The Comet and the Corner Peg

Wash day at the meadow well started before breakfast and finished when the Well Keeper said so. This wash day she had said it would finish before the dew, with every sheet in off the line, dry, and folded on the pile.

It had not been a good day for finishing things. Three times since noon somebody had come up the grass and rung the well bell twice, which is how the valley asks for Maren. Three times Maren had not come. And three times the somebody had stood about by the well, asking the Well Keeper where Maren might be. Each time she wrung out a sheet in front of them and said she didn’t know, and she wasn’t Maren, and would they mind the basket.

So by the time the light went yellow she still had four sheets on the long line, dry at the top and damp at the hems. They needed turning. Turning a sheet means every peg off and every peg back on, hems to the top, so the damp end gets its share of the wind. The Well Keeper did it the way she did everything to a sheet, which was corner first.

There is one corner on every sheet that the wind is after. It is the one at the windward end, and if the wind gets under it, the whole sheet goes off to see the valley. Peg that corner first and the sheet can flap all it likes. The Well Keeper had never once chased a sheet across the meadow. She put that down to the corner, and to the peg she always used on it.

It was the grey one, and the oldest peg she had. One winter it had split down the middle, and she had bound it up with blue lamp-wick thread, because lamp-wick thread was what was in her pocket. That was eleven years ago. Since then it had held the windward corner of the first sheet through every wash day and every wind, and it had never let a sheet go. She gave it about as much thought as she gave her own thumb.

She was on the second sheet, with three pegs in her mouth, when the Wandering Comet came along the edge of the meadow with the tray.

The Comet was on the way to the pond, as the Comet was most evenings, in the travelling coat, holding the tray of card packs level like a full bowl. As a rule the Comet did not stop at the well. Tonight the Comet stopped, and looked at the line, and then looked for a long time at one peg on it.

“That one,” said the Comet.

The Well Keeper took the pegs out of her mouth. “That’s a peg.”

“Yes. The grey one, with the thread.” The Comet set the tray down on the well wall with great care. “The wind came round twice while I was at the gate. The sheet tried to go both times. That peg didn’t move. How long has it held that corner?”

“Eleven years,” said the Well Keeper. She had never counted before. It came out as eleven.

“And never let one go.”

“Not once.”

“I’d like it,” said the Comet. “I’ll pay in stardust. More than a peg is worth. Less than that peg is worth, probably, but you’d have to tell me, and I don’t think you know.”

“It isn’t for sale.”

“No,” said the Comet, as if that were the right answer. “Things that work like that seldom are. Then I’ll play you a hand for it.”

“I’ve got four sheets and the dew coming.”

“I’m in no hurry.”

“I am,” said the Well Keeper.

It should be said that the Comet does not wheedle, and does not ask twice. The Comet states the terms and then waits. The Comet waited now, beside the tray, looking at the peg with every sign of being able to wait all night. The Well Keeper looked at the sky. She looked at the hems. She looked at the Comet, who had not moved.

“One hand,” she said. “My terms. If you win, you take the peg, once the sheets are in. If I win, you take the sheets in. And you fold them.”

The Comet considered this. “Properly?”

“Properly.”

“Agreed. I fold extremely well.”

“We’ll see,” said the Well Keeper, and put the pegs back in her mouth.

* * *

They played on the upturned laundry basket, because it was there. The Well Keeper took the last wet pillowcase out of the tub and pegged it over the side of the basket for a windbreak, so the cards would not get to the pond before the Comet did. Her own deck lived in the peg bag, where most things lived that she used every day. The cards were soft at the corners and smelt faintly of soap.

The Comet sat very straight on the well wall, took a deck from the tray, looked at it, put it back, and took another.

“They’re the same,” said the Well Keeper.

“They are not,” said the Comet, and did not explain.

That was when Poppy came up the grass with two buckets, to fetch water for tomorrow’s dough. She saw the basket and the board and the Comet, and she set both buckets down without filling either.

“What’s the stake?” said Poppy.

“A peg,” said the Well Keeper, from the line.

“Which peg?”

“Grey one. Corner.”

Poppy looked at the grey peg, and then at the Comet. Then she took a stub of chalk out of her apron and drew two columns on the side of a bucket.

“Nobody asked you to keep score,” said the Well Keeper.

“Somebody has to,” said Poppy. “You’ll both remember it wrong.”

Morning went quickly, mostly because the Well Keeper did. She laid a Sunbeam Squire in front of the lantern at the end of her row, the one nearest the washing line, and went straight back to the second sheet. On the board the little Squire stood in its own square of sunshine with its chin up, which was cheering to see with the real light going.

“You played that without looking at it,” said the Comet.

“I looked at it on the way past.”

“That’s hurrying.”

“That’s wash day. Your turn.”

