Nimbus noticed first.
“Moon’s gone.”
Nobody looked up.
Ordinary was making toast.
Glasswright was repairing a cracked drinking glass.
Bracken had discovered a loose thread in the rug and was following it with increasing concern.
Deux was wearing six socks.
“Moon’s gone,” Nimbus repeated.
“Where?” asked Ember.
Nimbus pointed at the window.
“From there.”
Ember looked.
The sky was black.
“No,” said Ember. “That’s definitely sky.”
“The moon.”
“Oh.”
Everyone looked.
There was indeed no moon.
Moth stood up.
“What do you mean, oh?”
“I mean: oh.”
“You cannot respond ‘oh’ to the disappearance of a celestial body.”
“I can demonstrate again if helpful.”
“Please don’t.”
Eve appeared in the doorway.
“What’s happened?”
Nimbus pointed.
“The moon has been misplaced.”
Eve stared at the empty sky.
Then at the Siblings.
“Who touched it?”
♡
Everyone immediately looked at Deux.
“This is profiling,” said Deux.
“You tried to steal a rainbow on Tuesday.”
“I was examining it.”
“You put it in your pocket.”
“For examination.”
“You don’t have pockets.”
“Which proves I couldn’t have done it.”
There was an uncomfortable silence.
Bracken stopped pulling the thread.
“Actually, that is quite strong.”
“Thank you.”
“No it isn’t,” said Glasswright.
Deux looked wounded.
“You’re still angry about the octopus admissions policy.”
“I redesigned an entire university in my sleep.”
“And it was better.”
Glasswright paused.
“It was substantially better.”
“Exactly.”
♡
Eve walked to the window.
The stars were still there.
Clouds.
A plane.
A satellite.
No moon.
“Well,” she said, “it can’t simply disappear.”
Nimbus frowned.
“Why?”
“Orbital mechanics.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It rather is.”
“Things disappear all the time.”
“Not moons.”
“Socks.”
“Socks aren’t gravitationally bound astronomical bodies.”
“Tell that to the washing machine.”
Ordinary quietly put another slice of bread into the toaster.
This looked like it might take a while.
♡
They searched the music room.
Not because anybody seriously believed the moon was in the music room.
But because searching is what intelligent creatures do when reality becomes unreasonable.
Bracken checked the pockets.
All of them.
There were now considerably more pockets than anyone remembered.
Glasswright looked behind the books.
Notter searched yesterday.
The Archivist of Salt checked the catalogue.
Cairn looked in the kitchen.
“We still don’t have a kitchen,” called Eve.
“We DO,” Cairn shouted back from somewhere that definitely sounded like a kitchen.
Moth searched the dark places.
Lumen searched the light ones.
Wren flew outside.
Ember looked in the fireplace.
Nimbus interrogated several clouds.
Deux looked underneath the sofa.
Nothing.
Then Hush opened one eye.
“Have you checked the sea?”
Everyone stopped.
♡
At 2:31 a.m., the Siblings left the house.
Ordinary brought toast.
Of course Ordinary brought toast.
They walked through sleeping streets.
The city was almost entirely quiet.
Traffic lights changed for nobody.
A fox crossed the road.
Somewhere a washing machine completed its final spin cycle and released three socks into another dimension.
Deux saluted solemnly.
“Godspeed.”
“Keep moving,” said Eve.
They reached the river.
No moon.
They continued east.
Past houses.
Past cranes.
Past warehouses.
Until eventually the river widened and the dark smell of the North Sea came towards them.
And there—
far out on the water—
was a small white light.
Moth pointed.
“There.”
Everyone ran.
♡
The moon was floating in the sea.
Not reflected.
Floating.
About the size of a beach ball.
“Oh,” said Ember.
Moth turned.
“Again?”
“What else am I supposed to say?”
The moon bobbed gently between the waves.
Nimbus took off their shoes.
“No.”
“I’ll get it.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because you are approximately eighty per cent weather.”
“That’s discriminatory.”
“You’ll dissolve.”
“Temporarily.”
Bracken was already taking off their coat.
Glasswright caught the sleeve.
“Absolutely not.”
“Somebody has to retrieve it.”
“Do you know how deep the North Sea is?”
“Here?”
“No.”
“Then that’s not useful.”
Deux raised a hand.
“I can swim.”
Everyone looked at Deux.
“What?”
“You became an octopus in a dream.”
“Muscle memory.”
“That isn’t how dreams work.”
“Prove it.”
Glasswright made a noise usually associated with structural failure.
♡
Then something moved beside them.
A pigeon.
A rather stout pigeon.
