Snuggle down now.
All the way down.
Let your head go heavy on the pillow.
All the covers up.
Nice and close.
Tonight we're going to China.
A long,
Long time ago.
To a farmhouse in the country.
On a soft spring evening.
Am I going to visit?
A room full of silkworms.
Now,
Silkworms are small.
And soft.
And pale.
And very,
Very gentle.
Can't bite or sting.
They don't really do anything at all,
Except eat leaves and grow.
And sleep.
Which,
When you think about it,
Is a very good way to spend your time.
And here's a funny thing about silkworms.
When lots and lots of them are eating at once.
With all those tiny mouths nibbling away together.
It sounds exactly like rain.
And steady.
Just like rain.
You don't have to stay awake for all of it.
You can just listen to the rain and drift off.
Whenever you like.
Let's begin.
It's evening in the water country.
Long,
Long ago.
In this part of China there is almost more canals than roads.
Water runs everywhere.
Tween the fields,
Behind the houses,
And under the little humped stone bridges that arch over it like a cat stretching its back.
Long narrowboats are tied up along the banks for the night.
Nodding gently against their robes.
The canals are so still this evening that every bridge sits on top of its own reflection.
So each one makes a perfect circle.
Half of stone.
And half of water.
All along the canal banks grow the mulberry trees,
Row after row of them.
With their wide,
Soft,
Bright green leaves.
Every family in the village grows them.
Because every family in the village raises silkworms.
And silkworms eat mulberry leaves.
Nothing else at all.
In the farmhouse at the end of a lane,
With a dark tiled roof and a wooden door.
Lives a girl called Zhao Yun.
Her name means little swallow.
And right now she's standing in the doorway,
Watching the real swallows come home.
They live in a little cup-shaped nest made of mud.
Tucked up under the edge of the roof right above the door.
All evening they've been swooping low over the canal.
Now.
One.
And then the other.
They come back to the nest.
And tuck themselves in.
And fold their wings and fluff up their feathers.
And go still.
Two small swallows,
Home for the night.
And from upstairs,
Soft and steady.
Just like rain.
It's a very quiet village this time of year.
That's because it's silkworm month.
And in silkworm month the whole village goes hush.
Front doors are kept shut.
Neighbors don't come visiting.
And nobody minds.
Because everybody knows why.
A strip of red paper is pasted on Zhao Yan's front door.
The same as on the doors all along the lane.
And it says,
More or less.
We're raising silkworms in here.
Please be gentle.
Silkworms like peace and quiet.
So for one whole month,
Everybody in the village talks a little more softly.
And walks a little more lightly.
And closes doors carefully.
Instead of letting them bang.
It's the quietest month of the whole year.
Jiao Yan rather likes it.
Supper is in the kitchen.
By the warm stove.
Bowl of rice.
Some green vegetables.
And a little piece of fish from the canal.
Her grandmother.
Whom Zhao Yun calls Nai Nai.
Pours them each a small cup of tea.
They drink it slowly and don't talk much,
Because it's silkworm month.
Curled up on the warm rigs beside the stove,
With her paws tucked underneath her.
Is.
Shoo her,
The cat.
Cure is black and orange and white.
All in patches.
As though somebody made her out of leftover pieces of three different cats.
She has been asleep since the middle of the afternoon.
She opens one eye at the clink of the teacups.
Then she closes it again.
Then Nai Nai puts down her cup.
Stanza.
And lifts the big,
Flat basket by the door.
It's piled high with more leaves,
Picked fresh this afternoon while the sun was out.
They're cool and soft and smell green,
Like a garden after you've walked through it.
Last feed of the day,
" says Nai Nai.
Bring the lamp.
So,
Zhaoyuan picks up the little lamp with its small,
Steady flame.
Together they climb the narrow wooden stairs.
Slowly towards the sound.
Soft and steady.
Just.
Like rain.
The Silquam room is the warmest room in the whole house.
In the corner,
A small clay pot of coals is glowing,
Dull,
Red,
And quiet.
Keeps the room as warm as spring afternoon all night long.
Because silkworms don't like to be chilly.
All around the walls,
From the floor almost up to the ceiling.
Stand Wooden Rack.
And on the racks,
One above the other,
Like shells.
A wide,
Round,
Flat trace.
Made of woven bamboo.
And on every tray.
So quam.
Hundreds and hundreds on every tray.
And thousands and thousands in the room.
Their pale and soft and creamy white.
Color rise.
And each one is about as long as your little finger.
They weren't always this big.
When they hatched just a few weeks ago.
They were tiny and dark.
No bigger than ants.
Were so small that Nai Nai had to move them with a feather.
Brushing them onto the fresh leaves as softly as you'd brush a crumb off a sleeping baby's cheek.
Ever since then.
They've done almost nothing but eat.
And grow.
And grow.
Nai Nai takes handfuls of fresh mulberry leaves from the basket.
And scatters them over the trays.
One tray after another.
Like somebody laying a soft green blanket over a bed.
For a moment.
Nothing happens.
All over the tree.
Small pale heads come lifting up out of the old leaves.
They find the edges of the fresh green ones.
And begin.
Xiao Yan and Nai Nai stand very still in the lamplight.
And listen.
It's the sound of thousands and thousands of tiny mouths all nibbling at once.
Each one alone would be far too small to hear.
All of them together make a soft,
Whispering,
Pattering hush.
That fills the whole room.
A gentle spring on a roof that might go on all night.
Zhao Yan closes her eyes and listens.
If she didn't know better.
She'd still think it was raining.
Soft and steady.
Just like the rain.
The Nine-Eye lifts the lamp.
