Tock, Tock in the Hazel
The rain stopped all at once. Ivo pushed back his hood and stepped out onto the wet moss. Fern came behind him, slow, her green-tipped spines beaded with water. Every branch was still letting go of its rain. Drops fell through the lantern-light between the trees and landed with small soft sounds. Ivo stood and let the forest finish dripping around him. Then, under all of it, he heard something steadier. Tock. Tock. Tock. It came from somewhere down the slope, patient as a clock. Ivo crouched beside Fern and listened with his whole face. "Tock, tock — somebody is still awake," he said.
Fern curled a little, the way she did when a sound was new. Ivo waited without touching her. He counted the tocks. Three, then a pause, then three more, then a longer pause, like someone resting their arms. It was not a branch. Branches knocked whenever the wind pleased, and there was no wind now. It was not water either. Water hurried. This sound took its time. Fern's nose came out first, then one eye, then the rest of her. She looked down the slope, where the ferns stood heavy with rain. Ivo stood up slowly. "Shall we go and see?"
They went down together, Fern walking in the flat places Ivo made in the moss. The forest was full of small lights, moss-light and star-light, caught in the wet. Every few steps Ivo stopped so Fern could catch up, and every time he stopped, the sound was closer. Tock. Tock. A fallen log lay across the path with ferns growing out of its back. Ivo stepped over it and held the wet bracken aside for Fern. On the other side the tocking was so near that he felt it in the soles of his boots. He knelt down and did not move.
Under a hazel bush there was a flat grey stone, and on the stone sat a wood mouse. She held a hazelnut in both paws. She lifted it, and brought it down. Tock. She turned it a little and brought it down again. Tock. Her ears were enormous, and her tail curled round her feet like a rope. She did not look up at Ivo. She was far too busy. Fern crept to the edge of Ivo's knee and watched with her small black eyes. The nut split. The mouse sat back as if she had been running.
Then she did something Ivo had not expected. She did not eat. She carried the broken pieces, one at a time, to a gap between two hazel roots, and posted them down into the dark. Something moved down there. Ivo heard a rustle, and a squeak, and then another squeak, higher. The mouse came back to her stone, chose another nut, and lifted it. Tock. Tock. Ivo looked at Fern, and Fern looked at Ivo. Below them the whole slope dripped and shone. "Tock, tock — somebody is still awake," Ivo whispered, and now he knew who it was.
A leaf hung above the stone, bent and full of rain. Every little while it let a cold drop fall straight onto the mouse's back, and every time, she flinched and lost her grip on the nut. Ivo found a curl of birch bark by the log. He reached in very slowly, the way you reach toward something that could run. He wedged the bark into the hazel twigs, tilted, so the drip ran off its edge and fell past the stone instead. Then he rolled a stray nut out of the moss, closer, where small paws could reach it. He sat back.
Nothing happened for a moment. The mouse looked at the bark. She looked at the nut. Then she picked the nut up in both paws, settled her tail, and lifted it. Tock. Tock. Tock. No pause now, and no flinching. Fern uncurled completely and leaned warm against Ivo's leg. Above them the trees finished their dripping, one branch at a time, until only the mouse's steady knocking was left in the whole forest. Ivo stayed until the squeaks under the roots went quiet. Then he picked up Fern, and she let him, and they climbed back up the slope.
The path home was soft and dark and smelled of washed bark. Behind them, far off, the tocking went on, slower now. Ivo's boot had left a deep print on the way down. It had filled with rain while they were gone. He crouched, and Fern leaned over with him, and they watched the last ripple cross it and flatten out. One star lay in the water, whole and still. "Tock, tock — somebody is still awake," Ivo said, very quietly. Then he carried Fern home through the moss, and the water in the footprint stayed exactly as it was.
