very uneasy, all the same. She had not yet had any dispute with the Queen, but she knew it might happen any minute. And then, thought she, what would become of me? They're dreadfully fond of beheading people here. The great wonder is, that there's anyone left alive. And there she answered her own question without noticing. Everyone was always left alive.
She was looking about for some way of escape, when she noticed a curious appearance in the air. After watching it a minute or two, she made it out to be a grin, and she said to herself, it's the Cheshire Cat. Now I shall have somebody to talk to.
How are you getting on, said the Cat, as soon as there was mouth enough for it to speak with.
Alice waited till the eyes appeared, and then nodded. It's no use speaking to it, she thought, till its ears have come, or at least one of them. In another minute the whole head appeared, and Alice put down her flamingo, and began an account of the game, very glad of a listener. The Cat seemed to think there was enough of it now in sight, and no more of it appeared.
I don't think they play at all fairly, Alice began, in rather a complaining tone. And they all quarrel so dreadfully one can't hear oneself speak. And they don't seem to have any rules in particular. At least, if there are, nobody attends to them. And you've no idea how confusing it is, all the things being alive. There's the arch I've got to go through next, walking about at the other end of the ground. And I should have croqueted the Queen's hedgehog just now, only it ran away when it saw mine coming.
How do you like the Queen, said the Cat in a low voice.
Not at all, said Alice. She's so extremely. Just then she noticed that the Queen was close behind her, listening. So she went on, likely to win, that it's hardly worth while finishing the game.
The Queen smiled and passed on.
Who are you talking to, said the King, coming up to Alice, and looking at the Cat's head with great curiosity.
It's a friend of mine, a Cheshire Cat, said Alice. Allow me to introduce it.
I don't like the look of it at all, said the King. However, it may kiss my hand if it likes.
I'd rather not, the Cat remarked.
Don't be impertinent, said the King, and don't look at me like that. He got behind Alice as he spoke.
A cat may look at a king, said Alice. I've read that in some book, but I don't remember where.
Well, it must be removed, said the King very decidedly, and he called the Queen, who was passing at the moment, my dear, I wish you would have this cat removed.
The Queen had only one way of settling difficulties, great or small. Off with his head, she said, without even looking round.
I'll fetch the executioner myself, said the King eagerly, and he hurried off.
Alice went back to see how the game was going on. Her hedgehog was engaged in a fight with another hedgehog, which seemed an excellent opportunity for croqueting one of them with the other. The only difficulty was, that her flamingo had gone across to the other side of the garden, trying in a helpless sort of way to fly up into a tree. By the time she had caught it, the fight was over, and both hedgehogs were out of sight. So she tucked it under her arm, and went back for a little more conversation with her friend.
When she got back to the Cheshire Cat, she was surprised to find quite a large crowd collected round it. A dispute was going on between the executioner, the King, and the Queen, who were all talking at once, while all the rest were quite silent, and looked very uncomfortable.
The moment Alice appeared, all three appealed to her to settle the question, though, as they all spoke at once, she found it very hard to make out what they said.
The executioner's argument was, that you couldn't cut off a head unless there was a body to cut it off from, that he had never had to do such a thing before, and wasn't going to begin at his time of life.
The King's argument was, that anything that had a head could be beheaded, and that you weren't to talk nonsense.
The Queen's argument was, that if something wasn't done about it in less than no time, she'd have everybody executed, all round. It was this last remark that made the whole party look so grave, though everybody had heard the same promise a hundred times before, and were all still in the best of health.
Alice could think of nothing else to say but, it belongs to the Duchess. You'd better ask her about it.
She's in prison, the Queen said to the executioner. Fetch her here. And the executioner went off like an arrow.
The Cat's head began fading the moment he was gone, and by the time he had come back with the Duchess, it had entirely disappeared. So the King and the executioner ran wildly up and down looking for it, while the rest went back to the game.
And that is how the great question of beheading a bodiless cat was settled, which is to say, not at all. It simply faded, smiling, into the warm air, the way, if you will let them, tonight's problems may too.
Chapter Nine.

The Mock Turtle's Story.
You can't think how glad I am to see you again, you dear old thing, said the Duchess, tucking her arm affectionately into Alice's, and they walked off together.
Alice was very glad to find her in such a pleasant temper, and thought that perhaps it was only the pepper that had made her so savage in the kitchen. When I'm a Duchess, she said to herself, I won't have any pepper in my kitchen at all. Maybe it's always pepper that makes people hot tempered, and vinegar that makes them sour, and barley sugar that makes children sweet. I only wish people knew that.
She had quite forgotten the Duchess, and was a little startled when she heard her voice close to her ear. You're thinking about something, my dear, and that makes you forget to talk. I can't tell you just now what the moral of that is, but I shall remember it in a bit.
Perhaps it hasn't one, Alice ventured to remark.
Tut, tut, child, said the Duchess. Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it. And she squeezed up closer to Alice's side.
