“How do you do, again?” And Maya gave its leaf a little tap. The flat object peeled one eye open, turned it on Maya, and said:“A bee. The world is full of bees,” and closed its eye again.“Unique,” thought Maya, and determined to get at the stranger’s secret. For now it excited her curiosity more than ever, as people often do who pay no attention to us. She triedhoney. “I have plenty of honey,” she said. “May I offer you some?” The stranger opened its one eye and regarded Maya contemplatively a moment or two. “What is it going to say this time?” Maya wondered.This time there was no answer at all. The one eye merely closed again, and the stranger sat quite still, tight on the leaf, so that you couldn’t see its legs and you’d have thought it had been pressed down flat with a thumb.Maya realized, of course, that the stranger wanted to ignore her, but—you know how it is—you don’t like being snubbed, especially if you haven’t found out what you wanted to find out. It makes you feel so cheap.“Whoever you are,” cried Maya, “permit me to inform you that insects are in the habit of greeting each other, especially when one of them happens to be a bee.” The bug sat on without budging. It did not so much as open its one eye again. “It’s ill,” thought Maya. “How horrid to be ill on a lovely day like this. That’s why it’s staying in the shade, too.” She flew over to the bug’s leaf and satdown beside it. “Aren’t you feeling well?” she asked, so very friendly.At this the funny creature began to move away. “Move” is the only word to use, because it didn’t walk, or run, or fly, or hop. It went as if shoved by an invisible hand.“It hasn’t any legs. That’s why it’s so cross,” thought Maya.When it reached the stem of the leaf it stopped a second, moved on again, and, to her astonishment, Maya saw that it had left behind a little brown drop.“Howverysingular,” she thought—and clapped her hand to her nose and held it tight shut. The veriest stench came from the little brown drop. Maya almost fainted. She flew away as fast as she could and seated herself on a raspberry, where she held on to her nose and shivered with disgust and excitement.“Serves you right,” someone above her called, and laughed. “Why take up with a stink-bug?”“Don’t laugh!” cried Maya.She looked up. A white butterfly had alighted overhead on a slender, swaying branchof the raspberry bush, and was slowly opening and closing its broad wings—slowly, softly, silently, happy in the sunshine—black corners to its wings, round black marks in the centre of each wing, four round black marks in all. Ah, how beautiful, how beautiful! Maya forgot her vexation. And she was glad, too, to talk to the butterfly. She had never made the acquaintance of one before even though she had met a great many.“Oh,” she said, “you probably are right to laugh. Was that a stink-bug?”“It was,” he replied, still smiling. “The sort of person to keep away from. You’re probably very young still?”“Well,” observed Maya, “I shouldn’t say I was—exactly. I’ve been through a great deal. But that was the first specimen of the kind I had ever come across. Can you imagine doing such a thing?”The butterfly had to laugh again.“You see,” he explained, “stink-bugs like to keep to themselves. They are not very popular, so they use the odoriferous drop to make people take notice of them. We’d probablysoon forget the fact of their existence if it were not for the drop: it serves as a reminder. And they want to be remembered, no matter how.”Maya talks with the butterfly“How lovely, how exquisitely lovely your wings are,” said Maya. “So delicate and white. May I introduce myself? Maya, of the nation of bees.”The butterfly laid his wings together to look like only one wing standing straight up in the air. He gave a slight bow.“Fred,” he said laconically.Maya couldn’t gaze her fill.“Fly a little,” she asked.“Shall I fly away?”“Oh no. I just want to see your great white wings move in the blue air. But never mind. I can wait till later. Where do you live?”“Nowhere specially. A settled home is too much of a nuisance. Life didn’t get to be really delightful until I turned into a butterfly. Before that, while I was still a caterpillar, I couldn’t leave the cabbage the livelong day, and all one did was eat and squabble.”“Just what do you mean?” asked Maya, mystified.“I used to be a caterpillar,” explained Fred.“Never!” cried Maya.“Now, now, now,” said Fred, pointing both feelers straight at Maya. “Everyone knows a butterfly is first a caterpillar. Even human beings know it.”Maya was utterly perplexed. Could such a thing be?“You must really explain more clearly,” she said. “I couldn’t accept what you say just so, could I? You wouldn’t expect me to.”The butterfly perched beside the little bee on the slender swaying branch of the raspberry bush, and they rocked together in the morning wind. He told her how he had begun life as a caterpillar and then, one day, when he had shed his last caterpillar skin, he came out a pupa or chrysalis.“At the end of a few weeks,” he continued, “I woke up out of my dark sleep and broke through the wrappings or pupa-case. I can’t tell you, Maya, what a feeling comes over you when, after a time like that, you suddenly see the sun again. I felt as though I were melting in a warm golden ocean, and I loved mylife so that my heart began to pound.”“I understand,” said Maya, “I understand. I felt the same way the first time I left our humdrum city and flew out into the bright scented world of blossoms.” The little bee was silent a while, thinking of her first flight.—But then she wanted to know how the butterfly’s large wings could grow in the small space of the pupa-case.Fred explained.“The wings are delicately folded together like the petals of a flower in the bud. When the weather is bright and warm, the flower must open, it cannot help itself, and its petals unfold. So with my wings, they were folded up, then unfolded. No one can resist the sun when it shines.”“No, no—one cannot—one cannot resist the sunshine.” Maya mused, watching the butterfly as he perched in the golden light of the morning, pure white against the blue sky.“People often charge us with being frivolous,” said Fred. “We’re really happy—just that—just happy. You wouldn’t believe how seriously I sometimes think about life.”“Tell me what all you think.”“Oh,” said Fred, “I think about the future. It’s very interesting to think about the future.—But I should like to fly now. The meadows on the hillside are full of yarrow and canterbury bells; everything’s in bloom. I’d like to be there, you know.”This Maya understood, she understood it well, and they said good-by and flew away in different directions, the white butterfly rocking silently as if wafted by the gentle wind, little Maya with that uneasy zoom-zoom of the bees which we hear upon the flowers on fair days and which we always recall when we think of the summer.Maya with the bark beetle and the seven-legged daddy-long-legsCHAPTER IXTHE LOST LEGNearthe hole where Maya had set herself up for the summer lived a family of bark-boring beetles. Fridolin, the father, was an earnest, industrious man who wanted many children and took immense pains to bring up a large family. He had done very well: he had fifty energetic sons to fill him with pride and high hopes. Each had dug his own meandering little tunnel in the bark of the pine-tree and all were getting on and were comfortably settled.“My wife,” Fridolin said to Maya, after they had known each other some time,“has arranged things so that none of my sons interferes with the others. They are not even acquainted; each goes his own way.”Maya knew that human beings were none too fond of Fridolin and his people, though she herself liked him and liked his opinions and had found no reason to avoid him. In the morning before the sun arose and the woods were still asleep, she would hear his fine tapping and boring. It sounded like a delicate trickling, or as if the tree were breathing in its sleep. Later she would see the thin brown dust that he had emptied out of his corridor.Once he came at an early hour, as he often did, to wish her good-morning and ask if she had slept well.“Not flying to-day?” he inquired.“No, it’s too windy.”It was windy. The wind rushed and roared and flung the branches into a mad tumult. The leaves looked ready to fly away. After each great gust the sky would brighten, and in the pale light the trees seemed balder. The pine in which Maya and Fridolin lived shriekedwith the voices of the wind as in a fury of anger and excitement.Fridolin sighed.“I worked all night,” he told Maya, “all night. But what can you do? You’ve got to dosomething to getsomewhere. And I’m not altogether satisfied with this pine; I should have tackled a fir-tree.” He wiped his brow and smiled in self-pity.“How are your children?” asked Maya pleasantly.“Thank you,” said Fridolin, “thank you for your interest. But”—he hesitated—“but I don’t supervise the way I used to. Still, I have reason to believe they are all doing well.”As he sat there, a little brown man with slightly curtailed wing-sheaths and a breastplate that looked like a head too large for its body, Maya thought he was almost comical; but she knew he was a dangerous beetle who could do immense harm to the mighty trees of the forest, and if his tribe attacked a tree in numbers then the green needles were doomed, the tree would turnsearand die. It was utterlywithout defenses against the little marauders who destroyed the bark and the sap-wood. And the sap-wood is necessary to the life of a tree because it carries the sap up to the very tips of the branches. There were stories of how whole forests had fallen victims to the race of boring-beetles. Maya looked at Fridolin reflectively; she was awed into solemnity at the thought of the great power these little creatures possessed and of how important they could become.Fridolin sighed and said in a worried tone:“Ah, life would be beautiful if there were no woodpeckers.”Maya nodded.“Yes, indeed, you’re right. The woodpecker gobbles up every insect he sees.”