The Tapping in the Trees
"Do you hear that?" Dara asked, stopping so suddenly that River bumped her ankle. Tap. Tap-tap. It came from somewhere under the trees, patient and small, like a spoon tapping an egg. River lifted his whiskers and turned his head. He had heard it too. The forest was full of light that night. Not bright light — scattered light, a hundred small glows sitting in the branches like sparks that had decided to stay. Dara had walked this path a great many times. She had never once heard the tapping before. "Let's find it," she said. River slipped off the rock and went ahead of her, low and quick through the moss, his tail drawing a line behind him.
The tapping stopped. Dara stood still with her hand flat on a birch and waited. Nothing came but the stream and River breathing. Then it began again, further to the left, unhurried, as though it had all night. They went left. It stopped. They waited. It started up behind them, as if it had stepped politely out of their way. Dara laughed under her breath. Three times they followed it and three times it moved. River sat down in the wet moss and looked up at her, whiskers twitching. "Again, a little softer this time," Dara said. She took smaller steps. She put each foot down slowly, heel first, the way you walk on a floor that creaks. This time the sound stayed where it was.
The path dipped, and the light changed. Here the trees held things Dara had always thought were fruit. They hung low on grey stems, round and pale, each about the size of a plum. Up close she could see that they were hollow, and that the glow lived inside them, behind a skin thin as a moth's wing. Some shone steadily. Some were dim. Along one bend of the path, a whole row of them hung dark and cold, and that stretch of ground was black as a closed cupboard. River put his front paws on a root and stretched up to sniff one. Tap. Tap-tap. It was very close now. It was almost under them.
Dara crouched. River flattened into the moss beside her, still as a stone in a stream. A mouse came out from under a fern. She was small and grey-brown, with ears like two coins, and she was in no hurry whatsoever. She climbed the grey stem of one of the dark hanging lanterns. She settled herself. Then she leaned forward and knocked on it with one paw — tap, tap-tap — the way you knock on a door when you know somebody inside is sleeping. Nothing happened. The mouse waited. She knocked again, exactly as gently. Inside the pale skin, something stirred. A thread of green light woke up, stretched, and slowly filled the whole round shell until it hung there glowing like a small warm moon.
The mouse climbed down and went to the next one. Dara sat back on her heels and let out a long breath. All this time. Every evening she had walked under these lights and thought they simply came on, the way the sky simply goes dark. River's eyes followed the mouse from stem to stem. Tap. Wait. Tap-tap. Another lantern opened its green eye. The dark bend of the path was long, and the mouse was extremely small. Dara looked at her own hands. Then she looked at the nearest cold lantern, hanging just above River's head, and she stood up very carefully so as not to shake the branch.
She knocked. It was too hard. The lantern swung on its stem and bumped the one beside it, and both of them stayed dark. Dara winced and steadied it with both palms until it hung still again. River made a small chirring noise in his throat, which might have been sympathy. She tried the one next to it, and this time barely touched it at all — a brush, a breath, nothing. Dark. She tried a third. Two quick knocks, too fast together. Dark. She tried the same one again with her knuckle instead of her fingertip. Dark. Her arm began to ache from holding it up. Ahead, the mouse tapped, and waited, and tapped, and another light came on.
Dara went and watched her properly. It was not about strength, she saw. It was about the space between. Tap. A pause long enough to count two. Tap-tap. And then the mouse simply stayed there, doing nothing at all, until the light decided to wake. The waiting was the part Dara had been skipping. She chose a lantern near the mossy stump, and she knocked the way the mouse knocked. Then she made herself stand there with her hand resting on the stem, counting her own heartbeats, not moving. River leaned against her shin, warm through her sock. Nothing. She counted ten more. Still nothing. "All right," she said to the lantern. "You're allowed to take your time."
She moved on and tried another. And another. Her neck grew stiff from looking up. Twice a knock was too heavy and she had to hold the swinging shell until it settled. Once a whole cluster shivered and she stood frozen, sure she had spoiled them, but they only hung there, dark and calm, not spoiled at all. River found a puddle and got into it, because he was an otter and the night was long. Dara kept going down the black bend, lantern by lantern, hand up, knock, wait, nothing. She was not upset. It was simply the sort of thing that took as long as it took. "Again, a little softer this time," she said.
Tap. Tap-tap. She waited. She heard the stream. She heard River shake water off his back. And then, under her fingers, the shell went warm. The light came up inside it slowly, the way colour comes into the sky, green at first and then gold at the edges, until the whole lantern glowed and the moss below her turned bright and strange and beautiful. Dara did not say anything. She stood with her hand on the stem and let it shine. River climbed out of the puddle and came to stand in the circle of new light, dripping, looking up at it as if it were snowing. Then Dara turned to the next dark lantern and lifted her hand.
After that she knew the rhythm, though it still did not work every time. Some woke on the first knock. Some needed three tries and a long wait. One never woke at all, and she left it alone and moved on. River helped with the low ones. He could reach the lanterns that hung near the ground, and he patted them with a flat wet paw, then sat back on his tail to watch, which was exactly right. Behind them the black bend of the path was not black any more. It was a long soft green tunnel of light, wobbling a little wherever the branches moved. Somewhere ahead, the mouse tapped on, working her way steadily up the hill.
At the end of the lit stretch, a toad came out of the ferns. He was old and broad and slower than anything Dara had ever seen move on purpose. He set one foot down, thought about it, and set down the next. He crossed the whole bright patch of path without once looking up, and disappeared under a root on the far side, going home. Dara watched the place where he had gone. She thought about how long that crossing would have taken him in the dark, feeling for the way with his cold old feet. River shook himself properly then, ears and all, and pressed his wet side against her knee. High above, the last of the mouse's tapping grew faint and further off.
Dara found one lantern lying loose in the moss, fallen from its stem, still cold. She carried it back to the hollow between the roots of the leaning beech, where the moss was deep and dry, and she sat down with it cupped in both hands. River curled into the crook of her arm, heavy and damp and smelling of stream water. She knocked, softly. She waited. Nothing. She knocked again and rested her thumb on the shell and simply stayed there, breathing, while the forest ticked and settled around her and the green lights swayed along the path below. The shell went warm. The glow rose into it, slow as honey, and filled her hands.
They lay there a long while in the little pool of light. Dara's eyes kept closing on their own. Each time she opened them the lantern was a shade dimmer, the glow-light sinking back down inside the shell the way water sinks into sand. "Again, a little softer this time," she whispered, but she did not knock. She let it be. River's whiskers twitched once against her wrist and then went still. Far off, very faint, she thought she heard tap, tap-tap, somewhere near the top of the hill. The light in her hands thinned to a thread, and to a spark, and then it was gone, and the moss was dark and warm, and Dara was already asleep.
