The Fable of Prince Leo and the Firefly (Or the Beauty of Not-Knowing)

Every story begins differently. Even those that begin in the exact same words can be imbued with different meaning, different intonation, different timing. So in a few moments when I utter the words “Once upon a time,” that most classic and my favorite of beginnings, you have no reason to believe that you have heard my particular story, no reason to have some premonition of what may come. And I assure you that my story will not have dragons, or witches, or damsels, who may or may not be in distress. There will, however, be a prince. And his name is Leo.
Once upon a time, there was a young boy named Leo. In fact, he was no older than you, having a small build, feet that were slightly too large, and a noticeable shock of yellow hair on his head. He was crown prince of a small, island off of the southeastern tip of Louisiana, and though he was a prince, few would have believed it from his clothes. His oversized and faded clothes hung on him in tattered threads, and one could hardly tell if it had been the wear of years or the wear of the sun or perhaps both that gave way to his disheveled appearance. But clothes do not make the prince, and any man that lay eyes on him would have known immediately that he was royalty from the determined look in his brilliant green eyes. That and from the crown upon his head, crafted from the branches of the lone orange tree on his island. Orange blossoms and even whole fruits danced on the twigs with each motion, even the slightest shiver, of our prince. And wherever he walked, the scent of young oranges preceded him.
Now, when I said the island was small, I mean to say very small. In fact, it was no larger than a couple rooms in your house. Or a large whale, which, though it is a whale, is very small when it comes to islands. And perhaps because of its miniscule size, it remained undiscovered. Or perhaps one man in a grand ship had, in fact, discovered it once, but seeing it through the lens of his spyglass, he decided it was simply too insignificant to interrupt his journey. And perhaps this had actually happened many times over and many more times, but each time the mapmakers asked of details of the sea, the island was so small and so forgettable that the sailors simply lost it in the fog of their memories. Whether this happened, I cannot quite say, but for whatever reason, the island sat untouched, undisturbed, and as I said, undiscovered.
How Leo came to be prince of this small piece of land off the southeastern tip of Louisiana, he did not quite know or recall, but he cared for his island with dignity and a good heart. He tended to the lone orange tree and patrolled the perimeter of the shore. He built sandcastles and watched them dissolve by the morning. This he did not mind, the waves carrying out their minute-by-minute advance on the land. The waves washed away his castles, and he was able to build a grander place the following day, dreaming in the evenings of his plans for the next great construction. And he looked out onto the distant waves of the Gulf, studying that place where the water and the sky reach out to each other. There was only water and sky in all directions as far as he could see, and his island was the very center.
He had but two subjects: the wise mockingbird and the flamingo, who was less wise. And though they were his subjects, he treated them as friends and he treated them as equals, showing no favoritism. The mockingbird came during the winter months when the northern winds blew cold. She would build her nest in the orange tree, but when that northern wind blew especially cold, she would burrow in the crook of Prince Leo’s arm as he slept. At the summer solstice, she would take her leave to be replaced by the flamingo, who summered with the prince during the scorching season’s heat. And the two would pass the longer days practicing their balance on one leg as the small gulf waves lapped the shore and their ankles. That is, until the sweat began to bead on our prince’s brow, and they would lie in the shade of the orange tree, waiting for the sun to set allowing the island sand to cool. Not once did the mockingbird see the flamingo, nor the flamingo the mockingbird. But the two always left the prince with the same invitation, “Dear Prince Leo, come away with us to farther places and see the world.”
Prince Leo always responded kindly in his selfsame manner, “No, thank you. This is my kingdom, and here I am prince.” And the mockingbird and the flamingo, as flighty birds always moving from north to south or south to north and then back yet again, admired the prince for his contentedness.
There were only two nights in the year that the prince was ever alone, truly alone: first when the mockingbird left in the evening to be replaced by the flamingo and again when the flamingo took his leave to be replaced by the mockingbird. But on these nights, Prince Leo did not fret nor would he cry, for this is hardly a princely thing to do. Rather, he would look up at the vast night sky and talk to the stars. The stars were his favorite things in the entire world, and he admired them for their ability to fly in the air without rest, as if a magic string suspended them in a canopy above him. He knew each of them by name. There was the beautiful Alexandria at the tip of Ursa Major, the boastful Xeres embedded within the center of Orion’s Belt, and the wavering Agra at the panhandle of the Little Dipper. When he came upon a star that he did not know the name of, he would ask ever so politely, “What, dear star, is your name?” He always asked in his politely princely manner for stars are very prideful, and he did not wish to insult them. He only wished to befriend them. When each star responded, he would take a small twig from his orange tree crown and note the name, carefully writing it in the sand, so he would never forget. The island was full of the names of the stars. And he passed the nights of the solstices conversing with the stars, and he was no longer lonely.
