Some journeys begin long before the first step is taken. In this quiet animal fables tale, an elderly ant follows a call she can no longer ignore, discovering that being ready matters more than knowing the destination.
There was an old ant named Saba who lived at the edge of the great colony, in a room she had hollowed herself when she was young and strong.
One morning, her neighbors found her wrapping her smallest belongings in a leaf.
“Saba, what are you doing?”
“Packing,” she said.
They watched her fold a crumb of bread into the leaf, then a single grain of sugar, then a drop of water held in a bit of clay.
“Packing for what?”
“I am going to the Mountain.”
Now, every ant in the colony had heard of the Mountain. It was said to stand at the far edge of the world, past the red desert and the river that had no bottom and the forest where the beetles lived who spoke to no one. It was said that the air near the Mountain tasted like the first morning of the world. No ant from this colony had ever been there.
“The Mountain,” said her neighbor Kess, slowly. “Saba, you are old.”
“Yes.”
“The journey would take, well, no one even knows how long.”
“That is true.”
“You would have to cross the desert. The river. The beetle forest.”
“I expect so.”
Kess looked at the others. They looked at her.
“You will die on the road,” Kess said quietly. “Far from everyone who loves you.”
Saba set down the leaf bundle and looked at her friend. Her eyes were clear and calm and held something Kess could not quite name.
“Probably,” Saba said.
Then she picked the bundle up again.
“I have raised my children,” she said, tying the leaf closed. “I have carried my share for the colony. I have stored and sorted and tunneled and fed. All of those things were good, and I am glad I did them.”
She paused.
“And now there is something else.”
“What else?” Kess asked.
Saba looked toward the tunnel that led outside, where the light fell in a long golden stripe across the floor.
“I cannot quite say,” she told them. “Only that it has been calling for a long time. And I have been listening. And now I am ready.”
“Ready for what? You just said you don’t even know if you’ll arrive!”
Saba lifted the bundle onto her back. It was very small. She was very small. The tunnel ahead was long, and beyond it lay the world.
“I can take the first step,” she said.
And she did.
The neighbors stood in the doorway and watched her go down the corridor, through the gate, out onto the wide dry earth where the light was enormous and the sky went on forever. She looked like a speck. She looked like a grain of dust with legs.
She did not look back.
Kess stood there longest. She wanted to call out something, some warning, or some blessing, but nothing she thought of seemed large enough.
So she said nothing.
And somewhere out past the gate, already farther than seemed possible, Saba walked. The road was bright and open and it asked nothing of her except that she keep going. She kept going.
The sun crossed overhead. The shadows lengthened. The first star appeared.
Saba made a small camp beneath a stone, ate half her crumb of bread, and slept deeply, quietly, like someone who had finally stopped waiting and started walking.
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