Fairy Tale Sleep Stories · 11 Hour Compilation Part 2 · Sleeping Beauty to the Moon Princess Kaguya

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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 a castle wrapped in roses, where a spindle hums at the top of a winding stair, and a princess called Briar Rose, and her cooks, and her horses, and the very fire on her hearth, all lie down together to sleep for a hundred years.
And there is no hurry at all as she begins.
Settle in now. Let the chair hold you, and let the blanket be heavy in the good way, the way snow is heavy on a roof that has nothing to do until spring. Tonight of all nights you are in the right room, because tonight's tale is about sleep itself, the deepest and safest sleep in any storybook, and no one in this story is hurt by it, and no one in this room will be either.
Close your eyes, if they want to close. You do not have to watch. You do not have to follow every word, and you do not have to remember any of it in the morning. This story has been finding its own way through the dark for three hundred years. It does not need your help. It only needs your company, and it will keep yours in return, all the way down.
And if you drift, drift. The tale will go on without you, quietly, past the roses and up the stair, and it will not mind at all. In this story, falling asleep before the ending is not missing the point. It is joining in.
Chapter One.

The Wish by the Water.
Long ago, and far from here, there was a kingdom that had nearly everything.
It was a green country of low hills and patient rivers, with a deep wood along its northern edge and a coast of pale sand in the south that nobody important had ever bothered to fight over. The barley grew. The bees did well. The roads were safe enough that tinkers slept beside them with their boots off. It was the kind of kingdom that mapmakers tended to draw a little larger than it really was, simply because they had been happy there.
In the middle of that country, on a hill above a river, stood a castle with round towers and a roof of blue slate, and in the castle lived a king and a queen who were, by every measure a kingdom keeps, good at their work. The king was fair in his judgments and slow in his tempers. The queen remembered the names of the gardeners' children. When they rode out together, people did not bow because they had to. They looked up from the hay and waved.
And yet, in the quietest room of that castle, there was a sorrow, the small private kind, the kind that even kings and queens must carry the same as anyone.
They had no child.
Every day they said to one another, ah, if only we had a child. The old book tells it exactly that way, every day, and if you have ever wished for one thing for years together, you will know how a wish like that wears a path in a person, the way sheep wear a path across a hillside, gently, by going the same way every day.
The queen did her wishing by the water.
Below the castle garden there was a pool, fed by a spring, ringed with flat warm stones, and the queen went there in the summer evenings to bathe and to be nobody in particular for an hour. The water was clear as good glass. Dragonflies stitched back and forth across it. And the queen would float there in the low gold light, listening to the castle bells above her and the frogs in the reeds around her, and she would let her one wish rest on the surface of the water beside her like a leaf.
And one evening, out of the reeds, a frog came swimming.
It was a very ordinary frog to look at, green as a bottle, with those calm gold eyes frogs keep, that seem to have watched the world since before there were words for it. It swam a slow circle around the queen, in no hurry, the way everything in this story is in no hurry, and then it rested its small hands on a warm flat stone, and it spoke.
Your wish shall be fulfilled, said the frog. Before a year has gone by, you shall bring a daughter into the world.
That was all. No bargain. No conditions. No riddle to solve by midnight. Some gifts in old stories come with strings, but this one came the way the best things come, freely, out of still water, at the end of an ordinary day.
The queen held very still, the way you hold still when a wild thing has chosen to trust you. And by the time she had found any words at all, the frog had slipped off its stone, made one soft ring on the surface of the pool, and gone down into the dark green quiet to be a frog again.
The queen walked back up to the castle barefoot, carrying her shoes.
She told no one at first. A promise from a frog is a delicate thing to explain at court. But she carried it inside her all that autumn like a coal carried in a clay pot, warming her from a place no weather could reach, and when the winter came, she found she was not afraid of it, and when the spring came, the frog's word came true.
A daughter was born, in the season when the roses first open, and the old book says she was so beautiful that the king could not contain himself for joy.
That is worth pausing on, says the storyteller, turning the page slowly. Not that she was beautiful. All babies are beautiful, and every parent in every kingdom knows their own is the most beautiful ever managed. No. The part worth keeping is the king, a grown and sensible man, a man who weighed grain taxes and settled boundary disputes, walking the corridors of his castle at all hours with his sleeping daughter against his shoulder, unable to contain himself for joy.
Joy like that has to go somewhere.
And in kings, joy usually becomes a feast.
Chapter Two.

The Feast of the Golden Plates.
The feast the king ordered was the greatest that kingdom had ever seen, and the preparing of it took the whole first summer of the little princess's life.
The castle kitchens woke before the birds did, those weeks. Carts came up the river road from every corner of the country, carts of pears and honeycomb, of cheeses wrapped in nettle leaves, of fish packed in river ice, of small brown mountain plums that taste better than their looks. The bakers built loaves the size of cradle blankets. The cellar men rolled barrels up the ramps as gently as if the barrels were asleep. In the courtyard, long tables went up on trestles, and awnings of striped linen over them, and the castle children ran underneath the tables while they still could, because a table before the feast belongs to the children, as everyone knows.
The king did not only invite his family, and the neighboring kings, and the friends of the house. He invited the whole business of the kingdom, the millers and the ferrymen and the beekeepers, because joy, as we said, has to go somewhere, and his had decided to go everywhere.
And he invited the wise women.
Every old kingdom in those days had its wise women. They lived at the edges of things, at the ends of lanes, in cottages with herbs drying from the rafters, and they walked between the villages in all weathers with their baskets on their arms. They knew which root eased a fever and which tea eased a grief. They were midwives and menders and rememberers. And it was the custom, when a child was born to the crown, to ask them to the christening feast, so that each might give the child a gift, and

the gifts of the wise women were not silver cups. They were gifts that went in deeper than that, and stayed.
Now, in that kingdom there were thirteen wise women.
But the king, counting out his treasury with the steward, found that he had only twelve golden plates for them to eat from.
Twelve plates of gold, each one old as the castle itself, each one polished until it held the whole feast upside down in miniature on its face. Custom said the wise women must eat from gold, and there was no time to have a thirteenth made, and no one, it seems, was brave enough or awake enough to suggest that a wise woman might rather be welcomed on pewter than left home for the sake of a plate.
So one of them was not invited.
The old book does not make a villain of the king here, and neither will the storyteller. It was not cruelty. It was the other thing, the more common thing, the thing that causes most of the sorrow there is. It was carelessness. A tired man, a long list, a missing plate, a name quietly left off the bottom. Remember the plates, says the storyteller, holding the page a moment. Small things steer big stories. A plate. A spindle. A rose.
The christening itself came first, in the bright middle of the morning, in the castle chapel with its windows of deep blue glass.
The whole procession wound in from the courtyard to the sound of the bells, and the bells of that castle had been cast, generations back, a little deeper in tone than most, so that even their gladdest ringing sounded half asleep. The princess was carried in on a christening pillow that twelve grandmothers of the town had spent the summer embroidering, snowdrops and wrens and, down in one corner, at the queen's own quiet request, one small green frog, stitched where the priest would not especially notice it.
She was named at the font, and the water in the font had been carried up that morning from the spring below the garden, for the queen would have no other water, and if you think on that a moment you will see the whole shape of her mother's heart. As for the name itself, the old book never tells it. The story had already set aside a truer name for her, one still growing quietly in the garden at that very hour, and so it let the first name go unrecorded, the way a river lets go of a leaf.
The king held his daughter through the whole of the blessing and did not drop her, though the old book seems privately to have had its doubts about him. The queen wept the correct amount. And when the blessing was done, the bells let themselves go entirely, and the chapel doors were thrown open, and the procession poured back out into the sunlight, toward the smell of the roast and the long bright tables, a good deal faster than it had gone in.
The feast itself was everything a feast should be.
It began at noon and meant to end at midnight, and the tables ran the whole length of the courtyard, and the striped awnings breathed in the warm wind like sails. There was music from a gallery, fiddles and flutes taking turns, and below it the deep happy sound of a few hundred people all talking at once about nothing in particular. The roast turned on its spit. The fountain in the courtyard's center ran with cider, briefly, until the bees found out.
And at the high table, in a cradle of carved oak, the princess slept through nearly all of it, which everyone agreed showed excellent judgment.
The twelve wise women sat in the places of honor, each before her golden plate. They had come in from their lanes and their cottages in their good gray cloaks, and they sat together like a row of doves on a ridgepole, taking everything in with bright quiet eyes. They ate well. Wise women always eat well at feasts. It is one of the perquisites of wisdom.
And as the afternoon leaned into evening, and the shadows of the towers stretched long and soft across the courtyard, and the candles came out on the tables like the first stars, a hush went around, the good kind of hush, the kind that gathers before a gift.
The wise women rose, one by one, and went to the cradle.
Chapter Three. The Gifts of the Wise Women.
There was no wand waving, no flash, no thunder. That is not how wise women work. A gift from a wise woman looks, from the outside, like almost nothing at all. An old woman bends over a cradle. A word is said, low, once. A hand is held still a moment above a small sleeping chest, the way you hold a hand over new bread, to feel the warmth coming up. That is the whole of the ceremony. The magic is in the choosing, and wise women choose the way rivers cut valleys, slowly, and for good.
The first of the wise women bent over the cradle, and looked a long moment at the sleeping child, and gave her virtue.
Not the stiff kind, that stands in corners disapproving of things. The living kind. The kind that means a person grows up straight of heart the way a good tree grows straight of trunk, without ever seeming to work at it. A child with that gift, the wise woman knew, would tell the truth even when the truth was inconvenient, and keep her promises even to servants, and be, in the deep quiet middle of herself, sound. It is the least glittering of all the gifts, and the one the others rest on, which is why it was given first.
The second gave her beauty, and gave it sensibly, the way wise women do. Not the brittle kind that must be guarded like a jewel and makes its owner anxious. The warm kind, the kind that is mostly a way of looking at people as though they are welcome. Faces like that do not stop rooms. They ease them.
The third gave her riches, and with the riches, so the storyteller has always believed, a light hand on them, for what the old book means by riches is not gold in boxes. It means enough. Enough, and to spare, and the ease of heart that comes of never needing to count anything twice.
The fourth gave her kindness, the practical sort, the sort that notices the person at the edge of the room. The fourth wise woman had spent a long life at the edges of rooms herself, and she gave this gift slowly, with both hands resting on the cradle rail, in the manner of someone who knows exactly what it costs to be without it.
The fifth gave her a clear singing voice, true as a blackbird's at evening, the kind of voice that makes even a work song sound like good news. And the tellers swear that when this gift went in, the sleeping baby sighed, one small musical sigh, perfectly in tune, and up in the gallery every fiddler leaned over the rail at once to hear it, like swallows on a wire.
The sixth gave her grace in the dance, and in walking, and in sitting still, which is the rarest of the three. She gave it, the tellers say, with one small turning of her brown wrist in the candlelight, the smallest dance ever danced in that kingdom, and all down the long tables the candle flames bowed together, once, like partners at the start of the music.
The seventh gave her wit, quickness of mind, the gift of seeing to the bottom of a question while others are still admiring its surface. The seventh wise woman was the youngest of the thirteen, as the ages of wise women are reckoned, and there was a smile folded away somewhere inside her gift, because wit without warmth is only cleverness, and she was careful about the difference.
The eighth gave her patience to go with the wit, so the quickness would never make her sharp. That pairing was no accident. Wise women watch what the others give, and mend as they go, the way good cooks season a soup between them, and the eighth had stood all evening at the seventh's shoulder with her own gift ready, waiting her turn without the least sign of hurry, which was of course the gift itself, already at work in the room.
The ninth gave her the love of books, and everything that hides inside that gift, the long afternoons, the lamplit evenings, the thousand lives lived safely from a window seat. The ninth wise woman was known in her own village for reading as she walked the lanes, trusting her feet to manage the puddles on their own, and in forty years of it her feet had never once betrayed her.
The tenth gave her green fingers, so that gardens would do well for her all her life, and roses especially, roses above everything, the old book might have warned us there, if the old book were the warning kind. The tenth wise woman smelled of rosemary and turned earth, and before she gave her gift she paused to tuck the blanket closer around the child, not tenderly, or not only tenderly, but the way a gardener firms the soil around something newly planted, with two fingers, expecting great things.
The eleventh gave her good sleep.
Yes, says the storyteller, looking up. Even then. Even before everything that was to come. The eleventh wise woman bent over the cradle and gave the princess the gift of deep, easy, untroubled sleep, all her life long, the gift you would choose first if you were wise, the gift this whole room is built around. And the old book, which winks more often than people notice, says nothing at all about whether that wise woman, later, felt her gift had been taken rather too seriously.
Eleven gifts, given into the cradle like eleven candles lit one from another.
And the twelfth wise woman had just stepped forward, and had just opened her mouth to speak, when the doors of the courtyard swung open, both at once, hard enough to make the candle flames lie down.
Chapter Four.

The Thirteenth Wish, and the Twelfth.
The thirteenth wise woman had come to the feast after all.
She came up the length of the courtyard between the long tables, and the music did not so much stop as forget itself, fiddle by fiddle, and the happy noise of a few hundred people folded away like linen. She was not terrible to look at. The old book does not paint her with claws or shadows, and the storyteller will not either. She looked like what she was, an old woman in a gray cloak who had sat alone that whole bright day in a cottage at the end of a lane, listening to the far off music of a feast she had not been asked to.
And if you have ever, even once, been left out of something, and everyone has, then you know the exact weather inside her as she walked. It is a cold weather, and it rains a long time.
Hurt has a way of speaking in a room where joy has been careless, and it spoke now.
She did not greet the king. She did not look at the plates. She went straight to the cradle, and she said, loudly, so that no one in that courtyard could miss a word, that in her fifteenth year the princess should prick herself on a spindle. And then she said what should follow the prick of that spindle, and it was the coldest word there is, the one word that has no business anywhere near a cradle, and the storyteller sees no reason to warm this quiet room by repeating it. You know the word. Let it lie.
And without waiting for any answer, the thirteenth wise woman turned, and walked back down the whole hushed length of the courtyard, and was gone into the evening before anyone remembered how to move.
For a moment, nothing. The candles righting themselves. A dropped spoon. Somewhere at a far table, a child asking a question and being softly hushed.
Then every eye in that courtyard went to the cradle, where the princess slept on, because she was three months old and the world had not yet told her it could be otherwise, and every heart in that courtyard broke a little at once, which makes a sound, strangely, very like silence.
But the twelfth wise woman had never given her gift.
She stepped up to the cradle now, small and gray and steady, and she raised her hand, and the whole feast held its breath.
I cannot undo the words, she said, and her voice was kind and level, the voice of someone telling you the truth because you deserve it. A wish spoken over a cradle is spoken. That is old law, older than I am, and I cannot lift it.
But I can bend it.
And she bent it. The princess shall indeed prick her finger on a spindle in her fifteenth year, she said. But she shall not die of it. She shall fall instead into a deep sleep, and the sleep shall last one hundred years, and at the end of the hundred years she shall wake, whole and well and no older than the morning she closed her eyes. That is the whole of my gift, she said, and it is enough. Sleep instead of sorrow. A long night instead of no morning. And a waking at the end of it, that I promise this house, as sure as dawn.
She touched the cradle rail once, lightly, the way you touch wood for luck, and she went back to her place, and after a while, because the world is resilient and feasts are stubborn, the music found itself again, quietly at first.
The storyteller closes her hand gently over the page.
Hold on to the twelfth wise woman's promise, she says, the way the king and queen learned to hold it. You may keep it under your pillow all the rest of this night. Everything that follows in this tale, the spindle, the tower, the long stillness, all of it happens inside that promise, the way a sleeper is inside a house. This is a story about a rest, not an ending. Nothing in it will be lost. Everything in it will wake.
And now, says the storyteller, the years may pass, and they do, the way years pass in a happy kingdom, which is to say, like water under a bridge you trust.
Chapter Five.

The Kingdom Without Spindles.
The king, of course, did the thing that frightened fathers do. He tried to build a wall around tomorrow.
The very morning after the feast, while the trestle tables were still coming down, he made a law, and the law said this. Every spindle in the kingdom shall be burned.
Now a spindle, for those of you who have only ever met cloth after it is finished, was a small wooden thing, no longer than your forearm, shaped like a top on a stick, that spun and dropped and twisted loose wool into thread. There was one in every cottage in those days, usually several, the way there are spoons. The whole kingdom's shirts and sheets and sails began on somebody's spindle. To burn them all was not a small thing to ask. It was like asking a kingdom to give up its needles, or its ladles, or its second verse of every song.
The kingdom did it anyway.
Because the people had all heard, by then, what had been said over the cradle, and the princess belonged to all of them, the way a kingdom's child does. So the spindles came in. They came in cartloads and basketfuls, down the river road, over the bridges, spindles of ash wood and pear wood, plain ones and carved ones, grandmothers' spindles worn silky by fifty years of thread. The carts creaked into the castle yard all that autumn like carts bringing in a strange harvest.
And on a still gray day at the edge of winter, they were burned, all together, in the great yard, in a fire that smelled, they say, of fifty thousand hearths, and the people stood around it in their winter cloaks, quiet, the way people stand at the edge of any large change. It was not a sad fire, quite. Every spindle on it was a small act of love for one sleeping child. But the wise women, who stood together at the edge of the crowd in their gray cloaks, watched the sparks go up with unreadable eyes, because wise women know a thing that frightened kings forget, which is that what is written finds a way, and walls around tomorrow have never yet kept out a single sunrise.
Still. The fire burned down, and the winter came and went, and no harm arrived, and none the next year either, and slowly the kingdom learned to breathe again.
They spun their thread beyond the borders after that, and traded barley for it, and if cloth was a little dearer in that country than elsewhere, no one begrudged it. In time the whole matter softened into custom, the way frights do when nothing feeds them. Children grew up in that kingdom never having seen a spindle in their lives. That will matter later. The storyteller mentions it the way you set a key on a table, without comment.
And the princess grew.
She grew the way the wise women had promised she would, gift by gift, the way a garden comes on, bed by bed, over a long slow summer. The virtue came up first, as virtue does, in small ways, in owned up mischief and kept promises. The kindness bloomed at about the age of four, when she began saving the ends of loaves for the stable's oldest pony. The singing voice arrived at six, unmistakably, in the middle of a winter service, rising clean above the congregation like the one bird awake in a snowy wood, and the whole cold church turned warm for hearing it.
The books found her at eight, or she found them, and after that there was never any real separating the two. The wit and the patience grew up braided together as the eighth wise woman intended, so that she became the kind of girl who could untangle a quarrel between two stablehands and have both of them thinking it had been their own idea to laugh. The gardens obeyed her tenth gift, and her roses in particular were the envy of the county, climbing roses, red and white, that took the south wall of the castle a little more thoroughly every June.
And the eleventh gift held. Every night of her childhood, all through that castle's small alarms, through storms and lost teeth and the ordinary griefs of growing, the princess slept easily and deeply and woke glad, and the queen would stand sometimes in the doorway with a candle, watching her daughter sleep, and think, with a small catch under her ribs, of a gray cloaked woman's level voice saying, a waking at the end of it, that I promise this house, as sure as dawn.
Fourteen years went by that way.
Fourteen years of harvests and frosts, of bonfire nights and mended fences, of the princess growing taller than her mother and learning the names of everything in the wood at the kingdom's northern edge. The old fright faded until it was only a story the maids told new maids, in the way of houses. The king himself could go whole seasons now without thinking of it.
But the old book turns its pages whether or not anyone is watching.
And in the summer of her fifteenth year, there came a bright, wide open morning when the king and the queen rode out early to the far side of the kingdom, on some errand of weddings or boundaries, and were not to be home until the following day.
And the princess, for the first time in all her fifteen years, had the whole castle to herself.
Chapter Six.

The Tower Room.
A castle with everyone busy elsewhere is one of the finest playgrounds ever built, at any age, and fifteen is not too old for it. Fifteen is exactly old enough to enjoy it properly.
The princess spent that whole bright morning going wherever she pleased.
She went down first, to the kitchens, where the cook let her taste the plum preserve that was meant for Sunday, and the kitchen boy showed her a whistle he had carved, and got flour on her sleeve, and was not sorry. She went along the storerooms, bins of apples in sand, crocks of honey, the cool cellar smell of stone doing its patient work. She looked into the laundry, all steam and lavender water and wide white sheets on lines like a ship's rigging, and the laundry women sang the song about the miller's daughter, and she sang the third verse with them, and her fifth gift turned that steamy room into somewhere you would pay to stand.
She wandered the long gallery where her ancestors hung in their frames, and made faces at the sternest of them, respectfully. She visited the stables and gave the oldest pony, who was very old indeed now, the end of a loaf she had saved out of habit since she was four. She climbed to the battlements and walked the whole circuit of the walls with the wind in her sleeves, looking out over the kingdom, the river with its barges, the patchwork of barley going gold, the deep wood to the north like a green sea, and everything she could see from up there was quietly, unknowingly, saying goodbye to her for a while, and neither she nor the kingdom knew it.
And then, in the drowsy early afternoon, when the castle was at its quietest, she found the stair she had never climbed.
It was in the oldest corner of the castle, past a door she had always assumed was a cupboard. Behind it, a narrow winding stair went up and up inside a tower wall, each step worn into a smile by feet that had climbed it long before her grandfather's grandfather. Arrow slit windows let in coins of light that slid over her as she climbed. The air grew older as she went, and warmer, and stiller, and it smelled of dust and sun on stone, the exact smell of a long afternoon with nothing that must be done in it.
The stair turned, and turned, and ended at a little door.
In the lock of the little door sat a rusty key.
And from beyond the door came a sound she had never in her life heard before. A small, busy, contented sound, a whirring, a soft clatter and hum, round and round, like a wooden bee, like a cart wheel dreaming, like the purring of some patient wooden cat.
She turned the key. It complained sweetly and gave way. The door swung open on a little round room at the very top of the tower, whitewashed, warm with afternoon sun, and in the middle of the room, in a slant of gold light full of drifting dust motes, sat an old woman with a spindle, busily spinning her flax.
Good day, old mother, said the princess, because her fourth gift had made her courteous to her bones. What are you doing?
I am spinning, said the old woman, and nodded her head, and did not stop.
The old book, says the storyteller gently, holds no grudge against this old woman, and you need hold none either. She was no one wicked in disguise. She was only an old woman who lived at the top of an old tower, so far above the daily business of the kingdom that the great spindle burning of fifteen years before had come and gone beneath her notice entirely, the way a flood can pass through a valley and never trouble the high pastures at all. She had her flax, and her window, and her work, and she was, in the whole kingdom, the last person still doing it.
The princess came closer, drawn the way we are all drawn to any small skilled thing being done well.
The thread ran through the old woman's fingers as if it were alive. The spindle turned and dropped, turned and dropped, and the loose gray cloud of flax became, between her hands, a thin strong even thread, which is a plain kind of magic but a real one, the oldest trick there is, disorder in at one end and usefulness out at the other.
And what sort of thing is this, said the princess, that rattles round so merrily?
And she reached out her hand, as anyone would, as you would, and she took hold of the spindle.
It hardly hurt at all. That is the truth of it, and the storyteller is glad to report it. The lightest touch, the smallest bead of red on one fingertip, no worse than a rose thorn takes in passing, and the princess said, oh, more in surprise than anything.
And the wish, the old one, the bent one, the one that had waited fifteen patient years in the grain of things, woke, and did exactly what the twelfth wise woman had promised, and not one thing more.
Sleep came for her like a warm sea.
It came up so fast and so gently that she never even felt afraid. Her eyes went heavy the way your eyes are heavy now. The spinning room, the gold light, the drifting motes, all of it softened at the edges like something seen through honey water. There happened to be a bed there in the tower room, a plain old bed with a faded coverlet, standing against the curve of the wall as though it had been waiting there for years, and perhaps it had, for the old book says nothing at all about how it came to be in the right place at the right hour, and wise women, as we know, mend as they go.
The princess lay down on it, because lying down suddenly seemed the most natural idea in the world, and she thought, I will close my eyes for one moment only.
Which is what every sleeper in every land has thought, at the sweet steep edge of it, since sleeping began.
And she closed her eyes.
And the hundred years began.
Chapter Seven.

The Castle Falls Asleep.
Now comes the part of the tale that this room was made to tell.
Because the sleep did not stop with the princess. The old wish had been aimed at one girl, but the twelfth wise woman had bent it, and a bent thing spreads its weight in new directions, and what the wish became, in the end, was not a blow but a blanket, and the blanket came down over the whole castle, gently, evenly, corner to corner, the way snow comes down on a field in the night, forgetting nothing, refusing no one.
The sleep began in the tower room and fell through the castle like slow warm rain.
The king and the queen, who had come home early, just that hour, and were standing in the great hall still in their traveling cloaks, asking after their daughter, fell asleep where they stood, and settled together onto the bench by the long table, her head finding his shoulder by an instinct older than crowns, and their two crowns tilted toward one another like the heads of drowsy children.
The whole court went with them. The chamberlain slept upright against a pillar with his staff of office in the crook of his arm like a bedtime toy. The ladies in the solar slept over their embroidery, needles paused in the exact middle of stitches, threads of blue and gold hanging quiet as the ropes of stopped bells. The steward slept over his ledger, his pen resting in the valley of the open page, and the ink at its tip dried slowly into one small permanent star.
The sleep went along the corridors and down the back stairs the way evening goes through a wood, without missing one small thing.
In the laundry, the wide white sheets stopped swaying on their lines, all together, like a ship taking in its sails, and the laundry women slept standing among them, and the one who had been singing, the same song about the miller's daughter, fell asleep between one verse and the next with the low note still in her mouth, so that the song simply paused, half sung, warm, kept, the way bread is kept under a cloth. Down the long gallery, the painted ancestors in their frames left off whatever it is that portraits do that is almost watching, and did something quieter still. In the cellars, the barrels settled deeper into their slow dark arithmetic, and the honey stood gold in its crocks, entirely unbothered, honey being the one thing in any castle that already knows how to wait a hundred years without instruction.
And in the chapel tower, the bell had been about to strike the hour. The rope was drawn down in the bell ringer's two hands, and the great bell was leaned all the way back at the top of its swing, gathering its one deep note. The sleep gathered rope and ringer and bell together, gently, and the bell stayed leaned, and the note stayed gathered, unstruck, at the top of the tower, like a breath held gladly, and the hour the bell never rang that afternoon did not go anywhere. It waited, the way everything in that house now waited, becoming, year by year, the most patient hour any clock in any kingdom has ever kept.
Down in the yard, the guards slept at the gate, leaning on their spears the way tired hay makers lean on rakes at evening. The gatekeeper slept with his hand on the great iron ring of the door. The blacksmith slept mid swing, and the hammer, which should have fallen, did not fall. It only leaned back against his shoulder, patient, as if it too had been waiting for years for permission to rest.
In the stables the horses went down into sleep on their feet, in that way horses have, hip cocked, heads lowering by inches, and the stable cat folded shut on the warm beam above them. The hounds in the yard turned their circles once, twice, and lay down in the shapes hounds have slept in since the world was young, nose under tail, and were still. The doves on the roof put their heads beneath their wings, all together, a whole ridgeline of gray going soft, and slept.
And the flies on the wall slept.
The old book says so, exactly that, and the storyteller has always loved it best of all the lines in this tale. The flies on the wall. Because whoever first told this story, a very long time ago, in some firelit room, understood the thing this whole season is built on, which is that no sleep is really complete, no rest is truly deep, until even the smallest, busiest, most restless scrap of life in the house has been gathered in and tucked up too. Nothing was too small for this blanket. Nothing was left out of it. The fly on the wall of the great hall stopped its fretful walking and slept where it stood, a tiny dark punctuation mark on the white plaster, and the spider in the corner of the kitchen window slept at the center of her wheel, which was the one wheel in the kingdom the king had never thought to burn.
In the kitchen, the great fire itself grew drowsy.
The flames stopped leaping. They swayed slower, and slower, like dancers at the end of the last dance of the night, and then they simply stood, upright and golden and still, painted on the air, warm to look at and fast asleep. The fire slept. The roast above it stopped its crackling in the middle of a crackle. The pot stopped in the middle of a bubble, and the bubble, half risen, decided it could wait a century, and did.
The cook had been, at that exact moment, in the middle of a scolding. The kitchen boy, the same one who had shown the princess his whistle that very morning, had done something with the gravy that history does not record, and the cook's hand was raised, and the boy's ear was waiting, and the whole small thunderstorm of it was just about to break, when the sleep came into the kitchen like the smell of rain, and the cook's eyes closed where he stood, hand still lifted, and the boy's eyes closed where he cowered, ear still waiting, and the storm was postponed, in its entirety, for one hundred years. The scullery maid slept over the black hen she was plucking, her fingers full of feathers, and one loose feather that had just left her hand stayed exactly where it was, resting on the air itself, halfway to the floor, asleep.
And outside, the wind lay down.
That is how the old book finishes it, and no teller in three hundred years has improved on the order of it. The wind lay down in the courtyard like a dog before the fire, and on all the trees before the castle, not one leaf stirred, not one, and the banner on the highest tower, which had rippled without a single pause for as long as anyone living could remember, hung still at last in long soft folds, like a sleeve at rest.
Silence, then. But listen, says the storyteller, leaning close, because this matters more than anything else tonight. It was not an empty silence. It was a full one. It was not the silence of a house where something has ended. It was the silence of a house where everything is, at last and all at once, resting, the deepest afternoon hush ever gathered under one roof, king and cook, horse and hound, fire and fly, every heart in the place beating on, slow and safe and sure, once a minute, once an hour, keeping the long appointment.
The whole castle, sleeping. And at the top of it, in the little round room, in the slant of gold light where the dust motes now hung as still as tiny planets, the princess, sleeping soundest of all, one small red bead on her fingertip already healed, her breathing so soft and so even that it would not have troubled that floating feather in the kitchen, and on her face, all the old book cares to tell us, an expression of perfect peace, as of one who knows, even that deep down, that she has been promised a morning.
Chapter Eight.

The Hedge of Briars.
Around the sleeping castle, the roses woke.
They were her roses, the red and white climbing roses of her tenth gift, the ones that had taken the south wall a little more thoroughly every June. With no gardener awake to trim them, and something older than gardening now moving in their sap, they began to grow as roses have never grown before or since.
They came up out of the garden beds and crossed the paths. They took the south wall in a season and the east wall by the following spring. They wove themselves through the gates and along the battlements, over the stables, up the towers, thickening year by year into a hedge, and the hedge climbed until, in time, it covered the whole castle entirely, walls and roofs and chimneys, and closed at last over the highest tower, over the still banner itself, so that not even the flag on the roof could be seen, and there was nothing on that hill anymore, to look at, but an enormous mound of briars, dark green in summer, bare and bristling in winter, and every June, all over, drowsy with a hundred thousand roses.
And it was not a grim growing. That is worth saying twice, because a wall of thorns sounds like a fearful thing, and this one never was. Every June the whole vast hedge came into flower at once, root to rooftop, red and white together, and for a month the hill stood in the middle of that green country like one enormous rose with a castle for its heart, and travelers went a day out of their way just to pass downwind of it. Then the petals let go, as petals do, and came down for weeks in a soft red and white snow, drifting against the gates, sifting in at the high windows that had stood open since that summer afternoon, settling on the shoulders of the sleeping guards, on the king's crown, on the cook's raised arm and the flank of the oldest hound, until, summer by summer, the floors of that castle lay carpeted in a hundred years of roses, and the whole sleeping house, they say, smelled faintly of them all year long, even under snow. And every autumn the hedge drew itself in a little closer, the way a sleeper draws in a blanket. And every winter it stood bare and patient, holding the shape of the castle inside it like a thought it was keeping warm. And every spring it put out new green, and grew, and held on.
The kingdom around it did what kingdoms do. It went on.
The princess's people grieved a while, and hoped a while, and the twelfth wise woman's promise was told and retold in every cottage until everyone knew the terms of it by heart. A hundred years. A waking at the end. Sure as dawn. The kingdom passed to a cousin, who ruled it gently from another hill, and the farms went on being farmed, and the river went on carrying its barges past the briar covered hill, and the bargemen tipped their caps to it as they passed, without quite knowing why, the way you lower your voice near a sleeping child.
And the story itself settled over the country like a second hedge, softer than the first.
Grandmothers told it at bedtimes. Shepherds told it on hillsides. And somewhere in those years, nobody knows in whose kitchen or on whose road, the sleeping princess was given the name her own parents never gave her, the name the roses gave her. Briar Rose. That is who she became while she slept. In the tale as the whole world learned to tell it, the girl and the hedge grew together into one name, and the storyteller confesses she has always found that beautiful, that a person could be named, in her absence, by the thing that grew up to keep her safe.
From time to time, of course, young men came.
They came from far countries, princes and younger sons, having heard of the beautiful Briar Rose asleep behind the roses, and they came with axes and good intentions, and they tried the hedge.
The hedge did not let them through.
The old book is stern about this part, and the winter tellers used to make it sterner still, for the pleasure of the children under the blankets. But there has always been a gentler telling too, handed down alongside the other, and the gentler telling is the one this room keeps, and at this hour it is also the truer one. The hedge did not fight anyone. It simply held them away. A young man would set to with his axe at sunrise, proud as a new blade, and the briars would lean back from every stroke without hurry, and braid themselves quietly shut again behind their own leaves, two green stems for every cut one, and by noon he would find that all his morning's work had gained him no more ground than the length of his own arm, and that a rose was blooming, calmly, on the very branch he had cut first. Here and there, they say, the briars would take an axe from a tired hand altogether, gently, the way a grandmother takes a sharp thing from a child who is nearly asleep, and lift it up into the thorns out of harm's way, and by the following June even the axes wore roses. And one by one, scratched and baffled and strangely calmed, the way a person is calm after arguing all day with the sea, the young men gathered up their ropes and ladders and rode home, and grew old telling the story themselves by their own fires. There is a hedge in that country that cannot be quarreled with, they would say. Something is sleeping behind it, and the hedge will open when the sleeping is done, and not one hour before.
For the hedge was not cruel. It was faithful. It was doing what everything else in this tale does, which is to keep a promise, and the promise had a date on it, and the date was not yet.
So the wise learned to leave the hill alone.
The hedge stood. The seasons went over it, snow and rose, snow and rose, a hundred of each. The story traveled further and grew softer at the edges, the way stories do, until in the furthest countries they doubted there was any castle under there at all.
And inside, all that time, the castle slept on, and lost nothing.
The fire stood golden in the kitchen, not one degree cooler. The feather hung on the air, not one inch fallen. The ink star sat on the steward's page, keeping the accounts of a quiet century. The king and queen leaned together on their bench, crowns touching, and their sleeping faces, year by year, let go of the last of their old fright, until they wore the same expression as their daughter in the tower, which was peace.
Once a minute, once an hour, every heart in the place beat on, keeping the long appointment.
And the hundred years, which seem so long to us and were nothing at all to the sleepers, turned like a great slow wheel toward their final morning.
Chapter Nine.

A Hundred Years of Quiet.
But wait, says the storyteller, turning back one page, as if she has remembered something too good to leave. Before the wheel comes round, let us do what almost no teller of this tale ever takes the time to do. Let us stay a while inside the hundred years. Everyone hurries through them. A sentence, and on to the prince. But you and I are in no hurry at all, and a century of perfect sleep deserves better than a sentence, and besides, it is the most restful place in all the old book, and we are here to rest.
So. What is it like, inside a hundred years of quiet?
It is like this.
In the first years, the swallows still knew the castle, and came each spring to their old nests under the eaves, and raised their broods over the sleeping guards, and the nestlings grew up thinking of the still banner as simply how the world was. Then the briars closed over the eaves, and the swallows moved on to barns down the valley, and told their children nothing, and the castle passed out of the memory of swallows, which takes longer than you might think.
The seasons came in through the one place nothing could shut, which was the light.
In summer, the sun worked its way through the briar leaves in small green coins, and the coins moved slowly across the floors of the sleeping castle all day, over the flagstones of the great hall, across the hands of the sleeping ladies, along the ledgers and the lutes, and nothing woke, but the whole hush of the house turned faintly green and gold, like a hall at the bottom of a summer sea.
In autumn the light came in lower and browner, and lay in long stripes down the corridors, and the sleeping castle smelled, ever so faintly, of ripe blackberries from deep inside the hedge, for a briar is a bramble at heart, and even an enchanted hedge cannot entirely forget itself.
In winter, snow found its way through here and there and lay in small unmelting drifts along a windowsill, over a sleeping dove's back, in the upturned palm of the courtyard fountain, and did not trouble anyone. The cold came into the castle but the sleep was warmer than the cold, and the sleepers slept on like seeds under a field, perfectly safe, perfectly kept.
And in spring, every spring, one hundred times, the light turned young again, and the green coins came back to the floors, and the whole mound of briars filled with the sound of bees, a deep furred contented hum, the exact sound, if you have ever heard it, of an afternoon with no edges, and the bees crossed and recrossed above the sleeping doves, and never one of them landed on the still feather in the kitchen, out of professional respect, perhaps, one small floating thing for another.
And the nights. Thirty six thousand nights, give or take, and every one of them kind. The moon did what the sun did, but silvered, and slower, and on the clear nights its light came in through the briar leaves in small white coins where the gold ones had walked by day, and crossed the same floors, the same sleeping hands, the same ledgers and lutes, so that the castle was read twice over, like a beloved page, once in gold and once in silver. Owls took the towers, generations of them, raising their solemn children above the sleeping guards, and their soft question went down the corridors at midnight, who, who, and was never once answered, and never once minded, which is the way of owls. Rain came in its seasons, and the castle heard it the way you may be hearing it now, far off and made entirely of hush, ten thousand leaves deep. And on the rainy nights the sleepers went, if anything, a little deeper, the way sleepers everywhere do, and the whole hill, hedge and castle, king and cook, guards and doves, breathed together under the weather like one warm animal deep in its den, dreaming, safe, staying.
The dust lay down, at last, everywhere. That is the deepest kind of quiet a house can hold, when even the dust has finished settling, and it lay on the great table like the finest gray velvet, and it dulled the copper pans to the color of old moons, and nobody minded, because dust, whatever the busy world says of it, is only the softest possible way for time to touch a thing.
And the sleepers dreamed.
The old tellers say the good wise woman saw to that, that she had folded pleasant dreams into her gift the way you fold lavender into stored linen, and the storyteller believes it, and will go further. She has always maintained that you can tell, from how the tale ends, what each of them dreamed. The king and queen, leaning crown to crown, dreamed one long shared dream of an ordinary day, a day with nothing in it but their daughter's voice somewhere down a corridor, singing. The cook dreamed of a kitchen where every gravy behaved. The kitchen boy dreamed of whistles, and of being, someday, forgiven. The horses dreamed of one particular meadow at one particular dusk. The hounds ran slow and happy through fields of sleep after hares of sleep that were never quite caught and never quite lost. The fire dreamed of the forest it had been long ago, green and rained on and full of birds.
And Briar Rose, in her tower, in the slant of light that moved through a hundred years like one gold afternoon, dreamed the longest, kindest dream of all. And what it held, no teller has ever presumed to say, except that at some point, far into it, there was a road in her dream, and on the road, still a great way off, someone was coming, taking their time, in no hurry at all, the way everything comes in this story.
Sleep on, says the storyteller softly, to the castle, to the page, to you. Nothing is required of any of you. The wheel is turning by itself now.
For out beyond the hedge, beyond the valley, beyond three rivers and a range of blue hills, in a kingdom that had not even existed when the spindles burned, a young man was saddling a horse.
Chapter Ten.

The Hedge in Bloom.
He was a king's son, and the old book tells us little else about him, and the storyteller has always thought that fitting, because this is not his story. He rides into it near the end, courteous and brave, does the one thing asked of him, and shares the last page. The best guests at any long sleep are exactly like that. They arrive at the right hour, they come quietly, and they bring the morning with them.
He had come into that country by chance, hunting, or traveling, or simply young and out to see the world, and he lodged one night at a farmstead in the valley below a certain hill. And in the evening, by the fire, he heard an old man tell the tale.
The old man told it the way it had come down to him, from his own grandfather. That under the great mound of briars on the hill there was said to be a castle. That in the castle a princess called Briar Rose had slept for near enough a hundred years now, and with her the whole court, king and cook, horse and hound, fire and fly. That many young men had tried the hedge in the old days, and that the hedge had turned every one of them gently away, and that the wise had long since learned to leave the hill alone.
The king's son listened with his chin in his hand, and the firelight in his eyes.
And then he said, quietly, and not at all boastfully, which is worth noticing: I am not afraid. I should like to go and see the beautiful Briar Rose.
The old man tried to talk him out of it, as kindness required. He told him about the briars that braid themselves shut behind an axe. He told him of the proud young men who had cut all morning and ridden home by supper, no deeper in than the reach of their own arms. But the youth only smiled and thanked him and banked the fire for him before bed, and in the gray of the morning, he rode up the hill alone.
Now here is the turn of the whole tale, says the storyteller, and it turns on nothing that he did.
He carried no axe. He brought no army. He had made no vow and paid no witch. He was brave, yes, and his heart was in the right place, and none of that would have mattered one thorn's worth, except for this. On the day that he rode up the hill, the hundred years were done.
The very day. The wheel had come full round while the old man was still telling the tale, and the last night of the century had passed while the young man slept at the farm, and the morning he rode into was the exact morning appointed by the twelfth wise woman a hundred years before, with the whole kingdom listening. Sure as dawn, she had said. And here was the dawn.
He smelled the hill before he saw it.
Roses. A hundred thousand of them, opened all at once, red and white together, their scent coming down the morning road to meet him like a tide of warm honey. And when he rounded the last turning and looked up, he did not see the wall of dark thorn the old man had promised him. There was no thorn to be seen at all. The whole vast hedge, top to bottom, tower height and gate wide, had come into bloom in a single night, and stood there in the young sun like a mountain made of morning, humming with its bees, and every rose on it was turned outward, toward the road, the way faces turn toward good news.
He left his horse to graze. He walked up to the hedge. And the hedge opened.
By itself. This is the part the storyteller asks you to keep, if you keep only one picture from tonight. He never drew his sword. He never so much as reached out his hand. The briars simply drew apart before him, quietly and courteously, the way a curtain is drawn by someone gentle, the roses leaning back, the great stems unweaving a doorway, and a green and fragrant corridor opened before him through the very heart of the hedge, floored with a hundred years of soft fallen petals.
He walked in. And behind him, without haste, the hedge closed again, not to trap him, but the way a door is closed behind a welcome guest, to keep the warmth in.
He crossed the courtyard through the morning light.
He passed the horses asleep on their feet and the spotted hounds asleep in their circles, and he walked softly. He passed the doves on the roofline, every head beneath a wing. He passed the guards leaning on their spears, and he bowed to them, though they could not see it, because a sleeping soldier has still earned the courtesy. He stepped over the threshold of the great hall, past the gatekeeper's hand resting all these years on the iron ring, and inside, in the brown and golden hush, he saw the whole court, the ladies over their embroidery, the steward over his ledger with its one small star of ink, the chamberlain against his pillar, the king and the queen on their bench, crowns tilted together, sleeping like children at the end of a long feast day.
It was so quiet in that hall, the old book says, that he could hear his own breathing.
He went on, up the stairs, along the corridors, past the kitchen door, where he paused, and smiled, seeing the cook with his hand still raised over the boy, the storm still politely postponed, and the maid with her fingers full of feathers, and one gray feather resting on the air itself, and the fire standing golden and still, and the bubble in the pot, waiting.
And at the top of the oldest tower, up the narrow winding stair, where the light through the arrow slits slid over him coin by coin, he came to a little door, standing open now, and beyond it, in a slant of gold light, on a plain bed under a faded coverlet, he found Briar Rose.
She was fresh as this morning. A hundred years had not presumed to touch her. Her dress was of a fashion so old that he had seen it only in the portraits of his great grandmother's day, and yet the roses in her cheeks might have bloomed with the hedge, that very dawn. He stood a long while in the doorway, the way you stand at the edge of anything holy, and the dust motes hung about her like small still planets, and her breathing was the softest sound in a castle of soft sounds.
The old book says that she was so beautiful that he could not turn his eyes away. But it was not only that, the storyteller thinks. It was the peace on her face. He had never seen anyone so deeply at rest, so perfectly safe, so entirely certain, even a hundred years down, of being woken kindly. And it was the most natural thing in the world, and the gentlest, that he should stoop, and kiss her.
And the hundred years ended.
Not with thunder. With a breath. Briar Rose drew one long waking breath, the first new breath in that castle in a century, and her eyes opened, and they were awake at once, entirely, the way a person wakes from the best sleep of their life. And she looked at him quite sweetly, the old book says, quite sweetly and not at all surprised, and when she spoke, her voice was warm and unhurried, like someone finishing a conversation begun long ago.
Is it you, she said. You have been a long time coming.
For she had seen the road in her dream, remember, and someone on it, taking their time. Some tellers give her other words, and some give her none, only the sweet look. But those are the words as the storyteller learned them by her own grandmother's lamp, and she has never wished them different.
And hand in hand, with the morning pouring up the stair behind them, the two of them went down together, into

the waking house.
Chapter Eleven. The Waking House.
The castle woke the way it had slept, gently, evenly, corner to corner, and in the very same order, as though the sleep were a tide that had come in a hundred years ago and was now, with no fuss at all, going out.
The king and the queen woke first, on their bench in the great hall, crowns still tilted together. They lifted their heads, and looked at one another, and the old book says they looked at each other in great astonishment, but the storyteller has always suspected it was a very calm astonishment, the kind you feel on waking from a deep afternoon sleep in a chair, when the light has changed and the house smells of supper, and for one long sweet moment you cannot say what day it is, and it does not matter in the least. The queen straightened the king's crown. The king took the queen's hand. And down the stairs into the hall, hand in hand, came their daughter, fifteen years old and one hundred years wise, with a young man beside her, and whatever a hundred years may take, it had taken nothing that mattered, for the queen knew her child before her eyes had finished opening, and the space between the bench and the stair was crossed, and the storyteller will leave the three of them there a moment, in the middle of the hall, holding on, because some pictures do not want words on top of them.
And around them, room by room, the whole house came back.
The whole court woke, and stretched, and looked at one another. The ladies in the solar lifted their needles and finished, each one, the exact stitch she had begun a century before, blue and gold, without a single thread the worse. The steward woke over his ledger, blinked at the little star of dried ink, sharpened his pen, and carried the figure forward, and the accounts of that kingdom, they say, balanced across the missing century to the last sack of barley, which is its own quiet kind of miracle. The chamberlain woke against his pillar, consulted the staff of office in his arms as if it might explain something, and decided, in the manner of chamberlains everywhere, to proceed as though everything were in order, which, for once, it entirely was.
At the gate the guards woke and straightened on their spears, and passed one look up and down the line, the look soldiers everywhere use to agree that nothing will be mentioned. The gatekeeper woke with his hand still on the great iron ring, and turned it at last, and drew the gates open on a morning one hundred years wide. The blacksmith woke mid swing, and the hammer that had leaned against his shoulder all that century came down at last, but gently, a tap, and the anvil rang once under it, one small bright note like a bell for morning, and the blacksmith decided, wisely, that the first thing a new century needed was breakfast.
In the laundry the wide white sheets swayed on their lines again, and the laundry women woke standing among them, and the one who had been singing finished the low note she had held for a hundred years and went on into the next verse without dropping a word, so that the first song of the new age was the second half of a song from the old one, which is exactly as it should be. And high in the chapel tower the bell ringer woke with the rope in his hands, and pulled, and the great bell came down through its long postponed swing and struck, at last, the hour it had been holding all that time, one deep gold note that rolled out over the blooming hedge and down the whole valley, and the people in the fields below stood up from their barley, hearing a bell no living soul had ever heard and every one of them knew by heart from the story, and before any rider could be sent, the whole kingdom knew. The hundred years were done. The hill was awake.
Out in the yard, the horses woke and shook themselves, all down the stable row, a long soft thunder of manes, and put their heads out over the doors to see about breakfast. The hounds unwound from their circles, stood, stretched fore and aft in the manner of hounds, and wagged, sweeping a hundred years of dust from the flagstones with their tails. The doves on the roofline took their heads from beneath their wings, all together, considered the morning, and flew out over the blooming hedge toward the open fields, a hundred gray wings taking the new century lightly, as birds take everything.
And the flies on the wall woke too, and walked on. The old book insists on them at the waking just as it insisted on them at the falling asleep, and the storyteller loves it just as much the second time. Even the smallest and least regarded life in the house had been kept, all that time, safe as a coin in a pocket, and was now returned, complete, to its small important business of walking up walls. And the spider in the kitchen window woke at the center of her wheel, and walked her spokes once, testing, and found that a hundred years had not loosened a single thread, which is more than most builders can say.
In the kitchen, the fire woke first.
The still golden flames leaned, remembered themselves, and leapt up merrily around the roast, and the roast took up its crackling in the precise middle of the crackle it had left off, and the bubble in the pot rose the rest of the way and burst, a small ceremonial pop, the first new sound of the new age. The gray feather completed its journey to the floor, landing softer than any snow. The scullery maid woke with her fingers full of feathers and finished plucking the hen. And the cook's raised hand came down at last upon the kitchen boy's ear.
But gently.
Whether the wise woman's blanket had softened it on the way down, or whether no anger in this world can hold its heat across a hundred years of good sleep, the blow that had set out as a storm arrived as a pat, and the cook looked at the boy, and the boy looked at the cook, and what passed between them had a century of shared rest inside it, and the cook said only, mind the gravy, and the boy minded it, and that was the whole of the storm, forever. The storyteller has it on good authority that the two of them were fast friends from that morning on, and that the whistle was heard in that kitchen daily, and was even, in time, missed when it stopped.
The wind stood up from the courtyard and went back to its work, and on all the trees before the castle the leaves stirred at once, a long green sigh, and the banner on the highest tower lifted, and rippled, and streamed out into the morning as though no century had passed, because for it, none had.
And the hedge, its promise kept to the last hour, loosened all that summer into an ordinary garden of climbing roses, red and white, that took the south wall a little more thoroughly every June, and never again grew higher than a gardener could tend.
The wedding was held when the roses were at their fullest, and the old book gives it all splendor, but the evening of it, the part this room keeps, was not the loud kind.
It was held at evening, in the courtyard, under the same striped awnings, or their descendants, where a christening feast had been held a hundred years and fifteen summers before. The whole kingdom came up the hill, the millers and the ferrymen and the beekeepers, the great grandchildren of the guests of that first feast, and the tables ran the length of the yard, and the fountain, this time, was left to run with water, and the bees kept to the hedge, mostly.
The musicians, waking players of a vanished age, tuned their fiddles and played the tunes they knew, every one of them a hundred years old, and to the bride and the court they were simply the songs of home, and to the valley folk they were the loveliest old airs, heard once, long ago, from a grandmother's humming, and everyone danced to them just the same, the waked and the born, the past and the present, round and round the courtyard in the long gold light, and the line between the two kingdoms of time, which had stood on that hill like a wall for a century, came down for good over the course of one warm evening, to music.
At the high table sat twelve empty places, laid with twelve golden plates, in honor and in memory, and at the head of them a thirteenth place, laid just the same, with a plate of gold that the young king's son had ordered made before the wedding, first of all his works in that kingdom. No one sat there. But the place was laid, and the cup was filled, and the roses on that end of the table, the old folk swore, smelled sweeter than anywhere else in the yard.
And Briar Rose danced with her father, and with her young man, and with the kitchen boy, who trod on her hem and was forgiven before he finished apologizing, and when the stars came out over the courtyard the fiddles slowed, of their own accord, into the old tunes' oldest verses, and the dancing softened into swaying, and the children of the valley fell asleep one by one in the laps and against the shoulders of that whole gathered kingdom, and were held.
They lived contented to the end of their days. That is the ending as the old book gives it, and tonight of all nights it needs no improving. Not happily ever after, though they were happy. Contented. It is a word with sleep inside it, says the storyteller. It is the word for a house where nothing is owed and no one is missing and the fire is banked and the doors are latched and every ear in the place, at the day's end, is done with listening for trouble.
And so it was, on the hill above the river, for the rest of their long and ordinary lives.
Chapter Twelve.

