The Voice Button Asked For
All winter long, under the meadow, Dot told the sleepers the weather.
“Snow again,” she would say, going along the rows with her lamp. “Up to the top of the gate. The brook has a lid of ice on it. You’re not missing anything, Mr. Quill, it’s horrid.” Mr. Quill the hedgehog was fast asleep, and he went on being fast asleep. Dot took that as agreement.
Dot was a young hare. Hares do not sleep in winter, and Dot could not have slept in winter if she tried, because she would have woken herself up talking. So she came to help at the Long Sleep House. That is a deep warm burrow under a meadow, where small animals come to sleep the winter through in rows of little beds.
Over every bed, the sleeper’s dream floated in the air. Each dream was a small bright bubble about the size of a plum, with a picture in it, turning slowly. Mr. Quill dreamed of a puddle with an apple in it. The three wood mice in the end bed all dreamed of the same cheese. Anyone could look in and see.
Mrs. Hob kept the house. She was an old tortoise, and she was never in a hurry, not even when there was a reason to be. Tortoises sleep in winter as a rule, but Mrs. Hob had tried it once and found she missed too much. Every Tuesday she dusted the dreams with a goose feather, very gently, and a dusted dream glowed a little brighter for it.
On every bed, tied on with string like a luggage tag, hung a little slate. In the autumn, before they lay down, each sleeper had written on their slate the voice they wanted to wake them in the spring.
“Nobody is woken but by the voice they asked for,” Mrs. Hob told Dot on her very first day.
“Why?” said Dot.
“You’ll see,” said Mrs. Hob, and went on dusting.
Dot wanted one thing that winter, and she wanted it badly. Mrs. Hob had said that this year, on the first warm morning of spring, Dot could do the waking. All of it. Every bed. Dot meant to do it properly and by the rule, the way Mrs. Hob would. She practised reading the slates under her breath while she swept.
Her favourite sleeper was Button. Button was a round little dormouse who slept on her back with her paws folded on her middle, and she smiled in her sleep, as if somebody had just told her something nice. Her dream was a little blue bubble. Dot had never looked in it properly, because she was always too busy telling Button the weather.
The first warm morning came on a Tuesday. Dot smelled it coming down the burrow before she saw it: wet earth, and sun on wet earth.
“It’s spring!” she told everyone. Then she put both paws over her mouth, because you must never wake anyone by accident, least of all by shouting.
She took down the first slate. It said My mother, in hedgehog writing.
“Nobody is woken but by the voice they asked for,” said Dot. She ran up the meadow and fetched Mr. Quill’s mother, who came down in her apron and said, “Up you get, my prickle.” Mr. Quill sat straight up and said, “Is there breakfast?”
The wood mice’s slate said The robin on the woodpile.
“Nobody is woken but by the voice they asked for,” said Dot, and she fetched the robin. The wood mice woke all three at once and started arguing about the cheese.
The vole’s slate said Uncle Tam, who whistles.
“Nobody is woken but by the voice they asked for,” said Dot, and off she went again.
So it went all morning, bed after bed, until every sleeper in the Long Sleep House was up and yawning and blinking at the light. Every sleeper but one.
Button’s bed was in the damp corner. Back in the autumn her slate had slipped off its string, and it lay flat on the little table by her bed. Button had stood an acorn cup of water on it, for a drink in the spring. The cup had left a ring, and the damp had done the rest. Dot turned the slate to the lamp. All that was left of the writing was the one who sings the.
“The one who sings the what?” said Dot.
Button smiled in her sleep and said nothing, which is what sleepers do.
“Nobody is woken but by the voice they asked for,” said Dot, more slowly this time. “Well. Somebody sings.”
Now, you and I would think of the blackbird, and so did Dot. There was a blackbird on the gatepost who sang all morning, very well, and he was pleased to be asked. He came down the burrow and stood at the foot of Button’s bed and sang his best song, the one with the trill at the end.