“If it were only that,” observed Fridolin, “if it were only that he got the careless people who fool around on the outside, on the bark, I’d say, ‘Very well, a woodpecker must live too.’ But it seems all wrong that the bird should follow us right into our corridors into the remotest corners of our homes.”“But he can’t. He’s too big, isn’t he?”Fridolin looked at Maya with an air of grave importance, lifting his brows and shaking his head two or three times. It seemed to please him that he knew something she didn’t know.“Too big? What difference does his size make? No, my dear, it’s not his size we are afraid of; it’s his tongue.”Maya made big eyes.Fridolin told her about the woodpecker’s tongue: that it was long and thin, and round as a worm, and barbed and sticky.“He can stretch his tongue out ten times my length,” cried the bark-beetle, flourishing his arm. “You think: ‘now—now he has reached the limit, he can’t make it the tiniest bit longer.’ But no, he goes on stretching and stretching it. He pokes it deep into all the cracks and crevices of the bark, on the chance that he’ll find somebody sitting there. He even pushes it into our passageways—actually, into our corridors and chambers. Things stick to it, and that’s the way he pulls us out of our homes.”“I am not a coward,” said Maya, “I don’tthink I am, but what you say makes me creepy.”“Oh,you’reall right,” said Fridolin, a little envious, “you with your sting are safe. A person’ll think twice before he’ll let you sting his tongue. Anybody’ll tell you that. But how about us bark-beetles? How do you think we feel? A cousin of mine got caught. We had just had a little quarrel on account of my wife. I remember every detail perfectly. My cousin was paying us a visit and hadn’t yet got used to our ways or our arrangements. All of a sudden we heard a woodpecker scratching and boring—one of the smaller species. It must have begun right at our building because as a rule we hear him beforehand and have time to run to shelter before he reaches us.“Suddenly I heard my poor cousin scream in the dark: ‘Fridolin, I’m sticking!’ Then all I heard was a short desperate scuffle, followed by complete silence, and in a few moments the woodpecker was hammering at the house next door. My poor cousin! Her name was Agatha.”“Feel how my heart is beating,” said Maya,in a whisper. “You oughtn’t to have told it so quickly. My goodness, the things that do happen!” And the little bee thought of her own adventures in the past and the accidents that might still happen to her.A laugh from Fridolin interrupted her reflections. She looked up in surprise.“See who’s coming,” he cried, “coming up the tree. Here’s the fellow for you! I tell you, he’s a—but you’ll see.”Maya followed the direction of his gaze and saw a remarkable animal slowly climbing up the trunk. She wouldn’t have believed such a creature was possible if she had not seen it with her own eyes.“Hadn’t we better hide?” she asked, alarm getting the better of astonishment.“Absurd,” replied the bark-beetle, “just sit still and be polite to the gentleman. He is very learned, really, very scholarly, and what is more, kind and modest and, like most persons of his type, rather funny. See what he’s doing now!”“Probably thinking,” observed Maya, who couldn’t get over her astonishment.“He’s struggling against the wind,” said Fridolin, and laughed. “I hope his legs don’t get entangled.”“Are those long threads really his legs?” asked Maya, opening her eyes wide. “I’ve never seen the like.”Meanwhile the newcomer had drawn near, and Maya got a better view of him. He looked as though he were swinging in the air, his rotund little body hung so high on his monstrously long legs, which groped for a footing on all sides like a movable scaffolding of threads. He stepped along cautiously, feeling his way; the little brown sphere of his body rose and sank, rose and sank. His legs were so very long and thin that one alone would certainly not have been enough to support his body. He needed all at once, unquestionably. As they were jointed in the middle, they rose high in the air above him.Maya clapped her hands together.“Well!” she cried. “Did you ever? Would you have dreamed that such delicate legs, legs as fine as a hair, could be so nimble and useful—that one could really use them—andthey’d know what to do? Fridolin, I think it’s wonderful, simply wonderful.”“Ah, bah,” said the bark-beetle. “Don’t take things so seriously. Just laugh when you see something funny; that’s all.”“But I don’t feel like laughing. Often we laugh at something and later find out it was just because we haven’t understood.”By this time the stranger had joined them and was looking down at Maya from the height of his pointed triangles of legs.“Good-morning,” he said, “a real wind-storm—a pretty strong draught, don’t you think, or—no? You are of a different opinion?” He clung to the tree as hard as he could.Fridolin turned to hide his laughing, but little Maya replied politely that she quite agreed with him and that was why she had not gone out flying. Then she introduced herself. The stranger squinted down at her through his legs.“Maya, of the nation of bees,” he repeated. “Delighted, really. I have heard a good deal about bees.—I myself belong to the generalfamily of spiders, species daddy-long-legs, and my name is Hannibal.”The word spider has an evil sound in the ears of all smaller insects, and Maya could not quite conceal her fright, especially as she was reminded of her agony in Thekla’s web. Hannibal seemed to take no notice, so Maya decided, “Well if need be I’ll fly away, and he can whistle for me; he has no wings and his web is somewhere else.”“I am thinking,” said Hannibal, “thinking very hard.—If you will permit me, I will come a little closer. That big branch there makes a good shield against the wind.”“Why, certainly,” said Maya, making room for him.Fridolin said good-by and left. Maya stayed; she was eager to get at Hannibal’s personality.“The many, many different kinds of animals there are in the world,” she thought. “Every day a fresh discovery.”The wind had subsided some, and the sun shone through the branches. From below rose the song of a robin redbreast, filling thewoods with joy. Maya could see it perched on a branch, could see its throat swell and pulse with the song as it held its little head raised up to the light.“If only I could sing like that robin redbreast,” she said, “I’d perch on a flower and keep it up the livelong day.”“You’d produce something lovely, you would, with your humming and buzzing.”“The bird looks so happy.”“You have great fancies,” said the daddy-long-legs. “Supposing every animal were to wish he could do something that nature had not fitted him to do, the world would be all topsy-turvy. Supposing a robin redbreast thought he had to have a sting—a sting above everything else—or a goat wanted to fly about gathering honey. Supposing a frog were to come along and languish for my kind of legs.”Maya laughed.“That isn’t just what I mean. I mean, it seems lovely to be able to make all beings as happy as the bird does with his song.—But goodness gracious!” she exclaimed suddenly. “Mr. Hannibal, you have one leg too many.”Hannibal frowned and looked into space, vexed.“Well, you’ve noticed it,” he said glumly. “But as a matter of fact—one leg too few, not too many.”“Why? Do you usually have eight legs?”“Permit me to explain. We spiders have eight legs. We need them all. Besides, eight is a more aristocratic number. One of my legs got lost. Too bad about it. However you manage, you make the best of it.”“It must be dreadfully disagreeable to lose a leg,” Maya sympathized.Hannibal propped his chin on his hand and arranged his legs to keep them from being easily counted.“I’ll tell you how it happened. Of course, as usual when there’s mischief, a human being is mixed up in it. We spiders are careful and look what we’re doing, but human beings are careless, they grab you sometimes as though you were a piece of wood. Shall I tell you?”“Oh, do please,” said Maya, settling herself comfortably. “It would be awfully interesting.You must certainly have gone through a good deal.”“I should say so,” said Hannibal. “Now listen. We daddy-long-legs, you know, hunt by night. I was then living in a green garden-house. It was overgrown with ivy, and there were a number of broken window-panes, which made it very convenient for me to crawl in and out. The man came at dark. In one hand he carried his artificial sun, which he calls lamp, in the other hand a small bottle, under his arm some paper, and in his pocket another bottle. He put everything down on the table and began to think, because he wanted to write his thoughts on the paper.—You must certainly have come across paper in the woods or in the garden. The black on the paper is what man has excogitated—excogitated.”“Marvelous!” cried Maya, all a-glow that she was to learn so much.“For this purpose,” Hannibal continued, “man needs both bottles. He inserts a stick into the one and drinks out of the other. The more he drinks, the better it goes. Of courseit is about us insects that he writes, everything he knows about us, and he writes strenuously, but the result is not much to boast of, because up to now man has found out very little in regard to insects. He is absolutely ignorant of our soul-life and hasn’t the least consideration for our feelings. You’ll see.”“Don’t you think well of human beings?” asked Maya.“Oh, yes, yes. But the loss of a leg”—the daddy-long-legs looked down slantwise—“is apt to embitter one, rather.”“I see,” said Maya.“One evening I was sitting on a window-frame as usual, prepared for the chase, and the man was sitting at the table, his two bottles before him, trying to produce something. It annoyed me dreadfully that a whole swarm of little flies and gnats, upon which I depend for my subsistence, had settled upon the artificial sun and were staring into it in that crude, stupid, uneducated way of theirs.”