THE LEGEND OF
THE FLOWER OF THE VICTORIA
Story by Steve and Maria Yolen
Translation from the Portuguese by Guillermo Angulo
A young Indian woman, of a Brazilian tribe, heard
her father tell of the old belief of a God-Soldier, frightful
but beautiful and powerful, who lived in the Moon. As time went
by she believed in the legend and fell in love with the Soldier
of the Moon and, after that, no young person of her tribe was
considered deserving of her affection. The efforts of her family
to marry her with a respected and noble young person proved to
be unfruitful. The young Indian women waited patiently when the
Moon was not completely full. And when the moon appeared splendid,
fulfilling each lunar cycle, she remained hours and hours wide-awake,
watching the sky, hoping to see the face of the imaginary lover.
Often she was seen running through the jungle, with outstretched
arms, trying to grasp rays from the Moon and to embrace the soldier.
But to embrace the lunar rays was, then as now, a
hopeless task and the great love of her life continued to be
an unattainable dream. Her father, their relatives and their
friends tried with desperation to convince her that her passion
was a mere illusion. The months passed and she persisted in looking
for the rays of the Moon without managing to approach the loved
one. But one night completely clear, in which the Moon shone
like never before over highest jacarandas and in a sky without
clouds, the young Indian went to the forest, this time with the
firm determination to embrace the Soldier of the Moon and to
have him for always.
She ran into the forest, far from her town, and arrived
at a lagoon that seemed a mirror where the shining reflected
Moon was seen. "Finally" she thought, "My loved
one has descended to the Earth to bathe in the pool." Without
doubting at all, she entered into the water in search of the
encounter, but it was an illusion. As she discovered her error,
life left her. The young poor woman drowned in the solitary lagoon
of the forest, far from her town, her relatives, her friends.
But the story does not finish there: The Soldier of
the Moon, tells the legend, did really exist, and he felt pity
for the beautiful young Indian who had loved him so much until
dying in the desperation of desire to embrace him. With much
remorse but without the power to return her to life he turned
her into an Earth star. He transformed her into a star of the
Amazon River sweet waters. The star is now an enormous flower
that reigns as queen of all the aquatic plants. The young Indian
was transformed into a gigantic aquatic plant, the Victoria amazonica,
whose flowers are opened completely only at night. There is one
saying that Victoria amazonica only unfolds its flowers in all
its splendor on fully moonlit nights, when the sky that covers
the Amazonian forest completely is clean and particularly clear.
Who can say that it is not certain?
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