One New Thing

Once upon a time, in a far deep corner of the great forest, buried down under yawning ferns and towering reeds lived a community of the wee folk. Five or seven families, nine or ten per family. Apart from the kingdom but part of the kingdom, isolated as they willed yet connected as they want, the community lived for ever, or at least for the ever they could remember.

Forever is fine for folk with gray and silver round about their eyes and ears but young folk filled with the thrill of life, the curiosity of intelligence, and the impatience of early rising energy, need challenge to sate their souls. Every generation confronts their elders with why is this and why not that and who decided things for me? And every generation patiently accepted every challenge and worked their imaginations to bring something new to the answers to be given.

In this generation, when Wilm and Thel grew bold enough to challenge, the community gathered round and worked their magic to ease the pain of growing. "There is nothing new," the pair complained but the community sighed its disagreement. "If there was you wouldn’t be interested," Wilm further complained; "because the only things that interest you are what you already know," added Thel.

"You may be right," the community responded. "But, please, show it to be so. Then, we will know how to deal with it."

The young folk charged off into the forest, a competition brewing to be the first to return to their families with a new thing. It couldn’t be flowers or bugs or birds or small animals because all such, native to the neighborhood, were surely known and certainly dissected and finally digested by every folk not named Wilm or Thel. It couldn’t be colors or sounds for the same arguments. Something new, the pair discovered, is sometimes hard to find.

They looked and they searched; they peered under and looked over; they poked into and pulled out all manner of common experience. A morning flew by chased by an afternoon and evening crept up on the searchers but still they produced no new thing.

Sitting beneath a gnarly root by a rill the danced gently down a shallow draw, the pair compared their days. Among the "I almost thought this…" and "then I thought that…." and "I knew at once it couldn’t…", they prepared themselves to accept defeat. Forever was going to be a long time!

As they talked and grandly despaired of the future they could see, a mosquito traveling through the neighborhood espied them in deep conversation and decided to take advantage of their presence for an evening meal.

Landing on Wilm’s shoulder, the mosquito practiced the mosquito form to exquisite perfection. Puncture, quick and clean…well, as clean as mosquitoes are capable. Wilm reacted with a start and a jump and a grabbing. There in his hands he found the embodiment of a day’s - nay, a lifetime’s frustration - and Wilm reacted. He thought nothing particular of his act; it seemed to fit the crime. When finished, he threw the mosquito from him and dashed after the madly scampering Thel, racing, racing, racing to the community home.

The prior generations gathered to hear the younger’s tales. Thel spilled first the full, gory detail of the mosquito’s attack on Thel. She cast her spell around the oddly silent ambience, the muted trickle of the rill, the suddenly ominous roar of wings, and the malevolent climax as poor Wilm’s arm suffered the terrible consequence of their misadventure.

The community listened politely but crushed Thel’s spirit when they turned without comment to Wilm to hear his tale. Wilm didn’t embellish. He told it straight and true. Yet, when Wilm finished, there was applause and laughter and congratulations and slaps on the back and winks of encouragement and a hundred tokens of affection and appreciation.

A distraught Thel singled out her mother for consolation and education. "It’s simple, Thel," her mother gently explained. "The two of you set off to find something new. There is nothing new about a mosquito biting a boy, but a boy biting a mosquito; that’s something truly new!"

With apologies to John B. Bogart who, in 1918, wrote something similar about boys and dogs...