The night world
Sleepy Sleepland
Eight stops, in the order water travels — a spring is where water begins and the sea is where it ends, so the order can never drift. Nothing goes wrong on the way, nobody gets lost, and no question is ever raised.
The child is promised something wonderful — you will enter Dreamy Dream Land — and the walk is how you get there. The arrival happens in the bed, not on the screen.
The places
The Sleepy Forest
Where the trees close their eyes one branch at a time
The Sleepy Springs
Where the water begins, coming out of the ground
The Snoozy Stream
The willow and the crossing. Never “Sleepy Stream”
The Sleepy Waterfall
Where the water slows to a murmur and stays there
The Sleepy Lake
You cannot see the other side
The Starlit Shore
Stars in the water. The threshold between the lake and the sea
The Sleepy Sea
It breathes. Heard, never arrived at
The Moonlit Hollow
A sibling hollow, off the route, under a full moon
The Rainfall Hollow
The same hollow, in warm rain
The Snowfall Hollow
The same hollow, under snow
The Cloud Meadow
The same hollow, up in the cloud tops
Tardy’s Home
The mushroom house at the end of the path
Tardy’s Bedroom
Where the arrival actually happens — never on screen
The Crescent Moon
Up where the stars go out one by one
Space
Thirty years asleep and none the worse for it
Lair Bear’s Cave
Warm, dark and safe, for the very longest sleeps
The Yumekawa
The dream river — wide, slow, and moving the whole time
The Dreaming Pools
A stair of small basins on the flank of the fall, each one spilling into the next
The Hush
Long grass along the lake. It takes the wind so the water does not have to
The Luna Laguna
Where the lake stops being a lake — the first warm water, and the moon in it before you look up
Grove to Sleep
The mangrove crossing, where the fresh water meets the salt
Tardy’s Creek
The one place that is not on the way. It goes nowhere
The Peaceful Plains
Long grey-green grass, and one slow wave travelling through it
The Silent Savannah
The one warm place. Nothing is hunting and nothing is being hunted
The Big Shush
The shore. You cannot tell where the water ends and the sky starts
