Snotty Saves the Day

“I don’t know if you’re going to like this,” Snotty warned, trying an experimental chomp on a carrot. “And what if they’re trying to poison us, huh?” But by now his stomach was too busy to reply.

The idea that the food might be poisoned cheered Snotty up a lot. It was making him nervous, all this Teddy Bear hospitality. It was not what he was used to. Whereas the thought that he was a prisoner, liable to be tortured or killed at any moment—if that was the position, he knew where he was.

“More, please,” his stomach said.

“Well,” Snotty shrugged. “It’s your funeral.” So he ate his way through another couple of carrots and two slices of bread spread with the lemony cheese.

“Mmmm,” his stomach said. But Snotty wasn’t listening. Instead he planned his escape. Then he saw that the silly-looking Bear had left the rosy Key. There it was in the lock of the door.

“Honestly, what kind of a prison is this, anyway?” Snotty grumbled as he pocketed the Key in his lilac and purple plush suit. He slipped out the door. No one was about.

Snotty felt a little hurt by this. “What, they don’t think I’m important enough to be guarded better than THIS?” Reflecting on the Bears’ total lack of professionalism, he crossed a lush and overgrown meadow toward a wood where swallows and finches and chickadees sang in the trees. “I miss the Gnomes,” he thought to himself, depressed. He missed their size and their strength. He missed their manliness and grandeur. Most of all, he missed his own importance in their midst. “But think of how much credit I’ll get for escaping from the Rebel Stronghold with a full report. That’ll be a real score!”

At the thought of this, Snotty cheered up. If it was war between the Gnomes and the Teddy Bears—as it obviously was—then he considered the Gnomes to be in the right. For one thing, they were bigger than the Bears.

That much was easy. Once Snotty had determined this, his duty was plain. “I must fight the Enemy by any means possible!” he thought fiercely. “First I should get the lay of the land.” With that, he set about his mission with no delay. He went into the wood and climbed the highest tree.

As he climbed, the Key in his pocket slapped at his leg in an uncomfortable way. The higher Snotty got, the heavier the Key dragged on him.

Snotty ignored this.

When he had climbed as high as he could, he found himself in a canopy of treetops, surrounded on all sides by green: leaves, tree needles, and pale slanting light. He couldn’t see up, he couldn’t see down, he couldn’t see around. And because the branches above him were spindly, this was as far as he could go.

Little pools of water dotted the canopy, places where rain collected in hollows made of twigs and leaves and lichen. Tiny transparent shrimp scuttled about. And in a pond cradled by a bowl of moss lay a rose pink Crab.

Snotty considered this. “A Crab in a tree,” he thought. “That’s weird.” Other stuff was weird, too. The breeze smelled of strawberries. Every leaf and needle on every tree was clear and sharp. And, weirdest of all, the stump of Snotty’s little finger stopped throbbing. Here, in the trees, it didn’t hurt at all.

Snotty peered into the little pond. The rose pink Crab lay on its bottom, resting on a bed of pale green. Snotty leaned over to get a closer look, and the Key in his pocket banged against his leg.

“Let me out!” the Key said in a furious voice. “Now!”

Startled, Snotty thrust his hand in his pocket and pulled out the Key. It was heavier than he remembered, though, and it slipped from his hold and fell with a mild plop into the pool.

Snotty stared at the Key as it lay there at the bottom of the pond. Its head was oval and its shaft was plain. It was smooth and pink gold and it reminded Snotty of something, but he couldn’t think of what. He dipped his hand in the water to get it back. To his surprise, the little pink Crab didn’t scuttle away. Instead, to Snotty’s even greater surprise, it put what might have been its shoulder—if crabs had shoulders—to the Key, as if trying to dislodge it from the moss.

Snotty was so surprised by this that he didn’t do what he would have usually done—which would have been to pluck the Crab from the water, hold it by one pincer while it waved with the other, and then toss it to the forest floor below. Instead he was careful to touch the Key without touching the Crab.

He wondered why this was. As he grasped the Key, he had a strange thought. He thought he could feel what the Crab was feeling. Then it was more than a thought: it was real. He could feel it. He could feel cool water flow over his sturdy head, and he could see the wavy shimmer of the rose gold Key as the water moved. He could even see his own face—his, Snotty’s face!—all waves and shimmers, peering from the surface above.

