One Small Hum, One Big Hum

"Plip. Plop. Plink." Warm rain dripped from one giant leaf down to the next, all the way to the slow green river. Zane sat on his branch and listened to it. Zane was a small owl, soft as a mushroom, with a pale ring around each eye like a pair of tiny glasses. He liked the rain. He liked how the whole Emerald Jungle smelled of wet moss and ripe mango, all mixed together like a pudding.

Then he heard something else. "Hmmmmm." A low, round sound, down by the mud at the water's edge. Zane tipped his head to one side. Owls can tip their heads almost all the way around, which is very handy for hearing things. "Hmmmmm," it went again.

Down he flew, quiet as a falling leaf. There, in the mud, sat a stone. It was smooth and round and grey, with one thin white line around it, like a stripe on a shell. Zane tapped it with his beak. "Tap, tap, hummm," said the stone. Zane's eyes went wide and round. "You're a singing stone," he whispered.

He picked it up in his soft feet and carried it up, up, up to his nest in the hollow of the old mango tree. His mother's nest was one branch over, and he could hear her feathers rustle when she turned in her sleep. He tucked the stone under his wing. It was warm, like a mug of milk. "Tap, tap, hummm," it said. A big warm happy feeling spread right through Zane's chest. Then, right behind the happy feeling, came a small tight one. "Mine," he said out loud, though nobody was there to hear.

All along the branches, the glow-worms were switching on, one by one, strung through the leaves like fairy lights. One of them landed on Mei's ear and stayed there, glowing, and Mei never noticed. Mei was a mouse deer. Her legs were thin as pencils, her nose never stopped wiggling, and she could hear a mango drop from the other side of the river. "Zane," she called up. "Did you hear the humming? I heard a humming."

Zane put both wings over the stone. "What humming?" he said, and his voice went high and squeaky at the end, like a gate.

Mei tipped her head. She looked under the leaves. She looked in the fern. She looked behind Zane's nest and inside a curled-up flower. Above them, Pim the sloth hung upside down from a branch and began to say hello. "Hhhh," said Pim. "He's been saying hello since breakfast," said Mei. "He's nearly finished."

Zane waited until Mei had gone to look in the ferns again. Then he took out the stone and tapped it. "Tap, tap, hummm." It was a lovely hum. But it was a small hum, the same size as before, and it only filled the inside of his nest. Zane wanted more. He wanted a hum as big as the river.

He tried tapping it fast, with both feet. "Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap." The stone hummed the same small hum and jiggled away from him. It rolled to the edge of his nest and stopped. Zane caught it with one wing. His heart went fast. "That's not what I meant," he told it.

He tried wrapping it in a big green leaf, so the hum would stay inside and grow. "Tap, tap," he said, through the leaf. "Hmph, hmph," said the stone. That was worse. It sounded like a sneeze in a bag.

Then he tried the hollow log at the fork of the tree, where everything echoes. "Tap, tap, hummm-m-m," went the stone, all tangled in its own echo, like a tummy rumbling. Zane sat back on his heels. He felt wobbly inside, like a jug of water that someone had bumped. He had the stone, and the stone had a hum, but the whole thing felt smaller than it had a moment ago.

Mei came back with a leaf on her head and a crumb of mango on her nose. "I couldn't find the humming," she said. "Maybe it went home." She sat down on the branch beside Zane and let her thin legs dangle over the edge.

Zane looked at Mei. He looked at the stone, round and warm in his foot. His chest felt tight, and then something in it let go, like a knot loosening. Out came his wing, and there was the stone, sitting in it. "It didn't go home," he said. "It's here. Do you want to tap it?"

Mei's ears came up. "Really?" she said. "Really," said Zane. She tapped the stone with one small hoof. "Tap, tap."

Zane tapped it too. "Tap, tap." Then, without anybody saying anything about it, they tapped it together. "Tap, tap, tap, HUMMMMM." The hum came out big and round and warm, and the thin white line around the stone lit up silver, like the moon had got into it.

The hum ran down the trunk and out along the branches. The glow-worms blinked brighter. The raindrops on the leaves wobbled. Mei did a little hop and tapped again, faster. "Tap, tap, tap, HUMMMMM." It was bigger. It was better. It was a hum you could feel in your feathers.

Above them, Pim had finally finished. "Hello," said Pim, very slowly and very happily. Then he reached down with one long slow claw and tapped the stone. "Tap," said Pim. "Tap. Hum-m-m-m." His hum was low and slow, like a big sleepy drum, and it fit right in the middle of theirs.

So they played. Mei tapped fast, tip-tip-tip. Zane tapped slow, tap, tap. Pim's long slow tap came round about as often as a big leaf falls, and every time it came, Mei did a little hop. The old mango tree hummed. The river hummed back, low and long. The rain tapped along on the giant leaves: plip, plop, plink.

Zane looked around at all of it: at Mei with her leaf hat, at Pim upside down and smiling, at the glow-worms drawing slow bright lines in the dark. The small tight feeling in his chest was gone. In its place was the biggest, warmest hum he had ever felt, and most of it wasn't even in the stone.

"Where should the stone live?" Mei asked. Zane thought about it. "Here," he said, and he set it in the wide fork of the mango tree, where anybody's feet could reach it. "Here is better than my nest. In my nest it only hummed for me."

The rain went soft, the way rain does when it's nearly done. Mei curled up against Zane's side, warm and small. Pim closed his eyes, still upside down. The glow-worms dimmed to sleepy little dots, and the river slowed down and said shhh, shhh, shhh.

Zane rested one wing on the singing stone in the fork of the tree. "Tap, tap, hummm," it said, quiet as a pillow. The small owl closed his eyes. The green jungle hummed, low and soft, and hummed him gently to sleep.