Button rolled over.
“Not the blackbird,” said Dot. “Thank you. It was lovely.”
The frogs in the ditch were singing too, because frogs do in spring. Their song has only one note in it, but they mean every bit of it. Dot brought six of them and lined them up, and they sang their one note at Button with their throats puffed out.
Button pulled her blanket up over her ears.
“Not the frogs,” said Dot. “Thank you. Very loud.”
There was nobody left to try, so Dot tried herself. She had a voice like a gate that wants oiling, and she knew it. But she stood by the bed and sang the only song she knew, both verses, with feeling.
Button snored. It was a small round snore, very peaceful.
Dot sat down on the floor. “I’ve done it wrong,” she said. “I did every single bed right, and this one wrong, and it’s Button.”
Mrs. Hob came slowly across the room with her goose feather, because it was Tuesday, and Tuesday is dusting, whatever else is going on. She dusted Button’s dream, and the little blue bubble glowed brighter.
“You’ve talked to Button all winter,” said Mrs. Hob. “Have you ever looked?”
Dot had not. She stood up on her toes and put her nose close to the bubble.
Inside it was a brook, and a little boat on the brook, and a dormouse sitting very straight at the front of it. At the oars sat somebody big, somebody with a long striped face, and that somebody’s mouth was open, singing.
“The one who sings the ferry song!” said Dot. She was out of the burrow before Mrs. Hob had put the feather down.
Gran Pocket rowed the ferry over the brook. She was a big badger with big arms, and she sang at the oars, always the same rowing song, and always slightly flat. When Dot came pelting down the bank, Gran Pocket was sitting in the empty boat, looking at the water.
“Every spring,” said Gran Pocket, before Dot could say a word, “the first one I row across is a dormouse called Button. She sits at the front and trails her paw. I’ve been sitting here since the ice went off, wondering where she’s got to.”
“She’s asleep,” said Dot. “She’s still asleep, and she asked for you, only the slate got wet, and I tried a blackbird and six frogs and me.”
“You?” said Gran Pocket.
“I’m not very good,” said Dot.
“Nor am I,” said Gran Pocket. “But she asked.” And she climbed out of the boat.
It is a squeeze for a badger, getting down into the Long Sleep House, but Gran Pocket managed it, mostly by breathing in. She knelt by Button’s bed. She did not shout, and she did not whisper. She sang the rowing song the way she sang it every day at the oars, and the third note was flat, the way it always was.
Before the first line was over, Button was smiling, a much bigger smile than her sleeping one. Her eyes were still shut. Her paws came unfolded. By the second line she had sat up. By the third she had climbed straight into Gran Pocket’s lap, still half asleep, and pushed her face into the warm fur.
“Is it spring?” said Button.
“It is,” said Gran Pocket. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
Dot looked at Mrs. Hob, and Mrs. Hob nodded, slowly, the way she did everything.
“That’s why we have the rule,” said Mrs. Hob. “A sleeper woken by the right voice wakes up glad.”
That same afternoon Gran Pocket rowed Button over the brook, with Button at the front trailing her paw. The whole meadow heard the rowing song, flat third note and all.
That autumn, when the sleepers came back and lay down in their rows, Dot wrote every slate herself, in letters big enough to read from the door. On Button’s she wrote: THE ONE WHO SINGS THE FERRY SONG. GRAN POCKET. AT THE BROOK. SLIGHTLY FLAT. She did not leave a single slate on a bed. She kept them all in a biscuit tin with a lid, on the dry shelf by Mrs. Hob’s chair.
Then she went along the rows with her lamp and told the sleepers the weather.
“Cold,” she told Button. “Getting colder. But don’t you worry. Somebody’s waiting for you at the brook, and I know exactly where she is.”
And all winter long, under the meadow, every sleeper in the Long Sleep House slept safe and smiling, because somebody had written down who was waiting for them, in big letters, and put the lid on.