The Moonflower in the Middle of the Path

"Dara," said Milo, "there's a moonflower growing in the middle of the path." Dara kept her nose down and kept walking. She knew. She had known since spring, when a green shoot pushed up between two gravel stones and stood there, small and stubborn, like a comma in the wrong place.

Dara was a hedgehog, small and round, with a snout like a polished walnut and prickles the color of dry leaves. Her job in the Night Garden was the moonflowers, white flowers that stayed shut all day and opened only when the moon came over the wall, one by one, like someone unbuttoning a coat.

Milo was a moth. His wings were pale and dusty, as if somebody had tapped a teaspoon of flour over them, and he liked to land on things and tell Dara what he had noticed. "I noticed it before you did," he said, settling on the gatepost. "I notice everything first."

"You noticed it in June," said Dara. "It came up in April." Milo thought about that for a moment. "I noticed it first in June," he said, and folded his wings, pleased with himself.

The path flower was the only problem in the whole garden. Every other moonflower grew in the long beds, in rows, where moonflowers belong. This one grew in a crack of gravel no wider than a paw, right between the fountain and the bench, where feet went.

Dara had walked around it all summer. So had Grandma Fen, and so had the beetles, and so, once, had a snail, who took an entire evening to do it. Nobody had planted it there. That was the strange part. Nobody could say how it had come at all.

Grandma Fen was on the bench at the end of the path, where she sat most evenings with a shawl around her shoulders and her tea in an acorn cup. She was very old and very slow, and she had taught Dara everything she knew about moonflowers. "The Grey Lady will open tonight," she said. "I can feel it in my knees."

The Grey Lady was the oldest moonflower in the garden. Grandma Fen had planted her long ago, at the far end where the wall was low and the moonlight arrived first. She was more stem than leaf now, and she hadn't opened for three summers. The ground at her feet had gone dry as a biscuit.

Dara had counted forty-seven moonflowers opening this summer. She counted them out loud every evening, because counting made the waiting easier. She had never once counted the Grey Lady.

"She needs water," said Milo from the gatepost. "That's what I'd do. If I were tall. I'd water her." Dara looked at the watering can beside the fountain. It was a proper tin can, and the spout came up to her chin.

She had tried that weeks ago. She had put her shoulder against it and pushed, and the can had tipped, and she had gone over backwards into the mint. The watering can had won. It stood there by the fountain, gleaming and smug, and Dara had not forgiven it.

She had tried carrying water in her paws, and it ran out between her toes before she was three steps gone. She had tried carrying it in a folded leaf, and the leaf had opened at the wrong moment and poured the whole cup down her own front, and Milo had laughed so hard he fell off the gatepost.

"Every garden gets watered in its own way," Grandma Fen had said, when Dara told her. That was the sort of thing Grandma Fen said. Dara loved her and found it unhelpful.

So tonight Dara did the small thing she could do. She built a fence around the path flower, a ring of twigs pushed into the gravel, no taller than a teacup, so nobody would step on it in the dark. The fence fell over. She built it again. It fell over again. The third time she swapped the twigs about, and it stood.

"Very good," said Milo, who had watched the whole thing without moving. "I would have done it differently." "How?" said Dara. "With fewer falls," said Milo.

Last autumn the moonflower seed heads had gone brown and dry and rattly, and Dara had walked through the beds to shake them. When she came out the other side she was covered in seeds. They had stuck all over her prickles like tiny buttons, and Grandma Fen had laughed until her tea went cold. "You're a walking seed basket," she'd said. Dara had picked off most of them and flicked them into the beds. Most of them.

The light was going now. The garden turned the color of blue milk, the jasmine smell came up stronger, and the fountain went plish, plosh, plish, as if it were telling itself a story it had told a thousand times. Dara sat down beside the path flower and waited.

The moon lifted over the wall. It came slowly, the way the moon does, as if it had all night. It touched the tops of the beds and the rim of the fountain and then the path flower, and the path flower opened.

It opened the way small things open, all at once and very carefully. One white petal unfolded, then another, until the whole flower was spread wide and glowing and the gravel around it had gone pale and bright. Dara's prickles stood up all down her back. "Oh," she said. "Oh."

"I told you it was in the way," said Milo. "It isn't in the way," said Dara. "It's exactly where it should be."

But at the far end of the garden, by the low wall, the Grey Lady was still shut. Dara could see her from where she sat, a thin dark stem with a bud on the end of it, tight as a held breath. The moonlight was nearly at her. In a little while it would pass her by.

