Ever since the street lights went dark, the child could hear cellophane crinkling against their bedroom window at night. The sound felt like it was reaching out for a hand. Their mother couldn’t hear it, she closed the curtains on the question and said, “There’s nothing there.” Most nights, the child shrugged off an inner knowing and rolled over, but tonight felt different.

Leaning through the open window the child sensed a presence they couldn’t explain but the street outside looked empty. They exhaled questions into the night sky. The air grew curiously thick. It was trees that answered, waving with messages rippling through their branches, the kind of whisper you hear with your skin before your ears.

A black velvet flicker of wings came surfing through the branches towards the edge of the open window. The crinkling swelled, it came at the child from above and below, the vibration wrapping itself around the child’s chest.

Child of daylight,
I am the Night Natterer.
Tree Chatterer, Dream Scatterer.

For nine nights
I have flown through dusk
to this pocket of dark
to speak with you in trust.

Our bellies are empty.
The sky has lost its song.
The soil is poisoned.
The insects are gone.

Then, quite abruptly, the vibration disappeared and the presence was gone.

When the child told their school friends about the Night Natterer the next day, no one believed them. It's better to keep these sorts of things to yourself thought the child, who usually kept a lot to themselves. That week, the child’s world began to change. At school, the children seemed to turn into insects. One by one their shadows grew wings and too many legs to count.

The playground was buzzing, clicking and fluttering without a pause for silence. As the days went on, the sounds thinned, falling like autumn leaves dissolving into soil. Empty spaces appeared on chairs in the classrooms. Food was left uneaten in the lunch hall, which hung empty like a ghost hive.

What was most odd to the child was that the teachers didn’t notice. Parents didn’t either, they picked up a moth, a spider or a midgy from the entrance hall and as they hugged them the insects burst into a shimmering dust, carried away by a mischievous breeze.

That night, the wind rattled faintly against the glass. The child lay in bed staring at the ceiling, the reflection of their bedroom light glimmering in the window, wondering if the Night Natterer would return. The week's strangeness clung to the child, heavy as a question, was the Night Natterer even real. The world was changing, they were certain of it but whether anyone else could see it, they didn’t know. With a sigh, they reached for the switch and the room slipped into darkness.

The child listened intently, face tilted toward the window, breath shallow so as not to miss a single sound. It came as it had before, surfing through the trees, velvet wings flickering like sparks through the branches, leaves erupting with a silvery dust. Then a tap at the glass. Forgetting what their mother had told them, never to invite anyone into the house, the child opened the window and waved the presence in. 

The Night Natterer entered. A bat small enough to cup in two hands, yet somehow larger than the room itself. Its wings beat a playful music that made the curtains dance, carrying a scent of damp earth and bark, of stone after rain. Its soft grey brown fur caught the moonlight like worn velvet and its pale white underside glimmered faintly, like twilight pressed into fur. The child’s chest began to vibrate.

Child of daylight,
I am the Night Natterer.
Low Flutterer, Slow Gatherer.

I skim hedges, brushing grass
finding gold where life moves slow.

Beetles gleam, spiders write
To rush is to miss what darkness knows.

Glisten of slug trails. Patience of bark.
Scent of sap. Jewels in the dark.

Slow down, and you’ll hear it too.

Songs that sleep inside the spores.
Unheard stories yearning for more. 

The child breathed in deeply. The vibration filled their chest like the rhythm of a djembe, ancient and steady. As they exhaled, the Night Natterer spun out, riding the current of their breath into the night.

The next day, the child moved in a slow way. Not out of tiredness, it was more like a new kind of knowing. A way of letting the world arrive before stepping into it. To rush is to miss what darkness knows. These words echoed as their feet sank into the worn rug, soft as moss between their toes. They pulled on their socks and tied their shoelaces with the patience of a grandmother threading a story through the eye of a needle.

Downstairs, their mother burnt toast between phone calls and sharp shouts of “Come on, or we will be late.” The child didn’t answer. They leaned toward the window instead, to listen to a spider whose web clung to the corner of the glass, catching the morning light. Patience is the silk that holds the world together. These words echoed from the web, spinning the stillness into something that could be heard.

On the way to school, the trees seemed to be watching, nodding their branches in encouragement. At school, the child sat still as a stone, mapping the world in gentle pulses and echoed breaths. Even the quiet corners of the classroom vibrated softly. A ladybird landed on the rim of a pencil jar, its shell a tiny red lantern illuminating a path to write. On the window sill, a bumble bee tumbled clumsily, the child cupped it gently in their hands, feeling the thrum of its wing, and carried it outside into nectar thick air.

The playground pulsed with life in ways the child had never noticed. An army of ants were hauling crumbs like offerings to a hidden queen. A jewel beetle appeared on the child's jumper, its viridescent shell glimmering as though it were carrying a piece of emerald on its back. A rotting plank on the climbing frame cracked open revealing lice and grubs wriggling inside, the hidden mechanics of the world quietly at work. 

That night, the child turned their bedroom light off early. They stood at the open window and breathed in deeply. “I’m learning” they whispered into the dark. The trees seemed to nod in approval. The child climbed into bed and waited. Questions streamed from their chest like a waterfall of longing. Can we stop the insects from disappearing? Will the song come back to the sky? If we move more slowly, will we be less afraid? Will I find the stories that slip by unnoticed? and if I do, what should I do with them?

As they exhaled, the child made a strange clicking sound, like pebbles striking glass, a sound not quite their own. The darkness pressed close all around, but gently, a darkness so clear the child could almost see what they’d usually have to feel around for. Shapes unfolded in the blackness, the edge of the bed, the window frame, the wardrobe all echoing back a subtle, vibrating outline.

A shadow slid across the ceiling. The Night Natterer appeared as if summoned, a pulse of wings circling the lampshade above the bed. It slowed and hovered, stilling the air, then the clicking, crinkling vibration returned, echoing inside the child's chest like a familiar heartbeat.

Child of daylight,

They call me Bat, Natterer.

Myotis Nattereri, after Johann Natterer. 

He stilled our wings,

hung our shadows on museum walls.

He watched us through glass;

insects, birds and mammals.

Names can be cages,

they can also be keys.

I reclaimed mine,

to carry the news of night

to speak for my siblings

to be the dark casting light

You know more than you think,

and when you speak

your knowing multiplies like spores in the dark 

Changes are coming and you will play a part.

The next day, the child stood in the garden of the school playground watching the caretaker fix a wooden box high on the wall behind the garden shed. A bat box. Someone else is listening, the child thought. One by one, the other children drifted over, their games slowing, their chatter quieting. The air held its breath as the caretaker banged the final nail into the box. No one said much, but the children drew closer as if the box was humming with its secret purpose. A home, a refuge, a shelter for velvet wings. They all felt the happiness of the singing grass and the child waved at their friends with the same encouragement that the trees had shown the child.

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