On a rainy afternoon, Marlo folded a paper boat.
He folded it carefully, the way his big sister had shown him. Fold, fold, tuck. Corner, corner, pinch. When he was done, it had two sharp points, a flat bottom, and a little sail in the middle.
"It needs a name," said Marlo.
He thought about it for a long time. Then he wrote, on the side, in wobbly letters: SPARROW.
When the rain stopped, he took Sparrow outside. A little stream ran beside the garden, left by the storm, and it was running fast, down towards the street.
Marlo knelt and set the boat on the water. It spun once, then steadied, then sailed off.
"Bon voyage," said Marlo.
He walked along beside it, past the garden gate, past the neighbour's fence, to the end of the lane, where the stream ran into a big iron grate and disappeared.
"Goodbye, Sparrow," he said. He felt a little sad, but mostly curious.
That night, tucked in bed, he could not stop wondering. Where did the stream go?
"I think," said Mum, sitting on the edge of his bed, "it goes into a pipe, under the street. And then into a bigger pipe. And then into the river."
"And then?"
"And then, the river goes to the lake. And the lake goes to the great, wide sea."
Marlo's eyes grew round. "Sparrow is going to the sea?"
"It might."
Marlo closed his eyes and imagined it. Sparrow sailing under the streets in the dark, quiet and brave. Sparrow bobbing out into the river, in the moonlight. Sparrow floating along between the reeds, past a sleeping heron, past a sleeping bridge.
Sparrow reaching the lake, where the stars came out in the water, and the little boat sailed across them as if it were sailing across the sky.
Sparrow reaching the sea at last, rocking on slow, gentle waves, with a whale far below humming a lullaby.
"It will be all right," murmured Marlo. "It's a very good boat."
Mum kissed his forehead. "It is," she said.
Marlo smiled. He could almost feel the waves, rocking him, up and down, up and down, all the way to sleep.