Startled again, Snotty pulled his hand away, leaving the Key behind.

A bird flew by, looking at him without much interest as it passed. It was yellow and black with a red splash on its head, and Snotty could see it flash from branch to branch.

Snotty shrugged and put his hand back in the pool, picking up the Key.

Then, all at once, he felt he was the Bird.

“Wow! That’s terrific!” Snotty could feel the cross breezes that were too tiny for him to notice when he was only himself. He could feel how pleasantly those breezes ruffled the feathers on his breast. He could feel his smug pleasure in the beauty of his own song. And he could feel a tiny pang of bird hunger, and then feel patience, as he waited, singing, for a bug to pass by.

Snotty, enjoying himself as the bird, grabbed again at the Key and pulled it from the pond.

That was when it happened. As he held the Key tight, the world sprang up around him. Everywhere, in every corner, the world pulsed and buzzed and flowed. He could hear it. He could feel it. What was more, he knew it had always been there, only before he hadn’t known.

“I can see it!” he said in his excitement. “I can see it now!” And it seemed to him that when he laughed at the sights, the sounds, the smells, the feelings around him—all connected together by the thinnest of webs—that the Crab and the Bird laughed with him. Everyone and everything connected to him by this web—and this was everyone and everything everywhere—laughed. Everywhere laughed One Great Laugh.

Snotty laughed so hard that his hand jerked out of the pond, yanking the Key from the water. It flew from his fingers and disappeared into the pale and dark green canopy of leaves. As it went, so did the web. The scene fell back to the quiet blank it had been before.

Snotty cried out and ran after the Key. He should have known better, of course; he had fallen like this before. But he didn’t know better yet, so when he put his foot down too hard on a thin spot on the canopy, it happened again.

“Here I am, falling again,” he said to himself in a detached way. And he did fall, even as he thought it, with a plop, into a cold clear stream. He didn’t fight the current, and the stream carried him along. He found that when he ducked his head under its surface and opened his eyes, he could see a lot of things: tiny violet waving plants, and brightly colored fish—red and blue and yellow and white.

“Wait a minute,” he thought. “I can’t swim.” But it seemed that he knew how, he had just forgotten. And so Snotty did a neat breaststroke into a pool that collected in swirls under some boulders at the side of the stream.

Snotty lay face up in that pool for a while, floating and looking at the clear blue evening sky as it deepened into twilight. In a corner was the rising crescent moon. A brilliant planet shone below it. A rosy light spread around the edges of the sky.

Toenails clicked on some boulders overhead. Snotty raised his eye and saw the Dog standing on a pink granite rock. Snotty scrambled out of the water to join him.

“Hello,” he said. “You’re here, too, are you?”

The Dog nodded and the two watched the sky as the sun made its final dip below the horizon, and stars burst out on its far side. Then the Dog shook his head, and Snotty knew what he meant as if he had said it out loud. “I never get tired of seeing that same sight in the sky.”

“I know what you mean,” Snotty agreed.

The Dog turned, his toenails clicking on the granite boulder, and headed back toward the meadow of the Teddy Bear camp. Snotty followed.

On the way, they passed Justice and Mercy sitting in the evening breeze, fanning themselves and talking. The women waved and nodded in a friendly way.

Up ahead in the meadow, two long rows of rough trestle tables stood, all laid with rush mats and wooden cups and bowls. There were platters of steaming greens and loaves of that same dark, sweetsmelling bread Snotty had eaten before. The talk of those sitting and helping themselves to the food rose and fell in a gentle stream.

As Snotty neared, though, silence fell. He stopped in confusion, and looked out over the still crowd, which stared back, it seemed to him, with mistrust and doubt. This stung, though he had to admit the justice of it—hadn’t he laughed at them, called them nothing but stupid Bears?—and he turned to go. But there was a murmur from the crowd—“No, no!” a Crimson Bear protested, jumping up—and a general hubbub rose up. A Lemon Yellow Bear cleared a place on one of benches, and an Orange Bear leapt forward to lead Snotty to it and show him how to help himself to the food. He took some sweet smelling steamed nettles, pouring over them soup from a steaming tureen. A hunk of the bread and more of the lemony cheese completed his meal. The Crimson Bear pointed to a dish on which gray and white crystals were heaped. “There’s the salt!” she said proudly, and Snotty recognized her as the masked Rebel who had braved the Gnome stronghold. She had looked much more frightening behind her mask. Now she just looked friendly and shy.

