Elephant's Miracle

"Already he is running and flying to the center of the world" - Mircea Eliade, about what a shaman is up to, under his mask.

It all started when brother Green Elephant was contemplating in a big open patch of lovely and wild grasses. He was squatting on a high plateau way up above all the regions of the earth. His massive wit turned over all the particular issues of the day until at once everything grew still and he heard Little Truth speaking, in a tiny voice, from out of a hallowed tree trunk:

“I am the terrible truth. I trample over the faces of all beasts and men. I stand and dance in the boom, boom, boom all the way to the end of time.”

Green Elephant has gone on a journey, or so they say; He decided to reach the ends of time: “Now I will go to the ends of time” said Green Elephant to the wind and the stars, but brother wind said nothing and sister star answered never a word.

Everyone knows how the end of time had fallen so in love with her own survival that she went and hid in a little ravine; down somewhere in a ditch. No doubt it was very cold, damp and uncomfortable for her, but was it not only by doing so that she could stop the last day from breaking?

Silver Ant laughed, somewhere in the field. But this was of no importance to Green Elephant; He knew very well that fools will laugh at anything.

Now had it been anyone else we too should have all laughed, but Green Elephant was known to be a serious beast and not one to be trifled with once he had set out to do a thing. So we only stood very still and marveled and no one said a thing.

Green Elephant said “I cross red hills and green hills, I cross green seas and blue seas, over rivers, lakes and plains I go. When I meet an army I just stomp their bones; I go, go and go over the yellow hills of Cadmus', wade through treacherous marshes, trot across the fertile valleys and the dark shadowy canyons, to the snow-covered mountains and through the mighty Redwood forests and deep, deep into the purple shade of the wooded fields…”

When Green Elephant had been gone already a long time, one night after long years had gone by, Black Hen stood up and in a small but firm voice she said that she too would march to the mellifluous boom of the Elephant's Hoodoo drum, and so she went to find the end of time.

Mother Caterpillar and Sister Jaguar soon followed, and after awhile we all got up, even that mean old trickster Hare came with us.

It seemed that the end of time heard about all the commotion, and sat up; She must have seen us all coming. The love all creatures had for her moved her so deeply that she could no longer stay hidden and so at last she gave birth to the final day.