It was a few minutes past nine in the evening when Lunko opened his toolbag.
Lunko’s toolbag was made of thin leather, soft and lovely to touch. It smelled of leather, cinnamon buns, and honey. Lunko gave it a little pat, the way he did every evening.
“Time to get to work,” he told himself, and began checking through what was inside.
The most important tool of all is the Hush Key. It looks like an ordinary key, but when it turns in a lock, every sound stays shut outside the door, and the room falls completely silent. The very best sleep always begins in a silence like that.
The next important tool is the Memory Feather, a deep-blue pencil, fitted perfectly into the quill of a goose feather. With it, Lunko can write little notes along the edge of a dream. Things like: “Wake up now, you’ve slept through your alarm” (even though it’s really only three in the morning), or “Bring back that white dog who went missing back in fourth grade.” Sometimes the Memory Feather had to erase bad memories too. It was the only way a sleeper could drift on peacefully. Without the Memory Feather, dreams stayed unfinished, and unfinished dreams had a way of tangling up with other people’s dreams.
And the third essential tool was the Dream Measuring Tape. Everyone who saw its name wanted to know exactly what it measured. Lunko always gave the same answer:
“In dreams you might see all sorts of wishes coming true, or brand-new possibilities you’d never imagined. With this tape, I measure how long a dream lasts. Every little mark on it stands for ten seconds.”
Lunko packed his tools carefully back into the bag, closed it, and stepped out of his workroom straight into the night.
Night is Lunko’s great sky-field, where the stars and the dreams become one. Lunko’s own name comes from the Latin word Luna, meaning Moon.
He walked along the arc of the sky, watching closely over the dreams of everyone asleep. Whenever someone was sleeping – whether an animal, a bird, or a person – every now and then they would dream something. And that dream would appear on Lunko’s sky-field like a tiny little cloud. Peek inside one, and you could see the sleeper’s dream as clear as day. Lunko, the Dream Master. He is the only one who can see what sleepers dream, and, when it’s needed, set things right.
Lunko has a gift for sensing what’s about to happen inside a dream. Sometimes a sleeper is having a lovely dream, and just as Lunko senses something bad is about to happen, he quickly takes up his Memory Feather and writes the dream a happier ending.
The little dream-clouds glowed softly, and most of them shone snow-white, a sign of a pleasant dream for the sleeper. A cloud with a yellowish tinge might mean the sleeper was a little unsettled, but a deep purple-red glow was Lunko’s signal that important work awaited. If a cloud swayed gently in place, it might mean someone was sailing on water. A cloud that jolted and bounced might mean running or sledging down a hill at breakneck speed.
Lunko watched over the little clouds with great care. One snow-white cloud was bouncing up and down in a curious way, and he went closer to take a look. He peered inside. A small boy was galloping on a big horse at breathtaking speed and, to Lunko’s alarm, heading straight for a deep ravine. The boy hadn’t noticed the ravine at all; in fact, he didn’t seem to notice anything except the horse’s flying mane. He was simply too small to see that far. Lunko knew at once what would happen next: in the dream, the boy and his horse would gallop straight into the ravine, and in real life, the boy would tumble right out of bed.
Lunko reached into his bag and took out the Memory Feather. With one smooth stroke, he drew the horse a new path through a thin stretch of forest, leading all the way to the boy’s own front door. He tucked the Memory Feather back into the bag and watched as the horse swerved between the trees just before the ravine and slowed to an easy trot.
Lunko closed the little cloud and thought to himself, “Well, that was rather close.”
The cloud stopped bouncing, and Lunko wished the small rider a good night, in his thoughts.
He gazed for a long while at all the other little clouds. The sleepers’ night was calm.
“All is well,” he thought. He settled himself on the edge of a star and waited for the sunrise.
Good night, little sleeper!