Noor and the Hum With a Gap

Click. The sound came from inside Noor's mouth, small and bright, like a pebble tapping on a window. Noor was a gray mouse with ears soft as folded leaves and whiskers that twitched when she was thinking. She sat on the warm flagstone beside the fountain and pushed at her front tooth with her tongue, and it clicked again.

That tooth had been wobbling for days. It wobbled when she nibbled a sunflower seed. It wobbled when she yawned, and it clicked every time she made a whistling shape with her lips. Noor had decided she liked the click. It sounded like a tiny knock on a tiny door.

In her burrow, Noor had a private game. She whistled to the kettle and called it a duet, and the kettle never once complained. But a kettle is not a garden.

All around her, the Night Garden was waking up. Moonflowers grew in a long row beside the path, closed tight as little fists, waiting for the moon to clear the hedge. The fountain talked quietly to itself, plish, plosh, plish, and the air smelled of jasmine and wet earth.

Vera came down the path with a basket of water on her hip and her grass-green shawl around her shoulders. Vera was Noor's grandmother, and she was old and round and steady, like a stump you can count on. "Moonrise in a minute," she said. "Are you ready to whistle the moon-note?"

Noor had practiced the moon-note every night for a month, into her paws, into her blanket, into the dark. Tonight was different. Tonight she had to whistle it where everyone could hear, and the moonflowers would only open if the note came out clean. Her whiskers felt too warm. "What if it comes out wrong?" she said.

"Then it comes out wrong," said Vera, "and you try a different way." She set her basket down and eased herself onto the step. "I whistled at these flowers for three springs before one of them even shivered. Ask Pell. He watched me do it."

Up the path, Pell was watering the moonflower roots with a thimble stuck on the end of a stick. Pell was a hedgehog with a brown nose and a prickly coat, and he had tended the Night Garden longer than Noor had been alive. "Everybody starts crooked," he said, as if Noor had argued with him. "My first spring, I watered the path for a week and left the flowers thirsty."

Noor giggled, and the giggle made the click happen again. Then the moon lifted over the hedge, pale and round as a milk saucer, and it was time.

Noor climbed onto the flat stone and took a big breath and whistled.

Click. The note came apart in the middle. Half of it went up and half of it went sideways, and her wobbly tooth tapped against the sound. The moonflowers stayed shut. One of them, Noor was almost sure, leaned away from her.

"That's one try," said Pell, not unkindly. "Everyone has a first try in them."

Noor tried again, pressing her tongue flat against the tooth to hold it still. The note came out fuzzy, like a comb pulled through grass, and it thinned out before it reached the second flower. Her whiskers drooped all the way down.

"Come here," said Vera. She put her paw on Noor's paw. "Tell me what your mouth is doing when it clicks." Noor thought about it. "The tooth tips forward," she said, "and the air sneaks past it." Vera nodded slowly. "Then maybe your tooth wants a turn," she said.

Noor took another breath and whistled anyway. Halfway up the note, the wobbly tooth came free. It didn't pinch. It felt like a small door opening. The tooth landed in her paw, white as a moonflower petal and no bigger than a grain of rice.

Noor stared at it. There was a gap in her smile now, and the evening air came in through it, cool and new. "Oh," she said, and her voice sounded airy, like a flute with a window in it.

"But now my whistle has a hole in it," Noor said. She turned the tooth over in her paw. It looked very small and very finished.

Pell set down his watering stick. "A first tooth," he said. "That happens once." He said it the way he said most things, as if the garden had been waiting to hear it.

Noor felt the gap with her tongue, over and over. A mouse with a hole in her smile, she thought, like a fence with a loose post in it. She cupped her tooth in her paw so nothing could happen to it.

"Look at that," said Vera softly. "A window."

Noor tried the moon-note again. She whistled with all her might, but the air rushed through her new gap and turned the whistle into wind, and the wind blew out sideways and thinned away near the third flower. Not one moonflower moved.

Noor's tail curled tight. Three tries, three crooked sounds, and the moon was already climbing over the hedge. She sat down hard on the flat stone and looked at the little white tooth in her paw.

Then she stopped trying to whistle. She closed her mouth and hummed, letting the hum roll over her tongue and through the gap. Hmmm. The first hum was so small that nothing happened at all.

Noor tried again, a little braver, and let her tongue move out of the way so the gap could do its work. Hmmm. It came out round and hollow and low, like the fountain, if the fountain were happy. The nearest moonflower opened.

It opened like a hand unfolding, petal by glowing petal, and its center was pale as milk. Noor hummed again, a little louder, and another flower opened, and then another, all along the path, like someone lighting lamps one at a time.

"It was never the whistle," Vera said, and she laughed a warm, small laugh. "The hum is the whole thing. I only ever whistled the hum."

Pell took the thimble off his stick and sat down on it. "Twenty-two years of watering," he said, "and nobody told me."

Noor walked the path slowly, humming, and the moonflowers leaned toward her as she went. In her paw she carried her tooth, warm and small. Every note she made was softer and rounder than the ones she had practiced in her burrow, because now there was a gap to let the roundness through.

At the end of the path she stopped. "What will you do with it?" Vera asked. Noor looked at the old stone wall where the moonflowers climbed, found a mossy crack, and tucked the tooth inside. "It can watch the garden," she said.

Later, when the moon was high and the whole path glowed with open flowers, Noor sat on the warm stone beside her grandmother. The fountain talked to itself, plish, plosh. The jasmine smelled sweet, and the wet earth smelled like the beginning of something. Noor hummed, quiet as a thought, and the garden hummed back to her.

She yawned one long, soft yawn. Vera's shawl went around her shoulders, warm as summer. The moonflowers glowed on beside the path, keeping watch, and the Night Garden settled down for the night.