Goodnight. And the Lamp at the Edge of Morning.
The night is deep now, even at the edge of everything.
Come and stand one last time on the hill above the river, years after the wedding, on any warm June night you like. The castle is dark and easy under the stars. The gates are latched, but kindly, the way a coat is buttoned on a child. The roses on the south wall are open to the dark, red and white, and their scent goes down the hill to the river all night long, and the bargemen on the late water pass through it, a whole minute of sweetness, and tip their caps to the hill, out of habit, out of love, without quite waking.
In the stables, the horses are asleep on their feet, trusting their own bones to hold them, the way their great grandsires slept through a century without one bad dream. The hounds are asleep in the yard in their ancient circles. The doves are on the roofline, every head beneath a wing. The banner stirs on the highest tower, only just, like a sleeper's breathing.
In the kitchen the fire is banked under its blanket of ash, keeping tomorrow's warmth like a secret. It sleeps every night now, the fire, an ordinary night's sleep, and it is very good at it, better than any fire in any kingdom. It had, after all, a hundred years of practice. The pots hang in their ranks, holding a little of the moon. The gravy, these days, behaves.
And up the winding stair, the little room at the top of the tower stands open and swept and kept.
Nobody sleeps there anymore. But it was never shut away, never bricked up, never made into a fearful place, because this kingdom, alone among kingdoms, is not afraid of sleep, and could not be if it tried. The spinning wheels came back to the country in the new king's time, and the spindles with them, and on winter evenings the cottages hum again from lane's end to lane's end, a soft wooden purring under the smoke, and mothers spin while the tale is told, the tale, the one about the hill they can see from their own doorsteps, and no child in that valley has ever once been afraid of the dark at the end of it. How could they be. In their kingdom, the dark kept everyone safe for a hundred years and gave them all back without so much as waking the flies.
In the tower room there is only the plain bed with its faded coverlet, and a jar that the gardeners keep filled with roses, red and white, and the slant of gold light that crosses the little room every afternoon, unhurried, the way it crossed a whole century, one long kind afternoon that ended well.
Let the hill go dark now. Let the river carry the stars downstream a mile and give them back, the way it does, all night, an old game between old friends, and neither of them keeping score.
And here, at the edge of everything, in the small quiet room where the lamp is burning, the storyteller turns the last page of tonight's tale, and finds it is only the soft blank paper at the chapter's end, the page that is there so the story has somewhere to rest its head.
She looks over at you, the way a gardener looks at a bed at dusk.
You have done everything right tonight. You came in, and you sat down, and you let the blanket be heavy, and you let a very old story do its very old work. Perhaps you followed it all the way up the winding stair. Perhaps you drifted somewhere back among the golden plates, or the burning of the spindles, or the long green quiet of the hundred years, and the tale has been going on without you for an hour, comfortably, the way rivers go on, the way stars do. Either way is the right way. There is no wrong way to be near a story at night.
And if sleep is close to you now, and it is, let it come the way it came to that castle. Not as a thief. As a blanket. Corner to corner, forgetting nothing, refusing no one, gathering in the busy hands and the raised voices and the fretful small walkers on the walls of you, every last one, until the whole house of you is resting, and the wind lies down in your courtyard, and not one leaf stirs.
You have the twelfth wise woman's promise, the same as they had. It holds for everyone, everywhere, every night, and it has never once been broken. A waking at the end of it. Sure as dawn.
The lamp is very low now. The 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.
The storyteller's voice has grown very soft. The words have stopped being words. They are just warmth with a rhythm in it now.
Like bees in a hedge of roses, far off.
Like a wheel turning slowly in a high room, spinning something soft.
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 into

the greenwood, into Sherwood in the deep leaf of summer, where the light comes down green as pond water, where the deer step like rumors between the oaks, and where a man called Robin Hood keeps the merriest table in England.
And there is no hurry at all as she begins.
You do not need to do anything now. The forest in this story asks nothing of its guests. Settle in. Let the chair hold you the way moss holds a fallen branch, completely, and without any opinion about it. Let the blanket be heavy in the good way, the way shade is heavy under a great tree at noon.
Close your eyes, if they want to close. This tale does not need to be watched. It only needs to be near you, the way a campfire is near you, the way rain in the leaves is near you when the shelter is dry and 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, in among the trees, and it will not mind at all. Drifting is not leaving. Drifting is how a listener says thank you.
Chapter One. The Greenwood.
Long ago, in the green middle of England, there was a forest that was older than the kingdom around it.
Its name was Sherwood.
It was so large, in those days, that a bird crossing it would want to rest twice. Roads went in at the edges and thought better of it, dwindling to lanes, and then to paths, and then to deer trails, and then to nothing at all, just leaf mould and shade and the patient gray columns of the oaks. Whole villages sat along its hem like buttons on a green coat. And in its deep places the forest kept its own weather, cooler than the fields in summer, softer than the hills in winter, with slow winds moving high in the canopy like tides that had wandered inland long ago and decided to stay.
People said you could tell the hour in Sherwood without ever seeing the sun. Morning was birdsong and cold silver light and every spiderweb strung with beads of water. Midday was the drowsy hum of a warm clearing, bracken ticking as it stretched, a woodpecker somewhere keeping careless time. And evening was the color of everything deepening at once, green going to gold, gold going to shadow, while the wood pigeons called their five soft notes over and over, like someone humming a tune they had loved for years and mostly remembered.
The deer of that forest belonged to the king. That was the law. Every stag and hind and dappled fawn from one edge of the shire to the other was the king's own property, watched over by the king's foresters, and the penalty for an arrow loosed at the king's venison was heavy enough that most folk kept their bows at home and their eyes on the road.
Most folk.
For in the deep of Sherwood, in those days, there lived a man that the whole of England told stories about at supper.
His name was Robin Hood.
The oldest songs about him begin by asking the listener to draw near and listen, gentlemen and yeomen all, so draw near, and listen. He was not a lord in disguise. The old rhymes are quite clear about this, and rather proud of it. He was a yeoman, which meant a free man of the middle sort, with no castle, no title, and no land to speak of. What he had was a longbow taller than a doorway, a coat of Lincoln green, a horn that could call seven score men out of what looked like empty forest, and the best company of friends that ever sat down to dinner under one tree.
And here is the wonder of him, the thing worth keeping your eyes open a few minutes longer to hear. He was an outlaw, the most famous outlaw who ever drew breath, and the thing he was famous for, above everything else, was his manners.
The old songs list his rules the way you would list the virtues of a saint. He never harmed any company that had a woman in it, not once, not ever. He never took so much as a penny from a ploughman, or from any honest yeoman walking behind his oxen, or from a good knight fallen on hard times. Of all things in heaven he loved Our Lady best, and for love of her he was gentle with everyone who was gentle with the world. But a fat abbot riding through the forest with silver in his saddlebags and a hungry parish left behind him, or a proud official grown rich on other men's harvests, ah, said the songs, those gentlemen would be invited to dinner.
Invited. That was the way of it. That was the joke the whole forest was in on.
For Robin Hood robbed no one on the road, not exactly. He fed them first. A wealthy traveler stopped beneath the trees would be led, wondering, along paths no map had ever caught, to a clearing in the heart of the wood. And in that clearing stood an oak.
It was the greatest oak in England. Its trunk was as wide as a cottage. Its lowest branches were as thick as ordinary trees, and they reached out level over the grass as though the tree had spread its arms one summer, a thousand summers ago, and had never yet seen a reason to draw them back. Under that roof of leaves stood long tables of split logs, and fire pits ringed with river stones, and there the guest would be seated in the place of honor and served such a dinner as kings rarely see. Venison, of course, the king's own, roasted brown and glistening. Bread still warm from the ashes. Trout from the cold streams. Ale, and good wine, and blackberries in their season, and the pale sweet honey of wild bees.
And when the meal was done, and the guest sat back amazed, Robin Hood would smile, and ask, most politely, what such a dinner might be worth, and whether he might see the gentleman's purse, only to be sure the arithmetic was honest.
An honest man who told the truth about his purse went on his way with every coin he had come with, and sometimes more, and a story to tell for the rest of his life. A rich man who lied about his purse paid for his dinner. He paid, as a rule, everything above what he needed to get home safely. And it went out to the poor of the villages along the forest's hem, quietly, all through the year. A sack of flour on a doorstep. A purse on a widow's windowsill. Seed corn for a farmer whose ox had died in the plough.
The sheriff of Nottingham called this robbery, and he was not entirely wrong.
The villagers called it something else, and they were not wrong either.
One rule more, the strangest rule and the best one. Robin Hood would not sit down to his own dinner until a guest had been found to share it. He liked the news of the road. He liked strangers the way some men like books, because you never know what is inside one until it is open. Many an evening the whole company waited, the venison turning, the ale poured, while three men in green stood out by the great road, watching the distance for anyone interesting.
Which is exactly where this story begins. On a bright morning at the end of spring, by a narrow bridge over a quick stream, on the day Robin Hood himself went out walking, and met a man who would not step aside.
Chapter Two.

The Stranger on the Bridge.
The stream ran along the western edge of the forest, cold and quick and talkative, and the bridge that crossed it was a single plank of oak, worn gray by years of boots, wide enough for one man, or for one man's pride.
Robin came down to the bridge from the forest side, walking easily, his bow unstrung across his back, thinking of nothing in particular, which is the best thing to think of on a fine morning. And from the meadow side, at exactly the same moment, came a stranger.
He was the tallest man Robin had ever seen. The old song swears he stood seven feet, and the old song saw him, so we will take its word. His shoulders filled the morning like a barn door. He carried a quarterstaff of oak, taller than himself, worn smooth at the middle where his hands lived, and he swung it as he walked the way a smaller man swings a hazel switch.
Both of them stepped onto the bridge at once. The plank creaked twice, once for each opinion.
Give way, friend, said Robin, pleasantly.
Give way yourself, said the stranger, just as pleasantly. The bridge was mine at my end before it was yours at your end.
I stood on it first, said Robin.
I weigh more, said the stranger. So more of it is mine.
They looked at each other across ten feet of gray plank, and the stream went on underneath them, minding everyone's business at once, the way streams do.
Now Robin had his bow, and for a moment his hand thought about it before he did. But he was, before everything, a courteous man. It would be a poor tale to tell, he said, half to himself, that Robin Hood stood with a yew bow and a full quiver against a man armed with a stick. Stay there, friend. Grant me the time to cut a staff, and then we shall discover whose bridge this is by an older arithmetic.
The stranger leaned on his staff like a man leaning on a gatepost and smiled for the first time. Take all the time you need, he said. I have nowhere to be, and this is turning into a better morning than I had planned.
So Robin stepped back into the trees and cut himself a staff of ground oak, six feet of it, and peeled the twigs away, and swung it twice to learn its weight. Then the two of them met at the middle of the bridge, over the deepest part of the stream, and the morning got better still.
Do not worry. Nobody in this story is ever hurt worse than his dignity, and dignity grows back thicker every time.
What followed was less like a battle than like weather. The staves knocked and clattered in the bright air, quick as a woodpecker, hollow as a church door, and the two men rocked and swayed on the plank like two herons disputing a perch, feet shuffling, eyes merry, each waiting for the little lean, the little error. The stranger struck Robin across the ribs, a blow that rang him like a shaken rug, and Robin answered with a crack across the crown that made the tall man blink and mind his manners. The stream chuckled along underneath. A blackbird stopped to watch, decided it was only men, and went back to more serious things.
And then the stranger feinted low, swung high, caught Robin fair on the shoulder, and swept him, neat as a leaf off a step, into the stream.
The water was cold and green and about four feet deep, which is exactly deep enough for a lesson and not an inch deeper. The tall man leaned over the rail, peering down into the eddies, suddenly worried he had drowned the merriest voice he had met in a year.
Good fellow, he called, where are you now?
Faith, called Robin, from flat on his back in the middle of the stream, with his toes pointed downstream and his hair streaming like waterweed, I am in the flood, and traveling with the tide.
And he began to laugh. He lay in the cold water and laughed at the sky, and the stranger stood on the bridge he had won and laughed down at him, and if you had stood in the meadow that morning you would have heard nothing in all the world but a stream and two grown men laughing.
Robin waded to the bank, poured a boot out, and set his horn to his lips. He blew three notes, sweet and clear, and the empty forest turned out not to be empty at all. Men in Lincoln green came out of the ferns and down from the banks, a dozen, two dozen, more, appearing the way stars appear, one at a time and then suddenly everywhere.
Good master, said the first of them, a steady man called Will Stutely, you are wet through to the bone.
Nothing of the kind, said Robin. I have been inspecting the underside of the bridge, and I am pleased to report it sound. And this gentleman, he said, nodding up at the stranger, who had watched the ferns produce a small army with his staff still ready and his chin still level, this gentleman is the finest hand with a quarterstaff in the north country, and he has just now paid my ferry fare.
Some of the men, out of loyalty, were of a mind to duck the tall man on principle. Robin would not hear of it. He won the bridge fairly, he said, and a man who fights fairly and laughs afterward is not a man you duck. He is a man you feed.
They asked the stranger his name. John Little, he said, of Holderness, a free man of no particular fortune, out to seek a better one.
Then your fortune is found, said Robin, if you want it. Draw a bow with us, eat at our table, wear the green. The rich pay for their dinners and the poor eat free, and no man of mine is ever asked to do a shameful thing. What do you say?
John Little looked at the wet man who had fought him laughing, and at the quiet trees full of friendly eyes, and later he would say it was the easiest question anyone ever asked him.
That night there was a feast under the great oak, which surprised nobody, and at that feast the company held a christening, which surprised only the guest of honor. Will Stutely stood up as godfather, solemn as an owl, a cup of ale in his hand, and declared that the infant before them had come to the forest unnamed and could not lawfully remain so. This child was called John Little, he announced, and that will never do. The words are the wrong way round, as anyone can see. From this night forward, we turn them about, and he shall be Little John.
Seven feet of infant, said Will Stutely, gravely. The largest baby ever christened in England. May he grow.
And the clearing roared, and the ale went round, and the name stuck for seven hundred years.
From that day, Little John was the first of all Robin's friends, his other hand, his level head, his shadow that walked on its own. Where the master went, the big man was seldom far, and between the two of them there was a trust so plain and worn and comfortable that the songs never once bothered to explain it.
The bridge is gone now, plank and post. The stream is still there.
It still remembers, if you ask it quietly.
Chapter Three.

The Miller's Son and the Man in Scarlet.
A camp of seven score men sounds like a loud place, and by day, in fair weather, it could be. But mostly what it sounds like, if you stand at the edge of the clearing with your eyes closed, is work being done by people who like their work.
Listen. There is the long soft hiss of a blade on a whetstone, patient as a cat washing. There is the tap and scrape of arrows being made, for a company of archers eats arrows the way horses eat hay, and somewhere under the oak, always, someone sat fletching, laying the gray goose feathers true, and the best arrows in that camp, in later years, were fletched with feathers of peacock, which is a detail the old songs mention with such pride that we will mention it too. There is the creak of a bow drawn and the small polite thump of a target agreeing to be hit. There is bread being slapped into shape. There is a man singing the first half of a song and forgetting the rest, and three others supplying the rest, wrongly.
In all that good noise, this chapter finds two men worth knowing by name.
The first was called Much, and he was a miller's son. He had grown up in the dusty thunder of his father's mill on the forest's edge, lifting sacks of flour from the moment he could walk, and it had built him like a doorframe, not tall, but square, and quietly certain of where he stood. They said Much could carry a full sack under each arm and still open a gate with his foot, politely. He spoke little. He noticed everything. He kept the stores of the camp, the flour and the salt and the barrels, all counted in his steady head, and no man in the greenwood ever went hungry on Much's watch, because Much knew exactly what hungry felt like and had decided, somewhere back in his boyhood, to be its enemy for life.
And there was a fine white dust about him, always, or so the company swore. Years out of the mill, and still, if Much sat by the fire of an evening, the light found something floury in him. Some men never quite leave the place that made them. It is not a fault. It is a kind of loyalty.
The second man arrived, as the best people do, in the middle of an otherwise ordinary afternoon.
He came walking up the forest road in silk. Scarlet silk, red as rosehips, red as a robin's breast in January, with silk stockings to match, and he walked through the mud and the bramble shade like a man crossing a ballroom floor. The watch brought word, and Robin came out to the road himself, and stood marveling.
A gentleman so fine, said Robin, must surely be carrying a fine purse to match.
That, said the young man, pleasantly, is between me and my tailor.
It would be a kindness, said Robin, to let us weigh it for you. The road through Sherwood is long, and gold is heavy, and we are famous hereabouts for lightening burdens.
I have heard that you are, said the young man, and he smiled, and put his hand not to his purse but to the good yew bow on his back.
Now, the old songs love what happened next, and tell it at length, how the fine young man in scarlet would not be lightened of anything, and how he and Robin tried one another, bout after bout, all courtesy and no malice, and how the young man proved so quick and so strong and so unreasonably cheerful about all of it that Robin stepped back at last, laughing, and asked his name outright.
And the young man told him. He was the son of Robin's own sister, a nephew come looking for his uncle the famous outlaw, and he swore ever after that he had walked the last five miles in his best clothes on purpose, so as to be robbed by his own family in a manner worth writing home about.
They say the laughter could be heard at the far edge of the clearing, where the horses were, and that the horses looked up.
So the company gained a nephew, and because of the silk, and because it was that kind of camp, the name arrived before the introductions were finished. Will Scarlet, they called him, and Will Scarlet he stayed. He kept the fine manners and the finer clothes, brushed the forest off his shoulders every evening like a cat keeping its whiteness in a coal yard, and fought, when he had to, like a summer storm, briefly, brilliantly, and with everyone left standing afterward somehow feeling the day had gone well.
Much the miller's son and Will Scarlet, the quiet one and the bright one, the sack of flour and the bolt of silk. Between them and Little John and the rest, the great oak gathered a family the way an old coat gathers warmth, slowly, year by year, until you cannot imagine the coat without it.
They practiced at the butts each day, splitting peeled willow wands at distances you would not believe if I told you in feet. They hunted the king's deer, which we must admit, and the king will have something to say about it later in this very tale, so let it rest for now. They baked and they brewed. They mended and they argued and they made up. They swam in the cold pools in summer and sat close as loaves in an oven around the winter fires.
And every evening, before the master of the greenwood would touch his own dinner, the old strange rule woke up and stretched.
Go out to the great road, Robin would say, as the smell of the roast began its work on seven score patient men. Go up to the crossing by the Sayles, and look along the way, and bring me a guest. A baron, an abbot, a knight, a merchant grown too comfortable. Someone with news. Someone with a story under his cloak. I will not dine alone in front of all this plenty. It sours the taste.
And so, on an evening at the turn of autumn, when the beeches had begun to drop gold into the road and the light came long and low through the trunks, Little John, and Much the miller's son, and Will Scarlet took their bows and went up to the crossing, and stood in the shadows watching the empty way.
And along that road, at the pace of a tired heart, came a knight.
Chapter Four.

The Knight at Dinner.
You could see, even from a distance, even in poor light, that something was wrong with him.
A knight on horseback is usually a proud sight, all height and jingle. This one drooped. His cloak was thin and had been mended by someone who loved him but could not sew. One foot rode in its stirrup, the other swung loose and forgotten. His hood had slipped down over his eyes and he had not troubled to push it back, so that horse and man drifted up the road together like a boat with no hand on the tiller, and the horse, who clearly felt responsible for the whole enterprise, picked the smooth places to walk.
The three in green stepped into the road, and bent their knees courteously, for that was the custom of the house.
Welcome, gentle knight, said Little John, in his best voice, which rumbled like a cart on a wooden bridge. My master waits dinner on you, and has waited, fasting, these three hours.
The knight pushed back his hood, slowly, like a man coming up from deep water. Who is your master, he asked, though he did not sound as if any answer could frighten him. There was no fear left in him to spend.
Robin Hood, said Little John.
And the knight, to their surprise, smiled, though it was the smallest coin of a smile, worn thin from little use. I have heard he keeps a good table, he said. I had meant to dine tonight in Blyth or Doncaster, on water and regret. Your master's plan is better. Lead on.
So they brought him to the clearing, through the last of the long light, and Robin came forward and greeted him, and hood was doffed to hood, knee bent to knee, for the songs are particular that between Robin Hood and this knight it was courtesy from the first look, both ways, like two men who recognize something in each other before either can name it.
There was water brought in a basin, and towels of good linen, for the greenwood kept that gentle custom as faithfully as any castle. Then they set him in the seat of honor, and they fed him.
Bread and wine. Venison in its juices. Swan and pheasant, says the old song, and river fish, and ale like brown silk. And the knight ate at first like a man remembering how, and then like a man who had not truly dined in a season, and the company, who missed nothing, made their talk louder and easier around him so that he could eat unwatched. Much refilled whatever emptied. Will Scarlet told a story against himself involving silk stockings and a bramble patch. By the time the fire was built up against the dark, the knight sat back, and there was color in his face, and he said, quietly, that such a dinner had not stood before him in three weeks, and that if he ever again had a home worth the name, Robin Hood should be feasted in it until neither of them could rise.
If he ever again had a home. The words fell out of him and lay there.
Now, said Robin, gently, for he had heard the words land, thank the cook, and pay the reckoning. It is our small custom here. A yeoman pays nothing, but you are a knight, and dinner for a knight, with swan, comes dear. What is in your purse, sir, truly?
Ten shillings, said the knight, and my truth with it. Look if you will.
Robin nodded to Little John, and Little John spread the knight's thin cloak on the grass, and opened the little purse, and counted. Ten shillings. Not a penny over, not a penny hid.
And Robin Hood filled the knight's cup with his own hand and said, a man who tells the truth about an empty purse eats free under this tree, tonight and always. But sir, how does a belted knight come to ten shillings and a mended cloak? Were you careless, or a gambler, or unkind, and are you paying a fair price for it? Or is it the other kind of story?
It is the other kind, said the knight.
And with the fire warm on his face and the company quiet around him, he told it.
His name was Sir Richard at the Lee. He had a small castle and good lands, and a wife he loved, and one son, a tall boy, quick and kind and better with a lance at twenty than most men at forty. And at a tournament, in fair play, the boy's skill had outrun everyone's luck. A knight was struck true, and did not rise. No malice in it, no crooked stroke, the marshals themselves said so. But a man was gone, and the law, when it is done weeping, reaches for its scales. To keep his son from ruin, Sir Richard had needed gold, a great weight of gold, at once.
We will let him say the next part as the old song says it, plainly, for plainness was all he had left.
I borrowed

four hundred pounds, he said, from the abbot of Saint Mary's Abbey, in York. My lands stand pledged for it. The day of payment is tomorrow noon. If the money is not counted onto the abbot's table by then, the lands are the abbey's forever, and my family's name goes out like a candle, and I go overseas to end my days where no one knew me when I was whole.
And your friends, asked Robin, though he knew the answer. Everyone knows the answer.
My friends, said Sir Richard, were bees. Thick in the summer of my fortune. Gone at the first frost. When I rode past their gates this week, gates I had feasted inside, the porters were very sorry, and the lords were very much away.
The fire snapped softly. Overhead the great oak moved its thousand hands.
What surety could you give, said Robin at last, if a man were to lend you four hundred pounds tonight?
Sir Richard laughed, one note, like something breaking cleanly. None, he said. I have nothing left to pledge. No surety in the world, unless it be God in heaven, and Our Lady, who has never yet failed me, however near the edge I have walked.
And at that name, every man around the fire saw the master of the greenwood go still, and then begin, slowly, to smile.
Of all the sureties in England, said Robin Hood, standing up into the firelight, you have named the only one I would take before gold in the hand. Our Lady stands good for you, sir knight. Then the money is as good as counted. Little John. Go to the treasury, and count out four hundred pounds.
Chapter Five. Four Hundred Pounds.
The treasury of the greenwood was a dry hollow under the roots at the north side of the great oak, lined with stone, dark as the inside of a pocket, and Little John went to it with a rushlight and a sack and the particular expression of a man who intends to be generous with someone else's arithmetic.
Will Scarlet went with him to hold the light.
Little John counted the gold onto his spread cloak by twenties, and his counting, that night, had a certain music to it, for some of his twenties held more coins than other men's. When at last he announced that there lay four hundred pounds exactly, Will Scarlet looked at the heap, and looked at Little John, and said, solemnly, that it was the largest four hundred pounds he had ever seen.
Nor was that the end. For Little John observed that a knight could not ride to York in a threadbare cloak, it would shame the greenwood's hospitality, and the master agreed. So bolts of cloth were brought out, green and scarlet and good gray, and Little John measured the knight's new clothes using his own longbow as a yardstick, and three feet of gift traveled with every yard of measure. Much went off without a word and came back with new boots.
And when Sir Richard at the Lee protested, which he did, at every single item, Robin Hood talked over him, cheerfully, about the weather.
Last of all they brought him a horse. A gray courser, strong and calm, with a new saddle, for the knight's own tired beast had earned a long holiday in the forest pastures. And Robin said, it were a shame for a knight to ride to such an appointment unattended. Little John will go with you and serve as your yeoman until this business is done.
So in the gray of the morning, Sir Richard at the Lee rode north for York on a good horse, in good clothes, with four hundred generous pounds in his saddlebags and seven feet of borrowed yeoman at his stirrup, and hope sitting on him strangely, like a hawk returned to a wrist that had thought itself done with hawks.
Now turn the page, says the storyteller, and see the other end of this bargain.
In the great abbey of Saint Mary's at York, that same morning, the lord abbot sat at a long table doing sums of his own, and doing them out loud, with relish. This day twelve month, he told the hall, a knight borrowed of this house four hundred pounds, against all his lands. Unless he stands in this room by noon paying gold onto this table, the lands are ours, every field and fishpond, forever. And the sun, gentlemen, is already high, and the roads from the south, I am told, are quite empty.
The high justice of England himself sat at that table, retained in the abbey's coin, and it is recorded that only the prior spoke up for the absent man, and was told, in the language of the cloister, to mind his soup.
At which point there came a knocking at the gate.
Sir Richard at the Lee came up that long hall in his old thin cloak. This was his own idea, and Little John, walking behind with the saddlebags, had approved it as connoisseurs approve. The knight came poor, hood in hand, and knelt, and asked the lord abbot, humbly, for one thing only. More time.
Not a day, said the abbot. The sun and the deed agree, sir. Pay, or the land is Saint Mary's.
The knight, still kneeling, asked if any man at that table would speak for him, be his friend, hold the lands in trust against a later payment. The justice studied the grain of the table. The officers found things in their cups to look at. The abbot smiled the smile of a man watching fruit fall into his lap from a tree he did not plant.
Then Sir Richard at the Lee rose off his knees, and he was somehow taller than he had been, and he said, in a voice the old song took care to remember, that a lord who could watch a true man kneel and beg, and feel nothing but the weight of the coming gold, might keep his courtesy, for the gold itself was ready.
And Little John came up the hall and turned the saddlebags out onto the abbot's table.
Four hundred pounds, said the knight, counted and true, and had you offered me one kind word, my lord, you would have had my thanks along with it, and the thanks of my house would have been worth more to you, over the long years, than the money. Count it. And give me my deeds.
There are silences and silences, and the song lingers on this one. The abbot sat looking at more gold than he had expected ever to see refused him, which is to say, at gold that was merely gold now, and not fields, not fishponds, not forever. The deeds were fetched. The knight took them, and bowed to the exact depth courtesy required and not the width of a hair further, and walked back down the long hall with his heart floating somewhere up among the roof beams.
At the gate he put on his new clothes.
He rode home through the autumn gold with Little John beside him, and they sang, says the song, the pair of them, tunelessly and at length, the whole way into Wyresdale. And at the gate of his own small castle his lady stood waiting, who had watched the road every day for a month, and he swung down and told her, laughing and half crying, wife, be merry, and pray for Robin Hood, for our house stands, and our son is safe, and there is one man in England under whose tree the age of courtesy is not dead.
A year to the day afterward, Sir Richard at the Lee set out for Sherwood with four hundred pounds saved honestly, to repay his debt, and with a hundred new bows and a hundred sheaves of peacock arrows besides. He arrived at the great oak late, and full of apologies, having stopped on the road to see a poor yeoman righted, who was being cheated of his prize at a country wrestling match. Robin heard that excuse and declared it the only excuse in England better than the errand.
But here is the strangeness, and the joke, and the grace of it. Robin would not take the knight's money.
For it happened that not long before, on that same great road, the company had invited to dinner a certain monk, the high cellarer of Saint Mary's Abbey itself, no less, riding south in state. And when Robin asked that monk, most politely, what was in his coffers, the monk had answered, twenty marks, hardly worth the counting. And Little John had counted. And in the coffers of the cellarer of Saint Mary's lay eight hundred pounds in silver and gold.
Robin Hood had laughed until he had to sit down on a root. Then he stood, and swept off his hood to the baffled monk, and thanked him, for his honesty was poor but his errand was blessed. For do you not see, said Robin to the company, Our Lady stood surety for the knight's four hundred pounds. And here, by the hand of her own abbey's cellarer, she has sent repayment, doubled. She is the best guarantor in heaven or England, and none of you shall ever say otherwise under my tree.
So when Sir Richard came with his honest four hundred, Robin held up a hand. The debt is paid, he said. Paid twice over, by a lady, and it would be poor manners to collect it a third time. Keep your gold, sir. And take the second four hundred home with you besides, for your courtesy, and buy your good horse a brighter bridle, and let your lady never watch an empty road again.
And the hundred bows and the hundred sheaves of peacock arrows he did accept, and they hung in the great oak like an armory grown on branches, and the knight and the outlaw parted friends for life, which, in this story, is exactly what they remained.
Chapter Six.

The Friar at the River.
It was midsummer when the greenwood heard about the friar.
The talk began, as most greenwood talk began, at dinner. Someone claimed there was no man in three counties who could stand against Little John with a staff, and Little John modestly agreed, and Will Scarlet, examining an apple, remarked that he had heard otherwise.
He had heard, he said, of a friar down in Fountain Dale, where the river bends among the willows south of the forest. A curtal friar, one of the wandering sort, broad as a church door and strong as any two honest men, who lived by the water, said his prayers loudly, brewed the best ale in the shire, and had never in his life stepped out of anyone's way.
Robin set down his cup. Anyone can hear the weather turn in a story. Never, he asked, out of anyone's way?
Never once, said Will Scarlet, and bit his apple.
Well, said Robin Hood. It would be a discourtesy not to visit.
So the next morning he went south alone through the sleeping heat, down where the oaks gave way to willows, and he found the river running wide and easy over gravel, and on the far bank, in the deep shade, a friar in a gray robe, sitting like a boulder that had taken orders, with a brown dog asleep against his knee, eating bread and cheese with the concentration of a man at his true vocation.
Robin looked at the water, which was too deep for dry boots, and at the friar, who was very large, and he felt the morning improving around him exactly as the bridge morning had improved, years before. Some men collect smooth stones. Robin Hood collected mornings like this.
Good friar, he called across, in his most gilded voice, I have urgent business on your side of the water, and I dare not wet these clothes. Carry me over, in charity, and heaven will remember it.
The friar looked up from his cheese. He considered the request, and the requester, for a long, mild moment. Then he stood, tucked his robe into his belt, waded across, presented his broad back without one word, and carried Robin Hood over the river like a sack of fair value, setting him down on the far gravel gentle as an egg.
Robin was opening his mouth to be gracious about it when the friar spoke.
Now, said the friar, my business is urgent too, and it lies on the side I have just left, and heaven, as you say, remembers charity. Carry me back.
And such was the mildness of his voice, and such was the size of his shoulders, that Robin Hood, the terror of abbots, the uncatchable, found himself bending his back on a gravel bank while a friar the weight of a cathedral bell climbed aboard. The song says Robin carried him. The song also says the water reached Robin's knees, then his belt, then his chin was making calculations, and that the friar rode as serene as a bishop in a barge, remarking pleasantly on the fineness of the day.
Robin staggered out on the first bank and set him down. And then, because he could not help himself, he tried it a third time. Friar, he gasped, charity is a ladder, and turnabout is holy. Carry me over once more, and we part in love.
Gladly, said the friar.
And he took Robin Hood up on his back, and waded out sure as a ford horse, to the exact middle of the river, where the water ran deepest and the current pulled sweetest. And there he stopped.
Now, my fine fellow, said the friar, in a voice full of sunshine, here is my sermon for the day. It is short. Choose, whether you will sink or swim.
And he let go.
The river received Robin Hood with enthusiasm. The friar waded to the bank, sat down by his bread and cheese, and watched the famous outlaw come up streaming like a water spaniel, and the two of them looked at each other across the bright water, and it was the bridge all over again, and they both knew it, and the laughing started in the middle of the river and finished, much later, in the shade, with the friar's ale jug open between them.
They tried each other further, of course, the whole long golden afternoon, in every friendly way two strong men can, and the tally came out even, and evener with each cup. And at the end of it Robin put the question he had waded a river to ask. Come north, he said. Come to the greenwood. Seven score good men, and venison every day, and all the wrongheaded wealth of the north country passing our table in need of a blessing.
The friar considered. Is the ale good, he asked.
The best in three shires, said Robin, though I have just now drunk its better.
And who says the grace at this table of yours?
Nobody, said Robin, who says it properly.
The friar stood up and brushed the crumbs from his robe like a man concluding a negotiation. Then you have need of me, he said, and that is theology.
So the curtal friar came to Sherwood, and the greenwood, which named everybody, came to call him Friar Tuck. His dogs came with him, a jostling, devoted crowd of them, who took up posts around the cook fires with a professional air. He built himself a bower of boughs a little apart, said his offices loudly at dawn to the great annoyance and secret comfort of the camp, brewed, baptized the occasional baby brought shyly in from the villages, and said grace each evening over the venison, at length, with one eye open, blessing the meat and forgiving it for being so delicious.
The company had been a family for years.
Now it had a church. The roof was oak leaves. The bells were birds.
Chapter Seven.

The Golden Arrow.
Now all this while, down in Nottingham, in a castle of good gray stone, lived the sheriff.
The old songs never give him a name, and so neither will we. He was the sheriff, as winter is winter. He was proud, and careful of his dignity, and fond of accounts, and the account he could not close, the ledger line that itched him at night, was Robin Hood. Rents and rich purses went missing into that forest. Fat abbots came out of it lighter and furious. And the man responsible dined openly on the king's own deer, and the villagers, when questioned, had never heard of him, and could not say who, then, had left flour on their doorsteps, perhaps it was the fairies.
You may dislike the sheriff a comfortable amount, but do not fear him. He is not that kind of sheriff, and this is not that kind of story. Think of him as a man trying to catch a river with a ledger.
That spring, however, the sheriff had an idea, and he was so pleased with it that he was kind to his clerks for a week.
He proclaimed a grand contest of archery, open to every bowman in the north country, to be held on a holiday at the butts by Nottingham's gates. And the prize was this. An arrow of pure gold at the head and feathers, with a shaft of white silver, made by the town's best goldsmith, worth a farm. Word of it went out by every road and market, as the sheriff intended.
For the sheriff had reasoned thus. The finest archer in England is the man I want. The finest archer in England cannot bear that anyone else be called the finest archer in England. Therefore hang a golden arrow in the sun, and pride will bring him to me, walking on his own two legs, saving my men the forest.
Under the great oak, the proclamation was read aloud to a very thoughtful dinner.
It is a trap, said Little John, comfortably, helping himself to more.
It is a beautiful trap, said Will Scarlet. Gold head, silver shaft. The man has taste.
It is bait on a hook, said Friar Tuck, and the fish that bites is a proud fish. Bless this fish.
Robin Hood said nothing for a while. In the firelight the company watched him not saying it, and began, quietly, to grin at one another, because they knew their master. He could no more stay away from that contest than the tide can stay out of a harbor. The only question worth debating was the manner of the thing, and so the greenwood spent a happy evening debating it.
It was Little John, the level head, who laid out the way of it. We go, he said, but not as ourselves. Not one thread of Lincoln green crosses that field. We scatter through the crowd and shoot as strangers, one in white, one in yellow, one in blue, and the master in a sorry old coat of red, patched, with the hood pulled forward. Six of us shoot. The rest stand easy in the crowd. We win the arrow, we admire it, and we are gone before the ale tents empty.
And that is exactly what they did.
The holiday came in high blue weather. Nottingham on a fair day was a sight worth the walk, the whole town turned inside out, banners on the walls, the streets smelling of roast pork and trodden grass and gingerbread, pipers competing on corners, jugglers dropping things dramatically on purpose, children underfoot everywhere like happy weather. Somewhere a fiddler tuned his strings, gave it up as a bad job, and played anyway, and nobody minded, for it was that kind of morning. Out by the gates the butts stood freshly painted, the crowd banked up on either side deep as a hedgerow, and in a stand with a striped awning sat the sheriff himself, in his best chain of office, watching the field like a heron watching a pond.
And through the gates, in ones and twos, unhurried, in white and yellow and blue and russet and one sorry patched coat of faded red, came certain strangers, carrying bows.
Chapter Eight.

The Splitting of the Wand.
All morning the field thundered gently with the sound of arrows going where they were sent.
Every archer in the north had come. Farm lads with their fathers' bows. Foresters in the king's livery. Soldiers, millers, a tanner from Leeds who shot beautifully and blushed whenever the crowd cheered. Round by round the targets moved farther, and round by round the field thinned, the way a fire burns down to its truest coals.
By noon there were twenty archers. By early afternoon there were ten.
And by the slant light of the day's turning there were three, and one of them was a lean man in a patched red coat with his hood forward, who had said perhaps nine words all day, and whose arrows had a habit the crowd had begun to murmur about. Other men's arrows landed in the white. His seemed to land where the others' would have wanted to, in the middle of the middle, as if the arrow itself simply preferred it there.
For the last trial, the marshals did the old cruel thing. They took away the broad targets and set up a peeled willow wand, slim as a finger, at a hundred paces, pale against the brown earth.
The first archer's shaft kissed the wand in passing and the crowd sighed like a wave.
The second archer's shaft passed a hand's width wide, which at that distance is shooting to tell your grandchildren about, and the crowd cheered him home.
Then the man in the faded red coat stepped to the mark. He stood still a moment, feeling the small wind on his cheek the way you would feel for rain. The crowd hushed itself, rank by rank, back to the ale tents. Somewhere a dog barked once and was shushed by two hundred people.
He drew, in one slow breath, and loosed.
They said afterward you could hear it, over the whole silent field, the sound the willow wand made. A little green click. The wand stood split to the earth, in two thin white halves, with the arrow trembling between them.
The crowd made a noise like the sea getting to its feet.
And so it came about that the sheriff of Nottingham, in front of all the shire, with trumpets, handed the golden arrow to Robin Hood, at arm's length, smiling his official smile into the shadow of that hood, and knew him not at all.
You shoot, said the sheriff graciously, better than any man I ever watched. A fellow of your hand should leave off wandering and enter service. Come serve me, and wear my livery, and draw my pay.
Thank you, master, said the man in red, in a voice like any voice, but I have a master already, the best in England, and I could never leave him. He keeps, you see, a very good table.
And he bowed, and took his arrow, and the crowd swallowed him the way the forest swallows a path.
That night under the great oak the golden arrow went from hand to hand around the fire while the story went round the other way, twice as fast and growing. But Robin Hood, at the head of the table, turned his cup and was quiet, until Little John, who could read him across a dark field in rain, asked him what the matter was.
The matter, said Robin, is a discourtesy. The sheriff of Nottingham gave the prize to a stranger in a red coat. That stranger has a name, and the sheriff, our own good sheriff, of all men, does not know that he crowned it today. It is wrong for a man to be so far behind on the news.
The clearing grew very still with delight.
You would not, said Friar Tuck, hopefully.
A letter, said Robin Hood, standing up with the firelight all over his grin. A courteous letter. And Little John shall carry it, by air.
So a letter was written that evening, in a fair round hand, with every flourish courtesy allows. It thanked the lord sheriff for a splendid contest, praised the goldsmith's work in the warmest terms, assured his lordship that the arrow had found a worthy home in a tall oak of his acquaintance, and remained his lordship's most obliged and faithful neighbor, Robin Hood.
Do not be startled. Nothing in this story ever comes through a window unkindly.
And three nights later, as the sheriff sat at supper in his hall with the windows open to the warm dark, something came through the casement with a sound like a swan's wingbeat and stood, quivering gently, in the tabletop, precisely between the roast and the salt.
It was an arrow, fletched gray goose, and the letter was tied below the head with a green ribbon.
The household held its breath in the doorways while the sheriff read. His face passed through several counties. And it is recorded, by the kinder chroniclers, that after the shouting was over, and the guards had searched the empty garden, and the household had been sent to bed, the sheriff of Nottingham sat alone a long while, looking at the arrow standing in his good oak table, at the impossible dark it had flown out of, at the neatness of the shot between roast and salt.
And that he said, at last, quietly, to no one at all, that it was the second finest shot he had seen that week.
Then he went to bed. Even sheriffs must sleep, and it is not for us to grudge him.
In the greenwood the golden arrow was hung high on a bough of the great oak, where it swung small and bright among the leaves for years, catching the last of every sunset, catching the first of every fire. The company left it there. Nobody spent it. Some things are not for spending.
It was the light it gave, they said. A tree that has caught the sun once likes to be reminded.
Chapter Nine.

