How The Loris Learnt What To Do
My name is Lorrie and I usually like to take things easy. I am a very slow slender loris.
I live in a tree with my mother. My tree is tall and I have a spot of my own about fifty feet up from the ground. I can see right across the pond to the mango trees on the other side. From the first time I saw the fruit, I wanted to go over and eat one. But my mother had said, ‘Don’t bother. By the time you get there, the mangoes would have fallen. The season would be over.’
I didn’t believe her. I could see the mangoes grow bigger, turn from green to yellow and ripen ever so slowly. Green parrots flew in and pecked at them. The fruit didn’t fall for ages. I told my mother, ‘Look, they are still there.’
Her large unblinking eyes softened. ‘It is a long way to go around the water. It will take you many, many nights. You will have to avoid the grassland on the left and stick to the trees. You will have to go so far in, you will lose sight of the water. The moon will vanish. You might get lost in enemy territory. There are many predators: leopards, pythons, dragons. But even if you don’t get lost, by the time you get to the mangoes, the fruit will be rotten. We are slow movers.’
I don’t know why she didn’t even want me to try.
* * *
The rains came. There was thunder in the sky. In the north and the south, big animals waged war. We slept. I like to sleep. I like to dream. Sometimes even when my eyes are open, I am dreaming. My favourite dream is about mangoes. Green mangoes slowly turning yellow like the sun. In my dream I eat the sun. I feel warm inside and everything becomes night. Then, in my dream, I move like a dream. Fast as light falling at dusk.
* * *
Last week, I saw them again. Small, round, green bobbles on the trees across the pond appeared like a starburst in a faraway galaxy. Each one destined to turn into a sun, in the shape of a teardrop. An island. A day later nothing much had changed. I remembered what had happened last season and reckoned I had quite a few nights to get over to the mangoes. I couldn’t disappear for that long without telling my mother, so I told her.
‘It is too dangerous,’ she said. ‘Please, don’t go.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘You will be able to see me most of the time. It is only between the coconut trees that I will be out of sight. I’ll bring you back a mango.’
‘I don’t want a mango,’ she said. ‘I want you to be safe here.’
‘Don’t you want me to do what I dream of doing?’
‘I do.’
‘Then, let me go,’ I said and hugged her.
* * *
It took me three nights to get to the water’s edge and another three to get to the breadfruit tree that stretched over the stream. Progress was slow because I had to test each branch I used. Some were weak and would bend for the weight of a swallow. Others were short and I could not easily reach a connecting one. Sometimes I had to retrace my steps. But there was never any danger. I heard no other animals in the trees, up where I climbed. The monkeys were too heavy for my branches, even the tree squirrels couldn’t get close. Although I once heard a leopard coughing at the water, it did not frighten me. He would have had no way of reaching me and even when my branches dipped we were still way up in the safe canopy of the jungle. The difficulty was the breadfruit tree. The branch that bridged the stream was as big as an elephant’s leg. Anything could walk on it. It would take me from dusk to dawn to get across as my top speed is only about three feet an hour and I can keep that up only for a couple of hours at a time. If an enemy came while I was crossing, I would be in trouble. Big trouble.
I spent the afternoon watching the heron fishing in the pond. He is always on his own, stooped and morose. When he catches a fish he shows no mercy, gobbling it up straightaway. Sometimes he raises his grey wings like an avatar, but he has nothing to offer us. I like it when the fish jump just out of his reach and make ripples in the purple water like anger in his mind. Then he becomes a little dizzy and wobbles.
As the sun sank behind the trees, and the bats started to launch out into the black sky, one after another, I inched down towards the lower branches of the big tree. The biggest branch, when I reached it, was knotted and spongy. It was peculiarly furry and prickled my hands and feet. I felt it move in the slow rhythm of a sleeper’s breath. It dawned on me that I was walking across a leopard’s back. When I reached its ear, the leopard woke up. I quickly slid down a few inches. The leopard slowly stretched and stood up but did not notice me. I am very light. Then, to my amazement, he crept along the branch, ferrying me to the other side. On the ground he moved swiftly and took me all the way to the mango trees. What a thrill to move at such speed!
When I saw my dream fruit, I grabbed a passing cane and parted company. The leopard rushed into the undergrowth and vanished.
I had learnt my most important lesson: what you can’t do by yourself, you might be able to do with the help of someone else.
By the time I reached the branches where the fruit hung like coloured drops, a few had begun to ripen. I found one that a red-beaked parrot had ripped open. Inside the skin, in the golden soft fruit, I discovered heaven. I had never tasted anything so delicious. I ate and ate and ate, high up in the trees, safe and sweet. I ate all afternoon and all night. My dream had come true. I felt I was eating the sun.
Then, in the early morning, when the light was struggling to wake, to break out of the clouds, the sky seemed to get very angry with me. A howling and shrieking filled the air. Piercing screams. A huge metal bird burst out of the clouds and swooped down. The breadfruit tree exploded. The thunder was deafening. More explosions followed, one after the other, and the heat of several suns colliding singed the trees around me. A moment later, an enormous fire blazed and tree after tree ignited. The fire rushed towards me. I was petrified. Some humans appeared with guns. They fired at the sky. Another metal bird screamed down with its fiery droppings. More explosions. Mangoes fell to the ground. Branches. Trees. Birds. Monkeys.
I said goodbye to my mother, in my heart. I was sorry. Perhaps I should have heeded her. But I was not sorry to have tasted the mango. Even if our world was destroyed, at least I had tasted heaven. Was that bad? Should I not have done it? Was this onslaught somehow my fault?
I shifted a few inches down the branch. The fire was moving as fast as my thoughts, speeding over the ground, crackling twigs and grass and bushes. Animals I had never seen so close before broke out of the bush just ahead of the flames: pigs, iguanas, wild cats and deer. Then my leopard appeared. A human saw it and fired a shot. The leopard growled. The man dropped his gun and fled. The leopard leapt over the flames and came towards the mango trees. He stopped under my tree and looked back over his shoulder. My steps may be slow, but in my head I can think as fast as anyone.
I let go.
I landed on his neck, where I had been perched before. The heat of the blaze cracked trees and broke branches. He did not notice me with all the debris falling around. More humans appeared, shouting. The leopard with me on his back slipped into the water. I crawled to the top of his head, fast enough to get there as his body submerged and I sailed across the pond homeward.
When we finally reached the other side of the pond, the leopard padded up under the trees and shook himself, sending me flying up with the water drops. I caught the branch of my old tree. I was home and dry.
In our world even our enemies can become our friends. I wished the humans could too.
* * *
I found my mother just before dusk. She was waiting for me. We watched the flames rise and fall on the far side of the pond and I told her what the sun tasted like, and what it felt like to rush at speed, to sail across water, to fly in the air.
Her face turned slowly from side to side. ‘But how did you do it?’
I told her we can do what we dream of, despite the fires of war, by remembering what we learn and learning not to fear. I said, ‘You can move as fast as you wish, if you follow your heart but also use your head.’