Part One in a Series of Three
Narcissus was a beautiful young man, it is said; and he was given such physical beauty that he was a living picture of the Platonic form of Manly Beauty. He walked alone in the woods on a summer evening and was attracted to the smoothness of the darkening water. As the last rays of creamy sunlight caught his face, he looked into the water and fell in love. He sat curled on the side of the lake, staring at the elusive image on the surface until the light deserted him; he slept, then awoke in the morning sparkle to look at his reflection in this new aspect, the tentative light of dawn.
All day, he watched his beautiful countenance changing in the water: Here, this was the answer to his need for love, for the ideal, for the hunger after perfection, so often thwarted in the ugliness of daily life in the town and farm. Here, here was simplicity of form, crafted like a seamless garment, with no blemish, perfect in its predictability: his reflection was not only perfect beauty, it was something he could love and control at the same time. For Narcissus, the world was a terrifying place of chaotic particularities and blind duty; there had been no soil of love in his growth as a young sapling: only exposed and raw roots clinging to rock and drops of water. His physical beauty combined with his deep and abiding hunger for love had made a deadly potential mix: and the paint-base was the lake, the reflection. Narcissus had found a psuedo-love, a love which both answered his hunger and a controllable image which assuged his deep fears.
From the purple recesses below the surface of the water, a nymph saw the angelic face staring, as if at her through a window. She loved him immediately, and thought rashly but understandably that the look was meant somehow for her. Was her look for him born of true love or a desire to share beauty?- for she, Echo, was very beautiful, and had never found her equal until, she surmised, now. Here he was, his rich curls tapered gently around a golden, strong jawline, the eyes like the mystical waters in which she lived. In her nymphlike way, she came very close to the surface, and blew soft bubbles upward, globes resplendent in color and reflective power: painting a complex and symphonic picture for him of the foliage, the water, the sky. She was fecundating his mind, she was beginning to show him the divine fingerprints in nature all around. This, for her, was a primordial offering to budding love.
Narcissus only saw his reflection garbled by the disturbance in the water. His face grew harsh. He pulled away from the lake and threw in a stone contemptuously, hitting Echo on the cheek. Frozen in the unexpected nature of this abuse, Echo retreated and the water again was glasslike. Narcissus smoothed his own features and again poured his soul into conversation with the reflection.
Echo, from behind a submerged tree, saw him speaking and with timid strokes, came to answer. Surely, she thought, he must be teasing me and now is trying to talk with me. She came out of the water and began to sing, in small, childlike tones, the story of her soul, of her hopes in his regard, her new discovery of love, a love that would fill the world around them. It was like the song of many leaves, but if one listened closely, the words were clear and delicate, small pictures of the glory of life. It was the best gift she had to offer: it was herself.
Narcissus heard her, he heard the beauty and he smiled; but strangely, he did not look at her. He was taking her song and applying it dextrously to the reflection. He was assimilating her song into the image he'd chosen; and when he sang in reply, a song with all the beauty of his Imago Dei, it was to the reflection. Echo was only the instrument to fulfill Narcissus' deep desire: that his reflection would indeed love him in return. He was already feeling the loneliness of his choice, and so he began to use the sounds and smells of reality to fuel his tyrannical dream. Echo was a perfect source for fuel and he used her easily, greedily: and without guilt: because he never really knew she was there, in his focused blindness.
After many minutes, each an epoch of delight and pain, Echo began to understand: but the truth was too horrible to accept. Surely someone as beautiful could not be a cold serpent inside. This was a paradox of nature, one that she did not want to understand, nor could she shoulder it along with her own loneliness.
Perhaps if she could put herself in the place of the reflection, perhaps he would see her in time and begin to love her. Perhaps she could be a bridge to reality, perhaps her heart could be used as a means by which the reflection would lose its power. So, steathily, she placed her face under the water at the very point of the reflection: eye to eye, nose to nose, mouth to mouth. Like a warm breeze off the tropical sea, she felt his glance connecting with hers. It was like manna, it was like succulent fruit, it was pure feelings of joy.
She, too, was caught. She and he stayed there in a time-limbo. As the time slipped away, so did her understanding of herself. She began to thin, like fine reed-paper left on the water. She was dying, giving all of herself to try and reach him through the reflection in the water. Finally, she had no strength to keep herself afloat, and she let a gasp of air escape her mouth. The water once again bubbled, moving with the last strength of the nymph. Narcissus grew desperate, the loss of the reflection threw him into a panic- because unbeknownst to him, Echo had become the very lifeblood of the reflection's power. He reached downward to pull her up and held her there for another long minute. Her heartrate was slowing into the erratic rythym of the near-dead.
Finally, he fell on the bank, asleep. Echo floated up to the surface, and began to take in the cool night air. She saw once again, the trees and the voluminous sky, the ripples on the water she'd loved so much as a child. She saw the night bird cut across the ink expanse, the homely sounds of the racoon along the tree roots. She began to breathe again, to live again. She was hungry.
She did not look back at the still form on the bank as she began to tear joyfully away through the undergrowth, for she knew that Narcissus would not, perhaps, ever miss her. He would have his reflection. She grieved finally, for the loss of her own ideal, her own dreams of love with Narcissus: but later, wiser, she grieved for the real loss of his soul; she felt pity, finally, for the soul trapped in it's own reflection: in fine, she appealed to Divinity for his rescue. The mystery, cloaked in the girds of providence, is whether or not even the Most High was able to reach Narcissus.