The King Comes to the Greenwood.
Now all of this, as news will, went traveling.
It left the shire on market carts and pack saddles, changing its clothes a little at every fireside, the way stories do, and by and by it came to London, and climbed the longest stairs in England, and was told, over supper, to the king.
Edward, the old song calls him. Edward our comely king. And the song says that when he heard of Robin Hood, and of the golden arrow, and of his own deer of Sherwood running thin, because there was a man in the greenwood who regarded them, sire, as his pantry, the king set down his cup and was quiet a long moment, and no one at the table could tell from his face whether a storm was coming or a holiday.
So the king came north. He came to Nottingham with a household that filled the castle to the eaves, and he stayed, the song says, half a year, and in all that half year, of Robin Hood he caught exactly nothing. It is a rare thing for a king to be refused, and rarer still for the refusal to be so polite, and the king began to want, more than the capture, a look at this fellow.
At last an old forester of the shire, gray as a January morning, came to him privately and told him the truth of it. Sire, you may hunt this man for seven years with seven armies and never once wet your boots. He cannot be caught by anyone he does not wish to meet. But he can be met. Dress as a rich abbot. Take five of your quietest knights and put them in monks' gray, and ride down the forest road, unhurried, as men with full saddlebags ride, and you will dine with him before the sun is down. And sire, whatever passes under those trees, you have my word you will take no harm. That is the strangeness of him. That has always been the strangeness of him.
And so, on a morning of high white clouds, there rode down the great road into Sherwood a lord abbot on a tall horse, broad in the shoulders for a churchman, with five gray monks behind him who sat their saddles like cavalry.
They had not gone a mile beneath the trees when the road, which had been empty, was not.
A man stood in the leaf light with a longbow in his hand, bareheaded, and men in green stood easy behind him, a few, and then more than a few, and the abbot gave up counting somewhere past thirty.
The man in front took the abbot's bridle, and bent his knee, courteous as a chamberlain.
Sir abbot, he said, welcome to the greenwood. We are yeomen of this forest. We live under these trees on the king's deer, for we have no other larder, and you have abbeys and churches and rents in plenty, and gold going spare. Grant us some of your spending, for holy charity, and you shall have such a dinner for it as no abbey ever laid.
And the abbot said, gravely, that he had lain a fortnight at Nottingham with the king, and had spent a great deal in that expensive company, and that forty pounds was every coin he had left in the world.
Little John spread his cloak on the road, and counted. Forty pounds. Not a penny over, not a penny hid.
So Robin took twenty pounds for his men, and set the other twenty back in the abbot's saddlebag with his own hand, and said, sir, a man who tells the truth on this road keeps the half at least, and dines free besides.
Then the abbot said the thing he had ridden into the forest to say. I carry with me a greeting, he said, from Edward the king. He bids you and your men to Nottingham, in his own name. And from inside his robe he brought out the king's seal, the great wax and ribbon of England, and held it out in the green light.
Robin Hood went down on his knee in the road. Both knees. His hood was off before either knee had landed.
I love no man in all this world, he said, so well as I do my king. Sir abbot, for the love of the seal you carry, you are the most welcome man to walk this road in seven years. Tonight you dine with me.
And he set his horn to his lips and blew, and the forest, which had been a forest, became seven score men in

Lincoln green, kneeling in the bracken with their hoods off.
And the song tells us what the abbot said then, very low, inside his own chest, where no one could hear it. Here is a wonder, and a seemly sight. His men come quicker to his horn than my men come to my crown.
Then they dined.
They dined under the great oak, in the place of honor, on venison, which the abbot ate with an expression the company entirely misread, and good white bread, and the fat wild swans of the river, and Friar Tuck said a grace over the king's own deer that lasted, the song swears, until the meat was nearly cold, while a gray monk with a soldier's shoulders laughed into his sleeve.
And the tall abbot ate the king's venison, at the king's expense, in the company of the man who had taken it, and found, to his private and everlasting astonishment, that he could not remember a better dinner in his life.
Chapter Ten. Lincoln Green.
After dinner, as the light went long and gold between the trunks, there was sport.
Hazel wands were set up down the clearing, at a distance the abbot privately considered unreasonable, and on each wand was hung a garland of roses, and the game was the old greenwood game. Every man shoots through the garland. And whoever misses loses his arrow to the winner, and takes for his tuition one friendly buffet, flat handed, from the master of the field.
You may set your heart at ease. Nobody here is ever hurt worse than his dignity.
So they shot, in the slant light. Little John shot, and Will Scarlet shot, and Much the miller's son shot, and mostly the arrows went through the garlands clean, and now and then a man missed, and paid his forfeit, and the clearing laughed. And Robin shot best of all, twice splitting the wand itself, which was his old habit.
But the third time, at the last, whether the light had shifted, or the wind had breathed, or whether, as Friar Tuck maintained ever after, heaven itself had a hand on the arrow, Robin Hood missed the garland. By three fingers' width. The whole clearing saw it, and drew one delighted breath, and held it.
Little John was solemn as a church. Master, he said, a bargain is a bargain, and the whole field is witness. Your arrow is lost, and there is a payment owing.
Then I will take my pay, said Robin, laughing, from a better hand than any of yours. Sir abbot, I delivered you your dinner, deliver me my buffet. I yield it to the church.
It falls not into my order, said the abbot, gravely, to smite a good yeoman.
Smite boldly, said Robin Hood, planting his feet. I give you full leave.
So the abbot rolled back his sleeve. And the clearing noticed the arm that came out of that churchman's sleeve exactly one instant too late. The buffet, when it came, was flat handed and fair and entirely within the rules, and it sat the most famous outlaw in England down on the grass of his own clearing, neat as a leaf off a step.
By my faith, said Robin Hood, from the ground, working his jaw thoughtfully, there is pith in your arm, sir abbot. There is a strong yeoman spoiled in you.
And then he looked up.
He looked up at the tall man standing over him, the light full on his face at last, and the look lasted longer than any look needs to, and something came into Robin's face that no man under the oak had ever seen there.
For at the long table, Sir Richard at the Lee had already risen to his feet, white as a wand, and now he came forward and went down on his knee in the grass. And when the company saw the knight kneel, and then saw their own master pull the hood from his head and come up off the ground not to his feet but to his knees, the whole clearing understood at once, the way a field understands wind, and seven score men went down in the bracken without a word.
My lord the king of England, said Robin Hood. Now I know you well. Mercy, my lord, for me and for my men. For we meant your majesty nothing but forty pounds of inconvenience, and we have fed you the best dinner in your own deer's power to provide.
And Edward the king looked down at him, at this fellow who could split a willow wand at a hundred paces, who could not be caught by half a year of crown and cavalry, and who had been brought to both knees in a heartbeat by a circle of old wax with a ribbon on it.
Mercy I grant, said the king, to you and your men, on this one condition. That you quit this greenwood, and come south, and dwell at my court, and serve me. I have a use for a man whose men love him faster than mine love me.
Then this is the gladdest day the greenwood ever grew, said Robin, and welcome, my lord, twice welcome, once as abbot and once as England.
And then the king said the thing that turned the whole day to holiday for good.
Have you, he asked, any of that green cloth to sell me?
They clothed him under the great oak, Edward the king, in Lincoln green, and his five knights after him, and when the whole company rode out of Sherwood for Nottingham in the morning there was not one thread among them all that was not green, king and outlaw and knight and miller's son together, and they shot at wayside marks the whole road in, and the king lost as often as any man, and paid his forfeits laughing, for winning was his daily bread and had long ago lost its taste.
Now the good folk of Nottingham, seeing from their walls a hundred riders all in green coming up the road, drew the one conclusion the past ten years had taught them to draw, and the gates were half barred and the bells half rung and the streets emptying fast, when the tallest rider put back his hood and showed the town the face of the king.
Then the bells rang the other way, which every town knows how to do, and quickly.
There was a feast in the castle that night. And it is recorded that the sheriff of Nottingham dined at the high table, two seats from a lean man in new green whom he had once handed a golden arrow at arm's length. And if the sheriff knew him, he was wise enough at last to say nothing, and if he did not, then he passed a most pleasant evening, and either way we may leave him there kindly, with his cup full, in the candlelight, at peace.
And in the morning the king's pardon was cried in the marketplace, to Robin Hood and to all his company, by name where names were known and by trade where they were not.
And that cry, said the storyteller, turning the page slowly, was heard in a good many villages along a certain forest's hem, and in every one of them, somebody smiled at their supper and said nothing, and put a little extra flour by, out of old habit, for whoever might need it.
Chapter Eleven.

The Turning of the Year.
So Robin Hood went south, and dwelt at the king's court.
He was given rooms, and a fee, and new clothes with fur at the collar, and the court found him marvelous, for a season, the way courts do. And the song says that in twelve months and something more, his fee had run through his open fingers to knights and squires and porters and anyone with a good story and a thin coat, and he had kept nothing, which surprised him not at all, and the court very much.
But a fee can be spent again. It was not the money.
It was this. At court, the morning came through windows. The birds were in cages, and sang beautifully, and wrongly, at the wrong hours. Dinner arrived without being hunted, and tasted like it. And of all the seven score men of the greenwood, in the end only Little John and Will Scarlet had stayed at his master's side, the others drifting home north by twos and threes, not from any failing of love, but because a forest was where their hands made sense.
Robin grew quiet. Quieter by the month. He stood at ceremonies with his face doing its duty and his heart somewhere up among old branches.
And one bright morning he chanced upon some young men of the court at the archery butts, laughing at one another's misses, and he stood and watched them a long while. And the smell of the cut grass, and the flat thump of the arrows, and the particular sound young men make when nothing yet has ever really gone wrong for them, undid him completely, there in the sunshine, in his good clothes.
He went to the king that same day.
My lord, he said, I once built a small chapel in the greenwood, a poor thing of wood and thatch, and it is the dearest roof to me in England after yours. I have not knelt in it these many months, and I cannot sleep for thinking of it. Grant me leave to walk north, barefoot, as a pilgrim goes, and see it once again.
And Edward the king looked at him a long moment, the way he had looked down at him once in a clearing, and what was in the king's face the song calls sadness, and lets it be. He had studied this man well enough by now to know exactly what he was being asked, underneath the pilgrim's words, and exactly how it would end.
Seven nights, said the king, quietly. I give you seven nights, and no more. And he watched him go from the highest window.
Robin Hood came into Sherwood on a morning in May, in the young leaf, with the dew still down.
The song keeps this part simple, and so will we. He came in under the eaves of the forest, and stood still, and heard the notes of the small birds threaded through the green dusk of the wood, and he said, aloud, to nobody, it seems long since I was here. And also it seemed to him that he had never left, and both were true, for that is exactly the shape of coming home.
He shot a hart, for old custom. And then he set his horn to his lips, and blew the three notes, sweet and clear, the notes the whole north country could have sung in its sleep.
And Sherwood answered.
Out of the ferns and down from the banks, out of the green shade by ones and twos and then by scores, seven score men came through the bracken with their hoods coming off as they ran, and they knelt around him in the old rings, laughing and not one of them pretending otherwise. And the word went along the forest paths and out to the villages on the hem faster than any horse could have carried it. He is home. He is home. He is home.
And home he stayed. The old song, closing, says that Robin Hood dwelt in the green forest after that for two and twenty years, and in the arithmetic of songs, two and twenty years means always.
So let the years turn now, the way the song lets them turn, like a slow wheel, well greased with quiet.
Spring in the greenwood was the birches first, a green mist along the streams before the oaks would commit to anything, and the pools loud with snowmelt, and the fawns arriving on their borrowed legs, safe now by the king's own word.
Summer was the deep leaf. Light coming down green as pond water. The cold pools and the swimming, and the bees working the lime trees until whole aisles of the forest hummed like a held note, and the smell of roasting over everything, and always, at evening, a guest at the merriest table in England.
And one summer among those summers, the greenwood held a wedding. A young minstrel called Allan a Dale had come to the fires with a broken harp string and a worse heart, for his true love Ellen was promised that very week to a rich old knight she had never chosen, and the banns were bought and the church was ready and everything was arranged except her opinion. Robin Hood heard the tale out, and asked what Allan could pay for the righting of it, and the answer was five shillings and a ring, and the ring, Allan explained, was spoken for. The master of the greenwood declared it the best fee ever offered under his tree. So the company went to church. The old knight arrived to find the aisle lined with quiet men in Lincoln green, and the bride arrived to find Allan waiting at the door, and Friar Tuck, at length, with one eye open, and enjoying himself immensely, married the two people in that church who actually wished to be married. The old knight rode home unwed and unharmed, which everyone agreed was the correct order of injuries. And Ellen came into the greenwood a bride, and there was dancing on the grass until the owls complained, and from that summer on the camp had music at evening, which is the one furnishing no great hall should ever be without.
Autumn was the beeches dropping gold into the roads, and Much the miller's son counting barrels and sacks against the cold with his steady lips moving, and apples in the ashes, and smoke standing up straight from the fires.
And winter was close and kind. Snow on the shoulders of the great oak. The fires banked deep, and the company sitting close as loaves in an oven, and Friar Tuck's grace grown shorter in the cold and warmer for it, and the stories going round and round the fire, the bridge, the river, the wedding, the golden arrow, the buffet that sat a king's outlaw down in his own clearing, every story polished a little rounder every winter, the way the stream polishes its stones. In after years the singers would give Robin a sweetheart, Maid Marian, queen of the May games. The oldest songs are shy about her, but the firesides of England never were, and there is room under a tree that size for both to be true.
Year by year. Ring by ring, the way the oak counted.
And that is where this telling leaves them, for a night telling knows where to stop. We do not follow them out. We leave them under the tree, at the fire, at the full table, forever, in the two and twenty years that mean always, with the snow coming down soft outside the circle of the firelight, and nothing coming up the road but friends.
Chapter Twelve.

Goodnight. And the Lamp at the Edge of Morning.
It is night in Sherwood now. Deep night, the kind the forest keeps for itself.
The fires under the great oak have been banked down to their embers, and the embers breathe under their blankets of ash, slow and even, keeping tomorrow's warmth like a secret. The long tables stand empty in the dark, wiped and quiet. High in the branches, where it has hung for years, the golden arrow holds the last red of the firelight in its feathers, a small warm star among the leaves, and sways a little, and settles.
The company is asleep.
Little John sleeps like a hill, vast and calm, one arm across his eyes. Will Scarlet sleeps with his fine coat folded square beside him, brushed even in his dreams. Much the miller's son sleeps with his stores all counted and his mind at rest, and a fine white dust of moonlight on him that would not surprise anyone. Friar Tuck sleeps in his bower of boughs, having said his last office to an audience of owls, and his dogs are curled against him in a warm devoted heap, twitching gently after dream rabbits.
Robin Hood sleeps under the tree that knows him best.
Out in the moon meadows, the deer have come from the shade to graze the silver grass. They are safe tonight. They step without hurry, lifting their heads now and then to listen, finding only owl sound and leaf sound, and lowering them again. The whole herd drifts across the clearing slower than clouds.
By the old crossing at the forest's western edge, the stream is still talking. The plank bridge is long gone, and the stream does not mind. It goes on telling the same story to its stones all night, the one about the morning two grown men filled the whole meadow with laughing, and the stones have heard it a thousand times, and let it be told again.
Down in Nottingham, the town sleeps behind its walls. The market square is bare and blue with moonlight. The bells hang quiet in their towers, resting their voices. In the castle of good gray stone the sheriff is asleep, and his ledgers are closed on their shelf, and whatever he dreams of, it holds no arrows, and we are glad for him.
Away north, in a small castle in Wyresdale, Sir Richard at the Lee sleeps beside his lady, and the deeds of his lands sleep in their chest, and his tall son sleeps down the hall, and the road outside the gate lies empty all night long with no one watching it. That is what a happy ending looks like from a window. An empty road, and no one watching it.
And over it all, the forest.
The high canopy moves in the night wind, slow as a tide, the sound the greenwood has made every night since before the kingdom had a name. The oaks hold up the stars. The owls go over on their soft wings, asking their one round question. An acorn lets go, somewhere in the dark, and lands in the moss, and begins, very slowly, in no hurry at all, to become a great oak with room under it for seven score friends.
The greenwood does not sleep, exactly. It keeps watch the way the very old and the very kind keep watch. With its eyes half closed. Over everyone.
And far away, at the quiet edge of everything, in a small room, a lamp is burning low.
The storyteller turns the last page of tonight's tale. Pressed flat there, faint as a watermark, is an oak leaf, still green, which no autumn has ever been able to touch. If you held it to your ear, in a very quiet room, on the very edge of sleep, you might hear it. A horn, far off among the trees. Three notes, sweet and clear. Friends coming through the ferns.
You do not need to hold it to your ear. You are already hearing it.
The flame is the size of an almond now. 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.
The words of the story have stopped being words. They are just warmth with a rhythm in it now.
Like a heartbeat through a wall.
Like rain in the leaves, far off, when the shelter is dry.
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 follow the small wooden music of a loom to a house in the north of old China, where a daughter is about to set down her shuttle and buy a horse, in the oldest and kindest of all the soldier songs, the Ballad of Mulan.
And there is no hurry at all as she begins.
Settle in now. Let the chair take your weight, all of it, even the part you have been carrying in your shoulders since morning. 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 lamplight is near you, the way a river is near a sleeping house.
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.
And you may believe you already know the tale that is coming. Most travelers who find this room believe that. But the tale by lamplight is older than the one you were shown, and smaller, and warmer. It was a song first, short enough to fit on two pages, and people have been singing it for some fifteen hundred years, by rivers, in courtyards, over cradles. There is no dragon in it. There is no magic in it at all, only the ordinary kind that never wears out. A daughter who loved her father. A horse bought in four markets. A secret kept for twelve years among ten thousand men. And at the very end, a joke about two hares, told with a smile, that has not aged a single day. Everything the old song holds is here tonight, and we will add nothing to it but lamplight.
The flame leans, and settles.
We begin.
Chapter One.

The Loom That Faced the Door.
Long ago, and far to the east of here, in the north of old China, there was a house that stood a little apart from its village, with its back against a low hill and its face turned to the road.
It was not a grand house. Its walls were of packed earth, the color of bread crust, and its roof had been mended so many times, tile by tile, that it had taken on the patchwork kindness of a quilt. There was a courtyard with a mulberry tree in one corner and a well in the other, and a few brown hens who patrolled the ground between them with the seriousness of small officials. Beyond the courtyard wall lay the millet fields, going gold. Beyond the fields the river country began. And far beyond that, so far that on most days they were only a blue suggestion along the sky, stood the mountains of the north.
In that house lived a family of five. A father, who had been a soldier once, long ago, and who walked now with an old soldier's ache in his knee when the weather turned. A mother, who ran the house the way a good captain runs a ship, calmly, with lists. An elder sister, grown and gentle, who could fold a dumpling so that it looked like a lotus about to open. A little brother, still small enough to consider the hens his personal cavalry. And between them, the second child, the younger daughter.
Her name was Mulan.
The old song does not tell us what she looked like, and we will not invent a face for her. The song is wiser than that. It tells us instead what she sounded like, which is a better way to know a person. In fact, said the storyteller, the song begins with a sound. Or rather, with the absence of one.
In the main room of that house stood a loom of dark wood, old enough that its beam had been worn silky by three generations of resting hands. It stood facing the door, the way looms did in those houses, so that whoever sat weaving could see the courtyard and the gate and the road beyond, and so the daylight could come in over the work. A weaver sits at a loom for many hours. It is good to face the world while you do it.
And the loom had a voice. Everyone in the family knew it the way you know a voice. Click, and then clack. The shuttle flying through the open threads from one hand to the other, the beater drawn home, the cloth growing by one thin line. Click, and clack, hour after hour, so steady, so woven into the days of that house, that the family only truly heard it on the day it stopped.
On the evening our story begins, it had stopped.
Mulan sat at the loom with the shuttle quiet in her lap. The threads stood open, waiting, patient as a held breath. Through the door she could see the courtyard going blue with dusk, the mulberry tree holding the last of the light in its highest leaves, one hen making a final proud circuit of the well. From the kitchen came the good sounds of the evening meal being made, the fire, the water, the knife on the board. And from the loom came nothing.
No click. No clack. Only, every little while, a sigh.
Her mother heard it, of course. A mother hears the sound a loom is not making more clearly than she hears thunder. She came and stood in the doorway with her hands still dusted with flour, and she looked at her daughter for a while, and then she asked the question the song still asks, word for word, after fifteen hundred years.
Daughter, what are you thinking of? Daughter, what do you long for?
And Mulan answered the way the song answers.
I am thinking of nothing, she said. I am longing for no one.
Which was true, in its way. There was no sweetheart in her thoughts. There was no far city she wished to see. What sat with her in the dusk, beside the quiet shuttle, was heavier than any of that, and she was still deciding how to lift it.
Last night, she said at last, I walked down to the village gate. And I saw what is posted there.
The courtyard went very still, the way a room goes still when a word everyone has been stepping around is finally set down on the table.
Because her mother knew what was posted at the gate. The whole village knew. The whole north knew by then. And in a moment, so will you. But slowly, said the storyteller, turning the page with no hurry at all. Slowly. Nothing in this room ever arrives faster than a walking horse.
Chapter Two.

Twelve Scrolls of Paper.
To understand what was nailed up at the village gate, you must know one small thing about that time and that place, and then the story will carry you the rest of the way.
The north of China, in those years, was ruled by emperors who had come down from the grasslands long before, horsemen who had become builders of cities. And so the old song calls the ruler by two names in the same breath, the Khan and the Son of Heaven, one name from the grass and one from the throne, and it never once stops to explain itself. We will do the same. He was the Khan. He was the Son of Heaven. He was, either way, very far off, and his word traveled in the form of paper.
That autumn, trouble had come down out of the north, as it did in those centuries the way hard winters come, not as a surprise but as a season. Riders had been seen along the passes. The beacon fires had been lit on the old towers, one answering another all down the line of the hills, small orange stars appearing in the dusk where no stars should be. And the Khan had called up a great army.
The calling arrived in the village as a sheaf of notices, brushed in black ink on paper the color of oatmeal, fixed to the boards by the gate where the tax notices and the market days were posted. The army lists were long. They had been copied out into twelve scrolls, and the crier had read them by lantern light, name after name after name, while the village stood in the cold and listened.
And on every one of the twelve scrolls, the song says, stood her father's name.
The song does not explain how a name comes to be written twelve times. It only says it plainly and lets it stand, and perhaps that is what it felt like to a family reading by lantern light, that the name was everywhere, that there was no scroll in the empire without it, that the paper itself would not let him go. Twelve scrolls. Twelve times. His name.
Her father had no grown son. Mulan had no elder brother. That is the very hinge of the song, and it says it just so, in two short lines, like two stones set side by side to cross a stream. The little brother was still of the age when a wooden sword is heavy. The elder sister was needed where she was. And the father, the old soldier, stood at the gate a long time that night, reading his own name in the lantern light, twelve times over, and then walked home, favoring his knee.
At the evening meal he said, at last, what everyone knew he would say. I will report at the muster. I have served before. I remember the way of it.
No one answered him. The fire spoke a little. The mother set down the ladle and did not pick it up again. Because they had all seen him come back from the well that winter, one hand on the wall. They had all heard him on the stairs. He was brave, and he was loved, and he was old, and all three of those things were true at once, which is the kind of arithmetic that keeps families awake at night.
That night, Mulan lay in her own bed, in the quiet of the house, and listened.
She heard the wind come down off the hill and cross the courtyard, stirring the mulberry leaves. She heard the well rope shift on its hook. She heard her father cough once, softly, twice, and go quiet. She heard, in her mind, the crier's voice reading the lists, and behind it, further back, the click and clack of the loom, the sound of her whole life so far, steady as a heart.
And somewhere in the smallest hour of that night, with no trumpet and no vow and no lightning, quietly, the way a scale finally tips when one more grain of rice is added, she decided.
In the morning she rose before the hens, and lit the fire, and set the millet gruel over the fire, and when her father came into the kitchen she filled his bowl and set it before him and said, Father. The lists call for a man of our family name. They do not say which one.
He looked at her a long moment over the bowl.
I will buy a horse in the market, she said. And a saddle, and a bridle, and a whip. And I will ride to the muster in your place, as your son, and no one will know me. I sit a horse as well as anyone in this village. You taught me yourself, before my brother could walk.
Now, here the old song does a very kind thing, said the storyteller, and we will honor it. It does not record the argument. You may be sure there was one. There were tears, and there was the word no, said more than once, said in every voice a father has. But the singers who made this song, fifteen hundred years ago, gave that family their one night of grief to themselves, off the page, behind the shut door, and every singer since has kept it so. The song simply steps from the deciding to the doing, the way you step over a threshold.
And so shall we.
By the second evening it was settled, because it was the only door out of that winter that did not have the old man's name on it. The mother took out her needles and began, without a word, to let out the shoulders of a coat. The sister sat close to Mulan and braided her hair tight, the plain way, the way that fits under a soldier's cap, and said nothing either, but braided very slowly. The little brother, who understood only some of it, promised to guard the hens.
And the loom stood quiet in the dark, facing the door.
And the door, all night, held.
Chapter Three.

The Four Markets.
The market town lay half a day south along the road, where the road met the river's first slow bend, and on market days it doubled itself, the way towns do, every street growing a second street of stalls and awnings and voices.
She went down with the dawn carts, riding among a neighbor's baskets with the family coins knotted into her sash, a daughter going to market, which was every second person on that road, and nothing about her to make anyone look twice. The dew burned off the millet as they went. By the time the town wall showed above the orchards the day was warm and smelled of dust and ripening fruit, and inside the gate the noise arrived all at once, the way water arrives when a sluice is opened. Bread sellers calling their one word over and over. A tinker's small hammer, mending something back into the world. Geese being contradicted. Somewhere a bamboo flute, unhurried, playing a tune the whole north knew and no one could name.
Now the song, said the storyteller, gives Mulan's errand a shape that singers have loved for fifteen hundred years, and once you hear it you will not forget it. It sends her to four markets. In the east market she buys a fine horse. In the west market, a saddle and a saddle blanket. In the south market, a bridle. In the north market, a long whip. Four corners of the compass, one for each piece of the journey, as though she were buckling on the whole wide world one direction at a time. Perhaps the guilds of that town really did keep to their own quarters, the horse dealers in the east and the saddlers in the west. Or perhaps the singers simply knew that a task told in four directions sounds complete, the way a table with four legs stands. Either way, we will walk all four, because the song did, and the song knows what it is doing.
The east market smelled of hay and warm animals. The horse dealers had strung a rope line in the shade of the wall, and along it stood the horses, tails swishing the flies, necks drooping in the morning warmth. There were tall glossy horses that stamped and rolled their eyes to be admired, and the dealers praised those loudest.
Mulan walked the line slowly, twice, saying nothing, the way her father had taught her. You do not listen to the dealer, he had said. You listen to the horse.
Near the end of the line stood a dun horse with a black mane and one white forefoot, neither tall nor small, watching her come with a calm dark eye. When a cart clattered past behind them, the glossy horses shied and the rope jerked all down the line, and the dun horse only turned one ear toward the noise, and then turned it back, and went on watching her, as if to say, yes, carts do that.
She stood at its shoulder. It breathed at her, a great warm smell of hay. She laid her hand flat on its neck, and felt it lean, very slightly, into her hand, the way the lamp flame leans, and settles.
This one, she said.
The dealer began a speech about three finer animals. The horse and Mulan waited together, with the same expression, until he had finished. Then she counted the strings of copper cash into his palm, coin by careful coin, and the dealer, who was not a bad man, looked at her once, and looked at the horse, and let the price be fair.
In the west market she bought the saddle. The saddler's shop smelled of leather and beeswax and lamp oil, that deep brown smell that gets into the wood of such shops and never leaves. Saddles hung on pegs like a flock of patient birds. The saddler showed her the seams, the tree, the girth straps, and she checked each one with her thumbs the way her father had shown her at the kitchen table the night before, his hands remembering thirty years back all on their own. She bought a felt blanket too, gray with a red border, thick enough to keep a horse's back kind through a long day.
There were stirrups on that saddle, two hoops of iron hung on broad leathers, and it is worth a moment to say so, because stirrups were a new thing in the world then, or nearly new, and the north country was where they were newest and best. An older rider had gripped with his knees and hoped. A rider with iron under her feet could stand in a mountain pass, could turn in the saddle, could rest one leg and then the other across a long day, could become, in time, the kind of rider this song is about. The saddler set the leathers to her height and told her she would thank him within the year. She thanked him for twelve.
In the south market she bought the bridle. It was quieter there, an old man in a small shop, reins and headstalls hanging in loops on the wall like written letters. He fitted the bit to her hand, then to the dun horse's mouth, gently, talking to the horse all the while about nothing, the weather, the barley, and the horse listened to him with its calm ears, and Mulan thought, this is how I will talk to you on the nights when neither of us can hear anything kind. He would take no extra coin for the fitting. For the soldier's family, he said, and bowed to her, not knowing the half of what he was bowing to.
And in the north market she bought the long whip.
It was the smallest purchase and the strangest, said the storyteller, and the song gives it its own whole line, so we will too. A soldier's whip, in those days, was hardly ever used for whipping. It was a walking staff when the passes were steep. It was a pointer for showing a far thing to a friend without shouting. It was a way to knock the snow off a tent rope, and to test a river's ice, and to feel taller on a cold night. She chose one of dark rattan, longer than her arm, with a good weight in the hand, and the seller wrapped its grip in new leather while she waited, and the wrapping of it, round and round, slow and neat, was the last quiet errand of the day.
And that was the whole of the errand, and the song keeps it the way a list is kept by someone who loves the things on it. In the east market, a fine horse. In the west market, a saddle and a blanket of felt. In the south market, a bridle. In the north market, a long whip. Say it slowly and it is a compass. Say it more slowly and it is a lullaby. Fifteen hundred years of drowsy children have gone to sleep counting those four markets on four fingers, one direction at a time, and there is no reason in the world, tonight, why you should not be one of them.
She rode home in the late afternoon with the saddle creaking its new leather song under her, the bridle brasses winking in the low sun, the whip across her knees, and the whole west turning the color of ripe apricots ahead of her, and if you had passed her on that road you would have seen nothing to remember. A farm daughter on a dun horse. And you would have passed the beginning of one of the oldest songs in the world, and never known it.
That evening the horse stood in the courtyard, nosing the mulberry leaves, entirely unimpressed by the hens, who reorganized their entire government around it before nightfall. The little brother fed it a heel of bread and named it four different names, all of which the horse declined. The father walked around it once, slowly, his hand trailing on its flank, and said only, a good eye, this one, and stood a while at its head with his forehead near its forehead, saying something too quiet for the yard to hear.
And by lamplight, at the kitchen table, he taught his daughter the things his old hands knew. How to set the saddle so it sits forward of the loin. How to tie the soldier's knots, the one that holds and the one that slips free in the dark. How to bind her hair the plain tight way the soldiers bound theirs, under the cap, so that nothing of it showed. How to answer a sergeant, which is briefly, and how to answer a bragging man, which is not at all.
Keep your feet dry, he said at last. Feed the horse before you feed yourself. Stand your watches honestly. And come home.
That is a whole book of soldiering, said the storyteller, in four lines. Old soldiers speak in pack loads. Everything they say is folded small, to carry far.
Chapter Four.

The Yellow River Nights.
She left at first light, because the song says so, and because first light is when brave things are easiest, before the day is awake enough to argue.
At dawn, says the song, she took leave of her father and her mother. It gives the parting one line, and the line is enough. The mother put into her saddlebag a parcel of steamed bread and dried dates, wrapped in the blue cloth that was usually kept for festivals. The father checked the girth he had already checked, twice, and then once more. The sister smoothed the coat across her shoulders, the coat whose shoulders she had let out herself, needle by needle. The little brother stood very straight by the gate, guarding the hens, as promised, with his wooden sword.
No one wailed. That was their gift to her, and the song understood it. She rode out through the gate and down the road with the dun horse stepping quick and light in the cold, and she did not look back until the house was small, and when she finally did look back, the house was small, and the figures at the gate were small, and the whole valley of her childhood lay in the early light like something woven, gold thread and green, and she fixed it in her memory the way a weaver fixes a pattern, thread by thread, so it could be carried.
All that day she rode south and west, toward the crossing. The road gathered others as it went, the way streams gather, men on horses, men on mules, men walking with their muster papers folded inside their caps, all flowing the same direction. Nobody looked twice at a quiet young rider on a dun horse. An army gathering is a river of strangers. It was the easiest place in the whole empire to be unknown.
And at dusk, exactly as the song says, she came to the bank of the Yellow River, and camped.
Here the storyteller paused, and turned the lamp wick down a little, because this part of the song is the part that has kept it alive for fifteen centuries, and it deserves the dark.
The Yellow River at evening is less like a river than like a moving field. It is wide, and it is the color of its own name, gold and brown, thick with the good silt of half the world, and it does not rush. It proceeds. It has somewhere to be, and it has been going there for longer than there have been names for it, and it will accept no advice. All along the bank that evening were the small fires of the mustered men, each fire with its little kingdom of light, and the great water slid past them all, catching the firelight and folding it under, catching the first stars and folding them under too, patient, enormous, calm.
The riders on that road had heard it long before they saw it. It came to them first as a feeling in the ground, and then as a smell, wet earth and cold stone and something mineral and very old, and then, over the last low rise, as a sound, and the sound was the astonishing part, because it was not loud. A water that wide has no need of loud. It made one broad seamless going sound, a sound with no edges anywhere in it, and the men on the road fell quiet as they came down to it, one by one, the way people fall quiet entering a temple, and the horses pricked their ears at it and then accepted it, and the road ended at the ferry landing, in the smell of wet rope and river mud, and everyone made camp where the day left them.
Mulan picketed the horse where the grass was good. She ate the steamed bread, in the blue festival cloth, slowly. She banked her little fire the way her father banked the kitchen fire. And then she lay with her head on the saddle, in her coat, under the whole deep sky of the north, and listened.
And the song tells us exactly what she heard, and exactly what she did not hear, and it is the saddest and gentlest verse in it, and it goes like this.
She did not hear her father and her mother calling their daughter.
She heard only the Yellow River's water, going by in the dark. Splash upon splash. Murmur upon murmur. The great water, flowing and flowing.
That is all the verse says. It does not say she wept, and so we will not say it either. It only sets those two sounds side by side, the voices that were not there and the water that was, and lets them rock against each other, the way a boat rocks at its mooring, until the listener understands something that cannot be said any plainer. Every person who has ever slept far from home for the first time has lain inside that verse. The room is too quiet, or the night is too loud, and the particular voices that used to call you in to supper are a whole day's ride behind you, and what there is instead is water, or wind, or a strange city humming, some huge old sound that does not know your name.
The old singers even made the sound itself into words, and the words are still in the song, and they are worth hearing once in their own shape. Jian jian, says the river in the old tongue. Splash, splash. Two soft syllables, over and over, the water folding upon the water, and the singers set them exactly where the calling voices should have been, so that anyone who ever sang this song would have to make the river's own sound with their own mouth, softly, twice, and feel a little of what she felt. Try it, and you will find it cannot be said harshly. Jian jian. It is a sound the mouth can only make gently, the way you hush a child.
And here is the mercy in it, said the storyteller, the mercy the song is too wise to explain. The river did not know her name, but it stayed with her all night anyway. It did not stop once. It went on and on in the dark, patient as breathing, the oldest lullaby there is, the sound of something large that is not worried. And somewhere in the middle of listening to it, between one murmur and the next, she stopped hearing the silence where the voices should have been, and heard only the water, and the water carried her off to sleep as surely as it carried the stars downstream.
The dun horse dozed over her, hip cocked, one ear turned to the river.
The little fire kept its warmth folded under the ash.
And at first light she rose, and watered the horse, and crossed the Yellow River on the flat ferry with a dozen silent men and their silent mules, the water pushing broad and gold against the hull, the far bank coming slowly out of the morning haze. And when her horse's feet stepped off onto the northern shore, the song turns a page, and so do we.
She did not know it yet, but it would be twelve years before she crossed that water again.
The river, which had kept her company all night without asking who she was, went on behind her, flowing and flowing.
It is flowing tonight.
Chapter Five.

The Horses of the Black Mountain.
North of the river, the world began to change, the way a voice changes when it is getting to the serious part of the tale.
The fields thinned, then faded. The good yellow earth gave way to grass, and the grass grew tougher and grayer as she rode, until it hissed under the wind like a different language. The villages grew farther apart, and lower to the ground, with walls around them that were not decorations. The wind itself changed. It came from farther away now, and it carried grit in it, and a smell of stone and snow, and it had that particular loneliness of wind that has not passed over a single cooking fire in a hundred miles.
And ahead, all day, the mountains grew.
The one the song names is the Black Mountain. She could see why long before she reached it. Its stone was dark as wet ink, darker where the shadows of the clouds moved over it, and it stood at the edge of the grasslands like the last word of an argument. Below it, in the fold of its foothills, spread the war camp of the Khan.
She came over the last rise at dusk and saw it, and the song saw it with her, and she stopped her horse without meaning to.
It was a city that had not existed the month before. Ten thousand tents in rows, and the rows in squares, and the squares going on into the twilight farther than she could see, each tent glowing faintly from the fire before it, so that the whole valley looked like a field planted with low orange stars. Smoke stood up from it in a hundred soft columns and leaned east together. There was a sound to it, too, a vast quiet mumble, ten thousand men eating and mending and talking low, horses shifting at their lines, somewhere a smith still working, his hammer arriving small and late across the distance, tink, tink, tink.
She sat her horse and looked at it for a long time. Then she rode down into it, and became one of it, and that was that.
At the clerks' tent a tired man with ink on his fingers asked her family name, and she gave it, and he wrote it in a ledger with a worn brush, beautifully, because even tired clerks in that country wrote beautifully, and he asked her nothing else at all. The army needed soldiers the way a field needs rain. It did not interview the rain. She was given a tent number, a mess assignment, a wooden tally, and a direction to walk in, and the great camp swallowed her the way the river had carried her, without once asking who she was.
Her mess was ten men to a fire. That first evening she met them as shapes against the flame, and learned them, over the weeks, the way you learn a new room in the dark, one corner at a time. There was a big quiet man from the wheat country who mended everyone's boots without being asked. There was a boy no older than her little brother would someday be, who talked every night about his mother's noodle soup until the whole mess could taste it. There was an old soldier with a gray braid and seven campaigns behind him, who taught the new ones how to fold a blanket so it kept the ground's cold out, and how to stand a watch without letting the mind wander through the gate of every fear it owns. None of their names come down to us, said the storyteller. The song keeps them the way the night keeps the shapes around a fire. Warm, and close, and nameless.
They took to Mulan because she was steady. She ate what there was, without complaint. She kept her kit clean and her horse cleaner. She spoke little, and never about herself, and an army is the easiest place in the world to speak little, because there is always someone glad to fill the silence with the story of his uncle's mule.
And when the fires burned down, that first night and every night, she lay in her coat with her saddle for a pillow, in the great breathing dark of the camp, and listened.
And the song, which was listening with her, says again what it said by the river, because some verses must be said twice to be true.
She did not hear her father and her mother calling their daughter.
She heard only the horses of the nomads, far off on the slopes of the Yan hills, crying to one another in the night.
That was the sound of that whole country. Not war, not yet, not near. Just horses, wild and strange, a long way off in the dark, calling and answering, calling and answering, the way lonely things do. Some nights the wind brought the sound closer, and some nights it took it away entirely, and the camp of ten thousand men lay under it and slept, each man folded into his own coat, his own distance from home.
The old song gives that far sound its own two syllables as well, sisters to the river's. Jiu jiu, cry the horses on the night hills, thin and high, the way wind sounds in tall grass. First the water, jian jian, then the horses, jiu jiu, one soft sound for each of her two nights on the road, and nothing else of the whole long journey recorded at all. That is how the song measures distance. Not in miles. In the sounds that came to fill the place where the voices of home had been.
And Mulan learned what every soldier learns in the first month, which is the great secret the songs are kind enough to tell us in advance. An army is not made of iron. It is made of homesickness, wearing armor.
She pulled her coat closer, and turned her ear away from the hills, toward the banked fire.
And she slept.
Chapter Six.

Ten Thousand Miles Like Flying.
The years that came next, the song folds into six lines. Six lines for a whole war. And they are six of the finest lines ever made, said the storyteller, so we will unfold them slowly, like a blanket kept in cedar, and shake them out, and see how far they reach.
Ten thousand miles, says the song, she rode on the business of war.
That is the first line, and it is not a boast, it is an itinerary. The army of the Khan did not sit still. It moved the way weather moves, in fronts, along the whole long north of the empire, and Mulan moved with it, season after season. She learned the passes the way she had once known the rooms of her father's house. She crossed them in spring mud and autumn dust and winter iron. She watered her dun horse in rivers whose names she never learned and never forgot, gray rivers, green rivers, rivers so cold the horses drank in sips and shivered.
She crossed the passes and the mountains, says the song, as though she were flying.
Not because it was easy. Because she became good at it. There is a lightness that comes to a person who has done a hard thing many times, a saved motion, a quiet in the hands, and the song gives her that lightness like a medal. Where the new men fought their horses and the road, she let both carry her. On the narrow tracks above the clouds she leaned with the mountain instead of against it. The old soldier with the gray braid saw it within the first year, and said to the fire, one night, without looking up, that one rides like the wind's own daughter, and Mulan looked into the flames and let the remark pass by, wearing, on the inside only, the smallest smile in the whole army of the Khan.
The years in that country did not pass so much as turn, like a great wheel of painted panels, and the two panels she came to know best were spring and winter. Spring was mud and foals and the smell of wet felt drying, the rivers cracking their winter lids with sounds like far doors closing, the first green coming up through the bones of the old grass. And winter was the long held breath, the world gone white and blue and iron, when the whole art of soldiering shrank to the keeping of fires and the keeping of tempers, and she was good at both.
The northern air, says the song, carried the sound of the watchman's iron.
Every camp, every night, all those years, the same sound. The sentries kept the hours with iron clappers, and the cold clear air of that country carried the clang from post to post, around the sleeping tents, regular as a slow heart. It was the sound of being guarded. It was the sound of someone awake so that you could be asleep. Mulan stood that watch herself, hundreds of nights of it, walking the line under stars so many and so hard they looked like frost nailed up, striking the hour on the iron, hearing the next post answer, and the next, fainter and fainter, away down the dark. And some nights, standing there, wrapped to the eyes, she heard in the clapper's rhythm something from very far back, click, and clack, click, and clack, and she stood the whole watch with the loom of her mother's house sounding softly under the war's iron, and it did not make her sad, said the storyteller. It kept her. There is a kind of remembering that is a rope over the river. She held it, and stood her watch, and handed the hours on.
Cold light, says the song, shone on coats of iron.
That was winter in the high camps. The frost got into everything, into the tent seams, into the bread, into the bones of the old wounds, and the moon came up over the ranks of stacked spears and lay along the armor plate by plate, pale as milk, so that the sleeping army glimmered faintly all night, like a river seen from a hill. Cold light on iron coats. The singers put those two things together all those centuries ago, the softest thing in the sky and the hardest thing on earth, and every winter since has proven them right.
The armor of that army was made of small iron plates, hundreds of them to a single coat, each plate laced to its neighbors with cord, so that a coat of iron was really a cloth of iron, and moved when its wearer moved, and clicked to itself very softly on the march, like something patiently counting. By day it was only weight. But on the clear nights of deep winter, when the moon came up over the horse lines, every stacked coat of it in the camp turned silver, plate by plate by plate, and a sentry walking her round walked between low constellations, and it was beautiful, and nobody ever said so, and everybody saw it.
And then the song says its two great quiet lines about the war itself, and they are all it says, and listen to how it says them.
Generals fell in a hundred battles. Strong soldiers came home after ten years.
That is the entire war. Two lines. No blow is described. No field is named. The song had every chance to be loud, and it chose, instead, to be true, because the people who first sang it knew war the way farmers know hail, and they did not need it performed for them. There were battles, and Mulan was in them, and she did her duty, and the duty was hard, and some of the fires in her mess burned with one man fewer after certain days, and the boy who loved his mother's noodle soup grew up all at once one autumn, the way soldiers do. The song holds all of it in those two lines the way a locked chest holds winter clothes, present, and folded, and not to be spread out tonight.
Ten years, the song says there, and twelve in every other verse, for the old singers counted long years the way farmers count sacks, in round handfuls, meaning only that it was long.
And we will follow the song, said the storyteller, because the song has had fifteen hundred years to decide what a sleeping house needs to hear, and it decided.
What it wants us to know is not how the battles went. It is that between the battles, which is where most of a war is lived, there was a soldier called Mulan who kept her mess's fire lit in the rain when no one else could coax it. Who could calm any horse in the lines by standing at its shoulder and talking about the barley. Who was promoted, season by season, not for fury but for steadiness, until the men of a whole banner knew her voice in the dark and were glad of it. Who kept, in the bottom of her saddlebag, folded in a blue festival cloth gone soft as moth wing, a few dried date stones from a parcel eaten twelve years before, and never told anyone why, and never needed to.
The watchman's iron rang the hour, away down the lines.
The next post answered, fainter.
The mountains stood around the sleeping army, holding up the frost.
And the years, said the storyteller, turned the way pages turn.
Chapter Seven.

Twelve Winters, Twelve Springs.
Twelve years is a long time to keep a secret, and the first thing to say about how Mulan kept hers is that she did not keep it the way secrets are kept in lesser stories, with narrow escapes and held breath behind curtains. The song has no such scenes, and it needs none. She kept it the way a careful person keeps anything, a knife sharp, a horse sound, a fire lit. Quietly. Daily. Without drama.
She rose before the camp rose. That was the whole of the trick, if it can even be called one. In the blue hour before the drums, while ten thousand men still lay folded in their coats, she went down to whatever water the camp had pitched beside, a river, a stream, a tank of snowmelt, and washed in the cold and the dark with the horses for company, and was back at her fire, laced and belted, before the first man stirred. Twelve years of first light. She came to know the dawns of the whole north country better than any astronomer in the capital, the green dawns of spring, the white dawns of the snow months, the dawns of late summer that came up dusty rose, like the inside of a shell.
She slept in her coat. Many did, in that cold. She kept her collar high and her cap low, and men remembered her, years after, as a comrade who was sparing with words. The army had a thousand kinds of men in it, loud ones and silent ones, boys who wept for home and grandfathers who joked through blizzards, and a soldier who kept to herself at the wash hour was the least remarkable thing in any camp of the Khan. An army, said the storyteller, is a great crowd of people all politely not asking one another about the thing each one carries. One more unasked question fit in easily.
And the truth is, the men she messed with did not look past her soldiering, because soldiers do not look past soldiering. It is the whole of the language. Was your watch stood honestly. Was your share carried. Did your bow arm hold. Hers, hers, and hers. The big man from the wheat country would have followed her over the edge of the map. The boy who missed his mother's noodles became a man beside her fire, and when his courage failed one black night in the ninth year, it was Mulan who sat with him till morning, saying almost nothing, feeding the fire stick by stick, and he never forgot it, and you will see, at the end, said the storyteller, that none of them forgot any of it.
Twelve times, the plum rains came and went in the south, and the news of them came up with the grain barges. Twelve times, the wild geese went over the camps in their long wavering lines, south in the autumn, north in the spring, and every soldier in the empire looked up at them, because the geese were going over everyone's home, in turn, and could not be asked to carry anything.
When traders came through under license, or a supply column went back down the roads, she sent word home, the way soldiers did, a few characters brushed on a slip by the camp letter writer, paid for with a copper. All is well. The horse is fat. Honor to my father and mother. What came back, months later, smelling of the south, said the same few things in the same few strokes. All is well here also. The millet is in. Your brother is taller. And once, in the sixth year, in her sister's careful hand: the loom is kept in thread for you.
She read that one until the paper went soft.
Letters went both ways along those roads for twelve years, and they were all short, and none of them have survived, and the storyteller will tell you a small true thing about them anyway. The shortness was never poverty of feeling. Paper traveled by grace and by luck, folded inside other men's dispatches, wedged into the corners of grain ledgers, and a soldier learned to fold a whole year into eight brushed characters the way her mother folded a whole winter into one chest. All is well. The horse is fat. Between those two sentences, for anyone who knew how to read them, lay everything else, the frost, the mountains, the ninth year, the missing. Her family knew how to read them. Families always do.
The dun horse grew a beard of winter every year and shed it every spring, and grayed, slowly, at the muzzle, the way the father had grayed at the temples, and stayed sound, because she cared for it the way her father had told her at the kitchen table, feed the horse before you feed yourself, and she never once broke that law, not in twelve years, and every man in her mess knew that about her, that the quiet one's horse ate first, and thought it lucky, and perhaps it was.
And then, in the twelfth year, on an afternoon of high cold sun, the war ended.
It did not end with a great last clash, not where she was. It ended the way a long illness ends, gradually, and then suddenly. The raids thinned. The passes went quiet. Envoys' horses, groomed like mirrors, began to come and go under truce banners. And one morning the criers went down the tent rows shouting that it was over, over, the whole of it over, and the great camp made a sound she never forgot, not a cheer exactly, but ten thousand men letting out one winter of breath apiece, and then, absurdly, everyone began at once to mend things and pack things and boast about kitchens, and the boy of the noodles, now a broad man with frost scars on his cheekbones, sat down by the fire and wept as easily as rain, and no one pretended otherwise, and the big man from the wheat country patted him with a hand like a spade, twice, which for him was a speech.
The army turned south, toward the capital, to be thanked and counted and sent home.
And Mulan rode with it, down out of the mountains she knew like rooms now, past the Black Mountain standing at the door of the grasslands, dark as wet ink, exactly as it had stood twelve years before, not one day older.
She turned in the saddle once, and looked back at it.
Thank you, she did not say. But she thought something of that shape, said the storyteller. Soldiers do, at the last sight of a hard country that did not kill them. It is a kind of bow.
Chapter Eight.

The Hall of Light.
The capital came up out of the southern haze like a made thing the size of weather. Walls within walls, gray and immense, with gate towers whose roofs curled at the corners like the first movement of a wave that had decided, on reflection, to remain architecture. Bells vaster than wells. Streets straight as loom threads, running away to vanishing, strung with market stalls whose awnings made a second sky, and more people in any one of those streets than Mulan had seen in her whole life before the army, all of them apparently late for something wonderful.
The returning soldiers camped outside the walls, and were fed, and were feasted, and then, banner by banner, the ones whose deeds had been recorded were called in, to be received by the ruler himself.
And so it happens, said the storyteller, that our song, which began with a sigh at a loom in a farm kitchen, arrives, for one chapter only, at the very center of the world.
The Son of Heaven sat in the Hall of Light.
That is what the song calls it, and the hall earned the name. It was a room the size of a field, held up on pillars of red lacquer as big around as ancient trees, and the morning came into it through high screens in long diagonal shafts, so that the polished floor was striped gold and shadow, gold and shadow, all the way to the throne, and the air in the beams was full of slow bright dust, like snow that had decided never to land. Officials stood along the pillars in robes the colors of deep water. Somewhere out of sight, a musician touched a stone chime every little while, a single held note, round as a drop of honey, simply so that the silence would not forget itself.
Into that hall, in her plain soldier's best, with her cap on straight and her boots as clean as twelve years of roads would ever allow, walked Mulan.
Her name was read from the rolls of merit. And here the song does something with numbers, said the storyteller, that singers have smiled over for centuries. Twelve scrolls had called her father to the war, if you remember. Now the clerks of the Son of Heaven recorded her deeds in twelve grades of honor, merit stacked on merit, the count of the calling answered exactly by the count of the thanks. Twelve for twelve. The song built that doorframe on purpose, so we would notice her walking back out of it.
Rewards were announced in the high clear voice such halls train men to use. Strings of cash by the hundred thousand. Silks. And then the Khan himself, for the song calls him the Khan here again, in his own hall, leaned forward on the throne and asked her, in front of everyone, the question rulers keep for their best soldiers.
What do you desire? A minister's post? Name it, and it is yours.
And the hall waited, gold and shadow, gold and shadow, chime.
Understand what was being held out to her, said the storyteller, so that you can feel the full weight of the thing she set down. A minister's post in that empire was the summit of the visible world. It meant a mansion in the capital, and servants in ranks, and a seal of office carried before you through the streets, and your name brushed into the histories by men whose whole employment was the brushing of names. Men spent entire lifetimes hoping to be offered the tenth part of it. The hall knew all this, and held its breath accordingly.
And Mulan bowed, and gave the answer that is the hinge of the whole song, and one of the loveliest answers ever given in any hall anywhere.
Mulan has no use, she said, for a minister's post. Lend me a camel with long legs and a steady stride, one that can do its thousand miles, and send me back to my village.
That was all. Of every treasure in the middle of the world, with the floor of the Hall of Light stretching gold and shadow to the throne of the Son of Heaven, and everything on it hers for one word, she asked for transportation.
There was, the tellers say, a silence. And then, from the throne, of all places, something that in a smaller room would have been called a laugh, and has come down through the singers, who keep everything, as the Son of Heaven being pleased.
It was granted. Of course it was granted. Rulers love best the one wish they can grant completely.
And so, a few mornings later, out of the western gate of the capital, past the bells and the awnings and the streets straight as loom threads, there went a soldier of twelve years on a tall pale camel with long legs and a scholar's expression, riding it the way you ride a boat, swaying, unhurried, with a dun horse on a lead rein trotting light and free of every burden but its own gray muzzle.
The guards on the gate towers watched them go north and grow small on the great road.
None of them knew they were watching the best part of a song.
The camel's bell knocked out its slow soft time, mile after mile after mile.
And every mile of it, now, was toward home.
Chapter Nine.

