Zippy's Day

I could not wait, so I did not.

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

It took much longer than I 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 ones, set into the posts, one every few paces, the entire way. I started counting them and gave up somewhere past the orchard, which for me is not very far past the beginning.

So I ran back with two facts in me and no way at all of getting them out.

Fizzy was sitting in the road halfway up the lane with a lantern hinge that would not go, fizzing gently.

"It's longer than everyone thinks," I 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 and —"

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

I hate being told that. I have been told that my entire life and it always means you are being too much.

Except this time it did not mean that. Fizzy wanted the information and could not get it out of me at the speed I was delivering it. So I hummed a whole song first, all the way to the end, which is what I do instead of bursting, and then I said it again slowly, and Fizzy went to find somebody with a pencil.

Everything that happened afterwards — Tidy's plan, the hanging from the far end back, the whole shape of the day — started with somebody writing down that the path was longer than we thought.

It did not start with me running. It started with me saying it slowly.

Later I was in the queue for the one ladder, which by mid-afternoon was the worst place in Candyfloss Land, and I arrived at it vibrating and asked whether it was even moving.

"It is," said Mello. "Breathe in slow. Breathe out slower."

So I did, and then I hummed most of a song, and I stayed in that queue for twenty minutes without once making it anybody else's problem, which I would like noted.

I have three clear memories of the party and they are all loud.

Jitters singing the welcome, which was note-perfect, twice, and then again because everybody shouted for it. I was the one doing most of the shouting.

Beamy on the bucket with the envelope, going through the whole day name by name, and taking eleven minutes about it — eleven minutes, standing still, and I did not interrupt once, and I want that written down somewhere permanent.

And the Wheel at the end. All of us up the lit lane in the dark and Rainbow setting the cloud on, and the whole thing starting to turn for the first time since spring. I got there first. Obviously I got there first. Then I had to stand and wait for fifty-four fluffs to catch up, which took a while, and I watched them come up the lane in twos and threes with their lanterns behind them, and I was not bored for a second of it.