To My Boy, on the Mountain
Once, in a deep valley between two mountains, there was a boy called Jem who lived by himself on the near mountain with forty goats.
Jem was very polite to his goats. He spoke to them as if they were his aunts. “Would you be so kind as to come off the roof, Mrs. Hobb,” he would say, and “Thank you, Aunt Dot, that will do,” when Aunt Dot had eaten enough of his hat. Every night he said goodnight to each goat by name, all forty, and he did not skip the ones already asleep.
Each goat wore a bell, and Jem had tuned every bell to a different note. When the goats came down the path in the right order, the bells played a tune. They hardly ever came down in the right order, so most evenings the tune arrived in a heap. Jem thanked them for it anyway.
On the hilltop above the village stood the post-stone, a tall grey stone with iron rings in it. People tied their letters to the rings with red wool and went home. Then the Wind came by and took the letters up. It dropped each one on the right doorstep, or nearly the right one. The Wind was the valley’s postman. It was very old and a little hard of hearing, so it went by what was written on the outside, and took each letter to the nearest place that fit.
Sometimes Jem watched the letters go over his mountain, small and white with red tails, all on their way to somebody else. He had never had one. He had never been invited anywhere at all.
This mattered most on the longest night of the year, when the whole village feasted. Every window had a lamp in it, and people went from fire to fire with pies. But in that valley nobody went to a fire unless they were asked, and nobody had ever asked Jem. So every year he sat on his step among the goats and listened to the singing come up from below. He sang along with the parts he could guess.
Down in the village, in the last house before the bridge, lived Granny Wren. Her son Tom was grown, with a beard, and kept sheep on the far mountain. Every winter she kept the chair by her fire for him. Tom had sat on its cushion for so many winters that it was worn into his exact shape.
Tom came home every longest night whether anyone wrote or not, as sons do. But Granny Wren wrote every year all the same, because a letter is a nice thing to get, even for someone who is coming anyway.
Inside, the letter said: There is a chair by the fire, and a pie, and a place kept. Come down when you see the lamps. With love, from the last house before the bridge.
On the outside, in big round letters so the Wind could read them, she wrote: To my boy, on the mountain. Then she tied it to the post-stone with red wool and went home to make the pie.
That afternoon the Wind came over the hilltop and rattled the rings. It took up the letter and read the outside in its big slow whistle: “To my boy, on the mountain.” It looked about for a mountain. The far mountain was far, and the near mountain was near. It looked about for a boy, and on the near mountain, sitting on his step, there was one. So the Wind dropped the letter at Jem’s feet and went on its way, very pleased with itself.
Jem read the outside, “To my boy, on the mountain.” He looked at the mountain, which was his, and at himself, who was a boy. He read the inside once standing up. He read it again sitting down, in case he had read it wrong standing up. Then he read it a third time, out loud to the goats, so that somebody else would hear it too.
“There is a chair by the fire,” Jem read, “and a pie, and a place kept.”
Mrs. Hobb ate a corner off the letter, which Jem took to mean yes.
Now, you may think a boy ought to know when a letter is meant for somebody else. But Jem had never had a letter before, and he did not know what they usually said.
He combed his hair with the goat comb, which was the only comb he had. He wrapped his best cheese in a clean cloth, because a guest should never arrive with empty hands. Then he said goodnight to all forty goats by name, and asked them very kindly to mind the mountain until morning.
The goats did not mind the mountain. When Jem set off down the path, they set off after him, because goats go where they like and they liked Jem. And for the first time, they walked in the right order. Their bells played Jem’s tune all the way down the mountain without one note wrong.
Granny Wren was lifting the pie out of the oven when she heard a tune coming down the near mountain. She went to the door with the pie dish still in her hands.
On her step stood a boy she had never seen. His hair was combed very flat, and he was holding out a cheese in a cloth. Behind him, filling the lane, were forty goats.
“Good evening,” said Jem. “I’ve had your letter.”
Granny Wren saw her letter in his other hand, with a corner eaten off, and she knew who it was meant for. Then she looked at Jem’s face. It was the face of someone who has been asked somewhere for the first time in his life.
She could have said there had been a mistake. She did not say it.
“Then you’d better come in,” said Granny Wren, “before the pie gets cold.”
She put the goats in the byre with an armful of hay, and she sat Jem in the chair by the fire. Jem fitted the cushion only halfway. He sat up very straight in one side of the hollow and was careful not to spread into the rest, in case it was being saved. Granny Wren cut him a slice of pie the size of a roof slate. She asked him the goats’ names, and she listened to all forty.
They were halfway through the pie when the door banged open and Tom stamped in out of the snow, as he did every year.
“Mother,” said Tom, “there are forty goats in your byre.”
“There are,” said Granny Wren. “Hello, love. I’ve missed you.”
Then Tom saw the boy in his chair. And Jem saw Tom, and the big empty half of the cushion beside him, and understood all at once whose letter he had. He went red to the ears. He stood up so fast that the cheese rolled off the table.
“I’m very sorry,” said Jem. “It said my boy. It said on the mountain. I thought it was me.”
Tom looked at the boy, and at the letter with the corner eaten off. Then he laughed, a big laugh that shook the snow out of his beard.
“It said my boy,” said Tom. “It didn’t say which.”
He picked the cheese up off the floor, put it back on the table, and went out to the woodshed.
From the woodshed came a sawing, and then a banging, and then a great deal more banging. Granny Wren sat Jem back down and cut him more pie. “He’ll be a while,” she said.
When Tom came back, he was carrying a new chair of pale fresh wood, with one leg a little short. He set it on the other side of the fire and sat in it. It rocked. Tom said it would settle. Then he tried Jem’s cheese, said it was the best he had ever eaten, and had another piece to make sure.
Later the singing came along the lane, from door to door. That year Jem did not hear it from the top of the mountain. He sang it in Granny Wren’s kitchen, between Granny Wren and Tom, and it turned out he had guessed most of the parts right.
At bedtime Jem said goodnight to Granny Wren and to Tom, by name, the way he did with the goats. And Tom said, “Goodnight, Jem.”
Nobody had ever said it back before.
From that winter on, Granny Wren wrote her letter twice, and addressed them both the same: To my boy, on the mountain. The Wind was old and a little hard of hearing, but it was perfectly fair, and it took one to each mountain. And on other nights, Granny Wren found she needed a great deal of cheese, which only Jem could bring.
So every longest night, two boys came down. First Granny Wren heard a tune coming down the near mountain, in more or less the right order. Then she heard Tom stamping the snow off his boots. Tom’s new chair settled, as he had said it would. And Jem grew, until one winter he sat down in the old chair by the fire and filled the cushion all the way across.
And that is why, to this day, the Wind carries two letters to “my boy, on the mountain” every winter, and the last house before the bridge has two chairs by the fire.