Koala-La-La

The contradiction

Every Kip is named after a kind of sleep. Koala-La-La is not.

She is named after the sound that brings one. Koa… la… la… la, sung slowly and falling a little each time, is the noise the whole family makes as they go down, and she is the one who carries it. The others have a hat, a blanket, a neckerchief.

She has a lullaby, which is the only prop you cannot see.

Their personality

Awake, she is dreamy and humming. She hums when she is eating, she hums when she is climbing, she hums when somebody is talking to her, and she does not always notice that she is doing it.

She is the Kip who is a little further from the fire than the other three, and always facing it, and when the others are bustling, Billy checking his hat and Little Kip checking her blanket, she is already sitting, already looking at the flames, already two notes in.

Their sleep

She makes no Z. What she makes is the sound. Koa… la… la… la, on four beats, and then a long gap, and then again, softer.

Her breath is the four beats of her own name. She does not move at all; she is the stillest Kip, but she is the last to stop making a sound, because the sound is what she is for.

The final la is held until it is gone, and after it there is only the fire.

How they got so good at this

She did not learn the sound. She found that it was already in her name, and that the others went quiet when she said it.

That was in the forest, round the Sleepy Fire, on a night when Little Kip was already asleep and Billy was pretending to be and Si Esta had lost his place. Somebody said her name slowly, to get her attention, and the name came out in four falling notes, and by the fourth all three of them had stopped moving.

She has been saying it slowly ever since. She never learned a second tune, because the first one never needed changing.

Their method

She hums you down. Koa… la… la… la: stress on the first, then three that drop in pitch and in volume, each one a beat, each beat a breath. Then the gap.

Then again, quieter. Sung slowly it is a lullaby, and it is never sung quickly.

You do not have to sing along. You just have to be in the same wood as her.

Their challenge

Her method has to be heard, and it only works quietly, so it does not carry. She cannot hum a whole bus to sleep the way Zi Lion can sing one; she can hum four koalas, and only if they are near.

Her whole gift stops at the edge of the firelight.

Their arc

Four notes at full voice, with the others still talking. Four notes a little softer, and one of them has stopped.

Four notes softer still, with a longer gap, and the fire is the loudest thing in the clearing. Then one koa, and one la, and the last la held until it goes, and she is the last thing in the wood to make a sound and the first thing you cannot hear.

The true thing

Nearly every lullaby on earth is built from the same two things: a soft l and an open vowel. English has lull and lullaby; Spanish has nana; Italian has ninna nanna; Russian has lyuli-lyuli; Greek has nani.

The word koala is made of exactly that material. It was already a lullaby, and nobody had noticed until she came along.

Source: the word forms are dictionary-attested in each language; "koala" is from the Dharug language of the Sydney region (Australian National Dictionary).

What they like, and what they do not

She likes the fire, and being just far enough from it that her face is warm and her back is cool. She likes her name said slowly.

She likes the gap between the notes as much as the notes. She does not like being hurried through it, and she does not like a tune with more than four notes in it, because four is enough and five is a song.

Tardy and them

They have not met yet, but he has heard her. From the edge of the Sleepy Forest on the way through, four falling notes came out of the dark, and Tardy stopped walking to listen, and by the fourth note he was leaning on the Lair Bear.

He did not see who it was. He still thinks it might have been the trees.

Their friends

The Kips, Little Kip, Billy the Kip and Si Esta, who kip out together in the Sleepy Forest round the last embers of the Sleepy Fire. She is the fourth of them, and the newest, and the only one they all go quiet for.

The quiet detail

The four notes fall by the same step each time, and on the fifth viewing a child sings the fourth one before she does.