Scorpion Soup (5 page)

There were lines of people queuing around the palace, all waiting for an audience – for their king to provide a solution to their woes.

The farmer sent agents across the known world to find the shop clerk who had sold him the potions.

But each one came back empty-handed.

In a moment of desperation he reached into the bag and fished out one of the two last bottles. He had no idea what was in it, but felt sure it would give him the boost he so badly needed.

Unscrewing the stopper, he sucked down the invisible contents, and prepared for what was to come.

An hour passed and the farmer’s wife – now the queen – shuffled in. She insisted on an increase in her allowance, and demanded a new crown.

The farmer king smiled tautly. Then, clapping his hands, he ordered the royal guards to take the queen to the tower.

‘I have always despised you!’ he exclaimed. ‘And will now never have to listen to your moaning again!’

As the guards marched the queen away, the farmer king called his household staff to attention.

‘I am doing away with you all!’ he cried, ‘because I know that you have been stealing from me, and are spying on me, and I hate every one of you!’

After that, he sent a message to the neighbouring king declaring war, on the grounds that the next kingdom was using too much air. And then, he roamed the streets in his royal carriage, as his soldiers arrested every third man and woman for plotting against him.

A mutiny ensued.

By the end of the night, the farmer king had been overthrown by his people – all because he had drunk the miniature bottle once-labelled
Deceit
.

Stripped of his medals and dressed in rags, he was taken to a small cell below the one in which his own wife was still imprisoned. The cell door was slammed, and the key turned in the lock.

The most wretched of all the cells, its walls were masked in dried blood and filth.

‘They’ll hang you at sunrise,’ said the toothless jailer through the bars as he strode off.

The farmer king crouched down, put his head in his hands, and wept.

‘That’s enough noise!’ bawled the jailer from a distance. ‘Any more and I’ll come in and thrash you!’

Wiping away his tears, the prisoner coaxed himself to be strong. But his pitiful situation was too much to take. The farmer was about to break down in tears again, when he remembered that around his waist was a belt into which the last miniature bottle had been sewn.

Taking a deep breath, and squaring his shoulders feebly, he said to himself,

‘Well, what could be worse than what’s promised to me – a gallows at dawn?’

He unpicked the stitches, opened the bottle, and drank down its contents.

A little time slipped away, and the farmer found himself feeling quite good. In fact, given his circumstances, he felt marvellous, as if there was everything to live for.

Jumping to his feet, he began scoping out plans for the near future, enthused about the little time he had left. The last grains of sand may have been running through the hour-glass, but each one gave rise for hope.

Scanning the grimy whitewashed walls of the cell, the farmer noticed something scribbled high up around the room, in the few inches where the walls and ceiling met. He had missed it before, while lying on the floor in a crumpled heap.

Peering up keenly, the farmer king turned pauper found himself reading what looked like a tale:

Back in the days when the world was inside out and upside down, and when humans were the slaves to frogs, there lived twin brothers in the land of Cathay. Tall and handsome, the first was called ‘Glorious’, and the second – who was terribly short and odious to the eye – was named ‘Grotesque’.

To say there was sibling rivalry between the two would be a grave understatement. From dawn until dusk, Glorious and Grotesque bickered and fought, because Glorious did exactly as he was told, and Grotesque always broke the rules.

Their squabbling began in the crib, continued through childhood, and then into adolescence, when Grotesque’s wrongdoing got them both into trouble.

And trouble came in the most severe form when the brothers attracted the attention of the frogs.

There was nothing that frogs disliked more than humans who made a nuisance of themselves. As rulers of the earth, the amphibians believed that Man had but one role to play – serving them.

The frogs lived in vast twisting labyrinths beneath the ground.

They liked it there because it was damp and cool, and because it gave much misery to their human servants, whom they regarded as unclean and downright rude. The frogs had been in charge for so long that neither they nor the people ever considered that things could be the other way round.

