Story Lighthouse

Leaves are falling, red and gold. Pistachio has an empty basket.

Under the oak: one acorn! Plop. One in the basket.

Piko points at the grass. Two more acorns! Plop, plop. That makes three.

Tosbi has two by the stream. Plop, plop. That makes five.

Hece hoots from her branch: “Look in the leaves!” Three acorns, hiding. Plop, plop, plop. That makes eight.

Ritim waves from the pond. Two shiny acorns float by. Plop, plop. Ten!

Ten acorns! The basket is full. Pistachio hugs it tight. “All mine!”

But who is this? It's Hedgie, with an empty tummy. Grumble, grumble.

Pistachio looks at her basket. Then she looks at her friends. Hmm...

One for you, and you, and you... one for everyone! And four left for winter. Acorns taste better shared.

Down in the cove, the sea is grey today. Ritim sighs. “Too grey!”

Ritim has eight arms and eight paint pots. Dip, swish!

Red for the crab. Orange for the starfish. Dip, swish!

Yellow for the fish. Green for the seaweed. Dip, swish!

Blue for the waves. Purple for the shells. Dip, swish!

Pink for Ritim's own cheeks! Seven arms are painted. One arm is empty.

“Which colour now?” Ritim wonders. “There are no pots left!”

Piko rows by in his little boat. “Ritim, the sea looks beautiful!”

Now Ritim knows what the last arm is for. Not for paint, but for a big, warm hug!

The sun goes down behind the sea. It's bedtime on the island.

Goodnight, Pistachio, curled up by your tree. Goodnight, fluffy tail.

Goodnight, Tosbi, tucked inside your shell. Goodnight, little toes.

Goodnight, Ritim, rocking on the waves. Goodnight, eight sleepy arms.

Goodnight, Hedgie, under the leaves. Goodnight, soft prickles.

Hece isn't sleepy. Owls stay up at night! “Hoo, hoo! I'll keep an eye on the stars.”

Piko climbs the lighthouse stairs. One step, two steps... and a great big yawn.

Piko switches on the great lamp. Its light sweeps over the sea, round and round.

“Goodnight, lighthouse,” Piko whispers. The light winks back. Blink. Blink.

Everyone is asleep now. Only the lighthouse is awake, and Hece. Goodnight, little one.

One windy morning, Hece the owl found a little wooden box on her doorstep. On the lid it said PLANT ME. Inside were dozens of seeds, and every seed was shaped like a letter.

“Letter seeds!” hooted Hece. “I've read about these. Whatever word you plant is what grows.” Piko's antenna spun round and round with excitement.

Piko went first. He pressed T, R, E, E into the soil and gave them a sprinkle of water. Up shot a tree, so fast that its leaves were still yawning.

Tosbi fancied a nap. Slowly, very slowly, he planted B, E, D. Soon a big bed had grown, with a pillow and a blanket. Tosbi climbed straight in.

Then it was Pistachio's turn. She wanted a cake more than anything in the world. She was in such a hurry that she grabbed an L instead of a C and planted it before anyone could look.

The ground rumbled. Water bubbled up. Instead of a cake, there was a LAKE, right in the middle of the garden! Splash! Pistachio's tail was soaked.

Everyone burst out laughing, even Pistachio. “One little letter,” said Hece, “and a cake turns into a lake.”

They tried again, slowly this time. Pistachio sounded it out: “C... A... K... E.” And up grew a cake, a tall one, with strawberries on top.

Ritim popped up in the middle of the lake. “Please don't un-plant it!” he called, waving all eight arms. “It's the best swimming pool ever!”

By evening there was only a handful of letters left in the box. Piko chose them carefully, lined them up by the garden gate and watered them well.

Next morning, a sign had grown by the gate: F R I E N D S, with a flower opening on every letter. “The best word in the whole box,” said Hece.

Tosbi the turtle found a seed in the grass. It was striped black and white, like a tiny zebra. “I'm going to grow you,” he told it.

He dug a little hole with his front feet, dropped the seed in and covered it up. “Now what?” asked Pistachio, peering over his shell.

