The Last Slice of the Moon

Lottie was the Moon-keeper. She had been the Moon-keeper for exactly one month, which is to say for exactly one moon, and she was very proud of it. She was small for the job. Her moon pole was three times as tall as she was, and it had to go in and out of her cottage through the window.

Lottie did everything on tiptoe. She believed that moon work ought to be done quietly. And since she could never be quite sure when moon work might start, she tiptoed all the time: to the well, to the shop, up the stairs and into bed.

Most people think the moon grows full all by itself. It does not. The missing pieces are kept in a round hatbox on the coolest shelf in Lottie’s cottage. Each evening Lottie took out the next slice and climbed the round hill above the village. There she set the slice in the little cup at the end of her pole and handed it up. The moon took it, and was that much fuller.

The slices glowed faintly, the way snow does after dark. They were thin and curved, and if you stood one on its edge it would roll like a hoop. Lottie never stood one on its edge.

Tonight there was one slice left in the hatbox. Tonight was the full moon, and it would be Lottie’s first. She meant it to be on time.

She went up the hill on tiptoe, with the pole over her shoulder and the hatbox under her arm. The moon was waiting just above the hill, low and nearly round. It always waited there a little while, low enough to reach. Then it climbed, and after that no pole in the world was long enough.

“Nearly there,” Lottie said to the moon, quietly.

At the very top of the hill there was a molehill that had not been there yesterday. Moles are like that. Lottie’s tiptoe caught it, and down she went, and the hatbox flew open, and out bowled the last slice of the moon. It landed on its edge. It teetered once. Then it rolled away down the hill like a hoop, faster and faster, shining as it went.

“Oh,” said Lottie. Even then, she said it quietly.

She looked up at the moon. It was waiting. It would not wait all night. She laid the pole down beside the molehill, picked up the empty hatbox, and went after the slice.

Now, you might think that a person in such a hurry would stop tiptoeing. Lottie did not. She ran down the hill on tiptoe, in quick little steps, like someone crossing a cold kitchen floor.

The slice rolled into the village. It rolled down the middle of the lane, past the baker’s dark window. It turned into the dairy yard and rang softly against a milk churn, ting, and turned out again. Lottie tiptoed past the churn and said, “Sorry,” to it, in case.

The slice rolled out of the village and down to the river. There was a line of flat stepping-stones across it, and the slice went over them, hop, hop, hop, as if it had been doing it all its life. Lottie hopped after it on tiptoe, from stone to stone. She did not fall in. She was rather proud of that, afterwards.

On the far bank the slice rolled along the path to the mill, teetered at the edge of the millpond, and fell in with a small round splash.

Lottie got to the edge and stopped.

There were two of them.

Two slices of moon lay on the still water, side by side, both pale, both glowing, both exactly the shape of the gap in the moon. One was the real slice. The other was only the pond’s picture of it. If Lottie waded in after the wrong one, she would come up with two cold handfuls of water, and the moon would climb away without its last piece.

The door of the mill opened, and Mr. Hobb looked out. Mr. Hobb was the miller. He was always awake at night, because the millwheel turned best then, and he was always floury, even his eyebrows, which sat on his face like two small drifts of snow.

“I heard a splash,” he said.

“It’s the moon,” said Lottie, very quietly. “The last slice. I have to give it back, and I don’t know which one it is.”

Mr. Hobb came and stood beside her and looked at the pond. “Ah,” he said. He said it in a whisper, because Lottie was whispering and it seemed only polite.

First, Lottie looked very hard at both slices. They looked the same.

Then Mr. Hobb tilted his head to the left, and Lottie tilted hers to the right, and they looked again. They still looked the same.

Then Mr. Hobb did what he always did when he was thinking. He blew the flour off the end of his nose. His breath went out over the water, and one of the slices shivered and wobbled, and the other lay perfectly still.

Lottie took hold of his sleeve. “Do it again,” she said.

He did it again. The same slice wobbled. The other did not move at all.

“That one’s only the pond,” said Lottie, pointing.

“And that one’s yours,” said Mr. Hobb. “The real thing doesn’t wobble.”

He waded in up to his knees without stopping to roll up his trousers, and he bent down and lifted the slice out of the water. It came up dripping light, little bright drops that ran off it and went out on the pond. The other slice was gone at once.

The slice was colder than Mr. Hobb expected. He said, “Ooh,” and wrapped it quickly in an empty flour sack. Then he looked up at the moon, and so did Lottie. It had begun to climb.

Pudding was waiting by the mill door, already harnessed to the flour cart, because Mr. Hobb took the flour round before morning. Pudding was a very old white pony who stopped to sniff every gate. Mr. Hobb lifted Lottie into the cart, and the hatbox, and the slice in its sack, and climbed up after them.

“Up the hill, Pudding,” he said. “Walk on.”

Pudding walked on. Pudding did not trot. Pudding had never trotted.

They went round by the bridge, because a cart cannot do stepping-stones, and back through the village to the hill lane. At the first gate Pudding stopped and sniffed it, carefully, all over.

“Oh, please,” said Lottie, looking at the moon.

“Pudding has never once been late,” said Mr. Hobb. “Slow, often. Late, never.”

At the second gate Pudding stopped and sniffed that one too. The moon climbed a little higher. Lottie sat on her hands so as not to fidget.

The third gate was the one at the top of the hill. Pudding sniffed it, and Mr. Hobb opened it, and there was the pole, lying in the silver grass beside the molehill.

Lottie climbed down. She went around the molehill on tiptoe, giving it plenty of room. She unwrapped the slice. It was dusty with flour all along one edge, and there was no time to brush it. She set it in the cup, lifted the pole, and reached up as high as she could reach. Then she went up on the very tips of her tiptoes, higher than she had ever tiptoed in her life.

The moon was nearly out of reach. The cup just touched its edge. The slice slid into place without a sound, and there it was over the sleeping village, round and whole and shining: a full moon, on time.

Mr. Hobb took off his cap. “That,” he said, “is the finest full moon I’ve seen in years.”

“It’s my first,” said Lottie.

“Then it’s a very good first,” he said. “I’ve watched it come up from the mill door every night for years. I never knew there was anybody up here seeing to it.”

“You could come up and watch,” said Lottie. “You’d have to be quiet.”

“I can be quiet,” said Mr. Hobb, very quietly.

He drove her home with the empty hatbox on her lap, and she was asleep before they reached the bottom of the hill. At her cottage, Mr. Hobb carried her in and put her to bed with her boots off. He slid her pole in through the window, the way she always did, and he went back out to the cart on tiptoe, because by now he had learned. Pudding sniffed Lottie’s gate, all over, and then they went home.

The next night Lottie began taking the slices down again, one each evening, and the hatbox slowly filled. When she came to the floury slice, she meant to brush it clean. Then she thought of Mr. Hobb up to his knees in the millpond, and she put it away just as it was.

So if you look at the full moon some clear night, look along its bottom edge. There is a faint pale smudge there. That is Mr. Hobb’s flour. It is there because once, on Lottie’s very first full moon, the last slice rolled all the way to the millpond. It came back up the hill in a flour cart, just in time.

The moon has been full on time every month since. Lottie sees to it, on tiptoe.