In the Meadow Between — the soft grey country that waits between the last star and the first light — there is an orchard where the trees grow slowly and the air is always just about to yawn.
Marlow came to it the way you come to the gentlest places: not by hurrying, but by growing slow enough that it was simply there. At the gate, which was only two leaning branches and a great deal of quiet, the grey hare was waiting, as she always was.
"This is the Drowsy Orchard," she said softly. "Come in, little turtle. But come in slowly. Nothing here has ever once been in a hurry."
So Marlow went in slowly, and the orchard let him.
The trees were tall and grey and kind, and their leaves moved the way a blanket moves when someone tucks it in — once, and then settled. But they did not grow apples, and they did not grow pears.
"What grows here?" Marlow whispered.
"Dreams," said the grey hare. "Soft ones. Slow ones. The kind that ripen only when you stop reaching for them."
Marlow looked up. High in the branches, here and there, hung small round dreams, glowing the gentle grey of moonlight on water. Some were nearly ripe. Some were still growing. None of them were in any hurry at all.
He reached up on the very tips of his toes to pick one — and the moment he reached, it drifted a little higher, the way the moon does when you walk toward it.
"Ah," said the hare kindly. "You cannot pick a dream. That is the first soft rule of the orchard. You can only lie down beneath the tree, and be still, and let the ripe one fall to you when it is ready."
So Marlow found a tree with low and patient branches, and he lay down in the cool grey grass beneath it, and he was still.
He did not reach. He did not stretch. He did not try.
He only breathed — slowly in, slowly out — the way the orchard breathed, the way the whole night breathed around him.
And above him the little dreams ripened in their own good time, and the leaves settled, and the grey hare sat nearby keeping her calm and patient watch, and somewhere a branch let go of a single grey leaf that came down turning, turning, in no hurry, and landed soft as a thought beside him.
His eyes grew heavy in the good and gentle way.
"Stay as long as you like," said the grey hare, and her voice was further now, soft as mist drawing closed. "The orchard will keep growing while you sleep. A ripe dream is already on its way down to you. You have only to lie still, and let it come."
Marlow let it come.
He did not catch it. He did not even watch for it. He only rested in the grey grass, beneath the patient tree, in the slowest, kindest orchard in the world, and felt the first soft edge of a ripe dream settle over him like a second quilt.
The trees grew slowly on.
The grey hare kept her gentle watch.
And far away, but never too far, the morning waited at the edge of the world — in no hurry, in no hurry at all — for no one to wake.