Omar's Long Ear and the Lost Note

Omar's left ear turned before the rest of him did. It stood up tall on his head, a whole hand taller than his right ear, and swung toward the hill path as if it had heard its name called. Omar was a young rabbit who lived in a burrow under a hawthorn hedge, and that ear did whatever it liked.

On this evening the hill was doing its usual slow business. The sky had gone the soft grey-blue that comes just before the stars switch on, and Grandma sat in her chair by the burrow door with her knitting needles going click, click, click. The door hung loose on one hinge and squeaked whenever the wind leaned on it. It had squeaked that way for eleven years.

The squeak was a low round note, like a spoon resting in a cup. Omar had heard it about nine hundred times. Tonight he heard it, and he heard the beetle under the grass at the same time, and the faraway whistle of a kettle in a house at the bottom of the hill, and something tapping inside a tree three fields over. His ear swung from one sound to the next, quick as a wink, and swept Grandma's yarn ball off the arm of her chair.

That ear had once heard a mouse sneeze in the next valley. It had heard a pear drop off a tree in the dark. It heard everything nobody asked it to hear, and it somehow missed the one thing everybody wanted it to hear, which was Grandma saying dinner was ready.

Omar had tried holding his ear down with a scarf once. He had tried folding it in half and sitting very still. The ear had waited politely, then swung loose the moment he stopped thinking about it.

"You're twitching again," said Grandma, without looking up.

"I'm not twitching. I'm listening," said Omar, and he put the yarn back where it belonged.

"Same thing, with you," she said, and her needles went click, click, click.

Down the path came Priya, a dormouse in a brown coat with her pouch over one shoulder. Priya collected things that had been dropped and couldn't find their way home: a bottle cap, a bead, a key with no lock. She set the pouch down and sat on it like a cushion.

"It's mostly rubbish," said Priya. "That's what everyone says." "I've never said it," said Grandma. "I've said it's a good pouch."

"What are we listening to?" asked Priya.

"Everything," said Omar. "That's the trouble with my ear. It never shuts. It hears the kettle and the beetles and Grandma's knees."

"My knees are perfectly quiet," said Grandma.

Then his ear swung so fast his whiskers went with it. Up there, above the hawthorn hedge and above the hill, something was humming. It was a big low hum, wide as a barn door, and it went round and round in a slow circle the way a moth goes round a lamp. Only there was no lamp. There were just the first few stars, coming out one at a time, like someone lighting candles in a very large room.

Priya tilted her head one way and then the other. "I don't hear anything." "Neither do I," said Grandma, and she held her needles still to be sure.

Omar stood up on his back legs. "It's going in circles," he said. "It's been going in circles for a while now. It sounds tired."

The hum came lower. Out of the dim sky drifted a small bright smudge, all soft edges and glitter, and it stopped above the hedge, close enough that Omar could see it was a comet. She had a round friendly head of light and a long tail trailing behind her like a scarf caught in the wind. The air smelled of cold and clean sheets, the way the sky smells when it leans close.

The comet looked at them and blinked. "Hello," she said. "I'm Nim. I'm supposed to be most of the way to the next planet by now. Instead I've been going round your hill since suppertime."

"Why can't you go?" asked Priya.

Nim's tail drooped. "Comets travel on a hum," she said. "Mine is a big hum, and underneath the big hum there's a small note that tells me which way to lean. Since this morning I can't find the small note. My hum is too loud in my own ears. So round I go, past your hill, past the barn, past the field with the white horse in it, and back again."

"It's like a thread," she said after a moment. "A thread that goes through the eye of a needle. Without the thread, a comet just goes round in circles and looks silly."

"That sounds tiring," said Priya. "It's very tiring," said Nim. "And a bit boring. I've seen your hill four hundred times tonight and I still don't know what's behind the hedge."

"What is behind the hedge?" asked Nim." "A vegetable garden and a shed with a crooked door," said Priya. "Oh," said Nim, and she sounded delighted, the way you are when a small mystery finally gets an answer.

"I'm always a little late," she went on. "My sister passed this way on Tuesday and she's three planets on by now. I'd like to be on time just once. Just once would be nice."