“Well,” observed Maya, “I think I’d look at a thing like that myself.”“Look, for all I care. But to look and tostare like an idiot are two entirely different things. Just watch once and see the silly jig they dance around a lamp. It’s nothing for them to butt their heads about twenty times. Some of them keep it up until they burn their wings. And all the time they stare and stare at the light.”“Poor creatures! Evidently they lose their wits.”“Then they had better stay outside on the window-frame or under the leaves. They’re safe from the lamp there, and that’s where I can catch them.—Well, on that fateful night I saw from my position on the window-frame that some gnats were lying scattered on the table beside the lamp drawing their last breath. The man did not seem to notice or care about them, so I decided to go and take them myself. That’s perfectly natural, isn’t it?”“Perfectly.”“And yet, it was my undoing. I crept up the leg of the table, very softly, on my guard, until I could peep over the edge. The man seemed dreadfully big. I watched him working.Then, slowly, very slowly, carefully lifting one leg at a time, I crossed over to the lamp. As long as I was covered by the bottle all went well, but I had scarcely turned the corner, when the man looked up and grabbed me. He lifted me by one of my legs, dangled me in front of his huge eyes, and said: ‘See what’s here, just see what’s here.’ And he grinned—the brute!—he grinned with his whole face, as though it were a laughing matter.”Hannibal sighed, and little Maya kept quite still. Her head was in a whirl.“Have human beings such immense eyes?” she asked at last.“Please think ofmein the positionIwas in,” cried Hannibal, vexed. “Try to imagine how I felt. Who’d like to be hanging by the leg in front of eyes twenty times as big as his own body and a mouth full of gleaming teeth, each fully twice as big as himself? Well, what do you think?”“Awful! Perfectly awful!”“Thank the Lord, my leg broke off. There’s no telling what might have happened if myleg had not broken off. I fell to the table, and then I ran, I ran as fast as my remaining legs would take me, and hid behind the bottle. There I stood and hurled threats of violence at the man. They saved me, my threats did, the man was afraid to run after me. I saw him lay my leg on the white paper, and I watched how it wanted to escape—which it can’t do without me.”“Was it still moving?” asked Maya, prickling at the thought.“Yes. Our legs always do move when they’re pulled out. My leg ran, but I not being there it didn’t know where to run to, so it merely flopped about aimlessly on the same spot, and the man watched it, clutching at his nose and smiling—smiling, the heartless wretch!—at my leg’s sense of duty.”Maya with Hannibal“Impossible,” said the little bee, quite scared, “an offen leg can’t crawl.”“An offen leg?Whatis an offen leg?”“A leg that has come off,” explained Maya, staring at him. “Don’t you know? At home we children used the word offen for anything that had come off.”“You should drop your nursery slang when you’re out in the world and in the presence of cultured people,” said Hannibal severely. “But itistrue that our legs totter long after they have been torn from our bodies.”“I can’t believe it without proof.”“Do you think I’ll tear one of my legs off to satisfy you?” Hannibal’s tone was ugly. “I see you’re not a fit person to associate with. Nobody, I’d like you to know,nobody has ever doubted my word before.”Maya was terribly put out. She couldn’t understand what had upset the daddy-long-legs so, or what dreadful thing she had done.“It isn’t altogether easy to get along with strangers,” she thought. “They don’t think the way we do and don’t see that we mean no harm.” She was depressed and cast a troubled look at the spider with his long legs and soured expression.“Really, someone ought to come and eat you up.”Hannibal had evidently mistaken Maya’s good nature for weakness. For now something unusual happened to the little bee. Suddenlyher depression passed and gave way, not to alarm or timidity, but to a calm courage. She straightened up, lifted her lovely, transparent wings, uttered her high clear buzz, and said with a gleam in her eyes:“I am a bee, Mr. Hannibal.”“I beg your pardon,” said he, and without saying good-by turned and ran down the tree-trunk as fast as a person can run who has seven legs.Maya had to laugh, willy-nilly. From down below Hannibal began to scold.“You’re bad. You threaten helpless people, you threaten them with your sting when you know they’re handicapped by a misfortune and can’t get away fast. But your hour is coming, and when you’re in a tight place you’ll think of me and be sorry.” Hannibal disappeared under the leaves of the coltsfoot on the ground. His last words had not reached the little bee.The wind had almost died away, and the day promised to be fine. White clouds sailed aloft in a deep, deep blue, looking happy and serene like good thoughts of the Lord. Mayawas cheered. She thought of the rich shaded meadows by the woods and of the sunny slopes beyond the lake. A blithe activity must have begun there by this time. In her mind she saw the slim grasses waving and the purple iris that grew in the rills at the edge of the woods. From the flower of an iris you could look across to the mysterious night of the pine-forest and catch its cool breath of melancholy. You knew that its forbidding silence, which transformed the sunshine into a reddish half-light of sleep, was the home of the fairy tale.Maya was already flying. She had started off instinctively, in answer to the call of the meadows and their gay carpeting of flowers. It was a joy to be alive.Maya with the mosquitoCHAPTER XTHE WONDERS OF THE NIGHTThusthe days and weeks of her young life passed for little Maya among the insects in a lovely summer world—a happy roving in garden and meadow, occasional risks and many joys. For all that, she often missed the companions of her early childhood and now and again suffered a pang of homesickness, an ache of longing for her people and the kingdom she had left. There were hours, too, when she yearned for regular, useful work and association with friends of her own kind.However, at bottom she had a restless nature, little Maya had, and was scarcely readyto settle down for good and live in the community of the bees; she wouldn’t have felt comfortable. Often among animals as well as human beings there are some who cannot conform to the ways of the others. Before we condemn them we must be careful and give them a chance to prove themselves. For it is not always laziness or stubbornness that makes them different. Far from it. At the back of their peculiar urge is a deep longing for something higher or better than what every-day life has to offer, and many a time young runaways have grown up into good, sensible, experienced men and women.Little Maya was a pure, sensitive soul, and her attitude to the big, beautiful world came of a genuine eagerness for knowledge and a great delight in the glories of creation.Yet it is hard to be alone even when you are happy, and the more Maya went through, the greater became her yearning for companionship and love. She was no longer so very young; she had grown into a strong, superb creature with sound, bright wings, a sharp, dangerous sting, and a highly developed senseof both the pleasures and the hazards of her life. Through her own experience she had gathered information and stored up wisdom, which she now often wished she could apply to something of real value. There were days when she was ready to return to the hive and throw herself at the queen’s feet and sue for pardon and honorable reinstatement. But a great, burning desire held her back—the desire to know human beings. She had heard so many contradictory things about them that she was confused rather than enlightened. Yet she had a feeling that in the whole of creation there were no beings more powerful or more intelligent or more sublime than they.A few times in her wanderings she had seen people, but only from afar, from high up in the air—big and little people, black people, white people, red people, and such as dressed in many colors. She had never ventured close. Once she had caught the glimmer of red near a brook, and thinking it was a bed of flowers had flown down. She found a human being fast asleep among the brookside blossoms. It had golden hair and a pink face and wore ared dress. It was dreadfully large, of course, but still it looked so good and sweet that Maya thrilled, and tears came to her eyes. She lost all sense of her whereabouts; she could do nothing but gaze and gaze upon the slumbering presence. All the horrid things she had ever heard against man seemed utterly impossible. Lies they must have been—mean lies that she had been told against creatures as charming as this one asleep in the shade of the whispering birch-trees.After a while a mosquito came and buzzed greetings.“Look!” cried Maya, hot with excitement and delight. “Look, just look at that human being there. How good, how beautiful! Doesn’t it fill you with enthusiasm?”The mosquito gave Maya a surprised stare, then turned slowly round to glance at the object of her admiration.“Yes, itisgood. I just tasted it. I stung it. Look, my body is shining red with its blood.”Maya had to press her hand to her heart, so startled was she by the mosquito’s daring.“Will it die?” she cried. “Where did youwound it? How could you? How could you screw up your courage to sting it? And how vile! Why, you’re a beast of prey!”The mosquito tittered.“Why, it’s only a very little human being,” it answered in its high, thin voice. “It’s the size called girl—the size at which the legs are covered half way up with a separate colored casing. My sting, of course, goes through the casing but usually doesn’t reach the skin.—Your ignorance is really stupendous. Do you actually think that human beings are good? I haven’t come across one who willingly let me take the tiniest drop of his blood.”“I don’t know very much about human beings, I admit,” said Maya humbly.