Around the World in December

December Around The World

Tartaruga Barros

When December completed thirty-one days, he opened the door, but January wasn’t there. December put his snout out in the air, and sniffed, but there was no sign of January anywhere.

December was quite ready to go back to his cosy cave, where he’d make a little fire (hidden from the other polar bears, who would laugh at him if they knew), and sleep until the end of winter. Every year December thought, It would be nice to spend some more time with January, who seems like such a nice little arctic fox, but, in the end, December went to his cave with a new pillow or kitchen towel, peppermint tea, poems from Burns, Keats, or anything from Stevenson.

‘How can you read?’ asked January three years earlier. ‘With your claws, I mean. I find it difficult to turn pages with my paws.’ She raised her little white arctic fox’s paw, and turned it from one side to the other. ‘You forgot a Jules Verne here last time, and it took me the whole year to go around the world in 80 days.’

‘A polar bear has his ways,’ said December.

December thought January was a very nice arctic fox, but a little bit too bouncy. She ran up and down the frozen lake for no good reason, jumped over boulders and winter trees when she could have easily walked around them; rolled on the snow, then shook herself, creating a tiny snow storm around her small, furry body. She always asked things. December barely had the time to finish answering one question, January was already asking another three.

‘Why don’t you move to England?’ January asked two years earlier. ‘Since you like the English so much, I mean.’

‘Stevenson, Burns and Scott were Scottish. Only Keats was English.’

‘Well, they certainly aren’t here from Alaska. You should go there, where they lived.’

‘Me? Off into the world?’

‘Why not? I bet English December will have nothing to do once English January takes over.’

The idea was so absurd that December, without even answering, left for his cosy cave. But, next year, there was the little white fox, asking:

‘What do you think foreign months look like? Have you noticed that none of us has wings? So many creatures with wings, but not a month that can fly. Even humans, born wingless, have created their own wings.’

‘We aren’t human,’ said December.

January was very quiet, then she sat on her haunches, and said:

‘I have heard that Japanese foxes can turn into humans.’ Her voice sounded like the calm before a storm.

‘What for?’ asked December.

That was last year. This year, January didn’t show up. December went looking for help. The animal he looked for was a brown faced white sheep who was always going through an existential crisis. This year, the sheep had joined a herd of buffalos.

‘Still not right,’ said February to himself. ‘I’m still incomplete, wrong, different. I’m smaller than the buffalos.

‘February,’ called December. ‘We have a problem.’ He told the sheep everything, from January’s questions to her disappearance.

‘Indeed, this is a problem,’ said February. ‘Do you really think, is it really possible, that January left Alaska? I’ve never heard of a month wandering out of his or her climatic region before. It is as unimaginable as Alaska itself going out for a stroll.’

‘We have to find her,’ said December.

‘Leave? Me? No. I mean, we can’t leave Alaska without supervision,’ said February.

The polar bear scratched his neck. February was right, somebody had to run the weather until they found January.

‘Maybe we should wait,’ said February. ‘Look after the place until January comes back.’

To December, that sounded like the right thing to do. Months can’t simply go strolling around the world as if they were migrating birds. That just didn’t happen. However, he was very worried about January. The arctic fox had always been very curious, and would sometimes dive into the snow just to smell the sleeping earth beneath the cold, but January had always been punctual. She measured her snow with care, shaped her clouds with diligence, sculpted her temperature with precision, sometimes even artistically.

‘We have to find her,’ said December.

February spent many minutes chewing on a decision, until December said:

‘If you can stay in her place, I’ll go look for her.’

The sheep immediately agreed, relieved that December didn’t want him to go along on this journey. February didn’t even complain that he’d have to readjust all of his instruments in order to keep Alaska in its tracks until it was time for him to actually take over.

‘When you last saw her,’ asked December, ‘did she say anything? Did she give you any hint of where she might have gone?’

February cocked his head, and chewed on that.

‘Actually, she did say something,’ said February. ‘I thought she was joking, because it was too absurd, but January said she was going to see Mexico.’

