seventeenth night

today is the sixth night of christmas. and i am still running. i have not stopped and he has not stopped chasing. in any case, by the twelfth night, it will be over.

there is a fairy tale from greece about the kallikantzaros. the kallikantzaros is a mean, mischievous race of creatures, like goblins or trolls. the difference is that the kallikantzaros is dedicated to sawing down the world tree, the tree that holds up all of existence. all of the kallikantzaros saw at the bottom of the tree, underground, away from all light, until december 25, christmas day. on christmas day, it is said that when the kallikantzaros finally start to saw the final part of the world tree, they realize that they can go to the surface now. something about christmas means that they can come up to the surface and play their tricks on mortals. they live on the surface for twelve nights - until the night of the feast of epiphany, when they are forced to go underground again and find that the world tree has healed itself in their absence. and so they go back to sawing, again and again and again, year after year after year, never tearing the world down from its anchor. 

there is a pattern. the golem has a pattern. it appears as a small toy. perhaps a doll or a globe or even a compass. but it is none of those things. it is a golem. and it will grow bigger. it absorbs other things into it. metal. meat. bone. it grows and grows until it is bigger than we are. and then it rips the sky apart and travels back to babel. 

perhaps it is adding to itself, trying to saw down the world tree, but it can't. it can't grow forever. it always returns to its tower, its babel. 

why hasn't he returned?

six.