The Road Home.
Going home is a different journey from leaving, even on the same road, said the storyteller. Every mile of it is played in another key.
The great road north unspooled itself backward for her, day by day. The straight streets of the capital became towns, the towns became villages, the villages became fields, and the fields, at last, became the river country, and it all came toward her steadily, at a camel's pace, which is the pace of someone who has stopped needing to hurry and has not yet stopped wanting to.
Word went ahead of her. Word always goes ahead, faster than camels. A returning soldier is news, and news in that country moved from well to well and market to market like water finding its level, and so it happened that in a farm kitchen on the far side of the Yellow River, on an ordinary morning, in the middle of an ordinary chore, an old man and an old woman heard, from a neighbor who had it from a carter who had it from the ferry, that their child was alive, and done with the war, and on the road.
The song then does the thing it has been waiting twelve years to do, said the storyteller. It gathers the whole family, one by one, each to their own preparation. Listen to how the old singers built it. Three verses, three doors, three kinds of love.
The father and the mother, hearing their child is coming, go out beyond the wall of the town to meet her, leaning on each other.
That is the first verse. Leaning on each other. Twelve years had come to live in their knees and their backs, and neither could walk that road alone anymore, and neither would dream of not walking it, and so they walked it together, one slow support, out past the wall, out past the last houses, to stand where the road comes over the rise, in the wind, side by side, four hands on two sticks, watching.
They went out early. Of course they went out early. No one who has waited twelve years waits well through the last hour of it, and so they stood in the wind longer than they needed to, and the town let them, and one by one, quietly, other people discovered errands that needed doing near the wall, until the whole end of the road was lined with unfinished business and turned heads.
The elder sister, hearing her sister is coming, stands at the door and makes herself beautiful.
That is the second verse. She put on her festival dress. She took out the rouge and touched it to her cheeks, and set the good pin in her hair, the one kept wrapped in paper in the bottom of the chest. Not for a festival. For a doorway. Because when the one who went for all of us comes up the path, the first thing she sees at the door of home should be someone standing in it dressed as for the best day of the year. That is a kind of love with no other language, said the storyteller, and the song gives it its whole verse, and does not smile at it, and neither will we.
She did it at the little bronze mirror the two of them had shared as girls, tilting it to catch the window light, and a mirror in those days was polished metal, and gave back a warm and golden version of the world, which is the correct version for such a morning. She practiced nothing. There was nothing to practice. She looked at herself once, steadily, the sister who stayed, whose keeping of the loom and the house and the parents was its own twelve years of service, and found that she could smile, and carried the smile to the door, and stood there holding it like a lamp.
And the little brother, hearing his sister is coming, sharpens the knife, whish, whish, toward the pigs and the sheep.
That is the third verse, and it always gets a smile, and it is allowed to. The little brother was little no longer. He had grown up guarding the hens, and then the gate, and then the whole farm, and he was a young man now with shoulders on him, and his love went straight out the kitchen door and into the practical matter of the feast. The best pig. The fat sheep. A whetstone singing in the yard, whish, whish, a sound that in every village in the world, in every century, has meant exactly one thing. Someone we love is coming, and there is going to be a dinner about it.
And behind him the whole kitchen had broken into its happiest weather. The big steamer stood over the fire, breathing white and steady. The millet was washing, the jujubes were out of their jar, the good dark vinegar was down from its shelf, and the mother moved through all of it giving orders she did not need to give to people who were already doing the things, which is how joy cooks. By noon the smell of the feast to come had drifted over the wall and down the lane, and the neighbors began, casually, one household at a time, to find reasons to walk past the gate.
And up the road, at the camel's patient pace, through the turning gold of the late afternoon, came Mulan.
She saw the town wall small in the distance. She saw the two figures before it, leaning together, and knew them at half a mile the way you know your own name called in a crowd. The camel, sensing something, lengthened its stride. The dun horse lifted its gray muzzle off the wind and made a sound it had not made in twelve years.
And the song, which spent six lines on the whole war, spends none at all on this. It sets them walking toward each other on the road, the old two and the young one, and then it looks away, the way the singers looked away from the family's grief at the beginning, because some rooms are entered only by the people who live in them. We are told no words. There were perhaps not many. There was the wind, and the dust of the road, and four hands and two sticks and one soldier kneeling in the road with her arms full of both her parents at once, all three swaying a little, like one tree.
Let them stand there as long as they like, said the storyteller, turning the lamp a little lower.
The road will wait. The feast will wait.
The whole rest of the song is nothing but welcome.
Chapter Ten.

The Dress by the Window.
The house, when she came through the gate at last, was exactly itself. That is the miracle the song saves for the end, the plainest one it has. The mulberry tree, taller. The well, unchanged, with its same cold smell of deep stone. Hens, patrolling, the granddaughters of the old government, identically serious. The kitchen, breathing its supper smoke. And in the main room, facing the door, in thread, waiting, the loom.
Her comrades were with her in the courtyard. Two of the old mess had ridden the same roads home, the big man of the wheat country whose village lay a day farther east, and the man who as a boy had missed his mother's noodles, and the family, in the way of that family, would not hear of them riding on hungry, and so they stood their horses in the courtyard while the whetstone sang and the sister laughed in the doorway and everything smelled of woodsmoke and welcome.
And Mulan walked into the house, and the song walks her through it room by room, touch by touch, and this passage, said the storyteller, is the tenderest homecoming in all the world's poetry, and it is made entirely of furniture.
I open the door of my east room, says the song, in her own voice now, for the song gives her its own voice at the end. I sit on my bed in the west room.
Door, and bed. She opened her own door. She sat on her own bed. She let each room take her weight again, one at a time, the way you greet elderly relatives, and the house held her the way the chair in the lamp room is holding you now, listener, as though no time had passed at all, as though time were a rumor from another country.
I take off my robe of the wars, says the song. I put on my dress of the old days.
The sister had kept it folded in cedar all those years, and it smelled of cedar and of the south and of before. The wartime coat, twelve winters heavy, she folded and set down, and it was only cloth at last, only cloth on a shelf, and the dress came down over her shoulders as light as the first day of spring lets itself down over a valley.
Facing the window, says the song, I comb out my cloudy hair. Hanging up the mirror, I touch the yellow flower to my forehead.
The window gave onto the courtyard, and the late light came in over the sill the way it had always come. She unbound the soldier's tight plain braid, and her hair came down like weather off a mountain, and she combed it out slowly by the window, and pinned it the way her sister had taught her half a life ago. And on her forehead, between the brows, she set the little golden mark, the yellow flower powder, which was the fashion of that age, the small bright signature young women wore, the way we might wear a favorite ribbon. A dab of gold. The last stitch of the coming home.
She took her time at that window, and the song takes its time with her, and no line in it is in less of a hurry. For twelve years she had dressed in the dark, in cold, in silence, quickly, a soldier's dressing, finished before the drums. Now the combing alone lasted longer than any of those whole mornings put together, and the light moved slowly along the sill while she worked, and out in the courtyard she could hear her sister laughing, and the well rope creaking, and her mother telling somebody to sit down, sit down, you have ridden far enough, and she combed her hair in the middle of all those sounds the way you float in warm water, held up by every one of them.
Then she stood, and crossed the room, and stepped out of the door into the courtyard light, to greet her comrades properly, as herself.
And the two men of her mess, twelve years her brothers, turned around.
And the song says it plain, because plain is strongest, said the storyteller. They were amazed past all speaking. They stood in that courtyard like men in a story, mouths open, and the big man sat down slowly on the edge of the well, and the courtyard hens paused, sensing an event, and the words, when the words finally came, are in the song itself, and have been laughed and marveled over for fifteen hundred years.
Twelve years we marched together. Twelve years, shoulder to shoulder, fire to fire, snow and dust and the whole long north of the world.
And we never knew. We never once knew that Mulan was a girl.
There was no anger in it, said the storyteller. Understand that, and you have the whole ending. There was not one grain of anger anywhere in that courtyard. There was only astonishment of the very best kind, the kind that rearranges a man like a room being opened to the morning, and then, arriving right behind it, enormous, unstoppable, the laughter. The big man laughed until he had to sit down again on the edge of the well, and the laughter went around the courtyard like water finding its level. The other told the story of the ninth year, the black night and the fire fed stick by stick, and told it again, pointing at her, and could not finish it either time, for laughing that was very close to something else.
And the sister stood in the doorway watching all of it with her arms folded and her face shining, and the father came out and stood beside her, and the two men, recovering themselves, bowed to him, one old soldier to another, and one of them began, your son, and stopped, and started again, and said, your daughter was the best of us, and the father's face did the thing that such faces do, which is to remain perfectly still while everything behind it bows.
And the comrade who had been a homesick boy on the Black Mountain looked at her in her dress with the gold mark on her forehead, their best soldier, the steadiest hand of the banner, and he bowed. Deep, and slow, the bow you give to a general.
And Mulan laughed too, and pulled him up out of it by the sleeve, and said the only order she ever gave as herself.
Come and eat. My brother has been sharpening that knife for a week.
Chapter Eleven.

The Two Hares.
The feast was held in the courtyard, under the mulberry tree, because no room in the house could hold that much gladness with the lids on the pots.
The tables were boards on trestles, and the boards disappeared under the food. The little brother's knife had done its work, and the mother's hands had done theirs, and the sister moved down the tables refilling bowls as though bowls being empty were a small injustice she had personally sworn to end. There was warm wine in the good cups that lived, most years, wrapped in straw in the chest. The neighbors came, because in a village a feast is a tide and every door lies in reach of it, and the old men who had known her grandfather sat at the end nearest the fire and agreed with each other about everything, beautifully, for hours.
There was millet steamed to gold, and a whole fleet of the sister's dumplings, each one folded like a lotus about to open, and pork glazed dark and sweet, and mutton falling from the bone with garlic and good vinegar, and warm wine going around and around the table like a slow planet, and the mother, who had made nearly all of it, ate nearly none of it, being too busy watching it be eaten, which is a mother's whole feast, and always has been.
Lanterns were hung in the mulberry tree. Dusk came down slow and violet behind them. The camel folded itself up by the wall like a piece of travel put away, and the dun horse stood loose at the gate of its own yard, gray muzzle deep in good barley, home.
And in the middle of it all sat Mulan, in her old dress, with the gold mark on her forehead and twelve years of the north folded away on a shelf, eating her mother's cooking with her eyes closed for whole moments at a time.
It was the big man from the wheat country who finally asked. Of course it was. He had been turning it over all evening, like a stone in the boot of his mind, and at last, in a lull, with the whole table listening, he set down his cup and said, but how. Twelve years. Marches, camps, watches, the whole war through. Shoulder to shoulder. How did we never see it?
And the table went quiet, and the lanterns swayed once in the tree.
And Mulan smiled, and the song smiled with her, said the storyteller, because here, at the very end, the old singers handed her the last verse to say herself, and it is not an answer at all, and it is the best answer ever given. She reached for the wine, and filled his cup back up, and said this.
The buck hare, she said, tucks up his feet to sit, and dances them when he runs. The doe hare has a soft and dreaming eye. You can tell them apart all day, when they sit still, if it matters so much to you.
But when two hares run side by side, close along the ground, flat out, ears back, flying over the autumn field together, tell me, old friend.
Which is he? Which is she?
And who in the wide world could ever say?
That is where the song ends. On that. Not on the throne room, not on the war, not even on the doorway full of family. On two hares running side by side over open country, and a question with a smile inside it, a question that has no answer and needs none, asked by a soldier at her own table, in her own dress, in the lantern light of home. And the whole table laughed at once, and the laughter went around and around like the warm wine, and was a long time settling. The big man wiped his eyes, and could not stop saying, two hares, two hares, and the old men by the fire made him tell it back to them twice.
Her father laughed too, the old soldier, quietly, in the way of a man hearing a thing he will keep. And the storyteller has always liked to believe, though the song does not say it, that he understood the verse better than anyone at the table. It is not a riddle about hiding, he could have told them. It is a riddle about running. Side by side, over the hard country, all those years. The running was the same running. The service was the same service. The rest was never anyone's business but the field's.
And that verse, said the storyteller, is the reason there is a tonight for this tale at all.
Because the neighbors carried it home, and the carters carried it downriver, and someone, somewhere, in some courtyard smelling of millet and woodsmoke, first sang it instead of saying it. And it walked out of that village on its own two feet, the little song, and up and down the rivers of China, and into the garrison towns and the tea fields and the nurseries, fifty generations of courtyards and boats and bedsides, mothers to children, children to their children, all the dynasties rising and setting around it like moons while it went on its way, small and light and indestructible, carrying, the whole time, in a song still short enough to copy onto two pages, everything you have heard tonight. A loom. Twelve scrolls. Four markets. A river that murmured all night to a homesick soldier. A camel requested from the middle of the world's own treasure hall. A dress by a window. Two hares in the grass.
No dragon ever needed. No magic ever missing.
Just a daughter who went, and did the thing, and came home, and laughed about it at dinner.
In the courtyard the lanterns burned down slow in the mulberry tree. The neighbors went off into the dark in twos and threes, calling their goodnights, and the goodnights got farther and farther apart, and then were done. The comrades slept that night under the family roof, and rode on next morning to courtyards of their own, carrying the verse in their saddlebags to seed the whole east of the country with it.
And in the main room of the house, in the dark, the loom stood facing the door, in thread, patient.
In the morning, it would have its weaver back.
And the house would get back its old music. Click, and clack. Click, and clack.
The sound of everything, at last, in its right place.
Chapter Twelve.

Goodnight. And the Lamp at the Edge of Morning.
The night is deep now, over that whole country.
The feast is long over. The boards are wiped, and the trestles lean against the wall, and the good cups are back in their straw, dreaming of the next great day. The courtyard is swept. The lanterns are out of the mulberry tree, and the tree stands holding stars instead, loosely, the way trees do, losing one now and then between the leaves and never minding.
The hens are in their house, folded down into one warm shape, the whole small government asleep in a row.
The camel sleeps by the wall, folded like a hill practicing to be a smaller hill. Its long legs are done with miles. Its bell hangs on the gatepost, and once in a while the night air moves it, not enough to ring. Just enough to remember.
The dun horse is asleep in its own yard, standing, in that way horses have, trusting its bones. Its muzzle is gray. Its work is over. If it dreams, and horses do, it dreams of good grass by a wide gold river, and of a voice at its shoulder, talking, quietly, about the barley.
The whip hangs on its peg by the door, retired.
The soldier's coat lies folded in the chest now, under cedar, next to a blue festival cloth worn soft as moth wing, with a few date stones inside that no one will ever throw away.
In the west room, the mirror hangs by the window where she left it, and the moon has found it, the way the moon finds every mirror eventually, and the two of them are keeping each other company across all that distance, a little light going back and forth, back and forth, with nothing that needs saying.
The mother sleeps. Her lists are done. Every one of her children is under one roof tonight, and a mother sleeps differently on such nights. The whole house can feel it, the way a ship feels a calm sea.
The father sleeps, the old soldier, and his knee has no weather to warn him of tonight. Somewhere down deep, where the old campaigns live, a sentry's iron rings the hour, and it is a friendly sound now, far off, well guarded, someone else's watch. All is well. Sleep on.
The sister sleeps with the good pin wrapped again in its paper, back in the bottom of the chest, and the little brother, who is not little, sleeps the plain deep sleep of the person who carved for everyone and got the last portion, which is the sweetest sleep there is.
And in her own bed, in her own house, in the middle of her own one life, Mulan is asleep.
She sleeps well. The song would want you to know that, and so does the storyteller. No listening for the camp around her. No boots by the bed, waiting. The north wind comes down off the hill and crosses the courtyard and finds nothing to trouble and no one to wake, and goes on over the millet fields with its hands empty, and that is all the news from the north tonight, and it is the best news there has ever been.
Out past the fields, the great river is flowing.
It murmurs all night, splash upon splash, going by in the dark with its cargo of folded stars, past ten thousand sleeping houses, carrying nothing away from any of them that morning will not return. It kept a soldier company once, on the worst first night of her life, and it has never once stopped making that sound, and it is making it now, somewhere, truly, this very hour, while you lie there with your eyes closed.
Far to the north the mountains stand in the starlight, holding up the frost, keeping the passes, asking nothing.
And the loom faces the door.
And the door is latched, and the house breathes, and the story is all the way home.
The storyteller sits back, here, in the small room at the edge of everything, and lets the book rest open on her knee a while, on the page with the two hares running.
On the shelf at the edge of the lamplight, where the tales keep their things, there is a wooden loom shuttle, worn smooth by a daughter's hands, and a soldier's whip lying quiet beside it, retired. They have been side by side on that shelf all along, all season, since before this night ever began. Perhaps you heard of them once, in this room, and wondered. Now you know. They belong to the same hands. They always did.
The shuttle, and the whip. The going, and the coming home. Two hares, running side by side.
And no one in the world needs to tell them apart.
The lamp is very low now. The flame is the size of an almond, and it leans, and rights itself, and goes on with its small golden work, the oldest work there is, keeping the dark kind.
The room is warm.
The chair holds you.
The night holds the room.
And somewhere far off, and long ago, and even now, a loom is saying its two soft words over and over, click, and clack, click, and clack, slower, and slower, like a heart settling, like rain easing, like a house falling asleep around a story.
You do not have to listen anymore.
It will go on without you.
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, a small gray house sails through the sky on the back of a storm, and a girl in silver shoes follows a road of yellow brick to a city as green as deep summer water.
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 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 lamplight is near you, the way rain on a window is near you when you are already half asleep.
You may know some of this tale already. You may be certain you know it. But the story you are about to hear is the old one, the first one, the one set down on paper more than a hundred years ago, before anyone put it on a stage or a screen. By lamplight, some things are different. The shoes, for one, are not the color you remember, and the story will show you why. The old way is the deep way, and the deep way is the way down to sleep.
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.
The flame leans, and settles.
We begin.
Chapter One.

The House on the Gray Prairie.
Long ago, and half a world from here, in the very middle of a country called Kansas, there stood a small wooden house alone on the great prairie.
If you stood in the doorway of that house and looked in any direction you liked, you would see the same thing. Grass. Flat gray grass, running out and out to the edge of the sky, so far and so level that the world seemed to be a plate and the house a crumb in the middle of it. No tree broke the line of it. No hill lifted it. The sun had baked the plowed land into a gray mass with little cracks running through it, and even the grass was not green there, for the sun had burned the tops of the long blades until they were the same gray as everything else.
The house was small, because the lumber to build it had come from many miles away by wagon, and a wagon can only carry so much. There was one room in it, and in the room a rusty looking stove, a cupboard for the dishes, a table, three or four chairs, and the beds. And in the floor of that one room there was a small trap door, and under the trap door a ladder, and under the ladder a little dark hole dug into the earth, called a cyclone cellar, where the family could go if one of the great prairie winds rose up. Remember the little door in the floor. It matters, in a while, though not in the way you might guess.
In that house lived a farmer named Uncle Henry, and his wife, Aunt Em, and a little girl named Dorothy.
Dorothy was an orphan, and the old book does not dwell on that, and neither will we. It is enough to say that when she came to live with her aunt and her uncle, she brought the only two things the gray country could not fade. She brought her laugh, and she brought her dog.
The dog was called Toto. He was a little black dog with long silky hair and small black eyes that twinkled merrily on either side of his funny, wee nose. Toto played all day long, and Dorothy played with him, and loved him dearly. When the gray of the prairie pressed too close, it was Toto who saved her from growing gray herself. He was not gray. He was black as a stove lid and quick as a cricket, and wherever he went, a little of the world's color seemed to follow him around.
Aunt Em had been a pretty young wife once, they said, but the sun and the wind had taken the sparkle from her eyes and the red from her cheeks and lips, and she had grown thin and gaunt, and she never smiled now. When Dorothy first came to her and laughed, Aunt Em would press her hand upon her heart, so startling was a child's laughter in that quiet place, and she would look at the little girl with wonder that she could find anything to laugh at.
Uncle Henry never laughed either. He worked hard from morning till night and did not know what joy was. He was gray also, from his long beard to his rough boots, and he looked stern and solemn, and rarely spoke.
But do not feel too sorry for that house. It was a poor house in a gray country, but it held three people and a dog who belonged to one another, and that is more than many a palace can say. And on the evening our story truly begins, everything in it was where it should be. The dishes were washed. The stove was banked. The wind was just beginning to talk to itself away off at the edge of the world.
Uncle Henry sat upon the doorstep and looked anxiously at the sky, which was even grayer than usual. Dorothy stood in the door with Toto in her arms, and looked at the sky too. From the far north they heard a low wail of the wind, and they could see where the long grass bowed in waves before the coming storm. Then there came a sharp whistling in the air from the south, and as they turned their eyes that way, they saw ripples in the grass coming from that direction also.
Two winds, one from the north and one from the south, were walking toward each other across the whole width of the prairie, and the house stood exactly where they were going to meet.
Uncle Henry stood up.
There is a cyclone coming, Em, he called to his wife. I will go look after the stock. And he ran toward the sheds where the cows and horses were kept.
Aunt Em dropped her work and came to the door. One glance told her of the danger close at hand.
Quick, Dorothy, she screamed. Run for the cellar.
Toto, who did not care for loud weather, jumped out of Dorothy's arms and hid under the bed, and the girl started to get him. Aunt Em, badly frightened, threw open the trap door in the floor and climbed down the ladder into the small dark hole. Dorothy caught Toto at last and started to follow her aunt. And when she was halfway across the room there came a great shriek from the wind, and the house shook so hard that she lost her footing and sat down suddenly upon the floor.
Then a strange thing happened.
The house whirled around two or three times, slowly, like a leaf trying to make up its mind, and rose slowly through the air. Dorothy felt as if she were going up in a balloon.
The north wind and the south wind had met exactly where the house stood, and made it the exact center of the cyclone. Now, in the middle of a cyclone the air is generally still. It is the great pressure of the wind on every side of the house that raised it up, higher and higher, until it was at the very top of the cyclone, and there it remained, and was carried miles and miles away, as easily as you could carry a feather.
It was very dark, and the wind howled horribly around her, but Dorothy found she was riding quite easily. After the first few whirls around, and one other time when the house tipped badly, she felt as if she were being rocked gently, like a baby in a cradle.
Toto did not like it. He ran about the room, now here, now there, barking loudly. But Dorothy sat quite still on the floor and waited to see what would happen. Once Toto got too near the open trap door, and fell in, and at first the little girl thought she had lost him. But soon she saw one of his ears sticking up through the hole, for the strong pressure of the air was keeping him up so that he could not fall. She crept to the hole, caught Toto by the ear, and dragged him into the room again, and afterward closed the trap door so that no more accidents could happen.
Hour after hour passed away, and slowly Dorothy got over her fright. She felt lonely, and the wind shrieked so loudly all about her that she nearly became deaf. But by and by, as nothing dreadful happened, she stopped worrying, and resolved to wait calmly and see what the future would bring.
At last she crawled over the swaying floor to her bed, and lay down upon it, and Toto followed and lay down beside her.
And in spite of the swaying of the house and the wailing of the wind, Dorothy soon closed her eyes.
Think of that, for a moment, as you lie in your own still bed, which is going nowhere at all tonight. A little girl in a flying house, a whole mile above the earth, with the storm singing its enormous gray song on every side of her. And she slept. Children can do that. It is one of their great talents, and it is a talent worth borrowing tonight.
The house sailed on through the dark, over the whole width of the sleeping country, carrying a bed, a stove, a cupboard of dishes, a small dog, and a sleeping girl.
And while she slept, the storm grew tired, the way all storms do.
The house began, very gently, to come down.
Chapter Two.

The Silver Shoes and the Kiss.
Dorothy was awakened by a shock, so sudden and severe that if she had not been lying on the soft bed she might have been hurt. As it was, the jar made her catch her breath and wonder what had happened, and Toto put his cold little nose into her face and whined dismally. Dorothy sat up and noticed that the house was not moving. Nor was it dark, for bright sunshine came in at the window, flooding the little room. She sprang from her bed and, with Toto at her heels, ran and opened the door.
And then she gave a cry of amazement and looked about her, and her eyes grew bigger and bigger at the wonderful sights she saw.
The cyclone had set the house down, very gently for a cyclone, in the midst of a country of marvelous beauty. There were lovely patches of greensward all about, with stately trees bearing rich and luscious fruits. Banks of gorgeous flowers were on every hand, and birds with rare and brilliant plumage sang and fluttered in the trees and bushes. A little way off was a small brook, rushing and sparkling along between green banks, and murmuring in a voice very grateful to a little girl who had lived so long on the dry, gray prairies.
Think of stepping out of a gray world into that. She stood in the doorway a long moment, only looking. After a life of gray grass and gray sky, here was green in a hundred shades, and blue, and gold, and the deep red of fruit hanging low enough to touch. Even the air smelled different. It smelled like water and blossoms and warm bark, and she breathed it in slowly, the way you might breathe now, once, before we go on.
While she stood looking eagerly at the strange and beautiful sights, she noticed coming toward her a group of the queerest people she had ever seen. There were three men and one woman, and all were oddly dressed. The men were about as tall as Dorothy herself, though they were, so far as looks go, many years older. They wore round hats that rose to a small point a foot above their heads, with little bells around the brims that tinkled sweetly as they moved. Their hats were blue, their clothing was blue, and they wore well polished boots with a deep roll of blue at the tops.
But the woman was different. Her hat was white, and she wore a white gown that hung in pleats from her shoulders. Over it were sprinkled little stars that glistened in the sun like diamonds. Her face was covered with wrinkles, her hair was nearly white, and she walked rather stiffly, but her eyes were kind and bright.
When these people drew near the house where Dorothy was standing in the doorway, they paused and whispered among themselves, as if afraid to come farther. But the little old woman walked up to Dorothy, made a low bow, and said, in a sweet voice, You are welcome, most noble Sorceress, to the land of the Munchkins. We are so grateful to you for having freed our people from the Witch of the East, and for setting them free from bondage.
Dorothy listened to this speech with wonder. What could the little woman possibly mean by calling her a sorceress, and by saying she had freed anybody from anything? Dorothy was an innocent, harmless little girl, who had been carried by a cyclone many miles from home, and she had never freed anyone in all her life.
You are very kind, said Dorothy, but there must be some mistake. I have not freed anyone.
Your house did, anyway, replied the little old woman, with a laugh, and that is the same thing. See, she continued, pointing to the corner of the house.
Dorothy looked, and gave a little cry of fright. There, just under the corner of the great beam the house rested on, two feet were sticking out, shod in silver shoes with pointed toes.
Oh dear, oh dear, cried Dorothy, clasping her hands together in dismay. The house must have fallen on her. Whatever shall we do?
There is nothing to be done, said the little woman calmly.
Now, if this were a different kind of book, and a different kind of room, this might be an alarming moment. But listen to how the old story itself treats it, because the old story hardly pauses at all. The one the house came down upon was the Wicked Witch of the East, and she had been wicked for so many years, and so dry and dusty inside from all that wickedness, that there was very little of her left to trouble about. Indeed, even as Dorothy watched, the feet in the silver shoes disappeared entirely, and nothing remained but the shoes themselves, sitting empty in the sunlight.
She was so old, explained the Witch of the North, that she dried up quickly in the sun. That is the end of her. But the silver shoes are yours, and you shall have them to wear. She reached down, picked up the shoes, and after shaking the dust out of them handed them to Dorothy.
The Witch of the East was proud of those silver shoes, said one of the Munchkins, and there is some charm connected with them. But what it is we never knew.
And here is where you must let go of something you may have carried into this room. If a small voice in you says the shoes should be red, thank the voice, and let it drift off to its own sleep. In the old book, on the old page under the storyteller's lamp, the shoes are silver, and always were. Silver like frost on a fence rail. Silver like the underside of a poplar leaf when the wind turns it over. They will matter later, so let them shine quietly in your mind, and hold their color.
Dorothy carried the shoes into the house and placed them on the table. Then she came out again and asked the little old woman a question that had been gathering in her all this while.
Are you a Munchkin? she asked.
No, but I am their friend. I am the Witch of the North.
Oh gracious, cried Dorothy. Are you a real witch?
Yes indeed, answered the little woman. But I am a good witch, and the people love me. There were only four witches in all the Land of Oz, and two of them, those who live in the North and the South, are good witches. Those who dwelt in the East and the West were, indeed, wicked witches. But now that your house has settled the matter of the East, there is but one wicked witch in all the Land of Oz, the one who lives in the West, and she is far away from here.
But Aunt Em has told me that the witches were all dead, years and years ago, said Dorothy.
Aunt Em lives in a civilized country, said the Witch of the North, and in civilized countries there are no witches left. But the Land of Oz has never been civilized, for we are cut off from all the rest of the world by a great desert. Therefore we still have witches and wizards among us. The greatest of the wizards is Oz himself, and he lives in the City of Emeralds.
Dorothy was going to ask another question, but just then the Munchkins gave a shout and pointed to the corner of the house where the witch had lain, and there was nothing there at all now, not even the dust, for the sun had finished its patient work, and the field grass was already leaning back into the space as if nothing had ever pressed it down.
Dorothy thought for a moment, and then she said the thing that had been under all her other thoughts, the way a stone is under moss.
I want to get back to my aunt and uncle, she said earnestly, for I am sure they will worry about me. Can you help me find my way?
The Munchkins and the Witch looked at one another, and then at Dorothy, and shook their heads. There was the great desert on every side, they told her, and none had ever crossed it. It seemed, for a moment, that she would have to live with them always.
Then the Witch of the North did a curious and wonderful thing. She took off her cap and balanced the point on the end of her nose, while she counted one, two, three, in a solemn voice. At once the cap changed to a slate, on which was written in big white chalk marks, LET DOROTHY GO TO THE CITY OF EMERALDS.
Is your name Dorothy, my dear? asked the little old woman.
Yes, answered the child.
Then you must go to the City of Emeralds. Perhaps Oz will help you.
Where is this city?
It is exactly in the center of the country, and is ruled by Oz, the Great Wizard I told you of. It is a long walk, through a country that is sometimes pleasant and sometimes dark and terrible. However, I will use all the magic arts I know of to keep you from harm.
Won't you go with me? pleaded Dorothy, for the little old woman had begun to feel like the only fixed thing in a spinning world.
No, I cannot do that, she replied. But I will give you my kiss, and no one will dare injure a person who has been kissed by the Witch of the North.
She came close to Dorothy and kissed her gently on the forehead. And where her lips touched the girl they left a round, shining mark, soft as lamplight, though Dorothy did not know this until later. Carry that mark with you through the whole of this story. Whatever shadows lean over the road ahead, remember that the kiss goes where she goes, the way a night light goes on shining whether or not you open your eyes to check.
The road to the City of Emeralds is paved with yellow brick, said the Witch, so you cannot miss it. When you get to Oz, do not be afraid of him. Tell your story, and ask him to help you. Goodbye, my dear.
The three Munchkins bowed low to her and wished her a pleasant journey, after which they walked away through the trees, their little bells tinkling fainter and fainter until the sound folded into birdsong. The Witch gave Dorothy a friendly little nod, whirled around on her left heel three times, and straightway disappeared, much to the surprise of little Toto, who barked after her loudly enough, once she was gone, since he had been much too sensible to bark while she was standing there.
But Dorothy, knowing her to be a witch, had expected her to disappear in just that way, and was not surprised in the least. She stood in the sweet green morning with the silver shoes waiting on the table behind her, and the yellow road waiting somewhere beyond the trees, and for the first time since the wind took the house, she felt that the world, though very strange, was not unkind.
Chapter Three.

The Road of Yellow Brick.
When Dorothy was left alone she began to feel hungry, and hunger, in any world, is a homely and reassuring thing to feel. So she went to the cupboard and cut herself some bread, and spread it with butter, and gave some to Toto, and then she took a pail down to the little brook and filled it with clear, sparkling water, and drank, and washed her face, and felt very much better.
There was work to do before a journey, and she did it the way sensible people do, one small task at a time. She had only one other dress, but it happened to be clean, and it hung on a peg beside her bed. It was gingham, with checks of white and blue, and though the blue was somewhat faded from many washings, it was still a pretty frock. She put it on, and tied her pink sunbonnet under her chin, and took a little basket and filled it with bread from the cupboard, laying a white cloth over the top.
Then she looked down at her feet and noticed how old and worn her shoes were. They would surely never do for a long journey. And there on the table sat the silver shoes, quiet as two spoonfuls of moonlight, exactly where she had left them.
She took off her old leather shoes and tried on the silver ones, and they fitted her as well as if they had been made for her. Perhaps they had been, in the way that some things in old stories are simply waiting for the right person to arrive.
At last she picked up her basket, and called to Toto, and shut the door of the little house carefully behind her, and put the key in the pocket of her dress. There were several roads near by, but it did not take her long to find the one paved with yellow brick, and within a short time she was walking briskly toward the Emerald City, her silver shoes tinkling merrily on the hard yellow roadbed.
The sun shone bright and the birds sang sweetly, and Dorothy did not feel nearly so bad as you might think a little girl would who had been suddenly whisked away from her own country and set down in the midst of a strange land. But then, she had slept well, and eaten, and the road was warm underfoot, and those three things together will carry a traveler a long way.
She was surprised, as she walked along, to see how pretty the country was about her. There were neat fences at the sides of the road, painted a dainty blue color, and beyond them were fields of grain and vegetables in abundance. Evidently the Munchkins were good farmers and able to raise large crops. Once in a while she would pass a house, and the houses of this country were odd looking dwellings, for each was round, with a big dome for a roof, and all of them were painted blue, for in this country of the East blue was the favorite color.
The people came to their doors to look at her as she passed, and bowed low, every one of them, for it was known through all the land that her house had been the undoing of the Wicked Witch of the East and had set them free. Dorothy did not feel she had done anything to deserve the bowing, since it was really the house that had done it, and the storm that had carried the house. But she nodded back politely, because politeness costs nothing and is always the right size.
Toward evening, when she was tired with her long walk, she came to a house rather larger than the rest, where many men and women were dancing and singing on the green lawn, and a big table near by was loaded with good things to eat. This was the home of one of the richest Munchkins in the land, whose name was Boq, and his friends were gathered with him to celebrate their freedom, and they welcomed Dorothy kindly to supper and to pass the night.
Dorothy ate a hearty supper, waited upon by Boq himself, and Toto was slipped so many good things under the table that he grew quite round. When she had eaten, Boq looked at her thoughtfully.
You must be a great sorceress, he said.
Why? asked Dorothy.
Because you wear silver shoes and have destroyed a wicked witch. Besides, you have white in your frock, and only witches and sorceresses wear white.
My dress is blue and white checked, said Dorothy, smoothing out the wrinkles in it.
It is kind of you to wear that, said Boq. Blue is the color of the Munchkins, and white is the witch color, so we know you are a friendly witch.
Dorothy did not know what to say to this, for all the people seemed to think her a witch, and she knew very well she was only an ordinary little girl who had come by the chance of a cyclone into a strange land. So she said nothing, which is often the wisest speech of all.
That night she slept in a pretty room with a soft bed and sheets of blue cloth, and Toto curled up on the blue rug beside her.
In the morning she asked Boq how far it was to the Emerald City.
I do not know, he answered gravely, for I have never been there. It is better for people to keep away from Oz, unless they have business with him. But it is a long way to the Emerald City, and it will take you many days. The country here is rich and pleasant, but you must pass through rough and difficult places before you come to the end of your journey.
This troubled Dorothy a little, but she knew that only the Great Oz could help her get to Kansas again, so she bravely resolved not to turn back.
She bade her friends goodbye and set off again along the road of yellow brick. When she had gone several miles she thought she would stop to rest, and so climbed to the top of the fence beside the road and sat down. There was a great cornfield beyond the fence, and not far away she saw a Scarecrow, set up among the tall stalks of corn to keep the birds from the ripe grain.
Dorothy leaned her chin upon her hand and gazed thoughtfully at the Scarecrow. Its head was a small sack stuffed with straw, with eyes, a nose, and a mouth painted on it to represent a face, and the painted face was a cheerful one. An old pointed blue hat, that had belonged to some Munchkin, sat on its head, and the rest of it was a blue suit of clothes, worn and faded, which had also been stuffed with straw. On its feet were some old boots with blue tops, such as every man wore in this country. A stout pole held the figure up above the cornstalks, and it sat there comfortably enough, the way a child sits upon a gate.
While Dorothy was looking earnestly into the queer painted face of the Scarecrow, she was surprised to see one of the eyes slowly wink at her. She thought she must have been mistaken at first, for none of the scarecrows in Kansas ever wink. But presently the figure nodded its head to her in a friendly way. Then she climbed down from the fence and walked up to it, while Toto ran around the pole and barked.
Good day, said the Scarecrow, in a rather husky voice.
Did you speak? asked Dorothy, in wonder.
Certainly, answered the Scarecrow. How do you do?
I am pretty well, thank you, replied Dorothy politely. How do you do?
I am not feeling well, said the Scarecrow, with a smile, for it is very tedious being perched up here night and day to scare away crows.
Can you not get down? asked Dorothy.
No, for the pole holds me up. If you will please lift me down, I shall be greatly obliged to you.
So Dorothy reached up both arms and lifted the Scarecrow off the pole, and set him gently on the ground, and it was easily done, for, being stuffed with straw, he was quite light.
Thank you very much, said the Scarecrow, when he had been set down on his own two boots. I feel like a new man.
Dorothy was puzzled at this, for it sounded queer to hear a stuffed man speak, and to see him bow and walk along beside her. But in the land she now traveled, the queer thing and the kindly thing were often the same thing, and she was learning to greet them both the same way.
Who are you? asked the Scarecrow, when he had stretched himself and yawned. And where are you going?
My name is Dorothy, said the girl, and I am going to the Emerald City, to ask the Great Oz to send me back to Kansas.
Where is the Emerald City? he inquired. And who is Oz?
Why, do you not know? she returned, in surprise.
No, indeed. I do not know anything. You see, I am stuffed, so I have no brains at all, he answered sadly.
Oh, said Dorothy, I am awfully sorry for you.
Do you think, he asked, if I go to the Emerald City with you, that Oz would give me some brains?
I cannot tell, she returned, but you may come with me, if you like. If Oz will not give you any brains, you will be no worse off than you are now.
That is true, said the Scarecrow. You see, he went on confidentially, I do not mind my legs and arms and body being stuffed, because I cannot be hurt. If anyone treads on my toes or sticks a pin into me, it does not matter, for I cannot feel it. But I do not want people to call me a fool, and if my head stays stuffed with straw instead of with brains, as yours is, how am I ever to know anything?
I understand how you feel, said the little girl, who was truly sorry for him. If you will come with me, I will ask Oz to do all he can for you.
Thank you, he answered gratefully.
And that was his whole trouble, and the whole of it, a small sorrow, as sorrows go, and by the end of this story it will be smaller still.
They walked back to the road, and Dorothy helped him over the fence, and they started along the path of yellow brick together. Toto did not like this addition to the party at first. He smelled around the stuffed man as if he suspected there might be a nest of rats in the straw, and he growled once, in a small unconvincing way, and then gave it up and trotted ahead as before.
The Scarecrow never grew tired, and he never needed to eat or to sleep, so he was a very easy traveling companion. As they walked, Dorothy told him all about Kansas, and how gray everything was there, and how the cyclone had carried her to this queer Land of Oz.
The Scarecrow listened carefully, and said, I cannot understand why you should wish to leave this beautiful country and go back to the dry, gray place you call Kansas.
That is because you have no brains yet, answered the girl. No matter how dreary and gray our homes are, we people of flesh and blood would rather live there than in any other country, be it ever so beautiful. Home is home, and there is nothing else quite like it, anywhere.
The Scarecrow sighed.
Of course I cannot understand it, he said. If your heads were stuffed with straw, like mine, you would probably all live in the beautiful places, and then Kansas would have no people at all. It is fortunate for Kansas that you have brains.
And on they went, through the fields and the long yellow afternoon, the little girl, the little dog, and the man of straw, who was already thinking as hard as a man can think who has nothing yet to think with.
Chapter Four.

The Man of Tin.
Toward evening the road began to change under their feet. The yellow bricks, which had lain smooth as a tabletop all through the Munchkin farmlands, grew rough and uneven here, and the walking was harder. The farms were fewer, and the houses fewer, and the little blue fences had given up somewhere behind them. The country was growing lonelier, mile by mile, the way a song grows quieter, verse by verse, when the singer is beginning to think of bed.
The Scarecrow, having no brains yet to tell him where the holes in the road were, stumbled often, and sometimes went down all his length upon the bricks. It never hurt him in the least. Dorothy would pick him up and set him on his feet again, and he would laugh with her at his own mishap, and walk on as cheerfully as before. There is a kind of traveler who is improved by every fall, and he was exactly that kind.
By and by the trees began to gather at the sides of the road, first in twos and threes, then in crowds, until the party walked in a green dusk with the branches meeting overhead. It was the beginning of a great forest, and the light that came down through the leaves was dim and soft, like light through water. Toto trotted close to Dorothy's heels now, and even the Scarecrow walked a little nearer than before, though he would have told you, quite truthfully, that he was not afraid, only sociable.
If we do not soon come to some place to spend the night, said Dorothy, I shall be very tired. In fact, I am very tired now.
Straw does not tire, said the Scarecrow, but I have noticed that flesh does, and I am sorry for it. When we see a house, I shall mention it at once.
He was as good as his word. A little while later he stopped, and pointed off among the trees, and there stood a small cottage, built of logs and branches, quiet and empty, with its door standing open as if it had been expecting somebody for years. Dorothy went in and found, in one corner, a bed of dried leaves. She lay down at once, with Toto beside her, and being very tired from the long day's walking, she fell fast asleep almost before she had finished lying down.
The Scarecrow, who was never tired and never sleepy, stood patiently in another corner all night long, waiting for morning. Think of him there, if you like, as you lie in your own corner of the night. The most patient of sentries, a man of straw in the dark of a strange wood, perfectly content, listening to a girl and a dog breathe slowly in the leaves, and thinking his long, soft, strawish thoughts until the birds began.
When Dorothy awoke, the sun was slanting green and gold through the trees, and Toto was already out the door, chasing birds he had no plan for catching. She breakfasted on bread from her basket, and drank from a little spring of clear water they found near the cottage, and shared with Toto, and they made ready to walk on.
They had not gone far when Dorothy stopped, quite suddenly, and put her hand up.
What was that? she asked.
From somewhere among the trees close by there had come a deep groan. It was not a frightening sound. It was a patient one, if a groan can be patient, the sound of someone who has been uncomfortable for a very long while and has nearly given up mentioning it.
They turned toward it, and walked a little way through the trees, and there Dorothy stopped again, with a little cry of surprise.
One of the big trees had been partly cut, and standing beside it, with an axe lifted in his two hands, was a man made entirely of tin. His head and arms and legs were jointed upon his body, but he stood perfectly motionless, as if he could not stir at all, and the morning sun lay along his tin shoulders in one long bright line.
Did you groan? asked Dorothy.
Yes, said the tin man. I did. I have been groaning for more than a year, and no one has ever heard me before, or come to help me.
What can I do for you? she inquired softly, for she was moved by the sad patience in his voice.
Get an oil can and oil my joints, he answered. They are rusted so badly that I cannot move them at all. If I am well oiled I shall soon be all right again. You will find an oil can on a shelf in my cottage.
Dorothy ran back to the cottage at once and found the oil can, small and dented and faithful, exactly where he said it would be. Then she returned and asked, anxiously, Where are your joints?
Oil my neck first, said the Tin Woodman, for that was what he was, a woodman made of tin.
So she oiled it, and as it was quite badly rusted, the Scarecrow took hold of the tin head and moved it gently from side to side until it worked freely of itself, and the Tin Woodman sighed, a long, easy, grateful sigh, the sigh of a man setting down a load he has carried for a year.
Now oil the joints in my arms, he said. And Dorothy oiled them, one by one, and the Scarecrow bent them carefully, one by one, until they were quite free of rust and moved as smoothly as new. There is hardly a kindlier sound in any story than the small squeak of a stiff joint letting go, and there were many such sounds in the forest that morning, each one a little lower and a little softer than the last.
The Tin Woodman gave a sigh of satisfaction and lowered his axe at last, leaning it against the tree.
This is a great comfort, he said. I have been holding that axe in the air ever since I rusted, and I am glad to be able to put it down at last. Now, if you will oil the joints of my legs, I shall be all right once more.
So they oiled his legs, knee and ankle, one by one, until he could move them freely. And he thanked them again and again for his release, for he seemed a very polite creature, and very grateful. I might have stood there always if you had not come along, he said. So you have certainly saved my life. How did you happen to be here?
We are on our way to the Emerald City, to see the Great Oz, answered Dorothy. And we stopped at your cottage to pass the night.
Why do you wish to see Oz? he asked.
I want him to send me back to Kansas, and the Scarecrow wants him to put a few brains into his head, said she.
The Tin Woodman appeared to think deeply for a moment. Then he said, Do you suppose Oz could give me a heart?
Why, I guess so, Dorothy answered. It would be as easy as to give the Scarecrow brains.
That is true, the Tin Woodman said. So, if you will allow me to join your party, I will also go to the Emerald City and ask Oz to help me.
And as they walked back toward the road of yellow brick together, he told them, simply and without sorrow, how he came to be made of tin. He had been a woodman of flesh and blood once, he said, and he had loved a Munchkin girl, and meant to marry her. But the old woman the girl kept house for did not wish to lose her, and paid the Wicked Witch of the East two sheep and a cow to stop the marriage. And that witch, the very same one whose two feet you saw at the corner of a fallen house, laid an enchantment on his axe. And the axe slipped in its work, again and again, and each time the kindly tinsmith of the village replaced a little more of the woodman with bright tin, until at last he was tin altogether, a marvel of the tinsmith's patience, jointed and polished and shining, and stronger than he had ever been before.
But the tinsmith, for all his patience, had not thought to give him a heart. And so the love had gone quiet in him, the way a house goes quiet when the fire is banked, and it was the one thing in all the world he missed.
I will be very careful in the rain from now on, he added, in a practical tone, for it was the rain that rusted me. Dorothy, hearing this, put the oil can into her basket beside the bread, where it rode for the rest of the story, and you may keep half an ear on it, for a day will come when it is wanted.
And so the party was four, counting the dog. They walked on through the forest, and the Tin Woodman swung along so easily on his new oiled joints that there was a soft ringing at every stride, like a very small bell ringing very far away.
Chapter Five.

