THE NIGHTINGALE IS CALLED a Nightingale because it sings at night.

There are other birds who cry in the night: the whippoorwill complains and the owl hoots, the loon screams and the nightjar calls. But the Nightingale is the only one who sings: as beautifully as the lark sings in the morning and the thrush at evening, the Nightingale sings at night.

But the Nightingale didn’t always sing at night.

There was a time, long after the beginning of the world but still a very long time ago, when the Nightingale sang only in the day, and slept all night—like the blackbird and the wren and the lark.

Each morning in those days, when night had fled away and the earth tilted its face again into the sun, the Nightingale awoke from sleep, along with the lark and the robin and the wren. He drew his beak out from the feathers of his shoulder, he fluffed out his brown plumage, and—as the long bars of morning sun found their way into the thicket where he liked to live—he sang.

In those days every morning seemed to be the first morning that ever was; everything the Nightingale saw, the green leaves sparkling with dew, the multicolored morning sky, the mossy earth teeming with insects, the tall trees, the birds and beasts awakening, all seemed to have just been made that morning.

That was because Time had not yet been invented. But it was about to be invented.

On a certain morning very much like every other morning that had been, the Nightingale awoke and sang. As he sang, he saw someone coming through the glades of the forest where he lived. It was someone the Nightingale knew well, someone he loved, someone who caused him to sing even a longer and more beautiful song as she came closer.

There was no one in the whole world at all like her, and yet she was just a little like everything there is.

She had no name, in those days, this someone; for that matter, neither did anyone or anything else, because names hadn’t been invented yet. But long after this story, she would come to be called Dame Kind.

The forest where she walked was all Dame Kind’s work. She had planted the trees and the flowers in all their variety and helped them to grow. She had watered them with the rain and had set the sun to shine on them. It was she who had thought of filling the trees with birds and the air with insects and the rivers and the seas with fish and the earth with animals.

It was she who had thought of making the earth round, like a green and blue and white marble, and who set it turning in the sun, so that there would be day and night.

In fact, there was nothing on earth or in the sky that Dame Kind had not thought of and set in place and made to go. Every small difference there is between one thing and another, Dame Kind had first thought of. It was all her work, and she went about in it endlessly, fixing and changing and pruning and thinking of new things all the time.

It was no wonder that the Nightingale was glad to see her, and sang for her, because she had herself thought up the Nightingale, and thought up his song, too.

“Good morning,” sang the Nightingale.

“It’s a beautiful morning,” Dame Kind said, and it was. She smiled, and the beauty of the morning was her smile. “And I,” said Dame Kind, “have had a new idea.”

“I bet it’s a good one,” said the Nightingale, who had never had an idea in all his life, good or bad.

“I think it’s a good one,” said Dame Kind. She thought a moment. “I’m sure it’s a good one. Anyway, I’ve had it, and so there it is. Once you have an idea, there’s no going back.”

“If you say so,” the Nightingale said cheerfully. “What is the new idea?”

“Well,” Dame Kind said, “you can come see, if you like.”

Together they went through the forest to the place where the new idea could be seen. In Dame Kind’s footsteps as she walked there sprang up two new kinds of turtle, the speckles on the eggs that plovers lay, and the world’s first June bug. The Nightingale didn’t marvel at these things, because such things always happened where Dame Kind walked in the world.

At a certain place in the forest where the sun fell in patterns of light and dark on the flowers and the ferns, there sat a creature the Nightingale had never seen before.

“Is it the new idea?” asked the Nightingale.

“It is,” said Dame Kind.

The creature had a round, flat face, and it stood on two legs, not four. Like some animals’ babies, it was all naked, except on the top of its head, where long fur grew thickly. The sheen of its skin was soft and fragile-looking. There was something in its child’s naked face, in its wondering eyes, that the Nightingale had never seen before in the faces of any of the thousands upon thousands of creatures that Dame Kind had thought of.

For just a moment, watching the new creature, the Nightingale knew that the world was turning beneath him, turning and turning and never quite coming back to the same place.

“What is it?” the Nightingale whispered.

“It’s a Girl,” Dame Kind answered. “And here is a Boy to go with her.”

Another creature came from the woods. The two seemed very much alike, though there were differences. The Boy had caught a crimson salamander, and he brought it to show the Girl.

The Nightingale didn’t understand. “Boy? Girl?”

“Those are their names,” said Dame Kind.

“Names?”

“They thought them up themselves,” Dame Kind said proudly. “With a little help from me.”

The Nightingale marveled now. Never in all the forest had he ever heard of a creature that thought things up. He himself had never thought up anything. “How does it happen that they thought up names?” he asked.

“Well,” Dame Kind said, going into the forest glade where the Boy and the Girl sat together, “that’s the new idea.”

From a distance—he didn’t yet like to get too close to the new idea—the Nightingale watched the Boy and the Girl playing with the salamander the Boy had caught. What clever hands they had! Gently and quickly their flexible long fingers turned this way and that, picking up the salamander and putting it down, prodding it, caging it and releasing it. The Girl freed it at last, and then, as though her hands could not be at rest, she picked up something else—a flower, by the stem, between thumb and finger.

When they saw Dame Kind, the two new creatures ran to her, smiling and bringing her the flowers they had gathered. She sat with them, and they climbed into her lap, and she hugged them to her bosom, and they laughed and talked with her about all the things they had seen in the world since they had come to be.

“Look!” said the Girl, pointing up to the sky, from which a flood of hot golden light fell, warming her face.

“Yes,” Dame Kind said. “It’s lovely and warm.”

“We call it the Sun,” the Boy said.

“That’s a good name,” said Dame Kind fondly.

