The something far away was the barn door, with Doodle's map pinned to it, and all Humdy's green dots.
And I looked at the tally and said, out loud, to nobody: "That's wrong."
It was. Humdy had been colouring in a dot for every hook filled, which is exactly right and exactly what Doodle meant. But four fluffs had been filling hooks at the far end before the map existed at all, first thing, and had never told anybody, because why would you. So the map said forty-one and the path said forty-nine.
Nobody had known they were eight ahead. Everybody in that yard had been working to a number that was eight short, all morning, on a day when the one thing we did not have was time.