Alice did not much like her keeping so close, for the Duchess was exactly the right height to rest her chin on Alice's shoulder, and it was an uncomfortably sharp chin. But she did not like to be rude, so she bore it.
The game's going on rather better now, she said, by way of conversation.
'Tis so, said the Duchess. And the moral of that is, oh, 'tis love, 'tis love, that makes the world go round.
Somebody said, Alice whispered, that it's done by everybody minding their own business.
Ah, well. It means much the same thing, said the Duchess, digging her sharp little chin into Alice's shoulder as she added, and the moral of that is, take care of the sense, and the sounds will take care of themselves.
How fond she is of finding morals in things, Alice thought to herself. And that last one happens to be the motto of this room.
I daresay you're wondering why I don't put my arm round your waist, the Duchess said after a pause. The reason is, that I'm doubtful about the temper of your flamingo. Shall I try the experiment?
He might bite, Alice cautiously replied, not at all anxious to have the experiment tried.
Very true, said the Duchess. Flamingoes and mustard both bite. And the moral of that is, birds of a feather flock together.
Only mustard isn't a bird, Alice remarked.
Right, as usual, said the Duchess. What a clear way you have of putting things.
It's a mineral, I think, said Alice.
Of course it is, said the Duchess, who seemed ready to agree to everything that Alice said. There's a large mustard mine near here. And the moral of that is, the more there is of mine, the less there is of yours.
Oh, I know, exclaimed Alice, who had not attended to this last remark. It's a vegetable. It doesn't look like one, but it is.
I quite agree with you, said the Duchess. And the moral of that is, be what you would seem to be, or, if you'd like it put more simply, never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.
I think I should understand that better, Alice said very politely, if I had it written down. But I can't quite follow it as you say it.
That's nothing to what I could say if I chose, the Duchess replied, in a pleased tone.
Pray don't trouble yourself to say it any longer than that, said Alice.
Oh, don't talk about trouble, said the Duchess. I make you a present of everything I've said as yet.
A cheap sort of present, thought Alice. I'm glad they don't give birthday presents like that.
Thinking again, the Duchess asked, with another dig of her sharp little chin.
I've a right to think, said Alice sharply, for she was beginning to feel a little worried.
Just about as much right, said the Duchess, as pigs have to fly. And the m.
But here, to Alice's great surprise, the Duchess's voice died away, even in the middle of her favourite word moral, and the arm that was linked into hers began to tremble. Alice looked up, and there stood the Queen, arms folded, frowning like a thunderstorm.
A fine day, your Majesty, the Duchess began in a low, weak voice.
Now, I give you fair warning, shouted the Queen, stamping on the ground as she spoke. Either you or your head must be off, and that in about half no time. Take your choice.
The Duchess took her choice, and was gone in a moment, head and all, at a comfortable trot, and you may be sure both parts of her arrived home together.
Let's go on with the game, the Queen said to Alice, and Alice was too much frightened to say a word, but slowly followed her back to the croquet ground.
The other guests had taken advantage of the Queen's absence to rest in the shade, but the moment they saw her, they hurried back, the Queen merely remarking that a moment's delay would cost them their lives, which cost them, in the event, nothing at all, as usual.
All the time they were playing the Queen never left off quarrelling with the other players, and shouting off with his head, or off with her head. Those whom she sentenced were taken into custody by the soldiers, who had to leave off being arches to do it, so that in half an hour or so there were no arches left, and all the players, except the King, the Queen, and Alice, were in custody and under sentence of execution.
Then the Queen left off, quite out of breath, and said to Alice, have you seen the Mock Turtle yet?
No, said Alice. I don't even know what a Mock Turtle is.
It's the thing Mock Turtle Soup is made from, said the Queen. Come on, then, and he shall tell you his history.
As they walked off, Alice heard the King say in a low voice, to the company generally, you are all pardoned. Come, that's a good thing, she said to herself. And there is the trick of that garden laid bare. The King said it every day, the moment his wife's back was turned, and the whole garden knew the arrangement by heart. Nobody was ever executed in that country.
They very soon came upon a Gryphon, lying fast asleep in the sun, a creature with the head and wings of an eagle and the body of a lion, sprawled on its back in the warm grass with all four paws in the air, doing nothing whatever, magnificently.
Up, lazy thing, said the Queen, and take this young lady to see the Mock Turtle, and to hear his history. I must go back and see after some executions I have ordered. And she walked off, leaving Alice with the Gryphon. Alice did not quite like the look of the creature, but on the whole she thought it quite as safe to stay as to go after that savage Queen.
The Gryphon sat up and rubbed its eyes, watched the Queen till she was out of sight, and chuckled. What fun, said the Gryphon, half to itself, half to Alice.
What is the fun, said Alice.
Why, she, said the Gryphon. It's all her fancy, that. They never executes nobody, you know. Come on.
And those are the safest words in the whole old book. Keep the sentence, grammar and all, for those nights when some loud voice has been shouting sentences over your head all day. They never executes nobody. Come on.
Everybody says come on here, thought Alice, as she went slowly after it. I never was so ordered about in all my life, never.
