The Fox Who Counted Stars

The field had been cut that week, so it lay pale and stubbled under the sky, and the sky, as it happened, was full of stars.

Tam lay at the mouth of his den on the bank under the hawthorn, with his nose on his paws and his tail over his nose, which was the correct way to lie, and was not asleep.

He had tried the usual things. He had turned round three times and lain down facing the other way. He had listened to the stream, which was generally enough. He had thought about mice in a calm and general manner, without going into detail. None of it worked. His eyes kept opening, and each time they opened there was the field, and there was the sky, and there was Tam, still awake, looking at both.

“Count something,” an old badger had told him once. “Anything. It doesn’t matter what. It’s the counting that does it.” The badger had then gone to sleep in the middle of the conversation, which Tam had taken as proof.

There were no sheep in the field. There had been, in the spring, but they had gone over the hill to be somebody else’s. There were no mice that would stay still long enough to be counted, and it would have been rude to ask. There were, however, a great many stars, and stars, as far as Tam could see, did not go anywhere.

He began at the top, with the bright ones.

“One,” he said, quietly, so as not to disturb anything. “Two. Three.” That was the three in a row that looked like a belt. “Four. Five.” The two that went about together, over the wood. “Six.” A small one on its own that he nearly missed, and went back for.

Tam knew his numbers up to about forty. After forty he had a general sense of there being a lot, which was usually all a fox needed. He was fairly confident there were more than forty stars. He would deal with that when he came to it.

“Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen.”

Something landed on the fence post at the corner of the field. It landed without a sound, which meant it was an owl, and it turned its head all the way round to look at him, which meant it was the owl.

“You’re up late,” said the owl.

“I’m counting,” said Tam.

“Counting what?”

“Stars.”

The owl looked up, considered the sky for some time, and looked back down. “What for?”

“To get to sleep.”

“Ah,” said the owl, in the voice of someone who had never once had the least trouble staying awake. “Well. Don’t let me stop you.” And it settled its feathers and stayed exactly where it was, looking interested.

Tam looked back up at the sky. He had been at thirteen. Or fourteen. He was fairly sure it was one of those. The trouble was that the star he had been on had moved, or one very like it had moved in beside it, and he could no longer say which was which, and the owl was watching.

He went back to the belt. “One. Two. Three.”

This time he got further. He got past the belt and the pair over the wood and out across the wide dark middle of the sky, where the stars were smaller and closer together, like seed in a sown row. “Nineteen. Twenty. Twenty-one.” The owl on the fence post had closed its eyes, or possibly only one of them. “Twenty-four. Twenty-five.”

Something was coming along the bottom of the hedge.

It was coming slowly, with a good deal of rustling, and stopping every so often to eat something. Tam did not need to look. Only one animal went about the night as though it owned the hedge and had all the time in the world, and that was the hedgehog.

“Evening,” said the hedgehog, arriving. It was very close. It had no fear of foxes and no interest in acquiring any.

“Evening,” said Tam. “Twenty-six.”

“Twenty-six what?”

“Stars.”

“Which twenty-six?”

Tam opened his mouth to say, and found that he could not. He had known a moment ago. The twenty-sixth star had been a particular star, small and a bit yellow, just to the left of a bigger one. Now there were a great many small and slightly yellow stars just to the left of bigger ones, and all of them looked pleased with themselves.

“There’s a good slug along here,” said the hedgehog kindly, as if that would help, and went off down the hedge to find it.

Tam put his chin back on his paws.

The field was very quiet. The stubble ticked a little as it cooled. Far off, on the other side of the hill, one of the sheep said something and was answered. The owl had definitely closed both eyes now, and was doing a fair impression of a knot on a post.

“One,” said Tam. “Two. Three.”

He went more slowly this time. He took the belt, and the pair, and the single one he had nearly missed, and then he went out across the middle very carefully, giving each star a good look before he counted it, so that he would know it again if it tried anything. He got past twenty. He got past thirty. He got, to his own surprise, to thirty-eight, which was nearly as far as his numbers went, and he thought, with something like pride, that he might be about to find out what came after.

And a cloud came over.

It was not a big cloud. It was a long, low, soft one, the colour of a fleece, and it came in from the west without any hurry at all and lay down across the middle of the sky, exactly where he had been counting. It did not cover the belt. It did not cover the pair. It covered the thirty-eight, and it stayed.

Tam waited for it.

The cloud took its time. It thinned at one end and thickened at the other. A star showed through for a moment and then went again, like someone looking out of a door and thinking better of it. The owl opened one eye, looked at the cloud, and closed it, having no opinion. Somewhere down the hedge the hedgehog found its slug and said so.

When the cloud had gone, the stars were all back, every one of them, in their places. But Tam looked at them and could not, for the life of him, tell which had been counted and which had not. They all looked the same. They all looked as though they had been there for ever and were not going to say.

He thought about starting again.

He did start again, in a way. He said “One,” and looked at the first star of the belt, and it was a good star, steady and clear. He said “Two,” and looked at the second. He did not say three for a while. He was looking at it. It was a little bluer than the others. He had never noticed that before.

His eyes closed. He opened them.

“Three,” he said.

The field lay pale and still. The hedge was dark. The owl had gone, at some point, without a sound, the way it had come. The hedgehog was a small rustling a long way off, going home.

Tam’s tail was over his nose. His nose was on his paws. The stream was doing what the stream did. He thought he might count the pair over the wood next, the two that went about together, and he looked for them, and found them, and did not count them. They were fine as they were.

He breathed out, slowly, the way you do.

The stars stayed where they were. They did not need counting. They had been there before the fox and the field and the hawthorn, and they would be there after, and they went on, one, and two, and three, and all the rest of them, uncounted, all the long night, while the fox slept.