The Sorcerer & The Pond Creature

It didn’t have a name, it didn’t even really exist for the longest time. It simply was everything and nothing, spread across time and space, across all the living and dead creatures. It was all the living and dead creatures, it lived within them all, through them all, it was them. It was the water in the pond, the trees growing on the shores, bugs crawling through the flesh of those trees, small fish, mosquitoes, warms that were consuming dead, rotting meat and the meat itself. It was the birds in the grass, it was the grass too, the seeds that birds ate, rot that consumed dead bodies, first shoots of flowers reaching through snow and ice when spring came. It was it all and nothing in particular, just a constant, limitless presence within everything, without boundaries, shape or form.

People came and it became them too, not just a single person, but everyone who came to the pond. Maybe they had come sooner, but it hadn’t noticed before. They brought thoughts, conversations, images flashing through their minds like bright lights, so different from everything it had known and seen previously. When it lived through birds, bugs, trees and rabbits the world didn’t change, the world remained constant, the same for generations, year after year, century after century, everything lived and died and remained the same. People brought worlds, different realities, through their thoughts it saw distant lands, places so weird, so different, incomprehensible: hills similar to those in the distance (birds brought images of those) only much higher, piercing the sky itself.

In human minds it saw places where clouds were so low, merged with the waters of lakes and rivers. It saw rivers so wide that you couldn’t see the the other shore. It had known rivers from before, there was a rives in the valley, all kinds of beasts brought visions of it from afar, it knew the river through the eyes of the beasts, but this was different.

At some point it got bored of the stories of those who lived in the pond, started dreaming about new ones. Dreams were the beginning of the end. It began to want, to hunger, wanted new people, new beasts to come, to become different through them, through their thoughts and imagination. It remembered all the men and women who came to the pond once or many times, got lost and drowned or left safely. It kept some of them for itself, took them apart and consumed. They lived in it, within it, dismantled, disassembled, swallowed but never gone. Life didn’t disappear, life simple turned into something new.

Slowly it started to comprehend its own nature. This realisation was similar to waking up after a long, endless dream. It understood that it wasn’t trees, or birds, or warms, it wasn’t rotting flesh or even water. It was something different, something separate, larger and smaller at the same time. It was the pond that wanted to leave its place in the valley and start roaming across the land, walk up to the mountains, to the ocean, to become the mountains and the ocean and the sky, to be something new.

Once the sorcerer came to the pond as though responding to its call. The sorcerer was not in his power yet, he was just a boy, nothing more, he was weak and frightened like a rabbit, hid behind a log on the shore. He was carrying his fear within him like a living beating heart, an additional organ in the body, many people carry fear within them but nobody’s was this big or powerful. It got curious, it wanted to see, to know. It whispered to the boy, to the emptiness within his soul, got through his muscles and bones, into his mind, where all the fears lived. It stopped being the water in the pond, the grass, the trees, all the beasts large and small and focused all of its attention on the boy. There was power in him, strange, shapeless, nameless power that it hadn’t seen in anyone and anything before. It wanted to understand it, to partake in it. Time passed, the boy fell asleep right there, on the soft, cold earth, rolled into a tight, small ball. It looked through his dreams, plunged into his dreams the same way beasts plunge into water. Those were strange dreams, filled with fire and range, behind them all, in the depth there was a man made out of fear and rage, he had the same blood as the boy’s.

It thought for a moment about drowning the boy, keeping him for itself. It would swallow all of his dreams and desires, reassemble them in different order, absorb him, take him apart and let him find a new life within the eternal, shapeless body of the pond. It was tempted for a moment, but nevertheless let the boy go when he woke up. It wanted him to come back and bring new dreams. It wanted to understand his strange power, maybe use that power somehow in the future.

The boy did come back, sat on the shore, stared into the distance without thinking about anything in particular and everything at the same time. The sun was setting, plunged into the depth behind the horizon. Through the boy’s eyes it watched the sunset and enjoyed it. It couldn’t enjoy such simple things on its own, only through someone. There was beauty in the world, there was calmness. The power in the boy grew and grew.

As the boy fell asleep it watched his dreams again, those were strange, dark dreams. It had to stretch itself through the pond afterwards, through every drop of water, every living and dead creature just to feel alive again. The boy’s dreams made it feel cold, abandoned, lost but they were mesmerising too. It thought again of drowning the boy, but that meant the dreams and the power would be over too, it didn’t want them to be over, it wanted more.

Time passed, it felt the passage of time now, it was present in almost every moment. More people started coming to the pond. It knew they were here for the boy, for his power, the same power that attracted it, everyone wanted a bit of that power, just a drop, a bite, a slice, to partake in something larger than them. It read in the minds and hearts of people, there were sick among them, lost and lonely. The boy spoke to their sickness, cured it, made them whole again. Day after day he came to the pond in the afternoon and was sitting on a log, staring into the distance, his mind and his dreams filled with different images. He was a man now.

