The Sleep Bell’s Voice

By evening, the floating village of Moonreed loosened its ropes and sighed. The rafts and reed-woven houses bobbed together like a gentle school of fish, nudging and settling until every plank found its place. Lanterns blinked awake one by one, their light soft and honey-colored, swinging on curved poles that whispered against the wind. The air held the sweet-salty smell of drying seaweed, and the faint clack of looms drifted from open doorways.

Anouk sat cross-legged on a mat by the doorway of her family’s little house-raft. Her feet were bare, toes polished with a sheen of salt. She worked a small shuttle through a strip of reed cloth, humming as she went, a tune that had no words but knew the shape of her breath. The shuttle’s wooden nose clicked, her hummed notes curled, and beyond the railing the water patted the posts like an old friend.

“Listen,” said her mother, Sami, from the low bench where she tied fringe to the edge of a larger mat. “The Sleep Bell will speak soon.”

Anouk paused, squinting toward the bell tower at the far edge of the village. It wasn’t much of a tower, more a stack of driftwood and rope pulleys rising from a wide raft. At its top hung the Sleep Bell—smooth and pale as a moon cut from shell, a gift from a traveler long ago. Each night, when the light between sea and sky grew the color of tea, the bell called. It called so gently that babies yawned in their slings, cats folded themselves in windows, and the last gull on the last pole tucked its head under its wing.

Her father, Ruel, stepped through the bead curtain, his hands smelling of tar and river-sand. He had been mending the little boats at the Lantern Docks, and his shirt carried tiny flecks of rope fiber. He bent to kiss Anouk’s hair. “Faster than your shuttle, the bell rides the wind,” he said. “But your weaving is straight.”

Anouk grinned. “I want to finish before it rings.”

“You never do,” Sami teased. “That is the trick of the Sleep Bell. It waits until just when you think you have time for one more row.”

They spoke as if the bell had ears. In Moonreed, they spoke like that to many things—the oars, the jars, the coils of net—because in a place that floated on water and wind, you treated everything as if it might quietly help you back someday.

Ruel set a small paper parcel by Anouk’s knee. “Market sweet. Almond and orange. Share with your mother.” He sat and cleaned his fingers with a rag, his eyes on the slow-smiling lanterns across the village. The fish-sellers were taking down their boards. A boy steered a barge loaded with fresh-cut reeds, and the smell was green and wet.

Anouk’s hum fell into silence. Somewhere a baby gave a drowsy squeak, and the oars’ conversations softened to murmurs. The light turned the color of peaches, then of warm cream. Even the gulls—those noisy kings of the poles—grew still.