Generation after generation, the humans served the frogs, and the frogs amused themselves by tormenting Mankind. They liked very much to point to the pale skin of the people, to screw up their faces and to hiss.

And, they liked to empty Frogland’s prison – where only humans were kept – and to take the inmates to the underground pool known as the Abyss, where they were thrown in and forced to swim with bound wrists, until they drowned.

So it was that attracting the attention of the frogs was not a good thing.

Not a good thing at all.

Because the frogs never had a kind word to say to anyone who wasn’t one of them.

On a damp chill day, Glorious and Grotesque were brought before the Supreme Frog Council, their hands tied with twine, hoods pulled down over their heads.

The Great Frog Leader straightened his crown, licked the air, and croaked:

‘I have it on good authority that you horrid humans have caused a disturbance to our brethren.’

‘But Your Frogship,’ said Glorious, his words muffled by the covering, ‘we are twin brothers, of which there is one saintly one –
me
– and one immoral one –
him
. Ask anyone and they will tell you that there is the good and the bad.’

‘Silence!’ croaked the Great Frog Leader. ‘I will speak and only I!’

Fearing for their lives, the brothers remained silent.

The Great Frog Leader consulted with his Supreme Council and, a moment later, he gave judgement.

‘You are to be cast into the Abyss,’ he said. ‘And nothing you will say or do can make us change our minds.’

Before they could protest, the twins were being prodded through the dank labyrinth towards the Abyss.

‘It’s all your fault,’ Glorious snapped as they shuffled forwards, ‘I’ve never done anything bad in my life!’

‘You’re so damned sanctimonious,’ retorted his brother, ‘what a tedious life you have lived!’

Silenced by the frog commander, the brothers kept shuffling until they reached the Abyss.

The chamber in which it lay was danker and darker than any other, and had luminous lichens and moss covering the sheering stone walls.

Perched at the edge of the deep pool, the Great Frog Leader ordered the brothers to swim for as long as they could.

With that, they were pushed in.

A great deal of splashing followed, in which Glorious did exactly as he was told. He swam up and down, his legs kicking wildly, the hood still covering his head.

Within a few minutes he had drowned.

Grotesque on the other hand disobeyed the orders. He was damned if a frog was going to tell him how to die. And so, taking the deepest breath of his life, he swam down towards the bottom of the pool.

As he swam, the hood floated away, and he found he could see really quite well. The deeper down he went, the more oxygen there was in the water. So much so that, right down on the floor of the pool, he found that he could actually breathe. By rasping his bindings on a jagged rock, he managed to free his hands.

Glancing around, he noticed that there was a narrow cleft in the darkest corner of the pool. Grotesque swam over to it and, after a lot of wriggling, he managed to scrape through. The passage twisted to the left, then the right, doubled back on itself time and again, but Grotesque kept going.

The thought of the frogs waiting up on the surface, to cart away his corpse, was reason enough not to give up.

Eventually, a long distance from the entrance of the cleft between the rocks, the surviving twin rose to the surface of a shallow pool. Emerging into blinding sunlight, he stepped from the clear water, a little dazed, but thrilled to be alive.

Almost immediately he found himself surrounded by people.

But they were not ordinary people like him. Rather, they had human bodies but the heads of sheep.

‘Baa, baa! He has come!’ bleated one of the sheep.

‘You are right!’ chorused the others.

‘Baa! At last! After so many centuries, baa!’ cried another.

‘The scriptures did not lie!’

‘He is so handsome!’ bleated the first.

Grotesque stepped onto the dry land, and took in the congregation of creatures huddling closer. He wondered if he was dreaming. But before he could give it any thought, the sheep-people carried him away.

The next thing he knew, the twin was reclining in an immense alabaster palace, one that had been kept for centuries just for him. Sheep-headed maidens doted on his every whim, feeding him choice morsels from platters of food. And, as they did so, they sang to him – the sacred ballad of the sheep-people.

Unable to believe his sudden reverse in fortunes, Grotesque congratulated himself on surviving, and on having somehow become a deity to the misguided community of sheep-people.

