The Little Bat Who Wanted to See the Sun

In an old banyan tree at the edge of a village lived a little bat named Chiku. Like all bats, Chiku slept through the day, hanging upside down, and woke when the sky turned purple.

But Chiku had heard stories. The mynas, who chattered all evening before bed, spoke of a great golden lamp in the sky called the sun. "It makes the whole world bright," they said. "It makes the mangoes sweet."

"I want to see it," Chiku told his mother. "The day is not for us," she said gently. "Our eyes like soft light, and the night is full of things only we can do." But Chiku had made up his mind.

The next morning, when the other bats tucked in their wings, Chiku kept his eyes open. The sky turned pink, then orange. Then the sun rose over the fields.

"Oh!" said Chiku. It was the brightest thing he had ever seen. It was so bright that he had to squint. Soon his eyes watered, and the whole world became a white blur. He tried to fly to the mango tree and bumped into a branch. He tried to find the pond and landed in a bush. The mynas giggled. A crow told him, not unkindly, to go to bed.

Tired and dizzy, Chiku crept back to the banyan and slept.

When he woke, the sky was purple again, and the village was in trouble. A baby squirrel had wandered away from her nest at dusk and could not find her way home. The mynas could not see in the dark. The crow could not see in the dark. Everybody called out, and nobody knew where to look.

Chiku opened his ears. He sent out his tiny squeaks, as bats do, and listened for the echoes. Tree. Wall. Well. And there, at the bottom of the old haystack, a small, shivering shape.

"This way!" he called, and he flew slow circles above the haystack until the mother squirrel reached her baby.

That night the mynas said, "You have the best eyes in the village." Chiku laughed. "They are my ears," he said. He looked up at the moon, round and soft and silver. "And that," he decided, "is my sun."