​

​

Midnight in Wand Wood is a most saztaculous time. To be out in the darkness amongst the trees and scrittling night creatures as one day finally gives way to another, is a majickal privilege. Especially when you glimpse the night chorus drifting through the woodland and hear its majickal refrain, and you become privy to one of the best kept secrets of Wand Wood.

Allow me to explain.  Days are, by nature, shy and reluctant, with each one as alive as you or I and hesitant for what the future holds during their brief tenure amongst us. Imagine for a moment, being tomorrow, waiting to take your place in the long line of days passed, completely unaware of the world you’re about to be born into. As your time draws closer, you might overhear tales from previous days of creatures that had been only too glad when their day had ended, having had the most glopped up day, ever. And then think to yourself, is it ever really the day’s fault, or simply events that take place within it? Such are the nervous thoughts swirling round a day’s mind as they hesitantly prepare to be born on the chime of midnight.

Hence the need for Mionetti and her midnight cauldron of singing jimbles, their soothing chorus calling to the anxiously waiting new day, assuring it that for everyone who will remember it as glopped, there will be many others whose memories will be nothing less than saztaculous: those that will fall in love, those who will share birthdays, and those who, for any number of majickal reasons, will experience something unexpectedly crumlush during its all too brief time amongst us.

And – so far, at least – Mionetti and her jimbles have always managed to coax each apprehensive new day to take its place at the head of the long line of its predecessors, before taking a deep breath and be born at midnight, allowing us to wake in the morning, no matter what the future holds.

Once, just a blinksnap after midnight, I caught sight of Mionetti drifting through the trees. “Where do you go, now?” I asked.

“To safely deliver yesterday to all the other waiting yesterdays, who will re-assure them their day will always mean something quite majickal and saztaculous to someone.”

The jimbles were already asleep in the cauldron, tired from singing. “And then?”   

“I visit tomorrow, who will be waiting just as timidly as today was.”

“What will you say to it?”

She smiled. “That it will be born in the quietest time. And that for all the creatures who will complain at its arrival, it also represents hope for everyone. For this is the secret constancy of days, they bring time for hope amongst us all. And be it today, tomorrow, or a thousand tomorrows hence, one day will live to see a brand-new world of hope, knowing all its forbears played their own majickal part in it all.”

I wished Mionetti well, then turned to greet the new day with the same hope in my hare’s heart. 

​

Remember with each new day, hope is born.