It was on one of these nights that something rather peculiar, and some might even say extraordinary, happened. As the flamingo said goodbye and dusk fell upon the island, Prince Leo noticed a small star not in the sky but hovering on the horizon of the waters. It was in the far-off distance, and the prince squinted to see why it had fallen from its heights in the sky. And as he watched it, he realized that the star was drawing closer and closer to the island. He called out to it, “What, dear star, is your name?” But no response came back to him over the waters. Thinking that the star could not hear him, he called out louder, “What, dear star, is your name?” But yet again, no response came back to him over the waters, and for this he was afraid.
And he watched the tiny light come closer and closer to his island. Prince Leo stood defiantly on the shore, among the names of the stars, and waited for the strange visitor and waited to defend his island. Quite suddenly, the little star was upon his island. It was so little, in fact, that it was no larger than his pinky fingernail. And it was not malicious. It danced around Prince Leo’s head, and in the next moment, it was twirling around his feet. It flew up high, and then low, but never to the ground, flickering the whole time. And the young prince delighted in the tiny light.
But he wished to understand it, for never had he seen a star such as this. Running to his lone orange tree, he found a small glass jar, just big enough for the star. He rushed back to the star, and carefully clasped the lid to the base, sealing the light inside. Sitting at the base of his orange tree, he peered into the jar.
His mind began to race. Perhaps it was a very young star, just born, and perhaps this is why it could not speak to tell him its name. Perhaps it was a fallen shooting star, and in its fall, it had been injured. This must surely be the reason why it could not speak to tell him its name, and now, he would help the noble star return to health and return to its home in the night sky. He looked upon the magical and miraculous light with anticipation. He had never caught a star, his favorite of all the things in the world, and now he had one of his own, right before him. He held his breath, and his heart was full of wonderment.
But what he found was neither magic nor miracle. What the prince saw was a big-eyed, three-bodied, antennaed, and rather unremarkable bug with a thorax powered by glowing pheromonic energy. He was looking upon what we call a firefly. And the prince was disappointed for his magical star had been irreversibly reduced to a bug.
He held the jar up to the light of the moon, hoping to restore his initial excitement. Looking through the glass, he spied a greater swirling cloud of lights high above him. Throwing down the jar at the foot of the orange tree, the cloud swooped down to him. It was a swarm of fireflies — and in their vast number and in the glittering spectacle, the young Prince Leo forgot that they were bugs. And he was once again swept up in the magic of the moment. He danced with them at his feet, practically a-flight, and he hardly remembered when he fell asleep with the thousands upon thousands of fireflies in their romantic frenzy before his eyes. And he did not dream of sandcastles that night but of fireflies and stars.
The sound of the mockingbird’s song fell upon his ears in the early morning. Rubbing his eyes, Prince Leo awoke to find that all of the fantastical fireflies had disappeared. He brought himself out of the sand to begin his morning patrol of the island, and as he was rising, he bumped the small glass jar. Seeing it, he quickly fell upon the vessel. Inside he would find the first firefly, and he would have some way to remember the evening. But picking up the glass, he didn’t see a glow, or even a flickering. The bug lie on the bottom of the jar, black and flightless, its light squelched out. The prince shook the jar and tried to revive the flame, but it remained a motionless speck, dead. And although Prince Leo had never seen death, he knew that the firefly would never be the same. He threw down the jar and fell upon his knees and cried into the sand. He cried because he did not understand what he had done wrong. Seeing the mockingbird in the orange tree above him, he cried out, “The magic is dead.”
The mockingbird in her great wisdom, replied to the prince, “It is not that the magic is dead, dear Leo. It is that you tried to understand the magic, and in your understanding, you changed it. You saw first with the heart before seeing with the mind, and the heart sees so much clearer. You can never have the magic of that first pure sight.”
Leo did not understand the words of the mockingbird, but instead he collected himself up, wiped the tears from his eyes, and said in his polite and measured manner, “I don’t think I am prince of this island anymore. I’m ready to see the world.” He set aside his crown, picked one last orange with the mockingbird, and together they left.
And as the summer solstice came to pass, the flamingo returned to the island, but he did not find Leo. And the names of the stars had disappeared just the same. All he found was the lonely jar with an unremarkable bug.