The Dust on the Leaves

At the end of a long dry day, when the sun had gone down behind the far hill, a door opened in the side of the bank.

Out came a big badger carrying a tin tub.

Out came a small badger carrying a basket of pegs.

The big one was Bramble. The small one was Mim.

Between the two hills there was a line. It went from a hook on this hill, all the way across, to a hook on that hill, and it hung there in the dark and swung a little when the air moved.

Bramble put down the tub and looked up at the trees.

"Dusty," he said.

Mim looked up too.

It was true. All day the road had been dry, and the carts had gone by, and the dust had come up off the road and drifted into the trees and settled. Every leaf on every tree was wearing a small grey coat.

"Stream," said Bramble.

So they filled the tub at the stream, which was cold and quick and made a sound like someone shushing. Bramble tipped in one scoop of soap flakes. They smelled like clean sheets. Mim stirred them round with a stick until the bubbles came up over the edge of the tub and sat there, wobbling, waiting.

Then they picked the leaves.

They did not pull. Mim went up the little tree, because she was small, and Bramble went up the big one, because he was not. They took each leaf off the way you take a plate out of somebody's hands — carefully, with both paws.

They put them in the tub.

They washed them.

Mim liked this part best. The grey came off the leaves and went into the water in little clouds, and underneath the grey the leaves were green. Not a new sort of green. Just the green they had been all along, waiting.

When the water had gone the colour of a puddle, they wrung the leaves out one at a time and carried them, dripping, to the line.

And Mim held up a leaf, and Bramble pegged it, and they said the thing they always said:

"Wring it, hang it, let the night dry it."

They hung up four hundred leaves.

It took most of the night. The line got heavy and dipped in the middle, and the leaves turned slowly in the dark, and the water came off them one drop at a time into the grass below, which is the reason grass is wet in the morning, if anyone ever asks you.

When it was done, Bramble sat down on the upturned tub.

Mim sat down next to him, on the grass, which was wet, but she didn't mind.

They looked at the line. Four hundred leaves, turning.

"Good," said Bramble.

Then the sky went the colour of the inside of a shell, and the badgers took the leaves down, and put them back, and went inside. And in the morning every tree on both hills was green.

Nobody noticed.

That is all right. That is rather the point.

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