Blanket Kingdom and the Lost Hum

"Pip, Pip, can you hear that?" Queen Ava whispered, and she crept across the quilt to find out.

Ava was the smallest queen in the Blanket Kingdom. Her castle was a pile of pillows. Her hills were the lumps of a woolly blue blanket, and her river was a ribbon of satin. Every night, the whole kingdom hummed a sleepy tune, and the hum tucked everybody in. Nobody there thought this was strange. It was just what blankets did.

But tonight the hum was wrong. It went "Mmm, mm... mm?" and then it stopped.

"The tune is missing a piece," said Ava. "I want to find it. Then we can all go to sleep."

She asked the pillow castle first. The pillows only sighed, "Fluff, fluff." That was no help.

She asked the satin river. It slid past and said, "Shhhh." That was no help either.

Ava sat down on a hill and frowned. She tried humming it herself. "Mmm, mm, la..." Nothing fit.

Then she felt something under her bottom. It was lumpy. It wriggled.

"Oh!" said Ava. She lifted the edge of the blue hill, and there sat a small brown sock.

"Excuse me," said the sock, in a muffled voice. "I live here."

"Do you know the tune?" asked Ava.

"No," said the sock. "I only came to keep my toes warm. This is my hill tonight."

So Ava did not ask the sock. She listened to it instead. When the sock sighed, its toe went pop. And the pop sounded just right. It was the missing piece!

Ava hummed, "Mmm, mm, la..." and the sock went pop. The pillows joined in, and the river went "Shhhh." The whole kingdom hummed the tune from start to end.

Down in the blue hills, the sock gave one last, soft pop. Then everything was warm and still.