Courage

In a land beneath the sea, a small monster slipped quietly into a cave one night and took up residence there.  His tentacles were long and his jaws were wide, but the creatures that lived in those parts didn’t know this, for he hid himself in a grey fog through which only he could see.

His cloak of fog looked to the other animals like a shadow passing through the water.  In it, he could drift in the currents, like a cloud that drifted across the sun.  He could linger among the dark crevices of a sea mount, unseen, or lie low on the ocean floor so that he blended into the sand.  But any animal that entered that shadow disappeared.

It took a while for the disappearances to be noticed, for the sea is a place where life feeds life and the small give birth to many so that the large may give birth to few.  The monster, at first, being small, ate of the many.  So, as his form was hidden within the shadowing fog, his appetite was hidden within the balance of birth and death, and his presence went unsuspected.  But as he ate, he grew.  And grew.  And grew.  And as he grew, things began to change.

First plankton grew scarcer, filtered out of the water by the passing fog.  Then the anchovies dwindled and the herrings and smelts, and then the crustaceans that anchored themselves to the rock shelves and pinnacles. Then cod and sea bass began to disappear, and salmon, and even sword fish, dolphins and sharks.

Finally a blue whale rounded a point of land and vanished before the eyes of a school of flying gurnard.  The gurnard panicked.  They scattered, skimming across the surface of the water in every direction, screeching what they had seen, and the animals, large and small, realized, abruptly and undeniably, what they had been ignoring.

Now that their eyes were open, they could see that great areas of the sea bottom lay barren, swept clean by the monster within the fog.   The open waters were no longer clouded with schools of fish competing for space.  The cliffs and slopes of the sea mounts were void of life.  

Alert as they now were, the larger animals might flee the path of the shadow during the day.  But the night gave them no warning, no safety. And the small or slow-moving creatures had no escape, night or day.  Frightened and troubled, the animals consulted among themselves.  Though they had accepted the cycles of birth and death, of growth and loss, they could not resign themselves to this: an appetite that left in its path only barren emptiness.   

A council was called of the old and the wise, summoned by the gulls and the albatross who knew that the end of life in the sea would be their own end.  The elders came from far and near; the small were carried across the waters on the backs of the large.  With the gray fog sweeping ever broader swaths of ocean, not all arrived, but the council convened at last in clear waters beneath a tropical sun. 

Creatures of every shape and color, creatures with no shape but the shape given them by the movement of the waters, creatures with no color save the color given them by the reflections of the sunlight, all of these brought to the council the wisdom of their kind and their sense of a shared fate.  Whales stood guard all around, though they could do little to protect the gathering but signal danger by their own disappearance.

Among the most ancient of the elders was the nautilus, of whom it was said that he stored within his shell all of the memory of his kind from the beginning of time.  He had not spoken in a hundred years, perhaps longer.  Perhaps far longer.  Yet he was borne to the council in the mouth of a great eel, who, in this time of desperation, had retrieved him from the depths in which he slept.

The nautilus lay, unmoving, for three days while the elders of all the creatures of the sea debated the situation.  Attack, proposed some, but they could find no means.  Escape, said some, but they could find no route.  Hide, said some, but they could find no sanctuary.  Finally, when all seemed lost, they turned to the nautilus, and he answered them.

“None of us alone could defeat this enemy,” he said.  “Even together, our strength would fail.  Yet the monster has his weakness:  I hear that he has yet to refuse any living creature that comes within his reach.    Perhaps given the chance he will consume himself.”

“But how?” asked the others.  “He is a fog.  How can a fog be consumed?”

“No,” said the nautilus.  “Within the fog is a monster, a being like ourselves gone wrong.  He can be found only by entering the fog, by finding him where he finds his prey.”  He paused.  “Or we can let him be.”

“Let him be?” 

“He will consume most of that which lives in the sea.  Then he will consume the sea birds that fall from the sky for lack of food.  Then he will starve and die.  The ocean will lay empty for a time beyond reckoning.  And then, life will begin again.  For life is tenacious beyond all destruction, beyond all consumption, beyond all death.”

“No!” said the great eel.  “We are not creatures of time beyond reckoning.  We live now.  We live here.  We will enter the fog, and though many of us fail and perish, yet others who come after may succeed.”   Around her a sound of agreement rose among the animals, swelling and then fading away.  

The nautilus sat silent as their murmurs fell away.  “It will be dark within the fog,” he said finally, “dark beyond darkness.    A being capable of such blind consumption must live in profound darkness.  What light can withstand it, I do not know.”  Then the nautilus drew into his shell and closed himself within the memory of a thousand thousand lifetimes in the currents of the deep.

