Winky's Day

I woke before the sun, the way I always do.

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

I 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 in the way you get used to a thing you have decided not to mention.

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

And I was off the step and out of the gate before the plan was even finished, which is how my plans usually go. A cloud melts in sunlight — 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 mine.

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

Tipsy came out into the garden at about seven, so softly the dew stayed where it was.

"Winky. How many of them said yes?"

"All of them!"

"How many of them did you ask?"

I stopped bouncing.

The whoosh was still going — that big fizzy up-and-up feeling that arrives before the thinking does and does not wait for it. So I shook it out. Both arms, both feet, the very tips of all that fluff, for five whole seconds, and then froze, still as a statue, and took one big breath in and one long breath out.

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

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

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

So I went round again, slower, and I want to write down what I found, because I did not expect any of it.

Handy's arms were shaking at eleven in the morning and Handy had not mentioned it to a living soul. Somebody had taken the bank job at half past seven because everybody was looking, and had said oh, quietly, and only Hushy heard it. Lonny had been standing at the edge of my yard since eight o'clock waiting to be asked for something.

None of that was in my map. My map had hooks on it.

Then there was the rope, at about a quarter to ten, and I did not come out of that one well either.

Huffy said three times that it was frayed and the yard told Huffy not to spoil the day — and I did not say that, but I did not say anything else either, and I was standing right there. Then Huffy held the worn part out without a word and we all came and looked at it.

"Oh," I said.

Nine lanterns. Over the bridge. Onto the stones. That is what my "oh" was worth.

At ten to two Puzzly asked what time the sun actually went down and it turned out to be twenty past six, not seven, and we all had four hours instead of nine, and after that the day was mostly running.

At four o'clock the whole land came apart at once. I did not fix that. Tipsy did, by walking into the middle and standing still until everybody stopped.

And at half past four Peeky said there was a lantern missing, twice, because the first time nobody heard it.

Rainbow came down off the hill at twenty past six with a cloud in both arms, and stopped at the top of the bend, and stood there for a very long time.

We were all at the gate. And the first thing he did — before hello, before anything — was open his mouth to ask who needed what.

Tipsy got there first. "Put the cloud down. Winky's got a table for it."

He put it down, and then his arms started shaking, and he could not get a single word out.

I have known Rainbow my whole life and I have never once seen that. Mopsy sat down on the wall next to him, and after a while asked which colour it was today, which is his own question, and he said grey. Worn out. Carried alone since the spring and never said, because he did not want anybody worrying.

"Every colour belongs," I said, from the gate, and it did not come out steadily at all.

Then Beamy got up on my bucket with an envelope and read out the whole day, every name, for eleven minutes.

And somewhere around the fourth minute I started doing a sum I did not want to do.

Mossy found a lantern in the long grass by my gate at ten to six in the morning, with a flattened trail behind it much too long to have been made by one. Zenny heard something go over at Winky's, before the birds, and remembered the direction. Muddle went the wrong way to the shed and found the box at the bottom of the bank with twenty-two of them spilled in the ditch.

By my gate. Before the birds. At about twenty past five.

I was the only fluff in Candyfloss Land who was awake and moving at twenty past five that morning, and I went out of that gate so fast that I have no memory of the step at all.

I did that. My foot did that.

The frayed rope, the lost box, the oil in the bank, the nine split seams, Muddle's knees, Boingy in the nettles, Bravo on the bank, the whole afternoon of counting — every single bit of it came out of four seconds on my own doorstep that I did not even feel happen.

I did not say so. I am not entirely proud of not saying so, and I have decided I will tell Beamy tomorrow, and that today was not the night for it.