One Of Sky

The sky, having won, had left its things all over the hollow, like a guest.

There was a burnt paper tube in the hedge, as long as Mungo is tall. By sunrise three fliskies had moved into it and were calling it a howff, and Lady Pettigrew, invited to inspect, put her head in and withdrew it and declined the place in the terms in which she had declined the room. On the wall Mine was out again, amused again, with the spoon and the shoe, and beside the spoon lay a new length of thin black wire. Tansy sat on the fox's shoulder looking at nobody, and nobody asked.

And in the mushroom patch there was a stick. It was straight and pale and twice the height of a grumlin, and it had come down out of the dark point first, and stood upright between two mushrooms like a spear thrown at a village by somebody with nothing against it. Nettie was in front of it with her arms folded when the hollow woke. She looked from the stick to the far end of the green, where the smoke lay thickest.

"Gnomesby," she said.

Wick wanted it. He wanted it badly. The table had three legs and a ruling for four, and here, out of the sky, was a leg, longer and straighter than anything the hedge had ever let him have. He got both hands round the foot of it and leaned back with his whole thin weight, and it did not so much as shiver.

"Nearly," he said, through his teeth.

"It is recorded," said Grizel, from the window. "I entered it at first light. A thing belongs to whoever wrote it down."

"I'm holding it," said Wick. "A thing belongs to whoever's holding it."

There was a small pleased noise from the hedge at a grumlin arguing the fliskie side.

"It's in my patch," said Nettie.

"It was aimed," said Lady Pettigrew, from the stool, "at the Court."

Kit had been listening from the path. She looked at the stick, and at Wick hanging off it like washing, and gave the third ruling of her keepership, which was shorter than the argument.

"Whoever can lift it."

Wick tried. He got his shoulder under it and his boots into the earth, and the stick leaned an inch, and came back. He let go, and stood with his hands on his knees, and said nothing, not even nearly.

Then there was a shadow across the patch, and it was square.

Nobody saw Mungo leave the gate. Grizel at the window will swear to that, and so will Nettie at the patch, and Wick, with his head down, saw only boots. What can be recorded is that the stick was in the patch, and then the stick was standing inside the shed door, and that Mungo was at the gate before and after with the lantern out and both boots in their dent. Between those two facts lies a length of time which the ledger has measured and declines to publish. A sentry who has left his gate once in his life has left it once, and the ledger is not going to be the one to say different over a stick.

Wick stood in the door of the shed for some time, looking at what was in it. Then he looked down the path at the gate.

"I didn't ask him," he said.

"No," said Kit.

"He doesn't even like tables. He's never sat at one."

"No."

Wick went in and shut the door, and from inside came the sound of a tool being taken out of a beard.

The table is nearly ready. It will have three legs of hedge and one of sky.