In a wide forest where the pine trees stood tall as castle towers, there lived a young fox named Sacha.

Sacha had a russet coat like autumn leaves, black paws that looked as though he had stepped through soot, and a white-tipped tail that swished behind him whenever he was thinking.

He lived beneath the roots of an old beech tree with his aunt, Mirembe, who knew every path, puddle, burrow, berry bush, and bird’s nest in the forest.

“Every forest has two faces,” Aunt Mirembe often said as she tucked dry moss around their den. “The daytime face is busy and bright. The nighttime face is quiet, but not empty.”

Sacha liked the daytime face very much. In the day, he could chase golden butterflies, sniff warm stones, and watch beetles carry crumbs three times their size.

But nighttime made him curious.

At night, the forest changed.

The green leaves became silver. The pond turned black and shiny. Mushrooms glowed softly beneath fallen logs. Even the ordinary sounds were different. A branch cracking in daytime sounded like nothing much. A branch cracking at night sounded as if a giant had stepped on a twig.

One evening, when the sky was lavender and the first star blinked awake, Aunt Mirembe returned to the den with a serious expression.

“Sacha,” she said, “tonight I must travel beyond the willow marsh to help an old badger who has hurt his paw.”

“Is he all right?” asked Sacha.

“He will be, once I reach him. But I will not return until morning.”

Sacha’s ears drooped. He had slept alone before, but not often.

Aunt Mirembe touched her nose to his.

“There is something important I would like you to do,” she said.

Sacha stood a little straighter. “What is it?”

“Tonight, you will be the temporary guardian of the Sleeping Forest.”

Sacha’s eyes grew round.

The Sleeping Forest was what the animals called their home once the moon had risen and most creatures had settled down. The rabbits slept in grass-lined tunnels. The field mice curled in nests of feathers. Deer rested beneath fir branches. The owls, of course, did not sleep, but they kept to the high trees and watched quietly.

“A guardian?” Sacha whispered.

“A guardian listens,” said Aunt Mirembe. “A guardian notices. If there is true danger, the guardian gives the warning call. But a guardian must be wise, too. Not every sound is danger.”

Sacha nodded very solemnly.

Aunt Mirembe showed him the warning call, a sharp, ringing bark that traveled through the trees.

“Use it only if you are sure,” she told him. “A warning can save animals from trouble. But too many false warnings can fill the forest with fear.”

Then she slipped away between the beech trunks, silent as smoke.

Soon the sky became deep blue. The moon rose, pale and round, and laid a path of light along the forest floor.

Sacha climbed onto a mossy rock near the center of the woods. From there, he could see the sleepy hill where the deer rested, the bramble patch where the hedgehogs lived, and the narrow trail that led toward the marsh.

“I am the guardian,” he whispered to himself.

For a while, everything was peaceful.

Crickets sang their scratchy songs.

A brook whispered over pebbles.

Leaves rubbed together in the breeze with a sound like tiny paws brushing velvet.

Then, from the nearby ferns, came a loud rustle.

Sacha sprang to his feet.

Rustle, rustle, scrape!

His heart thumped.

Could it be a wolf? A hunter? A terrible creature with giant teeth?

He took a careful step forward.

“Who is there?” he called.

The ferns trembled. Out waddled three small hedgehogs, each carrying a leaf over their heads.

“Sorry,” said the smallest one, whose name was Niko. “We were collecting moon mushrooms.”

“You sounded very large,” Sacha said.

“We are very determined,” said Niko.

The other hedgehogs nodded.

Sacha watched them waddle away, their leaf hats bobbing.

“Not every rustle is danger,” he reminded himself.

A little later, he heard a long, spooky hoooooo from the top of an oak tree.

Sacha’s fur fluffed all the way down his tail.

Hoooooo!

He looked up.

Two round amber eyes peered down at him.

“Oh,” said a voice. “Good evening, little guardian.”

It was Asha the tawny owl.

“You startled me,” Sacha admitted.

Asha blinked slowly. “That is simply how I say hello to the moon.”

“Could you say hello more quietly?”

“I could,” said Asha. “But then the moon might not hear me.”

Sacha was not sure whether owls truly spoke to the moon, but Asha sounded certain, so he nodded.

Then a strange clattering began near the pond.

Clink. Clatter. Splosh.

Clink-clink. Splosh!

Sacha hurried through the trees. The pond gleamed beneath the moon, and reeds shivered along its edge.

“Is someone in trouble?” he called.

A large shape rose from the water with a splash.

Sacha leaped backward.

It was Toma the beaver.

Toma held a smooth stone in his front paws. Around him, several other beavers were stacking mud and sticks against their dam.

“We are repairing the moon gate,” Toma explained.

“The what?”

“The place where moonlight enters the pond,” Toma said, pointing to a small gap between the reeds. “If the water is too low, the minnows cannot see their way home.”

Sacha looked at the shimmering path of light.

“That sound was your stones?”

“Yes,” said Toma. “Sorry if we made too much clatter.”

Sacha sat beside the pond for a moment. The beavers worked hard, but their clinks no longer sounded frightening. They sounded like a busy sort of music.

As the night grew deeper, the forest became quieter.

That was when Sacha heard it.

A low, distant sound.

Oooooooh.

It floated through the trees from the north.

Sacha froze.

Oooooooh.

