The Bookworm

The Bookworm

by Bianca Aguirre 

In the beginning, the bookworm lived inside the Tree of Knowledge. The bookworm feasted on its fruits of knowledge and grew (indeed) quite knowledgeable. With each juicy morsel the bookworm consumed, he grew segment by segment until there was only one fruit remaining in his knowledgeable tree. The apples had given him knowledge of free will, the apricots of man, the cherries relationships, the coconuts emotions, the figs sticky situations, the grapefruits passion, the guavas medicine, the lemons and limes understanding, the lychees hygiene, the mangos beauty, the nectarines truth, the oranges secrets and untruth, the peaches culture, the pears the arts, the persimmons social studies, the plums languages, the pomegranates mathematics, the starfruits science, and of course the nuts which told anything and everything else.

The one fruit which remained, the bookworm did not have a name for. It puzzled him that with all of the tree’s knowledge he did not know this strange fruit’s name. He cautiously licked the fruit and came to understand its namelessness. He left it in the tree, dangling like candy before a child, before it fell into the hands of Eve. Eve’s white teeth, now stained a purplish red, grimaced up at the bookworm, and the leaves in the tree began to furiously shake. They twirled to the ground and collected on the earth’s carpet in a collection of papers. A tremor shot through the trunk; Eve shook as the tree began to fall. She dropped the fruit and ran. Now, it stained the paper. It was time for the pears’ art of storytelling. The bookworm began to write.

Meanwhile, Eve tumbled through the rest of the garden. She didn’t once look back at the fallen tree, but she could feel the piercingly dark eyes of the worm glaring through her. “Adam,” she called. She found him asleep under the Willowing Tree. She knelt beside him and began to weep.

“Adam,” she called softly easing him awake, “something—something terrible has happened.” Adam stirred and the tree’s branches tickled his ears and rustled his hair. The leaves nudged his eyelids open and the sun illuminated his misty gray eyes.

“Hmmm,” he murmured.

“A tree, Adam, it’s—it’s fallen.” She stared at the ground. No tree had ever fallen in their garden; the thought alone of a tree falling was inconceivable.

“But I would know. I would know if a tree had fallen.” In the garden, Adam and Eve knew everything. They had the power to know all. “Are you sure? How do you know?” he questioned her, seeking explanation.

“I saw it happening.” She gasped for air. “I think I made it happen.”

“What happened?” he stroked her arms up and down, her blond hairs tickling his fingertips. She lifted her head and he saw her stained lips. She didn’t part them to answer. “Which tree fell?” but he had a feeling—based on his current lack of knowledge and Eve’s fruit-stained lips—that it had been the Tree of Knowledge.

What next? they both thought, holding one another underneath the willow tree.

With leaves of paper and the fruit’s ink, the bookworm created the very first book. After using all of the fruit’s ink to write his masterpiece, he crafted bookends for his pages—a front and a back cover. He shut himself inside these ends, realizing they could not be left open. His tree had fallen and the world’s inhabitants would have to pay.

Today, the bookworm resides in our books, thriving on what’s left of the world’s original free knowledge.