Just as the sky went the colour of honey, Mom lifted the small tin pail down from its hook. It was old and dented on one side, and it made a soft tinny ring when it knocked the table leg. "Would you fetch the last windfall apples?" she said. "For the pie tomorrow. Go before the light goes."
Ava took the handle and stepped out into the long gold grass. The apple tree stood right down at the far end, small and dark and waiting.
On the warm flagstone by the herbs, the cat lay curled like a comma. Ava could have hurried straight past. But the cat opened one slow eye, so Ava crouched and stroked from ear to tail, three times, and listened to it rumble. Then up again, pail swinging.
Halfway down, a ladybird was climbing a tall stalk of grass, right to the very tip, wobbling. Ava stood very still. At the top it lifted two little shells, unfolded wings like tissue paper, and went. Ava watched it all the way out of sight before walking on.
Under the tree the grass was cold and damp. The apples lay hidden there like eggs. Ava felt about with both hands and dropped them in one at a time — tunk, tunk — until the pail grew heavy and leaned her a little sideways. The last one had a wet leaf stuck to it. Ava held it up and breathed in: sweet, and sharp, and something like rain.
Turning round, Ava saw the kitchen window glowing warm and yellow across the darkening grass, and Mom in it, waving. Ava waved back with the hand that wasn't full, then carried the pail home slowly, so as not to spill a single one.
Upstairs, in pyjamas, Ava asked if the pail could stay. So it sat on the floorboards beside the bed, apples breathing their sweetness into the dark.
"Then you shall have a story," said Mom, sitting on the edge of the bed. "There was once a small brown mouse who lived under a hedge. One evening her mother said, fetch the last blackberries, before the light goes. So the mouse took a thimble for a pail and went out along the hedge. And on the way she stopped to watch the moon lying in a puddle. And she stopped again to hear a moth ticking against a leaf. And she stopped a third time, just to smell the cold sweet air."
"Was she late?" whispered Ava.
"A little," said Mom. "But her thimble was full, and so was she. She curled up in her burrow with the blackberries by her nose, and she went over the whole evening in her head — puddle moon, moth, cold sweet air — and by the third one she was fast asleep."
Mom kissed Ava's forehead and turned the lamp down low.
In the dark, Ava went over it too. The honey-coloured sky. The rumbling cat on the warm flagstone. The ladybird's soft, fragile wings. That apple smell. Mom waving at the window.
By the fifth one, Ava was fast asleep.