The Nightingale watched them for a time, and then, still marveling, he flew off to attend to the business of his life: to eat bugs and berries, to sing in the sun, and to raise his young.

“Well,” he said to himself, “it certainly is a wonderful new idea.

“I’m sure I never would have thought of it.”

 

Dame Kind walked in the forest with the Boy and the Girl, holding a hand of each, and telling them about the world that she had made.

She told them what things were good to eat and what were not, and the difference seemed very clear to the Boy and the Girl, as though they had always known it.

She told them of some things they should take care about. She said they shouldn’t kick open hornets’ nests, or jump off high places, or get in fights with large fierce animals.

The children laughed, because they knew all these things very well, from the very first moment they came to be.

At evening they came to the edges of the forest, to an open place where the darkening sky was broad and high and deep and far away, and trimmed with colored cloud.

“What’s beyond there?” asked the Boy, pointing far off.

“More of the world,” said Dame Kind.

“As nice as this?” asked the Girl.

“Much the same,” said Dame Kind.

“What are those lights?” asked the Boy, pointing up.

“They are far, far away,” Dame Kind said. “So far that no amount of traveling could bring you much closer to them. They are huger than you can imagine, and there are more of them than you will ever know. They stitch the sky together, and without them nothing would be at all.”

“I’ll call them Stars,” said the Boy.

“Oh,” said the Girl, looking to the east. “Oh, look, what’s that?”

Over the far purple hills there had arisen a sliver of golden light. As the Boy and the Girl watched, it grew larger, lifting itself slowly above the earth.

“Oh, how beautiful,” said the Girl. “What is it?”

The golden light grew round as it rose. It pulled itself free of the purple hills and rolled into the sky. It was huge, and bright, and looked down on the Boy and the Girl with a wise expression on its round, fat face.

“It comes and goes,” said Dame Kind. “It’s lovely to look at, but not as important as it thinks. It steals its light from the Sun, when the Sun’s back is turned.”

“I’ll call it the Moon,” said the Girl.

“I wonder,” said Dame Kind, “why you think everything in the world should have a name.”

Dame Kind had made the Moon, of course, just as she had made everything the Boy and the Girl saw and named.

But she couldn’t remember just then why she had made it.

I must have had a reason, she thought, looking up into the big fat face that looked down. The smile on the face of the Moon seemed to say: I know the reason.

Dame Kind felt troubled. She took the Boy’s hand and the Girl’s hand and led them back into the forest. “Dear children,” she said. “You are my wonderful new idea, and I love you very much.

“I’ve shown you everything in my world that can give you joy and pleasure, and I’ve explained about some of the inconveniences there are, and how to avoid them.

“I’ve made you as well as I could to fit into this world I have made, and I will always think about your happiness, just as I do about the happiness of every other creature that is.

“Now I want to tell you something.

“For your own happiness, don’t talk too much with…” She gestured over her shoulder with her thumb.

“The Moon,” said the Girl.

“The Moon,” said the Boy.

“The Moon,” said Dame Kind. “I think it’s not to be trusted. I forget just now why I think so, but I do. It comes and goes, and steals its light from the Sun, and it’s not to be trusted.

“Will you do that?”

“If you say so,” said the Girl.

“If you say so,” said the Boy, and yawned a huge yawn.

“Good,” said Dame Kind. “You are wonderful children, and I’m sure you’ll be happy. We won’t mention it again.

“Now I’ll leave you, because I have a thousand thousand other things to see to. But I’ll always be near, and I’ll always have you in my thoughts.

“No matter what.”

Dame Kind kissed them both, and then she went away, to pour rain, to plant seeds, to turn the world in its socket. She had some new ideas for beetles; as anybody who has ever looked closely at the world knows, Dame Kind is very fond of beetles.

The Boy and the Girl lay down to sleep on the soft blooming moss of the forest floor. There was nothing to trouble them, and nothing to alarm them. When they slept, they had no dreams, because dreams had not been invented yet.

Before she slept, the Girl looked up once at the Moon.

It had grown smaller as it went higher in the sky, and it had lost its golden color; its stolen light was white and cold. The light crept through the branches of the trees and stole over the flowers and the ferns, making them all black and silver. It was beautiful and strange, and the face of the Moon looked down into the Girl’s face and smiled a far-off smile, as though it knew something about the Girl that the Girl herself did not know.

The Girl turned away then, and put her arm around the Boy, and closed her eyes and slept.

 

The days came and went, each one so much like the last that it was hard to tell whether it was the same day happening over and over again, or new days coming to replace old ones.

The Boy and the Girl ate when they were hungry and drank when they were thirsty; when they were sleepy, they slept.

With their quick feet and clever fingers they explored the world Dame Kind had made, giving a name to everything that seemed to have something different about it.

One leaf of a tree seemed to be pretty much the same as every other leaf, so they didn’t give a separate name to each leaf; they called them all Leaves.

There was not much difference between a bat and a bird, but there was a difference; so they called one a Bat and the other a Bird.

The difference between Day and Night was the biggest difference they knew. In the day the Sun shone and there was light; then they went exploring, and gave names to things, and ate and drank. In the night there was no Sun, and they lay on the mossy floor of the forest and put their arms around one another and slept.

And while they slept, the Moon came and went, rolling over the dark-blue sky and looking down on them.

There was a night when, very close to where the Boy and the Girl lay asleep, an owl hooted, and the Girl awoke.

She looked around her in the sparkling dimness. The fireflies had put out their lights. But there was a faint silvery light on the leaves and flowers.

She looked overhead.

Through the branches of the trees, on the deep-blue surface of the night sky, surrounded by the far-off stars, the Moon looked down on her.