Snotty felt shy, too, but a Rose Pink Bear sprinkled some salt on his food and said, “It tastes better with it than without, don’t you think?” Soon he was laughing and chatting with the Bears as if he had known them his whole life.

He had never laughed and chatted with anyone before as if he’d known them his whole life. In fact, the friends he had known his whole life were not the sort you would ever want to laugh and chat with—you had to be too careful to make sure you never let them get behind your back. You had to always keep an eye on them, and that, of course, got in the way of any real conversation.

Snotty knew he didn’t have to worry about that here, with the Bears. So he just ate up and enjoyed himself in general.

During the meal, he looked around himself. There were many different kinds of Bears: stiff white ones with pink bows, black floppy ones with tartan jackets, skinny yellow ones, and a fat one that looked like it had been dragged by a cat.

And of course, he saw other creatures as well. There was a Lace Swan, and there was a Tin Soldier and a Rose Fairy, and there was the kind of Seaweed that goes pop when you sit on it. There was a Centaur and a group of Nymphs. There was a Pack of Playing Cards and a Leprechaun. There were at least seven Plastic Dinosaurs. And sitting at the other end of the table, their heads together, were a Bird, a Mouse, and a Sausage, each one wearing a crown, and each one’s mouth forming a perfect ‘o.’⁴³

The Dog passed by on his way down the table. And the Dog’s expression said, “Those are our allies.”

“Oh,” Snotty said. “I see.”

Troubled, he remembered the Dead Things that fed the Great Lawn in the Garden of Earthly Delights. And by the look in the Dog’s brown eyes, he knew that those had been the same as these. Allies, the Dog’s eyes said. Comrades. Friends.

He thought about the Mexican piñatas he had shoveled into the dirt, and the puppies that had been buried, too. And he shuddered.

“Are you okay?” the Crimson Bear asked in a friendly way. Snotty nodded. But he found he wasn’t hungry anymore, and when no one was looking, he pushed his plate aside. He tried his best to join in when he could. The rest of the company laughed and ate and drank and talked and ate some more. They all had a very good time, and Snotty wanted to have a good time, too. So while he may have been a little quiet, he tried his best to keep up his end of the conversation. It was only when the Bears looked away from him, laughing at some joke or other, that he let himself think back to those Dead Things buried in the Garden. And then it was as if a dark hand took hold of his heart and squeezed. But when the Bears looked back to see if he was enjoying himself, he did his best to smile.

Afterward, the Orange Bear showed him how to take charge of his bowl and spoon and cup, how to take them down to the Stream and wash them clean before stacking them with the others in neat piles at the edge of the meadow.

“Come and join me and my friends,” the Orange Bear said, pointing to one of the campfires that had sprung up there. And Snotty, happy to be distracted from his own dark thoughts, agreed.

Around the fire sat the Crimson Bear and the Rose Pink Bear, a Robin’s Egg Blue Bear, and a Lime Green Bear. The Orange Bear led Snotty over, and fetched them both mugs of hot cocoa with marshmallows melting in the middle, the same as the others had. For a moment, they all sat together, drinking these in silence. Then the Lemon Yellow Bear came over and sat down, too.

“Tell us a story,” the Crimson Bear said to the Lemon Yellow Bear. “You know it’s your turn.”

At this, the Lemon Yellow Bear looked at Snotty, as if she was thinking over what story would be nicest for a guest.

“I think...” the Lemon Yellow Bear said, hesitating over her words—“I know I usually like to tell a happy story. But tonight I will tell you one that’s sad.”⁴⁴

The other Bears looked at her with attention.

“Yes,” the Lemon Yellow Bear said, and she gave a faint sigh. “Tonight I will tell you my story, by which I mean, how I came to be here with you. Because who knows how long we have to drink, and talk, and laugh together? If the Enemy overcomes us, all that will end.”

The Crimson Bear straightened her back and poked at the fire.

“The Enemy will never win,” she said. “Justice won’t allow it.”

“What Enemy?” Snotty wanted to say. He felt the Bears meant something other than the Gnomes—something bigger and more threatening still. But for now he drank his cocoa and was quiet.