“Let us go,” said the orcas.  “We are the most powerful of the dolphin family, ranked among the best thinkers of the sea.  Our teeth are sharp and we can communicate in darkness.  Perhaps we can swim in formation and confuse the monster so that he lowers his guard.”    Because the others did not know what else to do, they agreed. 

“We will stand ready.” said the great white sharks, “In case you need help, call to us.    We live alone and cannot communicate in the dark like you, but we can listen for your call.”  The orcas went in.  The surface of the fog closed around them. 

Almost immediately, one burst back out, not swimming but tumbling as if he had been thrown.

“The darkness!” he lamented, when he could again speak.  “I could not think!    I couldn’t remember the past or the plan or who I was or where or why.  It was as if all thoughts were equal, all jumbled together so that I couldn’t tell what was important or what was real.   I started floundering, losing my ability to swim.  Just as all began fading, one of my companions, the one in front of me, rammed me, throwing me out of the fog.”

 Long though the animals waited, none of the other orcas returned.

After that, many attempts were made and failed:  “We will go,” said the octopi.  “We do not need to think much, and we ourselves make clouds of darkness for hiding.  We can cling to whatever may come after us, and perhaps in attacking us he will injure himself.”  They went and did not return 

The urchins went in with their poison spikes and their very little need to move.  The electric eels entered the fog together, hoping the monster could not tolerate their current.  The lion fish carried their toxins into the darkness.  None came back.

 In the end, they were saved by the defenseless and the young.

 A scarred manatee had joined the council late.  Not having heard the words of the nautilus directly, she kept to herself, watching and thinking in her slow vegetative way.  After the disappearance of the lion fish, she rose in one of the council meetings.  

“I speak,” she said, “as one who is not capable of attack or even self-defense.  My kind have always relied on knowing our place in the natural order and living within it.  It is our only power, the source of our survival.   This monster exists only within the darkness that enables his existence.  Perhaps we need to face the darkness rather than the creature himself. 

“Deep in the trenches of the sea bottom are animals who live in regions where the sun cannot penetrate, as it seemingly cannot penetrate this fog.  Perhaps they have the means to drive off the darkness.”

Hidden in her shadow was a small silver jack, who,  young and daring, had joined the council uninvited.  Emboldened by her speech (the speech of one so formless and slow thinking), and finding himself at the center of the council, he too spoke up:  “I have been thinking,” he said, “that living in the darkness the monster cannot see himself.  If he could see his own form by the light we bring, he might find himself unrecognizable and fearsome, an enemy to be destroyed.”   

 So it happened.  From the deep trenches came the anglers, row after row, with gleaming lanterns dangling in front of their faces.  The jacks gave their silver scales, which were fastened to the empty shell of a turtle, layer upon layer, until they created a multifaceted mirror.  The shell was carried by a ring of glowing firefly squid who held it fast in their beaks, drawing in water that propelled them forward, their legs fluttering behind. 

When all was ready, a small procession swam to the edge of the shadow.  They knew that likely they would not emerge.  Behind them in the distance, creatures of all kinds watched as the fog drifted across the procession and it disappeared. 

For a time, nothing happened.  Then, as the animals continued watching, the fog shuddered and broke into fragments with sunlight piercing through.  In the sunlight they could see the anglers and squid scattered and tumbling, and the turtle shell falling, rocking back and forth as it settled toward the bottom.

For the first time they saw the great tentacles of the monster, but these were being shredded and torn by its even greater teeth in a frenzy of churning water that clouded red and then dissolved into the gentle currents. 

When it cleared, the sea bottom lay strewn with fragments of bone and limb and scale that showed the monster to be, as the nautilus had said, a creature like themselves grown monstrously wrong. 

The watching animals swam over that place, solemn, recognizing that they owed their existence to the few who had succeeded and the many who had not.  To those who had gone in and those who had watched and listened.  To those who lived on the surface and those who lived below the sunlight. 

As the creatures returned to their homes and life ways, scavengers emerged from the cracks and crevices and from their burrows in the sand to eat what remained of the monster and to carry home bits for their young.             

Near China's northern borders lived a man well versed in the practices of Taoism. His horse, for no reason at all, got into the territory of the northern tribes. Everyone commiserated with him.

"Perhaps this will soon turn out to be a blessing," said his father.

After a few months, his animal came back, leading a fine horse from the north. Everyone congratulated him.

"Perhaps this will soon turn out to be a cause of misfortune," said his father.

Since he was well-off and kept good horses his son became fond of riding and eventually broke his thigh bone falling from a horse. Everyone commiserated with him.

"Perhaps this will soon turn out to be a blessing," said his father.

One year later, the northern tribes started a big invasion of the border regions. All able-bodied young men took up arms and fought against the invaders, and as a result, around the border nine out of ten men died. This man's son did not join in the fighting because he was crippled and so both the boy and his father survived.