December went to Anchorage. The human vehicles, which moved and expelled a strong smell of diesel and smoke, stopped for him to pass. Humans themselves hid inside buildings and closed the doors, except for the ones with helmets and black clothes. They carried weapons with long, thick barrels, and they smelled of rubber and adrenaline. They shot tranquilizing projectiles that must do something to normal bears, but which slid down December’s white fur, and fell on that harsh human road. These people with helmets followed December into Ted Stevens International Airport. Other humans appeared, with other kinds of weapons that, instead of barrels, had lenses, and didn’t shoot projectiles. Some humans stayed behind the polar bear, yapping to the lenses, while December tried to buy a ticket from the man at the counter. He was a very confused man, and December had to repeat himself several times before he finally produced a ticked to Mexico City.

‘Are you filming some kind of practical joke?’ the man asked the people yapping at the lenses behind the bear.

A helpful old lady pushed the polar bear’s haunches when he got stuck at the metal detector. At the passport checkpoint, December said, ‘I don’t have a passport,’ and the officer just shook his head and motioned him through.

‘What is that supposed to mean?’ asked a human being behind December. ‘You can’t make an exception! What if he’s a terrorist?’

On the plane, December sat at the first row. The human passengers all stayed at the other side of the door, refusing to enter, even though the flight was already late. At last, December stood up, which prompted the humans to run away in a wave of arms, legs, and trolley bags.

‘If no one else is coming in,’ said the bear to the flight attendant, ‘close the door and let’s get going.’

The flight attendant must be ill. He shook all over and his voice barely came out of his throat. He took up a phone, exchanged words with the captain, then closed the airplane door, and they finally took off. Luckily, the flight was empty, and December occupied three seats. Even so, the airplane ceiling was too low, and the bear kept on bumping his head, until the flight attendant bravely approached him to offer a pillow.

‘It isn’t common in domestic flights,’ he said, ‘but you will end up with a headache.’

‘Thank you,’ said December.

Houston airport made way for the polar bear. The humans all rushed out of the way, inside one of those colourful rooms full of stuff to sell. December stopped at a Starbucks for a frapuccino and a chocolate lollypop on his way to his international flight. He didn’t fit in coach seats, so they transferred him to the first class, where he had strawberries and frizzy wine all the way to Mexico City. At the Herve el Agua tourism company, December asked for a bus ticket, but the attendants said he wouldn’t fit into a bus. They suggested he asked the local drivers to see if one of them could take him to his destination.

December left the airport and blinked into the Mexican light.

‘Siñor Oso,’ called a fat man, who leant on an old truck. He had a greying moustache.

December hopped onto the truck, and Moustache took the wheel. They travelled all day long, stopping only for the siestas, and camped at night near the road. Mexican winter was hardly as harsh as Alaskan winter. December missed his cave, pillows and little fire, but he didn’t feel cold. In the morning, Moustache made black coffee with a lot of sugar, and they continued on their journey.

December was not used to seeing things go by. He had already found it weird to see the clouds from the airplane’s small, oval windows, but it was different then. In the airplane, he only saw the continent drift beneath him. Here, he could feel it as well. The wind whistling between his claws, the weather combing his white fur.

Mexico had such different mountains, with a wet texture, and humid perfume, with a hint of very dry sand from the northwest. Even the clouds were different, fluffier here, and farther away. December didn’t know that things could be so different, even when they were still the same. Clouds, earth, even humans. The sky, away from city lights, had more stars.

Did it really have more stars? December couldn’t remember when was the last time he looked up to the Alaskan sky, the last time he saw the green northern lights. Or had it been red? Or yellow?

They finally arrived at a natural pool on top of a cliff whose rock slanted down to the bottom of a chasm. The rock looked like a waterfall. Tourists crammed the area behind the bushes that thinned out a few meters before the pool. They watched, pointed, and photographed a red fox sitting at the edge of the cliff with her snout up in the air, the large, wing shaped ears turned to the horizon, like dish antennas capturing the distance.

‘Excuse me,’ said the polar bear.

The human tourists shouted with fright, started to smell of sweat and fear. December walked past them, and reached the fox. She didn’t move, but the sky changed its angle, pouring more blue on the white polar bear.

‘I’m looking for a colleague,’ said December. ‘January of Klondike. Have you seen her?’

The fox took a long, deep breath, and December sat down beside her.