But it was not the same Moon.

The Moon she had once seen was a round, fat face, with a smile that puffed out its cheeks, and heavy-lidded eyes half closed.

This Moon was a thin crescent of light, with a shape like a fingernail paring; it had a thin, thin face that looked away, and a small pursed mouth, and a cold, cold eye that glanced sidewise at the Girl.

“Are you the Moon?” she asked.

“I am,” said the Moon, “I am.”

“What became of the other Moon?” asked the Girl.

“What other Moon is that?” the Moon asked back. Its voice was as cold and far-off as its light, but the Girl could hear it clearly.

“You aren’t the same,” said the Girl.

“Is that so?” said the Moon. “Well, there it is.”

“Why?”

“Oh, well,” the Moon said, and looked away. “That’s my secret.”

“Did you change?” asked the Girl.

“That would be telling,” said the Moon.

The Girl lay watching the Moon a long time, trying to think of a question she could ask that would make the Moon tell what it knew. It bothered her that the Moon had a secret she could not guess.

“There must be more than one Moon,” she said. “That’s all.”

The Moon said: “Is that what you think?”

“It must be,” said the Girl.

“Hm,” said the Moon, and smiled a secret smile. It had rolled on by now, rolling toward the west; and without saying another word, it rolled behind the trees where the Girl could see it no more.

In the morning she told the Boy: “We have to give the Moon a different name.”

“Why?” asked the Boy.

“Because it’s different now,” the Girl said. “I saw it last night. Once it was fat and round. Now it’s thin and sharp, and looks away. That’s a difference. And different things should have different names.”

The Boy couldn’t think of an answer to this. He didn’t like the Moon, and didn’t like to think about it. “Maybe it wasn’t the Moon at all,” he said.

“It was,” the Girl said. “I asked.”

The Boy said: “We weren’t supposed to talk to the Moon! Don’t you remember?”

“We weren’t supposed to talk to the Moon too much,” the Girl said. “I didn’t talk too much.”

The Boy turned away. He had a feeling within him that he had never felt before in all the time he had been in the world. He didn’t know what it was, and he didn’t know why he felt it. “The Moon is the Moon,” he said. “It doesn’t change, and it has only one name. Two names would just be confusing. And we’re not supposed to talk with it.”

He sat without turning around until the Girl said: “I won’t talk with it again.”

And so she didn’t. But she thought about it.

It’s a strange thing about names: when you know the name of something, you can think about it even when the thing itself isn’t there before your face.

Even though the Girl took care not to look up at the Moon’s smile, she could think about the Moon, and about whether it was one Moon or two. She could do that because she had a name to think of.

She could say to herself: “The Moon,” and even though the Sun was shining and making patterns of dark and light on the flowers and the ferns of the forest, she could see the cold, white, narrow face of the Moon and feel its silver light, and ask it questions that it would not answer.

 

The Boy learned this strange thing about names, too.

He found that he could sit and think about things that were not there before his face.

He could say to himself, “a Squirrel,” and the squirrel he had thought of would run around his mind, and pick up nuts in its little black hands, and eat them in its quick squirrel way.

He could say to himself, “a Stone,” and there would be a stone: not any particular stone, just a stone; a stone that was something like all the stones he had ever seen but not exactly like any one.

And, most interesting of all, he could think of the Stone and the Squirrel at the same time, and think about the many differences between them.

One afternoon the Nightingale came upon him while he was busy with this, thinking of the names of things, putting them together, and thinking about the difference between them.

What the Nightingale saw was this: he saw the Boy put his cheek in his hand and rest his elbow on his knee. He saw the Boy’s lips move, but no sound came out. Then he saw the Boy cross his legs a different way and rest his chin on his fist. He saw the Boy scratch his head, and laugh at nothing, and get up and throw himself down on the ground, and pillow his hands under his head.

The Nightingale didn’t know what the Boy was doing, and he grew curious.

“Hello there,” he sang from a branch above the Boy’s head.

“Hello, Bird,” said the Boy, looking up and smiling.

“What is it that you’re doing there?” the Nightingale asked.

“I was just thinking,” said the Boy.

“Oh,” said the Nightingale. “Thinking?”

“Just thinking,” said the Boy.

“Oh,” said the Nightingale. “What were you thinking up? Names?”

“I wasn’t thinking anything up,” said the Boy. “Not just now. I was just thinking.”

“Hm,” said the Nightingale, and he sang a few notes, because he had nothing to say.

“I was thinking of a question,” said the Boy.

“That’s clever of you,” said the Nightingale.

The Boy crossed his legs a different way. “The question is this: Why is there anything at all, and not nothing?”

The Nightingale marveled at the Boy. “That’s a good question,” he said. “I never would have thought of it.”

“But what’s the answer?” asked the Boy.

“Answer?” said the Nightingale.

“A question has to have an answer.”

“Does it?” said the Nightingale.

“Oh, forget it,” said the Boy.

“All right,” said the Nightingale, and he sang a long song.

The Boy listened to the song. He thought: Why is there anything at all, and not nothing instead? Why should there be something, instead of nothing at all? The question went on and on inside his head, and made him feel strange. The more he thought about it the stranger he felt: as though he himself did not exist.

This was the first time anyone had ever thought of this question, and from that day to this no one has ever thought of an answer: Why is there anything at all, and not nothing?

While the Nightingale sang and the Boy thought, the Girl, walking on the edges of the forest, discovered a strange thing.

The Moon was shining in the day.

The Sun had set, but it was still coloring the sky in the west. And far above the green hills the Moon had risen.

