On a sea so long ago that no map remembers its name, there sailed a ship called The Slow Horse — the bravest ship on that ocean, which, given the crew, was perhaps a little surprising.

The crew was four.

The captain was a boy named Liam. He was eight. He had captained for as long as he had had the ship, which was the part of long-ago that nobody could quite remember either. He stood at the wheel with both feet planted wide, hat too big, sleeves rolled twice because they were too long. He could hold the wheel through any wind he'd met yet. He had not yet met the worst wind.

The first mate was Liam's sister Ava, six years old, who ran The Slow Horse's entire operation while Liam handled the steering. Ava had a clipboard. Ava had a whistle. Ava had a list of every barrel of salt fish in the hold and every name of every gull that ever circled the ship. The first mate is the person who actually keeps a ship moving, and everyone on board, including Liam, knew it.

In the crow's nest sat the lookout — a small fox-colored girl named Iyla, three years old, who had volunteered for the crow's nest on her first day on board because nobody else wanted to climb that high. She climbed it easily. She sat up there in all weather. She had eyes that could see a piece of driftwood two miles off, and she shouted things down at predictable intervals — gulls!, whitecaps!, that one's a rock! — most of which turned out to be right.

On the deck, swabbing slowly, was the youngest. Baby Tessa, one year old. Tessa held a mop that was almost as tall as she was. She did not yet, in any meaningful sense, swab. But she walked behind the mop and pushed it where she could push it, and she did not fall down very often, and she was the cheerful presence the rest of the crew came back to between tasks.

That was the crew of The Slow Horse.

On the morning this story begins, The Slow Horse was under sail with all four crew members in their stations and a fine fair wind out of the south. Ava came up to the wheel with her clipboard.

"Captain," she said, in the voice Ava used at sea, which was different from the voice she used on land. "Where are we headed today?"

"To the island," said Liam.

"Which island."

"The one with the socks."

Ava sighed, but it was a satisfied sigh, because she had been hoping he would say that. "The Island of Lost Socks," she said, writing it down on her clipboard. "Every sock the kingdom has ever lost has washed up on that island. There is a sock-pile a hundred feet high. There are matching pairs nobody has seen in years. The kingdom — every kid in the kingdom — needs them back."

"That's why," said Liam.

Ava blew her whistle once, sharp. Iyla's small head poked over the rim of the crow's nest. "Land?" Iyla called down hopefully.

"Not yet," called Ava. "Just letting you know where."

Iyla nodded and went back to looking. Tessa, on the deck, knocked her mop against a barrel and laughed.

The Slow Horse sailed on.

The wind held. The afternoon passed. Then, at about four bells in the afternoon watch — which Ava had explained to Iyla once before in a way Iyla had only sort of followed — Iyla saw something on the horizon, a fleck of dark in all the blue. She squinted. She cupped her small paws around her eyes. She squinted again.

"LAND HO!" Iyla shouted, loud enough that Tessa jumped and the gulls scattered. "LAND HO, LAND HO, LAND HO!"

Liam grabbed his spyglass and looked.

It was the island. Striped with color even from here. The sock-pile, even from a mile away, was visible — a hundred feet high, just like Ava had said, and as Liam steered The Slow Horse closer he could see that every story he'd ever heard about the place was understatement.

The island wasn't really an island. The island was a sock-pile with a beach. The beach was made of more socks. The cliffs in the back were socks. The little trees on the cliffs had striped socks hanging from the branches like fruit.

The Slow Horse dropped anchor in the bay. The crew climbed down a rope ladder onto the sock-beach, which compressed under their boots in a way no proper beach ever does.

They got to work.

Liam, being the captain, dug. He waded into the sock-pile up to his waist and began the slow business of looking for matches. He'd haul out a striped sock, hold it up, squint, and start looking for its partner. He found three matches in the first hour. He found seven in the second.

Ava set up a sorting station on the beach. She had three barrels labeled with chalk on the side — REDS, STRIPES, OTHER — and as Liam handed her socks she dropped them into the right barrels with no hesitation. Within an hour the REDS barrel was full. Within two, the STRIPES barrel was overflowing.

Iyla was on patches duty. Iyla had small fast hands and a good eye for which socks belonged to which kids in the kingdom, and she ran up and down the beach picking out particular socks — the one with the patched toe, the one with the heel mended in yellow thread, the one with the small embroidered horse that belonged to the baker's son — and matching them to their lonely partners in the pile. She matched twenty in an hour. Her ears were pricked the whole time.

Tessa, meanwhile, found a sock-drift near the cliffs and rolled into it the way a baby bear rolls into leaves in autumn. She emerged covered in striped socks, beaming. Then she stuck her tiny hand into the drift and pulled out — by pure luck, but with the air of someone who had known exactly where it was — a single sock with a unicorn on it. She held it up.

Liam, across the beach, recognized it. "That's the one the baker's daughter has been looking for," he said. "Every Sunday for two years."

Tessa nodded, very serious. Then she went back to rolling.

Just at the rail of The Slow Horse, watching the four of them work — though no one in the crew turned to notice — there sat a black-and-white shape, large for a cat, with eyes like two pieces of the moon. The cat watched the sorting for a long while. The cat blinked, slowly. Then the cat lay down and put its chin on its paws.

By sundown the crew had loaded the ship with bag after bag of matched-up sock-pairs — stripes paired with stripes, reds paired with reds, the unicorn pair tied carefully together with twine. They sailed home that night under stars Iyla counted from the crow's nest, all of which she announced loudly the moment she saw a new one. One of them — small, pale, low on the horizon — she didn't recognize at all. Liam, when she pointed, didn't recognize it either. They left it where it was, and sailed on.

The kingdom was at the dock when they came in. The king and the queen were there. So was every kid in the kingdom, all of them holding their one lonely sock that they'd been missing for as long as they could remember. The crew of The Slow Horse came down the gangplank with the bags, and Ava (with her clipboard) called the kids forward one at a time, and the matches were made — sock by sock, pair by pair — by the light of the harbor lanterns, until the dock was warm with the sound of every kid in the kingdom going yes! yes! that's mine!

The baker's daughter — small and tearful — held her unicorn sock against her cheek and then hugged Tessa, who didn't quite know what to do but allowed it.

The family crew, sailing home.

Bedtime Stories — Vol. 1.