“Once,” the Lemon Yellow Bear began, “I lived in world that was more beautiful than I can remember without feeling sad.”

“I lived in a beautiful world too,” said the Orange Bear with a reflective look.

“I did, too,” said the Crimson Bear.

The Rose Pink Bear and the Robin’s Egg Blue Bear nodded.

Snotty thought, “I lived in a world where there was nothing beautiful at all.”

“In this world,” the Lemon Yellow Bear went on, “I lived with a little girl. We lived in a small house, the neatest house you ever saw. Everything was small. Our animals were small and clever. Our flowers were small and had a beautiful smell. Our fruit and vegetables were small, and once you ate them you never forgot their taste. Everything was small, and perfect for its kind. And we were content there, with our small world, my little girl and I.”⁴⁵

For a moment the Lemon Yellow Bear was quiet. Then she went on:

“We would sit together for hours on the porch in two small chairs, watching the garden grow. Or we would go for walks, she and I, and look at the sky. There were always lots of birds flying there, birds who had come from other lands, and sometimes they would stop and tell us stories of the things they had seen. I’ve told you some of their stories, around this fire, other nights.”

The Bears nodded. They remembered those tales with pleasure.

“We were very happy,” the Lemon Yellow Bear said, and her red button eyes gleamed in the firelight.

The Bears nodded again. They had been happy in their worlds, too, Snotty saw. “But I,” Snotty thought, “I don’t think I was happy in my world. Not at all.” And for the first time, this bothered him.

“One day a storm came from the North. The wind blew like a tornado for days; and from the clouds came ice crystals that were hard and jagged as glass. Nothing like this had ever been seen before—everyone went outside to look and catch the crystals in their hands.

“My little girl went too. Oh, I wish I’d stopped her! But how could I know? The Enemy had sent that storm, and in its ice crystals was the Fever of the Plains. And all who caught the crystals caught that disease as well.”

All the Bears were silent with sympathy. Snotty couldn’t help himself. He thought of Snowflake.

“When my little girl came back, she was changed,” the Lemon Yellow Bear went on. “The Fever had hold of her: she hated everything small. She couldn’t see beauty in our small animals, our small plants, our small house. Now she hated them because they were small. And because I was small, she hated me.

“Swearing I would find a way to help her, I set out on a quest. The storm had chased the birds away, and it was the birds I went in search of now. They would know the cure for this Fever, I thought. But when I found a bird—only one, all alone, faraway, blown off course—he told me that the birds would not be back to our world, and that the cure for the Fever could never be found there. He was sorry for me, he said, but it was best that I faced facts. And then he flew away.

“I made my way back home. I had been gone a long time, and my little girl had grown big. She hated small things—and me—more than ever before.⁴⁶ There was no place for me in her house, which was no longer small and cozy but was now big and grand. Crawling into a corner of one huge empty room in my grief, I found a small hole in the floor. I jumped inside and fell and fell and fell. And I landed here, to fight the Enemy who destroyed my world, or be destroyed myself in trying.”

The Lemon Yellow Bear sipped her cocoa as the other Bears reflected on the tale. Even though it was a sad tale, Snotty saw they liked hearing it. Snotty liked hearing it, too. In fact, Snotty started to ask whether there were other stories like it, but the Rose Pink Bear said, “It’s late.” At this they all got up, trooped down to the Stream to wash their mugs, and then went to sleep in a big warm tent. Snotty went with them and found a bark bunk bed beside the Lemon Yellow Bear’s. He was tired. It had been a long day.

“Night,” the Lemon Yellow Bear said in sleepy voice. “Night,” said the Rose Pink Bear and the Robin’s Egg Blue Bear and the Orange Bear and the Lime Green Bear and the Crimson Bear.

“Night,” Snotty said back. He was asleep almost before he finished the word.

He woke sometime before dawn. Rolling over and peering at the Bears lying in their bunks in the dark, he could see a bit of the bright yellow plush of the Lemon Yellow Bear by the light of the night’s last stars. The Lemon Yellow Bear murmured in her sleep and sighed.

Snotty got up. It was hard to get out of his warm bed, but something pushed him forward. He got up without disturbing his friends, and he went out, making his way to the tent where he could see Big Teddy sit, working by one lone light.