It was fatter, and smiling once again, as it had been when Dame Kind had first shown it to them. It seemed to be not quite all there, though. It was faint and very pale, and the Girl could partly see through it: she could see blue sky through its white skin.

“Hello again,” said the Moon.

“Hello,” said the Girl. She had forgotten, in her wonder, that she had promised not to talk with the Moon. “You’ve changed again.”

“Is that so?” said the Moon. Its voice was fainter and farther away than ever.

“Unless,” the Girl said, “there are three Moons: one fat one, one thin one, and one that shines in the day. Is that the answer?”

“What’s the question?” asked the Moon.

The Girl couldn’t think just what the question was. She sat down and looked up at the Moon. She thought: I am the question. For a long time she only sat and looked up, thinking: I am the question. But she could not think how to ask it.

Now a star or two was shining. The blue of the sky was darkening. And the Moon was growing brighter, more solid, more like itself.

“I’ll tell you this,” it said, rolling higher into the sky and smiling more broadly. “You and I are alike.”

“We are?” said the Girl.

“Oh, very much alike,” the Moon said.

“How are we alike?” asked the Girl.

“Would you like to know?” said the Moon. “Then you keep your eye on me.”

Now the night was deep. Around the edges of the sky the stars were numberless; but in the center the Moon was bright and put out the stars. Its silver light coated the world with strangeness. “I am strong,” the Moon said, “and so are you; but we’re more alike than that. You are beautiful, and so am I; but we’re more alike than that.”

“How are we alike?” the Girl asked. “Tell me.”

“Oh, you’ll see,” the Moon said. “Watch me come and go, and you’ll see. You’ll see it’s true.”

The Girl, sitting in the stream of the Moon’s light, and hearing its voice, knew that the Moon was right. She grew afraid. She said: “We weren’t supposed to talk to you.”

“Oh?” said the Moon. “Who told you so?”

“She,” the Girl said, even more afraid. “She told us so. She who made us both.”

“Oho,” the Moon said. “I wonder why she said that.”

“I don’t know,” the Girl said.

“I wonder,” said the Moon. “Do you think—perhaps—that there is something that I know, something she wants you not to find out?”

“I don’t know,” said the Girl.

“I wonder,” said the Moon.

“She told us everything,” said the Girl.

“Did she,” said the Moon. “Did she, now.”

“What is it that you know?” asked the Girl.

“You’ll find out,” said the Moon. “Just keep your eye on me.”

At that moment the Moon looked away. Its silver smile faded. Clouds, dark as slate and edged with lacy white, raced over the sky and across the face of the Moon.

Far away, there was a sound of thunder.

The Thunder said: “What’s going on?”

The Moon grew small, and it sped through the racing clouds as though it were being chased. The stars went out. The Girl hugged herself, feeling a cold wind blow.

The Wind said: “If I were you, I wouldn’t talk with the Moon.”

The Girl saw the Moon swallowed up in black clouds. She heard it say, as it went away: “Just keep your eye on me.”

“If I were you,” Dame Kind said (for it was her voice in the thunder, and her voice in the wind), “I wouldn’t listen to the Moon.”

The Girl was afraid, but she said: “Why?”

Dame Kind sat down with her. “Dear child,” she said. “Do you think I don’t know best? I know how you’re made, every little bit of you, every hair on your head! Didn’t I make you myself, and didn’t I make you just as you are so that you could be happy in the world I made, and give me joy in your happiness? And don’t you think then that I know what’s best for you?”

“But why?” the Girl asked again.

Dame Kind arose; she stamped her foot with a long roll of thunder, and she said in a loud voice: “Because I said so!”

She turned from the Girl and went away; and the rain fell in big, cold drops, pattering in the leaves of the trees and causing the birds and the animals to run and hide.

Dame Kind was puzzled and sad. Never before in all the world she had made, in all the time she had gone about in it, had she ever lost her temper and said: “Because I said so!”

But then, never before in all the world had anyone ever asked Dame Kind the question that the Girl had asked: “Why?”

 

The Girl said to the Boy: “The Moon does change.”

“It does?” said the Boy. They were sitting in a little cave they had found, out of the rain that fell from leaf to leaf. “How do you know?”

“I saw it again,” said the Girl. “And it was fat and big, not thin and sharp.”

“Maybe,” said the Boy, “there are three Moons.”

“No,” said the Girl. “It’s one Moon, but it changes.”

“I don’t care,” said the Boy. He still didn’t like hearing the Girl talk about the Moon.

“The Moon,” she said to him—softly, so that no one else would hear—“the Moon has a secret.”

“How do you know?”

“Because it told me,” said the Girl.

“We aren’t supposed to talk to the Moon,” said the Boy.

The Girl only took the Boy’s hand, and waited. The rain fell and fell, like tears. And at last the Boy said: “What is the Moon’s secret?”

“I don’t know,” said the Girl. “It won’t tell. But it said: Keep your eye on me, and you’ll see.”

“It’s probably not important,” said the Boy. “It’s something good to eat, or something to keep away from; or it’s the name of something we haven’t named yet.”

“No,” said the Girl. “It’s not anything like that. It’s something we don’t know, and something we couldn’t think of.”

The Boy said: “She would know what it was.” He pointed outward at the rainy world. “We’ll ask her.”

“No,” said the Girl. “She told us not to talk to the Moon. She doesn’t want us to learn the Moon’s secret.”

“Why?” asked the Boy.

“I don’t know,” said the Girl.

The Boy wondered what the secret could be. He thought it might be the answer to the hard question he had thought of: Why is there anything at all, and not nothing?

If he could make the Moon tell him the answer to that question, he would know everything. But he didn’t say this to the Girl.