“But of all the insects you bees have most to do with human beings. That’s a well-known fact.”“I left our kingdom,” Maya confessed timidly. “I didn’t like it. I wanted to learn about the outside world.”“Well, well, what do you think of that!” The mosquito drew a step nearer. “How do you like your free-lancing? I must say, I admireyou for your independence. I for one would never consent to serve human beings.”“But they serve us too!” said Maya, who couldn’t bear a slight to be put upon her people.“Maybe.—To what nation do you belong?”“I come of the nation in the castle park. The ruling queen is Helen VIII.”“Indeed,” said the mosquito, and bowed low. “An enviable lineage. My deepest respects.—There was a revolution in your kingdom not so long ago, wasn’t there? I heard it from the messengers of the rebel swarm. Am I right?”“Yes,” said Maya, proud and happy that her nation was so respected and renowned. Homesickness for her people awoke again, deep down in her heart, and she wished she could do something good and great for her queen and country. Carried away on the wings of this dream, she forgot to ask about human beings. Or, like as not, she refrained from questions, feeling that the mosquito would not tell her things she would be glad to hear. The mite of a creature impressed her as a saucyMiss, and people of her kind usually had nothing good to say of others. Besides, she soon flew away.“I’m going to take one more drink,” she called back to Maya. “Later I and my friends are going flying in the light of the westering sun. Then we’ll be sure to have good weather to-morrow.”Maya made off quickly. She couldn’t bear to stay and see the mosquito hurt the sleeping child. And how could she do this thing and not perish? Hadn’t Cassandra said: “If you sting a human being, you will die?”Maya still remembered every detail of this incident with the child and the mosquito, but her craving to know human beings well had not been stilled. She made up her mind to be bolder and never stop trying until she had reached her goal.At last Maya’s longing to know human beings was to be satisfied, and in a way far, far lovelier and more wonderful than she had dreamed.Once, on a warm evening, having gone tosleep earlier than usual, she woke up suddenly in the middle of the night—something that had never happened to her before. When she opened her eyes, her astonishment was indescribable: her little bedroom was all steeped in a quiet bluish radiance. It came down through the entrance, and the entrance itself shone as if hung with a silver-blue curtain.Maya did not dare to budge at first, though not because she was frightened. No. Somehow, along with the light came a rare, lovely peacefulness, and outside her room the air was filled with a sound finer, more harmonious than any music she had ever heard. After a time she rose timidly, awed by the glamour and the strangeness of it all, and looked out. The whole world seemed to lie under the spell of an enchantment. Everything was sparkling and glittering in pure silver. The trunks of the birch-trees, the slumbering leaves were overlaid with silver. The grass, which from her height seemed to lie under delicate veils, was set with a thousand pale pearls. All things near and far, the silent distances, were shrouded in this soft, bluish sheen.“This must be the night,” Maya whispered and folded her hands.High up in the heavens, partly veiled by the leaves of a beech-tree, hung a full clear disk of silver, from which the radiance poured down that beautified the world. And then Maya saw countless bright, sharp little lights surrounding the moon in the heavens—oh, so still and beautiful, unlike any shining things she had ever seen before. To think she beheld the night, the moon, and the stars—the wonders, the lovely wonders of the night! She had heard of them but never believed in them. It was almost too much.Then the sound rose again, the strange night sound that must have awakened her. It came from nearby, filling the welkin, a soaring chirp with a silvery ring that matched the silver on the trees and leaves and grass and seemed to come rilling down from the moon on the beams of silver light.Maya looked about for the source, in vain; in the mysterious drift of light and shadow it was difficult to make out objects in clear outline, everything was draped so mysteriously;and yet everything showed up true and in such heroic beauty.Her room could keep her no longer; out she had to fly into this new splendor, the night splendor.“The good Lord will take care of me,” she thought, “I am not bent upon wrong.”As she was about to fly off through the silver light to her favorite meadow, now lying full under the moon, she saw a winged creature alight on a beech-tree leaf not far away. Scarcely alighted, it raised its head to the moon, lifted its narrow wings, and drew the edge of one against the other, for all the world as though it were playing on a violin. And sure enough, the sound came, the silvery chirp that filled the whole moonlit world with melody.“Exquisite,” whispered Maya, “heavenly, heavenly, heavenly.”She flew over to the leaf. The night was so mild and warm that she did not notice it was cooler than by day. When she touched the leaf, the chirper broke off playing abruptly, and to Maya it seemed as if there had neverbeen such a stillness before, so profound was the hush that followed. It was uncanny. Through the dark leaves filtered the light, white and cool.Maya talking with the cricket“Good night,” said Maya, politely, thinking “good night” was the greeting for the night like “good morning” for the morning. “Please excuse me for interrupting, but the music you make is so fascinating that I had to find out where it came from.”The chirper stared at Maya, wide-eyed.“What sort of a crawling creature are you?” it asked after some moments had passed. “I have never met one like you before.”“I am not a crawling insect. I am Maya, of the nation of bees.”“Oh, of the nation of bees. Indeed ... you live by day, don’t you? I have heard of your race from the hedgehog. He told me that in the evening he eats the dead bodies that are thrown out of your hive.”“Yes,” said Maya, with a faint chill of apprehension, “that’s so; Cassandra told me about him; she heard of him from the sentinels. He comes when twilight falls andsnouts in the grass looking for dead bodies.—But do you associate with the hedgehog? Why, he’s an awful brute.”“I don’t think so. We tree-crickets get along with him splendidly. We call him Uncle. Of course he always tries to catch us, but he never succeeds, so we have great fun teasing him. Everybody has to live, doesn’t he? Just so he doesn’t live off me, what do I care?”Maya shook her head. She didn’t agree. But not caring to insult the cricket by contradicting, she changed the subject.“So you’re a tree-cricket?”“Yes, a snowy tree-cricket.—But I must play, so please don’t keep me any longer. It’s full moon, a wonderful night. I must play.”“Oh, do make an exception this once. You play all the time.—Tell me about the night.”“A midsummer night is the loveliest in the world,” answered the cricket. “It fills the heart with rapture.—But what my music doesn’t tell you I shan’t be able to explain. Whyneedeverything be explained? Whyknoweverything? We poor creatures can find out only the tiniest bit about existence. Yet we canfeelthe glory of the whole wide world.” And the cricket set up its happy silvery strumming. Heard from close by, where Maya sat, the music was overpowering in its loudness.The little bee sat quite still in the blue summer night listening and musing deeply about life and creation.Silence fell. There was a faint whirr, and Maya saw the cricket fly out into the moonlight.“The night makes one feel sad,” she reflected.Her flowery meadow drew her now. She flew off.At the edge of the brook stood the tall irises brokenly reflected in the running water. A glorious sight. The moonlight was whirled along in the braided current, the wavelets winked and whispered, the irises seemed to lean over asleep. “Asleep from sheer delight,” thought the little bee. She dropped down on a blue petal in the full light of themoon and could not take her eyes from the living waters of the brook, the quivering flash, the flashing come and go of countless sparks. On the bank opposite, the birch-trees glittered as if hung with the stars.“Where is all that water flowing to?” she wondered. “The cricket is right. We know so little about the world.”Of a sudden a fine little voice rose in song from the flower of an iris close beside her, ringing like a pure, clear bell, different from any earthly sound that Maya knew. Her heart throbbed, she held her breath.“Oh, what is going to happen? What am I going to see now?”The iris swayed gently. One of the petals curved in at the edge, and Maya saw a tiny snow-white human hand holding on to the flower’s rim with its wee little fingers. Then a small blond head arose, and then a delicate luminous body in white garments. A human being in miniature was coming up out of the iris.see captionA human being in miniature was coming up out of the irisWords cannot tell Maya’s awe and rapture. She sat rigid.The tiny being climbed to the edge of the blossom, lifted its arms up to the moonlight, and looked out into the bright shining night with a smile of bliss lighting up its face. Then a faint quiver shook its luminous body, and from its shoulders two wings unfolded, whiter than the moonlight, pure as snow, rising above its blond head and reaching down to its feet. How lovely it was, how exquisitely lovely. Nothing that Maya had ever seen compared with it in loveliness.Standing there in the moonlight, holding its hands up to heaven, the luminous little being lifted its voice again and sang. The song rang out in the night, and Maya understood the words.
“How do you do, again?” And Maya gave its leaf a little tap. The flat object peeled one eye open, turned it on Maya, and said:
“A bee. The world is full of bees,” and closed its eye again.