Beckons.
And points to one tray on the bottom shelf.
On this tray,
Nobody is eating.
Silkworms here have stopped.
Each one has lifted its head up a little and gone completely still.
Holding itself very straight and quiet.
As if it were thinking very hard about nothing at all.
Her.
Whispers Nine-Nine.
These ones are asleep.
That's what silkworms do as they grow.
Every so often they stop eating.
Lift their heads.
And sleep for about a day.
While they sleep,
They're getting ready to wiggle out of their old skin.
And wake up in a brand new,
Slightly bigger one.
The way you grow out of your pyjamas and need a new pair.
Silkworm farmers have called it sleeping for a very long time.
Silkworm.
Has its first sleep.
And its second.
And its third sleep.
And then,
Last of all.
.
.
Comes the longest one.
A big sleep.
Long,
Long ago,
A famous poet wrote a line about silkworms that had already had their third sleep.
That's what these ones are doing tonight.
It's their third sleep.
Nine-Nine doesn't put any leaves on this tray.
Don't feel the silkworm while it's asleep.
You simply let it be.
Xiao Yan looks at all those tiny,
Still,
Sleeping silkworms with their heads lifted up like sleepy question marks and smiles.
Even the silkworms are going to bed.
And in all the other trays.
Soft and steady.
Just like rain.
And on the little window ledge of the silkworm room,
There's a cat.
Not a real one.
The real one is downstairs by the stove.
This one is a little round can made of clay.
Painted black and white.
With its ears pricked up.
And two wide-painted eyes.
Sitting very straight.
In the Silk Country,
Families keep a little clay cat like this in the silkworm room.
To keep watch over the trays.
Clay again.
Is a very good watcher.
Never falls asleep.
And never wanders off to find a warmer spot by the stove.
Zhao Yan pats it on its smooth clay head.
Goodnight,
Cat,
" she whispers.
Keep watching.
Clay cat.
Keeps watching.
Nai Nai sits down on the little stool by the door to rest her legs before the stairs.
Zhao Yan leans against her knee.
And Nine-Nine tells her the old story.
Same one she tells every silkworm month.
It's very short.
Long,
Long ago,
She says.
There was an empress called Lezu.
Who like to sit in her garden under the mulberry tree.
And drink a cup of warm tea.
One day as she sat there.
Something small and white fell out of the branches above her.
Right into her teacup.
It was a silkworm's cocoon.
A little round cocoon like a tiny pillow.
The warm tea made it soft.
And when Lezu lifted it out of her cup,
Thread came with it.
One single shining silver-white thread.
She began to pull it gently.
And it kept coming.
Kept coming.
And she walked along with it all the way across her garden.
And it still didn't end.
That's because each cocoon Nai Nai says.
Is made of one single thread.
Just one.
Round,
Round,
And round,
And round.
If you could unwind it.
Would stretch from this house all the way down the lane.
And over the bridge.
Far along the canal.
And further still.
And that,
Says Nai Nai.
Was the beginning of silk.
Zhao Yan yawns.
She's heard this story lots of times.
She likes it better every time.
And steady.
Just like grain.
Zhao Yan's bed is in the little room right next door to the silkworm room.
And with just a thin wooden wall in between.
Nai Nai tucks her in under a quilt that's thick and soft and light,
All at once.
It's filled with fluffy silk from last year's silkworms.
The warmest,
Lightest quilt you could ever imagine.
Like sleeping under a cloud.
Nai Nai smooths Xiao Yan's hair.
Blows out the lamp.
And go softly down the stairs.
A little while later there's a soft thump at the end of the bed.
Huya has come up from the stove.
The way she does once the house is quiet.
She walks up the quilt very carefully.
As though it were a bridge.
Turns around three times.
And curls up into a warm round heap.
Against Zhao Yansai.
Then very softly.
She begins to purr.
Through the wooden wall comes the sound of silkworms eating.
And eating.
All night long.
In the warm dark room next door.
And steady.
Just like the rain.
Then,
Something else.
A soft tapping high on the roof tiles.
And then another.
And then more and more,
Gathering and spreading.
Until the whole roof is murmuring with it.
It's raining.
It's real rain this time.
Gentle spring rain falling softly over the village in the dark.
Tatters on the roof tiles.
Drips past the swallow's nest.
Where the two swallows sleep warm and dry.
It whispers on the mulberry leaves along the canal.
And makes tiny circles.
On the still water.
Thousands of them.
Under the bridges.
And around the boot.
Zhao Yan lies very still and listens.
Inside,
There's the silkworm rain through the wall.
Outside,
There's the real rain on the roof.
And she can't tell anymore which is which.
Same soft sound.
Same gentle hush inside and out.
All around her.
Filling the whole quiet house.
And it doesn't matter at all.
Your eyes close.
And steady.
Just like rain.
And that's where we'll leave her.
Warm under her cloud of quill.
With a patchwork cat purring at her side.
The silkworms eating in the warm room next door.
Sleepy ones sleeping their third sleep.
And the clay cat keeping watch on the window ledge.
With the swallows tucked up in their nest under the leaves.
The boats asleep on the canal.
And the soft spring rain.
Falling over everything.
Everything is safe.
Everything is warm.
Everything just exactly where it should be.
Now it's your turn.
Allow your eyes to close.
Listen to the rain.
And allow yourself.
Go warm.
Heavy.
And solve.
Goodnight Zhao Yan Goodnight Night-Night.
Goodnight,
You are.
Goodnight,
Little clay cat.
Goodnight,
Swallows.
Goodnight silkworms.
Good night you.
Soft and steady.
Just like rain.
