Rosa and the Loose Lid

The hum came up through Rosa's feet before it reached her ears. It rose out of the moss, low and round, like a cat purring in another room. Rosa was a turtle, small and round, with a shell the color of wet pond stones. The Slow Green, where she had lived all her life, was a mossy island the size of a garden, and it drifted between the planets the way a leaf drifts on a pond.

The hum was the planets turning. Grandma Rue said so. They turned so slowly and so steadily that all their turning came out as one long note, and everything on the Slow Green leaned toward it without deciding to. Tonight the note was rounder than usual. The dark was full of the slow glitter of a thousand small suns, and the air smelled of cold clean things, like sheets dried outdoors.

Grandma Rue sat in her chair two steps behind Rosa, wrapped in a blanket the color of tea. She was an old turtle, her shell worn smooth as a doorstep, and she had a way of saying a thing once and then letting it sit. "Hold this for me," she said, and she set the jar in Rosa's front feet.

The jar was wide and made of thick glass, with a brass lid, and inside it the hum moved in slow circles, pale as milk. It was heavier than it looked. "Keep the lid on tight," said Grandma Rue. "The hum likes to wander." Then she leaned back, and her eyes closed, and her breathing went long and slow, the way old turtles breathe.

Rosa held the jar with both front feet, the way she had been taught, and watched the pale hum turn. She had a hum of her own, but she kept it quiet. It was small and squeaky, more like a hinge than a song. Once, when she was very young, she had hummed along with the jar, and Grandma Rue had said, gently, "Not at a full jar, little one. A hum hears a hum, and then it gets restless."

Grandma Rue could always tell things. "Your shell gives you away," she liked to say. "It goes warm before your mouth opens." Rosa never worked out how Grandma Rue knew, since her eyes were usually shut.

Then something new hummed in the dark. It came from a long way off and it grew, and it was not the planets' one long note. It was a tune, up and down, cheerful and a little showy, the way somebody whistles when they come down a path.

Rosa stood up on her back legs. Turtles are not built for it, but she did it anyway, because the tune was coming closer and she wanted to see. The jar tipped. The brass lid rolled off into the moss and rocked on its rim, going tick, tick, tick.

The hum poured out. It came over the rim like milk out of a tipped cup, and it thinned into the dark and kept going. Rosa sat down hard and pressed the lid back on, but the jar was lighter now. She held it up. A little hum still moved inside, slow and pale and thin, like a coat with nobody in it.

All around her, the Slow Green had gone quiet. The moss lay flat. The pond at the middle of the island went smooth as a plate, and the little reeds around it stopped nodding. It was the kind of quiet a room makes when somebody shuts a window: not empty, just wrong.

Behind her, Grandma Rue shifted in her chair. Her blanket slipped off one shoulder and she pulled it back up without waking. Rosa's shell began to feel warm, the way it did in summer, except the night was cool and there was no sun anywhere near.

She could say something. She could wake Grandma Rue and say, I tipped the jar, and it would be over. But Grandma Rue had let her hold it on purpose, because Rosa was big enough now, and that thought was heavier than the jar had ever been. Rosa kept her mouth shut.

She would fix it herself. She put her mouth close to the lid and hummed her own small hinge of a hum, hoping the hum inside would take it. The jar stayed exactly as it was. Her hum hung in the air a moment, thin and squeaky, and then it was gone.

She tried a net made of cobweb from the railing, sweeping it back and forth through the dark. She caught one moth, who was annoyed, and no hum at all. "Sorry," Rosa whispered, and let the moth go.

She tried holding the jar over her head and shaking it, which only made the little hum inside slosh about and look seasick. So she put the jar down and sat beside it and stared out at the dark, and the dark stared back, calm and glittery and no help at all.

"That's my tune," said a voice. "You're humming it wrong." Rosa looked up. A comet had stopped just beyond the edge of the Slow Green, close enough that she could see the shape of it. It had a bright round head and a long tail of pale hair that drifted behind it, and the tail went on for a very long way.

"I'm Cass," said the comet. "Best tune in the sky, that one. Eight notes. I've been humming it since before your island was here." He said it the way someone says a thing they have said a hundred times and still enjoy.

"It sounds like a hinge," said Rosa. Cass went quiet for a moment. "A nice hinge," Rosa added. "Thank you," said Cass. "I think." He drifted a little closer, and his tail swung round behind him, and the moss at the edge of the island lit up silver and then went dark again.

Then he looked at the jar. "That's a hum jar," he said. "My friend Rue keeps a hum jar. That one's half empty." Rosa put both front feet on the lid. "Half empty," Cass said again, slower, in case she had missed it. "Where's the rest?"

"It just went," said Rosa. Her shell went hot. It went hot all over, all at once, like a stone left out in the sun, and she pressed her chin down so Cass could not see her face, though of course he could see her shell perfectly well if he cared to look.

Cass didn't say anything for a while. Comets, it turns out, are not in a hurry. "I leave a tail behind me wherever I go," he said at last. "Miles of it. Can't hide a thing. Everything I do is lit up behind me for a long way." "That sounds hard," said Rosa.

