The Line Between

But Molly said, «She loved him too. That's why she let him go. Keep your voice down.» I was going to tell her it didn't matter, that I knew Schmendrick was saying that because he was so sad, but she came over and petted Malka with me, and I didn't have to. She said, «We will escort you and Malka home now, as befits two great ladies. Then we will take the king home too.»

«And I'll never see you again," I said. «No more than I'll see him.»

Molly asked me, «How old are you, Sooz?»

«Nine," I said. «Almost ten. You know that.»

«You can whistle?» I nodded. Molly looked around quickly, as though she were going to steal something. She bent close to me, and she whispered, «I will give you

a present, Sooz, but you are not to open it until the day when you turn seventeen. On that day you must walk out away from your village, walk out all alone into some quiet place that is special to you, and you must whistle like this.» And she whistled a little ripple of music for me to whistle back to her, repeating and repeating it until she was satisfied that I had it exactly. «Don't whistle it anymore," she told me. «Don't whistle it aloud again, not once, until your seventeenth birthday, but keep whistling it inside you. Do you understand the difference, Sooz?»

«I'm not a baby," I said. «I understand. What will happen when I do whistle it?»

Molly smiled at me. She said. «Someone will come to you. Maybe the greatest magician in the world, maybe only an old lady with a soft spot for valiant, impudent children.» She cupped my cheek in her hand. «And just maybe even a unicorn. Because beautiful things will always want to see you again, Sooz, and be listening for you. Take an old lady's word for it. Someone will come.»

They put King Lir on his own horse, and I rode with Schmendrick, and they came all the way home with me, right to the door, to tell my mother and father that the griffin was dead, and that I had helped, and you should have seen Wilfrid's face when they said that! Then they both hugged me, and Molly said in my ear, «Remember — not till you're seven–teen!» and they rode away, taking the king back to his castle to be buried among his own folk. And I had a cup of cold milk and went out with Malka and my father to pen the flock for the night.

So that's what happened to me. I practice the music Molly taught me in my head, all the time, I even dream it some nights, but I don't ever whistle it aloud. I talk to Malka about our adventure, because I have to talk to someone. And I promise her that when the time comes she'll be there with me, in the special place I've already picked out. She'll be an old dog lady then, of course, but it doesn't matter. Someone will come to us both.

I hope it's them, those two. A unicorn is very nice, but they're my friends. I want to feel Molly holding me again, and hear the stories she didn't have time to tell me, and I want to hear Schmendrick singing that silly song:

Soozli, Soozli,

speaking loozli,

you disturb my oozli–goozli.

Soozli, Soozli,

would you choozli

to become my squoozli–squoozli…?

I can wait.

* * *

Four Fables

My father introduced me early on to George Ade's Fables in Slang; later, I discovered James Thurber's two books of Fables for Our Time on my own, and quite loved them.

«The Fable of the Moth» was first published in the 1960s, in Al Young's legendary little magazine Love, and owes something to Don Marquis' tales of Archy and Mehitabel. The other three fables in this set were written specifically for this collection. They tend to suggest a dark — even cynical — view of the human condition, but then it has always seemed to me that fables and fabulists mostly do that. Aesop was lynched, after all, according to Herodotus.

The Fable of the Moth

Once there was a young moth who did not believe that the proper end for all mothkind was a zish and a frizzle. Whenever he saw a friend or a cousin or a total stranger rushing to a rendezvous with a menorah or a Coleman stove, he could feel a bit of his heart blacken and crumble. One evening, he called all the moths of the world together and preached to them. «Consider the sweetness of the world," he cried passionately. «Consider the moon, consider wet grass, consider company. Consider glove linings, camel's hair coats, fur stoles, feather boas, consider the heartbreaking, lost–innocence flavor of cashmere. Life is good, and love is all that matters. Why will we seek death, why do we truly hunger for nothing but the hateful hug of the candle, the bitter kiss of the filament? Accidents of the universe we may be, but we are beautiful accidents and we must not live as though we were ugly. The flame is a cheat, and love is the only.»