From the garden path, Maya could hear the conductor calling, “Last train ready!” The words bounced back from the old stone wall.
Comet loved the echo. He called, “Good evening, wall!” The wall returned a faint version of his greeting.
Then Maya noticed another sound beneath the echoes: a soft, uneven tap. It continued after everyone stopped speaking.
“That cannot be our echo,” she said. “It is still happening.”
The conductor came to listen with them. They followed the sound along the safe garden path, pausing whenever it grew quieter. Near the shed, a loose wooden label tapped against a watering can whenever the breeze moved it.
The gardener fastened the label properly. The tapping stopped, leaving the stone wall’s gentle echoes easier to hear.
Comet tried his greeting again. This time Maya noticed how much fainter the returning words were than his original call.
They did not have to make every sound belong to the same explanation. The echo came from their voices; the tapping came from the breeze and the label.
Before heading indoors, Maya wrote both observations in her notebook. Comet drew a wall wearing two enormous ears.
The gardener laughed softly at his picture. Then they put the notebook away, and the evening returned to leaves, footsteps, and the quiet ordinary sounds of home.