Five Good Things and a Lantern

Creak. Creak. Creak. The lantern on the barn door swung on its hook, and Pia's eyes came open. Pia was a small bear cub, brown as a hazelnut, with a pale patch of fur on her chest that was shaped, if you looked at it sideways, like a leaf. She had slept in this barn every night of her life and had never once minded the creaking. Tonight she minded.

All around her the barn was settling down. The hay bales were stacked to the rafters, and the smell of them came up warm, warm hay and apples and a little bit of dust. The hens sat in a row on their beam, muttering themselves to sleep, mm, mm, cluck, mm. In the next stall Mei, Pia's mother, was folding a blanket into a square and smoothing it flat with her paw. "Go to sleep, small bear," said Mei. "Tomorrow is a big day." Pia shut her eyes. A big day was the trouble.

Tomorrow Pia would start at a new school. The old school had been a green field and a hollow tree with a door cut into it, and the teacher there had lost her whistle, so she called everyone in by singing. Everyone at the old school knew Pia. She was the bear who found things. She found the warmest egg in the henhouse and the strap of the milk bucket and the mitten that had been missing for two weeks. At the new school, nobody knew that yet. So far they didn't know anything about her at all, not even that she was the kind of bear who found things.

Once, at the old school, the teacher had asked who could find the lost chalk, and every child in the room had turned to look at Pia. She liked being the one they looked at. At the new school, when something went missing, nobody would turn and look at her. They would look at whoever they already knew, and Pia would be standing at the edge of it with her paws behind her back.

Pia tried counting hay bales. One bale, two bales, three. At nine bales her toes went wriggly and all the bales turned into the same bale, and she had to start again. She tried counting the hens' mutters instead. She got to eleven mutters, and then the whole row went quiet at once, every hen together, like a lid settling on a pot. The sudden quiet woke her right up. She tried counting her own breaths, in and out, in and out, but counting breaths made her think about breathing, and thinking about breathing is a sure way to stay awake. She tried counting the knots in the wood of her stall door, but there were a great many knots and each one looked like something.

Then came a soft thud, and another, and old Barley the sheepdog crossed the barn floor. He was gray around the muzzle like frost on a fence post, and his back legs were stiff at night as well as in the morning. He heaved himself down beside Pia's bale with a sigh she could feel through the boards. "You're awake," said Barley. "I'm counting," said Pia. "It isn't working." "What are you counting?" "Hay bales. Then hens. Then hay bales again." Barley put his chin on his paws. "Ah," he said. "You're counting the wrong things."

Pia rolled over in the hay to look at him. "Is there a right thing?" "There is," said Barley. "Five of them. Every night, before I sleep, I count five good things." He tapped the boards with one paw. "I learned it the night before my first day as a farm dog. I was a pup then, and I'd never seen so many hens in one place, and I was certain I'd forget which side of the yard the gate was on." "Did you?" "Forgot it twice. It's the only gate. But I counted my five good things, and then I slept, and in the morning the gate was exactly where the gate has always been."

"Show me," said Pia. Barley sat up and lifted one front paw. "One. The smell of apples out of the feed bin, first thing, before anyone has eaten anything." Tap. "Two. The warm square of sun that sits on the roof of my kennel at noon. Three. The cool dirt under the gate in summer, where I dig my toes in. Four. The sound of the gate latch when Mei comes out with the bucket." He stopped and looked at Pia. "Five. The spot behind my ear that you scratch. The one that makes my back leg go." Pia giggled into the hay. Barley's back leg went, just remembering it.

"Now you," said Barley. Pia lay still and looked up at the rafters. "I can't remember any," she said at last. "I spent all day thinking about tomorrow. I didn't save anything." "Start with the smallest," said Barley. "Small things are easy to pick up. You don't need the big ones."

Pia thought about it. "The egg," she said slowly. "This morning. It was still warm in my paw when I carried it in from the henhouse." Tap. "And the hay." Tap. "It smells like summer kept in a box." "Mm," said Barley. "And the white hen stood on my foot and went to sleep, and I didn't move my foot for ages because I didn't want to wake her." Tap. "And Mama gave me the thin apple slice, the one that goes all the way from the skin to the seeds." Tap. "And your tail swept the floor like a broom when I came in." Tap, tap. Pia stopped. "That's five. I need more paws."

She found more anyway, and kept them in her head instead of on her toes. The barn door rolling open in the morning, that long low rumble. Mei whistling through her teeth while she poured the milk. The rain at lunchtime that stopped just before Pia had to go outside. The smell of Mei's soap. Barley thumped his tail on the boards, once, twice, three times. "There," he said. "You've got more than five. Most nights you will."

Mei came over then, with the blanket over her arm, and knelt down in the hay beside them. "What's this?" she asked. "It's a counting game," said Pia. "You count five good things. Barley taught me. You have to do it too." "Those are the rules," said Barley, and he shut his eyes as if the rules were very tiring.

Mei thought about it. "Three," she said. "The smell of your fur when you come in from the orchard. Apples and outside, all mixed together. Two, the sound of the bucket handle when you carried the eggs today and didn't drop one. One, the lantern, lit and swinging on the door, so I can see it from my stall." Barley opened one eye. "You're meant to count up," he said. "I'm saving two for tomorrow," said Mei. "That's not the game." "It's my game now."

Pia laughed, and then she yawned, a big yawn that made her jaw click. Mei pulled the blanket up to her chin and kissed the pale leaf-shaped patch on her chest. "Sleep now, small bear," she said. "In the morning I'll walk you all the way to the school gate, and I'll be waiting at that same gate when the day is done." "Will you leave the lantern on?" asked Pia. "I always leave the lantern on," said Mei, and she went back to her stall.

The barn grew quiet. The hens were a soft round heap now, heads tucked in, and one of them muttered in her sleep, just once, and stopped. Barley's chin went down onto his paws, and his breathing went slow and even, in and out, in and out, like the sea a long way off. Somewhere outside, an owl said who, who, and then thought better of it and said nothing more.

Pia lay in the hay and thought about school. Tomorrow there would be a room with a door she had never opened, and a teacher whose voice she had never heard, and children whose names she didn't know yet. She didn't know which of them would be quiet and which would be loud. She didn't know who would want to hold the bucket or who would know a good place to find beetles. That was a great deal of not knowing, and it sat in her chest like a bag of bees.

But she was the bear who found things. She had found the warm egg and the lost mitten and the strap of the bucket, and tonight she had found six good things in a day she had thought was empty. Maybe a new school was just a great many things waiting to be found. Tomorrow night she would have a whole new set of them to count, and Barley would want to hear every one. Her worry turned over slowly in her chest, the way a fish turns in a pond, and came up as something closer to curiosity.

"Barley," she whispered. "Mm," said Barley, from somewhere close to sleep. "Tomorrow I'll have new ones. All new good things, from school." "Then you'd better count them and tell me," said Barley. "I want to hear the whole lot. Wake me up when you get home." "You'll be asleep." "I'll be pretending."

The lantern swung on its hook. Creak, creak. Its light traveled along the rafters, gold and then gone, gold and then gone, slow as a rowboat on flat water. Pia put her two front paws together under her chin and counted her last five of the day.

One, the warm hay under her back. Two, the blanket, smelling of Mei's soap. Three, Barley breathing, in and out, in and out. Four, the hens, asleep in a heap, every one of them safe on their beam. Five, the lantern swinging on the door, saying, as quiet as a light can say anything, I'm right here. I'm right here.

Tomorrow there would be a gate and a door and a room full of names to learn. For now the barn was dark and warm, and the hay held her up, and the lantern swung, and swung, and swung, and Pia slept.