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Paul Edmund Norman's Monthly Online Literary Magazine ~ July 2005 Issue No. 81
KATHARINE AND THE BABY SEED
by Robert Barr
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The day Katharine turned twelve, her parents gave her a marvelous birthday present. A baby seed. It was no bigger than the head of a pin, and it rested in a tiny dish all its own. She was to set it on water, and wait for it to grow. How excited she felt!
Lovingly, Katharine carried the baby
seed to her basement, and rested it carefully upon a pool of water there. There in the half-light, it shone with a
small, bright, warm glow. Then
Katharine went upstairs to bed.
Katharine was so excited about her
baby seed that it took her a long time to fall asleep. But finally she did, and in her sleep she
dreamed of the baby seed. She dreamed
that, downstairs on the pool of water, her baby seed was about to be eaten by a
snapping turtle.
Then she rememebered the monster turtle that indeed
lived at the bottom of the pool of water in the basement! She sprang from her bed and flew down the
stairs to the basement. There on the
surface of the pool floated the ferocious head of the turtle, drifting toward
her precious baby seed, its mouth wide, wide open and its teeth shining in the
glow of Katharine’s baby seed.
Just as the turtle plunged toward the baby seed, to
devour it, Katharine stretched her arm behind her head, back as far she could,
clenched her fist as tight as she could, and struck out at the vicious face of
the snapping turtle.
She struck the turtle in its face so hard that she
stopped it in its wake, and it stopped floating toward the baby seed before it
could suck it into its mouth. Then she
snatched up the baby seed on its special dish and fled with it to the forest.
There she sat under a tree, to hold the baby seed and
kiss it. But no sooner had she begun to
kiss the baby seed than the biggest snake that ever was, appeared a short
distance away, slithering through the grass and approaching Katharine and her
baby seed, to destroy it.
Then Katharine clasped the baby seed to her breast
with one hand, and with the other grasped a great axe that a woodman had left
leaning against the tree, and dealt the
serpent such a mighty blow that it cleft in twain, and its two halves flew
apart so rapidly that they are still flying, to this very day.
Then suddenly the baby seed turned into a baby, and
looked at its mother, Katharine, and smiled with surprise and gladness.
And the
baby grew up and had babies of its own, and everyone lived happily ever after.
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