[This is Part III of “On Being a Seed.” Click Part I and Part II for the prior episodes.]
It was not the first time I had died, and it would not be the last. The dancer held me mercilessly under the water until I had drowned completely. My struggles were weak and in vain; she was too powerful. But more to the point, she delighted in it, and a passion like that cannot be stopped. And so the darkness poured out of me and the water poured into me.
This was the first time I remembered feeling the
pulse. It was in the water itself. It was
the water. It was a feeling of going
back and forth, back and forth. It was a
swelling and receding, and there was a faint sound to it, a rhythm. Because in the beginning there was sound, and
there was an inexplicable pull.
 |
| But I was free . . . |
But I was free from my prison. There I lay in the cool, dark Earth. Dead. And
all around me were the denizens of the Underworld, each in a different state of
death. It was all so beautiful. I’m not sure when it happened as I lay in the
darkness, listening to the pulse, but I began to feel a tremendous hunger. I don’t know where it came from. Perhaps it was from the point that had fallen
inside of itself, that point from so long ago, that point from the other
world. It doesn’t matter, though. All that mattered was the incredible,
insatiable hunger.
And so I ate. I ate
the creatures of the Underworld that were all around me. I ate and I ate incessantly of the most
delicious substance. I didn’t ask
permission, and it wouldn’t have mattered to me if they had said no. Like the water dancer, I was consumed with
passion. All that mattered was that I must
eat—and eat I did!—and as I ate, I began to feel the ripping and tearing
again. Where had I felt that ripping and
tearing before? That should have been
enough to stop me, but it did nothing to slow me down, nothing at all. As I ate, I ripped and tore myself in a
terrible process that I would later learn was called “growth.” Growth was horrible, indeed. Dying was so much easier.
Sometimes the water dancer would come around, but now
that I was larger with many tendrils reaching outward, she could no longer
drown me. That didn’t stop her from
trying, though. It was a continual dance
we danced. She would flit this way and
that, and I would trap her in my many tendrils.
Once when I had swelled so large and threatened to hold her in an
endless embrace, she said that if I let her go she would tell me a great
secret. So I let her go, and she told
me.
“High above you,” she said, “There is a hidden world of
such immense delights that it makes the Underworld pale in comparison.”
“Pah!” I scoffed
at that. “What could be more beautiful
than the darkness?”
“There is a land of liquid gold, I swear it!”
I wondered to myself.
Liquid gold? I had already seen
the hard and glinting gold of the Underworld.
It was beautiful, indeed, something to be coveted. What must liquid gold be like? Gold that moved and flowed? Already, the hunger for the gold was
beginning. The water dancer began to
sound the drums again, louder this time.
The pulse was beckoning me.
“Upward!” I screamed, and I began my relentless climb up
and up.
“But there is a great King who guards the gold!” she
shouted after me.
Ha! A king?
We shall see about that, I thought.
I relished the idea of a new world and new delights to eat. Perhaps I would eat the king.
[Click here for Part IV.]
[Click here for Part IV.]
