Amber Trips the Light Fantastic
By Robin Jenkins
CHAPTER 1
The Spider and the Fly
A beam of sunshine raced through the windowpane and Amber watched the particles bounce and float. She shut her eyes and thought, “Nap, nap, nap,” as she watched spots of yellow and red and blue change shapes against the blackness of her closed eyelids.
”Nap is almost over. Time to get up … in five minutes or seven or ten. Why do grown-ups make children take naps?” she wondered. “Are we supposed to be sleepy in the afternoon because we are small (which I am not)? Two minutes, three minutes, eight minutes. When will the nap be over so I can stop wasting time – get up, get up and live? If we were supposed to sleep in the afternoon, the Sun would go out for twenty minutes or forty minutes or whatever it is that is a nap.”
Trying to stay awake, Amber looked at the golden elephant clock on the wall. The time was exactly 2:37 in the afternoon.
The clock was from Thailand and Amber had it in her room since Christmas because her mother said it was too gaudy for the living room.
“Mom thinks you’re a piece of junk because you’re only gold plastic, but I love you,” she whispered to the clock.
There was a butterfly on the second-hand that noisily ticked away the seconds. Listening to the ticking of the butterfly was making Amber sleepy. She rubbed her eyes and saw kaleidoscopic patterns in beautiful colors behind her eyelids.
I wish I could turn into something different, the way the caterpillar turns into a butterfly,” she thought. I would travel through time all around the world and turn into a girl on the other side of the world.”
“Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock,” said the clock.
“I could turn into anything,” whispered Amber.
The eyelid circus began to slow down and Amber felt dizzy, as if she had been spinning in circles.
Just then, a fly buzzed near her ear and she was going to turn over with her eyes shut and spin down the tunnel of sleep, when she thought she heard a very faint voice say, “Hey you – don’t go to sleep – B-Z-Z-Z-Z. I wanna show ya sumthin’, show ya sumthin’, B-Z-Z-Z.”
“Okay,” whispered Amber, “Show me,” and suddenly she was bobbing around on a little piece of dust, bumping into other little pieces of dust, just like the bumper cars at the fair.
She heard a loud noise like the noise the airplanes make when they take off. She looked around and saw a fly as big as a helicopter. It had two gigantic eyes.
”O-o-o-h!” she cried and fell off her chunk of dust. But the fly simply slipped his beautiful, translucent wing underneath her falling body. Then, using the same wing, he flipped her onto his back, so she was riding the fly as if it were an elephant.
“Hang onto my hairs,” he said. “Hold onto them like they were reins and you won’t fall off.”
“Yuk,” Amber said, but she did it very quickly, wrinkling her nose.
“Predjudice,” said the fly. People ride elephants all the time and they’re hairy just like me, but nobody has ever squashed an elephant in his hand, or smashed him to mush with a rolled-up newspaper because he or she thought the elephant was dirty – even when the elephant was unbathed and not smelling very fresh at all. Can you give me one single example of elephant-squashing ever having happened?”
“No, Mr. Fly,” Amber said thoughtfully, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of such a thing. But now that you mention it, elephants do have a reputation for being clean, since they shower themselves with their trunks.”
“You may call me Mr. Diptera,” said the fly as he beat his wings rapidly while buzzing around a garbage can.
“Diptera is how the educated of your kind classifies my kind. Diptera is my class. Class is the opposite of crass.
“Anyway, back to the elephant. An elephant, due to its size, is bound to be dirtier than I am,” Mr. Diptera said proudly.
“The elephant may shower, but only if he gets the opportunity. The elephant is considered a beast of burden because he is large and carries packages for mankind. But I am considered a burden of a beast because I am small and annoying to mankind. I live in places mankind does not like and eat the food that mankind hates to smell.
“So my kind is despised, persecuted and trapped on fly paper; whereas the elephant is made into a hero, even into a god called Ganesh in India. It isn’t fair, it isn’t fair, it isn’t fair,” Mr. Diptera said with sadness and conviction.
He buzzed around a vine in bloom as if searching for something. He landed on a big, white flower and said, “This is my home. Welcome.”