They had not gone far before they saw the Mock Turtle in the distance, sitting sad and lonely on a little ledge of rock, sighing as if his heart would break. Alice pitied him deeply. What is his sorrow, she asked the Gryphon. And the Gryphon answered, very nearly in the same words as before, it's all his fancy, that. He hasn't got no sorrow, you know. Come on.
So they went up to the Mock Turtle, who looked at them with large eyes full of tears, but said nothing.
This here young lady, said the Gryphon, she wants for to know your history, she do.
I'll tell it her, said the Mock Turtle in a deep, hollow tone. Sit down, both of you, and don't speak a word till I've finished.
So they sat down, and nobody spoke for some minutes. I don't see how he can ever finish, thought Alice, if he doesn't begin. But she waited.
Once, said the Mock Turtle at last, with a deep sigh, I was a real Turtle.
These words were followed by a very long silence, broken only by an occasional exclamation of hjckrrh from the Gryphon, and the constant heavy sobbing of the Mock Turtle. Alice very nearly got up and said, thank you, sir, for your interesting story, but she felt sure there must be more to come, so she sat still.
When we were little, the Mock Turtle went on at last, more calmly, though still sobbing now and then, we went to school in the sea. The master was an old Turtle. We used to call him Tortoise.
Why did you call him Tortoise, if he wasn't one, Alice asked.
We called him Tortoise because he taught us, said the Mock Turtle angrily. Really you are very dull.
You ought to be ashamed of yourself for asking such a simple question, added the Gryphon. And they both sat silent and looked at poor Alice, who felt ready to sink into the earth. At last the Gryphon said to the Mock Turtle, drive on, old fellow. Don't be all day about it. And he went on.
Yes, we went to school in the sea, though you mayn't believe it.
I never said I didn't, interrupted Alice.
You did, said the Mock Turtle.
Hold your tongue, added the Gryphon. The Mock Turtle went on.
We had the best of educations. In fact, we went to school every day.
I've been to a day school, too, said Alice. You needn't be so proud as all that.
With extras, asked the Mock Turtle, a little anxiously.
Yes, said Alice. We learned French and music.
And washing, said the Mock Turtle.
Certainly not, said Alice indignantly.
Ah, then yours wasn't a really good school, said the Mock Turtle in a tone of great relief. Now at ours they had at the end of the bill, French, music, and washing, extra.
You couldn't have wanted it much, said Alice, living at the bottom of the sea.
I couldn't afford to learn it, said the Mock Turtle with a sigh. I only took the regular course.
What was that, inquired Alice.
Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with, the Mock Turtle replied. And then the different branches of Arithmetic. Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.
I never heard of Uglification, Alice ventured to say. What is it?
The Gryphon lifted up both its paws in surprise. What, never heard of uglifying, it exclaimed. You know what to beautify is, I suppose.
Yes, said Alice doubtfully. It means, to, make, anything, prettier.
Well, then, the Gryphon went on, if you don't know what to uglify is, you are a simpleton.
Alice did not feel encouraged to ask more, so she turned to the Mock Turtle, and said, what else had you to learn?
Well, there was Mystery, the Mock Turtle replied, counting off the subjects on his flappers. Mystery, ancient and modern, with Seaography. Then Drawling. The Drawling master was an old conger eel, that came once a week, and taught us Drawling, Stretching, and Fainting in Coils.
What was that like, said Alice.
Well, I can't show it you myself, the Mock Turtle said. I'm too stiff. And the Gryphon never learnt it.
Hadn't time, said the Gryphon. I went to the Classics master, though. He was an old crab, he was.
I never went to him, the Mock Turtle said with a sigh. He taught Laughing and Grief, they used to say.
So he did, so he did, said the Gryphon, sighing in his turn, and both creatures hid their faces in their paws.
And how many hours a day did you do lessons, said Alice, in a hurry to change the subject.
Ten hours the first day, said the Mock Turtle. Nine the next, and so on.
What a curious plan, exclaimed Alice.
That's the reason they're called lessons, the Gryphon remarked. Because they lessen from day to day.
This was quite a new idea to Alice, and she thought it over a little. Then the eleventh day must have been a holiday?
Of course it was, said the Mock Turtle.
And how did you manage on the twelfth, Alice went on eagerly.
That's enough about lessons, the Gryphon interrupted in a very decided tone. Tell her something about the games now.
And notice what has happened on that little ledge of rock. A creature who was sighing as if his heart would break has spent this whole visit correcting his guests and boasting about his schooling, and has not sobbed properly in several minutes. That is what the Gryphon knew. Some sorrows are worn half for the company they bring, and the cure is somebody new to tell your history to, while the sun goes down the sea.
Chapter Ten.

The Lobster Quadrille, and Who Stole the Tarts.
You may not have lived much under the sea, the Mock Turtle said, and perhaps you were never even introduced to a lobster, so you can have no idea what a delightful thing a Lobster Quadrille is. No, indeed, said Alice. What sort of a dance is it?
