Poppy’s Blanket Went to the Bear

Poppy was a small fox, and she had a blanket. It had been blue once, and it went everywhere she went: to breakfast, down to the stream, under the table when there were visitors. One corner of it had been chewed to a point when Poppy was very small and didn’t know better. That corner was called the Ear.

At night, when Poppy couldn’t sleep, she held the Ear close and told it what tomorrow would be.

“Tomorrow is washday,” she told it one night. “You’re going on the line, because you fell in the soup. The West Wind will take you up and shake you about, and then you’ll come back folded. Try not to get dizzy.”

The Ear didn’t answer. It never did. But Poppy was sure it was listening, and that is all anybody needs from an Ear.

* * *

The foxes lived in a wood with one wide path through it, and on washday everyone along the path hung their washing out. The badgers hung out aprons. The hedgehogs hung out a great many very small socks. Poppy’s family hung out shirts and tea towels and one blue blanket with a corner like an ear.

At ten o’clock the West Wind came down the path.

The West Wind lifted everything off every line in the wood at once. Up it all went, over the treetops, sheets flapping and socks turning somersaults. The West Wind shook each thing out until the mud and the jam and the soup flew off and blew away into the next valley. Then, in the afternoon, it all came floating down again, folded, onto the right doorsteps.

Nearly always. Once a badger got a hedgehog’s sock and wore it on one claw for a week before anybody noticed.

Poppy sat on the doorstep all afternoon to wait. The shirts came down. The tea towels came down. Then something came down that was the size of a meadow.

It landed on the doorstep, and on the step below, and on the path, and on Dad, who had come out to see. It was folded very neatly into a square as big as the kitchen floor, and it smelled of honey and old books.

“That’s not my blanket,” said Poppy.

“No,” said Dad, from underneath it.

When they had got Dad out, they all stood and looked at it. There was only one creature in the wood who needed a blanket that size, and only one who read that many books, and they were the same bear.

“It’s Old Barnaby’s,” said Dad. “He lives in the cave at the top of the path. So I expect Barnaby has got yours.”

“Can we go and get it?”

“It’s nearly suppertime, and it’s a long way up,” said Dad. “We’ll go first thing in the morning. Try this one for a night. It might be nice.”

And it was nice, for everyone except Poppy. After supper they unfolded it in the front room, and it went from wall to wall. Mom said it was too good to waste on a floor, so they made a tent of it. The front flap kept falling down, so Mom propped it up with the big wooden soup spoon. Mom and Dad and Poppy and her two little brothers all got in, and there was room left over for a cousin or two.

Her brothers were asleep in a minute. Mom was asleep in two. Dad read a story to nobody, and then he was asleep as well.

Poppy was not asleep.

She felt for the Ear. She found a corner, but it was square. She tried another corner. It was square too. The third one was the squarest of all. A blanket with nothing but square corners has no Ear anywhere.

She held one of them up anyway and told it what tomorrow would be. But it smelled of honey and old books, and it seemed to be listening for somebody else.

You might think a blanket big enough for a whole family must be better than a small one with a chewed corner. It isn’t, if the small one is yours.

So Poppy crawled out under the spoon and woke Dad.

* * *

Dad did not grumble. He is a patient fox, and he has been woken before. He lit the lantern. Then he carried the two little brothers to their own beds, one under each arm, and tucked Mom up on the sofa without waking her. They folded Barnaby’s blanket as small as it would go, which was not very small, and put it in the wheelbarrow.

Then they went up the path, with the lantern hung on the front of the wheelbarrow.

Dad knew every turn of it. Left at the split stone. Over the plank bridge, which goes clonk in the middle. Past the badgers’ round window, with a lamp still lit in it. Then up, and round, and up again, where the path got steep and the moon came out to help with the last bit. Poppy walked for some of the way and rode on top of the blanket for the rest.

“Why does Barnaby live all on his own?” she said.

“He didn’t always,” said Dad. “He had cubs. They’re grown up now, and they’ve gone over the hills to live. They write to him. The badgers say his lamp has been lit all night, every night, since autumn came. He doesn’t sleep well.”

When they got to the cave, the lamp was out.

Dad turned the lantern low and they looked in. The cave was full of books, in piles and on shelves and holding up one leg of the table. And in the middle of it all, on a heap of moss, Old Barnaby was fast asleep.

He was very big. He was so big that Poppy’s blanket only covered his nose. He had it tucked right up under his chin, the way she did. And held between two of his claws, very carefully, as if it might mind, was the Ear.

Poppy put out a paw to take it, and then she didn’t.

“It smells of me,” she said in a whisper.

“Of someone small,” said Dad. “I expect his cubs used to smell like that.”

They sat down at the mouth of the cave to think what to do. Dad thought with his chin on his paws. Poppy thought out loud, but quietly.

“I could leave it here,” she said. Then she thought about her own bed with no Ear in it, and she knew she couldn’t.

“I could give him half,” she said.

“Which half gets the Ear?” said Dad.

Poppy didn’t know. She was still working it out when Barnaby opened his eyes. He sat up and saw two foxes and a lantern, and then he saw what he was holding, and his ears went pink.

“Oh dear,” said Barnaby. “It came down on my step this afternoon. I only meant to fold it properly. And then I thought I’d just see what it was like.” He held it out, with the Ear between two claws. “I haven’t slept like that since autumn. I’m sorry. Here.”

Poppy took her blanket and held the Ear under her chin. It was the right Ear. It smelled of her, and a little of honey.

She found she liked the honey.

“We could do it again,” she said. “Every washday. The West Wind could bring mine to you and yours to us. Then in the evening Dad and I would come up with the lantern and swap back. Mine would smell of you a bit, and yours would smell of us.”

“It does already,” said Dad. “We all slept in it.”

Barnaby put his nose into his own blanket. It smelled of foxes, a whole family of them, and a little of soup.

“You slept in it?” he said.

“We made a tent,” said Poppy. “With a spoon.”

Old Barnaby laughed, a big slow laugh that filled up the cave. “I’ve missed having small ones about,” he said. “I would like that very much.”

He found a pen and some paper, of which he had plenty, and wrote in letters as round as plates:

DEAR WEST WIND. PLEASE MIX UP THE LITTLE BLUE BLANKET AND THE ENORMOUS ONE AGAIN. THANK YOU. FROM POPPY AND BARNABY.

Dad said he would peg it to the line on washday, where it couldn’t be missed. The West Wind read the note, and every washday after that, the West Wind got it wrong on purpose.

* * *

They tipped Barnaby’s blanket out onto his moss, and he pulled it right up to his nose. Then Poppy rode home in the empty wheelbarrow with her own blanket round her, and Dad pushed, and he did not miss a single turn.

In bed she held the Ear close and told it what tomorrow would be.

“Tomorrow I’m going to tell everyone about Barnaby,” she said. “And on washday you’re going to visit him. He’s very big, but he holds things carefully. You’ll like him. He smells of honey.”

Then Poppy slept until morning, with her own blanket and the Ear tucked under her chin. And at the top of the wide path, under a blanket the size of a meadow that smelled of foxes and a little of soup, Old Barnaby slept all night too, for the first time since autumn.