The Fox Who Counted Silence

How it begins

Pippa Fen could count every tree in the forest, every mushroom beneath each tree and every spot on the mushrooms that did not mind being counted.

Silence was more difficult.

Otto Bramble mentioned this while carrying his cello home. 'How much quiet do you think fits in the clearing?'

Pippa took out her notebook. She was the forest counter. Questions with amounts in them were her favorite kind.

'I'll find out.'

She brought a ruler, a jar and a pair of very large earmuffs. The clearing was quiet until she set down the jar with a clink. A blackbird complained. The ruler snapped a twig. The earmuffs made her own footsteps sound like distant drums.

Pippa wrote: NOT THIS MUCH.

At the pond, she tried scooping silence into the jar. The frogs stopped singing to watch. For one small moment, everything was still.

'I've got it!' she shouted.

The frogs jumped. Water splashed. The jar contained a leaf and one indignant beetle.

By afternoon, Pippa had tried weighing silence, trapping it beneath a blanket and asking it to stand beside a tree for measurement. Each attempt made the forest louder.

Otto found her sitting in a pile of equipment.

'How is the counting?'

'I think the silence keeps running away.'

He set his cello down without playing. Then he sat beside her. Pippa waited for instructions. None came.

After a while, she heard a leaf settling. Then the soft scratch of a mouse carrying grass. Then her own breathing, which had been there all day without receiving a number.

'This isn't silence,' she whispered.

'Perhaps not the kind you were trying to catch.'

Pippa closed the notebook. Across the clearing, the blackbird began a small evening song. For once, she did not count the notes. She let the spaces between them stay exactly as large as they wanted.