At the End of the World and Beyond
translated by Magdalena Mullek
This translation first appeared in Children’s Books from Slovakia 2019.
Reprinted with permission of Slovak Literary Centre.
A Bug’s Journey
Even an ordinary bug does something crazy once in a while. It sails on a leaf to the other side of a river, flies across the ocean hidden in a flight attendant’s hair, crawls into a sleeping rhino’s ear or into a sleeping boy’s nose. We don’t know why the bug does it; perhaps it’s curious or willful, or perhaps the whole thing is an accident.
One day such a bug, about the size of an orange seed, crawled all the way to the top of the tallest tree in the forest. It found a comfortable spot beneath some peeling bark, and took a look around.
The forest was sinking into darkness, and nighttime animals were already awake. The bug could hear a fox walk quietly down below, a bat maneuver between branches, a mouse rustle in the grass. A bird that lived in the tree hollow was preening its feathers, and ants marched toward their anthill.
A wind blew from the north, and the top of the tree swayed precariously. In the east several birds took flight, and on the southern edge of the forest there was supposed to be nothing but darkness. But from up high many lights were visible, which had been overshadowed by the stars. The lights flickered and changed colors, they turned on and off; the bug couldn’t stop looking at them. It wanted to fly closer, but it knew that it could not cover such a distance on its tiny wings. When a magpie landed on the branch, the bug saw its opportunity and slipped in between its tail feathers.
The bug let itself be carried all the way to the edge of that lake of lights, to the roof of a 16-story apartment building. A flickering city lay before it.
The bug walked along the metal roof, crawled into several cracks, felt every barrier it came across with its antennae, and found a hiding spot in an area that wasn’t windy and had a good view of the city.
Amazed, the bug watched a 12-lane highway, which wound its way near the apartment building, and brought thousands of cars to the city.
A knocking sound interrupted the bug’s musings. It raised its antennae, straightened out its transparent wings that stuck out from beneath their grey wing cases, and looked around. In addition to several antennas and a lightning rod, there was an elevator machine room on the roof of the building – a boxy little house with a door and a window facing the city. A light appeared in the window, bounced and shook for a moment, but after a while it stopped moving and illuminated two pinkish faces with black eyes. The little bug didn’t know what kind of animals they were; they didn’t look like any creatures it had seen in the forest. It was afraid of them, but it was also drawn to the light.