“Unique,” thought Maya, and determined to get at the stranger’s secret. For now it excited her curiosity more than ever, as people often do who pay no attention to us. She triedhoney. “I have plenty of honey,” she said. “May I offer you some?” The stranger opened its one eye and regarded Maya contemplatively a moment or two. “What is it going to say this time?” Maya wondered.
This time there was no answer at all. The one eye merely closed again, and the stranger sat quite still, tight on the leaf, so that you couldn’t see its legs and you’d have thought it had been pressed down flat with a thumb.
Maya realized, of course, that the stranger wanted to ignore her, but—you know how it is—you don’t like being snubbed, especially if you haven’t found out what you wanted to find out. It makes you feel so cheap.
“Whoever you are,” cried Maya, “permit me to inform you that insects are in the habit of greeting each other, especially when one of them happens to be a bee.” The bug sat on without budging. It did not so much as open its one eye again. “It’s ill,” thought Maya. “How horrid to be ill on a lovely day like this. That’s why it’s staying in the shade, too.” She flew over to the bug’s leaf and satdown beside it. “Aren’t you feeling well?” she asked, so very friendly.
At this the funny creature began to move away. “Move” is the only word to use, because it didn’t walk, or run, or fly, or hop. It went as if shoved by an invisible hand.
“It hasn’t any legs. That’s why it’s so cross,” thought Maya.
When it reached the stem of the leaf it stopped a second, moved on again, and, to her astonishment, Maya saw that it had left behind a little brown drop.
“Howverysingular,” she thought—and clapped her hand to her nose and held it tight shut. The veriest stench came from the little brown drop. Maya almost fainted. She flew away as fast as she could and seated herself on a raspberry, where she held on to her nose and shivered with disgust and excitement.
“Serves you right,” someone above her called, and laughed. “Why take up with a stink-bug?”
“Don’t laugh!” cried Maya.
She looked up. A white butterfly had alighted overhead on a slender, swaying branchof the raspberry bush, and was slowly opening and closing its broad wings—slowly, softly, silently, happy in the sunshine—black corners to its wings, round black marks in the centre of each wing, four round black marks in all. Ah, how beautiful, how beautiful! Maya forgot her vexation. And she was glad, too, to talk to the butterfly. She had never made the acquaintance of one before even though she had met a great many.
“Oh,” she said, “you probably are right to laugh. Was that a stink-bug?”
“It was,” he replied, still smiling. “The sort of person to keep away from. You’re probably very young still?”
“Well,” observed Maya, “I shouldn’t say I was—exactly. I’ve been through a great deal. But that was the first specimen of the kind I had ever come across. Can you imagine doing such a thing?”
The butterfly had to laugh again.
“You see,” he explained, “stink-bugs like to keep to themselves. They are not very popular, so they use the odoriferous drop to make people take notice of them. We’d probablysoon forget the fact of their existence if it were not for the drop: it serves as a reminder. And they want to be remembered, no matter how.”
Maya talks with the butterfly
“How lovely, how exquisitely lovely your wings are,” said Maya. “So delicate and white. May I introduce myself? Maya, of the nation of bees.”
The butterfly laid his wings together to look like only one wing standing straight up in the air. He gave a slight bow.
“Fred,” he said laconically.
Maya couldn’t gaze her fill.
“Fly a little,” she asked.
“Shall I fly away?”
“Oh no. I just want to see your great white wings move in the blue air. But never mind. I can wait till later. Where do you live?”
“Nowhere specially. A settled home is too much of a nuisance. Life didn’t get to be really delightful until I turned into a butterfly. Before that, while I was still a caterpillar, I couldn’t leave the cabbage the livelong day, and all one did was eat and squabble.”
“Just what do you mean?” asked Maya, mystified.
“I used to be a caterpillar,” explained Fred.
“Never!” cried Maya.
“Now, now, now,” said Fred, pointing both feelers straight at Maya. “Everyone knows a butterfly is first a caterpillar. Even human beings know it.”
Maya was utterly perplexed. Could such a thing be?
“You must really explain more clearly,” she said. “I couldn’t accept what you say just so, could I? You wouldn’t expect me to.”
The butterfly perched beside the little bee on the slender swaying branch of the raspberry bush, and they rocked together in the morning wind. He told her how he had begun life as a caterpillar and then, one day, when he had shed his last caterpillar skin, he came out a pupa or chrysalis.
“At the end of a few weeks,” he continued, “I woke up out of my dark sleep and broke through the wrappings or pupa-case. I can’t tell you, Maya, what a feeling comes over you when, after a time like that, you suddenly see the sun again. I felt as though I were melting in a warm golden ocean, and I loved mylife so that my heart began to pound.”
“I understand,” said Maya, “I understand. I felt the same way the first time I left our humdrum city and flew out into the bright scented world of blossoms.” The little bee was silent a while, thinking of her first flight.—But then she wanted to know how the butterfly’s large wings could grow in the small space of the pupa-case.
Fred explained.
“The wings are delicately folded together like the petals of a flower in the bud. When the weather is bright and warm, the flower must open, it cannot help itself, and its petals unfold. So with my wings, they were folded up, then unfolded. No one can resist the sun when it shines.”
“No, no—one cannot—one cannot resist the sunshine.” Maya mused, watching the butterfly as he perched in the golden light of the morning, pure white against the blue sky.
“People often charge us with being frivolous,” said Fred. “We’re really happy—just that—just happy. You wouldn’t believe how seriously I sometimes think about life.”
“Tell me what all you think.”
“Oh,” said Fred, “I think about the future. It’s very interesting to think about the future.—But I should like to fly now. The meadows on the hillside are full of yarrow and canterbury bells; everything’s in bloom. I’d like to be there, you know.”
This Maya understood, she understood it well, and they said good-by and flew away in different directions, the white butterfly rocking silently as if wafted by the gentle wind, little Maya with that uneasy zoom-zoom of the bees which we hear upon the flowers on fair days and which we always recall when we think of the summer.
Maya with the bark beetle and the seven-legged daddy-long-legs
Nearthe hole where Maya had set herself up for the summer lived a family of bark-boring beetles. Fridolin, the father, was an earnest, industrious man who wanted many children and took immense pains to bring up a large family. He had done very well: he had fifty energetic sons to fill him with pride and high hopes. Each had dug his own meandering little tunnel in the bark of the pine-tree and all were getting on and were comfortably settled.
“My wife,” Fridolin said to Maya, after they had known each other some time,“has arranged things so that none of my sons interferes with the others. They are not even acquainted; each goes his own way.”
Maya knew that human beings were none too fond of Fridolin and his people, though she herself liked him and liked his opinions and had found no reason to avoid him. In the morning before the sun arose and the woods were still asleep, she would hear his fine tapping and boring. It sounded like a delicate trickling, or as if the tree were breathing in its sleep. Later she would see the thin brown dust that he had emptied out of his corridor.
Once he came at an early hour, as he often did, to wish her good-morning and ask if she had slept well.
“Not flying to-day?” he inquired.
“No, it’s too windy.”
It was windy. The wind rushed and roared and flung the branches into a mad tumult. The leaves looked ready to fly away. After each great gust the sky would brighten, and in the pale light the trees seemed balder. The pine in which Maya and Fridolin lived shriekedwith the voices of the wind as in a fury of anger and excitement.
Fridolin sighed.
“I worked all night,” he told Maya, “all night. But what can you do? You’ve got to dosomething to getsomewhere. And I’m not altogether satisfied with this pine; I should have tackled a fir-tree.” He wiped his brow and smiled in self-pity.
“How are your children?” asked Maya pleasantly.
“Thank you,” said Fridolin, “thank you for your interest. But”—he hesitated—“but I don’t supervise the way I used to. Still, I have reason to believe they are all doing well.”
As he sat there, a little brown man with slightly curtailed wing-sheaths and a breastplate that looked like a head too large for its body, Maya thought he was almost comical; but she knew he was a dangerous beetle who could do immense harm to the mighty trees of the forest, and if his tribe attacked a tree in numbers then the green needles were doomed, the tree would turnsearand die. It was utterlywithout defenses against the little marauders who destroyed the bark and the sap-wood. And the sap-wood is necessary to the life of a tree because it carries the sap up to the very tips of the branches. There were stories of how whole forests had fallen victims to the race of boring-beetles. Maya looked at Fridolin reflectively; she was awed into solemnity at the thought of the great power these little creatures possessed and of how important they could become.
Fridolin sighed and said in a worried tone:
“Ah, life would be beautiful if there were no woodpeckers.”
Maya nodded.
“Yes, indeed, you’re right. The woodpecker gobbles up every insect he sees.”
