The Fingerprints on the Moon

On the third night Mim came out of the door and stopped and said, "Bramble. Look at the moon."

Bramble looked at the moon.

The moon was smudgy.

"Ah," he said. "Yes. It's time."

"Time for what?"

"Fetch the long pole."

Mim fetched the long pole. It lived behind the door and it was longer than both of them put together, and she had to carry it sideways, and she knocked it on the doorframe twice getting it out, and Bramble did not say anything about that.

They walked up the hill with it.

"Bramble, why is the moon dirty?"

"It isn't dirty," said Bramble. "It's fingerprints."

"How does the moon get fingerprints?"

"People point at it."

Mim thought about this.

"Every night," said Bramble, "somebody points at the moon. And every time they point, a bit of them stays on it. Doesn't come off by itself."

"Who pointed?"

"Who didn't." Bramble stopped at the top of the hill and looked up. "There's a boy at a window. He points at it every night before he gets into bed, that one. And a woman out on a boat, pointing at it for the man steering, because he wasn't looking. And a baby down in the village who can't point yet, so she does it with her whole hand."

He shook his head slowly.

"The whole hand," he said. "Every time. Wants doing every month, this job."

Then he reached up with the pole, and he hooked the moon, and he lifted it down off the sky.

It was heavier than Mim expected. They carried it between them, one at each end, down the hill and over to the tub — and it was cold, and smooth, and flat on one side.

They washed it.

Mim did the front and Bramble did the back. There were fingerprints all over it. Big ones and small ones and one very small one that was just a whole hand, pressed flat.

Mim looked at that one for a while before she washed it off.

"That's the baby," she said.

"That's the baby," said Bramble.

When it was done the moon was so bright they had to look at it sideways.

They carried it to the line. They pegged it up by the top edge, and it hung there dripping, turning slowly, and they said the thing:

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

And the water came off it all night long, drop after drop, into the grass, and if you have ever gone outside early and found everything wet and silver and nobody knows why — now you do.

Before it got light, they put the moon back on its hook.

Then they sat on the tub, the two of them, and looked at it up there, clean.

"They'll only do it again," said Mim.

"Oh, yes," said Bramble. "Tomorrow. Straight away."

He sounded very pleased about it.

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