‘Are you well?’ he asked.

January of Klondike had a way of being that made you think of beginnings. She hopped up and down, like those deep, deep dreams that only make sense because they aren’t real, and which are quickly forgotten, as soon as the snow melts, and life emerges from the guts of winter. December had thought all januaries would be like Klondike January.

‘Have you noticed how beautiful it is?’ the red fox asked.

‘Of course I have.’

‘So have I, a long time ago, when I first started working. But, you know, I’ve stopped noticing. How about you? Do you still notice how beautiful it is?’

The last time December saw the northern lights: were they red or green? The first aurora December ever saw had been undulating spears of silent green. The kind of silence that has melody. December heard the aurora, an invisible song that underlined the green, the blue and the red. When December retired to his cave, he used to dance to that beautiful tango of sun breath kissing Earth’s aura. When was the last time he looked up to the sky?

‘Why do we stop being awed?’ asked the fox.

December thought he recognize in this January the same tone of voice of Klondike January. She went on:

‘Has the sky lost its velvet? Has the sun lost its fine tuning? The wind, its flexibility? Do you know what I think?’ asked the fox. ‘I think it is us who are spent, threadbare; frayed from inside out.’

The polar bear asked once more about the arctic fox, and the red fox said Klondike had gone south, to meet other Januaries and ask why they had never learned how to fly.

‘And once that question is asked,’ said the red fox, ‘we begin to look at the sky, you know? We begin to wonder beyond the blue.’

December went back to where Moustache had parked the truck. That day, the internet was full of selfies of tourists with a polar bear sitting beside a red fox at the back. The bear had not expected it would take such a long time to find January. To save time, he asked Moustache permission to drive the truck at night, so they reached Mexico City faster. There, he took a plane to São Paulo, Brazil.

At the airport, they guided him through special gates where he didn’t get stuck, and put him in a VIP waiting room with two security officers at the door to keep away the cameras, which tried to squeeze between the security officers’ shoulders to steal a glimpse of that fur the colour of last quarter moon.

In São Paulo, uniformed humans kept the swarm of reporters away. Outside the terminal, a taxi driver called the bear with gestures to the SUV he was driving. He had removed all the seats.

‘Só pro senhor, meu rei.’ ‘Especially for you, my King,’

What else could he call a polar bear that travelled first class and was on every TV channel of the world? Even the soap opera was interrupted for news of the wandering polar bear.

December gave an address, the taxi driver obeyed, faced the traffic of Marginal and the smell of the Tietê River. He left his passenger on 1919, Avenida Paulista. The bear crossed the sidewalk to an iron gate covered with graffiti. It belonged to a decrepit, stately house with walls that were once white, archways, porch, dust mite. One of the last mansions of Paulista Avenue. The bear knocked on the gate and went inside when it opened. On the other side, with large, yellow eyes, a lemur received him.

‘Not you as well,’ said the lemur. ‘What is going on up there in Alaska for the months to begin migrating? I know, I know, who am I to say anything, since I came all the way from Madagascar to pretend I am a fox, but look at it this way: apart from the jaguapitanga, who didn’t want the job, there are no foxes in Brazil. Not outside the zoo, anyway, and those have been here only for a while. When I first arrived, back at the time, it was either lobo guará or carambola. Carambola is a star fruit, but, with that name, I always thought it was an animal. Some sort of caterpillar, but it’s a fruit, can you imagine that? Carambola. A fruit. But I digress. What I was saying was that, well, I have charm, I’m exotic and all that stuff. But now, I’m here, asking myself why I’m not a flying squirrel. I don’t really need wings, I’d be happy to just soar in the breeze.

‘But, no!’ the lemur went on. ‘Your white January wanted nothing less than wings, the type that pierces through clouds. What about the wind, I asked, aren’t you afraid? It was a silly question, I know it now. What wind or hurricane can stop a flying fox?’

‘Do you know where she is?’ the polar bear asked when the lemur stopped to breathe.

‘If I knew, I’d be with her now, but she is very sudden. I was here, right in the middle of a sentence about madness and wind (I offered her some pururuca, which I make), about flying and wings. Or maybe I was at the beginning of a sentence about running like river water, I am not too sure where I was when she left like a storm. Why be a river, she asked exactly that: Why be a river when there is distant sea? Then she left, just like you are leaving now, but with thinner, niftier legs.’