“If it were only that,” observed Fridolin, “if it were only that he got the careless people who fool around on the outside, on the bark, I’d say, ‘Very well, a woodpecker must live too.’ But it seems all wrong that the bird should follow us right into our corridors into the remotest corners of our homes.”
“But he can’t. He’s too big, isn’t he?”
Fridolin looked at Maya with an air of grave importance, lifting his brows and shaking his head two or three times. It seemed to please him that he knew something she didn’t know.
“Too big? What difference does his size make? No, my dear, it’s not his size we are afraid of; it’s his tongue.”
Maya made big eyes.
Fridolin told her about the woodpecker’s tongue: that it was long and thin, and round as a worm, and barbed and sticky.
“He can stretch his tongue out ten times my length,” cried the bark-beetle, flourishing his arm. “You think: ‘now—now he has reached the limit, he can’t make it the tiniest bit longer.’ But no, he goes on stretching and stretching it. He pokes it deep into all the cracks and crevices of the bark, on the chance that he’ll find somebody sitting there. He even pushes it into our passageways—actually, into our corridors and chambers. Things stick to it, and that’s the way he pulls us out of our homes.”
“I am not a coward,” said Maya, “I don’tthink I am, but what you say makes me creepy.”
“Oh,you’reall right,” said Fridolin, a little envious, “you with your sting are safe. A person’ll think twice before he’ll let you sting his tongue. Anybody’ll tell you that. But how about us bark-beetles? How do you think we feel? A cousin of mine got caught. We had just had a little quarrel on account of my wife. I remember every detail perfectly. My cousin was paying us a visit and hadn’t yet got used to our ways or our arrangements. All of a sudden we heard a woodpecker scratching and boring—one of the smaller species. It must have begun right at our building because as a rule we hear him beforehand and have time to run to shelter before he reaches us.
“Suddenly I heard my poor cousin scream in the dark: ‘Fridolin, I’m sticking!’ Then all I heard was a short desperate scuffle, followed by complete silence, and in a few moments the woodpecker was hammering at the house next door. My poor cousin! Her name was Agatha.”
“Feel how my heart is beating,” said Maya,in a whisper. “You oughtn’t to have told it so quickly. My goodness, the things that do happen!” And the little bee thought of her own adventures in the past and the accidents that might still happen to her.
A laugh from Fridolin interrupted her reflections. She looked up in surprise.
“See who’s coming,” he cried, “coming up the tree. Here’s the fellow for you! I tell you, he’s a—but you’ll see.”
Maya followed the direction of his gaze and saw a remarkable animal slowly climbing up the trunk. She wouldn’t have believed such a creature was possible if she had not seen it with her own eyes.
“Hadn’t we better hide?” she asked, alarm getting the better of astonishment.
“Absurd,” replied the bark-beetle, “just sit still and be polite to the gentleman. He is very learned, really, very scholarly, and what is more, kind and modest and, like most persons of his type, rather funny. See what he’s doing now!”
“Probably thinking,” observed Maya, who couldn’t get over her astonishment.
“He’s struggling against the wind,” said Fridolin, and laughed. “I hope his legs don’t get entangled.”
“Are those long threads really his legs?” asked Maya, opening her eyes wide. “I’ve never seen the like.”
Meanwhile the newcomer had drawn near, and Maya got a better view of him. He looked as though he were swinging in the air, his rotund little body hung so high on his monstrously long legs, which groped for a footing on all sides like a movable scaffolding of threads. He stepped along cautiously, feeling his way; the little brown sphere of his body rose and sank, rose and sank. His legs were so very long and thin that one alone would certainly not have been enough to support his body. He needed all at once, unquestionably. As they were jointed in the middle, they rose high in the air above him.
Maya clapped her hands together.
“Well!” she cried. “Did you ever? Would you have dreamed that such delicate legs, legs as fine as a hair, could be so nimble and useful—that one could really use them—andthey’d know what to do? Fridolin, I think it’s wonderful, simply wonderful.”
“Ah, bah,” said the bark-beetle. “Don’t take things so seriously. Just laugh when you see something funny; that’s all.”
“But I don’t feel like laughing. Often we laugh at something and later find out it was just because we haven’t understood.”
By this time the stranger had joined them and was looking down at Maya from the height of his pointed triangles of legs.
“Good-morning,” he said, “a real wind-storm—a pretty strong draught, don’t you think, or—no? You are of a different opinion?” He clung to the tree as hard as he could.
Fridolin turned to hide his laughing, but little Maya replied politely that she quite agreed with him and that was why she had not gone out flying. Then she introduced herself. The stranger squinted down at her through his legs.
“Maya, of the nation of bees,” he repeated. “Delighted, really. I have heard a good deal about bees.—I myself belong to the generalfamily of spiders, species daddy-long-legs, and my name is Hannibal.”
The word spider has an evil sound in the ears of all smaller insects, and Maya could not quite conceal her fright, especially as she was reminded of her agony in Thekla’s web. Hannibal seemed to take no notice, so Maya decided, “Well if need be I’ll fly away, and he can whistle for me; he has no wings and his web is somewhere else.”
“I am thinking,” said Hannibal, “thinking very hard.—If you will permit me, I will come a little closer. That big branch there makes a good shield against the wind.”
“Why, certainly,” said Maya, making room for him.
Fridolin said good-by and left. Maya stayed; she was eager to get at Hannibal’s personality.
“The many, many different kinds of animals there are in the world,” she thought. “Every day a fresh discovery.”
The wind had subsided some, and the sun shone through the branches. From below rose the song of a robin redbreast, filling thewoods with joy. Maya could see it perched on a branch, could see its throat swell and pulse with the song as it held its little head raised up to the light.
“If only I could sing like that robin redbreast,” she said, “I’d perch on a flower and keep it up the livelong day.”
“You’d produce something lovely, you would, with your humming and buzzing.”
“The bird looks so happy.”
“You have great fancies,” said the daddy-long-legs. “Supposing every animal were to wish he could do something that nature had not fitted him to do, the world would be all topsy-turvy. Supposing a robin redbreast thought he had to have a sting—a sting above everything else—or a goat wanted to fly about gathering honey. Supposing a frog were to come along and languish for my kind of legs.”
Maya laughed.
“That isn’t just what I mean. I mean, it seems lovely to be able to make all beings as happy as the bird does with his song.—But goodness gracious!” she exclaimed suddenly. “Mr. Hannibal, you have one leg too many.”
Hannibal frowned and looked into space, vexed.
“Well, you’ve noticed it,” he said glumly. “But as a matter of fact—one leg too few, not too many.”
“Why? Do you usually have eight legs?”
“Permit me to explain. We spiders have eight legs. We need them all. Besides, eight is a more aristocratic number. One of my legs got lost. Too bad about it. However you manage, you make the best of it.”
“It must be dreadfully disagreeable to lose a leg,” Maya sympathized.
Hannibal propped his chin on his hand and arranged his legs to keep them from being easily counted.
“I’ll tell you how it happened. Of course, as usual when there’s mischief, a human being is mixed up in it. We spiders are careful and look what we’re doing, but human beings are careless, they grab you sometimes as though you were a piece of wood. Shall I tell you?”
“Oh, do please,” said Maya, settling herself comfortably. “It would be awfully interesting.You must certainly have gone through a good deal.”
“I should say so,” said Hannibal. “Now listen. We daddy-long-legs, you know, hunt by night. I was then living in a green garden-house. It was overgrown with ivy, and there were a number of broken window-panes, which made it very convenient for me to crawl in and out. The man came at dark. In one hand he carried his artificial sun, which he calls lamp, in the other hand a small bottle, under his arm some paper, and in his pocket another bottle. He put everything down on the table and began to think, because he wanted to write his thoughts on the paper.—You must certainly have come across paper in the woods or in the garden. The black on the paper is what man has excogitated—excogitated.”
“Marvelous!” cried Maya, all a-glow that she was to learn so much.
“For this purpose,” Hannibal continued, “man needs both bottles. He inserts a stick into the one and drinks out of the other. The more he drinks, the better it goes. Of courseit is about us insects that he writes, everything he knows about us, and he writes strenuously, but the result is not much to boast of, because up to now man has found out very little in regard to insects. He is absolutely ignorant of our soul-life and hasn’t the least consideration for our feelings. You’ll see.”
“Don’t you think well of human beings?” asked Maya.
“Oh, yes, yes. But the loss of a leg”—the daddy-long-legs looked down slantwise—“is apt to embitter one, rather.”
“I see,” said Maya.
