Two Shaky Towers : A Fable

y Towers

  by Joe Blow

  Copyright 2011 Aussiescribbler

  Two Shaky Towers

  Once upon a time there was a peaceful village built on a wide expanse of flat land between a huge lake and an equally huge forest. On one side of it all you could see was the lake, stretching away to the horizon, and on the other side trees stood tall and green all the way to a row of hills against the sky.

  The people of the village drank water and ate fish from the lake and ate the fruits of the forest, and they were relatively contented with their lives.

  One day one of the villagers spat out a seed, from a piece of fruit he was eating, into a small puddle next to the lake. Nobody paid any attention to it until they noticed a couple of weeks later that a small tree was growing up in that spot.

  Once they realised what had happened, they decided to plant some more fruit trees so that they would be able to pick and eat fruit without having to leave the village to find it.

  The only problem is that when they dug a hole to plant their first tree they happened to dig right into the underground lair of a spider which was fully two feet across and dripped venom from his pointed fangs. He burst up from the earth and the people ran screaming.

  The next day they held a town meeting.

  "We can no longer continue to live here on the ground," one of them said. "A spider might come out of the ground and kill us in our beds."

  So they agreed to build a small tower that they could live in most of the time.

  "Let's build a tower next to the lake," said those who liked to eat fish.

  "No, no, let's build a tower next to the forest," said those who preferred to eat fruit.

  Since they couldn't come to a decision, they ended up building two towers, one next to the forest and one next to the lake.

  And so it came to pass that the fish-eaters lived in their tower overlooking the lake and the fruit-eaters lived in their tower overlooking the forest.

  At night, as they sat around drinking and eating under the stars on the platform that formed the top of their particular tower, the fish-eaters and the fruit-eaters would tell stories and the most popular story was the story about the giant spider which had burst forth from the ground. And, as will happen with such stories, with each telling the spider became bigger and more ferocious.

  As time passed and the vision of the horrible spider grew in their minds, the people tended to spend less and less time out of their towers. Eventually, the fruit-eaters built up a huge store of dried fruit in their tower, and the fish-eaters an equally large stockpile of dried and salted fish. They also put many barrels of water into their towers. Thus they were able to live many, many years without leaving their respective towers.

  Understandably they were somewhat limited in the pastimes they could pursue. The fruit-eaters had taken a telescope up into their tower with them, and with it they took turns in looking around at the trees of the forest. It was a very powerful telescope and they were able to see all of the insects crawling up the trunks of the trees, and all of the birds building their nests among their branches. Over time they became experts on the trees and the animals of the forest, and wrote a number of books about them.

  Since the fish-eaters were now eating salted fish, they became very thirsty. They realised that, if they drank as much of their water as they would like to, it would run out very quickly. So they rationed it.

  For this reason they looked out particularly longingly at the lake, for they never had as much water as they really wanted.

  Then one day, they saw something moving far out in the water of the lake. It looked too big to be a fish.

  "What could that be?" they asked themselves.

  As they watched the thing getting nearer and nearer, they realised that it was in fact a man. He had been swimming like a fish swims through the water of the lake. This amazed them, as they had only ever paddled in the shallows of the lake, and cast their nets into it to capture fish. The idea that a man could swim was unknown to them.

  "This is a miracle!" they cried. "A man who can swim like a fish!"

  When the man reached the shore of the lake he waved to them.

  "How can you do such a thing?" they cried out from the top of their tower. "How can you move through the water of the lake like a fish?"

  "Come down here and I will show you," he replied.

  "Oh, no," they said. "We never go down there."

  "Why is that?" he asked.

  They didn't want to tell him that they were afraid of the spider, lest he think them cowards.

  "We would prefer it if you came up here and told us about yourself," they replied.

  "O.K.," he replied, and climbed up the side of the tower.

  Having forgotten how much strength they once had when they had lived on a balanced diet of fresh fruit and fresh fish and had drunk as much water as they liked, they had forgotten how easily they had climbed the tower themselves while building it. And so when they saw the stranger climb up quickly and confidently, placing his feet in the nooks and crannies between the stones, they were amazed.

  "This is a miracle!" they cried. "Look how he flies up the side of the tower!"

  When the man had reached the top of the tower he sat down with the fish-eaters and told them many marvellous things about the lake, where he had been long in the habit of swimming.

  They sat enraptured and their homesickness for the lake and their thirst for its water made them hang on every word the man said. And when he started to tell them all about how to swim, they started writing down notes.

  Now many of the fish-eaters were sick from their poor diet and from lack of water. The man could see this, and so he climbed back down the side of the tower, found one of their old nets and caught some fish. He also filled some bottles with water from the lake. And then he carried the fish and the water back up to the people in the tower.

  When the sick people in the tower drank the water and ate the fish, they began to feel healthy again. Some who had been in the habit of laying around listlessly all day, jumped up and began to sing for joy when they got some fresh fish into their bellies and had slaked their thirst with some fresh water.

  "Look how he has healed the sick!" cried the fish-eaters. "Another miracle!"

  "I do nothing but bring you what the lake provides," explained the man. "It is not me who has done any of these things. Rather it is the bountiful lake from which I have come and to which I must return."

  "Please do not leave us," the fish-eaters begged.

  "Why not come with me," he replied.

  "We can't do that," they responded, quaking secretly with fear of the giant spider.

  The man could see that they were afraid.

  "Once you paddled in the lake and caught fish from it," he said.

  They were amazed that he would know such a thing, when they had not told him.

  "There will come a day when you will eat and drink from the lake again," he told them. "And now that I have told you how to swim you will be able to live in the lake like I do."

  "When will this time come?" they asked.

  "Only after things have become very bad for you indeed," he said, as he realised that their fear was great and would keep them in their tower for a long time yet.

  "I warn you," he said, "those of you who stay up in your tower eating salt fish too long may die of thirst."

  The fish-eaters did not realise how desperate they had become for an end to their thirst, until they saw that the man was about to leave them and return to the lake for good.

  They fought with him to stop him from going. They were jealous of the fact that he would be able to drink the water and eat the fish of the lake and they would have to go back to their dri
ed fish diet and their thirst.

  "If we can't have water and fresh fish, then neither will you!" they cried, their despair in their own plight bringing out the worst in them.

  They pushed the man off of the edge of the tower and he fell to his death.

  The fish-eaters looked down at the dead man and a terrible guilt gripped their souls. They didn't sleep at all that night.

  But the next day when they awoke and looked down for the body of the dead man, it was gone. It had rained in the night and the body had been washed back into the lake.

  For many hours they sat wondering about why this thing had happened. But then one of them picked up the notes that they had made from the things the man said. These had been forgotten.

  Now they all gathered around as he read the man's words out aloud.

  "He was dead," they told themselves. "But now he lives again. Now we can all learn how to swim."

  They called the dead man the Son of the Lake and like the stories of the spider, the stories of the Son of the Lake grew more wonderful with each telling.

  And so the fish-eaters spent their days sitting around reading the notes