Title: GORKY OF THE WILD WILD WOODS
You think you know everything! You also think you've seen everything if you are one of those two-legged two-armed humans. But you are wrong!
For instance, you probably don’t have a single friend who is a ladybug (you can call me a ladybird if you like, many people do, who don’t like bugs generally speaking). And you certainly don’t know one with nine spots on her back, and definitely not one named “Gorky”! Yes, yes, why, you ask, brag about having a human boy’s name, a Russian word that means “bitter"? I had no control over my birth name. And I am not proud of being named after a Russian Socialist writer. But those nine markings on my forewings are something else. My nine spots are not just window dressing. Those spots are unique. They might bring you good luck if you and I were good friends. The more spots, the more luck. "If you save a ladybug's life, you'll be rewarded with as many years of good luck as there are spots on its back." That is what the myth promises.
We ladybugs are not all alike, even if you think so, because you two-legged humans who can’t fly, think you are so observant. There are 6000 varieties of us coccinellidae! Some of us are fancier than others. Some of us are red, some orange or yellow, some even a less showy brown. Diversity, thy name is Ladybug!
And we do not huddle inside all our lives, like you hominids— in a condo or a high-rise apartment building. Or in a village, a town, or even in a place like a hospital, a prison, or a jail.
We ladybugs are gifted enough to live outdoors! All year long. In fact, some of us live high up in the trees you pass without seeing us, or down in burrows and hutches where you can't step on us.
I know because, like I said, I am Gorky, the red-backed ladybug with the nine lucky markings who lives outside in a paper bag house tucked inside the roots of a mighty oak tree in a forest called the Wild Wild Woods. It is a humble home. I have an orange peel for a bed, and that’s about it.
But here is where my story begins.
I did not always live outside. Long ago (in ladybug years, which is about 8 weeks), I used to live inside (especially during the inhospitable winter months) with my ladybug family. Not just inside mind you, but inside the Cobblestone Castle, which is perched up on the sunny side of a hill that seems halfway to heaven. I was friends with Allie, one of the twin princesses who were daughters of the good King Siegfried. Yes, King Siegfried was known throughout the land as the good king.
But there was another king and another castle nearby. A bad king named King Exos, in another castle called Blackmoor on the dark side of a second hill.
One day, good King Siegfried was in a bad mood after a bitter disagreement with his rival King Exos, and he punished good golden-haired Allie for pulling a prank on the downstairs servants that her not-so-good-natured sister Gwendolyn had actually been responsible for. Princess Gwendolyn resembled her sister neither in disposition nor in physical appearance. Allie was no taller than three crates of autumn apples. Gwendolyn, by contrast, was dishonest and conniving and hated her gentle sister. The good king did a bad thing that day when he sent Allie down to the dungeon deep in the damp and quiet cellar of the castle, where the rats scurried and the snakes slithered. She was to stay there until she confessed and repented. Little did anyone know that King Exos, for a lark and for revenge, had put a spell on his enemy, making King Siegfried as evil to those around him as he, Exos, himself had always been.
When I heard this (we, ladybugs, gossip just like you humans), I recruited my queen bee friend Beebee and her worker bees, who swarmed the guard and stung him until he unlocked the dungeon door and let poor Allie go. When the King found out about this mischief, he banished the guard, banned me, and all the other “meddling” ladybugs from the castle. He threatened to turn us all into a pack of warring black crows if we were ever to return!
We fled back to the Wild Wild woods. Well, I fled. Not every self-respecting ladybug wants to live in a paper bag at the base of an oak tree. We ladybugs are not birds of a feather, so to speak. And I thought I would be there in the forest forever with my squirrel and chipmunk friends. I felt safe, but I missed my friend Aimee.
Meanwhile, by the ladybug grapevine, I heard that the good King had once again been duped by Gwendolyn, who blamed her sister for stealing the celebratory cake for the royal birthday party. In truth, it was Gwendolyn who had smashed the elaborate 12-layer cake and tossed it into the rose garden. Allie was once again marched down into the lower regions of the castle, to a second dungeon, this one even grimmer than the last. With not a single window and only a single meal of water and dry bread delivered to her once a day. With a simple salad on the sabbath.
Then, one Sunday, while I was sunning outdoors on an elephant leaf in the Wild Wild Woods, a young girl strolled by with her guardian, found me, plucked the leaf, and carried me back to the very castle I had been exiled from the year before! That girl was Princess Gwendolyn!
Gwendolyn carried me back to the castle on that leaf. And left the leaf in the kitchen near the day’s gathering of greens. I hid under the lettuces and, before long, the maids had unknowingly tossed me into the bowl with the other greens, and I was being carried down to the dungeon to Allie’s cell.
“Allie, it’s me, Gorky! Let me sit on your finger and lightly brush my back, over the nine markings, make a wish. Make three.”
With that single stroke, the dungeon cell door sprang open, and Allie was free!
“Make another wish, Allie. “
It was the last two wishes that changed everything. King Siegfried appeared, as “good” King Siegfried once again, swept his daughter up into his arms with me on her shoulder, and brought her back up into the common room of the castle. And there was Princess Gwendolyn, by the luck of a ladybug, a transformed Gwendolyn with tears of apology in her eyes, wrapping her arms around her twin sinister.
“My ladybug wish was that both my father and Gwendolyn would love me again. Thank you, Gorky.”
My ladybug job was done, and I did return to my home in the Wild Wild Woods. But during the cold months, I overwinter in the Cobblestone Castle. I have a special seat at the royal table, on a big elephant leaf.
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