Four Pockets for the Glow-Worms

Plip. Plop. Plip. The rain came down one leaf at a time, fat warm drops that landed on the giant leaves and slid off their pointed tips. Sami sat on the flat warm stone at the edge of the Slow River and let the drops fall on his nose, because counting them was a good way to be patient.

Sami was a small brown rabbit with one ear that flopped over and one ear that stood straight up like a question, and he was not patient by nature. He was working on it.

Beside him, near enough that his fur touched her knee, sat Grandma Fern. She smelled of warm grass and ripe mango, and she kept one paw resting on the braided bank rope while she watched the river wander past. Grandma Fern never hurried anything, not the river, not her tea, not Sami.

"Grandma," said Sami, "is it time?" "Almost," said Grandma Fern. "The glow-worms come out when the light turns blue."

Tonight was Lantern Night. When the wet season makes the mangoes soft and sweet, every rabbit along the Slow River climbs into the branches with jars of glow-worms and hangs them in long glowing strands, so that one and all can find the way to supper. Sami had waited three wet seasons for his turn.

That morning Grandma had said the words he'd been waiting for. "You may hang the first strand." Sami had carried those words around all day like a warm stone in his pocket.

The jar sat between them on the stone, humming with light. Grandma Fern had filled it at dusk, lifting each glow-worm out of the wet moss with a long-handled net and setting it in gently, one at a time, the way you'd tuck in a baby.

The trouble was the pouch. Glow-worms are small and wriggly and full of light, and to carry a hundred of them up a tree you need a leaf pocket that keeps them safe. Sami had made his first pouch at breakfast.

It looked wonderful. It looked like a green horn, tall and crisp, with the stem curled into a handle. Sami held it up to show Grandma Fern, then turned it over to show her the bottom.

Out slid a glow-worm. It landed in his ear. Then another went down his arm, and then seven more came strolling out of the bottom like tiny lamps with legs. Grandma Fern caught them in her two careful paws and set them back in the jar. "A very good horn," she said. "Not quite a pocket."

So Sami tried again. This time he folded the leaf twice and pinned the folds shut with two little thorns, the way he pinned his burrow door at night. He carried it three hops across the stone.

Tik. The leaf split along the fold. The glow-worms didn't fall out, exactly. They wandered out, glowing, in no hurry at all, and one sat on Sami's foot and one sat on Grandma's.

"Third time," said Grandma Fern, and her whiskers shook, which was how Sami knew she wanted to laugh and was being polite.

Priya the weaver bird swung down on a vine to see. Priya lived in the yellow tree and she liked everything in twos. "Hello, hello," she said. "Two hellos, one for each of you." Then she showed Sami her nest, woven of grass, tight as a cup.

Sami tried to weave. His paws were good for digging and thumping and holding, not for weaving. The grass made a saggy knot that looked like a shrug.

"Two loops, two pulls," said Priya. Sami tried again. His next knot came out shaped like a nest with windows in it. "Holes," said Priya kindly, "are for wind."

Sami sat back down on the warm stone. Both of his ears went down, even the one that usually stood up. He had made three pockets, and none of them were pockets.

Above him, something moved. It had been moving all evening, actually, at roughly the speed of the rain dripping from leaf to leaf. It was Tibo the sloth, hanging from a branch with his long arms folded over it. Sami had said good morning to Tibo at breakfast. Tibo had been thinking about it ever since.

"Hello, small one," said Tibo.

"Hello," said Sami. "My pockets don't work. The bottom opens, or the middle splits, or everybody walks out of the windows."

Tibo blinked one eye, then the other, and thought it over slowly. Then he shifted his grip, and Sami saw something he had been looking past all evening. Tibo was lying in a leaf the size of a boat, curled into a green hammock, and both ends of the leaf were twisted and tied. The branch swung. The rain came down. Nothing fell out.

Sami sat up so fast his floppy ear flew. "Both ends," he whispered. "If both ends are tied, nobody can walk out. Not even a glow-worm."

He chose the widest leaf he could find. He folded it like a hammock and gathered one end and tied it with grass, then gathered the other end and tied that too. Priya brought him two more blades of grass, because two was her favorite number. Grandma Fern held the low branch steady with one strong paw.

Sami climbed. The bark was warm and rough under his toes, and the leaf pouch swung against his chest, glowing through the green like a small sun in a blanket. Up he went, paw over paw, until the vine strand hung right in front of his nose.

He untied one end of the pouch and held it to the vine. The glow-worms walked out slowly, one after another, and settled along the strand, and the strand began to shine.

"Two, four, six," said Priya softly, counting from below. "Eight, ten."

Sami climbed back down and stood on the warm stone and looked up at what he had made. A string of tiny lights hung across the branch, gold and green and gentle, and everything underneath it turned soft at the edges.

He had one pouch left. He filled it and hung it low, right at the height of Tibo's nose, so Tibo could see his mango when it came past. "Oh," said Tibo, very slowly. "Thank you, small one. Now I can see."

The family came down to the river then, one by one, and the mangoes were passed from paw to paw. There was warm bread, and there were mangoes so ripe they came apart in two pieces, and there was juice on everyone's whiskers.

Priya counted the lanterns twice, because counting once felt unfinished. "Twenty-two," she said. "Twenty-two, twenty-two."

Sami sat down beside Grandma Fern with his crumpled fourth pouch in his lap, still green, still grass-tied. "Three went wrong," he said. "The fourth one's a good one," said Grandma Fern, and she put her paw on his head, warm and heavy as a sunbeam.

The rain slowed to one drop, then to half a drop. The jungle dimmed from blue to gray to a soft dark, and the lanterns came up brighter as everything else went down. "Plip," said the last drip, landing on a leaf above Sami's head.

Tibo said goodnight. It took a while. "Good... night... small... one." Sami said goodnight back, and he didn't mind waiting.

Grandma Fern pulled her shawl up over both of them, and Sami leaned into her side. The river went by slow as a sleepy thought, and the lanterns bobbed above them, gold and green and gentle. Sami's ears went soft and heavy, first the straight one, then the floppy one. "Plip," said the rain, one last time. "Plop."