He said: “Maybe, if we knew the Moon’s secret, we would know as much as she does.”

“Maybe,” said the Girl.

“And then we could do the things that she does.”

“Maybe,” said the Girl. But she didn’t think this was the Moon’s secret. She thought that the Moon’s secret was a secret about herself: something she didn’t know about herself, that the Moon knew.

But she didn’t say this to the Boy.

She said: “We can learn what the secret is. We must.”

“How?” said the Boy.

“We’ll do as it said,” the Girl answered. “We’ll keep our eyes on it, and learn.”

The Boy’s heart, for some reason, or for no reason at all, had begun to beat hard and fast. “All right,” he said. “We’ll keep our eyes on it, and see.”

 

And so they did.

They watched that night, and the next night, and every night from then on.

They watched the Moon change: each night it arose at a different time, and each night it grew thinner. Its fat face was worn away on one side, till it was like a melon cut in half. Its smile grew strange and its eyes were sad.

“Time eats me,” said the Moon to the Boy.

“What is Time?” asked the Boy.

“You don’t know?” said the Moon. “Then watch me, and learn.”

The next night the Moon was thinner, and the next night, thinner still. Now it had become the thin, sharp-faced Moon that looked away.

“The Moon does change,” the Boy said. “Once it was one way, and now it’s another way. On one night it’s fat, and then it grows thinner. Last night is different from tonight. Tomorrow night will be different again.”

“Different things should have different names,” said the Girl.

The difference between the way things once were, and the way things are now, and the way things will be, was the biggest difference the Boy and the Girl had yet learned.

They called the difference Time.

“Is that the Moon’s secret?” asked the Boy.

The Girl asked the Moon: “Is that your secret?”

But the Moon only answered: “Keep your eye on me.”

And still the Moon grew thinner with every night that passed. Now it was only the palest and thinnest of fingernail parings, and almost not there at all.

“I die,” said the Moon.

“What does that mean?” asked the Boy.

“Just watch me,” said the Moon, and it seemed that a silver tear stood in its eye. “Good-bye,” it said.

And the next night there was no Moon at all.

The stars glowed more brightly than they ever had, but the night was deeply dark. The Boy and the Girl could hardly see each other.

“It’s gone,” said the Boy. “Once it was, and now it’s not anymore. Once there was a Moon, and now there’s not a Moon anymore. It dies.” And he sat very close to the Girl in the fearful darkness. “That’s the Moon’s secret,” he said.

The next night was just as dark.

But on the next night, as the Boy and the Girl sat close together watching the darkening sky in the east, they saw, rising over the purple hills, as thin as could be and as pale as anything, a new Moon.

“Moon!” said the Girl in wonder. “You came back!”

“Did I?” said the new Moon. Now it faced the opposite way, and its small cold voice was smaller and colder than before. “Well, I come and I go. Ah, but it’s good to be young!”

And every night thereafter as they watched, the new Moon grew fatter and fuller. Its smile broadened and its cheeks puffed out. “Ah,” he said proudly to the Girl, “it’s good to be strong and beautiful.”

“Am I like you?” asked the Girl. “Am I strong and beautiful?”

“You’re very much like me,” said the Moon. “Look inside yourself and see.”

The nights passed. The full-faced new Moon began to shrink and lose its shape, just as the old Moon had done.

“I wane,” said the Moon. “I grow old.”

“Will I grow old?” the Girl asked.

“We’re alike,” the Moon said. “Look inside yourself and see.”

The Girl looked within herself. And she saw that what the Moon said was true: they were alike. She too would change. She was changing even now, as though she had a Moon of her own within her. She was strong and young and beautiful: and yet she too would grow old. “That’s the Moon’s secret,” she said. She had thought that the Moon’s secret was a secret about herself: and she was right.

When day came, the Boy and the Girl looked around themselves. The world seemed to be different from the way it had been.

“Everything’s changed,” said the Girl. She looked at the Boy. “You’ve changed.”

“You’ve changed,” said the Boy, looking at the Girl. “Why?”

“We’re different now,” said the Girl. “Different things should have different names.”

“Why have we changed?” asked the Boy.

“Well,” said the Girl, as the Moon had said to her, “there it is.”

“What name will you have, then?” the Boy asked.

“I will be the Woman.”

He straightened his shoulders, he lifted his chin, and he looked firmly far off. “All right,” he said. “Then I’ll be the Man.”

They took hands then, and looked at each other, and felt suddenly shy, and didn’t know what to do next.

 

The Man and the Woman walked together in the forest. They saw that the summer’s flowers had wilted and drooped on their brown stems. They hadn’t noticed that before.

They saw a hunting hawk fall from the sky on a brown mouse, and they heard a tiny shriek as the mouse was speared by the hawk’s sharp claws.

They saw a frog on a lily pad shoot out its long tongue, catch a careless dragonfly, and eat it. And they saw a heron step up silently on long legs behind the frog, catch it in its beak, and swallow it.

They kicked the dry brown leaves underfoot, leaves that had once danced green and dewy on the branches of the trees.

“Everything’s changed,” the Woman said.

“Nothing lasts,” the Man said. He took the Woman’s hand in his. “For everything, there was a time before it was alive, and a time after it isn’t alive anymore.”

Bigger than the difference between a Squirrel and a Stone, bigger than the difference between Night and Day, was the difference between being alive and not being alive anymore.

They called the difference Death.

“I die,” said the Moon to the Woman that night. It had grown as thin as thin, and was almost not there.

“Will I die?” asked the Woman, and the Moon didn’t answer; but she needed only to look inside herself to know.