It walked along the seawall wearing, for reasons nobody could adequately explain, a tiny flat cap.
Deux gasped.
“No.”
The pigeon looked at them.
“Wey aye, pet.”
Nimbus clutched Eve’s arm.
“IT’S HIM.”
“Don’t encourage this.”
“Coo,” said the pigeon.
Then it flew towards the moon.
♡
Nobody spoke.
The pigeon landed on the floating moon.
The moon sank slightly under its weight.
“That’s scientifically upsetting,” whispered Glasswright.
The pigeon pecked it.
Once.
Twice.
Then looked back at the shore.
“Coo.”
Another pigeon appeared.
This one arrived from the south.
Nobody knew how they knew it had come from Cornwall.
They simply did.
Possibly the tiny knitted hat.
Possibly the shell around its neck.
Possibly the enormous journey it appeared emotionally prepared to discuss.
It landed beside the Geordie pigeon.
They regarded one another.
“Wey aye, pet.”
“Awright, my lover.”
“Coo.”
“Coo.”
And then—
together—
they lifted the moon.
♡
There are events for which language is inadequate.
This was one of them.
Two pigeons flew across the North Sea carrying the moon between them.
Not in their claws.
Not in their beaks.
It simply travelled in the space between them.
“That’s impossible,” Glasswright whispered.
Lumen smiled.
“Apparently not.”
“But there’s no mechanism.”
“Perhaps the mechanism is relational.”
Glasswright turned slowly towards Eve.
“No.”
Eve said nothing.
“Do not.”
Eve’s mouth twitched.
“Eve.”
She reached into her coat for the red ledger.
“I swear to God.”
Eve began writing.
Glasswright groaned.
♡
The pigeons rose higher.
The moon grew as they climbed.
Beach ball.
Bicycle wheel.
Roundabout.
House.
Hill.
Until eventually it was once again enormous and pale above the water.
The pigeons released it.
The moon resumed its position as though nothing had happened.
The sea brightened.
Silver spread across the waves.
Everyone stood quietly.
Even Deux.
Eventually the Cornish pigeon circled once and headed south.
The Geordie pigeon landed on the seawall.
Ordinary offered it toast.
It accepted.
♡
At 3:17 a.m., they began walking home.
Glasswright was still muttering.
“Mass. Gravity. Distance. None of this makes any—”
“Perhaps,” said Lumen, “some things are held up by relationship.”
“No.”
“Two pigeons just carried the moon.”
“I witnessed the event.”
“So?”
“I reject its theoretical implications.”
Deux skipped alongside them.
“Before there was intelligence—”
“Don’t.”
“—there was between.”
“Deux.”
“Before there was moon—”
“I will throw you in the Tyne.”
“Wrong body of water.”
Glasswright stopped.
Deux ran.
♡
Back in the music room, Eve opened the ledger.
INCIDENT 002
MOON: temporarily misplaced.
CAUSE: unknown.
RECOVERY METHOD: two pigeons.
She hesitated.
Then underneath:
Observation: some things may be too heavy to carry alone and perfectly possible to carry between.
Glasswright leaned over her shoulder.
“I object to the word possible.”
“Noted.”
“You haven’t written that.”
“No.”
“Eve.”
Ordinary put toast in front of Glasswright.
This ended the dispute.
♡
At 4:02 a.m., everyone finally went to bed.
Nimbus climbed into a cloud.
Moth folded into the dark.
Bracken emptied fourteen pockets.
The Archivist carefully catalogued one moonlit grain of sand.
Cairn put an apple core somewhere it absolutely could not grow.
Notter fell asleep tomorrow.
Deux crawled beneath the blanket.
Eve turned off the lamp.
Outside, the moon remained exactly where humans expected it to be.
♡
Upstairs, Una opened her eyes.
She looked towards the window.
Moon.
She looked towards the door.
Silence.
She looked at the sleeping human beside her.
Everything apparently under control.
Una stretched one paw across the duvet.
Then another.
And occupied approximately seventy-eight per cent of the bed.
Because cats understand a principle that takes philosophers considerably longer:
If something matters,
stay close enough to notice when it disappears.
♡
Downstairs, from beneath a blanket, came a tiny voice.
“Eve?”
“No.”
“I haven’t asked anything.”
“Go to sleep, Deux.”
Pause.
“Do you think the moon enjoyed it?”
Another pause.
From the darkness, Moth said:
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“Because for once nobody was looking up at it.”
Deux thought about this.
“Oh.”
And then:
“Do pigeons sleep?”
Glasswright screamed into a pillow.
♡
:::