Mia and the Melody Tree

Mia loved her bedroom window full of little instruments: a rainbow xylophone, two wooden recorders and three brass bells. Today rain tapped on the glass, and Biscuit, her orange cat, watched the drops race each other down.

That morning a letter had come from far away. “My nights on the hill are very quiet,” her grandma wrote. “I miss your singing.” Mia wanted to send a lullaby to her grandma across the sea, but letters took two whole weeks.

Grandma Lina, who lived in the room next door, came in with her old button tin. “Hmm,” she said, the way she always did before something important. Inside lay a tiny blue seed shaped like a music note. It was humming.

“Play to it every day,” said Grandma Lina, “and it will grow into a Melody Tree. A Melody Tree can carry a song very far.”

Biscuit, who only talked when something truly mattered, sniffed it. “Rain and blueberries,” he said. “Plant it.” So Mia dropped the glowing note into a clay pot on the sill, and the soil gave one soft hum.