“One evening I was sitting on a window-frame as usual, prepared for the chase, and the man was sitting at the table, his two bottles before him, trying to produce something. It annoyed me dreadfully that a whole swarm of little flies and gnats, upon which I depend for my subsistence, had settled upon the artificial sun and were staring into it in that crude, stupid, uneducated way of theirs.”
“Well,” observed Maya, “I think I’d look at a thing like that myself.”
“Look, for all I care. But to look and tostare like an idiot are two entirely different things. Just watch once and see the silly jig they dance around a lamp. It’s nothing for them to butt their heads about twenty times. Some of them keep it up until they burn their wings. And all the time they stare and stare at the light.”
“Poor creatures! Evidently they lose their wits.”
“Then they had better stay outside on the window-frame or under the leaves. They’re safe from the lamp there, and that’s where I can catch them.—Well, on that fateful night I saw from my position on the window-frame that some gnats were lying scattered on the table beside the lamp drawing their last breath. The man did not seem to notice or care about them, so I decided to go and take them myself. That’s perfectly natural, isn’t it?”
“Perfectly.”
“And yet, it was my undoing. I crept up the leg of the table, very softly, on my guard, until I could peep over the edge. The man seemed dreadfully big. I watched him working.Then, slowly, very slowly, carefully lifting one leg at a time, I crossed over to the lamp. As long as I was covered by the bottle all went well, but I had scarcely turned the corner, when the man looked up and grabbed me. He lifted me by one of my legs, dangled me in front of his huge eyes, and said: ‘See what’s here, just see what’s here.’ And he grinned—the brute!—he grinned with his whole face, as though it were a laughing matter.”
Hannibal sighed, and little Maya kept quite still. Her head was in a whirl.
“Have human beings such immense eyes?” she asked at last.
“Please think ofmein the positionIwas in,” cried Hannibal, vexed. “Try to imagine how I felt. Who’d like to be hanging by the leg in front of eyes twenty times as big as his own body and a mouth full of gleaming teeth, each fully twice as big as himself? Well, what do you think?”
“Awful! Perfectly awful!”
“Thank the Lord, my leg broke off. There’s no telling what might have happened if myleg had not broken off. I fell to the table, and then I ran, I ran as fast as my remaining legs would take me, and hid behind the bottle. There I stood and hurled threats of violence at the man. They saved me, my threats did, the man was afraid to run after me. I saw him lay my leg on the white paper, and I watched how it wanted to escape—which it can’t do without me.”
“Was it still moving?” asked Maya, prickling at the thought.
“Yes. Our legs always do move when they’re pulled out. My leg ran, but I not being there it didn’t know where to run to, so it merely flopped about aimlessly on the same spot, and the man watched it, clutching at his nose and smiling—smiling, the heartless wretch!—at my leg’s sense of duty.”
Maya with Hannibal
“Impossible,” said the little bee, quite scared, “an offen leg can’t crawl.”
“An offen leg?Whatis an offen leg?”
“A leg that has come off,” explained Maya, staring at him. “Don’t you know? At home we children used the word offen for anything that had come off.”
“You should drop your nursery slang when you’re out in the world and in the presence of cultured people,” said Hannibal severely. “But itistrue that our legs totter long after they have been torn from our bodies.”
“I can’t believe it without proof.”
“Do you think I’ll tear one of my legs off to satisfy you?” Hannibal’s tone was ugly. “I see you’re not a fit person to associate with. Nobody, I’d like you to know,nobody has ever doubted my word before.”
Maya was terribly put out. She couldn’t understand what had upset the daddy-long-legs so, or what dreadful thing she had done.
“It isn’t altogether easy to get along with strangers,” she thought. “They don’t think the way we do and don’t see that we mean no harm.” She was depressed and cast a troubled look at the spider with his long legs and soured expression.
“Really, someone ought to come and eat you up.”
Hannibal had evidently mistaken Maya’s good nature for weakness. For now something unusual happened to the little bee. Suddenlyher depression passed and gave way, not to alarm or timidity, but to a calm courage. She straightened up, lifted her lovely, transparent wings, uttered her high clear buzz, and said with a gleam in her eyes:
“I am a bee, Mr. Hannibal.”
“I beg your pardon,” said he, and without saying good-by turned and ran down the tree-trunk as fast as a person can run who has seven legs.
Maya had to laugh, willy-nilly. From down below Hannibal began to scold.
“You’re bad. You threaten helpless people, you threaten them with your sting when you know they’re handicapped by a misfortune and can’t get away fast. But your hour is coming, and when you’re in a tight place you’ll think of me and be sorry.” Hannibal disappeared under the leaves of the coltsfoot on the ground. His last words had not reached the little bee.
The wind had almost died away, and the day promised to be fine. White clouds sailed aloft in a deep, deep blue, looking happy and serene like good thoughts of the Lord. Mayawas cheered. She thought of the rich shaded meadows by the woods and of the sunny slopes beyond the lake. A blithe activity must have begun there by this time. In her mind she saw the slim grasses waving and the purple iris that grew in the rills at the edge of the woods. From the flower of an iris you could look across to the mysterious night of the pine-forest and catch its cool breath of melancholy. You knew that its forbidding silence, which transformed the sunshine into a reddish half-light of sleep, was the home of the fairy tale.
Maya was already flying. She had started off instinctively, in answer to the call of the meadows and their gay carpeting of flowers. It was a joy to be alive.
Maya with the mosquito
Thusthe days and weeks of her young life passed for little Maya among the insects in a lovely summer world—a happy roving in garden and meadow, occasional risks and many joys. For all that, she often missed the companions of her early childhood and now and again suffered a pang of homesickness, an ache of longing for her people and the kingdom she had left. There were hours, too, when she yearned for regular, useful work and association with friends of her own kind.
However, at bottom she had a restless nature, little Maya had, and was scarcely readyto settle down for good and live in the community of the bees; she wouldn’t have felt comfortable. Often among animals as well as human beings there are some who cannot conform to the ways of the others. Before we condemn them we must be careful and give them a chance to prove themselves. For it is not always laziness or stubbornness that makes them different. Far from it. At the back of their peculiar urge is a deep longing for something higher or better than what every-day life has to offer, and many a time young runaways have grown up into good, sensible, experienced men and women.
Little Maya was a pure, sensitive soul, and her attitude to the big, beautiful world came of a genuine eagerness for knowledge and a great delight in the glories of creation.
Yet it is hard to be alone even when you are happy, and the more Maya went through, the greater became her yearning for companionship and love. She was no longer so very young; she had grown into a strong, superb creature with sound, bright wings, a sharp, dangerous sting, and a highly developed senseof both the pleasures and the hazards of her life. Through her own experience she had gathered information and stored up wisdom, which she now often wished she could apply to something of real value. There were days when she was ready to return to the hive and throw herself at the queen’s feet and sue for pardon and honorable reinstatement. But a great, burning desire held her back—the desire to know human beings. She had heard so many contradictory things about them that she was confused rather than enlightened. Yet she had a feeling that in the whole of creation there were no beings more powerful or more intelligent or more sublime than they.
A few times in her wanderings she had seen people, but only from afar, from high up in the air—big and little people, black people, white people, red people, and such as dressed in many colors. She had never ventured close. Once she had caught the glimmer of red near a brook, and thinking it was a bed of flowers had flown down. She found a human being fast asleep among the brookside blossoms. It had golden hair and a pink face and wore ared dress. It was dreadfully large, of course, but still it looked so good and sweet that Maya thrilled, and tears came to her eyes. She lost all sense of her whereabouts; she could do nothing but gaze and gaze upon the slumbering presence. All the horrid things she had ever heard against man seemed utterly impossible. Lies they must have been—mean lies that she had been told against creatures as charming as this one asleep in the shade of the whispering birch-trees.
After a while a mosquito came and buzzed greetings.
“Look!” cried Maya, hot with excitement and delight. “Look, just look at that human being there. How good, how beautiful! Doesn’t it fill you with enthusiasm?”
The mosquito gave Maya a surprised stare, then turned slowly round to glance at the object of her admiration.
“Yes, itisgood. I just tasted it. I stung it. Look, my body is shining red with its blood.”
Maya had to press her hand to her heart, so startled was she by the mosquito’s daring.
“Will it die?” she cried. “Where did youwound it? How could you? How could you screw up your courage to sting it? And how vile! Why, you’re a beast of prey!”
The mosquito tittered.
“Why, it’s only a very little human being,” it answered in its high, thin voice. “It’s the size called girl—the size at which the legs are covered half way up with a separate colored casing. My sting, of course, goes through the casing but usually doesn’t reach the skin.—Your ignorance is really stupendous. Do you actually think that human beings are good? I haven’t come across one who willingly let me take the tiniest drop of his blood.”
