The Little Bear Who Could Not Sleep

In a hollow beneath the roots of an old pine tree, on a hill where the snow always came early, there lived a bear cub named Bruno. He had round ears, a nose the colour of wet stones, and a bed of dry leaves that smelled of summer even in winter.

On the first truly cold night of the year, Bruno's mother yawned a wide, warm yawn and said, "It is time to sleep now, little one. We will wake up when the world is green again." She curled around him like a hill around a valley, and in one breath she was asleep.

But Bruno was not. He lay very still and listened to his own eyelids refusing to close. "I have forgotten how," he whispered into the dark. "Everybody knows how to sleep except me."

So Bruno crept out of the hollow and into the blue night, where the snow squeaked politely under his paws. The first neighbour he found was Owl, sitting on a branch like a small grey teapot. "Owl," said Bruno, "how do you fall asleep?"

"I do not," said Owl, blinking slowly. "I sleep when you are awake and I am awake when you sleep. But I will tell you what I see from up here. I see that the whole forest lets go at the same time. Nobody holds on. Perhaps you are holding on."

Bruno thought about that, and walked on. By the frozen stream he found Otter, who was tucking herself into a burrow lined with soft grass. "Otter," he said, "how do you fall asleep?"

"I make myself heavy," said Otter. "First my paws, then my back, then my nose. Heavy as a wet stone. When my nose is heavy, I am already dreaming." She yawned. "Try it from the bottom up. Nobody falls asleep starting at the head."

Bruno tried making his paws heavy right there in the snow, and they did feel a little heavier. He walked on, more slowly now, to the low branches where the little birds were roosting all in a row, puffed up like berries.

"How do you fall asleep?" he asked them, quietly, so as not to wake the ones already gone. "We do not think about tomorrow," said the smallest bird. "Tomorrow is not our night. We only think about how warm the bird beside us is."

Bruno went home through the blue snow. He passed the pine, and the moon, and his own footprints going the other way, and it seemed to him that the forest was not empty at all: it was full of sleeping creatures, all of them letting go at the same time, all of them warm beside somebody.

He climbed back into the hollow. He made his paws heavy, then his legs, then his back. He listened to his mother breathing, in and out, like a slow sea. He did not think about tomorrow, because tomorrow was not his night.

And somewhere between the second breath and the third, without ever noticing the moment it happened, Bruno the bear cub fell fast asleep. Outside, the snow kept falling, quietly, the way it does when everyone is dreaming. Good night, Bruno. Good night, forest.