“Oh, what a lovely place to live,” Amber said.
“For a fly,” said Mr. Diptera. “Come on, tell me the truth, that is what you were thinking, isn’t it?”
“Well, yes,” Amber said, “I’m sorry.”
“Watch out for the spider web,” said Mr. Diptera. “It’s very sticky.”
“Oh–oh–oh!” Amber cried. “Spiders? Oh, no! Flies are bad enough! Excuse me, Sir – but spiders – I just can’t stand! – I’m so little – what if it gets me?”
“Don’t be afraid, Dear,” Mr. Diptera said. “The spider can’t hurt you. Nothing will harm you.”
Amber had run to the fly and he comforted her, just like her mother did when she was scared at home. She stood, shaking, beneath his wing and he said, over and over again, “Do not be afraid.. There is nothing in the world, in any world, to be afraid of.”
“Any world?” Amber asked, “What do you mean?”
“First, let us have some refreshment,” said the fly. “Would you care for a flowerful nectar? It’s very sweet and refreshing.”
He rolled his big eyes and Amber noticed they were made up of many little eyes. She thought he must have been able to see an awful lot.
“Do you trust me?” he asked, looking in every direction.
Amber stared. Were those the eyes of a trustworthy fly?
“Who saved you from falling off the dust particle?” asked Mr. Diptera.
“You did,” Amber said.
“And from taking a nap?”
“Oh, yes,” Amber said, “A fate worse than death.”
“Not necessarily, My Dear,” said the fly. “Whether sleep is worse than death or death is worse than sleep, I cannot say. But I can tell you this – Everything is good. Can you tell me if you are asleep or awake right now?”
Amber squinted her eyes and turned her mouth upside-down. If she were asleep, how could she be so much awake? Yet, if she were awake, how could she be talking to a gigantic fly?
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I suppose it doesn’t matter.”
“So you do trust me,” the fly said.
“What else is there to do?” Amber answered.
“You’re a very logical young lady,” Mr. Diptera said. “Do you know how to spell my name? Look it up.”
Amber sat alone on the big, soft, white flower petal that smelled even better than her mother’s perfume. She saw some ants in a caravan, carrying huge bread crumbs. “Ants,” she thought, “Oh, no – ants sting!“
She was just getting up to step on the ants when a breeze knocked her down and she realized – to her astonishment – that the ants in this world were as large as the truck that had held all the furniture in her family’s house when her family had moved from Brick Street to Rose Street. Step on these ants? No way in this world! Why, she wondered, as she smiled at them and they waved their antennae in return, had she ever wanted to do such a thing in the first place?
Then she remembered she had been afraid of their stings.
Maybe Mr. Diptera was right when he said people respected elephants only because they were so big.
The air around her started to vibrate and roar. Mr. Diptera was landing. The flower petal shook and her hair blew in the breeze.
He handed her a flower half-her-size. “Pull off the bottom,” he said, “And drink. When you’ve had enough, just plug it up with the stalk. It’s honeysuckle. I had to look all over to get one small enough for you.”
After their refreshment, they sat and gazed at the sky and clouds, the big, green leaves, the flowers and the dirt below.
“Mr. Diptera,” Amber said, “I am wondering what you meant when you said there is nothing in any world to fear. How many worlds are there?”
“Good question, My Girl,” said the fly. “As many as you can imagine and more. There is no end. They never run out. But, in the universe, all worlds turn toward one. They’re all made up of the same thing.”
“What is that?”
“What are you?”
“I don’t know.”
“When you know what you are, then you will know what all the worlds are. There is the world of mankind that you already know a little bit about because you are a little girl – now. There is the world of insects that you are learning about – a little bit – because you are now in our world. There is the world of the elephant (Mr. Diptera sneered slightly) that you probably have known but don’t remember. There are the worlds of the fairy and the tree, the worlds of dirt, water, air, fire, and light – the worlds of birds, the worlds of metal, and the worlds of stone. Fish have worlds, too.”
“These are earthly worlds so you can understand what I mean when I mention them. But there are many, many others. The important thing to remember about all these worlds – and all the things in each world (and each thing in each world is a world unto itself) is that everything is important. Each has its function.
