Watch Your Flocks
Based on Rudyard Kipling’s Puck of Pook’s Hill series

It was nearly midnight.  It had snowed lightly, powdering the lawn and rimming the rough bark on every twig.  The children had spent the day helping to decorate the parlour, hall, and front door, and then taken whatever lengths of holly and ivy were left and pinned them around the schoolroom.  After it was dark, carollers from the village had turned up at the door to serenade them all, and been invited in for hot mince pies and cups of tea.  The children had enjoyed their own share as supper, hung their oldest stockings, and then were sent to bed.  Lying under the covers they could hear the Christmas Tree being dressed in its glory to surprise them before breakfast.

For a while, they stayed awake listening to the faint voices of their parents and the rustling of decorations being hung on branches.  Then, as drowsiness crept up on them, they whispered to keep themselves awake.  At one point, Miss Blake came in and told them to quiet down.  However, it was clear that she had not overheard exactly what they had been saying to each other, but simply thought them over-excited about the morrow’s festivities.  “Remember,” she said.  “Father Christmas will not fill your stockings unless you behave yourself and go to sleep.”

Once she had left, though, Dan was out of bed again to visit Una—though this time he took pains to step carefully lest the boards squeak—and the two of them stifled a giggle or two over their governess’s failure to guess the true reason they were still awake.

Eventually, the Tree must have been fully bedecked with its Ornaments, for they could hear their father go into the hall to lock up and their mother’s footsteps as she mounted the staircase.  Then the door opened; and she looked in on them.  Both children feigned sleep, their faces turned away; and neither moved so much as a muscle when she set down the lamp and tucked them firmly in.

“They’re quite soundly dreaming,” she said softly to their father as he came up.  (If either child felt guilt on overhearing this, it was not sufficient to cause them to admit their wakefulness.)

Eventually, the house was quite still, save for the ticking of the clock on the shelf.  Every so often, either Dan or Una would rise to see where the hands were pointing—which had the virtue not only of telling them the progress of the hour but also stirring their lethargy.  Finally, it neared the half hour before midnight.  They rose and dressed as quickly and quietly as they could.  Then, carrying bicycle lamps, they crept downstairs (being careful to avoid the centre of the fourth stair down, which always creaks).  They did not bother to try the great front door, for they knew it to be locked and the key upstairs with their father, but instead went directly through to the parlour.  There, the windows were but latched; and, however firm a latch may be against burglars, it can still be twisted open from inside.  This done, they exerted themselves to drag over one of the heavy armchairs.  It made a sad screech on the floor.  However, though they paused in silent fear of discovery, there was no sound from above.

They clambered up and through the window, and jumped down onto the flowerbed outside.

At this point, they continued an argument that had begun hours before.  Una wanted them to walk over to Little Lindens Farm, where they would be sure to see the cows kneel in their byre at midnight when the Christ Child was born.  Dan, on the other hand, cared more to hear them talk; and, since the power of speech is granted to all beasts at that hour, did not see the point of going so far afield so late at night, for—as he pointed out—they could prove the truth of that part of the tale and not leave the familiar grounds of their own house.  In the end, it was the wind that decided the issue, for it whistled under the hem of their coats and up around their legs in a most unpleasant way, and made their ears tingle even with their hats pulled down as low as possible.  So, toasting their hands on the bicycle lamps, they headed for the shed where old Middenboro lived.

At the creak of the door, the pony roused himself from his doze and snuffled their hands in the hope of a treat.  In this he was disappointed; but he was well petted as compensation.  Then the children waited.

After a while, Dan mused that it might have been a good idea to bring the clock with them.

“It would have been an awful nuisance trying to carry it with us out the window,” pointed out Una.  “It weighs terribly more than you think, too, despite its size.”

This was true.  And, as the children were both far too young to own a pocket watch, there was therefore no way for them to tell the time.

“It must surely be close to midnight,” said Dan.  “Do you think perhaps we arrived too late?”

“I don’t see how.   We dressed so very fast; and it was still well before the hour by the parlour clock.”

They waited some while longer.  It was quite comfortable inside the shed, enough that Una partway unbuttoned her coat and Dan took off his gloves.  Not only did the walls keep out the wind, but the shed was full of warm pony.

Still nothing happened.  Said Una sorrowfully, “I knew we should have gone to Little Lindens.”

“Well, there’s no point lamenting over it now!”  Dan thought a moment.  “Maybe we should try the pig-pound, though it’s bound to smell rather strong.”

“Or the hen-house,” Una suggested, but then added almost immediately, “No, that won’t do.  It’s animals talk at midnight, and hens are birds.”

