Flower and Song
Flower and Song — a philosophy story. 10 illustrated pages, narrated, on the kids shelf, free to read on Wonder Philosophy.
Page 1
The wind came off the volcano without warning, rolling down the terraces and slamming into the drying rack where the old king's painted bark-paper pages lay spread in the sun. The rack toppled with a crack, and suddenly the air was full of spinning paper. Citlali dropped her basket strap and lunged, snatching one page out of the sky, then another, then a third pressed flat against her chest. Tepi shouted and threw his whole small body flat onto a fourth page as it skittered across the stone terrace, his drum thudding against the ground. But two more pages caught the gust full on and sailed up over the terrace wall, tumbling end over end down toward the glittering lake far below. The king lunged after them, reaching with both long arms, but his fingers closed on empty air. He stood at the terrace edge, staring down at the lake, his cloak snapping around him in the wind.
Page 2
The aqueduct ran high along the ravine wall, a stone channel no wider than a dinner mat, water hissing through it as fast as a river. One painted page spun in the current, catching on a rock, about to tip over the edge into the chasm below. Tepi dropped flat and crawled along the slick rim on hands and knees, his bowl-cut hair dripping, knees scraping stone. 'Don't let go!' he shouted. The tall king crouched behind him, one long hand locked around the boy's ankle, bracing his own bare feet against a stone lip. Citlali scrambled up from the other side, swinging her flat basket into the channel to dam the flow, grunting as the water piled up against the woven cane. Tepi stretched his drumbeater out over the churning water, hooked the spinning page, and yanked it free just as it slid toward the drop. He tumbled backward into the king's chest, soaked but grinning, the rescued page clutched tight against his little turquoise cloak.
Page 3
The reed canoe, barely longer than three grown men lying head to foot, scraped off the mud and wobbled out into the shallows. Citlali dug her paddle hard against the water while Tepi knelt at the front, fishing net clutched in both fists. The last page spun on the surface ahead, soaked and curling, drifting toward a tall white heron standing motionless in the duckweed. "Paddle faster, it is sinking!" Citlali shouted, and the king leaned his long body sideways, hauling the canoe's edge down to steady it. Tepi lunged, net stabbing out, and scooped the page up just as the startled heron burst upward in a clatter of wings. But the sudden lunge rocked the canoe hard — Citlali grabbed Tepi's cloak to keep him from toppling in, and a wash of green lake water slapped over the side, pouring straight across the little drum strapped to his belly. Tepi yelped, slapping the wet turtle-shell with both hands. "My drum!" he wailed, as Nezahualcoyotl calmly pulled the dripping page from the net and held it up, safe, to the sky.
Page 4
Grandmother Xochipapalotl snatched the dripping pages from Citlali's arms and spread them flat across her hip-high worktable, barking orders between gritted teeth. "Stones, quickly, before they curl!" Citlali scrambled to haul smooth river stones from a basket, pressing one onto each soaked corner. Tepi, hopping up onto a low stool to reach, grabbed for a stone himself and knocked his elbow straight into the squat clay pot of orchid-bulb glue sitting at the table's edge. It toppled, glue sheeting across the floorboards just as a gust from the open rafters shook loose a storm of hummingbird feathers hung to dry overhead. The feathers rained down, sticking fast to the spreading glue — and to Tepi's hair, his bare feet, and the hem of Nezahualcoyotl's blue cloak as he lunged to catch the falling pot. The king staggered back, trailing glittering green and red plumage, while Grandmother clapped both hands to her face in horror at her ruined feathers.
Page 5
The market swallowed them whole — awnings flapping overhead, turkey crates stacked higher than a man's waist, pyramids of red and green chilies taller than Tepi himself. He trotted proudly with two pages balanced on his head, drum bouncing on his belly, until his bare foot caught the corner of a turkey crate. Down he went, arms flailing, and a sack twice his size burst open beside him — a great gasping cloud of blood-red cochineal powder rolling across the flagstones like spilled fire. Citlali shrieked and dropped flat, slapping her basket over the nearest drift to save it. The king knelt, scooping handfuls of the precious red dust into a gourd with his long fingers, while Grandmother Xochipapalotl swept more into her skirt-fold, scolding and laughing at once. Vendors leaned over their stalls, howling with laughter at the small boy sitting dyed red to the elbows. Tepi sat up, blinking through a red-dusted fringe, entirely unbothered, grinning up at them all.