The polar bear went to the sea. He walked down the Anchieta, stopped traffic all the way from Paraty to São Paulo. The truck drivers stopped to take selfies with December. In Santos, December walked into the waves, farther and farther away into the sea. He became a tiny cotton ball going up and down, up and down, until he could no longer be seen. They made a statue of him at the Santos Bay and there were those who campaigned for the polar bear to be the next president of Brazil.

Meanwhile, December swam towards Africa. Or so he tried. The sea currents didn’t care much for what the white bear wanted, and took him all the way to the north, dropping him on Cape Wrath, on the very top of Scotland.

There was a black sheep sitting by the shore, her hind legs stretched in front of her, like she had just taken a tumble.

‘You too?’ she asked as soon as the polar bear came out of the waves. ‘I thought this was a January thing.’

‘Have you seen my January?’ asked the polar bear.

The sheep shook her head. ‘I haven’t seen her, but she was here, and my January, who always spends some time with me, sniffing the salty air, went away on one of those incomprehensible journeys which populate the literatures of the world. He said he was going to write a journal and publish it. Around the world in a balloon, or something like it. What about you? Are you trying to go around the sea in 80 days?’

‘I just want to find my January,’ said the bear. ‘She hasn’t come back.’

The sheep jumped onto her feet.

‘What do you mean?’ she asked. ‘Months always come back. In fact, they never leave. That is what we do: we come back, then we come back again. Why would she go away?’

‘I don’t know,’ said December. ‘She just left.’

‘And hasn’t come back? Who is taking care of Alaska? Who has layered the snow, frozen the mountain tops, whitened the sunset, brought down the black screen for the aurora?’

‘February took her place. He is making a double shift.’

The black sheep nodded.

‘I suppose it is easier on a February to take over for another month,’ she said. ‘We’re more flexible, for being incomplete. But now I worry. What if my January never comes back?’

Suddenly, the bear had a doubt:

‘What was it like before we months arrived?’

Black February nibbled on a blade of grass.

‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘that the snow came down on its own. But, Klondike December, if snow comes down on its own and the sun sets without us, what, then, is our purpose?’

The question melancholized inside the white bear’s head while he crossed the United Kingdom towards the continent. It did not dissolve in the Channel’s dark waves, nor was it absorbed by the silent, white sand of France. The noise of many tourists calling out to the bear did not silence the melancholy. What was December’s purpose? What was his use?

‘Take this,’ said Continental February, a sheep as white as dreams. She was whiter even than Klondike January. Her ears were perked up, which gave her the look of being very philosophical.

‘I read Kant,’ said the sheep, ‘but, here, take this. It will cheer you up.’

The polar bear accepted the present, which was a beautiful pendant of a deeper blue than the seas he had crossed.

‘It is called lapis lazuli,’ said the sheep.

‘Why will this make me happier?’ asked the polar bear.

‘The stone itself has no power. It should warm you up because it is a present. I have given you something beautiful because you look paler than sadness. It is what I call a lazuli gesture. I’ve been writing my own philosophy, you see: The Art of the Lazuli Gestures. When there is nothing we can do to solve a problem, we make a gesture that means: I can’t help you, but there is blue and blue is beautiful. A lazuli gesture.’

‘What is it for?’

‘I don’t know,’ the sheep lowered her ears. ‘I haven’t finished writing it yet.’

‘Is it some kind of mercy?’ asked the bear.

‘No. My lazuli gesture is real, while mercy doesn’t exist. It is something humanity invented and they don’t really know how to use it.’

The bear wore the pendant on his neck.

‘It’s pretty,’ he said.

‘Quite so.’

‘Do you know where January is?’

‘Which one? There are two: the white one and the one with the balloon. The white one went to the east. So has the one with the balloon. If I were you, I’d follow the Silk Road.’

Thus December crossed France and dove into the Mediterranean. The seas, it would seem, weren’t willing to help the polar bear on his journey. He swam and swam against the storms, but ended up in the shores of Tunisia. There he was surprised to find a huge female elephant waiting for him. So big was the elephant, that it looked like a mammoth. December had never felt small before, being he a bear and the largest month in Alaska.

