A High Warm Place for Kettle
Kettle was a dragon about the size of a cat. She had green scales, two small round horns, and wings that were very good for getting onto barn roofs and not much good for anything higher. When she hiccuped, which she did whenever she was surprised or dizzy or had eaten her supper too fast, she puffed out a smoke ring. It was always a perfect O. She was rather proud of that.
Grown dragons sleep on the high mountain at the top of the valley. They curl on rocks warmed by their own fire, as close to the stars as they can get, and every dragon knows the rule for a good bed: high and warm and near the stars.
Kettle was too young to fly as far as the mountain. So up to now she had slept in the hayloft at Puddle End Farm, which was warm but not at all high, and she woke every morning with straw in her ears.
Tonight she decided that a dragon her size could find a high warm place of her own. Not the mountain. The mountain could wait until her wings grew. Just somewhere, for tonight.
So when the stars came out over the valley, and the lamps went out in the farmhouses, Kettle climbed out of the hayloft and went looking.
The nearest high place was the roof of the very barn she had just climbed out of. On top of it stood a weathervane, a tin ship with its bowsprit pointing west. Kettle flapped up and settled on its deck.
“High and warm and near the stars,” she said, and tucked her nose under her wing.
It was certainly high. It was a good deal nearer the stars than the hayloft. It was not warm, but Kettle thought she could fix that by breathing on it.
Then the breeze came round. The ship turned to face north, and Kettle turned with it. The breeze changed its mind, and the ship swung east. Then it went back. Then it went all the way round, and round again, faster, until the stars went past Kettle in stripes.
When the breeze dropped at last, Kettle was so dizzy that she hiccuped. Out came a smoke ring. She hiccuped again, and out came another. By the time she had finished, seven perfect Os were sailing away over the farm in a row. The sky above the barn said oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
“Not here,” said Kettle, and one more small O came out after the others, for good measure.
She flew down the hill much more slowly than she had flown up the barn. At the bottom of the hill was the millpond, and lying in the middle of the millpond was the moon. It was round and white and perfectly still, and it looked as flat and comfortable as a dinner plate.
Now, you and I know that the moon does not lie about in millponds. Kettle knew it too, mostly. But she was very sleepy by now, and nothing in the world is nearer the stars than the moon.
She came down on it as gently as she could.
“High and warm and near the—”
Splash.
It was only the moon’s reflection, of course, and Kettle went straight through it up to her horns. She bobbed back up like a cork, because dragons are full of warm air, and paddled to the bank with bits of moon wobbling all around her. When she climbed out and looked back, the moon had put itself together again as if nothing had happened.
A wet cat is a sorry thing. A wet dragon is a different matter, because a dragon is warm all the way through. Kettle sat on the bank and began to steam. She steamed from her ears and her elbows and the end of her tail. She steamed like a teapot, which, with a name like hers, was only fair.
She flew back up the hill with steam pouring off her like a long white scarf. Behind Puddle End Farm the farmer had left his washing out on the line: four shirts, two sheets and more socks than seemed reasonable for one man. Kettle flew along the line from one end to the other, and as she passed, the washing dried in the dark. In the morning the farmer found it all warm and dry and smelling a little of toast, and he never did work out why.
By now Kettle’s wings were going flap, and then nothing, and then flap. She was nearly dry and very nearly asleep in the air. She looked about for anywhere at all that was high, and down in the town she saw the clock tower. Near the very top of it was one lit window.
She landed on the sill with her eyes already shut.
“High and warm and near the stars,” she said, very slowly.
The window opened, and an old man looked out at her.
“High, yes,” he said. “Near the stars, yes. Warm, I’m sorry to say, no. But you’d better come in.”
Inside was a small round room full of brass wheels and long chains. One whole wall was the back of the great clock face, which was made of thick milky glass, so the hands showed through it as two long shadows. There was a wooden chair, a stool and a lamp. The old man sat back down in the chair with his breath coming out white and put his feet up on the stool. They were very fat feet, because they were wearing three pairs of socks.
“I’m Mr. Hobb,” he said. “I keep the clock.”
“Why aren’t you in bed?” said Kettle.
“Somebody has to wind the clock at midnight,” said Mr. Hobb, “and again at three, or the whole town gets up at the wrong time. So I sit up. It’s cold up here, but the cold keeps me awake, and that’s the one good thing about it.” He wiggled his toes inside the socks. “I think those are my toes. I haven’t been able to feel them since the first frost.”
Kettle looked at his feet. She could not sleep on a weathervane, and she could not sleep on the moon, and she could not fly to the mountain. But she knew one thing for certain. A dragon is warm all the way through.
So she climbed down off the sill, walked across the floor and curled herself round Mr. Hobb’s feet, nose to tail.
First his toes got warm. Then the stool got warm, and then the floor. The frost on the window ran down the glass in little drops. The brass wheels stopped being cold to touch. Soon the whole tower was as warm as a kitchen on baking day. Mr. Hobb took off one pair of socks. After a while he took off another.
“Well,” he said. “I’ve sat up in this tower for thirty winters, and it has never once been warm. I’m very glad you came.”
“So am I,” said Kettle, into his ankle.
At midnight Mr. Hobb got up, took hold of the big iron crank and wound the clock. It took forty turns. Kettle watched the crank go round and round, and it put her in mind of the weathervane, and she hiccuped. One perfect O floated up into the warm air.
Mr. Hobb caught it on his finger. He opened a little door in the clock face, reached out into the night, and hung the smoke ring on the minute hand.
“There,” he said. “Now you can watch the hours go round.”
Then he sat down again and gave an enormous yawn. “Here’s the trouble,” he said. “Now I’m warm, I’ll fall asleep, and I’ll sleep straight through three o’clock.”
“I’ll wake you,” said Kettle.
“How?”
Kettle thought hard about the tin ship going round and round. Hic. One O drifted up and bobbed gently between them.
“Like that,” she said.
So Mr. Hobb dozed in his chair, and Kettle dozed round his feet with one eye open. Through the milky glass she could see the shadow of the minute hand, with the round shadow of the smoke ring riding on it. It went round once. It went round twice. It went round three times. Then Kettle thought about the tin ship, and hiccuped one single O, and it floated across and settled on the end of Mr. Hobb’s nose.
He opened his eyes and looked at it, a little cross-eyed.
“Three o’clock?” he said.
“Three o’clock,” said Kettle.
He wound the clock, forty turns. Then he sat back down and put his feet up, and Kettle curled round them again, and they both went to sleep at the top of the tower with the window full of stars.
And that is how the town clock came to have a dragon in it. The tower has been warm ever since. Every night Kettle wakes Mr. Hobb for the windings with one smoke ring each, and she has never again woken up with straw in her ears. She has found her high warm place near the stars.
The first smoke ring is still on the minute hand. On a clear night you can see it from the market square, going round once an hour.
And Mr. Hobb wears only one pair of socks.