It started thinking that he might cure it too, might give it whatever it wanted, desired, dreamed of, let it leave the pond and wonder into distant lands, see distant places, strange things with no names, shapes or forms but didn’t know how to express that desire, it had no words, no language or body to do so.

There came a day when the sorcerer didn’t show up. It stayed frozen for the whole winter, its body stretched into the distance covered by layers and layers of snow. That was a bad winter, it died hundreds of times. It was waiting for the man and his dreams, his power, it wanted to find solace in those dreams and that power, but the man never came. It felt lonely, betrayed, abandoned. It should have drowned him when it had a chance, should have disassembled his body, swallowed it, made him a part of itself. Spring passed and summer passed, but the sorcerer never showed up. Many people drowned in the pond that year. It wanted to grow, spread its enormous body into the distance, all the way to the forest, to the boundaries of the village, into the village itself, to find him, but it couldn’t. It was tied to the pond. He was there somewhere, it saw him in the dreams and thoughts of other people, but didn’t come to the pond.

At the end of one of the summers the sorcerer finally walked out of the forest and came to the brink of water. He was thin, dirty, he stank, clothes hung on him like rags. Death followed him, walked after him, he had death in the pockets of his jacket, his heart, his head, but mostly in the rope that he was carrying with him. It knew right away that he came to the pond to die. For the first time in its endless existence it became grateful. The man could have killed himself anywhere, anytime, he would be lost forever to it then.That day it understood the difference between life and death. If the man died right there, became water, soil and warms, all of him would become life, but none of it would be him. It laughed, the wind became its laughter, cracking of the branches, chirping of the birds, whispering of waters in the pond.

The man tied one end of the rope around a branch of a willow tree, the other one around his neck, stepped off a small stool. It let him hang for a bit, choke and thrash violently, dance that old dance of all the hangmen, taste death for himself. When he was about to die it made the branch of the tree break under the weight of his body.

The sorcerer fell to the ground gasping, inhaling air with hungry, open mouth, it poured into him, filled his lungs, his blood with new life, all of his body ached, his soul was torn to pieces, his heart was thudding wildly in his chest, only his mind was pure, blank, wiped out, no thoughts, just silence.

It whispered to him then, it had never done anything like that before, it wasn’t sure it could, but there might never be another chance, what if he decided to kill himself in a different way, somewhere else and it would never even know.

«Give me body», it begged. It didn’t have a throat or vocal cords to speak, but it had the birds, winds, old trees, it had water and all the sounds that filled the air, they became its voice, its tongue, its throat, its teeth and mouth.

«Give me flash», it said.

The man listened bewildered, confusion written across his old, tired face. It wasn’t sure if he understood, but it hoped.

As the sorcerer rose to his shaky, uncertain feet, stumbled and fell to his knees once or twice running away, it whispered, yelled and cried after him.

«Set me free. Give me body. I am the soul of the pond, but I want to leave. I want to learn about the mountain, about the sea and the forests, the deserts. I want to learn about men, roads and cities…»

It yelled and yelled, sounds stopped resembling language but it kept yelling for hours, maybe days.When it finally stopped everything seemed lost.

It started dissolving after that day, becoming the earth and the water, the wind that whispered in the branches of the trees and the trees themselves, the birds that were nesting everywhere and cats that caught them constantly, swarms of flies and people that came and went, but not as frequently as before. Tall grass grew where once a path was. It had almost merged with the world around it by the time the sorcerer came again. Frosts had crept from the north and covered the pond with a shield of ice, winter was everywhere, everything smelled of it. The man’s coarse, low, intense voice brought it back to life.

«Are you here?», he was asking, «Are you here?»

«I am», it whispered faintly.

There was joy in that whisper.

«I didn’t know how to do it, that thing that you asked of me, had to figure it out. I thought maybe I was crazy. Maybe I still am…», he cackled as he took an egg out of his pocket, poked a small hole in it and drank all the insides.

«Get inside», he said. It didn’t know how to do it, but obeyed. Bodiless and enormous at the same time, with all the paws, heads, eyes, teeth and wings, branches, roots reaching into the depth f the earth, it tried to push through a tiny hole in the eggshell, but couldn’t. Everything unnecessary had to fall away, fall off, layer by layer. Everything had to stay behind, there are no half measure in matters of this importance.

As it pushed into the eggshell the pond lost its soul.

Inside the tight darkness of an empty egg it became wild, crazy terror, tried to break free, scratch its way out of the egg, return into the pond, but couldn’t, the man had covered the hole in the eggshell with wax.

«Silence», he said, «It will take time, you need to be born anew now. It is never easy»