The Hare Who Borrowed a Shell

Once there was a meadow with one long hedge, and every animal in the meadow had a front door in it. The mice had a small door with a big knocker. The rabbits had a round one. The oldest door of all was low and green, and it belonged to an old tortoise named Mrs. Tuck. The door with four doorbells belonged to Dash the hare.

Dash had four doorbells because he never waited for the first one. Dash was fast. He was so fast that he got places before his words did, so he said everything twice, to be sure one of them arrived. “Morning, morning!” he would say, and he’d be at the far end of the hedge before the second one caught up. On his birthday, the whole meadow hid behind the rabbits’ door to shout “Surprise!” Dash came up the path, ran straight past, and was three fields away before anyone had finished the S. It was a lovely party. Dash heard all about it the next week.

Now, you might think a hare like that would be the happiest animal in the meadow, and mostly he was. But there was one thing Dash wanted. Every evening the sun went down behind the long hedge, and every evening Dash saw it start. “Look, look!” he’d say, as the sky went gold. And by the time it went pink, he was at the pond, or the stream, or the top of the next hill, looking at something else. Dash had seen the beginning of every sunset there ever was. He had never once seen the end. He wanted to see one properly, just once, the whole way through.

So one evening he ran to the oldest door in the hedge and knocked on it so fast it sounded like rain.

Mrs. Tuck opened the door. This took a while. Mrs. Tuck had never once been late for anything, because she had never once been in a hurry.

“Hello, Dash,” she said.

“Mrs. Tuck, Mrs. Tuck! Can I borrow some slowness? Borrow some slowness?”

Mrs. Tuck thought about this. Thinking also took a while. “Slowness isn’t a cup of sugar,” she said. “But I can try to teach you.”

The first lesson was walking. “Put one foot down,” said Mrs. Tuck. “Then wait. Then put down the next one.”

Dash put one foot down. He waited as hard as he could, for almost no time at all. Then he did it again, and again, and again, faster and faster, until his feet got in a knot and he rolled down the path and into the hedge.

“Was that slow? Was that slow?” said the hedge.

“No,” said Mrs. Tuck.

The second lesson was eating. Mrs. Tuck set out a lettuce on a big flat cabbage leaf. “Chew every bite,” she said, “until you forget what you’re chewing.”

Dash chewed every bite very carefully and very quickly. He finished the lettuce. Then he finished the plate.

“Sorry, sorry,” he said, with his mouth full of plate.

Mrs. Tuck looked at the place where her plate had been. “That was my good leaf,” she said.

The third lesson was sitting. “Sit on this step,” said Mrs. Tuck, “and don’t move at all.”

So Dash sat still. He sat still on the step. He sat still on the gate. He sat still on the stone by the pond, and on the log, and on the fence post. Then he sat still on the step again. All of it took less time than it took Mrs. Tuck to blink.

“Did I do it? Did I do it?”

“You did it six times,” said Mrs. Tuck.

Just then the sky over the hedge began to turn gold. Dash’s ears went straight up. “It’s starting, it’s starting!” His back legs began to twitch. You could see the next field in his eyes already.

Mrs. Tuck looked at him for a long moment. Then she did something tortoises do not do.

You should know that a tortoise’s shell is her house and her coat and her umbrella, all at once. Mrs. Tuck had not taken hers off in ninety years. But she reached round to the side, undid something with a small click, and lifted the whole shell off like the lid of a pot. Underneath she was wearing a brown knitted cardigan with the buttons done up wrong. She had done them up wrong ninety years ago, and there had never been a reason to fix it.

“In you get,” she said.

Dash crouched down, and Mrs. Tuck lowered the shell over him, and his ears poked out of the front where her head usually went. It was very heavy. Dash could not have hurried under it if he’d tried, and he did try, a little.

And then the meadow slowed down.

That is the secret of a tortoise’s shell. When you are inside it, the whole world goes at a tortoise’s speed. A dandelion seed that had been drifting past came by like a little boat on a calm day. On a stem of grass by Dash’s nose, a drop of dew grew fat and round and let go, and Dash watched it fall the whole way down. Then another. Then another. A snail came along the edge of the step, and here is the part Dash told everyone about for weeks: the snail passed him.

“A snail passed me,” said Dash. “A snail passed me.”

And the sun went down, and Dash watched all of it.

First the gold sat on top of the hedge like a stripe of butter. Then, very slowly, the gold turned orange. The orange crept into the clouds and made them pink at the edges. The pond went pink too, and a frog on a lily pad went pink, and was surprised about it. Then purple came in from the far side of the sky, a little at a time. The pink went soft. The hedge went dark. And at last one small star came out, right over the green door.

Dash was still there. For the first time in his life, he had seen the end of something.

Beside him on the step sat Mrs. Tuck in her cardigan, with her front feet pulled up into her sleeves. She had forgotten that evenings got chilly. It had been ninety years since she’d felt one. She was a little cold, and very pleased with herself.

When the last of the purple was gone, Dash wriggled out from under the shell. He lifted it gently and set it back on Mrs. Tuck, and the meadow went back to its ordinary speed. A moth zipped past. The frog said “ribbit” at the usual rate.

Dash stood still, all in one place.

“Thank you,” he said.

Mrs. Tuck waited for the second one. It never came. It was the first thing Dash had ever said once.

Mrs. Tuck had heard a great many thank-yous in her long life, and she decided this was the best of them. “You’re welcome,” she said. She only said it once too, but then, she always did.

From then on, every evening, Dash came running up the path to the oldest door in the hedge. He still knocked like rain. He still said “Evening, evening!” But then he wrapped Mrs. Tuck in the scarf he had knitted for her. It was a very long scarf, because Dash had knitted it very fast and forgotten to stop. It went round her neck eleven times. Then Mrs. Tuck lifted off her shell, and Dash climbed in. And the two of them watched the sun go down, gold and orange and pink and purple, the whole way through. It was the slowest thing either of them did all day. And for a tortoise, that is really saying something.

The end.