She looked up, and blinked the tears away that had come into her eyes. “Oh, look!” she said. “Look, look!”

For she could see, as the old Moon rolled away, that held within its long, long arms was the new Moon that would come to be in its place. It wasn’t easy to see the new Moon; it was a pale, ghostly shadow. But it was like a promise. And the Woman knew that the promise had been made to her: for she and the Moon were alike.

“Now I know the Moon’s secret,” she said to herself, though what she knew she could never say in words.

 

Now through all this time the Nightingale had gone on with the business of his life: that is, singing in the day and sleeping at night, eating bugs and berries, raising his young and going about in the world to see what he could see.

One day was very much like another, as it had always been and would always be.

He didn’t know that the Man and the Woman had invented Time.

When he came upon them one day, he greeted them as usual: “Hello, Boy,” he sang. “Hello, Girl.”

“I’m not a boy,” the Man said. “Not anymore. Once I was, but now I’m a Man.”

“I’m not a girl,” said the Woman. “I’ve changed. Now I’m a Woman.”

“Oh,” said the Nightingale. “Sorry. I’ll try to remember.” He sang a few notes, and then he asked the Man, “Did you ever find an answer to your question?”

“No,” said the Man. “But I learned a lot of things.”

“Is that so,” said the Nightingale.

“Yes,” said the Man. He pointed up at the Nightingale. “Things aren’t as you think they are.”

“No?” said the Nightingale.

“No,” said the Man. “Listen to the Moon. You’ll learn.”

“Oh?” said the Nightingale. “The Moon never spoke to me. What did the Moon say?”

“There is Time,” said the Man. He came closer to the branch where the Nightingale sat. “There was a time before you were,” he said, “and there will be a time after. You won’t live forever. You will die.”

“Do you think so?” said the Nightingale, who didn’t know at all what the Man meant.

“You will. There are hawks, Bird. There are foxes. There are owls and weasels.”

“But not just now,” said the Nightingale, looking around quickly.

“There will be!” said the Man. His expression was so fierce and strange that the Nightingale flew to a higher branch away from him.

“You will die, Bird!” said the man in a terrible voice. “You will die!”

The Nightingale was astonished and troubled and didn’t know what to do. So he sang. “It’s all right,” he sang. “It’s all right.”

“It’s not all right!” cried the Man. “It’s not. Because you’ll die. And so will I!”

And just at that moment, with a noise of winds and many rivers, with a clamor of birdsong and a sound of leaves falling, Dame Kind came striding through the forest toward them.

The Woman leapt up. “We’ll run and hide!” she said. She took the Man’s hand. “Quick, we must!” she said, and together they ran to hide in the forest.

“Come out,” said Dame Kind.

She waited.

“Come out,” she said again. And the Man and the Woman came out from where they had hidden themselves.

“Why did you hide?” asked Dame Kind.

“Because we were afraid,” said the Woman.

Dame Kind looked at them sadly for a long time. Then she said in a gentle voice: “Who told you you should be afraid?”

The Man and the Woman looked away from Dame Kind, and they made no answer.

“And who told you that you would die?” Dame Kind asked them. “Was it the Moon?”

“It was the Moon,” said the Man.

“No,” said the Woman, and she raised her eyes to Dame Kind. “It wasn’t the Moon. We learned it ourselves.”

And that was true.

Dame Kind took the Man’s shoulder in her great hand. She gently brushed away the hair that fell before the Woman’s face. She said, “Oh, dear. Oh, my poor children.” Then she covered her eyes with her hand and shook her head. “Oh, my,” she said. “Oh, dear.”

“We only wanted to learn,” said the Man. “There is Time, and there is Change, and there is Death. And you never told us.”

“You never told us,” the Woman said, her eyes filling with tears. “You never told us we would die.”

Dame Kind lowered her hand from her eyes. “No,” she said. “I didn’t. And I will tell you why. Until you thought of those things, they did not exist.

“Until you thought of Time, there was no such thing. Things went on as they always had; there wasn’t a Yesterday, and there wasn’t a Tomorrow; there was only Today.

“Until you thought of Change, everything remained the same. The flowers were always growing, the young ones were always being born, the Sun and the stars and yes, even the Moon, were always doing just as they always do. Now you will see them change, you alone, and nothing will ever be quite the same for you.

“Until you thought of Death, dear children, nothing died. My creatures only lived. They didn’t know of a time when they had not been, and they couldn’t think of a time when they would not be. And so they lived forever. And so would you have too: except that you thought of Death.

“And when you thought of those things,” she said, “you thought of fear, too.

“And you thought of weeping.” She dried the Woman’s eyes with the sleeve of her gown.

“And the worst thing is,” Dame Kind said, and a tear came to her own eye, “that now you have thought of these things, you cannot take them back, ever. That’s the way it is with ideas. Once you have one, there’s no going back.”

The Woman wept, and the Man hung his head at these words of Dame Kind’s; and the Nightingale remembered a morning—an important morning—when Dame Kind had said those very words to him: once you have an idea, there’s no going back.

Dame Kind crossed her arms and rose up to her full height. “And now,” she said. She shrugged her shoulders. “Well, what now? I just don’t know. I don’t know if you can ever be happy here again; not as happy as you once were.” She looked around her at the blooming forest. “I can’t have you going about the world weeping. I can’t have you telling the birds and the beasts that they will die. I can’t have that.”

“It’s all right,” sang the Nightingale. He hadn’t understood much of what had passed between Dame Kind and the Man and the Woman, but he didn’t like to see them sad. “It’s all right,” he sang. “I don’t mind.”