“Now,” said Tosbi, “we wait.” Pistachio waited for exactly one minute. “Is it done yet?”

Every morning, Tosbi gave the seed a drink from his watering can. Every afternoon, the sun warmed the soil. And nothing happened. Pistachio drummed her claws.

On the fifth day, a tiny green loop poked out of the ground. Then it straightened up and opened two round leaves, like a baby stretching its arms.

One night there was a storm, and by morning the thin stem had bent over. Hedgie unwound his red scarf. “Here, use this.” Gently, Tosbi tied the stem to a stick.

The seedling grew and grew. First it was taller than Tosbi, then taller than Piko. Soon it reached Hece's lowest branch.

One morning, a fat green bud appeared at the top. Every day it turned to follow the sun, east in the morning, west in the evening, as if it were watching the sun cross the sky.

Then, on a bright summer morning, it opened: a flower as yellow as the sun, with a face full of seeds. Bees came buzzing from all over the island.

When autumn came, the big yellow head grew heavy and bowed down. The seeds in its middle had turned black and white and stripy. There were hundreds of them!

“Hundreds of seeds from just one?” gasped Pistachio. Tosbi smiled slowly and gave each friend a handful. “Next spring, we'll each plant one,” he said. “And then we wait.”

One morning, a boat bumped against the island's little pier. Out stepped a small hedgehog with a red scarf and a suitcase. “Hello,” he said shyly. “I'm Hedgie. I've come from far away.”

Pistachio ran to give him a welcome hug. “Ouch!” She jumped back, rubbing her nose. Hedgie's prickles had poked her.

“Sorry, sorry!” said Hedgie, curling up tight. When a hedgehog feels nervous, its prickles stand up even more. Now he looked like a pincushion with feet.

At lunch, nobody sat next to Hedgie. They weren't being mean, exactly. They just didn't know how to get close to someone so... pointy.

Hedgie sat alone on the beach and drew in the sand with a stick. He drew his old home: a garden, a red door and a big tree.

Ritim was painting nearby, as usual. He saw the drawing and slid closer. “You're good at drawing,” he said. “Want to paint with me?”

Hedgie had never painted before. He dipped a paw in blue and pressed it on the paper. Then he had an idea. He rolled gently across the page. Swish!

Where Hedgie had rolled, there were hundreds of tiny blue lines, like rain, like grass, like fireworks. Ritim's eyes went wide. “Nobody else can paint like that!”

Soon everyone wanted a turn. Hedgie rolled in yellow for Pistachio's sunflower field, in green for Tosbi's meadow and in purple for Hece's night sky.

Pistachio came over again, slowly this time. “Can I still give you a hug?” Hedgie smiled and smoothed his prickles down flat. When a hedgehog feels safe, its prickles lie down soft.

So she hugged him, gently, and it didn't hurt one bit. That evening they hung the paintings all along the pier, so the next boat would see them: a hundred prickly colours, all saying hello.

For a hundred years, the Story Lighthouse had swept its golden beam across the sea every night, so that boats could find their way home. But this week, something strange was happening. The light was growing weaker.

On Monday it faded just before midnight. On Tuesday, at eleven. By Wednesday it was dim at ten o'clock. Piko wrote it all down in his notebook. “Every night it goes out an hour earlier,” he said. “That's a pattern, and patterns have causes.”

Pistachio had a theory straight away. “The bulb is old. Bulbs wear out!” It was a sensible guess, so they decided to test it. They fitted a brand-new bulb and waited for night.

At ten o'clock, the new bulb faded exactly like the old one. “So it isn't the bulb,” said Piko, crossing it off his list. “A good test is still a good test, even when the answer is no.”

Hedgie had a spookier idea. “Maybe someone's sneaking in and turning it down.” Hece fluffed up her feathers. “Owls see perfectly in the dark,” she said. “I'll keep watch.”

Hece sat on the railing all night with her eyes wide open. Nobody climbed the stairs. Nobody touched the switch. And yet, just after nine, the light slowly faded anyway. “No sneaker,” she reported in the morning, yawning. “Just a mystery.”