"I'm always the last one in the burrow to fall asleep," said Omar. "And the first one awake. My ear wakes me up for the morning before the morning's even started."

Omar put his paws over his eyes so he could listen better, which is not a thing most rabbits do, but it worked for him. He listened past the beetle, past the kettle, past the wind in the hedge. He found the big hum easily. It was as warm and wide as a bath. But underneath it, where the small note should have been, there was only hush.

"Try humming what you think it is," said Priya.

Omar hummed. It came out high and thin, and Nim dipped in the air and had to hum harder to steady herself. He tried again, lower. That one made her wobble sideways. "Sorry," he said. "That was worse than the first one."

"Stand on the gate," said Priya. "You'll be closer." So Omar stood on the gate. He was closer to Nim and further from the ground, and his hum sounded exactly the same. "That was a good idea that didn't work," said Priya.

He sat down on his heels. His left ear had flopped forward over his face, and he pushed it back and held it flat against his head with both paws. All evening that ear had been swinging and twitching and catching other people's kettles. It never did what he wanted. It was always in the way.

Grandma's needles stopped. "Omar," she said. "What are you doing to your ear?"

"Keeping it still," he said. "It's rude. It hears everything."

Grandma thought about that for a moment. "The door's been squeaking that low note for eleven years," she said. "Some things are built to listen and some are built to squeak, and I don't see how either of them could help it."

Omar looked at the door. Then he let go. His ear stood up, all the way up, the way it liked to be, and turned itself toward Nim. And there it was. Underneath the big hum, tucked in like a coin in a pocket, a small round note was going round and round with her. He could hear it. It was the door note, only warmer.

"I've got it," he whispered. "It's the door note. The door's been singing it for eleven years."

"Then hum it," said Priya.

"I can't," said Omar. "My hum is too small. She'd never hear me from down here."

Priya was already opening her pouch. She dug past the bead and the key with no lock and took out a teacup with a chip in the rim, then a small bent spoon. "Someone dropped these on the path in the rain," she said. "I've been keeping them for two years. Hold the cup steady."

Omar held the cup. Priya tapped the spoon on the rim. Ting. It was a small sound and it floated off into the dark. She tapped again, slower and softer, and there it was: a low round note hanging in the air like a bubble, the door note, the very note Nim had lost.

Omar hummed along with it. One soft hum, then another. The note grew and went up the hill and over the hedge, and Nim's tail lifted, and the big hum and the small note came together like a key going home in a lock. The comet stopped circling. She hung still in the air, humming the two notes over each other, low, then lower. It was the sound of two things that belonged together, and it drifted down the hill and into the burrow and made the teacups in the cupboard hum back, very quietly.

"There it is," she said. "That's my way through."

The air around her began to shimmer, and the long tail of her light unrolled behind her, pointing out past the hill toward all those small suns glittering away one by one in the dark. The scent of cold clean air and clean sheets came down and settled over the garden like a blanket.

"Thank you, long ear," said Nim.

"Will you be on time now?" asked Priya. Nim thought about it. "Nearly," she said. "Nearly is much better than round and round."

Omar's ear swiveled, very pleased with itself. "It does what it likes," he said.

"So do I," said Nim. Up she went, humming, until she was a smudge, and then a spark, and then a hum so far off that it might have been the sky humming to itself.

Priya put the cup and the spoon back in her pouch and pulled the drawstring tight. She yawned, and it was such a small yawn that Omar yawned back at it, twice as big. Grandma's needles went click, click, click, slower now. The wind leaned on the door and the door sang its low round note, and nobody minded it at all.

"You could have kept your ear down," said Priya. "Nobody would have known."

"I would have known," said Omar. He left his ear up, tall and tall, turned toward the sky.

"Leave it out tonight," said Grandma. "It's had a busy evening."

The hill grew quiet. The stars settled into their places, and the hedge smelled of dust and leaves and the last warm bit of the evening. Grandma folded her knitting and said it was time, and they went in one after another, and the door sang behind them. Then the burrow was dark and soft. With his long ear loose on the pillow, Omar could hear the house breathing and the hedge creaking and the whole sky turning, slow and round, the way it does. That was the last thing he heard.