Mila and the lantern on the water
About 6 minutes read slowly. For age 4, and anyone else who is not sleepy yet.
Mila was four, and she was not sleepy. She had said so at the bath, and again at the pyjamas, and once more from the window, where she sat with her blue blanket around her shoulders, watching the garden go soft and blue.
Down by the gate sat a small fox with a white front and a tail curled around his feet like a scarf. He looked up at the window, and Mila looked down at the fox, and neither of them was in a hurry.
“Somebody left a light on,” said the fox, in a voice like dry leaves. “Down by the creek. Someone has to walk down and see it safely home.”
Mila wrapped her blanket tighter and went down to the garden.
The grass was cool and the path was soft. The fox walked slowly, and Mila walked slowly behind, and the evening walked slowly with them both.
At the bend in the path she saw it: a little round lantern, sitting on the water of the creek, glowing a warm yellow. It floated without any hurry at all, and where it went, the water turned to silver.
“That is the night light,” said the fox. “The creek carries it along the dark. It shows everything the way to bed.”
“Who walks with it?” asked Mila.
“Tonight, you and I,” said the fox. “The creek is nearly done. Listen.”
So Mila listened. The reeds leaned over the water and folded it in, the way a blanket is folded. A stone on the bank gave its small goodnight. A moth went past her ear, slower than a moth has ever gone.
They walked the bank, the fox and Mila, and the lantern slid along beside them, lighting the next few steps and no more.
“Goodnight, boat,” said the fox, and the boat rested a little lower on its rope.
“Goodnight, hills,” said the fox, and the hills lay down into the dark.
“Goodnight, moon,” said the fox, and the moon, high and thin and kind, stayed awake, because that is the moon’s job.
Mila yawned, and the fox yawned, and the lantern glowed a shade softer, as if it too had yawned.
The path turned toward home. Mila’s feet knew it without being told. Her blanket had slipped, and she pulled it back around her, blue as the hour, and it smelled of her own bed.
By the gate she looked back once. The lantern was small on the water now, a warm dot in the silver, still going, unhurried, all the way down the dark.
“Will it be there tomorrow?” she asked.
“Every night,” said the fox. “But it waits for no one, so now, to bed.”
Mila climbed into bed and the fox curled at the end of it, quiet as a heartbeat.
She pulled the blue blanket up to her chin.
The night pulled the dark up like a second blanket, over the creek, over the hills, over the little lantern going home on the water.
And Mila’s eyes closed, and stayed closed.
Goodnight, Mila.