"It's restful," said Cass. "Nothing to hold in." He swung his tail so the moss glittered. "Your shell is doing something odd. It's gone the color of a warm brick."

Rosa thought about the rest of the night, and the day after, and every evening after that. She thought about her shell, which would keep giving her away. It would stay warm for a week.

"I tipped it," she said. "I stood up to see you and the lid came off and the hum poured out. It went into the dark and I couldn't get it back. And I didn't tell her."

"Ah," said Cass. He drifted, thinking. "Well. Rue's all right. Rue's the best there is. But she's your grandma, so you had better tell her, not me." He said it kindly, not the way grown-ups say things that are secretly orders, and Rosa found she minded it less than she expected.

So she went and put her hand on Grandma Rue's arm, very lightly, and Grandma Rue's eyes came open at once, which made Rosa suspect they had not been properly shut for some time. "Grandma," said Rosa. "I tipped the jar."

Grandma Rue sat up. The blanket slid down to the moss. Rosa held out the jar with both front feet, and the pale hum inside turned slowly, thin and low. She waited for the sigh, or the long look, or the silence, which was worst. Grandma Rue said, "Oh, thank goodness."

Rosa blinked. "I thought it was something bad," said Grandma Rue. "Sit down. I've spilled that jar twice. Once on the night your mother hatched, and once on a Tuesday for no reason at all. There's a patch of moss down by the pond that's been humming ever since."

Rosa sat down. Something in her chest went loose, like a knot pulled free, and she found she could breathe all the way to the bottom. "Aren't you cross?" she asked. "Not even a little," said Grandma Rue. "You told me. That's the good part of the evening now."

"But the hum's gone," said Rosa. "I lost most of it." Grandma Rue pointed at the jar. "It's not gone. It's out there, wandering. A wandering hum always finds its way home. It just needs to hear where home is." She set the jar on the moss and lifted the brass lid right off.

They waited. The dark stayed dark. The planets turned, and their one long note went on and on, and the jar sat open and empty on the moss and did nothing whatsoever. "How long does it take?" Rosa whispered. "Longer than you'd like," said Grandma Rue.

Cass came closer, until his bright head hung over the island like a lamp. "Try the hinge," he said. "It's squeaky," said Rosa. "So's mine," said Cass. "Try it anyway."

So Rosa hummed. She hummed her own small hum, the one she kept quiet, and it came out squeaky and a bit wobbly and completely hers. She hummed it toward the open jar. Nothing happened. She kept humming anyway, because there was nothing else to do, and because it was dark, and because the tune was a good one.

Then a thread of pale light came down out of the dark, thin as a hair. It found the jar and slid inside. Another thread followed it, and then a whole drift of them, coming from every direction at once, slow and soft and silent, the way snow comes down. The jar began to fill.

Rosa kept humming, and the hum of the planets came down out of the sky and joined itself back into the jar, and the jar grew bright and round and full, right up to the rim. The moss lifted. The little reeds began to nod again.

Then the last thread arrived and stopped at the rim, and there was still a space left, a gap the size of a thumb, and the threads had run out. "Nearly," said Grandma Rue. "Keep going, little one."

So Rosa hummed one more time, her squeaky hinge hum, and this time it did not stop in the air. It went into the jar along with all the rest. The gap closed. The hum inside turned over once, slow and pale, and there was her small note in the middle of it, plain as a pebble in a bowl.

Grandma Rue screwed the lid on. "There," she said. "Now it knows your name." "Was that all right?" Rosa asked. "Humming at a full jar?" Grandma Rue thought about it. "That was a half-full jar at the time," she said, "and you were calling it home. That's different."

Cass laughed, a low hum that shook the moss, and then he yawned, which comets do by stretching their tails out long and thin. "I'm off," he said. "Lots of sky." He drifted away humming his eight notes, and the sound got smaller and smaller without ever quite stopping.

Grandma Rue put the jar on the shelf by the door, where its light fell soft on the path, and settled back in her chair. "Your shell's cooled down," she said, and closed her eyes. Rosa looked down. It had.

She sat beside the chair and watched the dark for a while. The thousand small suns glittered, slow and steady. The planets turned, and their hum came up through the moss and into her feet, and this time she could hear her own little note in it, tucked in the middle where nobody would notice unless they knew to listen.

The air smelled of cold and clean things. The moss smelled of rain that had not come yet. Rosa pulled her head in a little, and then a little more, and the world got smaller and softer, the way it does at the end of an evening.

Grandma Rue's breathing went long and slow. Down by the pond, the humming patch of moss kept its own quiet tune, the tune it had kept since a Tuesday long ago. The jar glowed on its shelf like a small moon with the door left open.

And Rosa curled into her shell, which was cool now and light, and listened to the hum going round, and her own note in it, small and squeaky and right where it belonged. The night came down over the Slow Green as gentle as a blanket, and everything was quiet, and everything was warm.