“Then no wonder Middenboro won’t talk to us!” said Dan in disgusted realization.  “For we aren’t animals, either:  we’re people.”

“And so you are,” said a sudden voice from mid air.  Startled, the children turned and peered up, raising the bicycle lamps for a better light.  The beams pierced the darkness; and they saw Puck in the hay-mow, leaning out and looking down.  He burst out laughing at the sight of their faces.  “And what am I?” he asked.

Their memories cleared and they recognized him.  “You are the oldest Old Thing in England,” said Una.  “That is what you are.”

“Which is a true word,” Puck agreed.  With a gesture, he invited them up.  Setting the bicycle lamps down, they climbed the ladder and sat beside him, their legs dangling over the edge.

“So, you came to hear the beasts speak,” he said, with a sideways glance.  “Ah, that’s Old Lore, that is.  I mind a time when all believed, heart and soul; and no man—nor woman either—would dare to test it.  You children live in bold times … or safe ones.”

“Well,” said Una, “there are no wolves in England now.”

“Nor raiders with swords,” put in Dan.

“Nor pirates.”

“’Tis, true,” said Puck.  “In this modern age, it takes rather less folly to venture forth in the darkest hour of the darkest day.”

Una yawned.

“Belike your bed calls,” suggested Puck, “and you two should return before you are missed.”

This the children would not allow.  “Everyone’s asleep,” explained Dan.  “Except for us, of course.  No one saw us leave.”

Below them, one of the bicycle lamps flickered as its gas ran out, and died into shadow.  Una looked down, wondering how long the other one would last.

“I do recall,” said Puck reminiscently, “another girl—not so very much older that you two—who came out from the hut where her family were sleeping.  Like you, she wanted to hear the beasts.  That was long ago,” he added.  “Minka was her name; and she herded the village goats.”

“How long ago?” asked Una, hoping that perhaps they were about to meet another of Puck’s friends.

“Long after the earliest times, but before the Romans came,” replied Puck.  “Folks had metal by then; or, at least, the richest did.  There was no Cold Iron to set above the doors; but there was Quickbeam (which is also called Rowan), to keep off the People of the Hills.  She had a little bunch of the berries, dried and sewn inside an amulet that she wore round her neck.  So that peril, at least, she did not face.”

“I thought it was the birth of the Christ Child that gave the Ox and Ass the power of speech,” said Dan.

“Oh, that bit was added later,” said Puck easily, “when your Christ came into England.  Gods arrive and Gods depart; and Minka’s Gods came down in the world long before the Romans arrived in these parts, let alone St. Wilfrid converting the heathen.  In their day, though, they were mighty; and she prayed for their protection.  I suppose they gave it to her, or else she was lucky, for she returned safely home despite the terrors of the night.”

“I think I’d like to meet her,” hinted Una.

“She is beyond the seizin you took,” said Puck gravely, “for that runs but three thousand years; and she lived near a thousand more before that measure.”

“One rather forgets,” said Una ruefully, “how long England has been here.  We’ve met people back to—”  She paused to think.  “—the very Coming of Cold Iron, when the flint-worker bought the knife to save the flock.”

Dan remembered.  He looked thoughtfully at Puck, who had been there before all the stories were told.  The Old One looked back.

“And you?” asked Dan.  “When did you come to England?”

“With Oak, Ash, and Thorn,” said Puck, as he had told them before.  “And when Oak, Ash, and Thorn are gone, then I shall go too.”

“Yes, but when was that?” asked Una, leaning forward eagerly.  “Before Cold Iron, I know; but when?  You are the oldest, after all.  Was it back before the Flood?”

“Way back with mammoths and dinosaurs?” asked Dan.  “There were Ice Ages once, too.”

“Oak, Ash, and Thorn do not thrive under Ice,” said Puck.  “Nor yet by it, either.  It was after that.”

It was a while later that their father came looking for them with his lantern, and old Hobson with him.  One cannot leave a window open to the winter wind without having it be noticed, later if not sooner.  The children’s footsteps had been easy to follow; and, once the direction was plain, the destination (and the reason) not hard to guess.

The old pony whickered as they came in; and the dark bicycle lamps showed that the children had been there.  The men raised their own lanterns, and saw Dan’s hand dangling loosely over the edge of the hay-mow.  They climbed the ladder, and found the pair of them curled cosily asleep, like dormice in their nests.

Her father picked up Una and carried her down.  Hobson bent in his turn to Dan.  “Ah,” he said, brushing lightly at the boy’s coat.  “There’s hedge-scritchings in that hay.”

“It’ll do,” said Father, at the foot of the ladder.  And so it did.