Jim Howes

Under the Midnight Tree Jim Howes

Every night, in the big old animal hospital, as the night staff are settling in for the overnight duty, the ancient grandfather clock in the hallway begins to strike midnight. As it strikes 1-2-3, all the birds in their cages are sitting up, alert. As the clock strikes 4-5-6, all the animanls with fur stir in their small cages. As the clock strikes 7-8-9, the animals with scales move from under their blanket and as the clock strikes 10-11-12 and the last chime echoes through the corridors, every animal is ready. As the last chimes die down, all the locks on the animals' cages click open and the doors swing out. The animals, most of them bandaged or wounded, limp, hop, wriggle and creep through the hall, down the steps and out into the garden at the back of the hospital. There they form a small group in the moonlight. From out of the sky a big brown owl flies in. She plucks a leaf from the tree and swoops over the group of animals where she drops the leaf. The animals watch it flutter towards the ground. Whichever one of them the leaf lands closest to will be the storyteller for that night. They will step forward and, in the language that all animals know, they will tell the story of how they came to be at the hospital before launching into a story about a relative out in the wild. None of them knows who will be the storytellers and none know what the stories will be. They only know that they are stories about the things that animals share...and that they are stories that must be told.