THE SECOND CONSEQUENCE OF my plan was the demise of our school mascot, Chester the Beaver. I had hated Chester from the first moment I walked into the school. Difficult as it might be to make a beaver even more repulsive, Chester wore a sailor’s cap and had an insane grin perpetually pasted on his face. The scabrous rodent was everywhere. There were stuffed Chesters, Chesters on the letterhead, Chesters on our track team t-shirts, and a huge Chester mural on the gym wall. The mural painter must have had aspirations to the Italian Renaissance, for he had painted on Chester those eyes that follow you wherever you go. Whether I was teaching a Phys. Ed. Class, or making a speech from the stage, there were those beady eyes forever on me, accusing, all-knowing. I was alone in my abhorrence, for Chester was loved by students and staff alike. Notwithstanding this adoration, it wasn’t difficult to convince the mothers at the first parent council meeting that having a beaver as mascot of an all-girls’ school was an idea open for debate.

Erasing the vile beast was not so easy. No matter how hard I tried, there always seemed to be another vestige of the drooling, evil fiend cropping up. There would be a stuffed beaver hiding in a drawer somewhere. The sweet librarian was determined to keep the one she had on her desk. I’d find a box of old track t-shirts with Chester taunting me on the front. There would be letter pages with the Chester logo still on the top. Little kids would not stop coming up and asking me, “Mr. Dunker, why did you get rid of Chester?”

“Ask your mother.”

I needed to choose a new mascot. After months of dithering, I finally chose a tree. It was more than just your basic tree, because for the trunk it had these intertwined people. It was kind of cool even though it wasn’t very inspiring on the track t-shirts:

“Hooray! Run like a tree!”

Even a beaver could run faster than a tree. It’s strange the way things work out. Where, after all, is my culpability when I callously break a bunch of little kids’ hearts by getting rid of their beloved mascot? Had I used the whole girls’ school thing as an excuse to get rid of Chester and replace him with a tree? What could have been more insulting to a beaver? Once beloved, now I was cursed, blamed for the fall from grace of Chester.

Red Flower returned to me. At first, I was happy to see her.

“Why are you here?” I asked. “Are you here to help me?”

“I am here to tell you a tale.”

She lowered her dark eyes, and began the tale of the Beaver at The End of The World.

In the woods outside my village, there are many giant animals. In the lake lives a giant serpent, as large as a whale, with horns on its head. It even scares the Gods, who throw lightning bolts at it. The Yakwawiak walks the earth, an animal so large the earth trembles under its massive feet. It has a snake instead of a nose, and giant spears coming from each side of its face. Its skin is so thick it cannot be penetrated by any spear. The Yakwawiak rips trees from the ground and, when angry, rampages through our villages, crushing everything in its way. A giant toad with the voice of a beautiful woman lures disobedient children to the streams where she drowns then eats them. The Big Tree People stalk the forest disguised with arms like branches and with long skinny fingers like twigs. They grab naughty children from their beds at night. There are giant bears that hide their hearts so you cannot kill them and giant wolves that can run faster than anything else in the woods.

Not all the creatures on earth are evil. At the end of the world is a dam. Behind are the waters controlled by the angry spirit, the spirit who resents all life on earth and seeks only to destroy it. He revels in mankind’s evil, and constantly tempts him to sin. With each sinful act performed by man, a stick is removed from the dam. Because we are so inherently evil, because we are so easily tempted, the dam would quickly burst, and mankind would soon be wiped out were it not for the beaver. This most humble of animals, the most unassuming, the most hardworking of God’s creatures, helps us. The beaver works day and night replacing the sticks. He pulls mud from the earth and packs the holes as tightly as he can. No matter how hard the beaver works, eventually he is overcome by the sins of man: the dam bursts, and all is swept away before it.

She raised her eyes, her sad, sad eyes, then turned and went away. But she left in her songless wake a revelation.