The Boat Made of Paper

It was raining at Nai Nai's house. Not a little bit. A lot.

The rain drummed on the roof and splashed in the gutters and ran down the kitchen window in long, wobbly lines. Kai pressed his nose against the glass and sighed a big, foggy sigh.

"I'm bored," he said. "There's nothing to do."

Nai Nai smiled. She opened the drawer under the table, the one full of string and buttons and birthday candles, and took out a sheet of thick, creamy paper.

"Come and sit with me," she said. "We're going to make a boat."

Kai climbed onto the chair. Nai Nai folded the paper in half, very neatly, and ran her thumbnail along the crease.

"Now you," she said.

Kai grabbed the paper and folded it as fast as he could. Fold, squash, fold. But the corners didn't meet, and the edges went crooked, and the whole thing came out crumpled and lopsided, like a hat that had been sat on.

"It's all wrong!" said Kai, cross.

"Of course it is," said Nai Nai gently. "You rushed it. Let's try again, slowly."

Nai Nai smoothed out a fresh sheet of paper. This time, she put her hands over Kai's hands, and they folded together.

"Fold slow," she said, "and fold true."

They lined up the corners, just so. They pressed the creases, firm and flat. They opened up the middle, and tucked in the ends, and folded the points up, one side and then the other. It took a long time. Kai's fingers wanted to hurry, but Nai Nai's warm hands kept them slow.

Nai Nai hummed as they worked. It was a little song she made up as she went along:

"Fold by fold and slow by slow,
little boat, where will you go?"

At last, they gently pulled the two sides apart, and out popped a boat. A real paper boat, with a pointy front and a pointy back and a tall fin in the middle, standing up all by itself on the table.

Kai stared at it. "We made that," he whispered.

"You made that," said Nai Nai. "Fold by fold."

Kai painted a small coral dot on the side with his paintbrush. "So I'll always know it's mine," he said.

"Will it float?" asked Kai.

"Not yet," said Nai Nai. "Paper drinks water. If we put it in the stream now, it would go soft and floppy and sink."

Kai's face fell.

But Nai Nai was already rummaging in the drawer again. She came out with a stubby white candle, the kind you put on a birthday cake.

"Watch," she said. And she rubbed the candle all over the bottom of the boat, round and round, slowly and carefully, until the paper went shiny and smooth.

"Wax," she said. "Water can't get through wax. It just rolls right off, like rain off a duck's back."

Kai took the candle and rubbed too. He rubbed the bottom and the sides and the front and the back. He rubbed every corner and every crease, until his arm ached and the whole boat gleamed.

Nai Nai dripped a little water on it from a spoon. The drop sat on top like a tiny glass bead, and rolled off onto the table.

Kai grinned. Outside, the drumming on the roof had stopped.

"Nai Nai," he said. "Listen. The rain's finished."

They put on their raincoats and walked up the hill behind Nai Nai's house, Kai holding the boat in both hands, as carefully as if it were a baby bird.

At the top of the hill, a little stream came bubbling out from between the rocks. It was full and fast after the rain, chattering and splashing as it ran down through the meadow.

"Where does the stream go?" asked Kai.

"Down the hill," said Nai Nai. "Then into a bigger stream. Then into a river. And the river goes all the way to the sea."

"All the way to the sea," Kai whispered.

He knelt down at the edge of the water. The grass was wet and cold through his trousers. He held the boat close to his face, and he whispered to it, so quietly that only the boat could hear.

"Go all the way to the sea," he said. "Be brave. And be patient."

Then he set it down on the water, and let go.

The little paper boat spun round once. It bobbed. It wobbled. And then it floated.

The stream caught the little boat and carried it away, bobbing and dipping between the stones.

Kai ran along the bank beside it as far as he could. Then Nai Nai called him back, and he stood on a rock and watched the little cream shape get smaller and smaller, until it went round a bend in the stream and was gone.

The little boat was on its own now.

It bounced over ripples. It slid past dandelions. It spun round a mossy stone, and sailed on.

Then, as it passed a stalk of meadow grass leaning over the water, something small and red and shiny dropped onto its front. Plink.

It was a ladybird. Seven black spots on a bright red back. She folded her wings away, and settled down at the very front of the boat, as if she had been waiting all morning for exactly this.

Her name was Dot. And she had always wanted to go on a voyage.

