Mama kept nibbling.
Her little lamb began counting dreams.
By Monday, Carol’s new keyrings had been accused of eating an island.
“The whole island?” Mum asked from the doorway.
“Just the green part.”
On Carol’s study desk, a small crocheted sheep stood beside an even smaller lamb. Neither looked particularly sorry. Their eyes had been sewn shut before the incident.
Eight
They had arrived in a little box on Sunday, for Carol’s eighth birthday. She had lifted them out by their soft woolly bodies, letting the metal rings fall against her palm with two tiny clicks.
“You can clip them to your bag,” Mum had said.
Carol stroked the larger sheep’s curly head. The lamb fitted neatly between her thumb and two fingers.
“They might get squashed.”
She placed them beside her pencil cup instead. The larger one became Mama. Carol considered several names for the smaller one.
“Little Lamb,” she announced. “For now.”
By bedtime, they had a folded-paper house, a blue-ribbon river, and a field cut from green card.
The field was Monday’s island. Carol had snipped little bites out of its edge.
“Mama was hungry,” she explained.
“What happened to the people?”
“They moved to my ruler. It’s a long village.”
A Busy Desk
On Tuesday, the sheep crossed the ribbon river in a pencil-sharpener boat. Mama brought grass for the journey. Little Lamb brought a pebble, which Carol said was essential luggage, although nobody had asked what it did.
The boat tipped.
“Too much pebble,” Carol said in Mama’s voice.
“Not enough boat,” she answered in Little Lamb’s.
She moved them safely onto a notebook and made the pebble captain. It was already very good at staying aboard.
On Wednesday, they opened a shop that sold clouds. A cotton ball cost one button. Mama ate the green wrapping paper, and Little Lamb had to explain why customers were receiving their clouds unwrapped.
After school each day, Carol went straight to the desk to see where she had left them. Her other birthday presents waited on the shelf. These two kept travelling between her hands.
Their yarn caught softly against her fingertips. Metal rings tapped the wooden desktop whenever she set them down, and the little patch of window light moved across their cream-coloured backs.
Thursday’s Story
On Thursday, Carol opened her notebook and drew a mountain.
Then she erased it.
She tried a dragon. Its nose went wrong, so she rubbed that out too. Grey crumbs gathered beneath her wrist.
Mum came in carrying the clean socks Carol had forgotten to put away.
“Where are they going today?”
Carol looked at Mama and Little Lamb. Then she brushed the eraser crumbs aside and spread a scrap of soft cloth beneath them.
“Nowhere.”
She cut a few narrow strips of green paper and put them beside Mama. Little Lamb settled against her woolly side.
“Mama’s having grass. He’s counting dreams.”
“Instead of sheep?”
“He knows all the sheep.”
Carol wrote three lines beneath her empty mountain. Mum sat on the edge of the bed while she read them aloud.
No boat sank. No island disappeared. Little Lamb dreamed of a field that Mama hadn’t eaten yet.
The Favourite Place
Through Friday and Saturday, the stories continued: a train made from coloured pencils, a button hunt, and a visit to the long village on the ruler. Every evening, Carol returned the pair to their scrap of cloth beside the pencil cup.
By the end of the week, Dad knew to ask about the sheep before borrowing anything from her desk.
One evening, he set his keys beside them. The metal rattled against their rings.
“Shh,” Carol said.
“They’re made of wool.”
“Then you don’t need to shout.”
Dad lowered his voice. “Are they both asleep?”
Carol tucked Little Lamb closer to Mama.
“Just him. She’s eating the garden.”
Dad moved his keys to the windowsill.
For the moment, the village was safe.
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