The Noise in the Wind

The next night the wind came over the hill, and it came in loud.

Bramble heard it before he saw it. He was standing at the door with the tub under his arm, and he stopped, and he tilted his head.

"Full," he said.

Mim came out with the pegs. "Full of what?"

"Listen."

So Mim listened.

The wind went past her ears, and inside it she could hear a gate banging. And a bucket falling over. And a dog barking at nothing at all, the way dogs do, going on and on about it. And underneath all of that, somebody laughing — somebody laughing so hard they had to sit down on a step.

"It's been all over," said Bramble. "It picks things up."

"Can we get them out?"

"That's the job."

They filled the tub at the stream. One scoop of soap flakes, and the smell of clean sheets came up with the steam, and Mim stirred until the bubbles came.

Then Bramble reached up and caught the wind by one corner, the way you catch a sheet coming off a line, and he pulled it down and put it in the water.

It did not want to go in. It never does.

But Bramble held it under and Mim pushed the bubbles across the top with both paws, and slowly, slowly, the noises began to come loose.

The gate came out first. It floated up and popped.

Then the bucket, which made one last clang and sank.

The dog took ages. The dog always takes ages.

And last of all, when the water had gone still and grey and quiet, one small thing was left, turning near the bottom of the tub.

Mim reached in and picked it up.

It was the laugh.

She held it in both paws. It was warm, and it kept going a bit, even out of the water.

"Do we wash it?"

Bramble looked at it for a while.

"No," he said. "Put it in your pocket."

So Mim put the laugh in her pocket, where it stayed, going quietly on.

They wrung out the wind. They hung it on the line, all the long length of it, and it dripped, and Mim held one end up while Bramble pegged it, and they said the thing:

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

And then it was quiet.

Not empty-quiet. Not the sort of quiet where you are waiting for a bang. Just quiet, the way a room is quiet when everyone in it is comfortable.

The wind hung on the line and dried, and moved a little, and made no sound at all.

Bramble sat down on the tub.

Mim sat down next to him and put her paw in her pocket, where the laugh was, still going.

"Bramble."

"Mm."

"Can I keep it till tomorrow?"

"You can keep it as long as you like," said Bramble. "It doesn't run out."

And in the morning the wind came down off the line, and went out over the hill, and it was clean, and it went past everybody's window without waking anyone up.

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