The Cowardly Lion.
As they walked, the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman fell into a gentle argument, the gentlest argument in all the old book, and one worth hearing slowly.
I shall ask Oz for brains, said the Scarecrow, for a head stuffed with straw cannot know anything, and knowing is the whole of it.
I shall ask for a heart, said the Tin Woodman, for brains do not make one happy, and happiness is the best thing in the world.
Each was quite sure the other had chosen wrongly, and each was far too polite to say so more than four or five times. Dorothy walked between them and said nothing, for she was thinking that what she wanted most was neither brains nor a heart but Kansas, which is a way of wanting both at once, and Toto wanted his supper, which settles the question in yet a fourth direction. The old book does not say who was right. Old books are wise that way. They let a question walk along with the travelers, mile after mile, like one more companion who never gets tired.
The forest was thick and dark in this part of the country, and the road of yellow brick ran through it like a seam of lamplight. Now and then there came a deep rumbling from somewhere far off among the trees, a big, furred, distant sound, and Toto would walk a little closer to Dorothy's ankles, and the Tin Woodman would say, in a comfortable voice, that it was probably nothing, in the particular tone people use when they are not entirely sure it is nothing.
And then, just as they came to a bend in the road, there was a great crashing in the underbrush, and out into the middle of the yellow bricks bounded an enormous Lion.
He was as big as a small horse, with a great shaggy mane, and he meant, it must be said, to be terrifying. With one blow of his paw he sent the Scarecrow spinning over and over to the edge of the road, where he lay in a heap of straw, entirely unhurt and mostly surprised. Then the Lion struck at the Tin Woodman with his sharp claws, and this went even worse for the Lion, for the claws could make no mark at all upon the bright tin, and the Tin Woodman simply fell over in the road with a clatter and lay there looking up at him.
Little Toto, now that he had an enemy to face, ran barking toward the Lion, and the great beast opened his mouth as if to snap at the little dog.
And Dorothy, fearing Toto would be hurt, and heedless of any danger to herself, rushed forward and slapped the Lion upon his nose as hard as she could, crying out, Don't you dare bite Toto! You ought to be ashamed of yourself, a great big beast like you, to bite a poor little dog!
I didn't bite him, said the Lion.
No, but you tried to, she retorted, helping the Tin Woodman to his feet. You are nothing but a big coward.
I know it, said the Lion, and he hung his great head, and two large tears gathered in his eyes. I have always known it. But how can I help it?
And there in the middle of the road, while Dorothy patted the straw back into the Scarecrow, the enormous Lion made his confession. All the other animals in the forest expected him to be brave, he said, for the Lion is everywhere thought to be the King of Beasts. And so, whenever he met any other creature, he roared as loudly as he could, and the creature always ran away, and no one ever learned the truth of it. But inside, behind the roar and the mane and the great padded paws, his heart went like a rabbit's whenever there was danger. He had only to meet a strange dog, or hear a sudden noise, and everything in him wished to run and hide.
It is my great sorrow, said the Lion. It makes my life very unhappy. Whenever there is danger, my heart begins to beat fast.
Perhaps you have heart disease, said the Tin Woodman, with some interest, for hearts were his subject.
It may be, said the Lion sadly.
If you have, said the Tin Woodman, you ought to be glad, for it proves you have a heart. For my part, I have no heart at all, so I could not even have heart disease.
The Lion thought about this, and found it was no comfort whatever, but he was too polite to say so, and that, if you are keeping count, was the second politeness of that kind in a single morning, which tells you what sort of company this story keeps.
So it was agreed that the Lion should come with them to the Emerald City, to ask the Great Oz for courage, and the party was five, counting the dog. Toto did not approve at first, for he remembered how nearly he had been snapped at. But by that evening he and the Lion had grown to be good friends, and they remained so for the rest of the story, which is the way of dogs, who keep no accounts.
During the rest of that day there was no other adventure, except one very small one, which mattered more than its size. The Tin Woodman stepped by accident upon a beetle crossing the road, and the poor little thing was hurt, and the Tin Woodman was so sorry that he wept, for he was always careful never to be cruel or unkind to anything. The tears ran slowly down his face and over the hinges of his jaw, and there they rusted, and when Dorothy asked him a question he could not open his mouth at all. Then the oil can came out of the basket for the first time, and the Scarecrow oiled the hinges of his jaw until he could speak as well as ever. This will serve me a lesson, said the Tin Woodman, to look where I step. And ever after he walked with his eyes on the road, and stepped over every ant, and Dorothy dried the last of his tears with her apron so that no more of him would rust.
The forest went on and on. Once they came to a great ditch that crossed the road and divided the wood as far as they could see on either side. It was too wide to jump and too steep to climb, and it seemed the journey must end there. But the Lion, after measuring it with his eye, said he thought he could leap it with one of them on his back at a time, and so it was done, in four soft flights, the Lion sailing over the gulf like a great cat crossing from one rooftop to another, first with the Scarecrow, then with Dorothy and Toto, then with the Tin Woodman, and each landing as gentle as the last.
Farther on there was a second ditch, wider still, too wide even for the Lion. And here the Scarecrow, whose head was already doing better work than he gave it credit for, had a thought. There stood a tall tree close to the edge. If the Tin Woodman can chop it down, said the Scarecrow, so that it falls across the gulf, we can walk over it quite easily. That is a first rate idea, said the Lion. One would almost suspect you had brains in your head instead of straw.
The Tin Woodman set to work at once, and he was a fine workman, and before long the tree fell neatly across the ditch, making a bridge of it, and they started over one behind another.
Now, in that part of the forest there lived certain beasts called Kalidahs, with bodies like bears and heads like tigers, and it happened that two of them saw the travelers on the bridge and came bounding after, thinking of supper. Dorothy heard them and looked back, and the Lion turned on the bridge and gave a roar so great and so loud that the whole forest listened, and even the Kalidahs stopped short and looked at him in surprise.
But they were bigger than lions, the Kalidahs, and there were two of them, and after a moment they came on again. So the Tin Woodman, waiting until his friends were all safely across, chopped away the near end of the tree, and the bridge, with the Kalidahs upon it, tipped and slid gently down into the gulf, and the Kalidahs went with it, down into the deep green shadows at the bottom, which is where Kalidahs live anyway when they are at home. The old book spends no more worry on them, and neither shall we. Let us say that they landed among soft ferns at the bottom of their own country, far below the road, and by suppertime they had forgotten the whole affair, for the memory of a Kalidah is short, and its ferns are comfortable.
The forest thinned after that, and toward afternoon the trees opened, and the travelers came to a broad river with a swift current, and on the far bank they could see the road of yellow brick beginning again, running on through a lovely country of green meadows and bright flowers. Getting over the water was the last puzzle of the day, and the Scarecrow solved this one too. The Tin Woodman built them a raft of logs, pinned together with wooden pins, and in the morning, after a night's rest under a fine tree, they pushed off from the bank, all five of them and the basket, poling their way across.
The river had one small trick left in it. In the middle, where the water ran deep and quick, the current took hold of the raft and carried it downstream, and the Scarecrow, pushing hard on his long pole, pushed it so deep into the mud at the bottom that it stuck fast, and before he could let go, the raft swept on without him, and there he was, left clinging to a pole in the middle of the river, like a heron who has forgotten what he came for.
The others were carried some way down the water before the Lion slipped in and swam, towing the raft to shore with his great strong tail held out for the Tin Woodman to grip. And as for the Scarecrow, he was not on his pole for long. A great Stork, flying by on her way home from feeding her young, took pity on him, and finding him light as a bundle of laundry, carried him in her beak across the water and set him down on the bank among his friends, who were very glad to have him back, straw and all.
He thanked the Stork so warmly, and so many times, that she blushed under her feathers, if storks can blush, and flew off saying it was nothing at all. And the party walked on along the riverbank in the late gold light, listening to the water, looking for the road, all together again, which is the best way for any story to end its day.
Chapter Six.

The Field of Scarlet Poppies.
The country they walked through now was the loveliest they had seen. The green banks were dotted with flowers, yellow and white and blue and purple, and the air was sweet with them. And as they walked on, looking for the place where the road of yellow brick came down to the river, the flowers grew thicker and thicker, until the other colors fell away one by one, and there was only red, and the travelers found themselves at the edge of a great meadow of scarlet poppies, stretching away as far as the eye could carry, like a red sea lying perfectly still.
Aren't they beautiful, said Dorothy, breathing in the spicy scent of the big bright flowers.
I suppose so, answered the Scarecrow, who could not smell them. When I have brains, I shall probably like them better.
If I only had a heart, said the Tin Woodman, I should love them.
I always did like flowers, said the Lion. They seem so helpless and frail. But there are none in the forest so bright as these.
Now it is well known, and the old book says it plainly, that when there are many of these flowers together, their odor is so powerful that anyone who breathes it falls asleep. It is not a trap, exactly, and it is not unkind. It is simply the flowers' own old magic, older than witches, older than wizards, the same slow red magic that has been putting tired creatures to sleep since the world began. The scent of the great scarlet blossoms lay over the whole meadow like a warm quilt over a bed, and the road of yellow brick ran straight through the middle of it, and there was nothing to do but walk on.
And here I will tell you something, listener, that the travelers did not know. You are allowed to breathe this part of the story as deeply as you like. The poppies can do you no harm from here. From here, in your bed, at the edge of the lamplight, their old magic arrives thinned and gentled, just enough of it, carried to you the way the smell of a garden is carried into a house at dusk. If your eyes grow heavy in this chapter, that is the story working exactly as it should.
They walked, and the scent of the flowers rose all about them.
Dorothy's eyes grew heavy first. Her feet still went on, one silver shoe and then the other, but her thoughts began to lie down long before she did. She felt she must sit among the poppies, only for a minute, only to rest her eyes.
But the Tin Woodman would not let her.
We must hurry and get back to the road of yellow brick before dark, he said, and the Scarecrow agreed, and so they kept walking, one on either side of her, until Dorothy could stand no more. Her eyes closed in spite of herself, and she forgot where she was, and sank down softly among the poppies, fast asleep, with Toto already asleep beside her, his chin on her arm, his supper forgotten for the first time in his life.
What shall we do? asked the Tin Woodman.
If we leave her here she will sleep on and on, said the Lion, with a great yawn, for the flower smell was reaching him too, heavy and sweet. And he could barely keep his own eyes open even as he said it.
The Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman, though, were not made of flesh at all, and the flowers had no doors into them. They could stand in the middle of that red sea all year and only admire it.
Run fast, they told the Lion, get out of this sleepy flower bed while your legs still listen to you. We will bring the little girl with us, but if you should fall asleep you are too big to be carried.
So the Lion aroused himself and bounded forward as fast as he could go, great soft leaps through the red, and in a moment he was out of sight.
The Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman made a chair of their hands, the way children do, and set Dorothy upon it with Toto in her lap, and carried the sleeping girl through the flowers, and she never stirred. They walked on and on, and it seemed the great carpet of red would never end. They followed the bend of the river, and at last they came upon their friend the Lion, lying fast asleep among the poppies, so close to the edge of the field that the sweet grass of ordinary country began just beyond his outstretched paws. He had run until running turned to walking, and walking turned to lying down, and there sleep had taken him mid stride, the way it takes children on long car rides, all at once and without any argument.
We can do nothing for him, said the Tin Woodman, sadly, for he is much too heavy to lift. We must leave him here, sleeping.
They carried Dorothy up a little farther, out of the reach of the scent, and laid her gently on the soft grass beside the river, with Toto tucked in the bend of her arm, and waited for the fresh breeze to wake her.
And while they waited, there took place one of those small kindnesses on which the whole of this story turns, quiet as a hinge.
A great yellow wildcat came bounding through the grass, hunting, ears flat, and running ahead of it, small and gray and breathless, came a little field mouse. The Tin Woodman, who had no heart, and therefore, as he said himself, was very careful never to be cruel or unkind to anything, stepped directly into the wildcat's path and raised his shining axe, and made himself as tall and as bright and as terrible as a polished stove, and the wildcat looked up at this gleaming apparition, thought the matter over with great speed, decided that supper elsewhere would suit it far better, and bounded away into the wood without another glance. It was not hurt in the least. It was only educated.
The little field mouse came up to the Tin Woodman and said, in a small voice that squeaked with dignity, Oh, thank you. Thank you ever so much for saving my life.
Don't speak of it, I beg of you, replied the Tin Woodman. I have no heart, you know, so I am careful to help all those who may need a friend, even if it happens to be only a mouse.
Only a mouse, cried the little creature. Why, I am a Queen. I am the Queen of all the Field Mice.
And so she was. In a moment the grass all around was alive with mice, dozens of them, then hundreds, come running to see that their Queen was safe, and when she told them what the Tin Woodman had done, they all cried out that they would grant him any favor he could name.
It was the Scarecrow, whose head was having another of its good days, who named it. There is a Lion asleep in the poppy bed, he said. Bring us as much rope and as many mice as there are in the meadows, and we shall save him.
You would have smiled to see it, and you may smile now, with your eyes closed. The Tin Woodman built a low truck of wood, with four wheels cut from thick branches, and the mice came by the thousand, each with a piece of string in its mouth, and they were harnessed to the truck like ten thousand tiny gray horses. Even the Queen took a place at the front. And when the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman had rolled the great sleeping Lion aboard, the mice all pulled together, and the truck creaked, and moved, and rolled slowly up out of the red field and onto the green grass, carrying the King of Beasts to safety in a wagon drawn by mice.
Dorothy, who had woken by then in the sweet river air, thanked the little creatures with all her heart. And the Queen of the Mice, before she left, said this. If ever you need us again, come out into the field and call, and we shall hear you and come. Then all the mice ran off through the grass to their thousand small suppers, and the Queen went last, with her tail held high.
The Lion slept on a long while yet, for the poppy scent was slow to leave so large a sleeper. The others sat about him in the grass and rested, and ate a little from the basket, and watched the river carry the evening light away, fold by fold. And when at last the Lion yawned himself awake, he was very glad to find himself in the sweet ordinary air again.
I ran as fast as I could, he said, sitting up and rubbing his eyes with a paw, but the flowers were too strong for me. How did you get me out?
And they told him about the field mice, and how they had generously saved him from sleeping forever in the poppy bed, and the Cowardly Lion laughed his first laugh of the whole story, warm and deep as a summer well, and said, I have always thought myself very big and terrible. Yet little things like flowers came near to ending me, and small animals like mice have saved my life. How strange it all is.
How strange, and how comfortable, said the Scarecrow, and nobody argued, and the stars came out over the five of them one at a time, in no hurry whatever, the way they are coming out now, somewhere above your own roof.
Chapter Seven.

The Emerald City and the Green Spectacles.
The travelers slept that night on the soft grass near the river, under a fine spreading tree, and when they woke the sun was up and the world smelled of clean water and warm clover. They found the road of yellow brick again before the dew was off it, and set out walking toward the place where the sky itself had begun, very faintly, to turn green.
For there was a glow ahead of them, low on the horizon, the color of light through bottle glass, and everyone agreed it could only be the Emerald City. As they walked, the glow grew, and the country changed to meet it. The fences beside the road were painted green now, and the little round houses were green, and the farmers they passed wore green clothes and tall green hats. Everything was as green here as everything had been blue in the country of the East, as if the land kept its colors sorted the way a careful child keeps crayons.
That evening they stopped at a green farmhouse, and the farmer and his wife gave them supper and beds, and the travelers asked their hosts about the Great Oz, since they were now so near him.
But the farmer only shook his head slowly. Oz never lets anyone come into his presence, he said. I have been to the Emerald City many times, but I have never seen the Great Oz, nor do I know of any living person who has seen him.
What does he look like, then? asked Dorothy.
That is hard to tell, said the farmer thoughtfully. You see, Oz is a great wizard, and can take on any form he wishes. Some say he looks like a bird, and some say he looks like an elephant, and some say he looks like a cat. To some he appears as a beautiful lady, and to others as a brownie, or a great head, or a shape of light. But who the real Oz is, when he is in his own form, no living person can tell.
The travelers thought about this in their beds that night, and if it puzzled them, it did not worry them much, for a warm bed argues against worry better than any philosopher.
The next day they walked on, and the green glow filled more and more of the sky, and in the afternoon they came at last to the end of the road of yellow brick. It stopped before a great wall, high and thick and green as a summer pond, that ran away out of sight on either hand, circling the whole of the city. In front of them, exactly where the road ended, was a big gate, all studded with emeralds that glittered so in the sun that even the painted eyes of the Scarecrow were dazzled by their brilliancy.
There was a bell beside the gate, and Dorothy pushed the button, and heard a silvery tinkle sound within. Then the big gate swung slowly open, and they all passed through and found themselves in a high arched room, the walls of which glistened with countless emeralds.
Before them stood a little man about the same size as the Munchkins. He was clothed all in green, from his head to his feet, and even his skin was of a greenish tint, and at his side was a large green box. This was the Guardian of the Gates, and a more courteous doorkeeper never kept a door in any story. He bowed to them, and asked, in a friendly way, What do you wish in the Emerald City?
We came here to see the Great Oz, said Dorothy.
The little man sat down to think this over, and it was plain the answer surprised him. It has been many years, he said, since anyone has asked to see Oz. He is powerful, and he is good, but those who come to him on idle errands find the visit goes hard, so few come at all. Are you sure your errand is a true one?
It is, said Dorothy simply. We each have one wish, and none of them is idle.
Then the Guardian of the Gates nodded, as if that settled the matter properly, and stood up, and said, Since it is so, I must take you to his Palace. But first you must put on the spectacles.
Why? asked Dorothy.
Because if you did not wear spectacles, the brightness and glory of the Emerald City would dazzle you, he explained. Even those who live in the City must wear spectacles night and day. They are all locked on, for Oz so ordered it when the City was first built, and I have the only key that will unlock them.
He opened the big green box, and in it were spectacles of every size and shape imaginable, and all of them had green glass in them. The Guardian of the Gates found a pair that fitted Dorothy just right and set them gently on her nose and over her ears, where two golden bands met behind her head and were locked together by a little key that hung on a chain at his belt. Then he fitted the Scarecrow, and the Tin Woodman, and the Lion, whose spectacles had to be the largest in the box, and even little Toto, who did not care for them at first but was persuaded, and all were locked on with the same small golden click, which is one of the most satisfying sounds there is, the sound of a thing done properly.
Then the Guardian of the Gates put on his own glasses and told them he was ready to show them to the Palace. Taking a big golden key from a peg on the wall, he opened another gate, an inner one, and they all followed him through it into the streets of the Emerald City.
Even with their eyes protected by the green spectacles, Dorothy and her friends were at first dazzled by the brilliancy of the wonderful City. The streets were lined with beautiful houses, all built of green marble and studded everywhere with sparkling emeralds. They walked over a pavement of the same green marble, and where the blocks were joined together were rows of emeralds, set closely, glittering in the brightness of the sun. The window panes were of green glass. Even the sky above the City had a green tint, and the rays of the sun were green.
There were many people walking about, men and women and children, and all of them were dressed in green clothes, and all of them had greenish skins, and all of them wore spectacles locked over their eyes, just as the travelers did. They looked at Dorothy and her strangely assorted company with wondering eyes, and the children all hid behind their mothers when they saw the Lion, but no one spoke to them, and no one was unkind. Many shops stood in the street, and Dorothy saw that everything in them was green. Green candy and green popcorn were offered for sale, and green shoes, green hats, and green clothes of all sorts. At one place a man was selling green lemonade, and when the children bought it, Dorothy could see that they paid for it with green pennies.
There seemed to be no horses nor animals of any kind. The men carried things around in little green carts, which they pushed before them. Everyone seemed happy and contented and prosperous, and nobody seemed in a hurry, which told Dorothy more about the City than the emeralds did.
Now, you may already be wondering something, listener, behind your own closed eyes. You may be wondering whether that city was truly as green as all that, or whether it was the spectacles. It is a fair question, and it is exactly the right question, and the story will answer it in its own good time. For now, do as the travelers did. Wear the green gladly, and walk on.
The Guardian of the Gates led them through the streets until they came to a big building, exactly in the middle of the City, which was the Palace of Oz, the Great Wizard. There was a soldier before the door, dressed in a green uniform and wearing a long green beard.
Here are strangers, said the Guardian of the Gates to him, and they demand to see the Great Oz.
Step inside, answered the soldier, and I will carry your message to him. And it must be said that his voice, for all the length and grandness of his beard, was as mild as milk.
So they passed through the Palace gates and were led into a big room with a green carpet and lovely green furniture set with emeralds. The soldier made them all wipe their feet upon a green mat before entering this room, which pleased Dorothy, for it was exactly what Aunt Em would have made them do, and it made the grand Palace feel suddenly like a place where sensible people lived.
When they were seated, the soldier said politely, Make yourselves comfortable while I go to the door of the Throne Room and tell Oz you are here.
They had to wait a long time before the soldier returned. When at last he came back, Dorothy asked, Have you seen Oz?
Oh, no, returned the soldier. I have never seen him. But I spoke to him as he sat behind his screen, and gave him your message. He says he will grant you an audience, if you so desire. But each one of you must enter his presence alone, and he will admit but one each day.
Therefore, since each of you must wait several days, said the soldier, I will have you shown to rooms in the Palace where you may rest in comfort after your journey.
A young girl in a pretty green silk gown led Dorothy through seven passages and up three flights of stairs to a room at the front of the Palace. It was the sweetest little room in the world, with a soft comfortable bed that had sheets of green silk and a green velvet counterpane. There was a tiny fountain in the middle of the room, that shot a spray of green perfume into the air. In a wardrobe were many green dresses, made of silk and satin and velvet, and all of them fitted Dorothy exactly.
Make yourself perfectly at home, said the green girl, and if you wish for anything ring the bell.
The others were led to rooms of their own, each as comfortable as the last, though it must be admitted the comfort was somewhat wasted on them. The Scarecrow, who could not sleep, stood patiently just inside his door all night, watching a little spider that was spinning in the corner, and thinking his slow soft thoughts. The Tin Woodman lay down on his bed from force of habit, remembering the days when he was made of flesh, and passed the night moving his joints gently up and down to make sure they kept in good working order. The Lion would have preferred a bed of dried leaves in the forest, but he had too much sense to let this worry him. He sprang upon the bed and rolled himself up like a cat and purred himself asleep in a minute, and his purring rumbled down through three floors of the Palace, and the people sleeping below found, though they could not have said why, that it was a very comfortable sound to sleep above.
And Dorothy, washed and fed and tucked into green silk, lay listening to the little fountain until her thoughts turned green and soft as the city, and she slept, with Toto curled beside her, and the silver shoes standing together by the bed, toes pointed at the door, patient as ever.
Chapter Eight.

The Four Faces of Oz.
The next morning, after breakfast, the green maiden came to fetch Dorothy, and dressed her in one of the prettiest gowns in the wardrobe, a soft green brocade that whispered when she walked. Dorothy tied a green ribbon around Toto's neck, and together they set out for the Throne Room of the Great Oz, down long halls where the lamps burned green and the carpets were deep as moss.
First they came to a great hall where many ladies and gentlemen of the court stood about in rich costumes, talking quietly to one another. These fine people came every morning to wait outside the Throne Room, though not one of them had ever been permitted to see Oz, and by now their waiting had stopped being impatient and become a pleasant habit, the way some people sit on a porch every evening whether or not anything passes on the road.
Then a bell rang, soft as a spoon against a cup, and the soldier with the green whiskers said, That is the signal. You must go into the Throne Room alone.
He opened a little door, and Dorothy walked through it with Toto at her heels, and found herself in a wonderful place. It was a big round room with a high arched roof, and the walls and ceiling and floor were covered with large emeralds set closely together. In the center of the roof was a great light, as bright as the sun, which made the emeralds sparkle in a marvelous manner.
But what interested Dorothy most was the big throne of green marble that stood in the middle of the room. It was shaped like a chair and sparkled with gems, as did everything else. In the center of the chair was an enormous Head, without a body to support it or any arms or legs whatever. There was no hair upon this head, but it had eyes and a nose and a mouth, and it was much bigger than the head of the biggest giant.
Now if you had been told, before bed, that a girl would stand before a giant floating head, you might expect this to be the frightening part. It was not. That is the strange, kind truth of it. The Head was a marvel, not a menace, the way the moon is a marvel when it rises orange and enormous over a field and you cannot look away. Its eyes turned slowly to look at Dorothy, the way great slow things move, and its voice, when it came, filled the round room the way an organ note fills a church, round and deep and even.
I am Oz, the Great and Terrible, said the voice. Who are you, and why do you seek me?
It was not so awful a voice as she had expected from so great a Head, and so Dorothy took courage and answered, I am Dorothy, the Small and Meek. I have come to you for help.
The eyes looked at her thoughtfully for a full minute. Then the voice said, Where did you get the silver shoes?
I got them from the Wicked Witch of the East, when my house fell on her and ended her spell, said Dorothy.
Where did you get the mark upon your forehead? continued the voice.
That is where the Good Witch of the North kissed me when she bade me goodbye and sent me to you, said the girl.
Again the eyes looked at her sharply, and they saw she was telling the truth. Then Oz asked, What do you wish me to do?
Send me back to Kansas, where my Aunt Em and Uncle Henry are, she answered earnestly. I don't like your country, although it is so beautiful. And I am sure Aunt Em will be dreadfully worried over my being away so long.
The eyes winked three times, and then they turned up to the ceiling and down to the floor and rolled around so queerly that they seemed to see every part of the room. And at last they looked at Dorothy again.
Why should I do this for you? asked Oz.
Because you are strong and I am weak, because you are a Great Wizard and I am only a little girl, said Dorothy.
But you were strong enough to end the power of the Wicked Witch of the East, said Oz.
That just happened, returned Dorothy simply. I could not help it.
Then, said the Head, I will give you my answer. You have no right to expect me to send you back to Kansas unless you do something for me in return. In this country everyone must pay for everything he gets. If you wish me to use my magic power to send you home again, you must do something for me first. Help me and I will help you.
What must I do? asked Dorothy.
There is one unkind power left in all this land, said Oz, and the voice was slow and grave, but not cruel. In the yellow country of the West there lives a Wicked Witch, the last of her kind, and the people there, who are called the Winkies, are her servants and cannot be free while her power lasts. When you can tell me she is gone, and her spell over the West is ended forever, then I will send you back to Kansas. But not before.
Dorothy began to weep, she was so disappointed, for she was small and meek, and ending the power of witches did not seem the sort of errand that belonged to her. But the great eyes only winked again and looked at her steadily, as much as to say that Oz had made up his mind, and that he believed, more than she did, that she could do it. So she went sorrowfully back to her friends, and told them what Oz had said, and the Lion sighed, and the Scarecrow patted her hand with his soft stuffed fingers, and there was nothing to be done that day but rest, so they rested.
The next morning the soldier with the green whiskers came for the Scarecrow, and led him to the great Throne Room. But when the Scarecrow entered, he did not find a Head at all. Sitting in the emerald throne was a most lovely Lady, dressed in green silk gauze, with a crown of jewels upon her flowing green hair, and growing from her shoulders were wings, gorgeous in color and so light that they fluttered if the merest breath of air reached them. She was, the Scarecrow thought, the most beautiful thing a person with painted eyes had ever been lucky enough to look at.
I am Oz, the Great and Terrible, said the lovely Lady, in a voice like water poured slowly. Who are you, and why do you seek me?
The Scarecrow, who had expected the great Head Dorothy told him of, was astonished, but he bowed as well as a stuffed man can bow, and asked for his brains. And the Lady smiled upon him kindly and gave him the very same answer. Help me, and I will help you. End the power of the Wicked Witch of the West, and the finest brains in all of Oz shall be yours.
The next day the soldier came for the Tin Woodman, and when the Tin Woodman entered the great room, the throne held neither a Head nor a Lady, but a Beast. Now, let the word rest easy on you, for this Beast is nothing to carry into sleep. It was a great round gentle enormity, nearly as big as an elephant, with a thick woolly hide and more eyes than it needed and more legs than it used, and it sat as still as a hill sits. It looked at the Tin Woodman the way oxen look over a fence, with a patience so large it has no room for anger in it. The Tin Woodman, who had faced it braced for terror, found that what he mostly wanted to do was pat it.
I am Oz, the Great and Terrible, said the Beast, in a voice like a great door swinging on a slow hinge. Who are you, and why do you seek me?
The Tin Woodman asked for his heart, and the Beast gave him the same answer the Lady had given, and the same the Head had given. Help me, and I will help you.
On the fourth morning the soldier came for the Lion, who walked into the Throne Room with his tail swinging low, and found no Head, no Lady, no Beast, but a Ball of Fire hovering above the emerald throne, so bright he could hardly look at it. Yet it did not roar or leap the way fire does when it is hungry. It burned round and steady, like the heart of a lamp turned high, and the warmth that came off it was the warmth of a hearth, not a wildfire. The Lion lay down before it, because that is what one does in front of a warm fire, whatever its size.
I am Oz, the Great and Terrible, said the Ball of Fire, in a voice that crackled softly like burning applewood. Who are you, and why do you seek me?
The Lion asked for his courage, and the Ball of Fire told him what it had told the others. Help me, and I will help you.
So the four friends sat together that evening in Dorothy's little green room and compared their four wonders, the Head and the Lady and the Beast and the Fire, and could not agree at all on what Oz truly was, which is exactly how Oz preferred it. And in the morning they made up their minds together, as friends do, that since there was no other way home, and no other way to brains, or a heart, or courage, they would go west. The soldier with the green whiskers told them there was no road to the country of the West. No one ever wishes to go that way, he said. How, then, are we to find her? asked Dorothy. That will be easy, replied the man, for when she knows you are in her country she will find you. Keep to the west, where the sun sets, and you cannot fail to find her.
At the gate of the City the Guardian of the Gates unlocked their spectacles with his little key and put them carefully back into the great green box, and the world went back to its own colors, which felt, after so much green, like taking off a heavy coat. He wished them well, and pressed the button, and the emerald gate swung open, and the four friends and the little dog walked out into the plain morning light, and turned their faces toward the West.
Chapter Nine.

The Golden Cap.
There was no road at all in the country of the West, only rolling fields of soft grass, dotted here and there with daisies and buttercups, and the travelers walked through it as through a sea that only came up to their ankles. The sun shone bright on their backs in the morning and bright in their faces in the afternoon, for they were walking into the sunset now, day after day, and every evening the sky ahead of them put on its yellow and amber and rose as if to show them they were headed the right way.
Now the Wicked Witch of the West had but one eye, yet that one eye was as powerful as a telescope and could see everywhere. From the door of her yellow castle she happened one day to look out and saw, far away, four small figures and a dog asleep in a field inside her borders, and she was angry to find strangers in her country, for she was the sort of person to whom every visitor is a trespasser. And here, listener, the old story spends several pages on the creatures she sent to drive them away, and if you were wide awake at noon I would tell you all of it. But it is night, so let it be enough to say this. She sent wolves, and the Tin Woodman stood in front of his friends while they slept, and in the morning the wolves were no more trouble. She sent crows, and the Scarecrow stood tall in the field and spread his arms, and the crows found that a stuffed man who wants his friends left alone is a match for any number of crows. She sent her black bees, and the Scarecrow's own straw was spread gently over Dorothy and the Lion and Toto so that the bees found nothing to sting but tin, and bees cannot sting tin, and when the trouble had passed, the straw was gathered up and stuffed back into the Scarecrow's clothes, and he was as good as ever. She even sent her Winkie soldiers, who did not want to come at all, and the Lion gave one great roar, and the Winkies, who were not brave and had never wished to fight anyone, ran back home as fast as their yellow boots would take them, and privately, in their hearts, they were glad to go.
Then the Wicked Witch, having spent all her wolves and crows and bees, went to her cupboard and took out a Golden Cap, with a circle of diamonds and rubies running round it. Now this Golden Cap held a charm. Whoever owned it could call three times upon the Winged Monkeys, who would obey any order they were given, and no person could command them more than three times. Twice already the Witch had used the charm in years gone by. Once, long ago, to make the Winkies her servants and set herself over their yellow country. And once to drive the Great Oz himself out of the land of the West, which is a thing worth remembering later in this story. This was the last calling she would ever have.
She stood on one foot and said, Ep pe, pep pe, kak ke. She stood on the other foot and said, Hil lo, hol lo, hel lo. Then she stood on both feet and cried out, Ziz zy, zuz zy, zik.
Now the charm began to work. The sky darkened the way it does before a summer shower, and there came a low rushing sound, like wind through a wood, and the sun broke through again as a great band of Winged Monkeys came flying toward the castle, filling the air with their wide leathery wings and their chattering and laughing. For here is a thing worth carrying into your dreams, listener. In the land of Oz there are monkeys with wings, whole flocks of them, and they travel the sky the way starlings travel it here, in wheeling crowds that fold and unfold, and to be carried by them, as you will hear, is not a terrible thing at all. It is the closest thing that country has to a ride through the clouds.
The King of the Winged Monkeys flew close to the Witch and asked what her third command would be, and the last she would ever give. Go to the strangers in my land, she said, and bring the girl and the dog and the Lion to me, and see that the others trouble me no more. And the Monkeys rose up in a great rustling cloud and flew away eastward over the yellow fields, and the Witch put the emptied Cap back in her cupboard, not knowing, because unkind people never do know these things, that she had just spent the last magic she would ever have.
The Monkeys found the travelers walking through the yellow fields, and what happened then was quick and strange, but listen to how the story itself tells it, because the story is kinder than you fear. Some of the Monkeys took the Tin Woodman and carried him far away and set him down in a rocky valley, where he lay too dented and bent to move, which sounds sorrowful until you remember that a tin man feels no pain at all, and can be mended by any good tinsmith as completely as a kettle can, and knows it, and so he simply lay looking at the sky and waiting, with the patience of metal, which is very great. Others took the Scarecrow, and drew the straw out of his clothes, and left his hat and boots and clothes in the top of a tall tree, which sounds even more sorrowful until you remember that a scarecrow is not his straw. He is something else, a voice and a way of thinking, and straw can be put back, and his own slow soft thoughts went on the whole time quite comfortably, high in the tree, watching the birds.
The Lion they wound about with many coils of rope until he could not scratch or bite, and lifted him up, a flying lion in a hammock of ropes, and carried him through the sky to the Witch's castle, where he was set down in a yard with a high iron fence around it. And Dorothy, with Toto in her arms, was lifted last and most gently of all, for the King of the Winged Monkeys had seen the mark of the good kiss upon her forehead, and the Winged Monkeys dare not harm, and would not wish to harm, anyone so protected. They carried her carefully, the way you would carry a bowl filled to the brim, and Dorothy, once she understood she was not to be hurt, found the ride through the evening air so smooth and so wide and so wonderful that she was almost sorry when it ended. The fields slid by far below, all gold in the late light, and the wind of the wings was steady, and Toto put his nose over her arm into the rushing air the way dogs do in wagons.
They set her down softly before the door of the yellow castle, and flew away in a long chattering ribbon across the sky, and the Wicked Witch came out to meet her. When the Witch looked down at Dorothy's feet and saw the silver shoes, she began to tremble, for she knew what a powerful charm belonged to them. At first she was tempted to run away. But she happened to look into the child's eyes and saw how simple the soul was behind them, and that the little girl did not know of the wonderful power the silver shoes gave her. So the Witch decided she was safe, and she said to Dorothy, harshly but with fear hiding under the harshness the way a mouse hides under a floor, Come with me, and see that you mind everything I tell you.
So Dorothy went to work in the castle of the Witch, and this part of the story passes like the plain parts of any week. She carried wood and swept floors and washed pots in the great yellow kitchen, and kept the fire fed, and the Winkies, who were servants there too, were kind to her in small quiet ways when the Witch was not looking, a warmer roll, a fuller bowl, a kind word by the wood pile. The Lion in his yard would not admit he was tamed, and roared very grandly whenever the Witch came near, so she did not come near, and every night, when the castle slept, Dorothy carried him food from the cupboard, and they sat together by the iron fence and talked of how they might get away, and found no plan, but found the talking itself a comfort, which is half of what plans are for.
And all this while the Witch thought only of the silver shoes. She wanted them for her own, for her power over her yellow country was old and thinning, and the shoes were worth more than everything else she had. But Dorothy wore them day in and day out, and took them off only at night and when she took her bath, and the Witch was far too afraid of the dark to enter Dorothy's room at night. And here you may smile into your pillow, listener, for it is true and it is written in the old book plainly. That witch, who had frightened a whole country, was afraid of the dark, the same dark you are lying in so comfortably now. And her dread of water was greater still. She never touched it. She would not so much as walk out into a rain. Remember the water, listener. The story is almost ready to use it.
At last the Witch thought of a trick. She placed a bar of iron in the middle of the kitchen floor, and by her arts made it invisible, so that Dorothy, walking across the room with her arms full of kindling, caught her foot on nothing at all and tumbled, and one of the silver shoes came off, and before she could reach it the Witch had snatched it up and put it on her own skinny foot.
Give me back my shoe, said Dorothy, getting up.
I will not, retorted the Witch, for it is my shoe now, and not yours. And she laughed at the girl, a dry little laugh like a gate creaking, and told her that one day she would take the other one as well.
Now Dorothy was so angry, in the plain honest way that children are angry at unfairness, that she picked up the bucket of water that stood near the door, the one she used for scrubbing, and dashed it over the Witch, wetting her from head to foot.
And the Wicked Witch of the West, who had never in all her long unkind life let water touch her, went soft at the edges and sank down and away, quietly and completely, like a spoonful of brown sugar in warm rain, until there was nothing left on the clean kitchen floor but the silver shoe, and a puddle, and the quiet.
That was all. That is truly all, listener, for that is how the old book tells it. No thunder came, and nothing burned, and nobody was hurt, least of all Dorothy, who stood a moment in the still kitchen, and then picked up the shoe, and wiped it dry, and put it on. And the silence that filled the yellow castle then was not an empty silence but a resting one, the silence of a house after a long argument has finally ended, the silence of a kettle taken off the boil. The spell over the West was done. The errand, which had seemed too large for a small meek girl, had come down in the end to a tripped foot, a lost temper, and a bucket of wash water, which is often the way with large errands.
Dorothy went out to the yard and unlocked the gate, and told the Lion the news, and then she and the Lion together called the Winkies and told them that they were free.
There was great rejoicing among the yellow people that day, but it was rejoicing of the gentlest kind, for the Winkies are a soft spoken folk. They did not shout. They lit lamps in every window of the castle, so that the whole yellow country could see the good news shining. They set the long tables and brought out the best of everything, and there was singing, but low singing, the kind that is half humming, and neighbors sat close together, and children fell asleep in laps before the meal was half done, and nobody moved them. And ever after, the Winkies kept that day as a holiday, and it was always the quietest and happiest day of their year.
Then Dorothy asked the Winkies if they would help rescue her friends, and the Winkies said they would do anything in the world for her, so she chose a band of the cleverest, and they went out together. They walked that day and part of the next until they came to the rocky valley where the Tin Woodman lay, all battered and bent, his axe rusted beside him. The Winkies lifted him tenderly in their arms and carried him back to the yellow castle, where the most skillful tinsmiths in all the West, and there are no better tinsmiths anywhere, worked for three days and four nights, hammering and twisting and bending and soldering and polishing, until the Tin Woodman was straight and whole again, and shone like new, and if here and there a patch showed on him, he did not mind at all, for a mended thing is a loved thing, and he had never in his life been so fussed over.
Then they went to the tall tree where the Scarecrow's clothes hung, and the Tin Woodman, whose axe the Winkie smiths had made bright and keen again with a handle of gold, chopped down the tree so gently that the clothes floated to the grass, and the Winkies stuffed them with clean fresh straw, and there stood the Scarecrow, as good as ever, thanking everybody twice around, and privately pleased, you could tell, with the excellent quality of the new straw.
And when they were all gathered in the castle once more, resting and mending and eating and being glad, Dorothy went to the cupboard to fetch fruit for supper, and found there, sitting quietly on a shelf, the Golden Cap. She tried it on, just because it was pretty, and it fitted her exactly, and though she knew nothing yet of its charm, she kept it, and wore it, and the story smiled to itself, for the story knew what the Cap was for.
Chapter Ten.

The Man Behind the Screen.
When the friends were rested and mended and ready to travel, the Winkies begged the Tin Woodman to stay and rule over them, for they had grown to love him dearly, and there is something about a man who has been mended by a whole village that makes the village feel he belongs to them. He promised that one day, when Dorothy was safely home, he would come back to the yellow country, and the Winkies gave each of the travelers a gift, and to Toto a golden collar, and stood in their doorways to watch them go, waving in their quiet way until the travelers were small in the distance.
Now the way back to the Emerald City was long, and there was no road, and it was Dorothy who found the shorter path, though she did not know she carried it on her own head. For when the friends had walked for days through fields of buttercups and had begun to lose their way, Dorothy remembered the charm written inside the Golden Cap, and stood on one foot, and on the other foot, and on both feet, and said the strange soft words, and the sky filled with the rushing of wide wings, and the Winged Monkeys came down around them like a flock of great gentle birds.
The King of the Monkeys bowed to Dorothy, for the Cap was hers now and the charm with it, and when she asked to be carried to the Emerald City, the Monkeys took each traveler up as carefully as parcels marked glass, and rose into the air, and flew east. And as they flew, the King told Dorothy the story of his people, how they had once, long ago, been a careless laughing folk who dropped a fine young man named Quelala into a river on his wedding day, silks and velvet and all, and so played one joke too many on his bride, the powerful princess Gayelette, and how they were bound ever after to obey the owner of her Golden Cap, three commands to each owner, until the Cap should someday set them free. It was a good story for a journey through the sky, told in an easy voice over the steady wash of wings, and Dorothy listened with the wind in her hair and the whole green and gold country unrolling below her like a quilt on a wide bed, rivers stitched in silver thread, forests embroidered in dark green, and far ahead, growing slowly, the soft emerald glow of the City.
The Monkeys set them down before the great gate, bowed to Dorothy once more, and flew away in a long merry ribbon.
The Guardian of the Gates was amazed to see them, for no one had believed they could ever return from the country of the Wicked Witch. He locked the green spectacles gently over their eyes once more, and led them in, and word ran ahead of them through the green streets faster than they could walk. The people crowded to see them, and murmured to one another, and bowed, for the news that the Witch's power was ended forever had come east faster than any traveler, the way good news does.
Yet when they came to the Palace and asked to see Oz, there was a long pause. The soldier with the green whiskers carried their message to the door of the Throne Room, and came back, and carried it again the next morning, and the Wizard made no answer at all. They waited one day, and then another, and then a third, and the waiting grew tiresome even in the sweetest little rooms in the world, until at last the Scarecrow, whose thoughts were slow but arrived somewhere useful more often than quick ones do, asked the soldier to remind Oz of the Winged Monkeys, and to mention that the friends were owed a promise and had been patient. And very promptly after that, word came back that they might all four come to the Throne Room together in the morning.
So in the morning they walked together down the long green hall, the girl, the straw man, the tin man, and the lion, with the little dog trotting ahead, and the door of the great round room swung open, and they went in, and stopped.
The throne was empty. The room was empty. There was no Head, no Lady, no Beast, no Ball of Fire. There was only the green light falling from the great lamp in the roof, and the emeralds glittering quietly on every wall, and a silence with something faintly embarrassed in it.
Then a Voice spoke, seeming to come from somewhere near the top of the great dome, and it said, solemnly, I am Oz, the Great and Terrible. Why do you seek me?
They looked again in every part of the room, and seeing no one, Dorothy asked, Where are you?
I am everywhere, answered the Voice, but to the eyes of common mortals I am invisible. I will now seat myself upon my throne, that you may converse with me. Indeed, the Voice seemed just then to come straight from the throne itself, so they walked toward it and stood in a row, and Dorothy told him they had come to claim their promises. The Witch's power was ended. The West was free.
Is she truly gone? asked the Voice, and Dorothy thought the Voice trembled a little.
Truly, said Dorothy. A bucket of wash water ended her, and nobody was hurt, and the Winkies keep the day as a holiday now.
Dear me, said the Voice, how sudden. Well, come to me tomorrow, for I must have time to think it over.
But the friends had waited long enough, and the Lion, thinking it might be well to frighten the Wizard just a little, gave a large deep roar, only one, and not his fiercest. But it was enough to make Toto jump sideways in alarm, and as the little dog jumped, he tipped over a tall green screen that stood in a corner of the room. The screen fell with a soft flat clap, and behind it, where nobody had thought to look, they saw a little old man with a bald head and a wrinkled face, who seemed to be as much surprised as they were, caught in the middle of the room with no throne, no thunder, and nowhere at all to hide.
The Tin Woodman raised his axe, not to use it, only to look official, and cried, Who are you?
I am Oz, the Great and Terrible, said the little old man, in a voice that shook a little, but please don't strike me, please don't, and I'll do anything you want me to.
Our friends looked at him in surprise and dismay. I thought Oz was a great Head, said Dorothy. And I thought Oz was a lovely Lady, said the Scarecrow. And I thought Oz was a terrible Beast, said the Tin Woodman. And I thought Oz was a Ball of Fire, exclaimed the Lion.
No, you are all wrong, said the little man meekly. I have been making believe.
Making believe! cried Dorothy. Are you not a Great Wizard?
Hush, my dear, he said, don't speak so loud, or you will be overheard, and I should be ruined. I'm supposed to be a Great Wizard.
And aren't you? she asked.
Not a bit of it, my dear. I'm just a common man.
You're more than that, said the Scarecrow, in a grieved tone. You're a humbug.
Exactly so, declared the little man, rubbing his hands together as if it relieved him, I am a humbug.
And it did relieve him. You could see it happen, the way you can see a man set down a heavy case he has carried a long way. For the little old man had been pretending for so many years, all alone in his great palace, with nobody in the whole world he dared tell the truth to, that being found out felt, once the first fright had passed, almost exactly like being rescued. He looked at the four faces around him, and none of them meant him any harm, and something in his wrinkled face smoothed out, and he asked them, quite humbly, if they would sit down, for there were chairs enough, and he had a story to tell, and it had been years since he had anyone to tell it to.
And you, listener, may settle deeper into your own pillow here, for there is no safer moment in any story than this one, the moment when the fearsome thing turns out to be a small kind thing that was only lonely, and everyone sits down together, and the truth comes out at last in a quiet room.
I was born in Omaha, said the little man, which made Dorothy sit up, for Omaha is not so very far from Kansas. When I grew up I became a ventriloquist, a man who can throw his voice, so that it seems to come from a bird on a branch or a box on a shelf, and later I went up in a balloon for a circus, to draw a crowd on fair days. And one day the ropes of my balloon got twisted, and I could not come down again, and the wind carried me for a day and a night over strange country, and set me down at last, gently enough, in the middle of this beautiful land.
The people here saw me come down out of the clouds, and thought I must be a great wizard, and I let them think so, he admitted, because they were not afraid of me, and they promised to do anything I wished. So to amuse them, and to keep the good people busy, I ordered them to build this City and my Palace, and they built them gladly and well. And because the country was so green and lovely, I called it the Emerald City, and to make the name fit even better, I put green spectacles on all the people, so that everything they saw was green.
But isn't everything here green? asked Dorothy.
No more than in any other city, replied Oz, but my people have worn green glasses on their eyes so long that most of them think it really is an Emerald City. It is a beautiful place all the same, he added, and that part needed no pretending.
Then he showed them, because there was no reason left to hide anything, how his wonders had been made, and this was the best part of the evening, for a good trick explained by a friendly man is a finer entertainment than any real magic. The great Head was made of many thicknesses of paper, with a face painted carefully upon it, and he had stood behind his screen and pulled fine threads to make the eyes move and the mouth open, and thrown his voice into it so that the Head seemed to speak. The lovely Lady was the little man himself, in a mask and a gown of green silk, with the beautiful wings pinned on. The Beast was a bundle of skins sewn cleverly together over a frame. And the Ball of Fire was a ball of cotton hung from the ceiling on a wire, burning bright with a little oil, warm and round and steady, just as the Lion remembered it.
The four friends looked at the paper head and the folded gown and the sewn skins laid out before them, and you might think they were angry, but mostly they were delighted, the way you are delighted when a magician shows you, at last, where the coin went. Only the Scarecrow shook his head slowly and said again, softly, and almost with admiration, You are certainly a humbug.
I am, said the little man, but do not tell the others. And how can I ever repay you, when I have no magic at all?
You promised us things, said Dorothy, not unkindly, but firmly, for promises were promises in Kansas.
The little man was quiet a moment. Then he said, I have been a make believe wizard for many years, and if there is one thing such a man learns, it is what people are really asking for when they ask. Come back tomorrow, one at a time, and I think, humbug though I am, I may be able to keep three of my four promises after all.
So the next morning the Scarecrow went in first, and Oz unfastened the Scarecrow's head, and emptied out the old straw, and filled it instead with a measure of bran, mixed all through with a great many pins and needles, and fastened it on again, and told him that from this day he had fine new brains, and would be sharp indeed. And the Scarecrow came out to his friends glowing with pride and happiness, and thought so hard all morning that you could almost hear it, and whatever a wise doctor might say about bran and pins, this much was plainly true. The Scarecrow believed in his brains now, and belief was the only part that had ever been missing.
Then the Tin Woodman went in, and Oz cut a small square hole, very neatly, in the left side of his tin breast, and placed inside it a pretty heart made of silk and stuffed with sawdust, and soldered the patch back so smoothly that it hardly showed. Is it a kind heart? asked the Tin Woodman anxiously. Oh, a very kind heart, said Oz, and it was, for the kindness, like the brains, had been living in its owner all along, waiting only for permission.
Then the Lion went in, and Oz took from his cupboard a square green bottle, and poured its contents into a green gold dish, and the Lion drank it down, and felt it go warm all through him, and Oz told him he was now full to the brim of courage. And the Lion walked out with his head high and his tail swinging like a bell rope, and never trembled again at anything the whole rest of his days, or if he did, he no longer minded the trembling, which is what courage actually is.
But when Dorothy came in, the little man could only sit down and sigh, for there was no bottle and no stuffing that could carry a girl across the wide desert to Kansas. And yet he wanted to keep this promise most of all. So he thought for three days, and on the third day he called her in, and said, I came to this country in a balloon, and I begin to think the only way out of it is the same way. We will make a balloon, you and I, and I will go with you, for I am tired of being a humbug shut up in a palace, and Omaha and Kansas are nearly neighbors.
So for days the Palace was filled with the pleasant sound of scissors and needles. Great strips of green silk were cut and sewn together, and Dorothy sewed her share, and the silk was painted over with a thin coat of glue to hold the air in, and at last there was a proper balloon, more than twenty feet across, with a big clothes basket tied beneath it by many ropes. Oz had it carried out before the Palace, and the people gathered in their thousands, for word had gone out that the Great Wizard was going to visit a brother wizard who lived in the sky, and the people of the Emerald City would not have missed it for anything.
The balloon was held over a fire so that the hot air filled the silk, and it swelled and rose and tugged at its ropes like a large patient animal that would rather be walking. Oz climbed into the basket and spoke to the people, and told them that while he was away the Scarecrow, with his fine new brains, would rule the City in his place, and the people were well pleased, for they liked the Scarecrow.
Come, Dorothy, cried the Wizard, hurry up, or the balloon will fly away.
But Toto, at just that moment, had trotted off into the crowd after a kitten, as dogs will at the worst of all possible moments, and Dorothy would not leave without him. By the time she had caught him up in her arms and run back, the ropes had grown too eager. They cracked one after another, softly, like knuckles, and the balloon rose into the air without her.
Come back, she called. I want to go too.
I can't come back, my dear, called Oz from the basket, leaning over the edge and growing smaller as he spoke. Goodbye!
Goodbye, shouted everyone, and every eye turned upward, and every green hat came off, and the balloon drifted up and up into the evening, growing smaller and rounder and quieter, until it was only a gentle dot against the first stars, and then it was gone. And that was the last any of them ever saw of Oz, the Wonderful Wizard, though he may very well have reached Omaha, and be living there quietly to this day, an ordinary little old man in an ordinary street, which was, after all, everything he had wanted.
The people of the Emerald City remembered him fondly ever after, and said to one another, Oz was always our friend. When he was here he built for us this beautiful Emerald City, and now he is gone he has left the Wise Scarecrow to rule over us. And that night the City slept peacefully under its green lamps, and only Dorothy lay awake a little while, wondering how she would ever get home now, with the wizard flown and the desert as wide as ever. But even she slept at last, for the Palace was warm and the bed was soft, and tomorrow, as Aunt Em used to say, always knows things that tonight does not.
Chapter Eleven.