Each day that passed, the maidens brought food more delicious than the day before, and they insisted that he eat more and more. And, each day, the kind of food that was brought was fattier and fattier – so that very soon Grotesque ballooned outwards in size.

When he refused to eat any more, the maidens fluttered their long sheepish lashes at him, giggling until he could resist no more.

Many days passed and Grotesque found he could hardly walk, so heavy had he become. But, as the maidens reminded him, there was no need for him to take to his feet, because they were there to serve him – to fulfil his smallest whim.

Then, early one morning, the maidens came to Grotesque’s chamber in a special procession. Some of them were playing lyres, others singing, all of them dancing.

‘This is a very special day, O dearest One!’ they called in unison.

‘Not more food,’ the twin spluttered. ‘I just can’t eat any more!’

‘No, no,’ said the chief maiden, ‘there is nothing to eat. We are going to bath you instead.’

Leading the twin through into the royal bathroom, they washed him as he had never been washed before. After that, they adorned his body with perfumes, and massaged him with rare oils.

‘This is indeed a very special day,’ thought Grotesque. ‘I do hope there will be many more days like this to come.’

Strumming on their lyres, the morning air warmed by their voices, the maidens led their guest to the hillside beyond the village where the palace lay. Giggling and prancing about, they looked at him suggestively, and giggled all the more.

As he wondered what was about to happen next, Grotesque was taken to a great slab of marble, sprinkled with rhododendron flowers, and anointed with oil. Before he could protest, he was tied down and his wrists and ankles were snapped into manacles.

‘What’s happening?!’ yelled the surviving twin. ‘What are you doing to me?’

The maidens tittered and laughed, kissed him goodbye, and wandered away, the lyres strumming as they went.

‘Come back! Come back!’ shouted Grotesque.

But the maidens did not turn.

Sunset came and with the night came terrible cold.

Manacled and left to survive the elements, Grotesque coaxed himself to do whatever was not expected of him.

‘They expect me to collapse and die,’ he said to himself. ‘Well, I’m damned if that’s what I am going to do. I’m going to survive because that’s what I do best.’

Just as Grotesque was trying to work out how to free himself, a giant bird swooped down and began pecking at him. It soon became very clear that the bird was used to feeding on the white marble slab – which was a kind of altar.

By twisting this way and that a few inches, Grotesque managed to angle the bird towards his wrists. A couple of pecks from the beak and his left hand became free. Moving fast, swinging his weight around, he freed his other hand, and then his ankles as well.

Rather than cowering on the ground as some might have done, Grotesque grabbed hold of the bird’s tail feathers and clung on for life as the creature soared into the air.

Far below he caught sight of the lines of sheep-headed people going about their daily work, and the palace where he had been fattened up before ending up as a sacrifice.

Despite the added weight of its payload, the bird reached a terrific height and flapped out to sea. Soaring higher and higher, until the air grew thin, it crossed a vast expanse of water, and then a desert, with Grotesque holding on all the while.

From time to time, the great bird seemed to glance down, as if it was aware of its human passenger.

Nuzzling into the creature’s plumage for warmth, the twin scanned the landscape below, desperately hoping he might be reunited gently with the earth.

All of a sudden he spied a narrow ribbon of water bisecting olive-green fields, in which farmers were toiling. His fingers strained to breaking point, he waited until he was directly above the canal…

…and he let go. And fell…

Down. Down. Down.

Tumbling head over heels, he fell for an eternity, before plunging with full force into the water.

As it happened, a procession was passing through the fields that day, a cortege of priests giving worship to the land. They were plodding in silence along the margin of the waterway, when Grotesque fell from the sky.

Believing him to be a divine being, they hauled him to the riverbank, pulled him out, and garlanded him with flowers.

They called him ‘Opee’, which meant ‘Heavenly’ in their language. And they carried him to a mountaintop monastery, where the gods were said to have lived since before time began.