Mabel Returns the Sun’s Alarm Clock

At the Inn at the Edge of Evening, where the sun stops for the night, there lived a girl called Mabel who read the instructions. She read all of them, all the way to the end, including the small print.

She read the bottom of the porridge tin, which said, Stir clockwise, or it sulks. She read the label in her winter coat, which said, Do not wash with a cloud.

Every evening at half past six the sun arrived, very large and very warm and already yawning. It had its supper by the fire and went to bed in the Big Room, in yellow pyjamas. At two in the morning it got up again, still mostly asleep, and padded off to its hammock at the Edge of Morning for one last little sleep.

The sun always forgot something. Mabel’s dad kept a box behind the desk marked THINGS THE SUN LEFT. There was a slipper in it, and a sunhat, and a pair of reading glasses that were still warm. Mabel’s mom did the washing, and every washday she held up one sock and said, “There goes another one to the Sea of Odd Socks.”

On the door of the Big Room hung a card of instructions. Everybody read the first line: Towels, the extra-large ones. Only Mabel had read the last line, in very small print: If the sun forgets its alarm clock, someone must take it to the Edge of Morning before the sun is due to wake. The way is on the back.

* * *

One Thursday night Mabel woke at a quarter past two, because her room had gone a little cooler, the way it did when the sun had left. The door of the Big Room stood open and the bed was empty. On the bedside table, ticking away to itself, sat the sun’s alarm clock.

It was a round brass clock as big as a cake tin, and the hand that said when to ring was pointing at six.

Mabel thought about waking Mom and Dad. But the card said someone, and Mabel was someone, and she was the only someone who had read it. So she put on her dressing gown and her boots, tucked the clock under her arm, and turned the card over.

The back said three things. Climb the Upside-Down Hill. Cross the Sea of Odd Socks. Go through the town where every day is Tuesday. Under each one, in small print, was a rule.

Outside, there was a lamp lit in every window in the valley, for anybody walking.

The Upside-Down Hill is only upside down on Thursdays, and this was a Thursday. Its top was in a hollow at the bottom, and its bottom ran all round the edge, like the rim of a bowl. A goat stood at the rim, trying to climb up and getting nowhere, because there was no up to climb. The small print said: On Thursdays, walk down.

So Mabel walked down. She walked down and down, and the further down she went, the higher up she got, until she was standing on the very top of the Hill with the stars all round her.

“How did you do that?” said the goat.

“It says so in the instructions,” said Mabel, and it always did. She called the rule back up to the goat, and soon the goat came trotting down to the top as well, looking very pleased.

* * *

On the far side of the Hill lay the Sea of Odd Socks, where every sock that has ever gone missing in the wash ends up. It rolled in soft, slow waves of stripes and spots and darned heels.

On the shore, beside a rack of umbrellas, sat a walrus called Mr. Fold.

Mr. Fold gave very long directions. He told Mabel to bear left at the large argyle, but not the second large argyle, which was further out and rather more purple. He told her to keep the bed socks on her right and to mind the knee socks, which were slow. He told her about a sock with a pompom he had once seen in a storm. Most people stop listening to Mr. Fold about halfway. Mabel listened to the end, because the end is where the useful part usually is.

“And when you get to the Tuesday town,” said Mr. Fold, at the very end, “ask for Big Ida.”

The small print on the card said: Travel only standing on a matching pair. This was hard, because it is the Sea of Odd Socks. There were red ones and blue ones and one with a reindeer on it, and not one had a partner. Then, a little way out, lying side by side, Mabel saw two yellow socks with small blue moons on them.

They were hers. One had gone in the wash in April, and the other in June.

Mr. Fold took his spectacles off and put them on again. “A pair,” he said. “On this sea. I’ve not seen that in a hundred years.”

He lent her his biggest umbrella, a green one. “Don’t trouble to bring it back,” he said. “Umbrellas always come back to me. It’s socks that don’t.”

So Mabel stood with one boot on each yellow sock and held up the green umbrella, and the night breeze filled it like a sail. Away she bobbed, past the argyles and the bed socks and the slow knee socks, exactly as Mr. Fold had said. On the far shore she put the socks in her pocket.

* * *

The town where every day is Tuesday had a sign on its gate: NO HURRYING. HURRYING IS FOR FRIDAYS. The small print on Mabel’s card said the same.

It was a long town, one street that went on and on. The clock under Mabel’s arm said twenty to six. Mabel walked as slowly as she could bear, and still the street went on.

Halfway along, on the town hall steps, sat a giant in a cardigan, knitting something very large and orange.

“Excuse me,” said Mabel. “Are you Big Ida?”

“I am,” said Big Ida. “This is a tea cosy for the clock tower. It gets cold up there.”

Mabel explained about the sun and the clock and six o’clock. Big Ida listened to all of it, and put the knitting down.

“I can’t hurry,” said Big Ida. “I never have. But I can walk.”

Big Ida lifted Mabel very gently into the cardigan pocket, which was warm and had a peppermint in it, and began to walk. It was the slowest walk in the world. But a giant’s legs are as long as a street, so slowly was fast. One step went over the bakery. One step went over the school. One step went over the last house in town, and there was the Edge of Morning.

“Thank you,” said Mabel, climbing out.

“Any Tuesday,” said Big Ida.

* * *

The Edge of Morning was a strip of pale grass where the stars were getting fewer. Between two tall posts hung a hammock, and in the hammock, in yellow pyjamas, lay the sun, snoring warmly.

The clock said one minute to six.

Mabel set it on the little stool by the hammock. The minute hand clicked. The clock cleared its throat.

“Ahem,” it said.

The sun snored.

“Ahem,” said the clock, a little louder.

The sun rolled over and pulled up its blanket.

“AHEM,” said the clock, as loudly as a clock can while staying polite.

The sun opened one eye, then the other, and sat up so fast the hammock swung. “Mabel? How did you know I’d forgotten it?”

“It says so in the instructions,” said Mabel, and it always did.

“I’d have slept till next week,” said the sun. “Thank you.”

Then the sun stood up and stretched, and rose, and it was morning, right on time.

“Hop on,” said the sun, and it laid down its very first beam of light like a long golden slide, all the way home. Mabel slid over Big Ida, who waved. She slid over Mr. Fold, who was hanging a green umbrella back on his rack. She slid over the goat, having breakfast on the top of the Hill. And she landed in her own bed with a soft bump.

The sun came down the beam after her and sat on the end of her bed for one minute to tuck her in. A sun that is on time can spare a minute. Then it went back up the beam to get on with the day.

So when Mom knocked a moment later, Mabel was under the covers, and the bed was warmer than three hot-water bottles, because the sun had been sitting on it.

“Morning, love,” said Mom. Then she saw the dressing gown over the chair, with two yellow socks hanging out of the pocket. “Your moon socks! Both of them! Where did you find them?”

“On the sea,” said Mabel. “They’d found each other.”

That evening the sun arrived at half past six, very large and very warm and already yawning, with its alarm clock tied round its middle on a string. Before bed, it added one more line to the bottom of the card on the door, in the smallest print of all: Thank you, Mabel.

Nobody else has read it. But Mabel has. She always reads to the end.