THE STORY

The Mantis and the Moon

By Marguerite Poland & Leigh Voigt

There was a mantis who tried to catch the moon.
He wished to sit on it and cross the sky each night so that all the animals would say - "There is the mantis traveling on the moon. He must surely be a god and we must praise him."
Then the mantis could ride majestically at last, looking down on the great dry desert where he lived - at the camelthorns and empty watercourses and the herds of springbok gazing at him. He would be proud, for they would think he really was a god, and every creature would revere him.
But the mantis was just an insect and the moon was far away. Even the night birds whose shadows dipped across its face would never reach it - so how could a mantis fly there - he with the short, whirring wings? But the mantis was a dreamer and when he sat rocking back and forth on a twig, or cupped in a leaf, he thought only of the moon and a way to get there.
The moon was elusive for it did not always rise at the same time.
The mantis decided to capture it as it peered over the horizon - then it was big and cumbersome and clambered slowly into the sky.
For when it was high and white it was distant, moving swiftly, and often it disappeared before it reached the far horizon, becoming faint and white like a fragment of forgotten cloud in the rising light of the sun.
The mantis waited impatiently all day until the shadows crept out from under stones and bushes, hunting across the dry ground for each other so they could mingle in the cool patches without the heat to wither them.
He watched until the sky was pale green - where the bright daylight and the blue darkness met.
And the moon rose, it came so silently he nearly missed it.
There it was, caught in the branches of a camelthorn.
The mantis flew to the tree in short, urgent bursts.
He hurried up the trunk - half running, half flying, climbing between the thorns and the drooping fronds of tiny oval leaves.
The moon was above him, pinned to the topmost twigs.
He struggled upwards and pounced, but he overbalanced and although he steadied himself to spring again, the moon had gone.
It was cradled in the branches of a baobab - resting quietly, it seemed, waiting for the mantis to unharness it.
He flew with a whirr and click of wings to the foot of the baobab, which stretched up its mighty branches to tangle with the stars.
The mantis started up the trunk - a long journey for a small creature.
But when he reached the cradle of the tree the moon had climbed ahead and was anchored to the tree above him.
The mantis flew at it - determined to catch it before it broke loose.
When he got there it was gone, moving on, smaller and very far away.
As the moon waned it rose later each night.
The mantis was drowsy with watching and too slow to reach it.
There were times when there was no moon at all and the desert creatures were uneasy - for although the moon always returns to light their grazing grounds, perhaps, one night, it will just keep on falling into the great wastes of sky below the earth and never turn and rise again over the desert; slim and curved and supple as a hunting-bow.
The mantis tried to catch that new young moon but it was lithe and swift and even the acacias could not hold it with their sharp white thorns.
"I shall make a trap," declared the mantis and he wove a rope out of dry grass and tied it in a noose around a stick.
He hid among some rocks on a high ridge where he was above the moon when it rose - full and orange and as heavy as a calabash of thick, sour milk.
When his noose was silhouetted against it, he tugged - for surely the rope would tighten round it long enough for him to scramble up.
But the noose knotted on itself and fell empty to the ground and the moon rose higher, undisturbed.
The mantis crept into a bush to think and there he pondered, brown as the dead leaves caught in its tangled stems.
Somehow he must catch the moon and ride on it.
How else could one so small be a god? There was no other way to be noticed and praised by the animals.
He cut a stake and sharpened it and set it on the hilltop.
It would pierce the moon and hold it, like a big white baobab flower caught on a thorn.
Again the mantis hid as the moon rose above the ridge of hills.
It moved slowly towards the stake.
"Oh foolish moon!" he cried.
"Now I have caught you! Oh wise and cunning Mantis!" But the stake only traced a shadow on its face and the moon was gone, climbing higher, up into the night.
The mantis shouted with rage and broke the stake in two.
He went to plan another way to outwit the moon.
He made a djani (A toy made by bushman children) - a length of reed and a partridge feather tied to a short twist of sinew, weighted with a stone.
Tossed into the air, it would spiral to the ground - fast as a falling star.
Surely it would twist itself around the moon and bring it down? When the moon was new - a small sickle he could easily capture - he took his djani up into the tallest baobab and waited.
When the rising moon was level with his hiding place he flung the djani at it.
It flew like a whip, curling across the curve of the moon.
Then it dropped gently, the feather fluttering like a small, falling bird.
The mantis ripped the stone off the djani and threw it on the ground.
The moon became full once more and the mantis followed it to see where it went when it sank below the horizon.
He flew from bush to bush, stone to stone, watching it circle the sky.
He came upon a waterhole deep in the sand, trampled by many hooves - and there, far below, was the moon, caught in the water.
Stealthily he crept down the steep bank where the coarse dark sand was damp.
He paused, gazing at the bright, hovering disc.
He pounced on it, clutching at it with his spiny claws.
But he sank gasping under the water, then struggled to the bank wet and afraid.
And still the moon lay there - bright and glowing.
Many times the mantis tried to pry the moon out of the water - but he failed.
At last, in anger, he took a rock and hurled it, cursing the moon.
The stone shattered the reflection and a thousand splinters of the moonlight pierced the mantis's eyes.
He ran away, far from the waterhole where he thought the moon was caught, and hid in a thorn tree.
He could not ease the splinters from his eyes and in everything he saw were bright beams of moonlight.
He could not sleep - there was no darkness in which to rest.
He no longer wished to be a god and sit astride the moon so that the desert animals would praise him and he wondered how he could have hoped for that.
He crept up the thorn tree to where the branches reached into the warm evening air.
He waited there until the moon rose - for him, a great fragmented light.
He held out his front legs to it - folded up because he prayed - and he begged the moon to give him back his sight.
He swayed gently on a twig, his head bent - a small and humble insect.
And the moon kept on rising, higher and whiter than before.
Then at last it set at the edge of the dessert's barren wastes, and still the mantis sat, bowing to it as he prayed.
When daylight came, it was pale and steady and the shadows of the thorn trees fell sharply on the sand: bird-flight was clear and swift and the mantis knew the moon had taken all the splinters from his eyes.
That was long ago - when the great herds wandered freely from the sea to the vast, dry plains of Heikum (Bushman people).
But the children of the mantis live there still, brown and green as the leaves that change with the seasons.
And they sit, their forelegs held up in praise of the moon who forgave and restored the sight of their ancestor - the small short-winged one, who wished to be a god.