The China Country and Glinda the Good.
It was the soldier with the green whiskers who thought of the answer, in the end. Glinda, he said. The Good Witch of the South. She is the most powerful of all the witches, and the kindest, and her castle stands on the southern edge of the land. If anyone can tell you how to cross the desert, it is Glinda.
So the friends decided to go south together, all of them, for the Scarecrow said the City could rule itself a while longer, and the Tin Woodman polished his axe, and the Lion stretched, and Toto wagged, and in the morning they set out through the southern gate, and the people of the Emerald City waved them away from the walls.
The country to the south was green and full of flowers, and the first day of walking was as easy as walking in a story should be. They passed fields and fences and little brooks, and slept that night on the grass with nothing over them but the stars, and the stars were enough.
On the second day they came to a thick wood, and the trees at the edge of it were unwilling at first to let them pass, bending their branches down against the travelers. But the Tin Woodman spoke to the first tree politely and firmly, and showed it his bright axe, and after that the whole wood let them through, cool and pleasant all the way to its southern side.
And there the travelers found something none of them had ever heard of, in all their travels. Standing across the country from east to west, farther than they could see in either direction, was a high wall, smooth and white and shining, like the side of an enormous dish, made, when they touched it, of china. Real china, the kind teacups are made of, cool and glassy under the hand.
They made a ladder, for there was wood about, and the Tin Woodman was clever with his hands, and one by one they climbed to the top of the white wall and looked over, and what they saw below them, listener, is worth opening your inner eyes for, however sleepy the outer ones have become.
Spread out beneath the wall was a country with a floor as smooth and shining and white as the bottom of a big platter. Scattered around were many houses made entirely of china and painted in the brightest colors, houses no taller than Dorothy's waist. There were little china barns with china fences around them, and china cows and china sheep and china horses and china pigs standing about in groups, no bigger than kittens. And the people, the milkmaids and shepherdesses in their bodices of rose and gold, the princesses in silver and blue, the shepherds in striped knee breeches with golden buckles on their shoes, were every one of them made of china, glazed and gleaming, and none of them taller than Dorothy's knee. It was, in the plainest words, a whole country from the top shelf of a grandmother's cabinet, alive and going about its morning.
The friends climbed carefully down inside, and set their feet on the smooth white floor as gently as they could, for in such a country the first law, and the kindest, is simply this. Walk carefully. Everything here can break, so nothing here must be hurried. And is that not, listener, a fine law for this hour of the night. Walk carefully. Nothing must be hurried. Say it once inside yourself, and let your shoulders come down from wherever they have been hanging.
They crossed the china country slowly and with great care, stepping around the little farms and over the little fences, and mostly all went well. Once a china cow, startled by Toto, kicked over her own china milking stool, and the little china milkmaid scolded them crossly, for in that country even a chipped elbow must go to the mender's shop, and the friends were very sorry, and walked more carefully than ever after that.
Further on, Dorothy met a beautifully dressed young princess, all white and gold and rose, who ran from them at first, and when Dorothy called out to her not to be afraid, the china princess stopped at a safe distance and explained, in a voice like the ringing of a tiny bell, that if she ran and fell she might break herself. And we can be mended here, she said, but one is never quite so pretty after mending, you know. Dorothy said she thought the princess would be lovely even with a mended arm, which pleased the princess, but did not persuade her to come nearer. There was also a funny little clown there called the Joker, all patched and cracked from head to heel, for he was always trying somersaults, and he seemed perfectly content with every crack, and stood on his head to prove it, and the princess sighed at him the way one sighs at a brother.
Dorothy asked the princess whether she might carry her back to Kansas and stand her on Aunt Em's mantel shelf, for she had never in her life seen anything so pretty. But the princess shook her little glazed head. Here in our own country we can talk and move about as we please, she said, but whenever any of us are taken away, our joints at once stiffen, and we can only stand straight and look pretty. Of course that is all that is expected of us when we are on mantel shelves and cabinets and drawing room tables, but our lives are much pleasanter here in our own country. And Dorothy said she would not make the princess unhappy for all the world, and wished her goodbye, and walked on. But she thought about it a long while afterward, and so may you, listener, the next time you see a china shepherdess standing very straight and quiet on somebody's shelf. Perhaps she is only being polite. Perhaps at home, in her own far country, she runs.
At the far side of the china country the travelers climbed the second white wall, helped one another down the other side, and found themselves at the edge of an old forest, deeper and older than any they had passed, where the trees wore long beards of moss and the light came down in green coins through the leaves. It was a quiet forest, and a kind one, and that night the animals of the wood gathered around the Lion, the way animals will gather around one of their own who has traveled, and they told him their troubles, for the forest had lately had a trouble in it, one of those large clumsy troubles that wander into even the best woods, and there was no king among them to set it right. And the Lion, with the courage sitting warm in him where Oz had poured it, set the trouble right, and it does not visit that forest anymore, and the bedtime telling needs not one word more about it than that. The animals bowed their heads to him and asked him to be their king, and he promised that as soon as Dorothy was safely on her way home, he would come back to them, and rule the quiet forest gently, which, in time, is exactly what he did.
Beyond the quiet forest the road south ran up against a steep hill, all covered with great pieces of rock, and this hill belonged to a curious people called the Hammerheads. They were short and round and stout, with no arms at all, and heads that were flat on top and set on thick wrinkled necks that could stretch out long and snap back again, like a jack shutting into its box. Whenever anyone tried to climb their hill, up would pop a Hammerhead, and out would shoot that head, quick as a shrug, and bump the climber gently but firmly back down the slope to the bottom, where the grass, it must be said, was thick and soft, as if the hill itself did not really wish anyone hurt, only turned away. The Hammerheads never explained themselves and never came down. It was simply their hill, and no one was to cross it, and there are people like that in every country, and the wise traveler does not argue with them, but goes another way.
And Dorothy had another way, sitting all this time upon her own head. She took off the Golden Cap and said the soft strange words, standing on one foot and the other foot and both feet, and down out of the southern sky came the Winged Monkeys, cheerful as ever, and gathered the whole party up, and lifted them over the grumbling hill so high that the Hammerheads could only crane their long necks and watch them pass, like hens watching a hawk that has no interest in them whatever.
This was the second command of the three, and the Monkeys flew them over the hill and over a bright patchwork of fields and set them down softly in the country of the South, the country of the Quadlings, where everything that had been blue in the East and yellow in the West was a warm ripe red, red barns and red fences and little red houses, and the fields were full of grain standing ready, and the people were short and fat and looked as if they had never once been hungry or worried in their lives. The King of the Monkeys bowed low to Dorothy, and she thanked him, and the Monkeys rose and flew away north, and she watched them go with a fondness she could not quite explain, though the story can. It is a fine thing to be carried, when you have walked a very long way.
The travelers walked through the red country the rest of that day, and were given supper and good beds by a Quadling farmer's wife, and in the morning they came to Glinda's castle, which stood on the southern edge of everything, white and beautiful, with the desert beyond it stretching away like a sea of sand. Three young girls in handsome red uniforms met them at the gate, and when Dorothy gave her name and her errand, they were led in without any waiting at all, for Glinda, unlike certain wizards we could name, had never in her life hidden from anyone.
Glinda sat on a throne of rubies, and she was both beautiful and young to their eyes. Her hair was a rich red and fell in flowing ringlets over her shoulders, her dress was pure white, and her eyes were blue, and they rested on the little girl with a kindness that had no hurry in it anywhere. What can I do for you, my child? she asked.
So Dorothy told her the whole story, the cyclone and the Munchkins, the road of yellow brick and the friends she had gathered along it, the four faces of Oz and the errand west, the bucket of water, the balloon that had flown away without her. My greatest wish now, she added, is to get back to Kansas, for Aunt Em will surely think something dreadful has happened to me, and that will make her put on mourning, and unless the crops are better this year than they were last, I am sure Uncle Henry cannot afford it. And it is by such plain small worries, listener, that you may always know a good heart.
Glinda leaned forward and kissed the sweet upturned face of the little girl. Bless your dear heart, she said, I am sure I can tell you a way to get back to Kansas. Then she added, But if I do, you must give me the Golden Cap.
Willingly, exclaimed Dorothy, for indeed it is of no use to me now, and when you have it you may command the Winged Monkeys three times. And she gave the Cap over gladly, and Glinda smiled at what she meant to do with it.
For Glinda used the commands of the Cap the way such things are meant to be used, all in gifts. With the first, she said, I shall command the Winged Monkeys to carry the Scarecrow back to the Emerald City, that he may rule his people there, for a city that has a wise ruler who was once stuffed by a farmer will never grow too proud. With the second, they shall carry the Tin Woodman safely to the country of the West, where the Winkies wait to make him their ruler, and where the tinsmiths who love him can keep him polished all his days. And with the third, they shall carry the Lion to the old forest, where the beasts have already named him king. And when the third command is spent, said Glinda, I shall give the Golden Cap to the King of the Winged Monkeys himself, so that no one may ever command his people again, and they shall keep their own sky, and be forever free. And somewhere far to the north, that very evening, a whole flock of monkeys turned somersaults in the air for no reason the farmers below could see.
But you have told us nothing yet for Dorothy, said the Scarecrow anxiously.
The silver shoes, said Glinda, gently, as if it were the simplest lesson in the oldest book, will carry you over the desert. If you had known their power you could have gone back to your Aunt Em the very first day you came to this country.
But then I should not have had my wonderful brains, cried the Scarecrow. Nor I my lovely heart, said the Tin Woodman. Nor I my courage, said the Lion. And Dorothy said she was glad of it too, glad of every mile of the yellow road, and that now that each of them had what he most desired, she thought she should like to go back to Kansas. The silver shoes, said Glinda, have wonderful powers. And one of the most curious things about them is that they can carry you to any place in the world in three steps, and each step will be made in the wink of an eye. All you have to do is knock the heels together three times and command the shoes to carry you wherever you wish to go.
Then Dorothy hugged them, each in turn, and it was the kind of goodbye that is allowed to take as long as it needs. She hugged the soft stuffed body of the Scarecrow, and kissed the Tin Woodman, who cried a little in spite of the danger to his joints, so that Dorothy dried his tears with her apron one last time, and she wrapped her arms deep in the warm mane of the Lion, and Toto licked everyone impartially. And nobody said anything for a while, because the best friends never need to, and the ruby room was quiet, and the quiet was full.
Chapter Twelve.

Goodnight. And the Lamp at the Edge of Morning.
Dorothy took Toto up solemnly in her arms, and having said one last goodbye, she clapped the heels of her shoes together three times, saying, Take me home to Aunt Em.
Instantly she was whirling through the air, so swiftly that all she could see or feel was the wind whistling past her ears, soft and enormous, like the inside of a seashell. The silver shoes took but three steps, and each step was gentler than the last, and if you are wondering whether she was afraid, she was not, for the shoes had been hers a long while now, and they had never once been unkind.
She rolled over upon the grass several times before she stopped, and sat up, and looked about her.
Good gracious, she cried.
For she was sitting on the broad Kansas prairie, in the deep gold light of late afternoon, and just before her was the new farmhouse Uncle Henry had built after the cyclone carried away the old one, with a new porch, and a rain barrel at the corner, and washing on the line. Uncle Henry was milking the cows in the barnyard, and the sound of the milk in the pail came across the yard, steady and small. Toto jumped out of her arms and ran toward the barn, barking joyously with his whole body.
Dorothy stood up and found she was in her stocking feet. For the silver shoes had fallen off in her flight through the air, and were lost forever in the desert, where perhaps they are lying to this day, filling slowly with the quietest sand in the world, and it does not matter at all, for they had done the only errand that was ever truly asked of them.
Aunt Em had just come out of the house to water the cabbages, and she looked up, and saw the girl running toward her.
My darling child, she cried, folding her in her arms and covering her face with kisses. Where in the world did you come from?
From the Land of Oz, said Dorothy gravely. And here is Toto too. And oh, Aunt Em, I'm so glad to be at home again.
And that is the whole of the ending, exactly as the old book gives it, and notice, listener, what the old book knew. It does not end with the Wizard, or the witches, or the wonderful City. It ends with a woman who thought she had lost a child, holding that child in a cabbage patch in the plain gold light, saying her name. That is what all the roads of yellow brick are for, in every story there is. They lead the long way round to the back door of home.
That evening there was supper in the new farmhouse. There was bread, and there was butter, and there was milk still warm from the pail. Dorothy told a little of where she had been, and Aunt Em said, mercy, and Uncle Henry said nothing, but he put another slice of bread on Dorothy's plate, which in Kansas is a long speech.
Afterward the dishes were washed, and the lamp was lit in the kitchen window, and the prairie outside went from gold to gray. But look at the gray now, listener. It is not the tired gray from the beginning of our story. It is the gray of a clean slate, of rain that is coming when the fields want it, of a dove's wing. Dorothy stood at the window a moment and looked at it, and found she loved it, every flat quiet mile of it, all the way to where it met the first stars.
Then she went up to bed, in a room that smelled of new wood, with Toto already a warm circle at the foot of the quilt. Below her the house ticked and settled. Outside, the wind came over a thousand miles of grass with nothing to knock over and nothing to carry away, and it made the one sound it makes, the oldest hushing sound there is.
And she slept. No cyclone in it. No witches anywhere in the world outside the window, so far as Kansas knows. Only the deep prairie dark, and the small lamp burning low downstairs, the way a lamp burns at the edge of morning, keeping watch over a sleeping house until the sun takes over the job.
And far away, at the edge of the world, in the quiet room where all of this was told, a girl in silver shoes has walked all the way home, and the page has come to its end.
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 north, all the way north, with a small girl in worn shoes, past a garden where it is always summer, past a palace of dreams and a castle of robbers, behind a reindeer who knows the way, under the burning green lights of the sky, to a hall built of snow where a boy sits beside a frozen lake, trying to spell one word out of ice, and the tale is called The Snow Queen.
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 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 lamplight is near you, the way a warm room is near you when the window shows nothing but winter.
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 about tonight's tale, before the first page. It is an old one from Denmark, written down almost two hundred years ago by a man named Hans Christian Andersen, a shoemaker's son who understood cold rooms and warm hearts better than anyone who has ever held a pen. He built this tale strangely and wonderfully, in seven small stories, like seven beads on one string, and tonight you will be given all seven, whole, in their old order, the way he left them. There is snow in this story, a great deal of it, but you will be warm the entire time. That is the arrangement. The cold stays on the page. The lamp does the rest.
And nothing in this room will ever startle you. Whatever winters blow through this tale, they blow themselves out well before the end, and every ending here is a soft landing. You can trust this room. That is what it was built for.
The flame leans, and settles.
We begin.
Chapter One.

The Mirror of the Trolls.
Attend, says the storyteller, because this tale begins in an unusual place. It does not begin with the boy, or with the girl, or with the queen of the snow. It begins with a mirror. When we know about the mirror, everything that happens afterward will make a kind of sense, the way a long winter makes sense once you know which wind brought it.
Once upon a time there was a troll. A real one, of the old cold sort, and the old book says plainly that he was the worst troll there ever was, the master of all the rest, and that his favorite thing in all the world was spoiling.
Now this troll, one idle century, made himself a mirror. And it was a very clever piece of work, in the way that bad ideas are often clever. For this mirror had the power to make everything good and beautiful that looked into it shrink down to almost nothing at all, while everything worthless and wrong grew larger, and stronger, and worse.
The loveliest green landscapes looked, in that glass, like boiled spinach. The kindest faces came out crooked, or upside down, or with no middles to them, so that their own mothers would have walked past them in the street. If a person had a single freckle, the mirror spread it over the whole nose and mouth. And if a good, warm thought passed through someone's heart while they stood before it, the mirror showed such a grimace that the troll laughed until his sides ached, which he considered the best use of an afternoon there was.
Everyone who attended the troll school, for he ran a school, told everybody everywhere that a miracle had happened. Now, they said, for the very first time, you could see what the world and the people in it really looked like. And they ran up and down the whole earth with the mirror, until at last there was not one land and not one person that had not been made crooked in it.
Then, because there was nothing left below to spoil, they wanted to fly up to heaven itself, to try the mirror on the angels.
Higher and higher they flew, and the mirror grimaced so hard, and shook so hard with its own cold laughing, that they could scarcely keep hold of it. Higher still they flew, and then the mirror trembled so terribly in its frame that it leapt right out of their hands, and fell back down toward the earth, turning over and over, and there it broke into hundreds of millions of billions of pieces, and more besides.
And this, says the storyteller, is where the trouble truly starts, and where the trolls, if they had understood anything at all, would have been sorry. Because broken, the mirror did far more mischief than whole.
Some of the pieces were hardly as large as a grain of sand, and these flew about in the wide world, and wherever they got into someone's eye, there they stayed. And from then on that person saw everything wrong, or had eyes only for what was worst in a thing, for every little splinter kept the whole power of the whole mirror. Some people even got a splinter right into the heart. And that was the most dreadful of all, quiet as it sounds, for a heart with mirror glass in it turns, little by little, into a lump of ice.
Some pieces were large enough to be made into window panes, but it was not good to look at your friends through those windows. Some became spectacles, and things went badly when people put on those spectacles hoping to see clearly and judge rightly. The troll laughed till he shook, which was the only kind of laughing he knew.
But out in the air, small splinters of glass were still floating.
Hold that thought gently, the way you would hold something with a thin edge. Do not worry over it. Only remember it. Two of those floating splinters matter to us tonight, and only two, and before this night is over, both of them will be gone from the world for good.
Now, says the storyteller, and here her voice warms, the way a room warms when someone opens a stove door, now we shall hear the first of the seven stories proper. And it happens far from trolls, on a rooftop, in summer, between two children and two rose trees.
Chapter Two.

The Roses on the Roof Gutter.
In a great town, where there are so many houses and so many people that there is not room enough for everyone to have even a little garden, and where most folk must content themselves with flowers in pots, there lived two poor children who had a garden somewhat bigger than a flower pot.
They were not brother and sister, but they loved each other as much as if they had been. Their parents lived just opposite one another, in two attic rooms, where the roof of one house leaned against the roof of the next, and the rain gutter ran along between. From each house a little window looked out, one facing the other, and you had only to step across the gutter to get from window to window.
Outside each window the parents had set a great wooden box, and in the boxes grew kitchen herbs, which they used, and in each box grew also a little rose tree, and the rose trees throve wonderfully. Sweet peas hung down over the edges of the boxes, and the rose trees sent out long branches that wound themselves around the windows and leaned across toward each other, until it was almost like an archway of leaves and flowers between the two little rooms, a green triumphal arch a few feet above the street, which nobody down in the street ever noticed, and which was, for all that, one of the loveliest gardens in the world.
The boxes were very high, and the children knew they must not climb about on them. But they were often allowed to step out to each other and sit on their little stools under the roses, and there they played most beautifully, in the smell of leaves and warm tar and summer.
The boy was called Kay. The girl was called Gerda.
In the winter, of course, that pleasure was over. The windows were often frozen quite shut and quite white. But then the children would warm copper pennies on the stove, and press the hot pennies against the frozen pane, and there would come a beautiful round peephole in the frost, and behind each peephole a soft bright eye, one at each window, the little boy and the little girl, looking across at one another through the white.
In summer they could be together with one jump. In winter it was down many stairs and up many stairs, on the inside, while outside the snow came drifting down.
Those are the white bees swarming, said the old grandmother, who sat by the stove with her knitting and knew things.
Do the white bees have a queen too, asked the little boy, for he knew that the real bees have one.
They have, said the grandmother. She flies there, where the swarm hangs thickest. She is the largest of them all, and she never lies still upon the earth. She flies up again into the black cloud. Many a winter night she flies through the streets of the town and peeps in at the windows, and then the panes freeze over in wonderful patterns, like flowers and like castles.
Yes, we have seen that, said both the children, and so they knew that it was true.
Can the Snow Queen come in here, asked the little girl.
Just let her come, said the boy. I will set her on the warm stove, and then she will melt.
But the grandmother smoothed his hair and told other stories, and the evening went on, warm and small and safe, the way evenings by a stove go on.
But that night, when little Kay was at home and half undressed for bed, he climbed up on the chair by the window and peeped out through his little round hole in the frost. A few snowflakes were falling out there, and one of them, the very largest, came to rest on the edge of one of the flower boxes. And the snowflake grew, and grew, and at last it became a whole lady, dressed in the finest white gauze, which seemed to be made of millions of starry flakes. She was beautiful, and fine, and made of ice, of dazzling, gleaming ice, and yet she was alive. Her eyes shone like two clear stars, but there was no rest and no quiet in them. She nodded toward the window, and she beckoned with her hand.
The little boy was frightened, and sprang down from the chair, and then it seemed to him that a great pale bird flew past the window, and was gone.
The next day there was a clear frost. And then came the thaw. And then came the spring. The sun shone, the green peeped out, the swallows built their nests, the windows were opened, and the two children sat once again in their little garden, high up in the roof gutter above all the floors of the two houses.
The roses bloomed that summer as they had never bloomed before. And the little girl had learned a song in which there were roses, and when she sang it she thought of her own, and she sang it to the little boy, and he sang it with her.
Down in the valley the roses grow, and there the Christ child you shall know.
And the two of them held each other by the hand, and kissed the roses, and looked up into the clear sunshine of God, and it seemed to them that the summer would simply go on, that the roses would never leave off blooming, and that nothing at all would ever change.
Remember them there, says the storyteller. Two small heads under an arch of roses, a gutter garden between two attic windows, a whole town below them that has no idea it is holding up paradise. Whatever this tale does next, that rooftop is where it is going home to. Keep one hand on it, and you cannot be lost.
Chapter Three.

The White Sledge.
One day Kay and Gerda sat looking at a picture book full of birds and beasts, and it was just then, as the clock in the great church tower was striking five, that Kay said, oh. Something pricked my heart. And now, something has flown into my eye.
The little girl put her arm around his neck. He blinked and blinked. No, there was nothing at all to be seen.
I think it is gone, he said.
But it was not gone. It was one of those very grains of glass that had sprung from the troll mirror, the wicked glass, you remember it, the glass that made everything great and good that was mirrored in it become small and hateful, while everything mean and wrong stood out plainly, so that every fault in a thing could be noticed at once. And poor Kay, the old book says it as gently as it can be said, poor Kay had gotten a second splinter as well, and that one had gone straight into his heart, and his heart would soon be like a lump of ice.
It did not hurt anymore. But it was there.
Why do you cry, he said to Gerda. It makes you look ugly. There is nothing at all the matter with me. And then, looking about, he said, that rose there is worm eaten. And look, this one is quite crooked. They are ugly roses after all, like the boxes they stand in. And he kicked the box with his foot and pulled off the two roses.
Kay, what are you doing, cried the little girl.
And when he saw how it frightened her, he pulled off yet another rose, and sprang in through his own window, and left dear little Gerda alone under the arch.
After that day, when she came with the picture book, he said it was for babies. When the grandmother told stories, he always came in with a but. And when he could manage it, he would walk behind her, put on her spectacles, and imitate her way of speaking. It was done exactly right, and people laughed at it. Very soon he could mimic the walk and the talk of everyone in their street. Everything that was odd about a person, everything that was unlovely, Kay could do it after them, and folk said, that boy has certainly a remarkable head. But it was the glass that sat in his eye, and the glass that sat cold in his heart, and it was because of the glass that he teased even little Gerda, who loved him with her whole soul.
His games were quite different now from what they had been. They had become so knowing. One winter day, as the snowflakes came drifting down, he brought out a big magnifying glass, and held out the corner of his blue coat, and let the flakes fall on the wool.
Now look through the glass, Gerda, he said.
And every snowflake stood there much larger, and looked like a splendid flower, or like a star with ten points. It was truly wonderful to see.
Do you see how artful, said Kay. It is far more interesting than real flowers. There is not one single fault in them. A snowflake is perfectly exact, as long as it does not melt.
Soon after that, Kay came by with big gloves on his hands and his little sledge on his back, and he shouted right into Gerda's ear, they have given me leave to sledge in the great square where the others play. And off he went.
Out there in the square the boldest boys would often tie their little sledges fast to the farmers' carts, and be pulled along a good way behind. It was the greatest fun. And while their play was at its height, a great sledge came into the square. It was painted white all over, and in it sat a figure wrapped in a rough white fur, with a rough white cap upon its head. The sledge drove twice around the square, and Kay got his little sledge tied on behind it, quick as thinking, and away he drove with it.
Faster and faster it went, straight into the next street. The driver turned and nodded to Kay in the friendliest way, just as if they knew one another. Every time Kay thought of loosening his little sledge, the driver nodded again, and Kay stayed where he was. And so they drove straight out through the gate of the town.
Then the snow began to fall so thick and fast that the little boy could not see his own hand in front of him as they rushed along. He undid the rope in a hurry, to be free of the great sledge, but it made no difference. His little sledge hung on fast, and away they went like the wind. He called out as loudly as he could, but nobody heard him. The snow drifted down and the sledge flew on, and now and then it gave a bound, as though it were flying over hedges and ditches.
He was thoroughly frightened now. He wanted to say his prayer, the evening one, the one he knew by heart. But all that he could remember was the multiplication table.
The snowflakes grew bigger, and bigger, until at last they looked like great white hens. Then, all at once, they flew to either side, the great sledge stopped, and the driver stood up. The fur and the cap were of snow, all of snow, and the driver was a lady, tall and slender, and shining white.
It was the Snow Queen.
We have driven well, said she. But you are nearly frozen. Creep into my bear fur.
And she set him beside her in the great sledge, and drew the fur around him, and it was to him as though he sank into a soft deep snowdrift.
Are you still cold, she asked, and she kissed him on the forehead.
Ah. That kiss was colder than ice. It went straight in to his heart, and his heart was already half a lump of ice. For one moment it was to him as though he were about to die. But only for one moment. Then it was well with him again, and he no longer felt the cold at all.
My sledge, my little sledge, do not forget it. That was his first thought, and someone had thought of it already. It was tied fast to one of the great white hens, and she flew along behind with the little sledge on her back.
Then the Snow Queen kissed Kay once more, and with that kiss he had forgotten little Gerda, and the grandmother, and every soul at home.
Now you get no more kisses, said she, for else I should kiss you to death.
Kay looked at her. She was so beautiful. A wiser face, a lovelier face, he could not have imagined. She did not seem to him now to be made of ice, as she had seemed that night she sat outside his window and beckoned. In his eyes she was perfect, and he was not afraid anymore. He told her that he could do arithmetic in his head, even with fractions, and that he knew how many square miles the country had, and how many people lived in it. And she smiled, and smiled. And then it seemed to him that what he knew was perhaps not so very much after all, and he looked up, into the great wide vault of the night.
And she flew with him. High up on the black cloud she flew, and the storm whistled and sang about them, as though it were singing songs older than any grandmother. Over forests and over lakes they flew, over sea and over land. Below them the cold wind rushed by, the wolves called far off to one another, the snow sparkled, and the black crows flew cawing over the white ground. But high above, the moon shone big and bright and calm, and Kay watched the moon through all that long, long winter night. And in the day, he slept at the feet of the Snow Queen.
The storyteller turns the page here, and the page is as white as the snow it tells of.
For back in the town, at a small attic window between two empty flower boxes, a little girl kept watch on the street where the sledges came home at dusk, one by one, and one of them did not come.
That winter was long. And when the tale goes on, it goes with her.
Chapter Four.

The River and the Cherry Garden.
But how did it fare with little Gerda, when Kay came back no more?
Where could he be? Nobody knew. Nobody could say. The other boys could tell only this much, that they had seen him tie his little sledge to a splendid great one, which had driven into the street and out at the gate of the town. Nobody knew where he was. Many tears were shed, and little Gerda wept long and hard. Then people said that he was dead, that he had been drowned in the river that flowed close by the town. Oh, those were long, dark winter days.
Then came the spring, with warmer sunshine.
Kay is dead and gone, said little Gerda.
I do not believe it, said the sunshine.
He is dead and gone, she said to the swallows.
We do not believe it, they answered. And at last little Gerda did not believe it either.
I will put on my new red shoes, she said one morning, early, the ones Kay has never seen. And then I will go down and ask the river.
It was still quite early. She kissed the old grandmother, who was sleeping, put on the red shoes, and went, quite alone, out at the gate and down to the river.
Is it true that you have taken my little playfellow, she asked the water. I will give you my red shoes if you will give him back to me.
And it seemed to her that the waves nodded, in a strange way. So she took her red shoes, the dearest things she owned in the world, and threw them both out into the river. But they fell close in by the bank, and the small waves carried them straight back to land, to her feet, as if the river would not take the dearest thing she owned, since it did not have little Kay to trade for them.
But Gerda thought only that she had not thrown the shoes far enough out. So she climbed into a boat that lay in the rushes, and went out to the farthest end of it, and threw the shoes from there. The boat, however, was not tied fast, and with the movement of her throwing it slid away from the shore. She felt it going and hurried to get back out, but before she reached the other end, the boat was a good arm's length from the bank, and gliding away, faster and faster.
Then little Gerda was very much frightened, and began to cry. But no one heard her except the sparrows, and they could not carry her to land. So they flew along the bank beside her and sang, as if to comfort her, here we are, here we are.
The boat drove on with the stream. Little Gerda sat quite still, in her stocking feet. Her little red shoes floated along behind, but they could not catch up with the boat, which traveled faster than they did.
Beautiful were both banks of that river. Beautiful flowers, old trees, hillsides with sheep and cows. But of people, not one single one to be seen anywhere.
Perhaps the river is carrying me to little Kay, thought Gerda, and at that she grew more cheerful, and stood up in the boat, and watched the lovely green banks go by for hours. The water lapped at the boat, kindly enough. The sun lay warm on her hair. Dragonflies stitched blue threads above the rushes, and stitched them again, as though the seam would not hold, and the river went on with her the way rivers go on, patiently, in no hurry to arrive.
And then she came to a great cherry orchard, and in the orchard stood a little house with strange red and blue windows, and a thatched roof, and outside it two wooden soldiers, who presented arms to everyone who sailed past.
Gerda called out to them. She thought they were alive. But they, quite naturally, did not answer. And the river carried her close in to them, driving the boat toward the land.
Gerda called louder still, and then out of the house came an old, old woman, leaning on a hooked stick. She had a great sun hat upon her head, and the hat was painted all over with the most beautiful flowers.
You poor little child, said the old woman. However did you come to be out on this great rolling river, driven so far into the wide world? And the old woman walked right out into the water, caught the boat fast with her hooked stick, drew it in to land, and lifted little Gerda out.
And Gerda was glad to be on dry ground again, though she was a little afraid of the strange old woman.
Come now, and tell me who you are, said the woman, and how you came here.
And Gerda told her everything. And the old woman shook her head and said, hm, hm. And when Gerda had told it all and asked whether she had not seen little Kay, the woman said that he had not come past yet, but that come he certainly would, and Gerda was not to be sorrowful, but should taste her cherries, and look at her flowers, which were more beautiful than any picture book, for every one of them could tell a whole story.
Then she took Gerda by the hand, and they went into the little house, and the old woman locked the door behind them.
The windows sat very high up, and the panes were red, and blue, and yellow, so that the daylight fell inside most strangely, in all those colors at once. But on the table stood the most delicious cherries, and Gerda ate as many as ever she liked, for that she had leave to do. And while she ate, the old woman combed the little girl's hair with a golden comb, and the hair curled and shone like gold about the small friendly face, which was so round and so soft, like a rose.
I have so long wished for a dear little girl like you, said the old woman. Now you shall see how well we two shall get along.
And as she combed and combed little Gerda's hair, Gerda forgot her playfellow Kay, more with every stroke of the comb. For the old woman was skilled in magic. But a wicked witch she was not. She did only a little magic, for her own pleasure, and what she wanted, in her lonely house among the cherries, was very much to keep little Gerda.
And therefore she went out into her garden, and stretched her hooked stick out toward all the rose trees, and every one of them, in the very fullness of its blooming, sank down into the black earth, so that no one could see where it had stood. For the old woman was afraid that if Gerda saw roses, she would think of her own roses at home, and remember little Kay, and run away from her.
Then she led Gerda out into the flower garden.
Oh, what fragrance was there, and what loveliness. Every flower a person could think of, flowers of every season of the year, stood in that garden in fullest bloom, all at once, all together. No picture book could be brighter or more beautiful. Gerda jumped for joy, and played among the beds until the sun went down behind the tall cherry trees. Then she was given a lovely bed with red silk pillows, and the pillows were stuffed with blue violets, and she slept there, and dreamed as sweetly as a queen on her wedding day.
The next day she played again with the flowers in the warm sunshine. And so many days passed, one exactly as sweet as another. Gerda came to know every flower in the garden by name and by face. But many as they were, it seemed to her always that one was missing, though she could not have said which.
Until one day she sat looking at the old woman's sun hat, the painted one, and the loveliest of all the painted flowers on it was a rose. The old woman had quite forgotten to take it off her hat, that time she made the real roses sink down into the earth. But so it goes, says the old book, when one does not keep one's wits about one.
What, said Gerda, are there no roses here? And she sprang in among the flower beds, and looked, and looked, and there was not one to find. And then she sat down in the middle of the garden and wept.
But her hot tears fell on the very spot where a rose tree had sunk down. And where the warm tears wetted the earth, the tree shot up all at once, as full of bloom as on the day it sank. And Gerda put her arms around it, and kissed the roses, and thought of the lovely roses at home in the roof gutter, and with them, at last, at last, of little Kay.
Oh, how much time I have lost, said the little girl. I was going to find Kay. Do you not know where he is, she asked the roses. Do you believe that he is dead and gone?
Dead he is not, said the roses. For we have been down in the earth, where all the dead are, and Kay was not there.
Thank you, said little Gerda. And she went to the other flowers, and looked into their cups, and asked, do you not know where little Kay is?
But every flower stood in the sunshine dreaming its own dream, its own little story. Gerda got to hear so many of them, so many. But not one flower knew anything at all about Kay, for each of them, as is the way with flowers, knew only its own song.
What did the convolvulus say? It told of an old castle above a narrow mountain road, with evening light on its red walls, and of a lovely maiden who leaned out over the balcony there and looked far down the road, fresher than the freshest rose, and asked the evening, will he not come soon?
What did the buttercup say? It told of a little courtyard, with the warm sun of early spring lying in it, and an old grandmother out in her chair, and her granddaughter, home for a visit, who kissed her. There was gold in that kiss, said the buttercup, heart gold. That is my little story. And it shone with satisfaction and said no more.
And the narcissus? The narcissus said only, I can see myself, I can see myself, and could not be moved off the subject, so Gerda left it admiring its own reflection, which it is doing to this day.
You none of you know anything, said Gerda at last, and she gathered up her skirt and ran, down to the far end of the garden.
The gate was shut fast. But she wriggled the rusty latch until it gave way, and the gate sprang open, and little Gerda ran out, on her bare feet, into the wide world. Three times she looked back as she ran, but no one came after her. At last she could run no more, and she sat down on a big stone to breathe.
And when she looked around her, she saw that the summer was over. It was late in the autumn. Inside the beautiful garden, where there was always sunshine and the flowers of all four seasons at once, a person could never have noticed. But out here the year had gone on without her.
Oh my, how I have lingered, said little Gerda. It is autumn already. There is no time to rest.
And she rose to go on.
Oh, how sore and tired her little feet were. And how cold and raw it looked all around. The long leaves of the willows had gone quite yellow, and the mist dripped from them like slow water, and one leaf fell, and then another. Only the sloe thorn still stood with its fruit on, and that fruit so sour it pulled your whole mouth together.
And it was gray, and it was heavy, out in the wide world. But she went on. That is the whole of Gerda, told in four words, says the storyteller, turning the page. She went on.
Chapter Five.

The Crow Who Knew a Princess.
Gerda had to rest again soon, for little legs go only so far on a cold road. And there on the snow, just in front of where she sat, came hopping a great crow.
The first snow of that early winter was down, thin and fresh, and the crow left neat little stitch marks across it as it came. It had been sitting a good while looking at her, turning its head this way and that way. And now it said, kra, kra. Good day, good day. It said this as well as it was able, for crows speak our language only with effort, and it meant it kindly, and it asked the little girl where she was going, all alone, out in the wide world.
The word alone Gerda understood very well, and felt the whole weight of it. And so she told the crow her whole life, from the roof gutter onward, and asked at the end whether it had not seen Kay.
The crow nodded quite thoughtfully and said, could be. Could be.
What, do you think so, cried the little girl, and she kissed the crow so warmly that she very nearly knocked it over into the snow.
Gently, gently, said the crow. I think, I say I think, it may be little Kay. But if it is, then he has certainly forgotten you by now, for the princess.
Does he live with a princess, asked Gerda.
Yes, listen, said the crow. But it is so hard for me to speak your language. If you understood crow talk I could tell it far better.
I never learned it, said Gerda. My grandmother knew it, though. I wish now I had learned.
No matter, said the crow. I shall tell it as well as I can, which will be badly enough. And it told what it knew.
In this kingdom where we two now sit, said the crow, there lives a princess who is so uncommonly clever that she has read all the newspapers there are in the whole world, and, mark this, has forgotten them all again, so clever is she. The other day she was sitting on her throne, which people say is not half so amusing as you would suppose, and she happened to hum a little song, and the song was this one, why should I not be married? Why not indeed, said she, there is something in that song. And so she determined to marry. But she would have a husband who knew how to answer when he was spoken to. A husband who did not simply stand about looking well born and distinguished, for that, she said, is so exceedingly tiresome.
Now you may believe every word of this, said the crow, for I have a tame sweetheart who lives at the palace and goes about there freely, and she has told me the whole of it.
The very next morning the newspapers came out with a border of hearts all around, and the princess's initials inside, and there it stood in print, that any young man of pleasing appearance was free to come up to the palace and speak with the princess. And whichever one of them spoke so that a person could hear he was at his ease there, and spoke the best, him the princess would take for a husband.
Yes, yes, said the crow, you may trust me. It is as true as it is that I sit here.
The people came streaming. There was a crushing and a crowding, a running and a hurrying. But it went well for nobody, not the first day, and not the second. Out in the street, every one of them could talk splendidly. But the moment they came in at the palace gate, and saw the guards standing there in silver, and the footmen all the way up the stairs in gold, and the great halls with all their lights, they lost themselves entirely. And when they stood before the throne where the princess sat, they could think of nothing to say at all, so they said back the last word the princess herself had said, and she had no particular wish to hear that one again.
It was as if a spell fell upon them the moment they were indoors, as if they had been struck sleepy from the carpets up. And the spell lifted only when they were back out in the street, where they could talk again beautifully, which was no use whatever out there. There stood a whole row of them, waiting, from the town gate all the way up to the palace door. I flew in and saw it myself, said the crow. They got hungry, waiting, and they got thirsty, but from the palace they received not so much as a glass of lukewarm water. The cleverest of them, it is true, had brought bread and butter in their pockets. But they did not share with their neighbors, no. Each one thought, only let that fellow beside me look hungry enough, and the princess will never take him.
But Kay, little Kay, said Gerda. When does he come? Was he among all those?
Give me time, give me time, said the crow. We are just now arriving at him. On the third day there came marching cheerfully up to the palace a little person, without horse, without carriage, on his own two feet. His eyes sparkled, the way yours do. He had beautiful long hair. But his clothes were poor.
That was Kay, Gerda rejoiced. Oh, then I have found him. And she clapped her hands.
He had a little knapsack on his back, said the crow.
No, that must surely have been his sledge, said Gerda, for he went away with his sledge.
That may well be, said the crow. I did not look so very closely. But this much I know from my tame sweetheart. When he came in through the palace gate and saw the guards in silver, and the footmen in gold all up the staircase, he was not put out of countenance in the least. He nodded to them and said, it must be dull work, standing about on the stairs. I would rather go in.
The halls blazed with candles. Privy councillors and excellencies were walking about barefoot, so solemn was the place, carrying golden dishes. It was enough to make anybody solemn. And his boots creaked most dreadfully loud, and still he was not afraid.
That is certainly Kay, said Gerda. I know he had new boots. I heard them creaking myself, in grandmother's room.
Creak they certainly did, said the crow. And he walked straight in to the princess, cheerful as morning, and she was sitting on a pearl as big as a spinning wheel. And all the ladies of the court, with their maids, and their maids' maids, and all the cavaliers, with their serving men, and their serving men's serving men, who each kept a boy besides, stood ranged all around. And the nearer they stood to the door, the prouder they looked. The serving men's serving men's boy, who goes always in slippers, one scarcely dares look at at all, so proud is he, standing there in the doorway.
That must be terrible, said little Gerda. And yet Kay won the princess?
If I had not been a crow, said the crow, I should have taken her myself, and never mind that I am promised elsewhere. He spoke, they say, quite as well as I speak when I speak crow language. He was merry, and he was pleasant. He had not come to woo at all, he said, only to hear the princess's wisdom, of which the newspapers had been full. And her wisdom he found good, and she found him good in return.
Yes, of course. That was Kay, said Gerda. He was always so clever. He could do arithmetic in his head, with fractions. Oh, will you not take me in to the palace?
Easily said, said the crow, easily said. But how shall we do it? I shall speak to my tame sweetheart about it. She will know a way. For this I must tell you plainly. A little girl like you, with bare feet, will never in this world get leave to walk in at the front.
Oh yes I shall, said Gerda. When Kay hears that I am here, he will come straight down and fetch me himself.
Wait for me by that stile, said the crow. And it wagged its head, and away it flew.
Chapter Six.

The Prince and the Princess.
Not until the evening had grown quite dark did the crow come back.
Rah, rah, it said. My sweetheart greets you a thousand times. And here is a little loaf of bread for you. She took it from the kitchen. There is bread enough in that kitchen, and you must be hungry.
Now then. It is not possible for you to come into the palace by the front, said the crow. You are barefoot, and the guards in silver and the footmen in gold would never allow it. But do not cry. Up you shall come, all the same. My sweetheart knows of a little back staircase that leads to the sleeping rooms, and she knows where the key is kept.
So they went into the garden, into the great avenue where the leaves were falling one after another, slowly, like small tired hands letting go. And when the lights of the palace had been put out, one by one, window by window, the crow led little Gerda to a back door, which stood ajar.
Oh, how Gerda's heart beat, with fear, and with longing. It was exactly as though she were about to do something wrong, and yet all she wanted in this world was to know whether it was little Kay. Yes, it must be he. She thought so hard of his wise eyes and his long hair that she could see him, see exactly how he used to smile when they sat at home under the roses. Surely he would be glad to see her. Glad to hear what a long way she had come for his sake. Glad to know how they had all grieved at home when he did not come back.
Oh, it was a fear, and it was a joy, and they went up the little back staircase together.
On the stairs a small lamp was burning on a shelf. And in the middle of the floor above stood the tame crow, turning her head on every side, and considering Gerda from all of them, and Gerda curtseyed, the way her grandmother had taught her.
My betrothed has spoken so very charmingly of you, my little lady, said the tame crow. Your history, as one might call it, is most touching. If you will take the lamp, I shall walk before. We go straight along here, and shall meet no one.
It seems to me that someone is coming behind us, said Gerda.
And something did indeed rush past her, like shadows running along the wall. Horses with flying manes and thin legs. Huntsmen. Lords and ladies on horseback, all of shadow, all quite silent, all streaming past and away.
Those are only the dreams, said the tame crow. They come and fetch the fine folks' thoughts out hunting, every night. And a good thing too, for then the fine folk lie the quieter, and one can look at them the better. Only, if you come to honor and high position, mind you keep a grateful heart. That is all I ask.
Why, that goes without saying, said the crow from the woods, a little embarrassed on Gerda's behalf, for Gerda's heart needed no such advice, and everyone present knew it.
Now they came into the first hall. Its walls were covered with rose red satin, worked all over with flowers. And here the dreams came rushing back past them again, but so quickly that Gerda could not get one look at the fine folk whose thoughts they carried. Each hall they passed through was grander than the one before, until a person could well grow dizzy with it. And then they stood in the bedchamber.
The ceiling of that room was made like the crown of a great palm tree, with leaves of glass, of the costliest glass. And in the middle of the floor, hanging from a thick stalk of gold, there were two beds, and each one was shaped like a lily. One lily was white, and in that one lay the princess. The other was red. And in that one Gerda was to look for little Kay.
She bent one of the red leaves aside, and she saw the brown back of a neck. Oh, it was Kay. She cried his name out quite loud, and held the lamp toward him. The dreams on horseback came rushing back into the room like a wind. The sleeper woke, and turned his head.
And it was not little Kay.
The prince was like him only about the neck. But young he was, and handsome. And out of the white lily bed the princess peeped, blinking, and asked what in all the world was happening. And then little Gerda cried, and standing there with the lamp, she told her whole story, all of it, and everything the two crows had done for her.
You poor little thing, said the prince and the princess together.
And they praised the crows, and said they were not in the least angry with them, though it must never happen again. Meanwhile, the crows should have a reward. Would they rather fly free, asked the princess, or would they have a fixed position, as court crows, with rights to everything that fell on the kitchen floor?
And both crows bowed very low, and asked for the fixed position. For they were thinking of their old age, and said, one so likes to have something laid by for the old man, as they put it.
And the prince got up out of his bed, and let Gerda sleep in it, in the red lily, and more than that he could not do, and it was a great deal. She folded her small hands and thought, how good they are, people and animals both. And then she closed her eyes, and slept the roundest, deepest sleep of her whole journey. All the dreams came flying back in to look at her, and this time they looked like God's own angels, and they drew a little sledge behind them, and on the sledge sat Kay, and nodded to her. But the whole of it was only dreaming, and so it was gone again the moment she woke.
In the morning she was dressed from head to foot in silk and in velvet. And she was invited to stay at the palace for good, and live in comfort all her days. But Gerda begged for one thing only, a little carriage with one horse before it, and one pair of little boots. Then she would drive out again into the wide world, and find Kay.
And she got the boots, and a muff as well, and she was dressed so beautifully and so warmly. And when she was ready to leave, there at the door stood a new coach of pure gold, with the coat of arms of the prince and the princess shining upon it like a star. Coachman, footmen, and outriders, for there were outriders too, sat in their places with little gold crowns on their heads. The prince and the princess helped her into the coach with their own hands, and wished her all the good fortune in the world.
The forest crow, who was now married, rode along with her for the first three miles. He sat on the seat at her side, for it disagreed with him thoroughly to ride with his back to the horses. The tame crow stood in the gateway and beat her wings. She did not go along, for she had suffered from headaches lately, since receiving her fixed position, and, it must be said, rather too much to eat with it.
Inside, the coach was lined with sugared cakes, and under the seat there were fruits and gingerbread nuts.
Farewell, farewell, called the prince and princess. And little Gerda cried, and the crow cried, and so the first miles went by. Then the crow, too, said farewell, and of all the partings on that road, this one was the heaviest. He flew up into a tree and beat his black wings there as long as he could see the coach at all, as it went away shining, bright as the clear sunshine, in among the darker trees.
Chapter Seven.