Why, said the Gryphon, you first form into a line along the seashore.
Two lines, cried the Mock Turtle. Seals, turtles, salmon, and so on. Then, when you've cleared all the jellyfish out of the way.
That generally takes some time, interrupted the Gryphon.
You advance twice.
Each with a lobster as a partner, cried the Gryphon.
Of course, the Mock Turtle said. Advance twice, set to partners.
Change lobsters, and retire in same order, continued the Gryphon.
Then, you know, the Mock Turtle went on, you throw the.
The lobsters, shouted the Gryphon, with a bound into the air.
As far out to sea as you can.
Swim after them, screamed the Gryphon.
Turn a somersault in the sea, cried the Mock Turtle, capering wildly about.
Change lobsters again, yelled the Gryphon.
Back to land again, and that's all the first figure, said the Mock Turtle, suddenly dropping his voice. And the two creatures, who had been jumping about like mad things, sat down again very sadly and quietly, and looked at Alice.
It must be a very pretty dance, said Alice timidly.
Would you like to see a little of it, said the Mock Turtle.
Very much indeed, said Alice.
Come, let's try the first figure, said the Mock Turtle to the Gryphon. We can do without lobsters, you know. Which shall sing? Oh, you sing, said the Gryphon. I've forgotten the words.
So they began solemnly dancing round and round Alice, treading on her toes when they passed too close, waving their forepaws to mark the time, while the Mock Turtle sang, very slowly and sadly, a song about a whiting and a snail.
Will you walk a little faster, said a whiting to a snail. There's a porpoise close behind us, and he's treading on my tail. See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance. They are waiting on the shingle. Will you come and join the dance? Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance? Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the dance?
You can really have no notion how delightful it will be, when they take us up and throw us, with the lobsters, out to sea. But the snail replied, too far, too far, and gave a look askance, said he thanked the whiting kindly, but he would not join the dance. Would not, could not, would not, could not, would not join the dance.
What matters it how far we go, his scaly friend replied. There is another shore, you know, upon the other side. The further off from England the nearer is to France. Then turn not pale, beloved snail, but come and join the dance. Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance? Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the dance?
And round and round they went, solemn as churchwardens, while the song swayed back and forth like water in a bay, asking its one question over and over. You may, you needn't. The dance goes on either way.
Thank you, it's a very interesting dance to watch, said Alice, very glad that it was over at last.
They then wanted her to repeat something in her turn, and she stood up to recite 'Tis the voice of the sluggard, but her head was so full of the Lobster Quadrille that the words came very queer indeed. 'Tis the voice of the Lobster, she heard herself say. I heard him declare, you have baked me too brown, I must sugar my hair.
That's different from what I used to say when I was a child, said the Gryphon. Well, I never heard it before, said the Mock Turtle, but it sounds uncommon nonsense. Alice said nothing. She had sat down with her face in her hands, wondering if anything would ever happen in a natural way again.
Would you like the Mock Turtle to sing you a song, the Gryphon went on.
Oh, a song, please, if the Mock Turtle would be so kind, Alice replied, so eagerly that the Gryphon said, in a rather offended tone, hm. No accounting for tastes. Sing her Turtle Soup, old fellow.
The Mock Turtle sighed deeply, and began, in a voice sometimes choked with sobs, to sing. Beautiful soup, so rich and green, waiting in a hot tureen. Who for such dainties would not stoop? Soup of the evening, beautiful soup. And at the chorus he stretched the words out long and slow, the way toffee is pulled, beautiful, beautiful soup, until the song was less a song than a ladle moving slowly round a pot, and everyone on that shore swayed along with it.
Chorus again, cried the Gryphon, and the Mock Turtle had just begun to repeat it, when a cry of, the trial's beginning, was heard in the distance.
Come on, cried the Gryphon, and, taking Alice by the hand, it hurried off without waiting for the end of the song.
What trial is it, Alice panted as she ran. But the Gryphon only answered, come on, and ran the faster, while fainter and fainter behind them came the melancholy words, soup of the evening, beautiful, beautiful soup.
The King and Queen of Hearts were seated on their throne when they arrived, with a great crowd assembled about them, all sorts of little birds and beasts, as well as the whole pack of cards. The Knave stood before them, in chains, with a soldier on each side. Near the King was the White Rabbit, with a trumpet in one hand, and a scroll of parchment in the other. In the very middle of the court was a table, with a large dish of tarts upon it, which looked so good that it made Alice quite hungry. I wish they'd get the trial done, she thought, and hand round the refreshments.
This is the last scene of the dream, and it is the silliest, and the safest. The prisoner is a playing card. The judge is a playing card. The evidence is a plate of jam tarts, not even nibbled.
The judge, by the way, was the King, and as he wore his crown over his great wig, he did not look at all comfortable.
And that's the jury box, thought Alice, and those twelve creatures, some of them animals, and some birds, I suppose they are the jurors. She said this last word two or three times over to herself, being rather proud of it, for she thought, and rightly, that very few little girls of her age knew the meaning of it at all.
