The Tray That Folded Both Ways

“I can’t walk past a squeak,” Corvin said. “I’m sorry. I’ve tried.”

His hands were already in his tool roll. The squeak belonged to Old Thrupp’s wheelbarrow, which was on its way down to the pond with a pond net laid across the top. It stopped, because Corvin was kneeling in front of the wheel. One drop of oil. Two turns with his thumb. The barrow went on down the slope without a sound, and Corvin walked behind it looking as pleased as if somebody had given him a present.

It was the night of the Midsummer Swap. Once a year, when the first lamps were lit, the whole meadow carried its odds and ends down to the pond and traded them round the Wandering Comet’s tray. Wick had lit the pond lamp, gone on to the next post, and come back to check the pond lamp again, so the swap could begin. Somebody had brought a teapot with no lid. Somebody else had brought a lid with no teapot. Within ten minutes the teapot had a lid, and two people went home each thinking they had got the better of the other.

Old Thrupp had brought his pond net. He had brought it to the swap six years running and carried it home six years running, because nobody in the meadow had anything that needed netting.

Hazel Coldwater, who was nine, lay on her front at the edge of the water with her chin on her fists, counting the stars in the pond. She said the ones in the pond were easier. They held still, and she didn’t get a crick in her neck.

The Comet sat on the upturned basket by the water, in the travelling coat, with the tray set out on a second basket alongside. It was a wooden tray that folded shut like a book, and when it was opened it squeaked: two notes, up and then down, like a neighbour saying “Oh?” to a piece of news. Card packs lay on it in neat rows. Corvin went along the rows the way some people go along a cake stall, and at the end of the second row he stopped.

It was an old deck of Kind Gusts, and it had a hole worn clean through the middle. Through the box, through every card, there was a round hole the size of a fingertip, as if somebody had kept the deck threaded on a pencil for years. Corvin mended kettles, lamps and decks with a hole in the middle. He had never in his life seen a hole in the middle as good as this one. He held the box up and looked through it at the pond lamp.

“How much?” he said.

“Seven,” the Comet said.

Corvin had five stardust. He counted it twice. It stayed five.

“I’m two short,” he said. “I could mend something. Part payment.”

“Nothing needs mending.”

Corvin lifted the near half of the tray an inch, and it said “Oh?”

“That does,” he said.

“That does not need mending,” the Comet said. “You may mend it anyway, if you must. A mending counts four. A mending nobody needs counts at half.”

“Two.”

“Two.”

“That makes seven.”

“Those are the terms,” the Comet said. “And the pack stays on the tray until the swap is over. A tray with gaps in it looks picked over.”

Now, a sensible person would have asked why a squeak did not need mending. Corvin had his small pliers out before the question could get anywhere near him.

He tipped the tray on its side and drew out the old pin. It was bent like an elbow. “No wonder,” he said, and he put it down in the grass beside him and did not look where. He fitted a straight new pin from his roll, put a drop of oil on it, and worked the tray. It opened without a sound. It closed without a sound. Then he pushed it the other way, and it folded backwards just as easily, flat against itself the wrong way round.

“There,” Corvin said. “It works in two directions now.”

The Comet looked at the tray for some time and said, “So it does.”

* * *

The swap got busy, as swaps do once everybody has finished pretending they only came to look. A pair of shears went one way and a jar of plum jam went the other. Two people wanted the same pack of Rain Clouds and were being very polite about it. Hazel got up off the grass to see. And Old Thrupp, who leaned on things, leaned on the tray.

Old Thrupp leaned on gates, on walls and on other people’s conversations, and the tray had never minded before. But the tray folded both ways now. It went over backwards off the basket. A dozen card packs slid down the bank like children on a tea tray in the snow, and skated out across the pond.

They did not sink. The meadow pond holds the sky, and on a clear Midsummer night it holds a great deal of it. The packs sat out there on the reflected stars like little boats in a harbour. They turned slowly. Then, all together, they began to drift towards the moon in the middle of the water.

“It works in two directions now,” Corvin said, a good deal less proudly.

The Comet had not moved. The Comet sat perfectly still on the upturned basket, with the coat buttoned to the top.

“The moon clears the hedge in a little while,” the Comet said. “A breeze comes up with it. The reeds are on that side. We will not hurry. You will.”

Corvin rolled his trousers to the knee. “Thrupp,” he said. “Your net.”

And for the first time in six Midsummers, somebody wanted Old Thrupp’s net.

