The mole followed the dark root down. It was red and smelled sweet, but the mole knew that the tastiest bits would be at the root-ends: the tendrils and soft root-hairs there would be full of secret flavor. So he pledged not to bite until the end.

After a day of digging, the root showed no sign of tapering. The mole, irked & exhausted, nursed his claws and took a break.

“This root has to end at some point, ” said the mole. “But meanwhile the air’s getting warmer and harder to breathe, and I don’t recognize this soil: it smells different, it’s more dense.”

During the second day of digging, it was obvious that the root was tapering — but at this rate he wouldn’t reach its tips for a week. The mole was astonished, but mad with determination. His anger mounting, he forgot about his safe burrow, loving family, and ample food-store above: he dug and dug, blind to his own exhaustion, making slower and slower progress in the tough, alien soil, coughing frequently in the strange warm air.

On the third day of digging the mole broke his right paw. He sat still, in a fog, realizing his predicament. The red root like a giant column stood before him, endless. He stared at it in desperation, then vowed to dig with just his snout if he had to until he reached the bottom of it. He felt himself going insane. Fury boiled his blood.

Just then he heard a great rumbling above him: his tunnel, miles-long, was collapsing. With his one good paw he dug a small niche to one side and watched as dirt crashed and filled up everything around him. He cleared a little space, taking short, shallow breaths from the hot air in his tiny chamber. He prepared himself to die.

An idea gripped him. He cleared away dirt until a small patch of the rich red root was visible. He took a great bite out of its rootflesh. It was disgustingly bitter, but he bit it again, clamping hard this time. He was determined to have one last feast, even if it wasn’t from the precious root-ends he’d wanted.

Suddenly, he heard a booming roar, feeling it rattle his ribcage, and he shut his eyes in pain. With his jaws still clamped, he felt himself whipped and sucked through the earth, rocks and root-knots pressing and grinding against him for unbearably long. Finally he felt sudden cool air and space around him, let go his jaws, and felt himself sailing through the air, striking something hard and falling.

He opened his eyes. A great, beautiful red serpent sat before him, coiled around a rock, in an enormous stone chamber. There was a bleeding bite mark halfway down its lustrous red body. The mole watched, transfixed, his battered body paralyzed. He’d never seen anything so perfect and awesome as the serpent.

It spoke: “I’m the red serpent, I hold the earth together in my endless coils. No creature has ever been in my lair. The law is that anyone who sets foot in it gets a wish. What will it be, Mole?”

The mole, losing consciousness, said: “I wish to eat your root-ends.”

The red serpent laughed. “Don’t be stupid. My blood is bitterest at the tip: you’ll choke and die. Wish for release, for long life, or for wealth and safety for your family.”

The mole repeated his wish firmly, and the red serpent, annoyed but bound, obeyed. “He’s so weakened from his ordeal that he could hardly do much with his little jaws anyhow,” thought the red serpent. He extended his tail before the mole, the long thin tip under his nose. And the serpent was right: with one quick bite the mole died.

But that bite was a great one, full of all the mole’s bile. The mole’s teeth had become poisonous with hatred for being seduced so far down in the dirt for nothing but injury and death. Everything the red serpent did to stem the bleeding failed.

The serpent, stricken, collapsed — and the earth with it, melting and turning to mud, free from the serpent’s bondage, joyously formless and drowning everything within and above it.

posted by Snail at 9:05 pm