The twelve jurors were all writing very busily on slates. What are they doing, Alice whispered to the Gryphon. They can't have anything to put down yet, before the trial's begun.
They're putting down their names, the Gryphon whispered, for fear they should forget them before the trial ends.
Stupid things, Alice began in a loud, indignant voice, but she stopped hastily, for the White Rabbit cried out, silence in the court, and the King put on his spectacles and looked anxiously round, to make out who was talking.
Alice could see, as well as if she were looking over their shoulders, that all the jurors were writing down stupid things on their slates, and one of them didn't know how to spell stupid, and had to ask his neighbour. A nice muddle their slates will be in before the trial's over, thought Alice.
One of the jurors had a pencil that squeaked. This of course Alice could not stand, and she went round the court, got behind him, and very soon took it away. She did it so quickly that the poor little juror, and it was Bill, the Lizard, our own Bill, of the chimney, could not make out what had become of it, and was obliged to write with one finger, which was of very little use, as it left no mark on the slate. But Bill did not seem to mind. He wrote on serenely, recording nothing, at peace.
Herald, read the accusation, said the King.
On this the White Rabbit blew three blasts on the trumpet, unrolled the parchment scroll, and read as follows. The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts, all on a summer day. The Knave of Hearts, he stole those tarts, and took them quite away.
Consider your verdict, the King said to the jury.
Not yet, not yet, the Rabbit hastily interrupted. There's a great deal to come before that.
Call the first witness, said the King. And the White Rabbit blew three blasts on the trumpet, and called, first witness.
The first witness was the Hatter. He came in with a teacup in one hand and a piece of bread and butter in the other. I beg pardon, your Majesty, he began, for bringing these in, but I hadn't quite finished my tea when I was sent for.
You ought to have finished, said the King. When did you begin?
The Hatter looked at the March Hare, who had followed him into the court, arm in arm with the Dormouse. Fourteenth of March, I think it was, he said.
Fifteenth, said the March Hare.
Sixteenth, added the Dormouse.
Write that down, the King said to the jury. And the jury eagerly wrote down all three dates, added them up, and reduced the answer to shillings and pence.
Take off your hat, the King said to the Hatter.
It isn't mine, said the Hatter.
Stolen, the King exclaimed, turning to the jury, who instantly made a memorandum of the fact.
I keep them to sell, the Hatter added as an explanation. I've none of my own. I'm a hatter.
Give your evidence, said the King, and don't be nervous, or I'll have you executed on the spot. Which was the way judges said good morning in that country, the words being as empty as the Hatter's borrowed hat.
This did not seem to encourage the witness at all. He kept shifting from one foot to the other, looking uneasily at the Queen, and in his confusion bit a large piece out of his teacup instead of the bread and butter.
Just at this moment Alice felt a very curious sensation. She was beginning to grow larger again, and she thought at first she would get up and leave the court, but on second thoughts she decided to remain as long as there was room for her.
I wish you wouldn't squeeze so, said the Dormouse, who was sitting next to her. I can hardly breathe.
I can't help it, said Alice very meekly. I'm growing.
You've no right to grow here, said the Dormouse.
Don't talk nonsense, said Alice more boldly. You know you're growing too.
Yes, but I grow at a reasonable pace, said the Dormouse, not in that ridiculous fashion. And he got up very sulkily and crossed to the other side of the court, where he curled up and went back to sleep.
Give your evidence, the King repeated angrily, or I'll have you executed, whether you're nervous or not.
I'm a poor man, your Majesty, the Hatter began, in a trembling voice, and I hadn't but just begun my tea, not above a week or so, and what with the bread and butter getting so thin, and the twinkling of the tea.
The twinkling of the what, said the King.
It began with the tea, the Hatter replied.
Of course twinkling begins with a T, said the King sharply. Do you take me for a dunce? Go on.
I'm a poor man, the Hatter went on, and most things twinkled after that, only the March Hare said.
I didn't, the March Hare interrupted in a great hurry.
You did, said the Hatter.
I deny it, said the March Hare.
He denies it, said the King. Leave out that part.
Well, at any rate, the Dormouse said, the Hatter went on, looking anxiously round to see if he would deny it too. But the Dormouse denied nothing, being fast asleep.
After that, continued the Hatter, I cut some more bread and butter.
But what did the Dormouse say, one of the jury asked.
That I can't remember, said the Hatter.
You must remember, remarked the King, or I'll have you executed.
The miserable Hatter dropped his teacup and bread and butter, and went down on one knee. I'm a poor man, your Majesty, he began.
You're a very poor speaker, said the King.
Here one of the guinea pigs cheered, and was immediately suppressed by the officers of the court. As that is rather a hard word, I will explain how it was done, exactly as the old book explains it. They had a large canvas bag, which tied up at the mouth with strings. Into this they slipped the guinea pig, head first, and then sat upon it. And the guinea pig made no complaint, a canvas bag being dark, and soft, and not a bad place to spend a warm afternoon.