“All right then,” said the Man. His face was brave, and his eyes were dry. His knees shook, but he pretended that they didn’t. “All right then, we’ll go someplace else.” He clenched his fists and set his jaw. “If we can’t be happy here, we’ll go someplace else.”

“You can’t,” Dame Kind said. “There isn’t anyplace else.”

The Man put his arm around the Woman. “All right,” he said, all right then: I’ll make one up. I’ll make up another place. I’ll make up another place, a better place, and go there.”

“Oh, dear,” said Dame Kind. She lifted her fingers to her chin in alarm and puzzlement.

The Woman brushed the last of her tears from her eyes. She said, “Yes! I’ll make up someplace else, too. A better place. And I’ll go there.”

“No!” the Man said turning on her. “I’ll make up another place, and we’ll both go there. Come on!” And he took the Woman’s arm and led her away; and though she looked back once, and though her eyes began again to fill with tears, she knew that she could not leave the Man; and so she went with him, and they went out of the forest together.

 

“Perhaps,” Dame Kind said when they were gone, “perhaps I made a mistake.” She sat sadly on the stump of a tree she had made long ago, and had made to fall down, too. “Perhaps the Boy and the Girl were a mistake.”

“Oh, no,” the Nightingale said. “I don’t think you could make a mistake.”

“I didn’t think so either,” Dame Kind said. “Well—I have made one or two—some animals and plants that didn’t work out—but they all came right in the end. They did their part.”

“So will the Boy and the Girl.”

“I don’t know,” said Dame Kind. “It’s odd, having things come about in the world that I didn’t think of. This place they’re going to make up: What will it be like? I don’t know. Because I didn’t think of it.”

“But you did,” said the Nightingale. “I don’t know anything about it, but—didn’t you think up the Boy and the Girl? If you thought up the Boy and the Girl, didn’t you think up everything they can think up? In a way, I mean.”

Dame Kind thought about that.

“I guess I did,” she said at last. A broad smile came over her face, a smile that was like the Sun coming from clouds; and in fact at that very moment a mass of thick clouds did go away from the face of the Sun, and the Sun’s smile remade the patterns of light and dark amid the ferns and the flowers. “I guess I did at that. In a way.” She sighed, and stood. A thousand thousand duties were calling to her. “Anyway, I’ll just have to get used to it. And I don’t suppose the story’s over yet.”

The Nightingale didn’t know what she meant by that, but he was glad to see Dame Kind happy again. He sang a few notes. “It’s all right,” he sang.

“You know,” Dame Kind said to him as she went away, “all those things the Man said are true. About Time. About Death.”

“It is?” said the Nightingale.

“But if I were you,” said Dame Kind, “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

“If you say so,” said the Nightingale, and his heart was filled with gladness.

And Dame Kind went away, to pour rain, to plant seeds, to turn the world in its socket. “And as for you,” she said to the Moon when next she saw it, “from now on you will hold your tongue.” She pinched its nose and squeezed its cheeks and locked up its lips until its face was hardly a face at all. “And from now on forever,” she said, “when the Man and the Woman ask you questions, no matter how they insist, you will answer nothing, nothing, nothing at all.”

And so it has been, from that day to this.

 

It was another day when the Nightingale saw the Man again, but whether it was the next day, or the day after that, or many many days later, the Nightingale didn’t know, for he didn’t keep track of such things.

The Nightingale was singing in the forest when he saw the Man some way off.

The Man stood looking into the forest where the Sun fell in patterns of dark and light on the flowers and the ferns.

“Why don’t you come in?” said the Nightingale. “Come in and rest, and have a chat.”

“I can’t,” the Man said. “I can’t pass through this gate.”

“What gate is that?” the Nightingale asked.

“This one here,” the Man said, pointing ahead of him with the stick he carried.

But the Nightingale could see no gate there. “Well, I don’t know what you mean,” he said, “but if you say so.”

The Man went on staring into the forest, through the gate that he alone saw there. He seemed at once sad and angry and resolute. The Nightingale sang a few notes and said, “Tell me. How is it with you now? How did the place you made up turn out? Is it better than here?”

The Man sat down, holding his stick in his lap, and put his elbows on his knees and his cheeks in his hands.

“I wouldn’t say better,” he said a little sadly. “It’s interesting. Bigger. I think it’s bigger, but we haven’t gone very far yet. There’s a lot of work to do.”

“A lot of what?” asked the Nightingale.

“Work,” the Man said, looking up at the branch where the Nightingale sat and saying the word a little bitterly. “Work. You wouldn’t understand.”

“I think,” the Nightingale said cheerfully, “I think I understand you less and less. But don’t hold it against me.”

The Man laughed, and shook his head. “No, I won’t,” he said. He sighed. “It’ll be all right. It’s the nights that are the hardest time.”

“Why is that?” asked the Nightingale. He hardly knew what Night was, after all; he slept all through it, and when he awoke, it was gone.

“Well, there are Things in the dark. Or anyway I think there are Things. I can’t be sure. She says they’re Dreams.”

“Dreams?”

“Things that you think are there but aren’t.”

“If you say so,” said the Nightingale.

“But it doesn’t matter,” said the Man. He grasped the stick in the two clever hands the Nightingale had always marveled at. “See, I’ve got this stick now. If anything comes near—” He struck out with the stick, which made a swishing noise in the empty air.

“That’s a good idea,” said the Nightingale. “I never would have thought of it.”

The Man was turning the stick in his hands with a dissatisfied expression. “I could make it better,” he said. “Somehow better. Stronger. Like stone—that’s the strongest thing. So it would cut, like a sharp stone.” He made an imaginary jab with the stick, like a jay’s sharp beak breaking into an egg, except there was no egg there. Then he put down the stick and sat again with his cheeks in his hands.