It did not sound like an owl. It did not sound like the wind in the leaves. It did not sound like beavers working, or hedgehogs rustling, or crickets singing.

It sounded sad.

And a little scary.

Sacha crept toward the north trail, placing each black paw carefully on the soft earth.

Oooooooh.

The sound came again.

He remembered Aunt Mirembe’s words.

A guardian listens.

Sacha did not bark a warning. Not yet.

He followed the sound past the silver birches, past a hollow log, and up a small slope where the trees thinned.

There, caught among the roots of an old pine, was a young deer named Zuri.

One of Zuri’s slender back hooves had slipped between two roots. She was not badly hurt, but she could not pull free.

“Oooooooh,” Zuri moaned again.

“Sacha!” she cried when she saw him. “I have been trying not to wake everyone, but I am frightened.”

Sacha’s chest tightened.

This was not a sound of danger coming.

It was a sound of someone needing help.

“I’m here,” he said.

He tugged at the root. It did not move.

He pushed at Zuri’s hoof. It would not slide free.

“Hold still,” he said, though his own paws were trembling.

Sacha looked around. A guardian listens, he thought. But perhaps a guardian also knows when to ask for help.

He raised his nose to the moon and gave three short barks.

Not the sharp alarm call.

A different call, the one Aunt Mirembe used when she needed neighbors.

Soon, the night forest stirred.

Asha swooped down from the oak, her wings silent.

Toma the beaver arrived, smelling of pond water and willow bark.

Niko and the two hedgehogs came waddling with their leaf hats tucked under their arms.

Even an elderly mole named Babatunde appeared from a mound of soft soil.

“What do we have?” asked Toma.

“Zuri’s hoof is caught,” said Sacha.

Asha flew to a branch above. “The root curves beneath the earth.”

Babatunde pressed his nose to the ground. “I can make a little tunnel beside it.”

“I can bring water,” said Toma. “Wet soil will loosen.”

The hedgehogs gathered dry leaves and placed them beneath Zuri’s knee so she would be comfortable.

Sacha stayed near Zuri’s head.

“Breathe slowly,” he told her. “Like this.”

He took a long breath in through his nose and let it out softly.

Zuri copied him.

Babatunde dug. Toma splashed water. The hedgehogs packed soft leaves around the edge so the mud would not slide back.

At last, Babatunde called, “Now!”

Toma pushed the root with his broad shoulder. Sacha gently guided Zuri’s hoof sideways.

With a soft squelch, it came free.

Zuri stumbled once, then stood.

“Oh!” she said. “Oh, thank you.”

Her mother, who had awakened and come searching, hurried through the trees. She nuzzled Zuri all over to make sure she was safe.

The other animals sighed with relief.

Sacha felt warm from nose to tail.

Then, from far away, there came another sound.

Crack!

Sacha’s ears shot up.

Crack-crack!

The animals looked at one another.

“Warning?” whispered Niko.

Sacha listened.

The sound came from the west, where the oldest trees stood. It was loud, but it had a slow rhythm.

Crack.

Pause.

Crack.

Asha tilted her head. “I see something.”

She flew upward, circled once in the moonlight, and returned.

“It is the ancient chestnut tree,” she said. “Its old branches are dropping cones.”

Just then, a fat chestnut cone plopped onto the ground beside them.

Niko giggled. “It sounds like the tree is knocking on its own door.”

Soon everyone was laughing quietly, even Zuri.

The forest settled again.

One by one, the animals returned to their beds.

The hedgehogs took their moon mushrooms home.

Toma paddled back toward his dam.

Babatunde disappeared underground with a polite little sniff.

Asha flew to her oak, though before she left, she said, “You did well, young guardian.”

Sacha went back to the mossy rock in the middle of the forest.

The moon had crossed half the sky. Dew shone on the grass. Somewhere, a rabbit dreamed and twitched its whiskers.

Sacha listened.

He heard the brook.

He heard the crickets.

He heard an acorn fall.

He heard a sleepy squirrel mumble from its nest.

And he heard the gentle breathing of the whole forest, rising and falling through roots, nests, dens, ponds, and branches.

Some sounds were warnings.

Some were work.

Some were greetings.

Some were frightened calls for help.

And some were simply the night being the night.

Just before dawn, Aunt Mirembe returned along the marsh trail. Her paws were muddy, and a few willow leaves clung to her fur.

She found Sacha sitting on the mossy rock, though his eyes were beginning to droop.

“How was the Sleeping Forest?” she asked.

Sacha thought for a moment.

“It was louder than I expected,” he said. “But not all loud sounds were scary. And not all scary sounds meant danger. Sometimes they meant somebody needed friends.”

Aunt Mirembe smiled.

“That is exactly what a guardian must learn.”

The eastern sky turned peach and gold. Birds began to wake, one by one, filling the branches with bright, cheerful songs.

Sacha climbed down from the rock and walked beside his aunt toward their den beneath the beech tree.

He was tired in the deepest, coziest way.

As he curled on the soft moss, he could still hear the forest around him.

A sparrow chirped.

A beetle hummed.

A leaf drifted down and landed with the tiniest hush.

Sacha tucked his white-tipped tail over his nose.

The forest was awake now.

But Sacha, temporary guardian of the night, closed his eyes and dreamed of silver trees, moonlit ponds, brave little hedgehogs, and all the many sounds that had kept him company until morning.