"Little boat, little boat, bob and float," she sang, in her tiny ladybird voice. "Slow and steady, little boat."

Down the hill they went, the little boat and Dot, faster and faster.

Then the stream turned a corner, and there were reeds. Tall green reeds, growing thick along the edge of the water. And the little boat sailed straight into them, and stopped.

It was stuck.

The water rushed past on either side. But the boat was caught between the reed stems, and it couldn't move forward or back.

Dot climbed to the top of the fin and looked around. "Oh dear," she said. "What do we do now?"

The little boat didn't know. So it did the only thing it could do. It waited.

And then, round the bend, came a mother duck. Behind her, in a wobbly line, paddled five fluffy brown-and-yellow ducklings, peep-peep-peeping.

As they swam past, their little feet made little waves. The waves rippled through the reeds. And the little boat rocked, and wiggled, and rocked again, and then slipped free.

"Thank you!" called Dot.

"Quack," said the mother duck kindly. Which meant: you're welcome.

The stream grew wider and slower as it came down off the hill. And just below a big round stone, the water had made a little whirlpool.

The little boat sailed into it. And went round.

And round.

And round, and round, and round.

"I'm getting dizzy," said Dot, holding on tight.

Every time the boat came near the edge of the whirlpool, the water pulled it back into the middle. Round and round. It couldn't get out.

"Little boat, little boat, bob and float," sang Dot, a little shakily. "Slow and steady, little boat."

On the bank, a round brown face with whiskers peeped out of a hole. It was a water vole, with tiny dark eyes and a twitchy nose, nibbling a stalk of grass.

He watched the boat go round. Once. Twice. Three times.

Then he reached out one small paw, very gently, and gave the boat a little push.

Out it shot, free of the whirlpool, and back into the stream.

"Thank you, vole!" called Dot.

The vole just nodded, and went back to his grass.

Ahead, the stream made a noise. Not a babble. Not a gurgle. A rushing, splashing, tumbling noise.

"What's that?" said Dot.

The little boat didn't know. But it was getting closer.

It was a waterfall. Only a tiny one, really. Only as tall as a cat. The stream poured over a row of smooth, mossy stones and tumbled down into a pool below, white and frothy and sparkling.

But to a little paper boat, it looked as big as a mountain.

"Hold on!" cried Dot, and she wrapped all six legs around the fin.

Over the edge they went.

Whoosh! Down, down, down they tumbled, in a rush of spray and bubbles. The boat tipped, and spun, and splashed into the pool at the bottom.

For a moment, everything was white water.

And then the little boat popped up again. Right way up. Shiny with wax, and only a tiny bit damp at one corner.

Dot shook the water off her wings. "We did it!" she squeaked.

Then the stream grew wider, and slower, and very, very quiet.

The stream had flowed into a pond. A wide, flat, glassy mill pond, as still as a mirror, with lily pads floating on top and dragonflies hovering over them.

The little boat drifted out into the middle. And there, it stopped.

There was no current. There was no wind. The water didn't move at all. The boat just sat, perfectly still, on its own reflection.

Dot waited. And waited. The sun moved slowly across the sky.

"Come on," she said, tapping her little foot. "Come on, come on, come on."

Nothing happened.

"Why aren't we moving?" Dot said crossly. "We'll never get to the sea at this rate."

On a lily pad nearby sat a frog. A big, green, shiny frog, with golden eyes, who looked as though he had been sitting there for about a hundred years.

"Hurrying won't help," said the frog, in a deep, slow voice. "The wind always comes. It just comes when it comes."

"But when?" said Dot.

The frog closed his golden eyes. "Wait," he said. "And you'll see."

So they waited.

At first, waiting was horrible. Dot fidgeted. She climbed up the fin and down again. She counted the lily pads, and then she counted them again, and got a different number.

But after a while, a funny thing happened. Because they were sitting so still, Dot started to notice things.

She noticed the dragonflies, with wings like stained glass. She noticed a fish, flicking silver under the water. She noticed the reflections of the clouds, drifting across the pond like slow white boats.

"It's quite nice here, actually," Dot admitted.

"Mmm," said the frog.

And then, as the sun began to go down, gold and soft over the trees, Dot felt something on her wings. A tickle. A whisper. A breath.

The evening breeze.