“I don’t know very much about human beings, I admit,” said Maya humbly.
“But of all the insects you bees have most to do with human beings. That’s a well-known fact.”
“I left our kingdom,” Maya confessed timidly. “I didn’t like it. I wanted to learn about the outside world.”
“Well, well, what do you think of that!” The mosquito drew a step nearer. “How do you like your free-lancing? I must say, I admireyou for your independence. I for one would never consent to serve human beings.”
“But they serve us too!” said Maya, who couldn’t bear a slight to be put upon her people.
“Maybe.—To what nation do you belong?”
“I come of the nation in the castle park. The ruling queen is Helen VIII.”
“Indeed,” said the mosquito, and bowed low. “An enviable lineage. My deepest respects.—There was a revolution in your kingdom not so long ago, wasn’t there? I heard it from the messengers of the rebel swarm. Am I right?”
“Yes,” said Maya, proud and happy that her nation was so respected and renowned. Homesickness for her people awoke again, deep down in her heart, and she wished she could do something good and great for her queen and country. Carried away on the wings of this dream, she forgot to ask about human beings. Or, like as not, she refrained from questions, feeling that the mosquito would not tell her things she would be glad to hear. The mite of a creature impressed her as a saucyMiss, and people of her kind usually had nothing good to say of others. Besides, she soon flew away.
“I’m going to take one more drink,” she called back to Maya. “Later I and my friends are going flying in the light of the westering sun. Then we’ll be sure to have good weather to-morrow.”
Maya made off quickly. She couldn’t bear to stay and see the mosquito hurt the sleeping child. And how could she do this thing and not perish? Hadn’t Cassandra said: “If you sting a human being, you will die?”
Maya still remembered every detail of this incident with the child and the mosquito, but her craving to know human beings well had not been stilled. She made up her mind to be bolder and never stop trying until she had reached her goal.
At last Maya’s longing to know human beings was to be satisfied, and in a way far, far lovelier and more wonderful than she had dreamed.
Once, on a warm evening, having gone tosleep earlier than usual, she woke up suddenly in the middle of the night—something that had never happened to her before. When she opened her eyes, her astonishment was indescribable: her little bedroom was all steeped in a quiet bluish radiance. It came down through the entrance, and the entrance itself shone as if hung with a silver-blue curtain.
Maya did not dare to budge at first, though not because she was frightened. No. Somehow, along with the light came a rare, lovely peacefulness, and outside her room the air was filled with a sound finer, more harmonious than any music she had ever heard. After a time she rose timidly, awed by the glamour and the strangeness of it all, and looked out. The whole world seemed to lie under the spell of an enchantment. Everything was sparkling and glittering in pure silver. The trunks of the birch-trees, the slumbering leaves were overlaid with silver. The grass, which from her height seemed to lie under delicate veils, was set with a thousand pale pearls. All things near and far, the silent distances, were shrouded in this soft, bluish sheen.
“This must be the night,” Maya whispered and folded her hands.
High up in the heavens, partly veiled by the leaves of a beech-tree, hung a full clear disk of silver, from which the radiance poured down that beautified the world. And then Maya saw countless bright, sharp little lights surrounding the moon in the heavens—oh, so still and beautiful, unlike any shining things she had ever seen before. To think she beheld the night, the moon, and the stars—the wonders, the lovely wonders of the night! She had heard of them but never believed in them. It was almost too much.
Then the sound rose again, the strange night sound that must have awakened her. It came from nearby, filling the welkin, a soaring chirp with a silvery ring that matched the silver on the trees and leaves and grass and seemed to come rilling down from the moon on the beams of silver light.
Maya looked about for the source, in vain; in the mysterious drift of light and shadow it was difficult to make out objects in clear outline, everything was draped so mysteriously;and yet everything showed up true and in such heroic beauty.
Her room could keep her no longer; out she had to fly into this new splendor, the night splendor.
“The good Lord will take care of me,” she thought, “I am not bent upon wrong.”
As she was about to fly off through the silver light to her favorite meadow, now lying full under the moon, she saw a winged creature alight on a beech-tree leaf not far away. Scarcely alighted, it raised its head to the moon, lifted its narrow wings, and drew the edge of one against the other, for all the world as though it were playing on a violin. And sure enough, the sound came, the silvery chirp that filled the whole moonlit world with melody.
“Exquisite,” whispered Maya, “heavenly, heavenly, heavenly.”
She flew over to the leaf. The night was so mild and warm that she did not notice it was cooler than by day. When she touched the leaf, the chirper broke off playing abruptly, and to Maya it seemed as if there had neverbeen such a stillness before, so profound was the hush that followed. It was uncanny. Through the dark leaves filtered the light, white and cool.
Maya talking with the cricket
“Good night,” said Maya, politely, thinking “good night” was the greeting for the night like “good morning” for the morning. “Please excuse me for interrupting, but the music you make is so fascinating that I had to find out where it came from.”
The chirper stared at Maya, wide-eyed.
“What sort of a crawling creature are you?” it asked after some moments had passed. “I have never met one like you before.”
“I am not a crawling insect. I am Maya, of the nation of bees.”
“Oh, of the nation of bees. Indeed ... you live by day, don’t you? I have heard of your race from the hedgehog. He told me that in the evening he eats the dead bodies that are thrown out of your hive.”
“Yes,” said Maya, with a faint chill of apprehension, “that’s so; Cassandra told me about him; she heard of him from the sentinels. He comes when twilight falls andsnouts in the grass looking for dead bodies.—But do you associate with the hedgehog? Why, he’s an awful brute.”
“I don’t think so. We tree-crickets get along with him splendidly. We call him Uncle. Of course he always tries to catch us, but he never succeeds, so we have great fun teasing him. Everybody has to live, doesn’t he? Just so he doesn’t live off me, what do I care?”
Maya shook her head. She didn’t agree. But not caring to insult the cricket by contradicting, she changed the subject.
“So you’re a tree-cricket?”
“Yes, a snowy tree-cricket.—But I must play, so please don’t keep me any longer. It’s full moon, a wonderful night. I must play.”
“Oh, do make an exception this once. You play all the time.—Tell me about the night.”
“A midsummer night is the loveliest in the world,” answered the cricket. “It fills the heart with rapture.—But what my music doesn’t tell you I shan’t be able to explain. Whyneedeverything be explained? Whyknoweverything? We poor creatures can find out only the tiniest bit about existence. Yet we canfeelthe glory of the whole wide world.” And the cricket set up its happy silvery strumming. Heard from close by, where Maya sat, the music was overpowering in its loudness.
The little bee sat quite still in the blue summer night listening and musing deeply about life and creation.
Silence fell. There was a faint whirr, and Maya saw the cricket fly out into the moonlight.
“The night makes one feel sad,” she reflected.
Her flowery meadow drew her now. She flew off.
At the edge of the brook stood the tall irises brokenly reflected in the running water. A glorious sight. The moonlight was whirled along in the braided current, the wavelets winked and whispered, the irises seemed to lean over asleep. “Asleep from sheer delight,” thought the little bee. She dropped down on a blue petal in the full light of themoon and could not take her eyes from the living waters of the brook, the quivering flash, the flashing come and go of countless sparks. On the bank opposite, the birch-trees glittered as if hung with the stars.
“Where is all that water flowing to?” she wondered. “The cricket is right. We know so little about the world.”
Of a sudden a fine little voice rose in song from the flower of an iris close beside her, ringing like a pure, clear bell, different from any earthly sound that Maya knew. Her heart throbbed, she held her breath.
“Oh, what is going to happen? What am I going to see now?”
The iris swayed gently. One of the petals curved in at the edge, and Maya saw a tiny snow-white human hand holding on to the flower’s rim with its wee little fingers. Then a small blond head arose, and then a delicate luminous body in white garments. A human being in miniature was coming up out of the iris.
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A human being in miniature was coming up out of the iris
Words cannot tell Maya’s awe and rapture. She sat rigid.
The tiny being climbed to the edge of the blossom, lifted its arms up to the moonlight, and looked out into the bright shining night with a smile of bliss lighting up its face. Then a faint quiver shook its luminous body, and from its shoulders two wings unfolded, whiter than the moonlight, pure as snow, rising above its blond head and reaching down to its feet. How lovely it was, how exquisitely lovely. Nothing that Maya had ever seen compared with it in loveliness.
Standing there in the moonlight, holding its hands up to heaven, the luminous little being lifted its voice again and sang. The song rang out in the night, and Maya understood the words.