Before the Sun

Hushy has the biggest ears in Candyfloss Land, and this morning they were full.

Winky went past shouting about lanterns. Zippy went past shouting about Winky. Somewhere a door banged and somebody laughed and somebody else dropped a bucket, and underneath all of it, small as a pin dropping, Hushy heard something else.

"Oh," somebody said.

Just that. One oh, from a fluff who had been handed the job of going down the bank to fetch what had rolled, and who was frightened of the bank, and who had said yes anyway because everybody was watching.

Nobody else heard it. There was too much morning on top of it.

Hushy stood in the lane and felt the familiar thing happen: the noticing, and then the quiet, and then the moment passing, the way it usually does, with Hushy still standing there holding it.

Chatty came round the corner talking, as Chatty does.

Hushy listened first — that is always the easy part, and Chatty had a great deal to get through. And then, when there was a gap, Hushy did the hard half.

"Chatty. Somebody needs swapping off the bank job. They won't ask."

Chatty stopped mid-sentence, which almost never happens.

"Who?"

Hushy told them.

"Right," said Chatty, and was gone, already talking, carrying it off down the lane at speed — which is, Hushy thought, exactly what Chatty is for.

Mossy likes the hour when the grass is still wet, because that is when the small things are out.

"Morning," said Mossy to a snail, who was halfway up a stem and in no hurry at all. "Morning," to a beetle. "Morning," to three green things: a leaf, a stalk and a bit of moss that Mossy was, frankly, named after.

Then Zenny said something about a clatter by the gate, and Mossy went to look, expecting nothing.

There was a shape in the long grass. Grey, round, on its side. Mossy had walked past it twice already this morning and filed it, without thinking, under rubbish — the way you do with a thing that is lying in the wrong place.

Mossy crouched down. Fresh air and a proper look: that is most of Mossy's method.

It was not rubbish. It was a lantern, one of the good ones, with a glass side and a little wire handle, and it had rolled in from somewhere with enough force to flatten a path behind it.

There was also, inside it, a snail. A different snail. Asleep.

"Right," said Mossy. "You first."

So the snail was carried to a damp stone and told where it was going, and only then did the lantern get picked up and carried back to the step, where somebody else would find it later and assume it had been there all along.

Mossy did not mind about that. Mossy had already noticed the flattened path in the grass, which went down towards the bank, and was much too long to have been made by one lantern.

The night before, Shivvy did not sleep much. That is usual.

Shivvy held the edge of the blanket — something solid — and named one safe thing, then another. The lamp on the landing. The gate that squeaks, so you always know when it is only the gate.

And somewhere in all those hours, without meaning to, Shivvy had walked the path. You do, lying awake — and you know exactly where it stops being friendly.

So when the window went grey, and word came round about lanterns all the way home for Rainbow, Shivvy did not think how lovely.

Shivvy thought: not there. Nobody is putting one there.

Being frightened of something teaches you a great deal about it. Shivvy knows the turn by the bridge where you cannot see your own feet. Shivvy knows the long stretch past the orchard feels three times longer than it is, and why: there is nothing along it to look at.

Peeky was on the wall outside, in a small quiet heap.

"They'll hang them where the path is pretty," said Shivvy. "They always do. The pretty bits already have the moon."

"Where would you put them?" said Peeky.

Shivvy held the top of the wall — something solid — and named them out loud, one by one. The hedge tunnel. The turn by the bridge. The long nothing past the orchard. The three steps by the gate that everybody trips on in daylight, never mind at night.

Peeky counted them on both paws. "That's four places nobody has thought of."

"I've thought of them," said Shivvy. "Every night. For years."

It was, Shivvy realised, the first time that had ever been useful.

Snoozy was woken at an hour Snoozy did not agree with.

"Lanterns!" Squirmy was already dancing on the spot, which is Squirmy's way of standing. "All the way down the path! All day! Are you coming? Come ON, Snoozy, it's the best day of the whole year —"

"It is dark," said Snoozy, "outside."

Snoozy was cranky. Snoozy knows the signs: everything sounded too loud, and Squirmy, who is a perfectly nice fluff, sounded loudest of all. So Snoozy sat on the edge of the bed and did three slow yawns before saying anything else, because the first thing a tired fluff says is hardly ever the thing they meant.

Then Snoozy thought about the party.

Everybody was thinking about the beginning of it — the walking out, the hanging up, the lighting. Nobody at all was thinking about eleven o'clock at night, when fifty-five fluffs would come in out of the cold, having been on their feet since sunrise, and want somewhere to land.

"You go," said Snoozy. "Do the path. I'll do the end of the path."

Squirmy stopped dancing for almost a second. "That's not a job."

"It is the job," said Snoozy, "at the end."

So while the rest of Candyfloss Land went out, Snoozy went in: blankets down, cushions along the window seat, the lamps turned low, and one lantern set aside — the last one on the whole route, the one that would hang over Winky's door and say here, this is it, you're home.

Then Snoozy had a very small nap, on purpose, so as to still be awake at midnight.

"Sunny can light the first one!" said Winky. "Sunny's the sunny one!"

And everybody agreed, in the warm way a crowd agrees, and somebody pressed the long matches into Sunny's paws, and that was that, decided, before breakfast.

Sunny said, "Here comes the sunshine!" — because that is what Sunny says — and meant about two thirds of it.