The Little Robber Girl.
They drove on through the dark forest. But the coach shone like a torch among the trees, and that, in a forest of that particular sort, was a mistake nobody had thought of in time.
It is gold, it is gold, cried the robbers, and they burst out of the trees and seized the horses by their bridles. The old book is harder on the coachman and the footmen and the outriders than we need to be at this hour. Tonight it is enough to say that they did not stay, and that the forest let them go.
And the robbers pulled little Gerda out of the coach.
She is plump, said the old robber woman, who had a long bristly beard and eyebrows that hung down over her eyes. She is a fine little one. She has been fed on nut kernels, this one. And she looked little Gerda over the way a housewife looks over goods at a market, and Gerda did not care for it at all.
But just then there came a loud yelp, and the old woman got a sharp bite on the ear, for hanging on her back, wild and willful, was her own little daughter, and in that family, you should know, a bite on the ear was a way of saying several things at once, most of them beginning with the word mine.
She shall play with me, said the little robber girl. She shall give me her muff, and her pretty dress, and she shall sleep with me in my bed.
And what the little robber girl wanted, in that camp, the little robber girl received, for she was spoiled through and through, and stubborn as a small oak. She and Gerda got into the coach together, and away they drove, over stumps and stones, deeper into the forest. The little robber girl was as tall as Gerda, but broader in the shoulders, and stronger, with brown skin and black eyes, and the eyes were almost sad, if you looked at them long enough, though nobody was often given the time.
She put her arm around Gerda's waist and said, they shall not touch you, as long as I am not cross with you. You are surely a princess.
No, said little Gerda. And she told her everything, everything that had happened to her, and how very fond she was of little Kay.
The robber girl looked at her quite gravely, nodded a little, and said, they shall not touch you even if I do get cross with you. Then I shall do it myself. And she dried Gerda's eyes with her own two hands, and then put both her hands into the beautiful muff, which was so soft and so warm.
And now the coach stopped. They were in the courtyard of a robber castle. It was cracked from top to bottom. Ravens and crows flew out of the open holes in the walls, and out of the gate came dogs, great dogs, each one looking as though it could swallow a man whole, though not one of them barked, for that was forbidden, and they took the rule seriously, and carried themselves in consequence with the gloomy dignity of large furniture.
In the great old smoke blackened hall, a big fire burned in the middle of the stone floor. The smoke drifted up under the roof and found its own way out, as it had done for a hundred years. A great cauldron of soup was boiling, and hares and rabbits were turning on spits, and the smell of it all was, it must honestly be said, very good.
Tonight you shall sleep with me and all my little animals, said the robber girl.
They got food and drink, and then went off to a corner of the hall, where straw lay deep, with old carpets spread over it. Above the corner, on rails and perches, sat nearly a hundred pigeons, and all of them seemed to be asleep, though they shifted a little, each on her perch, when the two girls came near.
They are all mine, said the little robber girl. And she seized the nearest one by the feet and shook it until it flapped its wings, which was her way of introducing it. Kiss it, she cried, and swung it right into Gerda's face.
Those two there are the wood rabble, she went on, pointing higher up, to a hole in the wall with bars before it, where two wood pigeons sat close together. Wood pigeons, the wild kind. They would be off in a moment if they were not locked in properly.
And this, this is my old sweetheart Bae.
And she pulled forward, by the antler, a reindeer. He wore a bright ring of polished copper around his neck, and he was tied up, and he was large, and patient, and his eyes were dark and mild.
We have to keep hold of him, said the robber girl, or he would run away from us in one leap. Every single evening I show him my little knife, and tell him how sharp it is, and how it is certainly the sharpest little knife in this whole forest. And the reindeer, who was polite, and who had heard this speech perhaps a thousand times, always agreed that it certainly was.
For the little robber girl kept a knife in her belt the way other girls keep a comb, and she was proud of it mostly in the way of whittling, and of showing it to visitors, and of being the kind of person who had one. It slept under her pillow at night, because, she said, you never can know. Nobody in that castle could remember it ever doing anything worse than sharpening sticks and spreading butter, but it had a great reputation, and she saw to it that the reputation was maintained.
Will you have your knife by you even while you sleep, asked Gerda, looking at it a little anxiously.
I always sleep with my knife, said the little robber girl. You never can know what may happen. But now tell me again what you told me before, about little Kay, and why you have gone out like this into the wide world.
And Gerda told it all again, from the very beginning. And the wood pigeons cooed up there behind their bars, and the other pigeons slept.
And then, out of the dark above them, the wood pigeons spoke.
Coo, coo, they said. We have seen little Kay. A white hen carried his sledge. He himself sat in the Snow Queen's sledge, and it drove low over the forest, where we lay in our nest. She breathed on the nests as she passed, and of all our nest only we two were left to remember it. Coo, coo.
What are you saying up there, cried Gerda. Where did the Snow Queen go? Do you know anything about it?
She was surely going to Lapland, said the wood pigeons, for in Lapland there is always snow and ice. Ask the reindeer who stands tied by the rope. He will know.
There is ice and snow there. There it is glorious and good, said the reindeer, and his mild eyes kindled as he said it. There one runs free, and springs about in the great shining valleys. There the Snow Queen has her summer tent. But her strong castle is farther up, toward the North Pole, on the island men call Spitsbergen.
Oh Kay, little Kay, sighed Gerda.
Lie still now, said the robber girl, who was more than half asleep already, or you will wake all my pigeons.
But Gerda lay awake a long while in the straw, listening to the fire settle and the smoke go up, and thinking of a boy at the top of the world.
In the morning Gerda told the robber girl everything the wood pigeons had said. And the little robber girl looked quite serious for once, and nodded her head, and said, no matter, no matter. Do you know where Lapland lies, she asked the reindeer.
Who should know that better than I, said the animal, and his eyes danced in his head. I was born there, and bred there. On the snow fields of Lapland I ran when I was young.
Listen, said the robber girl to Gerda. All our men are away this morning. Only mother is still here, and here she stays. But a little later in the morning she drinks out of the big bottle, and afterward she takes a small sleep. And then, then I shall do something for you.
And when the small sleep had duly arrived, and the hall was full of nothing but its snoring, the robber girl went to the reindeer and took hold of the copper ring.
I could go on keeping you a long time yet, she said to him. You are the most interesting thing in this whole castle, and you know it. But no matter. I will loosen your rope, and help you out, so that you can run home to your Lapland. But you must use those legs of yours properly, and carry this little girl for me to the Snow Queen's castle, where her playfellow is. You have heard every word she told me, for she talked loud enough, and you stood there listening, as you always do.
The reindeer sprang high into the air for joy.
The robber girl lifted little Gerda up onto his back, and had the good sense to tie her fast there, and even to give her a little cushion to sit upon.
And here are your fur boots, she said, for it will be cold where you are going. The muff I shall keep, it is far too pretty to give away. But you shall not freeze for all that. Look, here are my mother's great mittens. They will reach you right up to the elbows. In you go. Now your hands look exactly like my ugly old mother's, and that is the warmest thing hands can look.
And Gerda wept, for joy, and for all of it.
I cannot bear you to whimper, said the little robber girl. This is the moment to look pleased, if ever there was one. And here, here are two loaves and a ham for you, so you shall not go hungry either.
The loaves and the ham were tied on the reindeer's back. The little robber girl opened the door, called all the great solemn dogs inside, and then cut the rope through with her knife, which was thus given, at the very last, one genuinely important thing to do, and did it well.
Run now, she said to the reindeer. But mind you take good care of the little girl.
And Gerda stretched out both her hands in the enormous mittens toward the robber girl, and said farewell.
And then the reindeer ran. Over bushes and stubble he flew, through the great forest, over marsh and over plain, as fast as ever his legs would go. Far away the wolves said long cold things to one another, and overhead the ravens went home late, complaining, as ravens do. And then, high above, the sky itself began to glow, snap upon snap of red and of green, like great silent fireworks that had forgotten the noise.
There are my old northern lights, said the reindeer. Look at them shining. That is the roof of home.
And he ran on faster still, day and night both, under the burning sky.
The two loaves were eaten. The ham was eaten too, down to the string.
And then they were in Lapland.
Chapter Eight.

The Lapland Woman and the Finland Woman.
They stopped at a little hut, and a poor thing it was. The roof of it went right down to the ground, and the doorway was so low that the family had to creep on their stomachs when they wanted to go in or out.
Nobody was home in the hut but one old Lapland woman, who stood cooking fish over an oil lamp. And the reindeer told her the whole of Gerda's story, but first he told his own, for that one seemed to him a great deal more important. And Gerda herself was so overcome with the cold that she could not speak at all, but only stood steaming gently in the warm, like a small loaf just out of the oven.
Ah, you poor things, said the Lapland woman, then you have a long way to run yet. You must go more than a hundred miles farther, into Finmark, for it is there the Snow Queen is staying in the country now, and she burns her blue lights there every single evening. Listen. I will write a few words for you on a dried codfish, for paper I have none, and you shall carry it up to the Finland woman there. She can give you better directions than I can.
So Gerda was warmed through, and given to eat and to drink. And the Lapland woman wrote a few words on a dried codfish, and told Gerda to take good care of it, and tied her fast on the reindeer's back again, and off he sprang.
All that night the sky above them went snap, snap, and the most beautiful blue northern lights burned overhead the whole way. It was as if the night itself had lit lamps for them, all down the road, the last lamps of the world, hung where there are no more houses.
And then they came to Finmark, and knocked at the Finland woman's chimney, for a door she had none at all.
Inside it was hot, so hot that the Finland woman herself went about half dressed and barefoot. She was small, and rather grubby, and her eyes were the wisest eyes that Gerda had ever been looked at by. She loosened little Gerda's clothes at once, and took off the mittens and the fur boots, for otherwise the heat would have been too much for her, and she laid a piece of ice on the reindeer's head, which is how one is kind to a reindeer in a hot room.
And then she read what was written on the codfish. She read it three times over, until she knew it by heart. And then she put the codfish into the soup pot, for it was still perfectly good to eat, and the Finland woman never wasted anything. That was the first thing a person learned about her, and the wisest people, says the storyteller, are very often like that. Nothing is thrown away. Not fish, and not words, and not children who arrive by reindeer.
Then the reindeer told his own story first, again, and after it little Gerda's. And the Finland woman blinked her wise eyes, and said nothing at all.
You are so clever, said the reindeer. I know it well. You can bind all the winds of the world together with a single thread of sewing cotton. If the sailor loosens one knot of it he gets a fair wind, if he loosens the second it blows hard, and if he loosens the third and the fourth, then there comes such a storm that the forests fall flat. Will you not give this little girl a drink, so that she may have the strength of twelve men, and overcome the Snow Queen?
The strength of twelve men, said the Finland woman. Yes. That would certainly be a great help.
And she went to a shelf, and took down a great rolled hide, and unrolled it. Strange letters were written all over it, and the Finland woman read, and read, till the sweat stood out on her forehead.
But the reindeer begged again, so hard, for the little girl, and little Gerda looked up at the Finland woman with such pleading eyes, all full of tears, that the woman began blinking her own wise eyes again, and drew the reindeer away with her into a corner, where she whispered to him, while she laid fresh ice on his head.
Little Kay is with the Snow Queen, sure enough. And he finds everything there entirely to his liking and his taste, and believes it is the best place in all the world. But that is because he has got a splinter of glass in his heart, and a little grain of glass in his eye. Those must come out of him first. If they do not, he will never be a real human being again, and the Snow Queen will keep her power over him forever.
But can you not give little Gerda something to take, whispered the reindeer, something that will give her power over the whole of it?
I can give her no greater power than she has already, said the Finland woman. Do you not see how great that power is? Do you not see how men and beasts alike must serve her? How she has come on so far in the world, on her two bare feet? She must never learn of her power from us. It sits in her heart. It sits in this, that she is a dear, innocent child. If she cannot come to the Snow Queen by herself, and get the glass out of little Kay by herself, then there is no help that we can give.
Two miles from here the Snow Queen's garden begins. Carry the little girl that far. Set her down by the great bush that stands full of red berries in the snow. And do not stand there gossiping, but hurry back here.
And with that the Finland woman lifted little Gerda up onto the reindeer's back, and he ran off as fast as ever he could.
Oh, I have not got my boots. I have not got my mittens, cried little Gerda, for the burning cold told her so at once. But the reindeer dared not stop. He ran until he came to the great bush with the red berries. And there he set little Gerda down, and he kissed her on the mouth, and great bright tears ran down the animal's cheeks, and then he turned, and ran back again, as fast as ever he could, because he had been told to, and because he could not have borne to watch her walk away.
And there stood little Gerda. No shoes. No mittens. Alone in the middle of Finmark, in the middle of the ice, in the terrible cold, with the northern lights standing over her like the walls of a green cathedral.
She ran forward as well as she could. And then there came toward her a whole regiment of snowflakes.
They did not fall from the sky, for the sky was perfectly clear, all ablaze with the lights of the north. No, these snowflakes ran straight along the ground, and the nearer they came, the bigger they grew. Gerda remembered well how big and how artful the snowflakes had looked that day long ago, under the magnifying glass. But these were big in a different way. These were big, and alive. They were the Snow Queen's outposts, the sentries of her gate, and they had the strangest shapes that ever snow was put to. Some looked like great white hedgehogs, rolled and bristling. Some were like whole knots of white snakes, lifting their heads all together. Some were like small fat bears with every hair on end. All of them gleaming, dazzling white. All of them living snow.
Then little Gerda said her prayer, the Lord's Prayer, the same small prayer that had slipped away from Kay in the flying sledge, and had never once, in all this long road, slipped away from her.
The cold was so great that she could see her own breath, going out of her mouth like white smoke. And the breath grew thicker, and thicker, and it began to take shape. It became little bright angels, that grew larger and larger the moment their feet touched the ground, and every one of them had a helmet on its head, and a spear and a shield in its hands. More of them, and more of them. By the time the prayer was ended, a whole legion stood about her.
They touched their spears to the terrible snowflakes, and the snowflakes came apart, into ordinary snow, harmless and soft and done, a hundred small drifts lying quiet on the ground where a regiment had stood. And little Gerda walked on through them, safe, and undismayed. The angels touched her hands, and touched her feet, and where they touched she felt the cold less, and less.
And so she went, quickly now, toward the palace of the Snow Queen.
But first, says the storyteller, first we must see how it stands with Kay. He was not thinking of little Gerda. That must be said, and it is the last hard thing this tale will say. He was not thinking of her at all. And least of any thought in his head was the thought that at that very hour she stood outside the walls.
Chapter Nine.

The Word Made of Ice.
The walls of the palace were of driven snow, and its windows and its doors were of the cutting winds.
There were more than a hundred halls in it, all of them just as the drifting snow had blown them, and the greatest of them stretched for miles. All were lit by the strong northern lights. And all of them were vast, and empty, and glassily glittering, and cold to the very heart of the ice.
No merriment ever came into those halls. Never so much as a little dance for the bears, with the storm to blow the music while the polar bears walked on their hind legs and showed their fine manners. Never a little game party by the fire, with slapping of paws. Never so much as a small coffee gathering for the white fox ladies, with gossip worth carrying home. Empty, enormous, and cold were the halls of the Snow Queen, every one.
The northern lights flared and faded up there so exactly, so regularly, that you could reckon to the moment when they would stand highest and when lowest. A person could have set a clock by that ceiling, if there had been a person, or a clock, or anyone in all that whiteness who cared what time it was.
And in the middle of the endless empty hall of snow there lay a frozen lake.
It was cracked into a thousand pieces, and every piece was so exactly the shape of every other piece that the whole of it looked like a work of the highest art. And in the very middle of the lake sat the Snow Queen, when she was at home. And then she would say that she sat in the Mirror of Reason, and that this mirror was the best and finest thing in all the world.
Little Kay was blue with the cold. Indeed he was very nearly black with it. But he did not notice, for she had kissed the shiver out of him long ago, and his heart, as you know, was as good as a lump of ice.
He went to and fro across the lake, dragging sharp flat pieces of ice, which he laid together in every possible pattern, this way, and that way, trying to make something out of them. It was like the game we play at home with little flat pieces of wood, arranging them into figures. Kay made figures too, and his were of the most artful kind imaginable. In his own eyes those figures were remarkable, and important beyond anything on the earth, and this was the little grain of glass telling him so. He laid out whole written words made of ice. But there was one word he could never manage to lay, try as he would, and that word was, Eternity.
For the Snow Queen had said to him, when you can lay out that word for me, that one, then you shall be your own master. And I shall make you a present of the whole world, and a pair of new skates.
But he could not do it.
Now I am flying away to the warm lands, said the Snow Queen, on the day this tale has been traveling toward all night. I shall go and look into the black cauldrons. She meant the burning mountains, the ones men call Etna and Vesuvius. I shall whiten them a little. It is expected of me. And it does them good, after all those lemons and grapes.
And away flew the Snow Queen. And Kay sat all alone in the empty hall of ice, miles wide, and looked at his pieces of ice, and thought, and thought, until it fairly creaked in him. Stiff and still he sat there. You would have said he was frozen through.
It was then that little Gerda came into the palace, through the great gate, which was a biting wind. But she said her evening prayer once more, and at the sound of it the winds lay down, all together, as though they had suddenly wanted to sleep. And she stepped forward, small and warm, into the great cold empty hall.
And then she saw him.
She knew him at once. She flew at him, and threw her arms around his neck, and held him fast, so fast, and cried out, Kay. Dear little Kay. So I have found you at last.
But he sat quite still. Stiff, and cold, and looking at his ice.
Then little Gerda wept hot tears, and they fell upon his chest, and they sank in to his heart, and there they thawed the lump of ice, and burned away the little splinter of mirror inside it, till it was gone, entirely gone, one of the two splinters this tale has been watching all night, gone the only way such glass can go, in warmth.
He looked at her. And she sang, through her tears, the old song, the one from the roof gutter, the one they had learned under the arch of roses.
Down in the valley the roses grow, and there the Christ child you shall know.
Then Kay burst into tears. He wept, and he wept, and he wept so hard that the little grain of glass swam right out of his eye with the weeping, and that was the last the troll mirror ever had to do with these two children, its glass washed out and away by nothing more than crying at a song.
And then he knew her.
Gerda, he cried out. Dear little Gerda. Where have you been, all this long time? And where, where have I been? And he looked around himself, at the miles of it. How cold it is here, he said. How empty it all is, and how vast.
And he held on to Gerda, and she laughed, and wept for joy, and neither one of them could have told you where the laughing ended and the weeping began, and there was no need.
And it was all so blessed, so glad, that even the pieces of ice felt it, and began to dance. The flat sharp pieces danced about the two children on the frozen lake, for joy, plainly for joy. And when the pieces grew tired, and lay themselves down again, they lay down, of themselves, in the exact letters of the one word the Snow Queen had asked of him. The word he could never build by thinking. It had built itself the moment he was loved. Eternity, said the lake, in letters of shining ice, to nobody, perfectly.
So Kay was his own master now, by her own royal word. And the whole world was owed him, and a pair of new skates besides, and the Snow Queen might come home whenever she pleased. She would find her halls just as clean, and the word standing written on her Mirror of Reason, and a bargain, says the old book, is a bargain, even at the top of the world.
And Gerda kissed his cheeks, and they grew rosy. She kissed his eyes, and they shone like her own. She kissed his hands and his feet, and he was hale, and warm, and himself, down to the ground.
Then they took each other by the hand, the way they had held hands under the roses, and they walked together out of that great palace of snow. And they talked, as they went, about the grandmother, and about the roses up in the roof gutter, small talk, home talk, the very best kind. And wherever they walked, the winds lay still behind them, and the sun came through.
And when they reached the great bush with the red berries, standing like a lamp of its own in all that white, the reindeer was already there, waiting.
Chapter Ten.

The Road Home Runs Through Spring.
He had not come alone, the reindeer. He had brought with him a young reindeer mother, whose udder was full, and she gave the two children her warm milk to drink, there in the snow, and nuzzled them on the mouth as they drank. Warm milk at the edge of the world, says the storyteller. There have been grander feasts. There have not been many better ones.
Then the two reindeer carried Kay and Gerda away from that place, first to the Finland woman's hot little room, where the children warmed themselves through and through, and were given exact directions for the journey home. Then on to the Lapland woman, who had sewn them both new clothes while the north was busy, and had made her sledge ready besides, for that is what such women do. They mend what will be needed before anyone knows it will be needed.
And both reindeer ran alongside the sledge, and followed with them all the way to the border of that country, to the very line where the first green leaves of the year come peeping out of the ground. And there they parted, from the reindeer, and from the Lapland woman.
Farewell, said everyone to everyone, and meant it.
And the first little birds of the year began to twitter. The forest stood full of green young buds, everything just beginning, everything just barely, newly, certainly alive. And out of that forest, riding toward them on a splendid horse, which Gerda knew at once, for it had once been harnessed to a coach of pure gold, came a young girl with a shining red cap on her head and her old knife in her belt, riding the way people ride who have never once in their lives asked permission for anything.
It was the little robber girl.
She had grown weary of sitting at home in the robber castle, and had set out, riding north first, with a mind to try some other part of the world afterward, whichever direction looked least sensible from wherever she happened to be standing. She knew Gerda in an instant, and Gerda knew her, and there was great rejoicing on that road.
You are a fine fellow, I must say, she said to little Kay, looking him up and down. Gadding off to the end of the earth. I should very much like to know whether you deserve to have somebody run to the end of the world for your sake.
But Gerda patted her cheek, and asked after the prince and the princess.
Gone traveling, in foreign countries, said the robber girl. The pair of them. With trunks.
And the crow, asked Gerda.
Ah. The old crow of the woods is dead, said the robber girl, more gently. His tame sweetheart is a widow now, and wears a little end of black wool wound about her leg, and mourns him most properly, and complains more than ever, which with her is the very same thing as mourning. But that is how it goes. Now you tell me how it went with you, and how you got hold of him after all.
And Gerda and Kay both told her, the whole story, all of it, taking turns and interrupting each other, from the codfish to the dancing ice.
And the little robber girl listened to it all with her chin on her fist, and nodded at the end, and said, in her own way, which was as near as she ever came to a blessing, snip, snap, snurre, basselurre. It all came out even.
And she took them both by the hands, and promised that if she ever rode through their town, she would come up the stairs and pay them a visit. And then she rode away, out into the wide world, sitting her splendid horse like a small red flag going somewhere important, and the forest took her, and the tale, having loved her dearly, lets her go there, at a gallop, forever.
But Kay and Gerda walked on, hand in hand.
And as they walked, it became spring around them in earnest, the deep true spring, warm, green, with flowers standing up in the ditches and the smell of turned earth on the wind. The winter behind them seemed already like something read in a book, long ago, by lamplight.
They walked, and the roads became more traveled. Carts passed them, and church folk in their good clothes, and children driving geese. The fields were being worked. Somewhere a dog barked twice at nothing, importantly, and was satisfied. And then, on the wind, they heard bells.
Church bells. Their own. For there, rising over the last green hill, they saw the high towers of the great town, and it was their town, the very one, with its many houses and its many people and, in one particular street, two particular attic windows facing one another across a rain gutter.
They went in at the gate. The streets ran just as they had always run. The doors stood where doors had always stood. It was all so exactly itself, so unchanged, that changing so much on the way to it felt suddenly very strange in their two chests.
And they came to the grandmother's door, and it was open, and the stairs went up the way stairs do in the houses of our childhood, each one a note in a song that the feet have never once forgotten.
Up they went, the two of them, hand in hand still.
The stairwell smelled of wood, and of soap, and faintly, from far up under the roof, of roses.
Chapter Eleven.

The Roses in Bloom.
And they went into the room.
Everything stood exactly where it had stood before. Nothing had been moved. The clock on the wall said tick, tock, and its hands went round the way they had always gone round.
But as they passed through the doorway, in that one step, they perceived that they had become grown people.
It had happened somewhere on the road, quietly, the way the year turns, without one single day standing up and taking the credit for it. They were tall now. Their hands, still joined, were grown hands. The little room fit them the way a beloved coat fits after many years, which is to say differently, and perfectly, both at once.
The roses in the roof gutter were in bloom, blooming right in at the open window. The two rose trees had grown old and thick at the stem, and they still leaned toward each other across the gutter, and their arch still held, tended all these years, you may be sure, by the grandmother, who had kept every green thing living, and every lamp filled, the whole time, for she had never once believed that nobody was coming home to them.
And there beneath the window stood the little children's stools.
Kay and Gerda sat down, each on their own. Grown as they were, they sat down on the little stools under the roses, and they held each other by the hands. And the cold, empty splendor of the Snow Queen's palace slipped out of their memory like a heavy dream at morning, the kind you cannot hold even when you try, the kind that leaves nothing behind but gladness that you woke.
The grandmother sat in God's clear sunshine, in her chair, and she read aloud from the great book, and what she read was this. Except ye become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of God.
And Kay and Gerda looked into each other's eyes.
And all at once they understood the old song, the whole of it, the one they had sung as children without understanding and had sung ever since without forgetting.
Down in the valley the roses grow, and there the Christ child you shall know.
There they sat, the two of them. Grown up, and yet children. Children at heart. And it was summer. Warm, blessed, generous summer.
And that, says the storyteller, is the end of the seventh story, and of the whole tale of the Snow Queen. But you and I will stay in that room a little while longer, if you please. The old book allows it. There is no law that says a listener must leave the moment the tale is done, and on a summer evening like this one, nobody ever wants to.
So stay. The evening is coming on, slow and gold.
The sun goes down the way it does in the north in high summer, reluctantly, at an angle, taking half the night about it, and the light turns the color of honey, and then the color of quince, and lies along the rooftops of the town like something poured.
Below in the street, the day is being folded up and put away. Shutters are drawn in, unhurried. A shopkeeper stands in his doorway a moment, looking at the sky, deciding it was a good day, before he goes in. Children are called home by name, one street over, each name sung twice, and the second singing softer, because the child has already come.
The swifts are up in the last of the light, sewing their fast black stitches over the chimneys, and then, at some signal nobody has ever caught, they are done, and the sky belongs to the first bats, who fly like the swifts' shy cousins, and after them, to the stars.
The grandmother lights the lamp.
She has done it ten thousand evenings, and it takes her no thought at all. The small flame stands up, and the room turns gold, and the roses at the window turn from red to something deeper and quieter than red, the color roses keep for after dark, which only lamplit rooms and sleeping gardens ever see.
Kay sits by the window. If you asked him now what he remembers of the palace of snow, he would think for a long moment, and say, mostly the cold. And that there was a word I could not spell, however hard I thought. And that it spelled itself, the moment I was loved. And then he would laugh, softly, because grown or not, his laugh had come home with him, whole.
And Gerda. Gerda says nothing at all. She sits with her hand in his, and watches the lamp flame lean, and settle, and she is not thinking of robbers, or of talking flowers, or of a legion of small bright angels standing about her in the snow, though all of that is hers now, and always will be. She is thinking what the truly brave always think when the road is over, which is nothing, nothing at all, only warm, only here, only home.
The clock says tick, tock. The hands go round.
The grandmother reads a while longer, her lips moving with the good old words. And the summer night comes up the stairs of the town like a tide made of quiet, filling the streets, filling the rooms, rising past the windows of every house until the whole town floats in it, dark and safe, anchored by lamplight at a hundred small golden points.
And the roses breathe at the window, in, and out.
And the evening becomes the night, the good kind, the kind with nothing in it but rest.
Chapter Twelve.

Goodnight. And the Lamp at the Edge of Morning.
The room at the edge of the world is very quiet now.
The storyteller sits with the old book open before her at the last page of the tale, but she is not reading anymore. Her hand rests on the page, flat and light, the way a hand rests on the shoulder of a sleeping friend.
On the shelf at the edge of the lamplight, where the tales keep their belongings, something small has been settled tonight.
There is a velvet bag there, you may remember it, a little bag where this room keeps whatever splinters of a certain mirror the tales manage to bring home, and for the longest time the two it wanted most were still out in the world, one splinter loose in the world in a boy's eye, and one in a boy's heart. The bag does not need counting anymore. Those two splinters are gone for good, and they came to no harm and did no more harm, one wept away, one melted, both of them undone by the only two things that ever could, which are tears, and warmth. The bag lies quiet. The world is lighter by exactly two grains of unkindness, and nights like this one are how it happens.
And beside the bag, a pressed rose from a roof gutter in the far north lies where it has always lain, between its two little panes of window ice. It can rest now. The boy and the girl found each other. It took more than a winter. It took seven stories. But the finding held, and it holds still, and it will go on holding, which is what that word made of ice was trying to say all along, out on the frozen lake, to nobody, perfectly.
Far to the north, all the rooms of this tale are going to sleep.
The reindeer sleeps on the snow fields of Lapland, folded neat as a knife in its sheath, home, free, the copper ring long gone green and buried in a drift somewhere, missed by no one.
The robber castle sleeps, its fire banked, its hundred pigeons murmuring down to nothing on their perches, its great solemn dogs dreaming in a heap by the door, honorably off duty. Somewhere out in the wide world its daughter sleeps too, in her red cap, under a hedge she has entirely approved of, her horse standing over her, her knife under her ear, both of them perfectly safe, because the night has better sense than to bother her.
The little hot room in Finmark sleeps, and the wise woman in it, and the soup pot with one codfish message in it, savored long ago, wasted never.
The garden of the old woman who wanted a little girl sleeps under its own private summer, every flower folded, dreaming its one story, and there are roses in that garden now, whole beds of them, allowed home again, for even lonely magic softens in the end.
And the palace at the top of the world stands empty, and shining, and harmless, mile upon mile of moonlit snow with nobody in it at all. On the frozen lake the letters of ice still lie where joy left them, spelling their one long word to the northern lights. It is the quietest room on the earth. Nothing sad lives there. It is only cold. And cold, in its right place, with everyone safely home out of it, is just another kind of stillness, the stillness snow is made of, the stillness this whole night is wrapped in, yours included.
The Snow Queen herself is far away, whitening the shoulders of the burning mountains, which is her proper work, and not a wicked one, for someone must bring the snow, and someone must end the summers so that the summers can be missed, and she will do no harm this night. No white sledge will pass under any window of yours. Over your roof there is only the ordinary dark, doing its slow kind work, and the storyteller keeping her lamp against it.
The flame is the size of an almond now. It leans, and rights itself, and goes on.
The roses at that far window have all closed. The clock says tick, tock, to an empty room, and is content. The grandmother's book lies shut on the table with her spectacles asleep on top of it. And the two who sat on the children's stools have long since said their goodnights, in the oldest and shortest of all the old songs, and gone to their rest, grown, and children, and safe, all three at once.
You can let the tale set you down now, the way the boat set Gerda down, gently, on a green bank, in a kind country.
You do not have to hold anything. The story is holding it. The story was always holding it.
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, an old man walks into a bamboo grove at dusk and finds one green stalk glowing from within, like the moon shining through paper, and inside it, small enough to sleep in the palm of his hand, a princess whose true home is the moon itself.
And there is no hurry at all as she begins.
But notice, before her voice carries you off, what your eyes may already have caught. The page she has turned to is the last page in the old book. This is the twelfth tale, the final night of the Storybook Season, and the book has been saving it all this while, the way the month saves the full moon for its middle, the way a grandmother saves the best story for the night before the journey home.
There is nothing in that to be sad about. In this room, an ending is only another kind of tucking in.
So settle in. Let the chair hold you. Let the blanket be heavy in the good way, the way moonlight is heavy on a garden that has nothing left to do until morning.
Close your eyes, if they want to close. You do not have to watch. You do not have to follow. 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.
And one kindness more, on this night of all nights. This is a tale about going home. There is a parting in it, told the old way, the true way, and it is gentler than you may have heard, gentler than almost any parting in any storybook. No one in this tale is lost. Someone is returned. The moon in this tale is not a cold stone. It is a lantern with a family inside it, and it has been waiting a thousand years for you to hear this told properly, in a warm room, with your eyes closed, going soft toward sleep.
The flame leans, and settles.
We begin.
Chapter One.

The Grove of Green Light.
Long ago, and far from here, on the islands at the eastern edge of the world, there was a bamboo grove that the moon loved.
All groves are good places, but a bamboo grove is a particular kind of good place. It is not like a forest of oaks, which stands still and thinks. Bamboo moves. All day the tall green stalks lean and return, lean and return, in winds too small for anyone else to feel, and the sound they make is the most patient sound in the world, a hush and a knock and a creak, like a house settling, like rain deciding not to fall after all, like a thousand green flutes that have all agreed to hold the same soft note, which is the note between evening and night.
By day the grove was full of green light. Sunlight came down through the high leaves the way light comes down through deep water, softened, slowed, made kind. By night it was full of silver. The moon loved that grove, as we have said, and the grove loved the moon back, and lifted its thin leaves to be counted, and the moon counted them, every one, every night, and never once lost her place.
At the edge of that grove, in a house with a roof of thatch and walls of wood gone gray and soft as dove feathers, there lived an old man and an old woman.
The old man's name was Sanuki no Miyatsuko, and he was a bamboo cutter. That was his whole trade and his whole fortune. Every morning, in every weather, he took his knife and his baskets and went in among the tall green stalks, and cut what the grove could spare, and carried it home, and made things of it. He made baskets. He made cages for crickets, whose songs the fine folk of the capital liked to keep beside their pillows in autumn. He made blinds to hang in doorways, and dippers for wells, and fences, and flutes. There is almost nothing a patient man cannot make from bamboo, and he had been patient for seventy years.
He and his wife had food for every day and a fire for every night, and they were as happy as two people can be who carry one quiet sorrow between them. They had no child. This is told plainly, the way the old book tells it, and then it is let be, because the tale does not dwell there, and neither will we. It is enough to know that the house was tidy, and the garden was tended, and that sometimes, in the evenings, the house was a little too quiet, and the two of them had grown old listening to that particular quiet, and had learned to be gentle with it, and with each other.
Now, one evening in the early spring of the year, the old man was in the grove later than usual.
The light was going. Not gone, but going, the way it goes in a bamboo grove, from green to gray to a blue like the inside of a mussel shell. He had his bundle on his back and his knife at his belt, and he was picking his way home along the path he had walked ten thousand times, when he saw, off among the stalks, a light.
He stopped.
His first thought was fireflies, but it was too early in the year for fireflies, and the light did not wander. His second thought was fox fire, because he was a sensible man who knew that groves at dusk are famous for mischief, and he stood still a long moment, ready to be respectful to whatever it turned out to be. Country people in that age were wise in this. When you meet a strange light in the woods, you do not run at it, and you do not run away. You take off your hat, if you have one, and you say good evening, and you see what happens.
The light did not move. It sat where it was, low to the ground, steady as a lamp in a window.
So the old man went toward it, slowly, between the dark stalks, saying good evening as he came, and what he found was this.
One single stalk of bamboo, in among all the thousands, was shining from inside.
Not burning. Shining. The green of it had gone bright and soft all at once, lit from within the way a paper lantern is lit, so that one whole joint of the stalk glowed the way the moon glows when thin clouds cross her, and the light that came out of it lay on the leaves all around like spilled milk.
The old man stood before it a long time.
He was not afraid. He said so afterward, always, and his wife always believed him, and you may as well believe him too. There was nothing in that light that knew how to be frightening. It was the kind of light one candle makes when it is the only candle in a temple. It was the kind of light that is doing something very quietly for somebody, and does not mind being seen at it.
The old man took his knife, and he cut the shining stalk, with the same two clean strokes he had used all his life.
And inside, in the hollow of the joint, sitting in the light as if the light were a small room, was a girl.
She was perhaps the length of his thumb. No taller. She was dressed, tiny as she was, in robes finer than anything the old man had ever glimpsed through the gates of great houses, layer upon layer of silk in the colors of dawn, each layer smaller than a moth's wing. Her hair was black and long and fell around her like brushed ink. And she herself was the light. It came from her steadily, gently, the way warmth comes from a sleeping child, and she looked up at the enormous old face peering down at her, and she was not afraid either.
The old man let out his breath, very slowly.
Well, he said at last, and his voice was as soft as he could make it, which after seventy years of talking to bamboo was very soft indeed. Well. You were found in my grove, in my bamboo, which I have tended all my life. So I think you must be meant to be my child.
And that was all the philosophy anyone needed, in that age, at that hour, in that grove. Some things simply arrive, and the only wise answer is to make room.
He put out his hand, brown and creased and hard as a tree root, and the shining girl stepped onto his palm and sat down in it, composedly, arranging her small silks around her, as if a palm were a perfectly usual place to sit, as if she had been waiting in that green stalk, all this while, for exactly this hand.
And the old man carried her home through the darkening grove, walking with the great slow care of a man carrying a full cup, and the bamboo leaned and returned above him all the way, hush, and knock, and creak, and the first stars came out to watch, and the light of her spilled out between his fingers and went ahead of them both along the path, so that for the first time in all his years the old man walked home at night with no need of the moon.
At the door of the little house, his wife stood waiting with a lamp.
She had been about to worry. She never got the chance to finish. The old man opened his two hands in front of her, the way you open a book, and in the hollow of them sat the light of the whole world.
The old woman looked for a long moment.
Then she said, softly, the same thing all grandmothers say when a baby is put into their arms, no matter the baby, no matter the country, no matter the age of the world. She said, oh. And then she said, come in, come in out of the cold, the both of you.
And so the Moon Princess came to live in the house of the bamboo cutter. Though it would be a long while yet before anyone under that roof said the word moon.
Chapter Two.

The Smallest Princess in the World.
They made her bed, that first night, in a round woven basket, lined with the softest cloth in the house, and set it where the lamplight could keep it company. In the morning the old woman woke first, and lay a while being quite certain she had dreamed the whole of it, and then she saw, across the room, the basket glowing gently in the gray before dawn, like a coal under ash, and she woke her husband with her elbow, and the two of them lay in their old bed watching their basket shine, holding hands, which they had not thought to do in some years.
Raising her was like raising no child before or since. She did not cry. She was never ill. She ate almost nothing, a single grain of rice held in both her arms like a festival cake, a drop of broth offered on the tip of a chopstick, and yet she was never hungry, and never pale, for how could she be pale, being made of light. When she slept, the basket glowed. When she woke, the whole room knew it at once, the way a garden knows the moment the sun clears the hill.
And she grew.
That was the wonder inside the wonder. She grew the way the moon grows, not slowly, the way children do, one shoe size a season, but visibly, week upon week, the way the moon fills from a paring to a bowl to a lantern. In three months, no more, the girl who had sat in the old man's palm stood before him as tall as any young woman in the land, and taller in her bearing, and the old couple, who had missed a whole childhood and somehow not missed it at all, could only look at her and marvel, the way you marvel at the first warm day of the year, without one question in you that wants answering.
She was, the old book says plainly, the most beautiful person in the world. But the old book is careful, and we will be careful too, about what that means. It was not only the face. It was the light. It never left her. In the day you saw it the way you see a lamp lit at noon, only just, a warmth at the edges of her. But at dusk the corners of the house filled quietly with a pale gold shining wherever she sat, so that the old woman gave up trimming lamps in whatever room her daughter was in, and the dark of that house was never anything but gentle again.
And there was this, which the old book swears to, and which the old man swore to all his days. When he was tired, and came home aching in every joint a bamboo cutter can ache in, one look at her and the aches set themselves down like baskets at the door. When he was cross, he could not stay cross in the room with her. Sorrow and anger simply would not keep in that house, the way milk will not sour in a cold spring. Whatever she was made of, it was the opposite of heaviness.
Now, from the day he found her, the old man's luck turned like a tide.
He went on cutting bamboo, because a man does not stop being himself just because a marvel has moved in. But now, again and again, when his knife opened a stalk, he found the joints filled with gold. Not every stalk, and never with any warning. Just often enough that the rice jars filled, and then the storehouse, and then the strongbox he had to buy, and then the second one. He would come home and set the gold on the mat and look at it in a puzzled, mild way, like a man whose hens have started laying eggs of silver, and his wife would say, well, and he would say, well, and that was the whole of their conversation about wealth, because neither of them had ever wanted anything but enough, and now there was more than enough, and the only thing they could think to do with more than enough was to build a fitting house around their daughter.
So they built it. A real house, in the manner of the great families of that age, with deep eaves and floors of smooth wood that held the shine of the garden, with a wide veranda for moon viewing, and lattice shutters that swung up on autumn days to let the whole gold afternoon in. There were blinds of split bamboo so fine they poured like cloth, and the old man wove some of them himself, because there are things a craftsman will not leave to other craftsmen. There were curtained rooms deep inside for a young lady of rank, as the custom was in those days, where she would sit behind silk in the proper way when strangers came. There was a garden with a pond, and a pine leaning over the pond, and a stone lantern by the water whose little flame, the servants said, always looked a bit embarrassed, like a candle asked to sing beside a bell.
And when the house was built, the old man did the thing that made her truly theirs, in the eyes of that country and that age. He sent for a namer.
The namer was called Imbe no Akita, of Mimurodo, a man learned in names, for in that age a name was not a label but a garment, cut to fit, meant to be worn a whole life. Akita came, and was shown into the fine new house, and the blinds were raised a hand's breadth, and he looked once at the light sitting quietly behind the silk, and it is said he was silent for the better part of an hour, which for a professional talker is a kind of bow.
Then he gave her the name. Nayotake no Kaguya hime. The Shining Princess of the Supple Bamboo. Kaguya, they called her, ever after. The light and the bending green, both held in one name, the grove and the glow together, so that she would carry the place she was found wherever she went, the way we all do, whether our names admit it or not.
And then, because a naming in that age was a festival, the old man threw open his new gates and held a feast of three days, and invited everyone, and meant it. Fine folk came, and farmers came, and the priest came, and the neighbors who remembered the old man when his whole fortune was a knife and a knack. There was music, flutes and drums and the great arched harp, and there was rice wine, and there were lanterns strung along the eaves, though people said, laughing, that the house needed lanterns the way the sea needs salt. For three days the smell of good cooking hung over the grove, and the bamboo leaned and returned above the road, hush, and knock, and creak, watching everything, saying nothing.
On the third night, when the last guests had wandered home singing, the old man stood in his garden with his cup, and looked up at the moon over the pine, and, being full of rice wine and gladness, thanked it. For the fine night, he meant. For the feast gone well. For everything.
He did not know what he was thanking. The moon, who did, said nothing, and only laid her light down over the house and the pond and the sleeping grove, evenly, gently, the way a mother pulls one blanket over two children.
But light is the one guest that cannot be kept indoors. Through the finest blinds it goes, between the boards of the best shutters, out under the deep eaves and over the wall. On dark nights the new house at the edge of the grove shone, softly, like the moon behind a cloud, and travelers on the road below would stop, and look up at it, and ask at the next village whose house that was. And the village would tell them. The bamboo cutter's house, they would say. Where the shining princess lives.
And the travelers carried it on, as travelers do. Down the road, over the pass, into the wine houses and the way stations, all the long miles to the capital itself. There is a princess at the edge of the eastern grove, they said, made of light, or nearly, the most beautiful person in the world, they say, and no one has properly seen her, they say, which of course only made the story better, and the story went everywhere, gathering shine as it rolled, the way stories do.
And that, said the storyteller, turning the page with one finger, is where the trouble began. Because a tale like that always, always, finds its way at last to the ears of young men with time on their hands.
Chapter Three.

The Five Suitors.
Men came from everywhere.
They came on horseback and they came in carriages drawn by slow oxen, and the grandest of them came with runners going ahead to announce them, which in the deep country by a bamboo grove is a little like sending a herald to announce you to a duck pond. They gathered outside the old man's fence, in their best silks, in their court hats, and they walked up and down, and cleared their throats musically, and recited poems at the house in general, on the theory that somewhere behind those blinds somebody was swooning. The old book says that some of them, the truly lovestruck, took to walking around and around the fence in the dark, and peering hopefully at the gaps in the hedge, and the servants of the house took to calling this pastime night crawling, and took no notice of it otherwise, and the people of that land took the word for this hopeful creeping and made it their everyday word for courtship, so that every suitor since has been named for the fools at that fence, and no one else took any notice either, least of all Kaguya, who could not be seen from the fence, nor from anywhere, being a well brought up young lady of that age, living deep in the house behind her curtains, exactly as the custom was.
You could not so much as hear her sleeve move, says the old book, no matter how long you loitered. And still they loitered.
But loitering is hungry work, and unrewarded devotion is a crop that mostly fails. The summer heats came, and thinned the crowd. The autumn rains came, and thinned it further. Then the snows, which are the great test of romance conducted outdoors, and by the time the plum trees bloomed again the road along the fence was quiet, and the hedge had grown back over the peeping holes, and nearly every fine young man in the land had discovered urgent business elsewhere, and attended to it.
Nearly every one. Five remained.
Five of them, and the old book gives their names and their offices with a straight face, and we will do the same, because they were, after all, five of the greatest gentlemen of the land, even if they were about to spend the next three years proving that greatness comes in more varieties than one.
There was Prince Ishitsukuri, a man of high birth and deep comfort, who loved fine things and warm rooms, and whose talent, above all talents, was for arranging that the difficult parts of life be handled somewhere out of his sight.
There was Prince Kuramochi, clever as a kingfisher, rich as a harvest, a man with a workshop where his heart should have been, who never in his life met a locked door without first checking whether it could be painted to look open.
There was the Minister of the Right, Abe no Miushi, whose storehouses were famous and whose heart was trusting, a man who sincerely believed, all his days, that anything under heaven could be bought if one only wrote a large enough number, and who is owed some tenderness from us, because the world needs its trusting men, and is always a little hard on them.
There was the Grand Counselor, Otomo no Miyuki, a man of loud voice and grand gestures, at his very best on a veranda, describing storms he had never been out in.
And there was the Middle Counselor, Isonokami no Marotari, the youngest of the five in spirit if not in years, earnest as a schoolboy, quick to hope, the kind of man who trips over the doorsill on his way to do you a kindness.
These five did not give up. Rain or frost, festival or famine, they came and stood their hopeful watch by the fence, until at last the old man, who had a soft heart and no practice at all in the ways of great families, felt the situation had outgrown him, and went in through the curtains to speak with his daughter.
He sat down across the silk from her glow. He addressed her, as he always did, half as a father and half as a worshipper, which the old book notes and which she gently teased him for.
My treasure, he said. I am past seventy. I was old when the grove gave you to me, and I am older now, and no man knows his hour. In this world, a man takes a wife and a woman takes a husband, and their gate grows wide, and their house goes on. It is the way of things. These five lords have waited at our fence through three winters. They are men of the highest rank in the land. Choose one of them, and let your old father see you settled, and I will have nothing left to wish for.
And Kaguya was quiet a while, and when she answered, her voice was so mild that it took the old man a moment to notice she had not agreed to anything.
Why should I marry, she said, when I am so happy here with you.
The old man made the sound fathers make, which is not an argument but wishes it were.
Besides, she said, and here the light of her wavered, just once, like a lamp when a door far away in the house is opened, I am not certain I am the kind of thing that marries. I am not certain what I am. And if I wed a man because his rank is high, without knowing whether his heart is deep, I think I would be sorry, and I think he would be sorrier.
But she saw her father's face, and she loved him, and so she folded her hands and offered him the smallest coin that would still spend.
Do this, she said. Tell the five lords I will marry the one whose devotion is true. And since I cannot see into hearts any more than they can see into this house, let each of them bring me one thing, one thing only, that I will name. Whichever of them brings me what I ask for, faithfully and truly, that man I will call the deepest of heart, and that man I will serve as a wife serves.
That seems very fair, said the old man, brightening. That seems more than fair.
It is completely fair, said Kaguya, in the voice of a person being completely fair, which any parent can tell you is a voice with weather behind it.
That evening, at dusk, the five lords were called to the house, and gathered on the veranda in their court silks, each one certain the summons was for him alone, each one discovering the other four with the expression of a man finding strangers in his bath. The old man came out to them, cleared his throat, apologized in six directions at once, and delivered the terms. A murmur of delight. One thing only. How hard could one thing be.
Then, from deep in the house, from behind the curtains, where the lamps had not been lit because they were never needed, Kaguya named the things.
For Prince Ishitsukuri, the stone begging bowl that the Buddha himself once carried, which rests in far India, and shines with its own light.
For Prince Kuramochi, a branch from the jeweled tree that grows on Mount Horai, in the eastern sea, a tree with roots of silver and a trunk of gold, whose fruits are pearls of white jade.
For the Minister of the Right, Abe no Miushi, the robe made from the fur of the fire rat of China, which fire cannot burn, and which comes out of the flames brighter than it went in.
For the Grand Counselor, Otomo no Miyuki, the jewel of five colors that shines in the neck of the dragon of the deep sea.
And for the Middle Counselor, Isonokami no Marotari, the small shell of safe and easy birth, which the swallows keep hidden in their nests.
There was a silence on that veranda, says the old book, of a very high quality.
Somewhere in the garden the pond made a small sound, a fish rising, or possibly the pond laughing. The five lords looked at the curtains, and looked at the old man, and looked, at last, carefully, at nothing at all, each privately performing the same arithmetic, the distance to India, the depth of the sea, the temperature of dragons. And then, because they were courtiers, and courtiers can smile while swallowing a whole winter, they thanked the house for its kindness, and bowed beautifully, and went home in five different directions to five sleepless nights.
The moon rose over the grove that evening, near to full, and looked down at five great houses burning their lamps late, five fine minds pacing five polished floors, scheming, sighing, unrolling maps, and rolling them up again.
And in the house by the grove, in the room that needed no lamp, Kaguya slept the sleep of the completely fair.
Chapter Four.

