And I’m told that it’s really true
(By the little black bird who told it to me!)
So I’m handing it on to you!
WONGO, the little bear, stood at the entrance to his cave, his head hanging almost to his paws. He looked and felt very lonely and discouraged. He was weak and hungry and his friend Kaw, the wise old crow, was away. Wongo did not know where he had gone and did not know what to do without him. The world seemed a sad, dark place.
The sides of Wongo’s empty stomach seemed to rub together and call for food, but stronger, much stronger than that was the call of loneliness in his heart. He felt that if he were left this way much longer he would just lie down and die, all by himself. But Wongo did not die, as you shall see. This is a tale of adventure and great Magic, and let it never be forgotten that the little bear did his part in the Magic and did it well.
It was the year of the great thirst in Timbertangle—a year that all animals have good reason to remember, the year of the warm winter, when no snows came to melt into streams and pools in the spring.
All things that should have been green and fresh hung brown and dusty and rattled at the touch. Berries dried on the stem, before they were ripe, and nuts, when they were picked, were found to be just little withered specks in their hollow shells. Most of the streams were merely beds of bleached bowlders, white with dust, and only here and there, where water had been a rushing torrent in years past, was there a tiny trickle between the stones—just enough to satisfy the thirst of the many animals of Timbertangle. Even these little streams grew scantier each day and first one and then another dried up altogether.
It had been many, many moons since any rain had fallen and the larger animals were mere ghosts of themselves, for the smaller animals on which they fed had long ago died, or gone away in search of the green things on which they lived.
It must not be thought that Kaw, the crow, had been idle in all this time. He had flown many a day’s journey in every direction to see if he could find water, but always came back with the same tale—no rains had fallen anywhere and everywhere growing things were brown and dry and all living things cried for water.
A sort of watchman of Timbertangle was Kaw, for the little crow seemed never to sleep and there was not much that escaped his bright eyes. It was a mystery to many of the animals why Kaw and Wongo were on such friendly terms, the quick, alert bird and the lumbering little bear, but they certainly were almost always together, for seldom was Wongo seen that somewhere in the tree tops could not be distinguished the sheen of Kaw’s black feathers.