O nce upon a time a gardener lived with her husband in a valley in a hovel in the side of the East Mountain. Every day as her husband moped in the hovel, whittling away at wood and devouring the mushrooms his wife had harvested just that morning, the haggard gardener would go out in the very center of the valley to her tiny plot of a garden. There, she plopped onto her knees, thrust her rusty spade into the soil, and dug and dug.
On one particularly sunny afternoon, a caterpillar inched his way onto the gardener’s spade when the wife had abandoned her plot of land for just a moment to bury the remaining mushrooms she had harvested to keep from her greedy husband. When the gardener returned, the caterpillar sat up on his 16 back legs, and the little woman bent down so that her blue eyes were in line with his beady black eyes.

“Prepare to meet your death, you little plant-eating-pest!” The tired little woman said. As she reached for the spade to fling the caterpillar onto the recesses of the west mountain, the caterpillar said to her: “Listen to what I have to say, gardener. I’m pleading with you.
Why not let me live? I’m not really a caterpillar. I’m an enchanted fairy. I won’t even eat your plants. I’ve tried—they’re terrible.”
As the woman began to argue that her garden was full of foods of acquired taste, her greedy spouse stormed out of the hovel demanding to know where more mushrooms were. “I need more—!“ but he stopped short as he saw his wife in a heated conversation with her little spade not but an inch from her nose.
He approached his wife and saw the caterpillar. “Are YOU eating my mushrooms, you dirty little caterpillar?” The man demanded.
“Of course not,” the caterpillar replied. “Why would I eat my own home? Clearly, I am a fairy.”
The greedy man’s beady black eyes grew wide. “Oh really?” He replied. “Good. Make yourself useful: grant me a wish.”
The caterpillar set its little body akimbo.
“Fine. What would you like?” It asked.
“Change that hovel into a cottage,” the husband ordered.

Suddenly, the tiny portion of the east mountain that served as the man and wife’s home popped straight out from the mountain and, PING! became a quaint cottage. When the wife and husband turned their attention away from their new home and back toward the caterpillar, all that could be seen was its last two teeny legs and rear end disappearing into the ground.
The next morning, the gardener went back into the valley toward her plot of a garden.
Great gray storm clouds were billowing above the valley as she approached the plot.
She bent down and said:
.
A pair of antennae sprouting from two beady eyes popped out from the dry soil. “What does he want now?” The caterpillar inquired.
The wife sighed. “He insists on living in a mansion complete with a cool cellar for all his moldy mushrooms.”
The caterpillar gestured toward the east mountain with three of his little legs. “Go on home. He’s already in the cellar gorging himself.”

The woman walked back toward what used to be the cottage to find a beautiful mansion squeezed between the two mountains. She walked through its beautiful golden doors and marveled at the crystal staircases and mile-high ceilings. She then found a door whose shape oddly resembled a mushroom. She walked through the doorway and descended into a cellar to find her husband sitting on a plush throne, a bowl full of mushrooms in his lap.
“Now isn’t this better?” The husband said between mouthfuls of mushrooms.
“Yes,” the weary wife replied. “Let’s stay in this mansion and live in peace.”
For the next three nights, the wife slept in her bedroom draped with red velvet as her husband fell asleep in the cellar with his precious mushrooms. But the husband refused to be content. Her husband came into his wife’s room one dawn and jabbed her cheek with a mushroom. “Wake up,” he said. “I’m ready to be queen of this valley.”
The wife stared at him. “You mean king.”
“No—I mean queen! It’s part of the story, believe me— queen! Go on, go find that caterpillar.”
“Why can’t you just be content?!” The woman cried. “Or at least…be king?”
“Get going!” The man screamed, exasperated.

The woman went outside only to be pelted with rain as a terrifying thunderstorm seemed to slouch into the narrow valley. She got to her tiny plot and cried,
A tiny yellow umbrella popped up above the soil. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” a tiny voice cried from the soil. “Can’t you see that this whole storm motif is getting stronger? Didn’t you ever learn about foreshadowing?”
“Caterpillar, my husband wants to be ki—queen, of this valley,” the woman said.
“Go home,” the caterpillar replied. “A crown of mushrooms already rests on his head.”
The woman returned to the mansion to find her husband elevated high on a throne in the foyer. The throne was two miles high, and to his right and left were a row of mushrooms, each one a head shorter than the last.

“Surely now you’re content, Your Majesty,” the tiny wife cried up to her husband.
“On the contrary!” The man cried, raising his vine of a scepter above his head. “Go tell that caterpillar that I must be—POPE!”
“Dear me,” the woman sighed. “He’s forgotten we’re Anglican.”
“Don’t start preaching doctrine to me, woman!”
The man bellowed down. “Go on now, and make my request before the caterpillar!”
The woman dragged herself outside. A roaring river was flowing through the center of the valley from the downpour, and yet the rain kept falling. The woman cried out,
Caterpillar, caterpillar in the ground,
Crawl on out so you’ll be found,
My husband whose name is Ramsay
Has sent me; content he cannot be.
The woman bent down by the bank of the new river and a hollowed walnut half in which the caterpillar sat came zipping toward her.
“I know the story, lady,” the caterpillar piped out in its tiny voice. “Go on home. Your husband has been excommunicated from the Anglican Church and is now Pope.”

The wife went home to her mansion that was now a palace. As she approached the doorway, kings and emperors demanded to know her reasons for approaching the Pope. “Let me through!” The tiny and angry woman cried. “That’s my husband!”
The kings and emperors stared at her in astonishment. “How dare you claim the Pope is married!” they shouted, but the little woman, with fury in her eyes, pushed her way to the throne upon which her husband was sitting with his chin lifted high. A golden goblet filled with mushrooms sat on a diamondencrusted side table to his right.
“You better be satisfied, ‘Holy Father,’ the now sassy woman cried, making quotation marks in the air with her fingers.
Her husband turned his face toward the sun setting behind the west mountain.
“Dear woman,” he said in a suddenly pious voice that attempted to veil his insatiable greed, “I will have no peace until
I’m like our dear God.”

The wife’s fury dissolved into horrific sorrow. “Are you not satisfied with being
Pope?” she cried in frenzied panic. The wind outside the palace suddenly grew stronger, and hail began pelting the roof that soared miles above them. Suddenly, the wind forced the main doors open, and a torrent of water flooded into the palace.
A hollowed walnut half zoomed up toward the throne of the man. The caterpillar had tiny galoshes on each of his little legs.
“You desire to be God?” the caterpillar inquired of the man in his teeny voice.
“Yes!” the man cried.
And PING! The wife and husband were sitting in their hovel again. A small butterfly fluttered past the window.