The water was a great deal colder than Midsummer had any business allowing. The mud at the bottom was soft. The packs were further out than they had looked from the bank, and from down in the water they all looked the same.

“One by the bright star!” Hazel shouted. “The big one! Two going round the three-in-a-row!”

She had been counting the pond sky all evening, and she knew it by heart. Corvin did not know a single star by name, and found he did not need to. He went where Hazel said and swept the net. He handed packs back to Old Thrupp, who passed them up the bank to the Comet, who counted them.

“Four,” the Comet said. “Five. Six.”

A frog had climbed onto the Rain Clouds and sat on the box as if waiting for somebody to deal. Frogs in the meadow are terrible at cards, and keen anyway. Corvin netted the pack and the frog together, and the frog hopped off into the water looking as if it had been just about to win.

“Nine. Ten. Eleven.”

The last pack was the Kind Gusts. It sat right out on the reflected moon, and the moon showed through the hole in the middle of it. Then the real moon came up over the hedge, and the breeze came up with it, just as the Comet had said, and the pack went skimming off towards the reeds.

Corvin went after it. The water went over his rolled trousers, and then over the parts that were not rolled. He reached as far as a tinker can reach, and the net came up with the pack in it, one inch short of the reeds.

“Twelve,” said the Comet.

Corvin squelched up the bank. His trousers were dark to the hip.

“What happened to the tray?” Hazel said.

“It works in two directions now,” Corvin said, and there was no pride left in it at all.

* * *

Putting it back was harder.

Corvin hated doing a repair twice. He was about to do this one four times, though he did not know that yet.

First he needed the old pin. He and Hazel and Old Thrupp went over the grass on their hands and knees by the light of the pond lamp. They found a button, a hairpin, and two star flecks, small and bright and no help at all. They did not find the pin.

“Then you’ll have to make another one like it,” Hazel said.

This is harder than it sounds. Corvin had spent his whole life making bent things straight. Now he had to bend a straight pin exactly as wrong as somebody else had bent the old one, years ago, without even trying.

He bent it with his pliers and fitted it. He opened the tray. It squeaked, but high and thin, like a kettle in the house next door.

“No,” the Comet said.

He took it out and bent it further. He opened the tray. It honked like a goose that has been sat on.

Hazel laughed so hard she had to lie back down in the grass. Old Thrupp went to lean on a basket while he laughed, thought better of leaning on anything, and laughed standing up.

“Certainly not,” the Comet said.

He took the pin out again and bent it back, a little less than the second time and a little more than the first. He fitted it. He opened the tray.

It said “Oh?” Up, and then down.

The Comet listened to it twice. “Yes,” the Comet said. “That one.”

“Why does it have to squeak?” Corvin said.

“That is not in the terms.”

Corvin pushed the tray the other way, to be sure of it. It went over as far as standing up and not an inch further. It stayed there, upright on the basket like a little shop sign, with every pack showing.

“Leave it like that,” the Comet said. “From across the pond they can see every pack.”

A woman on the far bank was already pointing.

“So it works in one direction,” Hazel said, “and a half.”

“And a half,” Corvin said. He sounded proud again, but only of the half.

Hazel asked if she could have the honking pin. Corvin gave her both of the bad pins, and told her he could not have found a single pack without her, and that he was very glad she had spent the evening counting the pond. Hazel said she had got to two hundred and eleven and would have to start again now.

The swap ended when the moon stood over the reeds, and everybody went home with their shears and their jam and their teapot lids. Then the Comet took Corvin’s five stardust and held out the Kind Gusts. There was a pale ring on the box where the pond had dried.

“The hinge was mended four times,” the Comet said, “and is paid for once, at two. Two and your five make seven. There is a ring on the box now. Pond water. This pack has been out on the sky and come back, which raises its value considerably.”

Corvin’s face fell a little.

“The price was settled before it went in the water,” the Comet said. “Terms are terms. Do not hurry the mending.”

Three different people asked Old Thrupp what he wanted for his net. He found, now that somebody had asked, that he did not want to part with it at all. He carried it home for the seventh year running and was very pleased about it.

Corvin sat on the bank under the pond lamp with his trousers drying and the deck open on his knee, and got out his paste and his finest paper. Every so often somebody passing late stopped at the Comet’s tray and opened it, and it said “Oh?” the way it always had. Corvin heard it every single time, and he did not get up once.

It was the shortest night of the year. He had his deck with a hole in it and the whole of that night to mend it in, and he was as happy as a man in wet trousers has ever been.