Archive for the ‘Looking Downward’ Category
Look Into My Eyes, You’re Under
Tuesday, December 29th, 2009
Anya had been riding on the ancient whorled back of the Turtle for years, eons, forever, time stretched to infinity. Or, at least, that was how it seemed to her seven-year-old mind. The cut in her palm healed, but she existed in a daze of near-catatonic boredom. Bamboo forest gave way to grassland, then veldt, then coastal wetlands, then spruce and pine and fir. The Turtle refused to respond to her questions and attempts at conversation, barely acknowledging her existence. It plodded ever onward, toward what she hoped was the way back to her home and family.
When they reached bamboo once again, Anya realized that a cat was sitting next to her on the Turtle’s shell, mottled and striped and blotched in patterns of grey, with blue eyes the color of sorrow.
“Hello,” said the little girl. “Where did you come from?”
“Your father,” intoned the Turtle in a withered old voice like cracked leaves. The first words it had spoken to her during the long journey.
“I don’t understand. The cat came from my father?”
“No. He is your father.”
Anya’s eyes hardened and her stomach clenched into a ball of fury. She pushed off and slid down the Turtle’s shell to the ground. The cat stared at her impassively.
“Shut up! You just shut up! My father’s dead!”
“There is no such thing as death. We are all just varying states of energy and consciousness. Your father was once in one form. Now he is in another. Look into his eyes if you do not believe me.”
She did so, gazing deep into the cat’s blue unblinking eyes, at once recognizing them as the kind eyes from her infancy, her childhood, watching over her as she slept, ate, learned, fussed, experienced the world. The eyes an extension of his wide smile, his generous laugh, his strong arms, the man she’d yearned to amuse and be amused by, who had taught her the value of curiosity and optimism and open-mindedness.
“Daddy?”
The cat said nothing. He blinked once, slowly.
“Why did you leave me?”
“He cannot answer,” rasped the Turtle. “And the why is unimportant. He is here with you now, this is all that matters.”
She reached out and hesitantly scratched her father behind the ears. He smiled and purred and Anya felt something in her release.
Previously:
01: Mini Buddha Jump Over the Wall
02: The World, Under
03: Androcles Again
Androcles Again
Thursday, December 3rd, 2009
The little girl awoke, unbound, aware of a great rolling movement of musculature beneath her. Shapes and curves resolved into the structure of an enormous pachyderm. She’d been sleeping on the back of an elephant.
She looked over one side; its ponderous walking took them both across a frighteningly narrow tree branch hundreds of feet above the ground. She let out out a small squeak; the elephant’s trunk periscoped over its head and seemed to look at her.
“You are awake.” Its low rumbling voice sent vibrations through Anya’s legs and up into her teeth. The beast did not halt in its ambulation.
“Yes,” Anya said. “Where am I?”
“My realm. I am the Olifanz.”
“Don’t you mean elephant?”
“Did I misspeak?” the Olifanz said.
The little girl was quiet.
“Madame Spider delivered you to me.”
“Will you show me the way home?”
“No. But I will bring you to the Turtle, who will. Now be silent, or I will change my mind and eat you up.”
“But elephants are herbivores. I learned it at school.”
“As I said before,” the creature boomed, turning its massive head and fixing Anya with one harsh green eye, “I am not an elephant. I Am The Olifanz.”
“But why are you so grouchy?”
“Because I must deal with incessant questions from little girls who do not belong here. Plus, something behind my right ear has been causing me irritation and pain for months.”
Anya gently lifted the flap of the Olifanz’s right ear, and discovered a wickedly sharp-looking black object lodged in the skin. Tri-cornered, a bit like a shark tooth, and the darkest fuliginous black she had ever seen. Without a further thought, Anya reached down, gripped the tooth in her hand, and gave two quick tugs. The tooth came free, and in the process, one acuminate corner shallowly bisected the fate line on her palm; both she and the Olifanz cried out in unison.
“O! O!” trumpeted the Olifanz, then sprinted forward. Anya stuffed the tooth in the pocket of her jumper and held on, hand stinging. The Olifanz abruptly leapt forward into thin air. Anya screamed as they soared through the spaces between space, a lateral dimensional shift, vibrant colors blazing past her eyes, until, just as suddenly, they stopped, surrounded by a dense bamboo forest.
Before them stood an ancient tortoise, its skin fathomably wrinkled, its shell whorled and swirled with rune-like arabesques.
“As promised,” said the Olifanz, reaching up to snare Anya with its powerful trunk and then place her on the ground, “this is the Turtle.”
“How did we get here?”
“A moment of pure joy,” the Olifanz said. “We would have gotten here eventually, but your way was much, much faster.” Then the great beast lumbered away without another word.
Previously:
00: Mini Buddha Jump Over the Wall
01: The World, Under