The Stone Bowl of the Buddha.
Prince Ishitsukuri, who had drawn the Buddha's own begging bowl, began, to his credit, with honest despair.
India. He said the word to himself several times, in the privacy of his fine warm study, with the brazier glowing and the winter rain on the roof. India was, by every account he could gather, very far away. One traveled for months over seas that disliked boats, and then for further months over mountains that disliked everything, and at the end of it, supposing one arrived, there was no signpost saying bowl. A thing like that, if it existed at all, would be the treasure of some temple ringed with ten thousand monks, none of whom, presumably, were fools.
And here the prince had his idea, which arrived, as his ideas always did, wearing the costume of wisdom.
For who in this land, he reasoned, warming his hands, has ever seen the Buddha's bowl. No one. Who knows what it looks like. No one. A bowl is a bowl. The virtue of the errand, surely, is in the devotion, and devotion is a thing of the heart, and the heart, thought the prince, growing more comfortable by the moment, the heart does not actually require the body to go to India.
So he let it be known, with much ceremony, that he was departing for India that very spring. There were farewells. There may have been a banner. And then Prince Ishitsukuri traveled, by unhurried stages, to a quiet mountain temple in Yamato, some three days from home, where he took lodgings, and where he stayed, in considerable comfort, for three years.
We should be fair to him. The old book is, in its dry way. He waited three whole years, which shows a certain workmanlike respect for the distance to India. He inquired after the local cooking. He became, the tellers suspect, genuinely fond of mountain air. And when the three years had turned, he went into one of the lesser halls of that temple, where an image of the holy one sat in the dust of long neglect, and there before it stood a stone bowl, a plain old begging bowl, black as a kettle with the soot of a hundred years of lamp smoke.
Perfect, said the prince, from the bottom of his heart, such as it was.
He had the bowl cleaned of the worst of it, though soot that old goes all the way in, and he wrapped it in brocade, and set it in a carrying case of carved wood, and tied to the case a spray of artificial flowers, silk ones, very fine, because presentation, he had found, covers a multitude of journeys. And he composed a poem to go with it, all seas crossed and bones wearied and tears shed into the westward waves, a really excellent poem, the work of a man with three years of mountain leisure and no shame to spend them on.
Then he presented himself at the house by the grove, travel dust artfully applied, and handed in the bowl.
Now Kaguya knew one thing about the true bowl, the thing everyone knew, the thing the prince had somehow talked himself around. The Buddha's bowl shines. It carries its own soft light, as holy things do, a glow like a firefly's at the very least, like moonrise at best.
She had the blinds raised a hand's breadth. She looked at the offering on its silk cushion.
The bowl sat there, black as a midwinter midnight, and shone precisely as much as a stone shines, which is to say, it lay in the light of the room and kept all of it.
Not by the glimmer of a firefly, said Kaguya, gently, to the curtains, to the room, to history. There is not in this bowl so much as the light of a dewdrop on a blade of grass. And she wrote a poem saying so, kindly but completely, and sent the bowl back out to the veranda.
And here the prince did the strange small thing that fixed him in the memory of that country forever. He took his rejected bowl, and he dropped it outside the gate, in the ditch, the way a man drops a thing he is suddenly embarrassed to be holding. And then, unburdened, he turned back to the house and tried again in verse, hoping, roughly, that the bowl might be overlooked and the devotion still scored. Perhaps, he suggested, its light had failed out of deference to the greater light of the lady. It was, as recoveries go, nimble.
From behind the curtains came no answer at all, which is the completest answer there is.
And the people of that country, who heard the whole story by way of the servants, as people always do, coined a saying from it that outlived everyone concerned. Of a man who has failed and pleads on regardless, glowing with hope, empty of merit, they said, ah, he has dropped his bowl and kept on asking, and in their language the words for dropping the bowl and dropping one's shame ring so close together that the saying winked at itself, and everyone caught the wink. To lose the bowl was to lose the shame. The prince had mislaid both in a single ditch.
He went home, in the end, to his warm rooms and his excellent brazier, and the old book lets him go without malice, and so shall we. He was not a wicked man. He was only a man who wanted the moon without the journey, and the world is not short of them, and at least he wrote his own poems.
One task asked. One task failed. Four lamps still burning late in four great houses.
And in the house by the grove, the old man fretted, and Kaguya sat serenely behind her curtains, exactly as serene as a person who has asked for the unfindable and is watching it not be found.
Chapter Five.

The Jeweled Branch of Horai.
Prince Kuramochi was of another cut entirely. Where Ishitsukuri dreamed of comfort, Kuramochi dreamed of method. He heard his task, the branch of silver roots and golden trunk and fruits of white jade, from the mountain of Horai that stands in the eastern sea and can be found by no one who seeks it, and he did not despair at all. He went home, called for his steward, and began, that very night, to organize.
His plan had the beauty of a spider's web, and about the same warmth.
First, publicly, he announced his departure. He would sail for Horai, he declared, though it cost him his life. To the court he gave out that he was traveling south to take the hot springs, a modest cover story, for a modest man, he implied, did not trumpet a holy quest. Then he went down to the harbor with an entourage sized for an emperor's progress, boarded his ship in front of everyone who mattered, and sailed grandly out of the bay while the assembled world waved.
Three days later, by night, the ship slipped quietly back to a lonely stretch of coast, and the prince came ashore in the dark, hooded, delighted with himself.
He had prepared, in the mountains, in a place with no road to it, a hidden house. Around the house he had built a fence within a fence within a fence, and inside it a forge and a workshop, and into this snuggery he had gathered, in deepest secrecy, six of the finest metalsmiths and jewelwrights in all the land, six masters of the kind whose work you know at one glance and whose faces you never learn. He shut himself in with them. And there, for a thousand days, three years shy a season, while the world believed him on the deep sea, Prince Kuramochi and his six smiths built the branch of Mount Horai.
And here is the uncomfortable wonder at the middle of this chapter, which the old book does not soften, and neither will we. The branch was magnificent.
The roots were silver, brushed and darkened like roots that had gripped real soil. The trunk was gold, not polished gaudy but burnished soft, with the faint long lines of true bark drawn in by a graver's patient hand. And the fruits were moons of white jade, hung so cunningly on golden stems that they trembled when a door was closed across the room, exactly as real fruit trembles, and seemed always about to be ripe. Kaguya had named the tree leaf for leaf, and leaf for leaf the six smiths matched her asking, and when at last they laid down their tools, they looked at the thing they had made, and were silent, and one of them, the oldest, is said to have wiped his eyes, because a man may spend his whole life mastering a craft and only once be asked to do the impossible with it.
The prince, meanwhile, practiced his suffering.
This must be understood about Kuramochi. He was not lazy in his lying. He composed his false voyage the way a poet composes an epic, with drafts. He grew his beard to the correct length of despair. He studied thirst. He rehearsed a stagger. When at last he came up the road to the bamboo cutter's gate, salt stained and hollow eyed, bearing the shrouded branch before him on a lacquered stand, entire villages turned out to pity him, and the old man wept at the sight, and hurried him in, and sent word within doors that the impossible had arrived, and Kaguya, behind her curtains, felt her heart go very still, the way a garden goes still before hail.
For the branch was carried in, and unveiled, and it was right. She had asked for a thing that was not in the world, and here it stood, shining on its stand, correct to the last jade plum. She looked at it a long time.
And the prince, invited to rest, settling himself on the best cushion with the sigh of a man home from the edge of the map, told his voyage.
The old book gives him his full performance, and it is one of the treasures of the tale, the lie lovingly preserved alongside the truth like a counterfeit coin kept in the temple treasury for the fineness of its minting. He told them of five hundred days of open sea. Of storms that stood the ship on its beam, of a calm that lasted till the water went bad in the casks, of hunger, of strange islands where things with the faces of women sang. He told them of the morning Horai rose from the waves ahead, impossibly tall, robed in cloud, and of the shining woman he met there on the mountainside, dipping water with a silver bowl, who told him the mountain's name. He told them of flowers whose smell reached the ship before the land did, of streams running over pebbles of amber, of the tree, the very tree, blazing on its slope like sunrise made solid, and of how he took only this one branch, only one, out of reverence, and turned for home, and wept, he said, to leave a place no man sees twice.
He told it, says the old book, without one seam showing. The old man wept freely. The servants listening at the doors wept. It was, by every account, the best story anyone in that house had ever heard, and Kaguya, behind her silk, listening to a man describe with perfect beauty a place she half remembered and he had wholly invented, did not weep, and said nothing, and her light, for those who could read it, burned very low and very steady, like a lamp being patient.
The wedding preparations began that same hour. The old man could hardly be restrained. And they were still laying out the cups, the old book says, when there came a commotion at the gate.
Six men stood there. Working men, in working clothes, road worn and resolute, and their leader carried, held before him in both hands like a petition to a magistrate, a written account.
They were, the account respectfully declared, six craftsmen of the capital and its provinces, masters of metal and stone. For a thousand days, in a hidden house in the mountains, they had labored night and day at the order of the great Prince Kuramochi, setting aside all other work, seeing neither family nor festival, to build a certain branch. A branch with roots of silver, a trunk of gold, and fruits of white jade. The work was long since delivered. The payment, to date, was nothing. And hearing that the branch had found its way to this honorable house, they had walked all this way to present, with a thousand apologies, the bill.
There are silences and silences, said the storyteller. The silence on the veranda when the tasks were first named, that was a courtiers' silence, smooth as lacquer. This one had texture.
Kaguya read the craftsmen's account twice, with, the tellers insist, the blinds trembling faintly, in the way blinds will when someone behind them is being very quiet about her delight. The relief came off her like spring. She had the magnificent branch carried out and returned to the prince with one small poem, which observed, in the mildest possible way, that she had asked for a branch of Horai, and had been given instead the finest work six honest men ever did, and that of the two, the honest work was worth more, and was not hers to keep either.
And she paid the craftsmen. Paid them richly, from her father's bamboo gold, every day of the thousand days, and sent them home rejoicing. What Prince Kuramochi said to those six men as they passed him at the gate, the old book does record, and this room, at this hour, declines to repeat it. It was not gracious. Even so, their work was paid and their names were made, and he went home poor in the only coin that had ever interested him, and finding the capital suddenly airless, he vanished into the deep mountains, alone, for years, to be embarrassed among the pines, where embarrassment is at least private, and the pines, to their credit, never mentioned it.
The old book adds one small mercy, and it is worth carrying to sleep. The branch itself was not destroyed. A thing that beautiful never quite is. It passed from hand to hand, and out of the tale, and somewhere, the tellers like to think, it stands to this day in some quiet alcove, wearing a century of careful dusting, being at last what it always was. Not a lie. Just a masterpiece with a bad start in life.
Two tasks asked. Two tasks failed. And in the house by the grove, the old man had stopped planning weddings, and begun, in the evenings, simply sitting with his daughter, the two of them watching the pond hold the moon, which is, when everything else has been tried, the oldest occupation in the world.
Chapter Six.

The Robe of the Fire Rat.
The Minister of the Right, Abe no Miushi, was the richest of the five, and the least complicated. He heard his task, the robe of the fire rat of China, fur that fire cannot burn, and he reasoned as follows. The robe was in China. Ships went to China. Money went on ships. Where was the difficulty.
There was in the harbor at that time a trading master from over the sea, a merchant of great affairs named Wang Kei, whose ships went out with the autumn wind and came home with the spring one, and whose word, in matters of cargo, was accounted good. To Wang Kei the minister wrote a letter of beautiful frankness. There is said to be, in your great country, the fur of a certain rat that lives in fire. I require a robe of it. Buy it, whatever it costs, and this gold is for the buying, and there will be more gold when it is in my hands, and I am, with every confidence, your friend Abe.
And then the minister waited, which was the part of any plan he did best, because waiting, when one is very rich, is simply living.
A full turn of seasons went by. The ships went out. The ships came home. And with the spring wind came a letter from Wang Kei, and the letter, being a merchant's letter, was a small masterpiece of its kind. The robe had not been easy, it said. The robe had, in fact, been nearly impossible. The fire rat was not found in China proper, and his agents had traveled, at great cost, into the far west of the world, to a mountain temple in India, where at last, by prayer, by persistence, and by an outlay he blushed to name, the thing itself had been secured. He begged only to be reimbursed the difference, a further fifty ounces of gold, payable on delivery, and if the honorable minister found the sum excessive, he should say so plainly, and Wang Kei would keep the robe.
Send it at once, wrote the minister, by return messenger, with the gold. You are the most honest of men.
The robe came up from the harbor in a jeweled casket, and when the minister lifted the lid, even he, who owned beautiful things the way a beach owns sand, sat back on his heels. The fur was a deep blue, the blue of the last sky before night, and every hair of it was tipped with gold, so that when it moved in the light the whole robe rippled like a field of dusk with the sun still caught in it. It was, all agreed, too beautiful to be anything but true. This has never once in the history of the world been sound reasoning, and it has never once stopped anyone.
The minister did not even wait for a lucky day. He rode to the bamboo cutter's house with the casket before him on the saddle, and was received, and the robe was carried in, and even through the curtains he heard the small intake of breath, and his heart soared.
It is very beautiful, said Kaguya, and her voice was kind, because what she had to say next was not less kind, but it was harder. It is so beautiful that I hope it is true. And there is one way to know. The fur of the fire rat comes out of the flames brighter than it went in. Let us give it to the fire, and if the fire gives it back, I will put it on that same hour, and be your household's from that day.
Of course, said the minister. Naturally. Burn it. He said this, the old book notes, with the full serenity of a man who has paid so much for a thing that the universe would surely not embarrass him.
A fire was made in the garden, of good charcoal, well fanned. The evening was still. The household gathered on the veranda, and the blinds were raised a hand's breadth, and the robe of the fire rat was laid, with great ceremony, upon the coals.
It burned.
Not slowly, not reluctantly, not with any hesitation that could be generously interpreted. It burned the way any winter coat burns, promptly, thoroughly, and with a certain enthusiasm, crackling politely, sending up one long ribbon of blue gray smoke into the evening air, and leaving on the coals, in a few breaths, nothing at all but a fine white ash that stirred, and lifted, and went off over the garden wall like a sigh going home.
There was a silence, and in the middle of the silence sat the minister, watching the smoke of a year of his life and a great deal of his gold rise gently over the pines.
To his lasting credit, he did not shout. He did not curse Wang Kei, though a letter went west in due course that must have been warm to carry. He looked at the fire a long while, and then he laughed, one short honest laugh at the size of his own hope, and he stood, and bowed to the curtains, and said, the fire has spoken, and it says I am unmarried, and he went home with an empty casket and, the tellers like to think, a lighter heart than either prince before him, because he alone had actually believed, and there is a health in believing that outlives the disappointment of it.
Kaguya sent his poem back after him with gentleness. She had wanted, the tellers say, to like the robe.
And the people of that country, hearing how the splendid thing had gone up in one bright breath, made from the minister's own name a little word for it. When a plan looked glorious and perished at its first test, they said it had gone abenashi, gone the way of Abe, which is to say, gloriously, and completely, and up in smoke, and they were still saying it long after anyone remembered the man, which is one of the stranger kinds of immortality, but is immortality all the same.
Three tasks asked. Three tasks failed. And far away in the deep sea, something very large and very old turned over in its sleep, not knowing it had just become the fourth.
Chapter Seven.

The Jewel in the Dragon's Neck.
The Grand Counselor, Otomo no Miyuki, differed from the first three lords in one great point. It never once occurred to him to cheat. This was not entirely virtue. It was also that his imagination, a modest and well fed creature, had never needed to invent anything, because its owner had always been able to command instead.
So he commanded. He gathered his household men, his retainers and archers and stewards, every man who ate his rice, and he stood before them on the veranda in his grandest manner and informed them that somewhere in the deep sea was a dragon, and in the neck of the dragon a jewel that shone with five colors, and that they, his loyal men, would now go and fetch it, and that none of them was to show his face at home again until the jewel was in his hand.
The retainers looked at the sea, which could be smelled from the veranda when the wind was right. The sea declined to comment.
To speed them on, the counselor emptied his storehouses. Silk for traveling money, rice for provisions, gold for whatever gold does in an emergency involving dragons. The men bowed low, accepted everything, expressed with feeling their determination to die rather than fail, and departed in a body.
And then, being sensible men whose families loved them, they scattered like sparrows from a clapped hand. Some went home by back roads. Some went to relatives in distant provinces they had been meaning to visit for years. One or two, the old book suggests, simply found agreeable villages and settled down in them on the counselor's silk, and if any man of them went within a mile of a dragon, the record is silent about it.
The counselor waited. Waited, and had the great house made ready for his bride, lacquer and silver, new blinds, new mats, everything rare and fine, while his wives, and he had wives already, the old book mentions this with its driest face, watched the redecorating with expressions history has kindly not preserved.
A year of this. No jewel. No men.
At last the counselor did the one grand thing he truly had in him, the thing this chapter loves him for. He went himself. He had a ship fitted out, and he stumped aboard, and he pointed it at the horizon and went dragon hunting, personally, an old courtier on a wide gray sea, and for a few bright days he stood in the bows with his sleeves streaming and felt, we may be sure, magnificent.
The sea let him have those days. Then it introduced him to the weather.
The storm that came up out of the southeast was, the sailors agreed afterward, of the honest worst kind. Thunder that walked from one edge of the sky to the other. Waves like moving hills, dark as plums. The ship went up things it should not have been able to climb and down things it is better not to remember, and the counselor, clinging to whatever declined to move, discovered saltwater in parts of his dignity that dignity does not have names for.
And the helmsman, hauling at his oar, shouted the thing sailors have always shouted at passengers who bring their ambitions on board. This is your doing, my lord. You have been bellowing for a year about killing a dragon and taking his jewel. The dragon has heard you. The sea belongs to him. Pray, my lord. Apologize to the dragon, or we are all fish food together.
And the Grand Counselor Otomo no Miyuki, to whom no one had suggested an apology in forty years, apologized to the dragon.
He did it, once he got started, with real range. He stood as well as he could, gripping the rail, drenched to his court rank, and he assured the storm at the top of his lungs that he now perceived the dragon to be a great lord, a venerable lord, a lord in every way senior to himself, that the jewel was the dragon's own personal property and always had been, that he, Otomo, had spoken as a fool speaks, and that if the dragon would overlook the whole regrettable year, he, Otomo, swore never again to trouble so much as a pond newt. A thousand pardons. He counted several of them out loud.
Whether it was the apology, or simply that storms end, the old book does not commit itself. But the wind eased, and the thunder took its walk elsewhere, and after three ragged days a very humble ship ran gently aground on the beach at Akashi, and its passenger was carried ashore and laid under a pine to recover, which he did slowly, in stages, like a man being reassembled.
He was not injured, unless one counts the whole man. But the wind and the salt and the sun had swollen his eyes most pitiably, and when his people came hurrying down from the capital and found him propped beneath his pine, they observed, and the old book preserves the observation forever, that his lordship's eyes looked exactly like two plums. It is the most famous pair of plums in the literature of that island, and the counselor bore them home on a litter, with compresses.
From his sickbed he issued two final commands on the subject of dragons. The first was that his scattered retainers, who came creeping back by ones and twos when the news reached them, were not to be punished, but thanked, and he thanked them, feelingly, for their wisdom in never going anywhere near the beast, since it would certainly have killed the lot of them. The second was that the bride house, all that lacquer and silver, be given over to storage.
Marriage, he announced to the ceiling, and dragons, are both weathers, and a wise man enjoys weather from the veranda.
And the people of the capital, who had followed the whole affair the way people follow anything wonderful that is happening to someone else, laughed for a season, but gently, the way a village laughs at a storm once it has safely passed. Because he had gone himself. Say what you like about the plums. Of the five great suitors, only two ever truly went out their own front gates toward the impossible, and the counselor, wet, swollen, apologizing to the horizon, was the first of them.
The second was already studying swallows.
Chapter Eight.

The Swallow's Shell.
The Middle Counselor, Isonokami no Marotari, had drawn, on the face of it, the easiest task of the five. No India, no Horai, no China, no dragon. Swallows. The little shell of safe and easy birth that swallows were said to keep in their nests, a charm the size of a fingernail. Swallows nested every summer under the eaves of the palace kitchens, an easy stroll from his own gate. He was, his household agreed, practically married already.
The difficulty, as anyone who has ever tried to take anything from a swallow could have told him, is that swallows are not stupid.
He began with scale, in the manner of the age. He learned that the best colony nested along the ridge of the great kitchen hall of the palace, where the smoke kept the hawks away, and he sent twenty men to build scaffolds up to the eaves, and set them watching the nests in shifts, day and night, with instructions to reach in the moment a shell appeared.
The swallows took one look at twenty men on scaffolds and stopped coming home entirely. The nests stood empty. Even the sparrows left, on principle.
The counselor was in despair, and here the tale sends him, as tales in that age liked to send great men, wisdom in the shape of a servant. An old man of the kitchen stores, one Kuratsumaro, bent as a ladle and twice as useful, begged leave to speak, and spoke sense. Take down the scaffolds, he said. Send home the twenty men. A swallow keeps her secret for the space of one heartbeat, at the moment of laying, and no forest of watchers will ever see it. Let one man wait below with a basket on a rope and pulley, rigged to the ridge beam. When the mother bird raises her tail and turns herself seven times, that is the moment. Haul the basket up swift and quiet, and let the man feel in the nest with his hand, and the gods send he finds it.
It was excellent advice, and the counselor followed every word of it but one. When the night came, and the fires were banked, and the kitchen hall stood empty and warm and dark, and the basket waited at the foot of the rope, he looked at the man appointed to ride in it, and he could not bear it. This was his task. His shell. His one thing, asked of him by the only voice that had ever asked him for anything. He put the man aside, kindly, and climbed into the basket himself.
We should hold this picture a moment, said the storyteller, because it is the best thing any of the five ever did. A counselor of the middle rank, in his silks, folded into a storage basket in a dark kitchen, at midnight, waiting on the domestic arrangements of a bird. Love has been called many things by many poets. It is also this.
The basket went up. The great hall breathed around him, warm ash and old smoke and rice. Above, in the dark under the ridge, a rustle. A small feathered turning, once, twice, seven times. Now, whispered the counselor, and hauled at the dark, and his hand found the nest, and in the nest something flat, and hard, and rounded to his fingers.
I have it, he cried, in a voice that woke the geese three courtyards away. I have it, pull me down.
And whether the men below pulled too hard for joy, or the rope was old, or the night simply preferred the story this way, down indeed he came, basket, counselor, treasure and all, not gently, landing upon one of the great bronze rice cauldrons, which rang beneath him like a temple bell announcing the failure of a plan, and rolling from there to the floor, where his men found him flat on his back among the embers of his expedition, eyes shut with pain, both hands cupped over his prize like a lid over a lamp.
He would not open them until he had been carried home and propped up, splinted and bandaged, on his own pillows, with lamps brought near. Then, slowly, in front of his whole anxious household, the Middle Counselor Isonokami no Marotari uncurled his fingers from around the small hard thing he had carried down through fire and bell and ruin.
It was a dropping. An old, dried dropping, of the kind swallows leave a great many of, polished smooth by the nest and the years, and shaped, the tellers admit, quite remarkably like a shell.
He looked at it a long time, there on his pillow mountain, with his back complaining and his household not laughing so loudly that he could prove it. And at last he said, softly, the words that his country never let go of, because in the old language of that island, the words no shell and no reward sound exactly the same. All this, he said, and no shell in it. And the sentence folded over on itself and meant, all this, and nothing to show, and both meanings were true, and everyone in the room heard both, and ever since, in that country, when a great effort ends in a small nothing, they say those words, and the counselor is in them still, flat on his back, holding history's most disappointing pebble.
Word of the whole night ran through the capital by morning, as such words do, and it came, in time, behind the curtains of the house by the grove. And here the tale turns a small quiet corner that matters more than it looks. Kaguya, hearing it, did not smile.
She had set five impossible tasks to five vain men, and four vanities had duly come to nothing, and cost her nothing. But this was different. This one had climbed into the basket himself. She sent him a poem, the first thing she had ever freely sent to any of the five, a few kind lines asking whether it was true he had fallen, and hoping, in the oldest words the language had for it, that he was mending.
They brought it to him where he lay. His injuries, the truth is, were mending badly. He was old for such a fall, and the shame, some said, weighed more than the basket had. But he read her poem, and the household saw a little light come back into his face, the way the moon comes back from behind cloud, and he asked for brush and ink, and in a hand that wandered but did not once stop, he wrote back that a fall was a small price for such kindness, and that he counted it, on balance, a bargain.
He sent his poem. He kept hers. And holding it, the old book says, with his household around him, he closed his eyes, easy at last, at the end of a long, kind, clumsy, honorable life, and the old book draws a soft cover over him there, and says no more, and neither will we, except this. Of the five who asked for the moon's daughter, he came nearest. Not because of the basket. Because when the impossible was asked of him, he was the only one of the five who never once thought of sending someone else.
So the five tasks ended, and no one had won her, and no one ever would.
The fence by the road grew quiet. The hedge filled in. In the house, the old man packed away, without a word, certain wedding things he had been keeping hopeful for three years. And Kaguya sat behind her curtains in her own soft light, out of reach of princes and ministers and counselors, and the only suitor left in all the world with any standing at all was the one whose light she sat in every full moon night, looking up, and up, and saying nothing.
But before the moon could claim her, one more mortal had to try. And he was not a man who waited at fences, because he had never in his life needed to.
He was the Emperor.
Chapter Nine.

The Emperor's Letters.
The Emperor of that land heard about Kaguya the way emperors hear about everything, last of all, and from three directions at once.
He heard about the light in the house by the grove, and the five great lords, and the bowl and the branch and the robe and the plums and the basket, the whole of it, and where another man might have laughed, he found that he had stopped, in the middle of a corridor, and was looking out at the moon over the palace roofs, thinking. A woman had refused the five highest men in his realm without once being unkind. A woman no one could see had become the most visible person in the country. He was young, and he was wise for his age, though not yet as wise as he was about to become, and he decided he would like to know what sort of person shone.
So he sent a lady of his court, Nakatomi no Fusako by name, with instructions to go to the house, and see the princess, and report.
Fusako went. Fusako was received with every courtesy. Fusako sat in the fine outer room, near the curtains, and stated her errand, an imperial errand, a command, in the way of a woman who had never once in her career not been obeyed.
From behind the silk, the soft voice was very sorry. It was not possible. Not out of pride, said the voice, and truly not out of unkindness, but she was not fit to be looked at on the Emperor's behalf, being not quite what a person should be, and she could not.
You are refusing the Emperor, said Fusako, to the curtains, with the room going cold around the words.
I am refusing everyone, said the voice, gently, and it must be said the refusal had had practice.
And Fusako, who could command everything but light, went back to the palace with an empty report and a full imagination, and told the Emperor the truth, that she had seen nothing, and that nothing had been, somehow, the most impressive thing in her whole long service.
The Emperor then tried the door that always opened. He summoned the old man, and offered him what the old man's world could not refuse, court rank, a cap, a standing among the great. Only bring your daughter to the palace, he said, and the thing is done.
The old man went home walking on air, and came back walking on earth. She will not, he reported, wretched. And she says, and he twisted his cap in his hands, she says that if she is forced, she will only fade. Like breath from a mirror, she says. And your servant believes her, because his daughter does not say things twice, and she said this twice.
A ruler learns to hear the true no under all the polite ones. This, the Emperor understood, was a true no. So he did the thing this chapter has been waiting for him to do, the thing that made him worth a chapter in her story at all. He arranged an accident.
A royal hunt was proclaimed, with hawks and horses and horns, and its path, by the purest chance, ran along the road by a certain bamboo grove, and at a certain gate, quite suddenly, the Emperor dismounted and walked in, unannounced, as a hunter may, asking after water.
And so he saw her. No curtains warned, no blinds were ready. He came around the veranda and there was a light in the inner room like moonrise indoors, and in the middle of the light, caught halfway to rising, a woman looked up at him, and for the rest of his life he never told anyone what her face was, only that afterward all other faces seemed to be copies of something he had now seen the original of.
She moved to slip away. He caught, very gently, the edge of her sleeve.
And where he held her, she began to go faint. Not fleeing, not fainting. Fading, the way the moon fades when cloud crosses it, her edge going soft, the silk in his hand growing thin as lamplight, and she looked at him without anger and said, I am not of this country. I am not a thing that can be kept. If you take me, you will find your hands full of shining, and then full of nothing at all.
The Emperor was many things, and one of them, buried under the robes and the rank, was genuinely intelligent. He opened his hand.
She came back, the way the moon comes back, all at once and without reproach.
Forgive me, he said. And then, because intelligence, once started, is hard to stop, he said the wisest thing any man says in this whole tale. I see now what you are, he said. You are not to be won. Very well. Then I will not try to win you. But a letter is not a hand on a sleeve. May a letter come to this house, sometimes, from a man who is glad you exist under the same moon he is under.
And from behind her light, for the first time in the whole old book, Kaguya laughed, just a little, like a bell heard over water.
A letter, she said, would be received.
He rode home, and the hunt never did catch anything, and no one dared mention it. And that evening the first letter went out to the house by the grove, and in the morning an answer came back, and that was the beginning of the true courtship of this tale, the one that asked for nothing and therefore could be given everything.
For three years the letters went back and forth. Poems, mostly, in the way of that age, short as breaths and deep as wells. His plum blossoms against her late frost. Her first cuckoo against his long rains. Small jokes that took two weeks to finish. The moon, always and endlessly the moon, until the palace paper keepers must have wondered how one heavenly body could need so much ink. He never again came to the house. She never once came to court. The court ladies noticed that the Emperor's evening letters went always in one direction, like geese in autumn, and they said what court ladies say, and it changed nothing.
And this, said the storyteller, was the nearest thing to marriage the old book allows her, and the tellers have never agreed on whether it was less than one or more. A friendship at the exact right distance. The moon and the sea, writing to each other every night, moving each other from far away, touching nothing, missing nothing.
Three years of that. Three good years. And then, in the spring of the third year, the servants of the house by the grove began to notice something about their lady, and what they noticed is the last turning of this tale, and it turns, as it was always going to, upward.
Chapter Ten.

The Fifteenth Night of the Eighth Month.
It began with the moon, as it had to.
That spring, on the bright nights, Kaguya took to sitting out on the veranda, alone, watching the moon rise over the grove. The old servants held that it was unlucky to stare into the moon's face, and said so, kindly, and she smiled at them, kindly, and went on doing it. There was nothing anyone could name amiss. Only that as the moon filled, each month, her quiet deepened, and on the nights when it stood full over the pines, they saw, more than once, that her face was wet.
Through the summer it grew. And on the full moon night of the seventh month, the old man found her weeping openly, with her arms around her knees like any village girl, and he sat down beside her, old bones and all, and asked, and this time she told him.
I am not of this world, she said. There, at last, it is said. My home is the Moon Capital, the shining city, and its people are my people. I was sent down to this country for a time, for reasons that were not mine to choose, and the time is ending. On the fifteenth night of the eighth month, at the full of the moon, they will come for me. I have always known. Forgive me. I was small, and then I was happy, and there was never a good evening to say it.
She took her father's hands, both of them, small light around old wood.
Understand me, she said. I do not weep at going home. I weep because this has become home too, and no heart is made to be two homes at once. When I think of leaving you and mother, the sky itself feels like falling.
What the old couple said that night, the old book keeps behind its hand, and so will we. Grief in a small house is not for visitors. But by morning the old man had passed through weeping and out the far side into something splendid and hopeless, and announced to the household that the moon, if it wanted his daughter, could come down and discuss the matter with him personally. He was one basket maker, past seventy, and he was proposing to contest the sky. There is no braver sentence in the whole old book, and none more useless, and every parent who has ever heard this tale has understood him completely.
Word went to the palace, because by now what touched that house touched the Emperor. And the Emperor, who could not save her either, did what power does when it loves and cannot help. He sent everything he had. On the fifteenth day of the eighth month, a captain of the guard came down the road with two thousand men, and by evening the house by the grove was dressed in soldiers, archers on the roof ridge, spearmen shoulder to shoulder along the walls, the garden bristling, the gates barred, more armed men around one bamboo cutter's house than most wars got in that century.
Inside, in the innermost room, a storeroom with walls of good thick plaster, the old woman sat holding Kaguya in her arms, and would not be moved. The old man stood guard at its one door. Two thousand and two, then, all told.
Kaguya, held tight in the middle of the army, was gentle with them all.
You cannot fight them, she said. I say it not to wound you, but so that no one is hurt for me. The people of the moon do not come as an enemy comes. Walls do not stop moonlight. Locks do not know it is there. When they call me, I will go, not because I choose against you, but the way the tide goes, because it is made of the sea. Sit with me instead. We have tonight, until the hour comes. Sit with me, and let me look at you.
And so the last evening of the Moon Princess on the earth was spent in a storeroom, by lamplight no one needed, an old woman holding her, an old man at the door pretending to guard it and really only staying near, and outside, on the roof, two thousand soldiers under a rising moon, joking in low voices to keep their courage fed, while the full moon of the eighth month came up over the grove enormous and pale gold, the harvest moon, the one that stands lower and looks nearer than any moon of the year.
Midnight came, and went. The men on the roof began to hope.
And then, at the hour of the Rat, the deepest step of the night, the sky above the house began to lighten.
Not like dawn. Dawn comes from an edge. This came from directly above, softly, evenly, the darkness turning pale the way water turns when milk is poured into it, until the garden below was bright as ten full moons together, bright past noon, and yet with no glare in it anywhere, a brightness the eye drank without flinching. And down through the middle of that brightness, slow as a leaf, came a white cloud, and on the cloud stood people.
They shone. They were dressed as kings and queens are dressed in the oldest dreams, and their faces were calm the way deep water is calm, and among them rode a high canopied car of light. The cloud came down until it stood above the garden no higher than a man's head, and stopped there, resting on the air.
And now the two thousand proved what they were worth, which was nothing, and it was not their fault. The captain called the order. Every man on that roof was brave. But their arms, as they drew, went soft, the strength running out of them like water from a tipped jar, and the arrows wandered off sideways with no conviction at all, and fell in the vegetable rows. The fiercest fighters in the Emperor's service found they could not so much as glare. A heaviness had come over every armed man, mild and complete, the very heaviness that is settling over you now, the weight of the hour before sleep, and one by one the bows were lowered, because there is no drill for shooting at something that only makes you drowsy and kind.
The doors of the house opened themselves. Softly, in order, outer to inner, every latch letting go, every screen sliding wide, the lattices swinging up on their own to let the light walk through. The storeroom's one door opened last. The old woman felt her arms unclose, with no force in the world touching them, and Kaguya stood, and kissed her mother's hair, and walked out through the bowing doors into the garden of light, shining her own answer back at the sky.
From the cloud, one who seemed a king among them looked down, and spoke to the old man, and his voice was not unkind. It was worse, the old man said after. It was patient.
Miyatsuko, he said. For a small good deed, done long ago, you were lent a great joy. She was sent down for a fault, a little fault, committed in a high place, and her exile is long since paid, and the gold you found in your bamboo was her keep, sent down each month with the light. You have raised her well, and it is written in your favor forever. But the loan is ended. Give her back.
She is ill, said the old man, lying magnificently, his cap crooked, his old knees shaking. That one is not the Kaguya you mean. Yours is, is another Kaguya. This one is very ill, and cannot travel, and,
And the king of the moon looked at him, the way the moon looks at a cloud that is trying to hide it, and waited, and the old man's brave nonsense fell quietly to pieces, and he wept instead, which was the truth.
Kaguya asked for a moment, and it was granted. Even the moon, it turns out, will wait for letters.
She wrote two. The first was for the old couple, and she knelt and put it into their hands herself. Had I been born of this country, it said, I would never have left you, not for any sky. Keep my robe, my everyday one, the silk that was daughter and not princess, and on the nights when the moon is bright, look up, for I will be looking down, and the same light will be on both our faces, and that is not nothing. That is very far from nothing. Do not grieve longer than you must. Being your child was the good part of the whole long life of me.
The second letter was for the Emperor. She wrote it standing, while the shining people waited, and one of them, restless, murmured that the hour was passing, and she answered, without looking up, that she was saying goodbye to a whole world, and the hour could carry that much. With the letter she sent a gift, taken from the hands of the moon people themselves, a small sealed jar, white as the inside of a shell. In it was the medicine of the moon, the elixir of life, one draught of which holds off death forever. Take these to him, she said to the captain of the guard, and tell him, and here she folded into the letter one poem, the last one, and the old book has kept it a thousand years. Now that the moment is come, it said, and the robe of feathers waits for me, I find that it is you I think of, with tenderness, after all.
Then they brought the robe.
It came out of a box of light, the robe of feathers, hagoromo, white beyond white, soft beyond soft, the garment of her own country. And you must know what it does, for the ending to land in your chest the right way. The robe of feathers takes away the ache. That is its nature. No one wearing it can carry a heavy heart, for it is woven of whatever the moon is made of, distance and calm and unbroken light, and the moment it settles on your shoulders, sorrow lets go of you, not torn away, just set down, the way you set down a bag at your own front door.
Kaguya looked at her mother, and her father, a long time, gathering their faces the way you gather things for a journey.
Then she let the robe be laid upon her.
And all of it, the weight of the parting, the tearing of the two homes, the whole unbearable arithmetic, lifted off her in one long breath, and what stood in the garden then still loved them, you could see it, but loved them the way the moon loves, from a height, wholly, calmly, without one shadow of pain, and her face was the face of someone hearing, from far away, the sounds of the house where she was born.
She stepped up into the car of light, among the hundred shining people.
And the cloud rose. Slowly, the way a lantern rises when a child lets go of the string, up past the roof and its harmless drowsy archers, up past the tops of the pines, up and up, the brightness folding itself smaller and smaller, until it was a star among the stars, and then a spark, and then the sky closed softly over it like water over a lifted hand, and the full moon stood alone over the grove, and the night came back, the ordinary, kind, dark night, with all its crickets ringing.
No one who stood in that garden was ever afraid of the dark again. And no one who stood there ever again called the moon empty.
Chapter Eleven.

The Smoke of the Mountain.
What is left, after such a night, is the part of the tale that belongs to us, the ones who stay.
The old couple were, at first, like fields in winter. That must be said honestly, and the old book says it honestly, and then, like the good farmers of grief that old people are, they came slowly back. They had her letter, which the old woman kept in a box of paulownia wood and knew by heart anyway. They had the robe, her everyday silk, which held, the old man swore, a faint warmth always, like a stone that remembers the sun. And they had the veranda, and the pond, and the pine.
On the bright nights, the two of them would sit out together, wrapped warm, and look up, the way she had told them to. And the old woman said, once, that it felt like waving to a daughter married far away. Very far away, she said, and very well, into a great family, who would keep her shining. And after she had said that, it is told, the two of them could watch the moon rise without weeping, and some months later they could watch it rise smiling, because grief, tended gently, grows down into something with roots, and the name of the thing with roots is remembering.
The old man went on cutting bamboo. Of course he did. It was who he was. There was no more gold in the stalks, the keep having ended with the keeping, and he found he did not mind. He had never minded about the gold. And the tellers, who have carried this tale a thousand years, add here the one thing the old couple themselves would never have said aloud. Of all the houses of the earth, of all the emperors' palaces and the princes' mansions with their triple fences, when the moon had one child to lend, it looked down the whole shining world and chose the house of a man who was kind to bamboo. They were not people something terrible had happened to. They were the two most trusted people in the history of the ground.
And the Emperor.
The captain of the guard came back to the palace at dawn, empty of victories, and laid before him the letter, and the small white jar.
The Emperor read the letter twice. Then he sat for a long time with the jar of the elixir in his two hands, the little jar that unmakes death, the draught emperors in old tales burn kingdoms to find, his now, freely given, hers.
Then he asked his ministers a single question. Which mountain of this land stands nearest to heaven.
And they conferred, and answered him. In the province of Suruga, they said, there stands a mountain taller than every other, so tall its head keeps snow in high summer, and stands closest of all things in the realm to the road of the moon.
The Emperor nodded. He wrote his answer to her then, the poem the old book keeps beside hers, and it says, in the small space such poems are given, that a man who will never again see her has no use for a life that does not end. What should I do with forever, it asks, alone in it.
And he called a trusted man, a captain named Tsuki no Iwakasa, and if you listen to that name you can hear the word for moon inside it, which the tale notices and quietly enjoys, and he gave into his hands the letter and the jar. Take soldiers, he said, many soldiers, and climb the mountain in Suruga to its very summit, and there, as close to her country as this country goes, burn them together, the letter and the elixir both, and let the smoke carry up what I could not.
And it was done. Iwakasa went, with such a great company of warriors that the mountainsides were bright with them, and they climbed past the forests, past the last grass, up into the snow and the thin blue air, to the summit stones where the sky begins. And there they made a small fire at the top of the world, and in it the Emperor's letter, and the elixir of life, burned together, and the smoke of them rose, straight and thin and silver, up from the peak toward the moon, and it did not stop.
It has never stopped, says the old book. And the people, watching that thread of smoke stand up from the summit year upon year, gave the mountain its name from that day. Some say it is named for the warriors, the great host of them on its slopes, and some say it is named for the burning itself, fushi, the word for deathless, for the deathlessness that was given back unused. The mountain of Fuji. And when travelers on the Suruga road saw its smoke against the evening, for a thousand years, they would tell their children, that is the Emperor's letter, still going up, and the children would watch it rise and privately conclude, as children rightly do, that it must be very long, or very good, to take so many years in the sending.
So the tale sets everything down at last, each thing in its right keeping.
The moon keeps her. She is home, in the shining city, among her own calm people, wearing no ache, and on bright nights the light that falls on your window sill has come through the country where she lives.
The mountain keeps the smoke, the unswallowed forever, the love letter that is still, this very night, on its way.
And a house by a bamboo grove keeps two old people, asleep by now, her letter in its wooden box, her robe folded soft beside it, the memory of having been chosen laid over them both like a quilt.
Nobody in this story lost anything, in the end, except the five suitors, who lost only what they never had, and the world, which lost one light upward, and gained, in exchange, the mountain, and the tale, and the excellent plums.
Chapter Twelve.

Goodnight. And the Lamp at the Edge of Morning.
The night is deep now, even at the edge of everything.
Far away and long ago, the bamboo grove stands in the dark, leaning and returning, hush, and knock, and creak. No stalk of it glows tonight. The grove gave its one lantern back to the sky, and shines now only the ordinary way, silver at the leaf edges, which was always enough. Deer pass through it. The wind takes its slow roll through the leaves, a sound like the sea agreeing with itself, and the path the old man walked ten thousand times lies quiet from one end to the other, remembering feet.
Over the bay, over the pines, the mountain stands in the moonlight with its head in the stars, sending up its one silver thread. Fishermen on the dark water see the smoke and the moon in the same lifted glance, and say nothing, because some sights close the mouth and open something else.
And the moon herself stands over the whole of it, full and calm, the great lamp of this tale and of this season, and of every sleeper who was ever carried to bed.
Look at her a moment, from under your warm blanket, before the lamp goes low.
Most nights she is silver, a pearl, a bowl of milk. Some nights she is gold at the rising, huge over the hills, the harvest lantern. And once in a long while, on a night worth staying up for, the earth itself leans gently between its lamp and its moon, and the shadow of the whole world crosses that bright face, and the moon goes the soft color of embers, of amber, of a lantern behind silk. People have always gathered to watch that, in every age, on rooftops and hillsides, wrapped in blankets, quiet. And there is nothing in it to fear, and there never was. It is only the earth, saying goodnight, standing for one hour exactly between its light and its children, the way a mother pauses in a doorway. The silver always comes back. It always has. If you are ever awake to see the moon turn amber, think of Kaguya, going home, and the smoke of a mountain rising to meet her, and watch how gently the light returns.
The storyteller looks up from the last page, here, at the whole room.
Behind her, at the edge of the lamplight, stands the shelf. You have heard about the shelf. All season it has stood there, holding its small waiting things, and tonight, for the first time, nothing on it is waiting.
The old brass lamp with the dent in its side has been rubbed and has retired. The glass slipper has been danced in, twice, and fits exactly the one person it always fit. The silver shoes have walked their road of yellow brick and carried their girl home from it. The little pot of paint from the London nursery is closed tight, the thimble beside it given and received. The coral comb has been drawn one last time through copper hair, deep under a kind sea. The spindle sleeps, its hundred years all spent, wound down to an ordinary spindle at last. The yew bow has loosed its arrow into the greenwood and the greenwood keeps it. The loom shuttle from the house by the Yellow River rests by the whip that rode twelve years to war and told no one. The mirror splinters lie counted in their velvet bag, every last one home, none out doing mischief, the bag gone quiet. The bottle of tears has dried to a shimmer. The watch has agreed, at long last, that even teatime ends.
And the stalk of green bamboo, sealed at every joint, that the shelf kept for last because the shelf is sentimental, is dark now. Dark, and warm to the touch, like a lamp after morning, like a stage after the bows. Its light was never lost. Its light was only a story, and the story has been told, and told light does not go out. It goes in. Into the listener. Into you. Twelve tales, twelve nights of lamplight, and every one of them is in you now, keeping their warmth where warmth keeps best, in a sleeping person, in the dark, at the edge of morning.
The old book lies heavier than it did in August. Told tales weigh a little more, the way slept in beds do. The lamp leans, and rights itself, and goes on with its small golden work, minding its one acre of the dark, and the room is the same quiet room it has been all season, at the edge of everything, which means close to everywhere, and closest of all, tonight, to you.
There is nothing left to wait for. That is not an empty feeling. That is the fullest feeling there is. It is the feeling of the house after the guests have been walked to the gate, of the field after harvest, of the page after the last word, when the ink is dry and the pen is down and the whole long labor folds its hands.
The moon is on the window sill. The blanket is doing its slow warm work. Somewhere very far away, a thread of smoke is climbing toward a shining city, in no hurry, sure of its road.
And when the storyteller reaches the end of this last page, she will close the old book all the way, front board to back, for the first time since the lamp was first lit, twelve tales asleep inside it like twelve sleepers under one roof, and she will rest her hand on the cover a moment, the way you rest a hand on the shoulder of an old friend who has done a long thing well, and the old book will settle, and sigh, and sleep.
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.