Carried away

There once was a woman who lived on a rugged hillside near to a freshwater spring. She drank from it often, and savoured every drop of the life-giving water.
She made many journeys to the top of the mountain where the Holy of Holies dwelled, but always felt compelled to return to her home on the hillside.
She could not help noticing the many travellers who, ragged and footsore, bloodied and exhausted, passed by her door on their search for the Holy of Holies. They clambered over the rocks and stones, tripped over the sink-holes and pot holes and staggered from foothold to foothold.
The woman was filled with a deep compassion.
She began to bandage wounds and encourage the pilgrims, offering them bowls of water from the well, and showing them the simpler paths. She even walked some of the way with them.
More and more pilgrims came, and more and more of them seemed to need spring water and the woman’s tenderness.
She grew very weary as she too clambered over the rocks and stones to meet and tend to them. She became so busy day after day, that she drank form the spring less and less – after all, the precious water must be taken to others.
She was too busy to notice that day by day she was shrinking. Gradually the journeys became tougher and it was harder and harder to carry the bowls of water and the bandages. As she shrank, the pilgrims seemed to grow bigger and bigger, and their needs harder and harder to meet. Her voice was fading too. Before long her tiny body could only drag small offerings small distances.
Then, one day she fell.
There was a pot-hole too deep and wide, and she toppled, rather like Alice in Wonderland, to a place of unknown depths. It was dark and cold – a bleak underground cavern. She called out, but her voice was faint and no-one came.
She did not know how long she lay there – hours, days, weeks or months. She just knew that she was alone and afraid. She thought she would die.
Then she heard a familiar sound. It was the trickle of water. “Oh no!” she thought. “I will drown! This hillside is a catacomb of waterways and caves. I shall have to hold on!”
So she held on, and the trickle became a thunderous stream. Eventually she could hold on no longer and she was carried away in the whitewater. She gulped mouthful after mouthful and, as she did, she grew strangely stronger. When the gushing stopped, she found herself being lifted gently, gently on a stilling tide – up, up towards the light.
Before long, she was deposited on the hillside – laid flat to dry off in the sun.
© Sharonne Price