The truth was that Sunny had woken up grey. No reason. Grey the way a morning is sometimes grey, with nothing wrong in it anywhere. And in nine mornings out of ten Sunny would simply have got on with it, brightly, and nobody would ever have known, because the brightness works. That is the whole trouble with the brightness. It works.

Mopsy was sitting on the wall, not doing anything much, which is a thing Mopsy is good at.

"You've gone quiet," said Mopsy.

"I'm fine."

"Mm," said Mopsy, and went on not doing anything much, and left a space.

Sunny sat down in the space.

"They always give me this one," said Sunny at last. "The first lantern. The good bit. Because I'm the cheerful one. And I am — I do like it. But it's a cloudy sort of morning, and nobody asks a sunny fluff whether it's a cloudy sort of morning."

"Cloudy's allowed," said Mopsy.

"I know." Sunny turned the matches over. "I think I'd like somebody to light one with me, though. That's all."

So two of them lit the first lantern, later, when the time came. It was not less bright for being shared. It took two matches instead of one, and Sunny thought that was a fair price.

Winky woke before the sun, the way Winky always does.

The sky over Candyfloss Land was still the colour of a plum. And there, caught on the gatepost, was a long strand of floss with a note tied to the end of it, which is how the far side of the land sends word.

Home tonight. Bringing a cloud. — Rainbow

Winky read it four times, in case it changed.

Rainbow had been gone a whole season. All that time the Great Candyfloss Wheel had stood still, because a Wheel with no cloud has nothing to spin, and the land had got quietly used to the quiet.

"Tonight," said Winky, to nobody, at a volume meant for everybody. "TONIGHT. Let's gooo!"

Winky bounced right off the step. A candyfloss cloud cannot travel in sunlight — it melts, everyone knows that — so Rainbow would be walking home in the dark. So there would have to be lights. Lanterns! All the way along the path! And at the end of the path, a party. Here. At Winky's.

Winky was out of the gate before the plan was even finished, which is the way Winky's plans usually go. One stubby foot clipped the corner of the lantern box on the step. The box went over with a clatter like a drawer full of spoons, and some of what was inside went rolling off into the wet grass, down the bank, under the bridge.

Winky was already three gardens away.

By the time the sun came up, Winky had told eleven fluffs, woken four more, and drawn a map of the path on the back of somebody's shopping list.

Tipsy tip-toed out into the garden, so softly the dew stayed where it was.

"Winky," said Tipsy. "How many of them said yes?"

"All of them!"

"How many of them did you ask?"

Winky stopped bouncing.

The whoosh was still going — that big fizzy up-and-up feeling that arrives before the thinking does. So Winky shook it out. Both arms, both feet, the very tips of all that fluff, for five whole seconds. Then Winky froze, still as a statue, and took one big breath in, and one long breath out.

Winky had not asked anybody anything. Winky had told them.

"I'm going to go round again," said Winky slowly. "And this time I'll stay for the bit after they say yes."

"That's the bit worth hearing," said Tipsy.

So Winky went round again, slower. Slow enough, very nearly, to notice a lantern lying on its side in the long grass by the gate.

Very nearly.

Zenny was sitting in the dark, being still.

This is what Zenny does before the sun arrives: sit like a statue, and let the land wake up around you. Five slow breaths. In, and out. The grass shifting. A bird somewhere deciding whether to bother.

The trouble with Zenny's stillness is that Zenny hears everything, and everything wants a turn. A leaf. A gate. A beetle walking across a stone as if it owned it. Each little sound reaches in and tugs, and the whole job is to let it go past.

So when the clatter came — wooden, tumbling, over by Winky's gate — Zenny let it go past too.

Then Zenny sat with it.

Because that one had not been the world being busy. A gate creaks on its own. A leaf falls on its own. Nothing tips over by itself and then goes rolling for that long.

Zenny opened both eyes.

Down at the bottom of the garden, Mossy was already out in the wet, saying good morning to a snail.

"Mossy," said Zenny. "Did you hear it too?"

"Hear what?"

"Something went over at Winky's. Something with a lot of small parts in it." Zenny pointed, still perfectly still everywhere else. "That way. Before the birds started."

Mossy looked at the long grass by the gate, the way you look at a thing you have walked past nine times.

Zenny went back to being still. But Zenny kept that one sound, the way you keep a pebble in your paw, in case somebody came asking later.

Somebody did.

Zippy could not wait, so Zippy did not.

While the rest of the land was still arguing about breakfast, Zippy went down the path at full speed to see it — the whole route, gate to bridge to orchard to the long bend and back, because somebody ought to look and Zippy is always first when nobody else will go.

It took much longer than Zippy expected.

That was the first surprise. In your head a path you walk every week is short. Under your feet, at a run, in the almost-dark, it goes on and on, and then there is more of it, round a corner you had forgotten was there.

The second surprise was the hooks. Little iron hooks, set into the posts all the way along, one every few paces, for hanging things on. Zippy started counting them and gave up somewhere past the orchard, which for Zippy is not far past the beginning.

Zippy ran back. Halfway up the lane, Fizzy was already sitting in the road with a lantern hinge that would not go, fizzing gently.

"It's longer than everyone thinks," Zippy said, all in one breath. "Much longer. And there's hooks the whole way, hundreds, and if we only do the pretty bit we'll get to sundown with half a path and no time —"

Fizzy looked up. "Say that again. Slower."

Zippy hummed a whole song first, all the way to the end, which is what Zippy does instead of bursting.

Then Zippy said it again, slower, and Fizzy went to find somebody with a pencil.