A Pocket Full of Wind

How it begins

Hazel Nutley could sew a pocket for almost anything.

A pocket for acorns.

A pocket for spectacles.

A very small pocket for a very important button.

Then Bertie Beetle asked for a pocket of wind.

'I have a delivery,' he explained. 'A kite is waiting on the hill.'

Hazel measured the air with her tape. The tape fluttered.

'The wind won't stand still.'

'Perhaps it is excited.'

The adult squirrel made a deep blue pocket and held it open. A breeze rushed in. She closed the flap.

The pocket became flat.

She opened it. Nothing happened.

'Gone,' said Bertie.

'Not gone,' said Hazel. 'Somewhere else.'

They tried a pocket with two buttons. They tried one with a drawstring. They tried a pocket so enormous that Bertie could walk inside and turn around.

The wind passed through all of them, ruffling the thread and leaving Hazel's carefully sorted fabric in a cheerful heap.

'I make good pockets,' she said.

'You do.'

'Then why won't this one work?'

Bertie climbed onto the windowsill. Outside, the washing line swayed. A leaf spun across the path. Far away, on the hill, a kite tugged at its string.

'The wind may already know the way.'

Hazel joined him.

They watched a curtain lift and settle, lift and settle. Nobody buttoned it shut. It enjoyed the breeze and let it pass.

Hazel picked up a square of bright red cloth.

'Perhaps we don't need to deliver the wind,' she said. 'Perhaps we need to show our friend when it arrives.'

She stitched the cloth to a little wooden stick. Bertie carried it outside.

The red flag lifted.

For the first time all afternoon, Hazel made something useful for the wind without asking the wind to stay where she put it.

Bertie put the unused button in his own pocket. Some things, he thought, were still very happy to be carried.