She did not once stop pegging to play. She stopped playing to peg, which the Comet said was not the same thing, and Poppy said was worse.

The Comet took each turn the way the Comet did everything, turning a card over once more before laying it down. A Rain Cloud came up over the Well Keeper’s middle lantern and began, very politely, to rain on it.

“Keep that off my sheets,” said the Well Keeper.

“It stays on the board,” said the Comet. “It is a very well-mannered cloud.”

In the Afternoon round the Rain Cloud put out her middle lantern. She could have saved it. Poppy could see she could have saved it, and so could the Comet, and so could the Well Keeper, who had the sunlight for it in her hand. She spent it instead on a Lantern Page for the end lantern, the one by the line, which nobody was even attacking yet. Then she went to turn the third sheet.

Poppy made a hard white mark on the bucket.

“That’s a mistake,” said Poppy. “I’m writing it down as a mistake.”

“It was going anyway,” said the Well Keeper, round a peg.

“It was not going. You let it go. That isn’t a hand, that’s housework.”

“It wasn’t a mistake,” said the Comet. “She meant it. I’d have liked it better as a mistake.”

“Two against one,” said Poppy. “I’ll ring for Maren. She’ll tell you.”

“She won’t come,” said the Well Keeper. “She hasn’t come all day.”

By Night the meadow had gone blue. Down the hill the lamps were coming on one post at a time, which meant Wick was out lighting them and checking every cover twice. The Well Keeper had turned the fourth sheet and come back to the basket for good, and she still had not played the card she had been holding since the deal. Poppy had seen it. Poppy had said “Play the Gust” four times, and “Why won’t she play the Gust?” twice, to the Comet.

“If it were me,” said Poppy, “I’d have played that Gust in the Morning and had done with it.”

“If it were you,” said the Comet, “I’d have been waiting for that.”

Poppy opened her mouth, and shut it, and looked like someone who was going to want a game later.

Then the Comet laid the Moonlit Whale. It rose over the board, the size of a loaf and pale as milk, and swam with enormous dignity towards the lantern at the end of the Well Keeper’s row.

“Corner first,” said the Well Keeper, and played the Kind Gust.

It was a very kind gust. It went under the Whale like a hand under a sheet, lifted it off the board and over the side of the basket, and the Whale went up into the Comet’s sky as one small star. The pillowcase gave a single flap. When the lanterns were counted, the Well Keeper had one more than the Comet. It was the one at the end of her row.

Poppy looked at her bucket for a while. Then she rubbed out the mistake with her thumb.

“Corner first,” she said, as if it were something she had stepped in.

The Well Keeper put her palm flat on the grass. It was just beginning to go damp.

“Sheets,” she said.

* * *

There is taking in, and there is folding, and the Comet held them to be different things. Taking in can be done quickly. Folding cannot. So the Comet took the four sheets off the line faster than anyone would have believed, and dropped every peg in the peg bag but one. The grey peg came off last. The Comet held it a moment, turned it to see the thread, and gave it back to the Well Keeper without a word.

Then, beside the well, the Comet folded. The dew was settling on the grass. The Well Keeper checked, and there was not a drop of it on a single sheet.

Each sheet went into thirds, exactly, and then into thirds again. Each corner was squared against the brass box on the well post before it was allowed onto the pile. Poppy filled her buckets at last and stood holding them, watching, with water slopping onto her boots. The Well Keeper had meant to go in and put the kettle on. She did not go. They were the best-folded sheets the meadow well had ever seen, and she had been seeing sheets at that well for a very long time.

Somewhere in the third sheet, Wick came along the path below with his notebook, on his way to the next lamp. He called up that Maren had been on the observatory roof since noon with the apprentice, getting a star fleck out of the gutter, and had not heard the bell once. The Well Keeper said that was all right, then, and went on watching. Wick watched too, for longer than he meant to. Then he looked at the time, wrote it down, and hurried on.

When the last one lay on the pile, square as a loaf tin, she went and put the kettle on after all. She brought the Comet a cup, because anyone who folds like that has earned one, and another for Poppy, because Poppy was still standing there with her buckets.

The Comet drank the tea, picked up the tray, and looked once more at the peg in the Well Keeper’s hand.

“Then I’ll come back when it’s older,” said the Comet, entirely content.

“Tell me first,” said the Well Keeper. “I’ll want the washing in.”

* * *

So now, on windy wash days, the Wandering Comet sometimes sits by the meadow well in no hurry at all, watching one peg hold one corner. The Well Keeper puts the kettle on. She still pegs the first sheet corner first, with the grey peg and its blue thread, the same as ever. But she looks at it now as she puts it on. And when the wind comes round and the sheet tries, and the peg holds, she is pleased with it, and a little proud, and she doesn’t mind who sees.

It has still never let a sheet go. And she has no intention of letting it go either.