Carol Emshwiller by The Start of the End of it All (epub)

Author:The Start of the End of it All (epub)
Format: epub
Published: 2023-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

MOON

SONGS

/ / /

A tiny thing that sang. Nothing like it mentioned in any of my nature books, and I had many. At first no name we gave it stuck. Sometimes we called it Harriet, or Alice, or Jim. Names of kids at school. All ironies. More often we just called it Bug. This mere mite—well, not really that small, more the size of a bee—pulled itself up by its front legs, the back ones having been somehow bent. Or so it seemed to us. Perhaps it happened when we caught it.

How can such a tiny thing have such a voice? Clear. Ringing out. Echoing as though in the mountains or in some great resonating hall. Such a wonderful other-worldly sound. We felt it tingling along our backbones and on down into the soles of our feet.

My sister kept it in a cricket cage. Fed it lettuce, grains of rice, grapes, but never anything of milk or butter, “in order to keep down the phlegm,” she said, even though we didn’t know how it made its sounds. We asked ourselves that first day, “Is it by the wings? Is it the back legs? Is it, after all, the mouth?” We looked at it through a magnifying glass, but still we couldn’t tell. Actually we didn’t look at it long that time, for (then) we didn’t like the look of it at all. There were hairs or barbels hanging down from its mouth and greenish fur at the corners of its eyes. We didn’t mind the yellow fur on its body as that seemed cuddly and beelike to us. “Does it have a stinger?” my sister asked, but I couldn’t say yes or no for sure, except that it hadn’t stung us yet…me yet, for that first day I was the one that held it.

“I would suppose not,” I told my sister. “Maybe it has its voice to keep it safe, and besides, if it had a stinger it would have used it by now.” I did look carefully, though, but could see no sign of one.

To make it sing you had to prick it with a pin. It would sing for ten or fifteen minutes and then would need another prick. We knew enough to be gentle. We wanted it to last a long time.

How we discovered the singing was by the pricking, actually. The thing lay as though dead after we first caught it and we wanted to know for sure was it or wasn’t it, so we pricked it. One prick got a little motion. Two, and it sat up, struggling to pull its poor back legs under itself. Three, and it began to sing and we knew we had something startling and worthwhile—a little jewel—better than a jewel, a jewel that sang.

My sister insisted she had seen it first and that, therefore, it was hers alone. She always did like tiny things, so I supposed it was right that she should have it, but I saw it first, and I

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