I'm glad I've seen that done, thought Alice. I've so often read in the newspapers, at the end of trials, there was some attempt at applause, which was immediately suppressed by the officers of the court, and I never understood what it meant till now.
If that's all you know about it, you may stand down, continued the King.
I can't go no lower, said the Hatter. I'm on the floor, as it is.
Then you may sit down, the King replied.
Here the other guinea pig cheered, and was suppressed. Come, that finishes the guinea pigs, thought Alice. Now we shall get on better.
I'd rather finish my tea, said the Hatter, with an anxious look at the Queen, who was reading the list of singers.
You may go, said the King. And the Hatter hurriedly left the court, without even waiting to put his shoes on.
And just take his head off outside, the Queen added to one of the officers. But the Hatter was out of sight before the officer could get to the door, and the officer, who had been sent on that errand two hundred times and had never once caught anybody, strolled to the doorway and strolled back, duty done.
Call the next witness, said the King.
The next witness was the Duchess's cook. She carried the pepper box, and Alice guessed who it was before she got into the court, by the way the people near the door all began sneezing at once.
Give your evidence, said the King.
Shan't, said the cook.
The King looked anxiously at the White Rabbit, who said in a low voice, your Majesty must cross examine this witness.
Well, if I must, I must, the King said with a melancholy air, and after folding his arms and frowning at the cook till his eyes were nearly out of sight, he said in a deep voice, what are tarts made of?
Pepper, mostly, said the cook.
Treacle, said a sleepy voice behind her.
Collar that Dormouse, the Queen shrieked out. Behead that Dormouse. Turn that Dormouse out of court. Suppress him. Pinch him. Off with his whiskers.
The whole court was in confusion, getting the Dormouse turned out, and it was done with great gentleness in the end, two of the birds carrying him out like a small furry parcel, still asleep, whiskers intact, to a warm bank where he slept on in the sun, missing everything. And by the time the court had settled down again, the cook had disappeared.
Never mind, said the King, with great relief. Call the next witness. And he added in an undertone to the Queen, really, my dear, you must cross examine the next one. It quite makes my forehead ache.
Alice watched the White Rabbit fumble over the list. For they haven't got much evidence yet, she said to herself. Imagine her surprise, when the White Rabbit read out, at the top of his shrill little voice, the name, Alice.
Chapter Eleven.

Alice's Evidence, and a Pack of Cards.
Here, cried Alice, quite forgetting in the flurry of the moment how large she had grown, and she jumped up in such a hurry that she tipped over the jury box with the edge of her skirt, upsetting all the jurors on to the heads of the crowd below, where they lay sprawling about, reminding her of a globe of goldfish she had accidentally upset the week before.
Oh, I beg your pardon, she exclaimed in great dismay, and began picking them up again as quickly as she could, for she had a vague idea that they must be put back at once, or they would die. They were not goldfish, of course. They were a dream's jurors, and a softer landing was never had, for they came down on hats and wigs and cushions, and the whole business hurt exactly nobody.
The trial cannot proceed, said the King in a very grave voice, until all the jurymen are back in their proper places. All, he repeated with great emphasis, looking hard at Alice.
Alice looked at the jury box, and saw that, in her haste, she had put the Lizard in head downwards, and the poor little thing was waving its tail about in a melancholy way, quite unable to move. She soon got it out and put it right. Not that it signifies much, she said to herself. It would be quite as much use in the trial one way up as the other. And Bill, the right way up once more, gave her a small grateful nod, and took up writing nothing with his finger again, contentedly, as before.
As soon as the jury had recovered, and their slates and pencils had been handed back, they set to work very diligently to write out a history of the accident, all except the Lizard, who could do nothing but sit with its mouth open, gazing up into the roof of the court.
What do you know about this business, the King said to Alice.
Nothing, said Alice.
Nothing whatever, persisted the King.
Nothing whatever, said Alice.
That's very important, the King said, turning to the jury. They were just beginning to write this down on their slates, when the White Rabbit interrupted. Unimportant, your Majesty means, of course, he said in a very respectful tone, but frowning and making faces at him as he spoke.
Unimportant, of course, I meant, the King hastily said, and went on to himself in an undertone, important, unimportant, unimportant, important, as if he were trying which word sounded best. Some of the jury wrote it down important, and some unimportant. But it doesn't matter a bit, thought Alice. And she was righter than she knew. Important, unimportant. Said softly over, they rock, like a boat.
At this moment the King, who had been busily writing in his notebook, called out, silence, and read from his book, Rule Forty Two. All persons more than a mile high to leave the court.
Everybody looked at Alice.
I'm not a mile high, said Alice.
You are, said the King.
Nearly two miles high, added the Queen.
Well, I shan't go, at any rate, said Alice. Besides, that's not a regular rule. You invented it just now.
It's the oldest rule in the book, said the King.
Then it ought to be Number One, said Alice.
The King turned pale, and shut his notebook hastily. Consider your verdict, he said to the jury, in a low, trembling voice.
