THE YEAR of the PANDA

by Paul Fattaruso

There was something wrong with the sky when I left the palace with my new panda; the clouds seemed upside-down, though when I considered it, I couldn’t rightly say what identified the top of a cloud as the top, or the bottom as the bottom, and if the daytime moon seemed to shine a bit too brightly, it might be my eyes still adjusting to the full outside light. But I couldn’t get over some pith of dissimilarity between this sky and the sky as I’d last left it. We were under some distant cousin of the old sky. I took a look at the panda. He looked agreeably back at me. Then I looked up at the sky, with what I hoped he would take for a worried face, as if to say to him, “Does this seem right to you?” The panda gave a sad quiet growl and scratched in the grass a little. So he didn’t like it either.

 

The panda was a gift from the palace for my act of heroism, which was this: On a late summer afternoon, I had taken off sick from my job at the chicken factory, and was chasing after a huge blue butterfly, just for the chance to see it another minute before it flew out of sight, when the princess landed on me. She’d fallen from her hang-glider, and broke half the bones in my body. I spent over a year in traction at the palace, eating every sort of filet, seasoned according to the season, and much fine creme brulee. I spent my mornings in conversation with an array of royal nurses, and my afternoons studying the grain in the mahogany ceiling.

 

At last I was healed, and set loose into the countryside with my new panda. He looked like a toy, but his slightest movement, a little gesture with his nose, was fearsome for its massive grace. He was so strong he bruised the air he moved in. Now, the palace just out of sight behind us, he motioned for me to climb onto his back, and we rode around the earth, three thousand times, hunting berries.