‘I calculated the winds and waters,’ said the elephant, ‘and imagined you’d land somewhere around here.’

‘You knew I was coming?’ asked the polar bear.

‘When the months move, the world feels it.’

The elephant was March in Northern Africa and said that, once the polar bear was here, it was simplest to cross the continent and try his luck again in the waters of the Indic Ocean. The polar bear was still very sad and deflated, he had no will to argue and allowed the elephant to guide him through Libya, Chad, Sudan, South Sudan and, finally, Kenya.

That Northern African March was a silent month and seemed to think a lot, but said almost nothing. The polar bear told her about his doubts and asked what their purpose was, but the elephant simply looked at him for a very long time with those eyes dipped in the folds of time, and said:

‘Hm.’

So the polar bear didn’t suffer with the heat of Africa, which was more intense than the part of Brazil he had visited, the elephant always showered him with water from her trunk. When people realized the polar bear was crossing the continent with an elephant, they got together so that everywhere the polar bear went, there were people to travel with him carrying canopies or parasols.

Finally, at the Kenyan coast, the polar bear said goodbye to the African March and dove into the ocean, thinking that the elephant’s eyes contained the answers to all of December’s questions, but he wasn’t able to see them. Like that, he disappeared from the map inside the waters that had the same colour as the pendant the philosophical sheep had given to him.

For many weeks the world wondered where the wandering bear had gone to, until a BBC group, which was filming a documentary on Chinese giant pandas, came across the polar bear.

‘As you can see,’ the narrator spoke in a very low voice, ‘the polar bear is interacting with a female giant panda. What we are witnessing is astonishing. This is BBC, from the Sheeousheeon Mountain Range.’ (The subtitle reads Xiaoxiang range.)

‘Yes, she came through here,’ said the panda bear. She yawned. ‘I was too lazy to speak with her, but the little white fox spoke with our December. How very small is your January.’

‘I thought you were December,’ said the polar bear.

‘I am, most of the time, but sometimes I am late, and we reschedule. Now, for example, I am May.’

The polar bear had thought of asking every month he met what their purpose was, but he decided the panda bear was too lazy to even think about it.

‘Our January lives in Japan,’ the panda yawned. ‘She says it is easier to see the rest of the world from there, that water is more horizon than land. She is always dying to do things. I don’t have that problem. I die of un-wanting.’

‘Are you dying?’ asked December.

‘It is just a figure of speech,’ said the panda. ‘This thing humanity invented to sound pretty when they don’t know how to say something. Anyway, if you are looking for January, the nearest one is in Fukushima. Are you really going there?’

The polar bear crossed another continent, another stretch of salty blue, until he reached an island that drowned under its human population. He left footprints on the sands of Fukiagehama. The Japanese, who were keeping an eye out for the coming of the bear, quickly invented a kind of glass dome with which they protected the footprints from wind, salt and rain.

Fukiagehama, which was already famous for its natural beauty and sand sculpture festivals, from now on attracted even more visitors. Those who couldn’t take selfies with the bear himself, sold cars and houses to travel to Fukiagehama and take a selfie with his footprint.

On the ferry to Yawatehama, the bear rested his front legs on the rail and kept on asking himself what his purpose was. Why did he exist?

Behind him, Japanese travellers took pictures of him with powerful lenses. Some of them had tripods, most kept their fingers pressed against the button, snapping pictures endlessly. There was one woman who was so lost in her awe towards the bear that she forgot to take pictures. In fact, she took only one, at the precise moment when the bear came down from the rail, capturing him in mid movement and an expression so forlorn, that it reminded of a human sigh. The young woman became famous, her picture was sold all around the world, while the polar bear moved on, full of melancholy, up Ehime coast, across Tokushima, to reach another ferry that would take him to Nara, where June roamed unhappily among discarded petals of cherry trees.

‘These horrible flowers,’ said June. He introduced himself as a tanuki, ‘which means ‘racoon dog’ in Japanese’, he said. He leaned on a grumpy walking stick and swept the flowers with a grumpy broom. ‘I slip on them every year. And this heat? Why do I have to be June? Why can’t I be June in the South, where everything is mild and there are no flowers?’

