The Tinking Pail
The snow stopped falling while Kit was pulling on their second boot. The wind went away too. Kit pushed open the door, and the whole village stood quiet, the way a room is quiet when everybody in it has fallen asleep. Snow sat on the fence posts like small white hats. Sunny came out behind Kit, and the step creaked under her paws. Then, far down the lane, something went tink. Kit stood very still and held their breath.
Tink. Tink. Tink. It came slow, like a spoon tapping a cup. Sunny turned her round honey-gold face toward the lamps at the bottom of the hill. She was smiling, the way she always was, with her eyes closed. Kit took one mitten off and then put it back on. "Listen, Sunny. There it is again," Kit said. The sound waited a moment. Then it came once more, patient, from somewhere past the woodshed and the low stone wall.
So they went down the lane to find it. Kit's boots squeaked. Sunny's paws made wide soft prints, and Kit stepped inside them where the snow was already pressed flat. The lamps hung above them, warm and yellow, with snow on their little roofs. Every few steps the sound came again, closer now. Tink. Tink. Kit counted the gaps between. One, two, three, four, tink. It was not a scary sound at all. It sounded like somebody working.
At the low stone wall, Kit found it. A long icicle hung from the eaves of the old shed, and under the icicle sat a tin pail. Drop by drop, the icicle melted into the pail, and every drop went tink. On the wall beside it, five small brown birds sat in a row, waiting their turn. Kit understood then. The pail had not blown there. Somebody had carried it out and set it down on purpose, so the birds would have water that was not ice.
Kit leaned close. A thin skin of ice had crept across the top of the pail, and the birds were tapping at it with their beaks and getting nowhere. Kit pressed one thumb through. The ice went crick and broke into little plates, and Kit lifted them out and laid them on the wall. The birds dropped down at once, quick as leaves. Sunny sat in the snow and watched them drink, delighted, the way she was delighted by most ordinary things.
But there was only one pail, and the lane was long. Kit thought about the other icicles, the ones over the bakery step and the garden gate and the water trough. Kit went back for the stack of old tin lids in the woodshed, the wide dull ones nobody used. They carried them under one arm. Sunny walked beside them the whole way and did not hurry. "Listen, Sunny. There it is again," Kit said, and behind them the pail kept tinking.
The first lid slid off the gatepost and landed upside down in the snow. Kit tried again, and it slid again. So Kit scooped a ring of snow and packed it firm and set the lid down inside it, like an egg in a nest. That one stayed. Kit made four more nests along the lane, one under each icicle, and wiped each lid clean with a mitten. It took a long time. Nobody came out. The lamps hummed and the snow held still.
Then, one by one, the drops found them. Tink, said the lid by the gate. Tink, said the lid by the bakery step, a little deeper. Tink, tink, from the trough. The whole lane was tinking softly now, out of time with itself, like small bells that had never learned a tune. Kit sat down on the doorstep with Sunny and listened. Sparrows came. "Listen, Sunny. There it is again," Kit whispered, and their eyes were getting heavy.
Kit meant to get up. Kit meant to walk. But Sunny leaned down and gathered them in, mittens and boots and all, and Kit was carried up the lane with their cheek against warm honey-gold fur. The lamps went by above them, slow and yellow. Behind them the lids kept their small talk going, tink, tink, tink, down the whole quiet length of the village. Kit's eyes closed somewhere near the gate. Somewhere behind them, something soft began to hum.