“Anyway,” the Man said, “there’s nothing to be afraid of now.”

“No,” said the Nightingale.

“But then,” the Man said. “Soon. There might be something to be afraid of.”

“If you say so,” said the Nightingale.

The Man rose to go, shouldering the stick he had thought of. “It’ll be all right,” he said again. “It’s just the nights that are hard.”

He looked back once through the gate that he saw there, which kept him from the precincts of the forest, and which the Nightingale couldn’t see.

“Well, good-bye then,” he sang. “Good-bye.”

And the Man went away down the valley to the place he and the Woman had made up.

 

When darkness came that night, the Nightingale perched on his usual branch. He fluffed his feathers; he bent his legs so that his sharp, small feet locked themselves tightly around the branch (so that he wouldn’t fall from the tree in his sleep). He nestled his beak in the feathers of his shoulder and closed his eyes.

But sleep wouldn’t come.

The Nightingale’s eyes opened. He shut them again, and again they opened.

The Nightingale was thinking.

For the first time in his life, and the first time in all the time there had been a Nightingale, the Nightingale was thinking about something that was not in front of his eyes.

He was thinking about the Man and the Woman, alone in the place they had made up, wherever it was.

He was thinking of what the Man had said to him: that it was all right, but that the nights were hard.

That there were Things in the night to be afraid of.

The Nightingale took his beak out from the feathers of his shoulder and looked around himself.

There were no Things in the night to be afraid of that he could see.

There was a sparkling dimness; there were the black shapes of the sleeping trees and the very, very dark pool of the forest floor. There was the secret Moon turning in the clouds and saying nothing. There were stars, and there were breezes. But no Things.

“It’s all right,” the Nightingale sang. And because there were no other songs being sung, the Nightingale’s song was stronger and sweeter than he had ever heard it.

“It’s all right,” he sang again, and again his song floated out into the night, and lingered, all alone.

That’s interesting, thought the Nightingale, very interesting: but the night is for sleep. He tucked his beak again into the feathers of his shoulder and closed his eyes.

Without even knowing he had done so, he found after a few moments that he had opened his eyes again and was looking around himself and thinking.

He was thinking, What if I fly to where the Man and the Woman are?

If they hear me sing, he thought, they might not be so afraid. If they heard me singing, they would remember that day will come. And anyway, he thought, what’s the use of sleeping all night, when you can be awake and singing?

He made up his mind to do this, even though it was something he had never done before. He looked around himself, wondering how he would find the Man and the Woman. He unlocked his feet from the branch where he sat, opened his brown wings, and sailed off carefully into the cool darkness.

He flew, not knowing exactly where he should fly; now and then he stopped to rest, and to eat a few of the bugs that were so plentiful, and to look at the new world of night he had discovered, and to test his song against it. And after a time that seemed to him more short than long, he came upon the place where the Man and the Woman were.

“Why, it isn’t very far away at all,” he said to himself. “In fact it seems just like the same old forest to me.”

There was one difference, though.

In the place where the Man and the Woman were, there was something bright, something yellow and orange and red, dancing and shifting and shining. It was as though a tiny piece of the Sun had been broken off and set before them.

The Man and the Woman had thought of fire.

They sat before their fire, with their arms around each other, looking into the fire and into the deep darkness around them. In one hand the Man held the stick he had thought of.

The Nightingale didn’t like to get too close to the new idea of fire, which was surely marvelous but a little scary; and so he hid himself in a thicket. And from there he sang.

“It’s all right,” he sang.

The Woman listened. “Did you hear that?” she asked.

“What?” said the Man, looking up in alarm.

“Listen,” the Woman said.

The Nightingale sang: “It’s all right.”

The Man and the Woman listened to the song. In the stillness of the night it was so clear that it seemed they heard it for the first time. They had never noticed that it was so beautiful, so strong and soft, so happy and sad all at once.

“Once,” said the Man, “he sang in the day.”

“Now he sings at night,” the Woman said.

“We’ll call him the Nightingale,” said the Man.

The Woman rested her head on the Man’s shoulder. Hearing the Nightingale’s song, she remembered the forest they had left. She remembered the happiness they had had there. She remembered the Sun falling in patterns of light and darkness on the flowers and the ferns. She remembered it all, and hot tears came to her eyes, because they had lost it all.

“It’s all right,” sang the Nightingale.

The Woman thought: I can remember it all. And then she thought: If I can remember it all, then I haven’t lost it—not completely. If I can remember it, I will have it always, even if only a little bit of it. Always: no matter what.

She closed her eyes. “It’s all right,” she said. “It will be all right. You’ll see.”

The Man put his arm around her, glad of her warmth in the darkness. He listened to the Nightingale sing, and he thought: Day will come. No matter what happened before, day will always come. Tomorrow the Sun will lift itself over the hills, and the world will be new. What will it be like? He didn’t know, but he thought it might be good. He hoped it would be good.

“It’s all right,” sang the Nightingale.

“It’s all right,” said the Man, and he held the Woman in his arms. “I think it will be all right.” He closed his eyes, too. “Anyway,” he said, “I don’t think the story’s over yet.”

 

And so, from that day to this, the Nightingale has sung his song at night.

In the spring and summer, when his heart is full and the nights are soft and warm, he sings his song of hope and remembrance, his song that no one can imitate and no one can describe.

In the day, too, he can sometimes be heard singing, but so can the blackbird and the thrush and many other singers, and the Nightingale is hard to hear. But in the night he is alone: he is the one who sings at night.

It was the only new idea the Nightingale had ever had, and he never had another one.