‘There are flowers everywhere,’ said the polar bear. ‘Maybe if you walked on all four legs, instead of two, you wouldn’t slip so much.’

‘Walk on four legs! Do you think that, only because I was born on four legs, I must walk on four legs my whole life?’

December thought the idea of standing on your hind legs only because you weren’t born that way was confusing. However, it also sounded like Klondike January’s question. Why don’t we have wings?

December said that aloud, but the tanuki did not agree.

‘It isn’t the same at all, not even in a million years. You can go to the end of the universe and come back, and still it won’t be the same. We don’t have wings so we don’t fly. That’s what having no wings is for: not flying. But we have legs to stand and who is to decide how I am going to stand? At any moment I can become a human being and stand only on two legs.’

December remembered when January told him that Japanese foxes could become human. Could the tanuki do the same?

‘In that case, why stay in the tanuki form?’ asked December.

‘What a question! Because I am a tanuki, of course.’

This Japanese June made no sense at all, and he was very grumpy, so December decided to end the conversation. He asked about Klondike January.

‘Your January has been here, she has,’ said the tanuki. ‘She went looking for our fox. We call her Kitsune. That’s fox in Japanese. The Kitsune lives in Fukushima. The easiest way is through Nagoya, then go all the way up to Nagano, but take the road to Mabeshi. It’s easy to follow human roads, and you may even get a ride to Shirakawa, which is already in Fukushima. Is she going with you?’ The tanuki pointed over December’s shoulder and the polar bear turned around.

‘Hello,’ said the giant panda. ‘I un-wanted to stay behind.’

The two bears said goodbye to the tanuki but, before they left, December asked June:

‘What is our purpose?’

‘We have none.’

The polar bear went away crestfallen. In Nagoya, the panda suggested that, instead of following the tanuki’s directions, they took the train to Tokyo. From there, they took the train to Fukushima. If a polar bear travelling the world swarmed the internet with news, pictures and posts, a polar bear and a giant panda nearly shut down the internet servers around the world.

The trains had to be quickly adapted for the bears. The Japanese removed all the seats from an entire car, and filled it with bamboo and ice. They also installed a special air conditioning system. The Japanese did all that with the precision of working ants.

The panda yawned, but she un-wanted to sleep.

‘How fast the world goes by,’ she said, looking out the window.

The polar bear was tired of seeing the world. If he had no purpose, why did he even exist?

Alerted by the media, the Japanese fox, kitsune, waited for the bears at Fukushima station. Humans had formed a circle around the kitsune, but they made way for the bears. The Japanese fox was the colour of autumn, and had slanted eyes that seemed to have been drawn with ink.

‘Welcome,’ said the kitsune. ‘I’ve heard you are looking for me. Would you have some tea with me at my home? What a beautiful pendant,’ she told the polar bear as she guided them out of the station.

‘It’s a lazuli gesture,’ said December.

Prompted by the kitsune’s constant questions, the polar bear ended up telling them all about his adventures: the sky in Mexico and the long legged Mexican fox, the wordy lemur that had immigrated to Brazil and learned how to make pururuca, all the Februaries, the mountains of Africa, the sweet lollypop December had bought at the Starbucks back in Houston.

As he spoke, the kitsune took them to a little Japanese house made of wood and paper, with a rock garden, water and bamboo. There was a cherry tree in bloom beside the red gate. The Chinese December was delighted with the cherry tree and climbed it, letting her legs melt on the branches, enjoying the pink rain of petals that her weight caused.

‘Tell me more,’ the giant panda asked the polar bear, ‘because the things you tell are as pretty as these petals in the air. You make me un-want to do anything but dream.’

Thus encouraged, the white bear described the different intensity of salt in the different currents of the ocean, the consistency of solar beams in different altitudes, the heat in Brazil and the humidity in south China. While he relived his adventures, he almost forgot that he had no purpose.

Even as they left the train station, December had noticed something blurry about the sky over the kitsune’s house. When they crossed the gate he saw that it was a balloon. The balloon was painted blue like the sky, with white clouds that had lilac shadows. The balloon was anchored to the kitsune’s garden. Leaning against the anchor, a fox was writing on a notebook. This fox was small, with long whiskers, and a bowler hat.

