Shivvy's Day

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

I lay and held the edge of the blanket — something solid, that is the trick — and named one safe thing, and 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, I had walked the path. You do, lying awake. You go along it in your head 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, I did not think how lovely.

I thought: not there. Nobody is going to put one there.

Because being frightened of something teaches you an enormous amount about it. I know the turn by the bridge where you cannot see your own feet. I know the long stretch past the orchard feels three times its length, and why: there is nothing along it to look at. I know the hedge tunnel, where the black is proper black, and I know the three steps by the gate that everybody trips on in daylight, never mind at night.

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

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

"Where would you put them?"

I held the top of the wall and named them out loud, one at a time, all four.

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

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

It was the first time in my life that had ever been useful.

The bank was the part I dreaded, and I was not even the one going down it.

Bravo took that job off somebody who was too frightened to say no, and stood at the top of it, and then said — out loud, to nobody in particular — "I'm scared of this bit."

I went completely still.

"You are?"

"Feel it in my feet," said Bravo. "Right, then." One breath. One small step sideways, onto the part that looked solid.

I had never once heard Bravo say that. Not once, in all the years of easy! and off we go. And the strange thing — the thing I am still turning over — is that I got three steps down that bank myself, following, before I noticed I was on it.

I do not think I would have moved at all if Bravo had said easy.

Later I went up the long bend with Newby, who has never been above the third rung of a ladder in an entire life, and held the bottom of it while Newby did the four tall posts one rung at a time with a report from every single rung. It took eleven minutes. I did not mind. I have been the one who needs eleven minutes.

And at half past five, when the path was lit and everybody else was standing about being pleased, Wobbly said "what if one of them goes out" and got sent to check the lot, far end back.

I went along for the dark bits. Obviously I went along for the dark bits.

We found four things wrong. One leaning on a dry twig. One close enough to scorch the hedge. Two standing on soft ground that would have tipped the first time a foot went past.

I walked the hedge tunnel on the way to Winky's without holding on to anything.

I want that written down, because I do not expect it to happen again soon. Thirty feet of the worst dark in Candyfloss Land, lit from the ground up out of the roots, so you could see your own feet the entire way. Cloudy thought of that. Cloudy, who was staring out of a barn door thinking about boats.

At the party I sat where I could see the door, which is where I always sit. Somebody put a blanket round me. Beamy read the envelope out and my four places were in it, named as places, as though they were a proper piece of work and not a list of things I am afraid of.

Then Rainbow stood up and said the worried ones had checked twice and the frightened ones had gone anyway, and said it as though it were an ordinary fact about a working day.

I did not cry. I would like that written down too.