Ollie and the Goose-Feather Pillow
At the end of a lane there was a narrow house, only one room wide, and on clear nights the moon looked straight into its upstairs windows. In the smallest upstairs room slept a boy called Ollie. He slept with his feet poking out of the bottom of the blanket. However many times he was tucked in, out they came again, because Ollie said his feet liked to know what was going on.
Ollie’s pillow had been made by his grandma. She had stuffed it with feathers from a goose that once flew over the moon. “It only works when the moon can see it,” Grandma said when she gave it to him. “So mind how you sleep.”
He found out what she meant on the first clear night of spring. He went to sleep in the ordinary way, and he woke a little after midnight with nothing underneath him. His blanket had slid off onto the floor. His feet were pointing at the ceiling. He was floating above his bed in the moonlight, as light as a balloon, turning slowly round and round the way a balloon does when nobody is holding the string. Some time later he came down again, so gently that he was asleep before he touched the sheet.
That was once. Ollie had wanted to do it again every night since, and every night since, it had been cloudy. For seven weeks the sky over the lane was the colour of a dishcloth.
Then came a Thursday when the sky was clear from one side to the other. The moon came up round and white at the end of the lane, and Ollie went to bed early without being asked. Nobody in the narrow house had ever seen him do that before.
Thursday was washing day. Mom did the washing on Thursdays, and in the evening she put all the pillows back in their clean pillowcases. She did it in the dark, because she said she knew the house with her eyes shut. Mostly, she did.
Ollie got into bed. He lay down, closed his eyes, and waited to be light.
He was not light. He was exactly as heavy as a boy. And there was something under his ear like a potato.
He sat up and squashed the pillow. It was flat in the middle and lumpy in one corner, and it smelled of peppermint. Dad ate a peppermint every night before bed and always said he didn’t.
It was Dad’s pillow.
Ollie tried to sleep on it anyway. He tried it lumpy side up. He tried it lumpy side down. He tried it folded in half, which only made it lumpier. All the while the moon looked in at him, and he stayed flat on his mattress with his feet poking out.
So he got out of bed and tiptoed across the landing.
His mom and dad’s door was open a crack. Ollie pushed it a little wider. The moon was looking in at their window too, as bright as a lamp, and it showed him everything.
Mom was asleep on her side of the bed, curled up small, with the blanket over her ear.
Dad was not on his side of the bed. Dad was on the ceiling.
He was not quite touching it. He was floating a foot below it, on his back, in his striped pyjamas, with his reading glasses still on. Every time he breathed in, he rose an inch and bumped the ceiling softly with the end of his nose. Every time he breathed out, he sank an inch again. The goose-feather pillow had come up with him and was still tucked under his head. His book floated beside his ear, wide open. And his slippers had followed him up from the rug. They floated just below him, side by side, with their toes together, like two small boats waiting at a jetty.
Ollie climbed onto the end of the bed very carefully, so as not to jiggle Mom.
“Dad,” he said, in the smallest whisper he had. “Dad. You’re on the ceiling.”
Dad opened his eyes. He looked at the ceiling, which was very close. He looked down at Ollie, who was a long way off. He looked at his slippers. Then he grinned, and began to laugh without making a single sound. His shoulders shook, his glasses slid down his nose, and he bumped the ceiling three times in a row.
“Shh,” Ollie said. “Mom’s asleep.”
“Sorry,” Dad said. He wiped his eyes under his glasses. “I think I’ve got your pillow.”
“I’ve got yours,” Ollie said. “It’s got a potato in it.”
“That’s the best bit,” Dad said.
Now, you might think a very tall, very tired man who woke up against his own ceiling would want to come down at once. Not Dad. He picked his book out of the air and found his page. He was holding it upside down. He did not turn it round. He just went on reading, looking more comfortable than Ollie had seen him look all week.
But Ollie had come for his pillow. He stood on tiptoe at the end of the bed and reached up, and he could just catch the cuff of Dad’s pyjamas between his finger and thumb. He gave it a tug.
Dad did not come down.
Ollie went up.
His toes left the blanket, and then his heels. Then he was rising past the bedpost and the lampshade, holding on to Dad’s cuff, as light as a balloon all over again.
“Shh,” Dad said, beaming at him over the top of his book. “Mom’s asleep.”
For a long while the two of them drifted about the bedroom in the moonlight, whispering. They found that if you push off the ceiling with one finger, you go down slowly, and if you push off the lampshade, you go round. Ollie did somersaults. Dad tried one and only managed half, and spent some time upside down, reading his book the right way up for once. His slippers bobbed along after him wherever he went, toes together, waiting.
Then Dad drifted towards the wardrobe. Its door was open, because Mom had put the clean shirts away and not quite shut it. Dad was going in among the shirts, very slowly, feet first, when the bed creaked.
Mom sat up.
She looked at Ollie, up by the curtains. She looked at Dad, halfway into the wardrobe. She looked at the book, which was floating by itself in the middle of the room, because Dad had let go of it in surprise.
Ollie and Dad held very still, which is hard to do in mid-air.
Mom put her finger to her lips.
“Shh,” she said. “Mom’s asleep.”
Then she got out of bed. She did not fuss. She did not say one word about the time, or about school in the morning. She pulled the cord out of her dressing gown and reached up and tied one end round Dad’s ankle. She wound the cord twice round the bedpost and kept hold of the end. Then she reeled Dad gently out of the wardrobe, the way you bring in a kite.
“There,” Mom said. “Nobody goes in the wardrobe. I’ve just ironed those.”
She got back into bed with the end of the cord in her hand, and lay on her pillow, and watched them.
Ollie floated over to Dad and took his hand. Dad’s hand was big and warm, and his breath smelled of peppermint.
“You had a peppermint,” Ollie said.
“I did not,” Dad said.
“Dad,” Ollie said. “Have you ever done this before?”
“Once,” Dad said. “When I was no taller than you. Grandma made me a pillow too.”
“What happened?”
“I grew,” Dad said. “And then I forgot. I’ve been meaning to remember for about thirty years.” He squeezed Ollie’s hand. “I’m glad you came and got me.”
Ollie thought about the first time, turning round and round by himself with nobody holding the string.
“It’s better with two,” he said. “You can push off each other.”
The moon went on along the sky, the way it does, and the moonlight slid off the bed and across the rug. Ollie and Dad began to sink. They came down hand in hand, slower than snow, past the lampshade and past the bedpost, and they were both asleep before they touched the sheet.
Mom pulled the blanket over the two of them. Ollie’s feet poked out at the bottom, because they always do. Dad’s feet poked out too, because he was too tall to help it. The slippers settled on the rug with their toes together. The book came down on Dad’s chest, open, upside down. And Mom held on to the end of the cord all night anyway, just in case.
After that, Thursday was the night the pillows got muddled on purpose. Mom still puts them back in the dark, and she still gets them wrong, and nobody in the narrow house has ever asked her to turn the light on. On clear Thursdays the moon looks in at the upstairs window. It sees a tall man and a small boy turning slowly near the ceiling, holding hands. And it sees a mom in bed below them, with the end of a dressing-gown cord in her hand, saying, “Shh. Mom’s asleep.”
She isn’t, of course. She wouldn’t miss it for anything.