Page 6
The sky went grey all at once, and then the rain came down in sheets. The repainted pages lay drying across the courtyard stones, and Citlali screamed and dove for the nearest stack. Tepi dropped his beaters and ran, hauling a reed mat twice his own height over the pages nearest the huge upright drum. The old king lunged for the far corner, slamming flat sheets of bark together under his arm before the wind could take them. Grandmother threw her whole weight against a toppling pile, but the huehuetl drum — tall as the king himself — rocked, tipped, and rolled thundering across the courtyard, scattering everyone from its path. Rainwater sheeted between the flagstones, and the fresh red and blue glyphs lifted clean off the paper, running in little bright rivers toward the drains. Citlali threw mats over three more pages, Tepi stamped his bare feet into a puddle trying to dam it, and still the color slid away beneath them, glyph by glyph, into the stones.
Page 7
The cedar chest stood waist-high against the wall of the Amoxcalli, bound with cords dark with age. Nezahualcoyotl knelt and lifted its heavy lid with both hands, the hinges groaning. Inside lay the original songs, stacked pages brown as old leaves. Citlali leaned close, reaching to touch the top sheet — and it crumbled under her fingers, sinking into a soft drift of colored dust, red and blue and gold. "Careful!" the king said, grabbing her wrist before she could press further down. Grandmother Xochipapalotl hovered her fan protectively over the chest, as if she could shield what was already gone. Then Tepi, nose twitching from the powdery cloud, let out an enormous sneeze. The dust burst upward, glittering wildly in the lamplight, swirling over all their heads before settling. Nobody laughed. Nezahualcoyotl reached down slowly and closed the lid, quiet and final, his long hands pressing it shut as though tucking something to sleep.
Page 8
With every old page ruined, there was only one thing left to do: make new paper from nothing. Tepi ran back and forth from the river, hauling gourds so full they sloshed over his toes and down his turquoise cloak, dumping each one into a stone trough as wide as his own reach. Citlali knelt over the gravel, laying soaked strips of fig-bark side by side in a careful crossed grid, pressing each one flat with her palms before reaching for the next from the heap on her basket. Grandmother knelt behind her, pounding the overlapping strips again and again with her grooved stone, flattening fibers into a single pale sheet. Nezahualcoyotl lifted the finished boards, heavy and dripping, and carried them out past the fig trees into open sun, setting them down carefully on raised drying racks above the gravel. Steam curled faintly off the wet bark. Nobody spoke of the lost book; they simply built it again, sheet by sheet, hands blistered and sleeves soaked through.
Page 9
The stairway rose a hundred stone steps, each one knee-high, climbing straight up the temple's face like a ladder to the sky. Tepi scrambled up two at a time, drum bouncing on his belly, until Grandmother Xochipapalotl grabbed his cord and hauled him the last stretch. Citlali climbed steadily behind, the blank new book hugged flat against her chest, while Nezahualcoyotl steadied her elbow at the crumbling edges. At the flat summit they dropped to their knees, chests heaving, the whole lamplit city spread below like scattered stars. Tepi slammed his beaters down on the drum's skin — one, two, three strong strikes echoing out over the rooftops. For a breath, nothing. Then a voice floated up from a courtyard, then another from a canoe, then dozens, hundreds, the whole sleeping song rising back out of the city line by line. Citlali flattened the blank book across her knees and scratched fast with her reed pen, chasing the words before the wind could steal them twice.
Page 10
The floating garden raft rocks gently under their feet, knee-deep in black mud, as the sun climbs red over the volcano's smoking peak. Citlali kneels first, pressing marigold seeds into the soft earth with her thumb, one after another in a neat row. Tepi crouches beside her, scooping handfuls of mud and patting it flat over each seed, his drum bumping his knees as he leans forward. Grandmother Xochipapalotl kneels at the raft's edge, lifting fresh song-books from a woven basket and fanning her huge quetzal feather over them to dry the ink before handing them down. The king wades to the water's edge, bending his tall frame to pass each book into waiting hands as canoe after canoe glides close, children reaching up eagerly. "Take it and sing it loud enough for the lake to hear!" he calls, pressing a book into a boy's grip. Citlali straightens, flower-dirt on her palms, shouting the first line across the water, and Tepi beats his drum to start the rhythm. One by one the canoes pull away, children's voices rising together, the whole song drifting back to them across the canals.
About this story
- Audience: kids (ages 6–12)
- Format: 10 illustrated pages, narrated, on the kids shelf, free to read on Wonder Philosophy
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