There's more evidence to come yet, please your Majesty, said the White Rabbit, jumping up in a hurry. This paper has just been picked up.
What's in it, said the Queen.
I haven't opened it yet, said the White Rabbit, but it seems to be a letter, written by the prisoner to, to somebody.
It must have been that, said the King, unless it was written to nobody, which isn't usual, you know.
Who is it directed to, said one of the jurymen.
It isn't directed at all, said the White Rabbit. In fact, there's nothing written on the outside. He unfolded the paper as he spoke, and added, it isn't a letter, after all. It's a set of verses.
Are they in the prisoner's handwriting, asked another of the jurymen.
No, they're not, said the White Rabbit, and that's the queerest thing about it. The jury looked puzzled.
He must have imitated somebody else's hand, said the King. The jury all brightened up again.
Please your Majesty, said the Knave, I didn't write it, and they can't prove I did. There's no name signed at the end.
If you didn't sign it, said the King, that only makes the matter worse. You must have meant some mischief, or else you'd have signed your name like an honest man.
There was a general clapping of hands. It was the first really clever thing the King had said all day, and the whole court was pleased for him, the way a family is pleased when the slowest uncle wins a hand at last.
That proves his guilt, said the Queen.
It proves nothing of the sort, said Alice. Why, you don't even know what they're about.
Read them, said the King.
The White Rabbit put on his spectacles. Where shall I begin, please your Majesty, he asked.
Begin at the beginning, the King said gravely, and go on till you come to the end. Then stop.
And that may be the piece of the old book this room loves best, for it is the whole of the art of falling asleep. Begin at the beginning. Go on till you come to the end. Then stop.
There was dead silence in the court whilst the White Rabbit read out these verses.
They told me you had been to her, and mentioned me to him. She gave me a good character, but said I could not swim. He sent them word I had not gone, we know it to be true. If she should push the matter on, what would become of you? I gave her one, they gave him two, you gave us three or more. They all returned from him to you, though they were mine before.
There were more verses, each exactly as clear as those, which is to say, clear the way deep water is clear, all the way down to nothing. Pronouns without people. Errands without ends. And the court listened to them with enormous respect.
That's the most important piece of evidence we've heard yet, said the King, rubbing his hands. So now let the jury.
If any one of them can explain it, said Alice, who had grown so large by now that she wasn't a bit afraid of interrupting him, I'll give him sixpence. I don't believe there's an atom of meaning in it.
The jury all wrote down on their slates, she doesn't believe there's an atom of meaning in it, but none of them attempted to explain the paper.
If there's no meaning in it, said the King, that saves a world of trouble, you know, as we needn't try to find any. And yet I don't know, he went on, spreading the verses out on his knee. I seem to see some meaning in them, after all. Said I could not swim. You can't swim, can you, he added, turning to the Knave.
The Knave shook his head sadly. Do I look like it, he said. Which he certainly did not, being made entirely of cardboard.
All right, so far, said the King, and he went on muttering over the verses, finding a meaning here and losing it there, while the afternoon light came slanting in, and Alice felt herself growing again, quietly, steadily, the way a tide comes in, or a sleeper rises toward morning.
Let the jury consider their verdict, the King said, for about the twentieth time that day.
No, no, said the Queen. Sentence first, verdict afterwards.
Stuff and nonsense, said Alice loudly. The idea of having the sentence first.
Hold your tongue, said the Queen, turning purple.
I won't, said Alice.
Off with her head, the Queen shouted at the top of her voice.
Nobody moved.
Who cares for you, said Alice. She had grown to her full size by this time. You're nothing but a pack of cards.
And there it was at last, spoken out loud, the thing she had known since she arrived in the garden. They were only a pack of cards, after all.
At this the whole pack rose up into the air, and came flying down upon her.
And even this, the last and loudest thing the dream ever did, was gentle, for a playing card in flight is only a stiff sort of leaf, and by the time they reached her they were leaves indeed, dry ones, gold and brown, drifting and settling. She gave a little scream, half of fright and half of anger, and tried to beat them off, and found herself lying on the bank, with her head in the lap of her sister, who was gently brushing away some dead leaves that had fluttered down from the trees upon her face.
That is the whole distance between Wonderland and home. The width of a falling leaf.
Wake up, Alice dear, said her sister. Why, what a long sleep you've had.
Oh, I've had such a curious dream, said Alice. And she told her sister, as well as she could remember them, all these strange adventures you have just been hearing about. The rabbit, the pool, the caterpillar, the grin, the tea table, the garden, the trial. And when she had finished, her sister kissed her, and said, it was a curious dream, dear, certainly. But now run in to your tea. It's getting late.
So Alice got up and ran off, thinking as she ran, what a wonderful dream it had been. And the light was long and low across the meadow, and the river had gone the color of the inside of a shell, and the wood pigeon was still saying its one soft thing, as if no time had passed at all. And in that house, presently, there would be tea, and a saucer of milk for Dinah, and a small girl talking nineteen to the dozen about a dormouse in a teapot. And then, by and by, a bath, and a bed, and the end of one of the great days of a life. They do not announce themselves, the great days. They end in tea, like the others.
