The Cave and The Egg

Once there was a boy who loved his mother dearly. On a winter afternoon he was frolicking in the woods, when he came upon a great giant cave. He stopped and peered inside and saw diamonds and gold, a multitude of treasures which his mother would have loved very much. The boy entered the cave, determined to steal them. But as he entered the cave he became engrossed by the reflections of the diamonds and gold. They were many, and the boy felt that even if he spent his entire life stealing from the cave he would not be able to rob it completely .

The boy was frought with indecision. There were rubies and emeralds, sapphires and lengthy gold necklaces, arm bands, and long earrings. The boy ran through the cave, taking one trinket and another, grabbing one armful and dropping it later for another, until he reached the end of the cave

The cave did not seem endless when the boy entered, but now he saw that the entire end wall was steeped in a pile of jewels, and at the top, a great pearl egg, set with a variety of the brightest gems.

"But the egg is at the top of this mountain of treasure! Even if I were to spend my whole life growing I do not think I would ever reach it!"

The boy dropped the jewelry and diamonds he had taken from the cave, saddened. He sat down with the rings and rubies and gold strewn about the cave floor, and kicked them together. Then he looked at the jewels he had stolen, and at the treasures towering above me, and he grew an idea.

The boy saw the pile he had made was similar, though it was smaller, than the towering pile before him. "I will take this whole cave's wonders and pile it atop each other, until my pile is greater than this one before me!"

And so the boy toiled day and night each day to move the cave from one end to the other, taking jewels from the entrance and leaving them deep within. When he grew to be stronger, and the jewels were higher than he was, he cut down the trees outside the cave until the whole woods were used to make a ramp, which made him go higher and higher. At last, when the boy was an old man, he had made a pile taller than the one that had dwarfed him when he was a child.

"Alas, I have overcome it, and now this great pearl is mine!" The old man snatched the egg from the top. He laughed and roared atop his heap, triumphant. He looked down at the spoils of his work below him, and grinned madly at the pearl in his hands.

And then, the cave began to shake. The old man recognized the booming sound of footsteps approaching. The diamonds beneath his feet shook, the coins rattled, and the treasures began to slip. The old man could not see well, and when he saw what it was that shook the cave he froze in fear. What appeared behind the darkness of the cave was a great three-faced creature, who now stood in front of the old man. Its whole body was each made of parts of a man, a horse, a fish, and a hawk. But, though it made a great quake and appeared grotesque and ferocious, it did not stand eye to eye with the old man, it was no more massive than the great pile of the old man's treasures. The old man looked down at the thing.

"Who are you? What have you done to this cave?" the creature demanded.

"I was once a boy, but now I am the man!" the old man declared. "I sought this great pearl on the top of this great pile, and I made a greater pile to reach it."

The creature then saw the massive ramp, and pointed to it. "What is this?"

"That is the ramp I used to make the pile which was greater than the pile that was here before!"

At that, the creature laughed. His voice trembled the treasures again.

"Stop laughing you fool! You will kill us both!" the old man yelled.

The creature slowed his laughter and pointed at the old man. "You are the fool. It is you who has wasted his precious time! You needed not build this ramp to make that pile, or make that pile to keep this ramp. You could have picked apart the first pile faster, or you could have simply taken the even share from this repository, whose wealth is abundant enough for every living man's own needs."

The creature grew dim. "Instead, you have deprived the treasures of cave from the rest of the world, as each day you took more from the entrance, and placed it far behind here, so that whenever a man found the cave he thought it only an empty, barren place, and continued onward to wherever his journey was."

The old man clutched the pearl egg with his arms, suddenly aware of his own greed, and the deed he had made. He plead to the great creature, "I beg forgiveness!"

"This is not my crime to forgive. For, these material concerns do not concern me as I am not of this material world. But rest assured that had I been a man of equal ferocity you would have met your doom immediately."

The old man was silent. He kept the egg between him and his arms and looked full of sorrow, and made sounds of regret. At this, the great creature stirred, "I am a curious, so I ask of you: why have you done this? Why did you desire that egg?"

The old man tried to answer, but then he remembered why he had sought such a foolish endeavor. And then he remembered that as a child such a goal seemed at once pure. And then he realized that he had forgotten the meaning of his quest and his love of his mother, who was now long dead.

"My life has been consumed and squandered." the man cried, and then he continued to inveigh himself, "I sought this egg for pure reasons, to evoke love. But that is all lost. And now I know not what to do with this great pearl, or how to repent to the world, for such a great deprivation." And then the old man threw himself into great remorse and wept.

"Old man, save your pointless self-pity." The creature said. Its voice was massive but gentle. It turned away suddenly, and the man screamed at it.

"Wait great creature! You cannot leave me here, this is a horrible injustice and I must be punished!"

The creature turned toward the man, and said to him softly, "You are an old man, and you will spend the rest of your short days atop that heap." And then the creature continued to leave.

But the old man cried again, "No! That is a great injustice in itself! The wealth of the cave must be returned to the world again! This injustice made right!"

This made the giant turn back to the old man. "What do you suggest, old man?"

At this, the old man realized the true price of his conviction. The old man said, "You must use your great voice, and your great size to shake this place, and make these great treasures fall back unto the rest of the cave."

"Even I am dwarfed by this great pile you have constructed, and I cannot lift you from atop it and rescue you."

"This is my concern, creature. Your concern is to flood these treasures unto the cave, without harm to yourself."

"That is not a concern for myself, old man, as I said to you before: I am not of this world, and I cannot be harmed by it."

Then the creature bellowed and unleashed its strength against the walls, bringing the pile unto itself. The cave was flooded with gold and diamonds, emerald rings and sapphire bracelets, all the rubies and great gems returned to where they had been before.

When the creature stopped, he saw no sign of the old man, nor the great pearl egg that he had once sought.