The little boat felt it too. Its fin caught the air, and slowly, gently, it began to glide across the pond, towards the far side, where the water slipped out between two stones and became a stream again.

"Told you," said the frog, without opening his eyes.

That night, the little boat sailed under the stars.

The stream was quiet now, slow and dark and silver. It curled through sleeping meadows where cows lay in the grass like big soft rocks. An owl called from a hedge. The moon came up, round and white, and laid a silver path across the water.

The little boat floated right along it.

Dot curled up in the bottom of the boat, under the shelter of the fin, and looked up at the sky. There were more stars than she had ever seen. More stars than lily pads. More stars than anything.

"Little boat, little boat, bob and float," she sang sleepily. "Slow and steady, little boat."

Far away, on the other side of the hill, a boy was looking up at the same stars from his bedroom window.

"Goodnight, little boat," Kai whispered. "Keep going."

And on the stream, the little paper boat drifted on through the dark, slow and steady, all night long.

In the morning, the stream ran into a river.

The river was much, much bigger than the stream. It was wide and brown and deep, and it moved slowly and strongly, like a big animal breathing. The little boat felt very small.

There was mist on the water. And standing in the mist, in the shallows, was a heron.

He was tall and grey and very, very still. He stood on one long leg, with his neck tucked in, and his sharp yellow eye watched the water.

The little boat floated right past his feet.

"Good morning," said Dot politely.

The heron looked down at them. He didn't move. He didn't blink. He had been standing there since before the sun came up.

"You're very good at standing still," said Dot.

"Standing still is how I catch my breakfast," said the heron. "If you hurry, the fish swim away. If you wait, they come to you."

Dot thought about the frog, and the wind.

"Everyone keeps telling us to wait," she said.

"Then perhaps," said the heron, "it's good advice."

The river flowed through a little stone village with an old arched bridge. Children were playing on the bank, throwing sticks into the water.

But just before the bridge, a willow tree leaned out over the river, and its long branches trailed in the water like hair. And the little boat sailed straight into them, and got tangled.

It tugged. It wiggled. It couldn't get free.

Then a face appeared on the bank above. A girl, with two bunches of curly hair and a scraped knee. She looked down at the little boat in surprise.

"A paper boat!" she said. "Where did you come from?"

She found a long stick, and lay down on her tummy on the bank, and reached out very, very carefully. She didn't poke the boat. She didn't splash it. She just lifted the willow branch, gently, gently, until the boat slipped free.

"There you go," she said. "Where are you going?"

The little boat bobbed. Dot waved her tiny legs.

"To the sea!" squeaked Dot, though the girl couldn't hear her.

"Good luck!" called the girl anyway, and waved until the boat had sailed under the bridge.

That afternoon, the sky turned grey, and it began to rain.

Plip. Plop. Plip, plip, plop.

The raindrops hit the river and made a thousand little rings. They hit the reeds and the lily pads and the willow trees. And they hit the little paper boat.

Dot scuttled under the fin to keep dry. "Oh no," she said. "Paper drinks water. We'll go soft and floppy. We'll sink!"

But the raindrops didn't soak in.

Every drop that landed on the boat sat there, round and shiny like a tiny glass bead. And then it rolled off, right off the edge, and back into the river.

The wax. All that careful rubbing, round and round, every corner and every crease. It was keeping them dry.

Fold slow and fold true, Nai Nai had said, far away at the kitchen table. And it had worked.

The rain fell, and fell, and then stopped. And the little boat sailed on, a bit damp, a bit wrinkly at one corner, but floating, still floating.

Far ahead, Dot could smell something new. Something salty.

The river spread out into a marsh, where the reeds grew tall and the water was wide and shallow and tasted of salt. Seabirds called overhead. The air smelled of seaweed.

"We're nearly there!" said Dot. "I can smell the sea!"

But the tide was coming in. And the tide pushed the other way. It pushed the water back up the river, and it pushed the little boat back with it.

They drifted backwards. Past the reeds they had just passed. Past the post they had just passed.

"No!" cried Dot. "Wrong way!"

Then, with a sleek splash, a head popped up beside them. A round, whiskery head with bright black eyes. An otter.

She rolled over onto her back and floated alongside them, looking at the boat with great interest.

"Going somewhere?" she said.

"To the sea," said Dot. "But the water's pushing us back."

"Ah, that's the tide," said the otter. "It comes in, and then it goes out. Twice a day, every day. When it turns round, it'll carry you out. You just have to wait."