‘How do you do?’ asked the Scottish January. ‘Kitsune, dear, could we have some Earl Grey this afternoon?’

‘Of course, my love. You make it or I make it?’

The Scottish fox closed his leather bound notebook, stretched his front legs, then his hind legs.

‘I’ll prepare it,’ he said. ‘I’ve finished today’s entry to my journal. I’m writing a book,’ he told the bears. ‘80 Days in a Balloon.’

When the polar bear saw the Scottish January writing serious things on his journal, creating literature, he was reminded that he had no purpose, and lowered his snout, sadly.

‘Are you all right?’ asked the kitsune. ‘Would you rather have some green tea instead? Or something floral?’

‘I’m fine with Earl Grey,’ said December. He swept the pink petals that kept on falling over his head. ‘It’s just that I don’t know what our purpose is. June said we have no purpose. Could that be true?’

‘That grumpy old tanuki,’ said the kitsune. However, no matter how long she and Scottish January cracked their heads, they could find no purpose for their existence.

‘Why is everybody sombre?’ asked the panda. She had climbed down the tree and was back on the ground with them.

The polar bear explained, and she said:

‘The tanuki is right.’ She looked from the kitsune to the Scottish fox, to December. ‘What is the matter?’

The polar bear thought she was very naive, maybe even a bit unintelligent. She un-wanted to philosophise.

‘Having no purpose is very sad,’ said the polar bear.

‘Funny,’ said the panda. ‘I always thought it meant freedom.’

The cherry tree danced in the wind, the balloon pulled on its anchor. It wanted to soar. The polar bear slowly took the pendant from his neck and gave it to the giant panda.

‘Are you making a lazuli gesture for me?’ she asked. ‘But I feel fine.’

The polar bear thought for a while, then said:

‘The gesture is for me.’

She took the pendant and the two Januaries interlocked their furry tails. They made tea and the foxes told the bears that the arctic fox had been there, too, looking for wings.

‘Let me show you something.’ The kitsune opened a lacquered black box. From inside the box floated a small ball of white fire.

‘Every fox has one like this,’ said the kitsune. ‘It’s a star light ball. Hoshi no tama. Here in the east, we foxes still keep our power in one of these. In the west, it seems the foxes have lost their hoshi no tama. The white fox went looking for her power.’

‘Where?’ asked December.

The kitsune pointed her snout to the ceiling.

‘In the stars,’ she said.

After they drank their tea, the Scottish fox offered the bears a ride on his balloon. The polar bear and the giant panda climbed on the big balloon basket and waved goodbye to the kitsune, who kept on waving until they could see her no more.

They floated over the grumpy tanuki, who still swept pink petals with his grumpy broom, then crossed the sea to China, where the giant panda said her goodbyes. She became famous in China because of her beautiful lapis lazuli pendant. In fact, she was a legend. Painters painted her, poets wrote whole stanzas on her, tourists came from all over the world for a chance to see her.

In France, the polar bear met the philosophical February. He told her what he had done with the lapis lazuli pendant. The sheep reviewed her whole philosophy, and wrote that a lazuli gesture was, after all, a benefit for the person who made it, rather than to the person who received it. Her books can now be found in the great libraries of every country, right beside Kant.

The elephant waved her trunk from the other side of the Mediterranean.

The black sheep of Scotland wagged his tail at the sight of the balloon. In Brazil, the lemur would have made them some pururuca, but there was no space to land the balloon on Avenida Paulista. Too much traffic. So they waved to each other, the lemur from the ground, the bear and fox from the sky. Beside the lemur, very slowly, a sloth animal waved as well. This was October, coming to take charge.

The Mexican fox asked for a ride. She, too, wanted to fly. The two foxes dropped December in Alaska, where all the other months gathered together to hear about his adventures. Then November completed thirty days and December took over with a joy he had never before felt in his heart. He danced with every single aurora, counted the stars, made snow bears in the snow.

When December completed 31 days, he opened the door. Outside was January, whiter than snow. Floating beside her there was a ball of light. December pointed at the ball.

‘This,’ said the bear.

‘Are my wings.’