Dara stood up. "I need moss," she said.

"Moss?" said Milo. "Why moss?" But Dara was already going, which for a hedgehog means a fast, rolling waddle, down the path to the fountain, where the moss grew thick and green and soaking between the stones.

She didn't get into the water. She wasn't silly. She lay down on the wet moss beside the fountain and rolled, once one way and once the other, until her whole back was cold and heavy and dripping. Then she stood up very carefully and felt the water settling between her prickles like a hundred tiny cups.

"You're a wet hedgehog," said Milo. "You're the wettest hedgehog I have ever seen." "Thank you," said Dara, and she began to walk.

It was slow. Water is heavy and Dara was not. Every few steps a drop ran off her and hit the path with a small sound, and she had to stop and steady herself so the rest of it would stay where it was. Drip. Drip. Drip.

Milo flew ahead of her. "This way," he called. "Mind the root. Mind the root. Good. Now the flat part." Behind her the drops shone on the gravel in a wet silver line, like a trail drawn by somebody who wanted to find their way home.

"Slow and steady, little one," said Grandma Fen from her bench, and she said it every time Dara went past, and Dara went past three times.

The second trip was slower than the first, and the third was slower still. On the third trip the water ran off her in a warm steady trickle and her legs ached, and she thought, this is a silly way to water a flower. Then she thought, no, it isn't. It's my way.

She stopped beside the Grey Lady, stood close, and gave a small shake. The water flew off her prickles in a silver cloud and fell on the dry ground at the old flower's feet. Then she turned around and went back for more.

The moon was halfway over the wall when Dara made her last trip. She was so wet and so tired that she could hardly feel her own paws. She sat down beside the Grey Lady with her back against the stem and let the last of the water run off her. Drip. Drip. Drip.

The moonlight reached the bud. Nothing happened. Dara closed her eyes.

Then Milo said, very quietly, "Dara."

The bud was moving. It leaned, and opened, and the petals came out one after another, wide and white and shining, until the whole far end of the garden smelled like cold honey. The Grey Lady was open. After three summers, the Grey Lady was open.

Dara sat underneath her and looked up into the middle of the flower, where the moonlight was shining through. "Grandma Fen," she whispered. "Grandma Fen, she's open."

Grandma Fen came down the path with her shawl around her shoulders and stood a long time looking up, and her eyes were shiny, and she said, "Well." She said it twice. Then she said, "She was waiting for a drink, I think. Three summers she's been waiting for somebody small enough to bring it."

And then Milo said, "Look at the path," and they all looked, and the path flower was glowing in the middle of the path, white and wide and open, just as fine as the Grey Lady. Just as tall and just as bright.

Dara looked at it for a long moment. She looked at its small green leaves and its straight stem and the crack in the gravel where it grew. And she remembered the autumn, and the rattle of the dry seed heads, and walking out of the beds with a hundred seeds stuck to her prickles like tiny buttons.

"I did that," she said, surprised. "I dropped it there. I dropped it and I never even knew." Grandma Fen laughed her old soft laugh. "You've been planting all year, little one, and never noticed. You walked through this garden and it grew up behind you."

"All summer," said Dara, "I thought I was just walking." "That's how most help goes," said Grandma Fen. "It doesn't feel like helping. It just feels like walking."

Milo landed on the fence beside her. "I knew," he said. "I knew first." "You did not," said Dara. "I know," said Milo, and he wiggled his pale wings, and the two of them laughed in the dark garden like a pair of small bells.

After a while the moon went higher and the garden went quiet. The fountain slowed its talking to plish, plosh, one word and then a long pause, and the smell of jasmine and wet earth lay over everything like a blanket. Milo folded his wings and went to sleep on the fence post with his head tucked under.

Grandma Fen carried her cup back to the bench and sat down and spread her shawl over her knees.

Dara stayed by the flowers a little longer. The path flower leaned toward the Grey Lady and the Grey Lady leaned toward the path flower, the way old friends talk without any words at all. Her back was dry now and her paws were tired and the night smelled of jasmine and wet earth. Somewhere behind her the fountain said plish, and then, a long while later, it said plosh.

And Dara curled up in the soft moss beside the path, under the two white flowers, and listened to the fountain say its last soft word of the evening. The garden cooled and dimmed and went still. The petals glowed above her, the moon slid slowly over the wall, and Dara slept.