Tosbi, who never liked to rush, had been reading the lighthouse manual. “The lamp runs on a battery,” he said slowly, “and the battery is charged during the day by the solar panels on the roof. What if the battery isn't getting full?”

At sunset, Piko checked the battery meter. Instead of full, it showed only half. “The panels aren't catching enough sunlight,” he said. “But it's been sunny all week.” There was only one place left to look: the roof.

They climbed the narrow ladder, with Ritim's arms holding everyone steady in the wind. There were four solar panels gleaming in the sun. Three of them were clean. The fourth was completely covered by a big, messy pile of sticks and seaweed.

Pistachio reached out to clear it away, then froze. “Wait!” On top of the pile sat a seagull, and underneath her were three speckled eggs. The seagull glared at them as if to say: Mine.

“That explains the pattern,” whispered Piko. “She's been making her nest a little bigger every day, so each day the panel catches a little less sun.” “Then let's just move it,” said Hedgie. But Hece shook her head. “You must never move a nest with eggs in it. The mother might not come back.”

So they solved it another way. Tosbi found a spare panel in the storeroom. Together they carried it up and fixed it on the sunny side of the roof, well away from the nest. By sunset, the battery meter read FULL.

That night, the beam swept the sea until morning, as bright as ever. Three weeks later, three fluffy chicks were peeping in the nest. Piko added one last line to his notebook: Mystery solved. The lighthouse now has four new keepers.

Ritim was tidying the seabed when something green and shiny bumped against one of his arms. A bottle! Its cork was sealed with old red wax, and inside was a rolled-up piece of paper.

Everyone crowded round on the beach as Piko eased the paper out. It wasn't a letter at all. It was two rows of numbers: 2 5 12 12, and 18 15 3 11. “A phone number?” asked Pistachio. “Who are we supposed to ring, a fish?”

Hece peered at the numbers through her glasses. “Look,” she said. “Not one of them is bigger than twenty-six. And how many letters are there in the alphabet?” “Twenty-six!” said Piko, and his antenna lit up. “Every number is a letter!”

They counted through the alphabet together, on claws, wings and arms. Two is B. Five is E. Twelve is L, and L again. “BELL,” read Hedgie. Then eighteen, fifteen, three, eleven: R, O, C, K. “BELL ROCK!”

Everyone knew Bell Rock: the big rock at the end of the beach, shaped like an upside-down bell. On the back of the paper was a tiny drawing. An arrow pointed north with 20 beside it, another pointed east with 7, and there was a small X. Under the X was a single footprint with three toes.

At Bell Rock, Pistachio used Piko's compass to face north and set off, counting out loud. “Eighteen, nineteen, twenty!” Then seven steps east. She dug and dug... and found nothing but sand and one very surprised crab.

“Maybe my steps are too short,” said Tosbi, and tried it his way. His twenty steps barely got him past the rock. Hedgie's steps were tiny too. Piko's were long and clanky. Every one of them ended up somewhere different.

“That's the trouble with steps,” said Piko. “Everyone's are a different size. To find the X, we need to walk with the same steps as whoever drew the map.” They all looked at the three-toed footprint. Then they all looked at Hece.

Hece lifted her own foot. Three toes, exactly the same shape. “My grandmother lived in this lighthouse long ago,” she said quietly. “She loved puzzles. She signed everything with a footprint.”

So Hece walked the map with her own owl-sized steps: twenty north, then seven east. She stopped beside a clump of sea grass. Pistachio began to dig, and almost at once her paws hit something hard. Clunk!

It was a little tin box, rusty at the corners. Inside was a folded chart of the night sky, with every star pattern joined up in silver ink, and a note in wobbly owl handwriting.

“To whoever is curious enough to solve this,” Hece read aloud. “The stars are the oldest puzzle of all. Look up, find the patterns, and then make a puzzle of your own for the next curious one.”

That night they lay on the beach with the star chart. They found the Great Bear, the W of Cassiopeia and the Lighthouse Keeper, a constellation Grandmother Owl had made up all by herself.

Before bed, they wrote a new message, turned every letter into a number and sealed it in the green bottle. Ritim swam it far out past the bay and let it go. Somewhere, some day, someone curious will find it.