Chapter Twelve.

Goodnight. And the Lamp at the Edge of Morning.
But her sister sat still just as Alice left her, leaning her head on her hand, watching the setting sun, and thinking of little Alice and all her wonderful adventures, till she too began dreaming after a fashion.
She dreamed of Wonderland without ever leaving the bank. She heard, or thought she heard, the long grass rustle at her feet as the White Rabbit hurried by, and the rattle of the teacups as the March Hare and his friends shared their never ending meal, and the shrill voice of the Queen ordering off her unfortunate guests to execution, which never once was carried out. Once more the pig baby was sneezing on the Duchess's knee, while plates and dishes crashed all around it and struck nothing, and the squeak of the Lizard's slate pencil filled the air, mixed with the distant sobs of the Mock Turtle, who had, as we know on good authority, no sorrow at all.
So she sat on, with closed eyes, and half believed herself in Wonderland, though she knew she had but to open them again, and all would change to dull reality. The rattling teacups would change to tinkling sheep bells, and the Queen's shrill cries to the voice of the shepherd boy, while the lowing of the cattle in the distance would take the place of the Mock Turtle's heavy sobs.
Only she did not open her eyes. Not just yet. And neither need you.
It is worth knowing what that sister understood, which is that the two worlds are made of each other. Sheep bells on one side, teacups on the other, and nothing is lost in the exchange, ever, going either way. That is all a dream is. The day, told again, by a kinder teller.
Lastly, she pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers would, in the after time, be herself a grown woman. And how she would keep, through all her riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood. And how she would gather about her other little children, and make their eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long ago, remembering her own child life, and the happy summer days.
Hold that a moment, before the lamp goes low. It is the last page of the old book, explaining itself. A dream, dreamed on a riverbank, kept safe for years, and then lit again, like a lamp, for other children at other bedtimes. That is what is happening in this room tonight.
And now the dusk comes down over the meadow, and over the dream under it.
The meadow cools first. The bees went home long ago. The daisies close, one by one, unpicked, entirely content. The river takes the last of the pink out of the sky and carries it away west, slowly, without spilling any.
And down the rabbit hole, all that long warm way down, Wonderland is going to bed.
The hall of lamps burns low. The little golden key lies on the glass table, and the little door stands open now, with the smell of roses coming through. The pool of tears has gone smooth as a looking glass, and holds one star. Somewhere on the shore a thimble is kept, very carefully, in a nest.
The Caterpillar's mushroom stands empty under the moon, one side and the other side exactly as mysterious as before. Above the wood, the Pigeon sleeps deep among her eggs, and not a serpent in the sky anywhere, all night.
At the March Hare's house it is six o'clock, as it always is, forever teatime, but even a stopped clock rests. The tea has gone cool in the cups. The March Hare sleeps with his ears crossed. The Hatter sleeps in his chair with his hat tipped down over his eyes. And between them, in the teapot, in the warm dark, the Dormouse sleeps the sleep he has been practicing all his life, and if you listen you can hear him breathing there, in and out, in and out, the small tide of him, going all night.
In the garden the croquet is over. The flamingoes stand asleep on one leg apiece, folded up like pink umbrellas. The hedgehogs have wandered away into the flowerbeds, every one of them uncroqueted and glad of it. The roses are half white and half red, and nobody minds anymore, and nobody ever really minded. Far off, on his ledge by the sea, the Mock Turtle has sobbed himself into an entirely comfortable sleep, and the sea keeps him company, sighing beautifully, on and on, like soup.
And the cards are gathered up. All fifty two of them, counted and complete, the gardeners and the soldiers, the courtiers and the children, the Knave, quite pardoned, with the tarts beside him, not a crumb of them ever missing, and the King, and the Queen. Squared into a pack, and slid into their box, and set on the shelf. And the Queen of Hearts sleeps in the middle of the deck like everyone else, flat, and quiet, and harmless, dreaming, we may suppose, of roses that were red to begin with.
Last of all, the grin. It hangs a while over the dark garden, the way the first sliver of the moon hangs over a hedge, requiring nothing of anybody. It watches the whole sleeping country with perfect approval, and then it thins, and softens, and goes out, exactly like a lamp at the edge of morning.
And in England, in the real house, the curtains are drawn. Dinah is a warmth at the foot of the bed. And Alice is asleep, of course, in her own bed, with her lessons unlearned and her daisies unpicked, gone back down, perhaps, easily, the way you will go, to where the boats are slow and the tea is endless and the fall never lands. The river runs all night past the bottom of the meadow. It has heard the whole story. It tells it over, very quietly, to the reeds, and the reeds nod.
The storyteller closes the book, but slowly, the way a door is closed on a sleeping house.
The lamp is turned low.
Whatever became of them after, they are safe now, and so are you.
The lantern will be lit again. There are more tales in the old book than there are nights in a year.
Goodnight.