King of Diamonds
Biodiversity Excerpt
It was midnight, December 31. Scythe in hand, the Old Year stepped to the podium. Scattered among the Lonely Ones were the Days. According to the ancient calendar, there were only 365 x 10 = 3,650 of them left. And one of them would disappear every 24 hours, Charley Orange knew, taking 50 to 100 species of insects, plants and other Creations with them.
"Listen, Charley. Wolf is talking," said the Old Year.
Ragnar the She-Wolf sprang forth. "I dream of the time long back, beyond the Great Snows," she said. "The Lonely Ones preyed on me, but when their hunger was filled, they left me my space in the Creation.
"O-WOOOOOOO!" she howled. "Bring back the Old Ways! Our young ones are born sick and small; many are not born at all. Our hunters die in their prime. Gone is the time when we roamed freely across the land, keeping our fellow creatures fit, winnowing the weak and building the stock, creating impeccability.
"Once we raised our young to be free and wild, to go for the throat with hearts as pure as alabaster. Then the Lonely Ones - the Fearful Ones - shot us down, with our families, in our dens. They put death in our water, laid out poisoned meat for our young to eat, until none of us remained anywhere around them."
"Speak next, Moth," said the Old Year.
"If they weren't asleep as a species," Moth fluttered, "wouldn't their fashions honor us instead of extirpating us? They rip gashes in their clothes and it's the In Thing to wear. But if we nibble just one hole, it's Camphor City."
Meadowlark, sweet musician of the Beings, opened her warbling beak:
KEEP your FEET
OFF the CONCRETE
DON'T have to WORK
exCEPT FOR to EAT.
Drink NECtar in JUNE
with a PETAL SPOON
Hang TIGHT with the MOON
Keep some JUICE IN your PRUNE.
Don't GOTta be SMART
Just O-pen YOUR HEART
CAN'T SAVE yourSELVES
All SPACETIMED aPART.
"Hear, Charley! Now Tree is talking," said the Old Year.
"Just as worms crawl, fish swim and birds fly," said Tree, "so do we travel through time, or non-linear space. We weave the wind with song so we can remain one with each other. The Lonely Ones have lost their song; they have lost their oneness.
"We show them lace inflatables and prisms in dew. We sing them lullabies, we shelter them, we feed them and hide them from their enemies.
"And yet, across the world the Lonely Ones ax-murder us into chopsticks and toilet paper. They clog our aqueducts with concrete and DDT. They befoul the air we pump out, scalding our umbrellas with acids, filling them with scars and rents and slowing our escape from body into interdimensional travel through photosynthesis.
"The children I sacrificed to last year's frosts feed the flowers under my wings. When the vast everywheres forevers shrink to a pea, Time will stop. Therefore, we live at every moment, before the Lonely Ones appeared as well as now. Let us draw comfort and hope from the deeds of our ancestors. We are the epigoni; it is up to us to remember and revere the Old Ways.
"I pity the Lonely Ones. When will they join us in the infinite simultaneous worlds of spacetime?"
"All this philosophy and negativity makes me eat too much," said the Door to Nowhere Through Which All Species Come and Go. "You saw me grow as wide as the sea to let the dinosaurs and all their relatives and in-laws pass through me at once. And now the demands placed on me grow even greater."
"On you!" proclaimed the Undiscovered. "What about us? We're far and away the largest classification of life on this planet, and it's like we're being blown through you like flies in the wind."
From beneath them a soft, rumbling voice filled the arena. It was Gaia Itself, Charley knew, Progenitor of them all.
"I will endure," Gaia said. "But I can no longer support all my children. Many of you will perish. Many of the Lonely Ones will perish. It will be many aeons before we dance together again.
"But some of you will continue unfolding. The songs of change are rising through my pipes and through your genes. This is the time of Metamorphosis. I must shed my skin in order to grow my wings.
"You must strive, as always, to survive. I am, as always, neither a wrathful nor an enabling god/dess."
The Old Year, now the New Year and looking decades younger, came through the crowd and handed Charley a note. It was addressed: Only the Lonely. Before he could read it, a sudden gust of wind blew open his balcony door. He opened his eyes and sat bolt upright...