XXX

The longer I stared, the more I became convinced.  Yes.  The body I was seeing was indeed my own – the very same body I had dragged out into the chill night air when the small gray bird led me in search of the rider of the eight-legged horse.  I found this discovery mildly surprising, but was not shocked or disturbed by it in any way.  I remembered how the body had been changed into a sack of seed and how I had sown all of it in the field surrounding the grassy hill.  I recalled all of this as one might recall something read in a book a long time ago.

As I watched, I heard a voice speaking from some hidden recess of the cavern.  It was distant and faint, yet I knew somehow that it was speaking to me.

“Whose body is this?” it said.

“My own,” I replied.  “It is myself.”

Strangely, when I spoke my voice seemed to come not out of my own mouth but from the picture in the orb of light.  It, too, sounded distant and detached.

“Does this body live?” the voice asked.  It was sweet and melodious, the voice of a lady.

“No,” I answered flatly.  “It is dead, buried, scattered abroad.”

“But who buried it?”

“I did.  I did it myself.”

There was a long silence during which I contemplated the body on the slab and my own last words concerning it.  At last the voice spoke again:

“How is it that you have come to this place?”

“I threw myself down,” I returned.  “I wanted to destroy myself.”

“And do you see now,” the voice responded, apparently drawing nearer, “why you cannot do that?”

Another silence.  Then the voice again:

“Can this body live again?”

“I don’t know,” I answered.  “No, I don’t think so.”

“But look closer!”

I did, and saw a very strange thing.  From the fingers and toes of the body grew long tendrils which extended downwards into the floor of the cavern and penetrated the rock like the roots of a plant.  And from the top of its head rose a slender green shoot that reached up towards me through the shadows of the sparkling stalactites.

“Now look to yourself!” said the voice, even closer this time.

Once more I tried to see my hand in front of my face.  At first there was nothing; but then, very slowly, something began to emerge from the blackness.  In the beginning it was nothing more than a mist, a blur of faint light.  Then it grew and took on color – the color of flesh.  At last it came sharply into focus.  What I saw was a hand indeed, but not the hand I had expected to see.  It was very small and very fair, the hand of a very small child.

And now the light was growing all around me, so that I could see not only my hand but my whole body, wrapped in a long white gown.  I saw, too, the stone walls and dripping ceiling of the chamber in which I lay.  Gone was the orb of light; and when I sat up to look for it, I found that I was lying on a slab of stone exactly like the one in the vision.  I would have risen, but I felt extremely weak and exhausted with the mere effort of sitting up.  So I lay back down again upon the cold stone and closed my eyes.

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