"Wait," sighed Dot. "Of course."

So they waited, one more time.

The otter stayed with them for a while, floating and splashing and nudging the boat away from the muddy banks with her nose. Then she waved a paw and dived away.

Night came down over the marsh. The little boat rested in a quiet pool among the reeds. Dot slept under the fin. The stars came out, and the moon, and the sound of the sea, soft and far off, like someone breathing in their sleep.

And while they slept, very quietly, the tide turned.

When the sun came up, the water was flowing the other way. Out of the marsh. Out of the reeds. Out towards the edge of the world.

The little boat began to move.

It slid along the channel, faster and faster. The reeds parted. The sky opened up, huge and pink and gold. The gulls cried out.

And there, ahead of them, wide and sparkling and endless, was the sea.

"Little boat, little boat," whispered Dot, her tiny voice trembling. "We made it."

The sea was bigger than anything. Bigger than the pond. Bigger than the river. Bigger than the whole sky, it seemed. It shone and glittered and rolled, gently, gently, in long, slow waves.

A little wave lifted the boat, and carried it in towards a beach of pale golden sand. Then it set it down, soft as a feather, on the wet sand at the edge of the water.

The little boat had reached the sea.

Dot climbed up to the very top of the fin, for one last look. Then she opened her red wing-cases and unfolded her wings.

"Goodbye, little boat," she said. "Thank you for the voyage."

And she flew away towards the sand dunes, a tiny red speck against the morning sky.

The little boat lay on the sand, a bit faded now, and a bit wrinkly, with its coral dot still bright on the side. It had come all the way from the stream at the top of the hill.

It had been stuck, and spun, and tumbled, and becalmed, and pushed back by the tide.

But it had got there. In its own good time.

Back at Nai Nai's house, Kai had been waiting.

Every morning, he asked, "Do you think it's got there yet?"

And every morning, Nai Nai said, "Maybe. Maybe not. Boats take their own time."

Waiting was hard. Kai wanted to know. He wanted to know right now. He folded another boat, just to have something to do, and put it on his windowsill, and looked at it every night.

But a funny thing happened while he was waiting. He started to imagine. Every night, he lay in bed and imagined where the little boat might be. Stuck in the reeds, perhaps. Sailing under the stars. Floating past a heron, or an otter, or a girl on a riverbank.

And imagining made the waiting easier.

On Saturday morning, Nai Nai came into his room with a picnic basket.

"Put your wellies on," she said, with a twinkle. "We're going to the seaside."

The beach was wide and golden, and the sea went on for ever.

Kai ran along the edge of the water, looking and looking. He looked in the seaweed. He looked behind the rocks. He looked at every pale shape on the sand.

Nothing.

"It's a very big sea," he said at last, in a small voice.

"It is," said Nai Nai. "But I'm sure it got here. It just took its own time."

They walked on, slowly, side by side. And as they passed a little rock pool, something caught Kai's eye. Something small and pale and pointy, lying on the sand right at the edge.

He crouched down.

It was a paper boat. Faded and soft and wrinkled from the sea. But its fin was still standing. And on its side, still bright, was a small coral dot.

"Nai Nai," Kai breathed. "It's mine. It's my boat. It came all the way to the sea!"

Nai Nai crouched down beside him, and her eyes were shining. And on Kai's sleeve, just for a moment, a little red ladybird landed, and then flew away.

That night, back in his bed at Nai Nai's house, Kai was very sleepy. His cheeks were pink from the sea wind, and his toes still had sand between them.

On the windowsill, side by side, sat two paper boats. One was new and crisp and white. The other was faded and soft and wrinkled, with a coral dot on its side, and it had been all the way to the sea.

Nai Nai tucked the quilt up round Kai's chin.

"Nai Nai," he mumbled. "Next time, can we make a boat that goes even further?"

"Next time," said Nai Nai, smiling, "we'll fold it slow, and fold it true. And then we'll wait, and see."

She turned out the light. The moon shone through the window, and laid a silver path across the floor, like a silver river, right up to Kai's bed.

And as he fell asleep, Kai felt himself floating. Bobbing gently on a silver stream, under a sky full of stars, slow and steady, all the way to the sea.

Little boat, little boat, bob and float.

Slow and steady.

Goodnight, little boat.