Cassandra

Cassie was a happy girl. When she woke up, the sunbeam that had managed to steal trough the pinhole in the Venetian blinds painted jumping rabbits in all the colors of the rainbow right on the wall of her room.

She always brushed her teeth after breakfast, like a good girl, and the toothpaste too came out of the tube in rainbow colors, and its taste in her mouth was as fresh as the new day.

Cassie liked school, especially on those days they allowed her to bring Patch along. Patch was her Boston Terrier puppy, and he was a real dog, not a stuffed animal. But he let her dress him, and lay him down in the dolly bed and cover him with a blanket, and he stayed put just like a stuffed puppy would. But then she would pick him up and kiss and kiss and kiss him, and he would kiss her right back.

Cassie had lots of friends in school. And they all came to her birthdays. The very best birthday was the one when her grandpa made a puppet theater out of some wooden boxes he found in his garage, and grandma made the puppets. And her two brothers, they were older, hid behind the puppet theater and put on a show. And when everybody clapped and they sang “happy birthday” to her she was so happy she cried.

Summer vacations were fun too. Her Mom and Dad took them camping, and her favorite was some place where they had wild ponies. Her brothers complained because what’s the point if you can’t ride them? She loved her brothers, but she worried about them. Oh well, boys will be boys – still, she worried.

Then there was the day she got so worried that she couldn’t even find a word for it. There was this plant called queen Anne’s lace that grew over their neighbor’s fence. It was there by that fence that she would sit in the sun and talk to the bees. They were buzzing and telling her about their busy bee lives, and how it all came together with the earth and the sun and the wind and the rain.

That year she had looked out to the neighbors’ fence as usual and watched the queen Anne’s lace sprout out of the earth, and its tendrils grasp at the fence, and the fence grow thick with leaves, and the pink flowers pop out heart-shaped, little hearts opening to the sun’s kiss… That year she kept looking and waiting for her friends the bees to show up. She went over and sat by the fence, waiting. And waiting. That summer, the bees didn’t come.

She talked to her teacher. Her teacher looked at her funny, and told her not to worry. She tried talking to her parents, but they were busy. They were busy with meetings and conferences. And her brothers, they just played games on their smart phones, and watched something else they snickered about – about some girl called Helen – but wouldn’t show her. Whatever.

After a while, she stopped talking to them. She stopped talking altogether. She watched TV. The people on TV, their words bounced back and forth, back and forth like balls.

She didn’t like school anymore. Some days she wouldn’t go. Instead, she went to the most important building in the city, sat down on its steps, and just stayed there. Her Mom and Dad, they took her to doctors. They said that they would really, really listen if only she would speak to them. She finally opened her mouth and told them about the bees. That was it? That’s right – didn’t they get it?

They said they did, and started taking her to the meetings and conferences. People started taking her picture, and now she too was on TV. She tried to tell them, but it was like the sound was off, no one could hear her, like it was all inside her head.

Maybe not. Some people spoke about water the way she spoke about bees. They called themselves the Water Defenders. They proclaimed the sacredness of the nearby river, while the other side insisted that the world’s life blood circulated in oil pipes, which they intended to build. They moved their soldiers against the Defenders.

Her brothers didn’t care, they wanted to be heroes. She was asking them about science, like how come her bees had gone away? But the only science boys care about is the science that turns their bows and arrows into nuclear-armed rockets.

In the meantime, her parents kept trying different options. They took her to those summits where the whole world meets for a pow wow. It had happened somewhere in Japan, and more recently in Paris, and this time some place in Poland. It was fun, actually. So many people gathered from around the world and filled the streets. They were wearing their beautiful regalia and waving Extinction Rebellion signs and holding hands and dancing together and singing with one voice.

On this one occasion she stood with them out on the street, looking up at the building where the important people were. It was a fancy building. Somebody said it was meant to reproduce a coal mine. REALLY? Actually, from the outside it looked to her like a giant horse. Its pillars looked like legs. Its roof bent downward on one side like it had a tail, and rose up on the other side, like it was lifting its head.

A HORSE? REALLY? Something was VERY wrong. She tried to warn her friends, she begged them to stay away. But they said that the important people awaited them inside and everybody expected her to speak for them. So she did, and the important people stood all up and clapped. That happened when they invited her to a special session somewhere in Switzerland: a place called Davos.

Things took on unexpected turns after that. Her voice began to multiply on all the TV screens in the voices of other girls: girls from Africa and Asia and the Pacific Islands… And they all spoke such faultless English… It’s a small world, after all, as the Coca-Cola ditty goes.

But Cassie didn’t like Coca Cola. At any rate, something bothered her. The way she had obsessed about bees before, she now obsessed about horses. Everywhere they took her, the buildings with the important people inside them looked like giant horses.

Her brothers made fun of her: they had all the super-defense systems in place: they should worry about horses? She didn’t mean real horses, she meant pretend horses. They ignored her. She should go back to her girly stuff: saving the earth by mirroring the sun beams back at the sun and waving the arms of wind mills.

What they were saying confused Cassie. Maybe the important people in the horse buildings were only pretending to listen? After all, they knew how to pull strings. But like the gods of Olympus in the good old days of Troy, they too didn’t know how to get along, and got involved taking sides.

So who could she turn to? But the crowd pressed forward, taking her with them. And the important people shook with laughter, and spoke of the next summit.