Listen to this on the Wild Creation Stories Podcast here:
Once there was a small girl who was born with a special gift; she could sing the creative energy of the Universe.
When she sang, all the animals drew near, the deer, the frogs, the beetles and squirrels. Flowers blossomed, leaves unfurled and green tendrils reached for the sky, roots grew downward.
When she opened her mouth, the song might be a delicate, effortless trill — or a guttural, soul shaking scream.
Leaves would wither and fall from the trees, and sometimes animals collapsed in their final breath, for the energy that creates world is also that which destroys them.
None of this seemed strange to the small girl. It was what it was, and she sang of all that was.
Until one day her song was too much.
“You shouldn’t sing like that,” her mother said. “Other people who can’t sing will feel bad.”
“Such singing all the time is wasteful,” her father said. “Save it for when you need it.”
Because she loved her parents, the small girl quieted her voice.
She only allowed her song to come out when she was alone or with other children who didn’t seem to mind the whirling dust storms and flocks of ravens that followed.
One day a teacher caught the small girl singing to a spider in its web as it sank its fangs into a moth.
“That song is dangerous,” she said. “You could hurt someone with it.”
The small girl didn’t want to hurt anyone, so she stopped singing altogether, except in her dreams.
In her dreams, the small girl sang worlds into existence and out again, spiraling around universes.
The small girl grew up and became a talented musician who played the violin, but she never, ever sang.
She helped others find their voices, but she never forgot the danger that might happen if the world knew her song. She was certain it would destroy the world or at the very least, fracture it in two.
All through many years of playing her violin, the song inside the small girl was stirring.
She could feel it curl around her throat and extend its tentacles through her limbs, asking, begging, to be sung.
When she could stand it no more, the small girl ran into the woods and whispered a song like the spring rain, a winter wind, howling wolves.
The town came alive under her song, soft and quiet as it was. Colors were brighter. People felt more peace and more anger.
There was more of everything that was when her voice fell over it.
A townswoman with extremely sharp ears — she could hear a feather plucked from a bird miles away — complained about the dreadful noise coming from the woods keeping her awake at night. She persisted until the townsfolk traced it back to the source.
They found the small girl song-whispering in the woods to the moss and the trees, the rocks and the stream, and demanded that she be silent.
The small girl choked her voice down again, but it was harder this time. When the townsfolk left she asked, “What if it’s okay for me to upset people? Like the hurricanes and the tides, the moon and the sun, what if I, too, am a force of nature?”
And just like that, the small girl stopped hiding.
She sang in the morning with the doves and the frogs. She sang in the afternoon with the children who climbed off the school bus. She sang in the evening with the moon and the stars.
She sang whenever she felt like it.
Some people held their ears and ran away. Others gathered all their belongings and followed her, reveling in the song.
Her song did fracture the world, opening a huge fissure reaching to the core of the earth.
From that crack grew a great, strong tree so tall that it stretched across the universe and beyond, leading the small girl and her singing followers to other worlds.
The song sang itself in and out of existence into forever, which is all now.