“Flies, for example, do very important work. We clean up your world, which is our world, too. Ants do the same in a different way. Then there are the smaller bugs – if I may use the term – that are about your size, and some even much, much smaller, that clean up worlds ever-so-tiny.
“We all work and live and die together and do it again and again.”
“Really,” Amber said, wrinkling her brow.
“Take this flower, for instance,” continued the fly. Soon it will turn into a ripe, juicy melon. Then a big human will come along and pick it. He and his family will eat what is left and some of it will go into the ground and the other bugs will make soil from it.
“Then it will be autumn when leaves fall to the earth. Those leaves that haven’t been eaten by bugs will become soil, and eventually so will the bodies of the bugs.
“Then the spring will come, with the rain and the sunlight – and the vine will turn green again. The vine will be fed by the air, especially the air that humans breathe out of their noses and mouths – it is rich in carbon dioxide. (Look up carbon dioxide, along with Diptera.) The vine will be nourished by the water and by the soil.
“In the summer, the human will come along again and pick the melon. The man and his wife and their children will get strength and life from the food, and will the bugs – the insects and the microbes.
“And the Earth will go to sleep, so-to-say, again in the winter and wake up again in the spring as the Earth turns around the Sun, on which we all depend.”
“What about the world of sleep? Amber asked. “I hate to go to sleep but here I am. If I’m asleep, it’s not so bad – but I’m not sure I’m asleep.
“Is death like this? My cat, Fred, died, you know. And I was very sad. Do you think Fred woke up in a new world, like me being here now?”
“Can’t say, My Dear, exactly what happened to Fred. But if I were you, I wouldn’t be sad. As I said before, everything is good.”
“What if it’s scary, like a tarantula?”
“Fear is just another gate you walk through. After you’ve traveled a little more, you’ll know what I mean.”
“Another gate you walk through?”
“Yes, and every world you walk through is a little bit of you, just as you are a part of every world.”
“My word,” said Amber. She stood up and paced around the flower, each time moving closer to the center.
“Fear is a gate we walk through. There are many worlds and they are one and I am them. Am I sunlight or am I night? Asleep or awake?”
She said this again and again as she walked closer and closer to the center of the flower where the flower sloped down, and in she slid.
When she hit bottom, she fell on something shiny. She looked down and saw her own reflection. She stood up and looked for a long, long time, putting her face closer and closer to the mirror until she fell through and started buzzing around.
She looked up and there was the mirror – but she was a fly!
After a while, she calmed down. Having not much else to do except to fly and buzz and beat her wings against the glass, she went back to look at herself. After due consideration, she decided that for a fly and to a fly, she didn’t look half-bad.
“In fact,” she concluded, “I am a rather attractive fly. What pretty fly eyes I have.”
As she pressed her big, fly-eyes – made up of all the little eyes – against the mirror, she fell through again – and was a little girl again.
She looked into the mirror and saw two selves joined at the fingers and the wings: on one side, the little girl, and on the other side, the fly.
The little-girl self began to grow large while the fly self grew small.
The tiny fly self, all-of-a-sudden was caught in a rope!
Something, somewhere was tying up the fly in a rope. She saw a fat, white garden spider move in for the kill.
“Watch out for the spider web,” echoed Mr. Diptera’s voice. “Don’t be afraid,” she heard him say. “The spider can’t hurt you. Nothing can harm you. There is nothing in the world – in any world — to fear.”
“What about scary things, like tarantulas?” she heard herself asking as the spider legs clutched the fly.
“Fear is just another gate you walk through. Do you trust me?”
“What else is there to do?”
The mirror shattered as the little girl grabbed the fly from the spider. She fell again through the mirror and traveled a long, long way on a stream of light of many colors.
Robin Jenkins (copyright 1988, 2007)
Tags: children's literature, novel, Amber Trips the Light Fantastic, Chapter 1, Buddhism, Hinduism, Ecology, Earth Science for Children, Fantasy, Fairy Tale, Dream Vision, Metaphysical
