A New COVID-19 Fable

NOTE: To see a video of Author Lisa Suhay reading this fable on YouTube CLICK HERE .

Anor and her brother Divoc were as different as could be.

Anor was outgoing. Wherever she went she made a new friend. This was because she greeted absolutely everyone she met, from people walking past to the dogs they were walking.

She was also a hugger and a shaker of many hands.

“You really have to stop that,” her brother chided. “’ Tis the worst of all things to endanger yourself in such a way. Who knows what these people might be? A Duster? A king? A liker of broccoli, even.”

Anor giggled.

“An eater of broccoli??” she teased. “Oh! Far and away worse than any plague carrier or robber in the night. You must learn to relax.”

“Never!” thought Divoc. He had relaxed once upon a time and no good had come from it.

Also, any kind of plant that flowered yellow - or let off greenish-yellow pollen - was not to be trusted in his experience.

Nor were Kings.

Divoc was 19, while Anor was much younger. He remembered the days when everyone in the kingdom - and even the whole of the world - had been locked away in their homes for months and months on end

This was back in the dark days when the Sickenmore Trees all around the world came into full flower all at once causing The Great Plantdemic.

Anor had been born after the final quarantine ended.

She had never known the feeling a child has when he’s taught that beyond “Never talk to strangers” the rule is - “When you see a person, run!”

Divoc and children all around the world had spent nearly a year living by a new rhyme:

If you go walking, night or day

See a person? RUN AWAY!

No time to chat. Don’t stay to play.

Turn around and RUN AWAY!

No matter if they’re meek and mild,

Run run run away, my child.

At first, the dust spores from the trees were easy to spot when they rose, like glitter, into the air and fell straight down to blanket the ground.

Some leaders sounded the alarm early because the flowers in their own gardens had warned them, "Beware the Dust. Wash it all away. Live to breathe another day."

The very best leaders were not politicians, but gardeners who knew how to make everything from trust to the economy grow. They understood that the trees had changed as the soil in which they grew was soured.

In their cities, they made it the law for everyone to stay in their homes until the spores had been settled and scrubbed from the planet.

They hosed and scrubbed sidewalks, cars, buildings and even PEOPLE with special mixtures that dissolved the spores.

Not all leaders were so worldly-wise.

Some, a very few, leaders insisted the Plantdemic was “silly nonsense” and should be ignored. They even called the Sickenmore Trees “lovely.”

Craven Hornswaggler, King of land in which Anor and Divoc lived, was the absolute worst of all.

Not only did Hornswaggler tell his subjects that the tree pollen would be harmless, he went so far as to suggest they collect it in little bags to use as lucky charms against all illness.

The Rose Garden that grew outside the King’s window cried out each time he passed, “Beware the dust! Avoid your fate! Act now before it's too late!”

The King glared at the roses. “I thought you were always supposed to be rosie? I expect only good news from you."

"Be rosie or be gone,” he commanded.

The earth itself tried to shake up the King.

Hornswoggler faltered, made missteps, but was unmoved.

“He’s not listening,” cried the water in the garden's fountain in despair. “He can’t see the forest for the Sickemore Trees.”

Then came the winds of change that carried and scattered the specks of pollen as an invisible force that blanketed the whole of the world.

In an effort to gain the love of his people old Hornswaggler ordered gold to be distributed throughout the land.

But the people knew that gold was of little use when protection and action were needed. They demanded more of their King.

In response, Hornswaggler ordered that the great Rose Garden be demolished. In its place he transplanted an entire forest of the Sickenmore Trees just to prove how safe they were.

“Fear not!” the King announced from atop the highest tower of his fortress where the air was clear. “For I am well!”

With that said he brought in massive fans to blow away the dust from the newly planted grove of Sickenmore Trees. His aim was to demonstrate how easy it was to clear the air.

Let it be said, here, now and forever, that this was a man who would go down in history as the “Plantdemic Pollinator” - not a clearer of air.

The spores spread by touch, by breath and even footsteps.

The spores had very different effects on people.

Some needed only one touch or breath by a single spore to be stricken with a terrible illness.

Others could breathe and even cover themselves in the spores and never be harmed. Yet they were harmed by the terrible grief they felt later for being the carriers of the Plantdemic.

Divoc, who was 9 at the time, was what all would later angrily refer to as "a Duster." He was immune to the effects of the Syckenmore trees, but carried the dust without a thought for the safety of others.

As the days passed he grew restless and bored. He decided to sneak away from the house and meet a group of others for games at a local park.

This was before the scientists invented the special glasses that allowed people to see the footprints of a so-called “Duster.”

The grass beneath his feet shouted for him to stop, but people had forgotten how to hear the voice of Nature.

Dogs in every yard he passed barked out a warning, which he ignored.

And so it was that Divoc crept back into his house that evening carrying the fine spores on his shoes, clothes, in his hair and on his very breath.

He never told anyone he’d gone out, so his mother, father and grandparents – all sheltering together – never had the chance to make him wash up or clean his clothes.

While his mother survived, his father and grandparents perished soon after.

Years later his mother married again and Anor was born into a new world filled with more caution and less people.

Now Divoc looked down at his sister and envied her open and carefree ways.

“Tell me again what happened to the old King,” she said brightly. “Did he ever change his ways?”

Divoc shook his head, “Not at all!”

“Hornswaggler – or Old Duster as he's known to the history books – continued his reign for a few brief years before one of his own Sickemore Trees, made frail by the fans blowing on it for so long, fell on him as he stood outside his castle giving another fine speech about how it had all been just a bad dream.”

Anor shook her head.

“Well then, ‘Tis a good thing we have ourselves a Queen now,” she said. “All the Sickenmore Trees are gone and people are listening to the new Rose Garden now that the King is done and Dusted.”