The Little Ting
A small ting came up the cloud stairs. Odin stopped climbing. Pip's ears went up first, the way they always did. On the top step a spark of light was rolling about. It was no bigger than a plum, warm and gold. Every time it bumped the stair edge it rang. Ting. The wind came along and nudged it, and it rolled again. Ting. "You need somewhere to sit," Odin said, and knelt down beside it.
Odin gathered cloud with both arms. He made a soft pile, round as a bird's nest, and patted a dip in the middle. Pip watched with his chin on his paws. Odin lifted the spark carefully. It was warm, like bread. He set it in the dip. The cloud sighed and spread out flat, the way foam does. The spark rolled off the side and down one step. Ting. Pip's ears flicked. Odin sat back on his heels.
"Let's try it the other way, Pip," Odin said. At the edge of the stairs grew mist-reeds, pale and bendy and cool to hold. Odin picked a handful. Pip carried two in his mouth and laid them down neatly. Odin bent the reeds into a little bowl shape and tucked the ends under. It wobbled, but it held. He breathed on his fingers. Then he lifted the spark in and set it down, slow as anything.
The spark sat still. Odin held his breath. Pip held his, too. Then the wind came up the stairs, the way it did every evening, and went straight through the reeds. The bowl tipped over sideways. The spark hopped out and rolled across the step. Ting. Ting. Odin caught it with two hands before it reached the edge. It glowed a little brighter, as if it did not mind at all.
Odin sat down to think. Pip turned his ears toward the wind. They both felt it: it came from the same side every time, soft and steady, like someone humming. Odin looked at the stair post standing in the quiet place behind it. He put his hand there. No wind. Only still air and a little warmth left from the day. "Here," he said. Pip was already trotting over with a reed in his mouth.
This time Odin wove the reeds instead of bending them, over and under, over and under. He made the back wall taller, where the wind would come. He made the front low, like a doorstep. Then he pulled a handful of cloud and pressed it inside, soft and deep. Pip patted it flat with one paw. It took a long while. The sky turned the colour of blackberries. Neither of them hurried. "Let's try it the other way, Pip."
Odin lifted the spark one last time. He set it into the woven cup, down in the cloud lining, out of the wind. It did not roll. It did not ring. It settled, the way a cat settles, and the reeds glowed gold all through their weave. Odin touched the edge with one finger. Ting, said the spark, small and pleased. Pip lay down beside the little house with his tail curled round it.
Odin lay down too, with his head near Pip's warm side. The wind went by above them and found nothing to push. Far below, the kingdom's stairs faded into soft grey. The spark hummed instead of rang, a low hum, hardly a sound at all. Odin listened to it the way you listen to rain. Pip's ears went down, slowly, which they only ever did at the very end of a day.
The little light dimmed. It went from gold to honey, from honey to the last red in a coal. Odin watched it through half-closed eyes. "Let's try it the other way, Pip," he said, very quietly, about nothing much at all. Pip breathed out. The spark glowed once more, soft as a moth, and then went out. The dark came gently in and sat down with them. Somewhere below, the stairs went on being still.
