Scorpion Soup Read online

  For seven days and nights I waited there at the same spot, the emerald canopy pressing ever closer, hunger gnawing at my ribs. I survived by squeezing water from the tubular flowers, and by eating the berries of the low shrubs that were common on the forest floor. I might have retraced my steps down to the river, but I had no idea in which direction it lay.

  Something inside me was telling me to wait.

  So I did.

  And then, on the seventh night, the vision came again.

  This time, the Capilongo was not reading, but smoking a pipe, staring into the embers of a dying fire. As I watched, he narrowed his eyes, and he whispered:

  ‘Dear apprentice, I know you are watching me. And I am waiting for you.’

  Then, as if answering my unspoken question, he added:

  ‘Follow the golden bird.’

  At dawn next day, I was woken by the shrill sound of a tiny bird, no bigger than a hummingbird. It was hovering beside my face, as if it were hoping to gain my attention. Rubbing my eyes, I saw that it wished for me to follow it. I jumped up and, before I knew it, was running through the jungle in pursuit of the golden bird.

  I chased and chased, the tangle of vines and twisted branches hampering each footstep. The little bird seemed to understand that I was an unfamiliar visitor to its jungle. Floundering about clumsily, I wished for wings to take to the air as he. From time to time, he would hover beside me, allowing me to catch my breath, before hurrying on.

  By the night of the first day I reached a glade of empty ground.

  Pinned out in the centre of it was the headless body of a man. Even before I had drawn near, I had guessed its identity. For all around it were torn pages, the Word of the Lord.

  I buried the missionary under a pile of flat-sided stones, and read a passage from Genesis over him. I ought to have had fear, because his head was missing – chopped off I imagined by savages.

  But, for the first time since my departure from Toledo, I had hope.

  Through three more days I chased the golden bird, until the air became cool and free from the insects that plagued my waking hours. I crouched on the banks of a little stream, chewed a handful of berries, and fell back with surprise.

  Standing over me was the Capilongo.

  ‘Excuse me for startling you,’ he said in a polite voice.

  I breathed in hard, choking in surprise.

  The Capilongo reached down and offered me his hand. It was soft, covered in chocolate-brown feathers.

  ‘I saw you in a dream,’ I said.

  ‘And I saw you,’ the Capilongo replied, ‘and I know why you have come.’

  Glancing at the ground, I mumbled the word ‘duty’.

  ‘Before you kill me,’ said the Capilongo, ‘please do me the honour of dining with me. You see, I have very little chance to make intelligent conversation.’

  I agreed readily. After all, it was the least I could do.

  The creature led me to a cave behind the stream. It was gigantic, carpeted in scented moss, and illuminated by shafts of natural light. Arranged down the middle was a long banquet table, at which two places had been laid at one end.

  Welcoming me to his home, the Capilongo ushered me to the head of the table, and clapped his hands.

  Nothing happened, not for a moment at least.

  Then, slowly, an army of sloths slipped from the shadows, their long curved arms laden with dishes and plates.

  We dined on wild fruits, the seeds of which looked like cut diamonds, on slivers of raw blue meat, and on a kind of jelly that smelled of frogs. The sloth servants ferried one dish after another to the table.

  I asked if there were savages living near. The Capilongo looked up sharply.

  ‘There is a tribe up in the mountains,’ he said, reaching for a segment of fruit. ‘They live on the brains of their vanquished foes. The skulls are stored beneath the ground in vats, pickled for months in the juice from the lowreeh tree.’

  ‘Do they hunt Capilongos?’ I asked.

  My host sniffed.

  ‘I am pleased to report that they do not,’ he said.

  Before I could reply, the Capilongo reached down and picked up a knife. An assassin’s dagger of sorts, it had a sharp point and a long, straight shaft. He turned it carefully so that the blade was held in his fingers, the hilt pointing towards my chest.

  ‘Capilongos have two traditions,’ he said in a kindly tone. ‘The first is always to assist a guest in anything he might require. The second is to entertain an assassin before he carries out his duty. This knife is sharp enough to stab me easily in the heart, or to slit my throat, whichever you prefer. But, before you dispatch me,’ said the Capilongo earnestly, ‘I would ask that you permit me a small indulgence.’

  Wondering what it was, I nodded.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Would you mind me regaling you with a story? Think of it as an entertainment, a parting gift.’

  I could hardly believe what I was hearing. But, delighted at having arrived at my quarry so easily, I accepted.

  The Capilongo clapped his hands and the sloth servants cleared the plates.

  When the serving dishes were gone, an elderly sloth glided over to the table. Between his upturned hands was held a salver, a bottle of aged jungle brandy upon it. When two glasses of the tawny liquid had been poured, the Capilongo lit his pipe and his tale began:

  Mittle-Mittle

  There was once a kingdom in the Horn of Africa where all the men were brave, and all the women were beautiful. Surrounded by desert, it was a land of great abundance and verdure. The grass was the colour of crushed emeralds, the flowers dazzling pinks, reds and blues; and the air crystal clear.

  At one end of the land there was a mountain capped all year round with blinding white snow and, at the other, a forest impenetrable and dark – the Forest of Empty Souls.

  There was no king, because the people had found over centuries that they did better without a leader. The last king had passed away without issue, and it was then that the citizens decided they didn’t have any need of a monarch at all.

  When there was a matter to be dealt with or decided, they went to a pool in the palace, a pool filled with toads. And, with great reverence, they consulted the toads.

  Although no one in the kingdom could speak the language of the toads, they found that the creatures seemed to understand what they were being asked. Through twitches of their wart-covered bodies, and through croaking, the amphibians managed to make their feelings known.

  Now, in the kingdom there was a special shrine. There was no religion as such, yet the shrine was worshipped night and day, and revered like nothing else.

  A thousand and one steps crafted from porphyry led up to the central chamber. Each morning and each night it was rinsed with tears gathered from the populace.

  As there was no sadness, or very little indeed, the people grew a special kind of onion, the mere hint of which made their eyes stream with tears. Enormous fields of these onions were grown by the farmers, for the sole purpose of rinsing the steps of the sacred shrine. The women would take it in turns weeping into miniature silver buckets, which were taken ceremoniously to the steps at dusk and at dawn.

  As for the shrine, the interior walls were fashioned from pure gold, embossed with the images of toads at play. Deep inside, beyond a golden screen of filigree, lay a simple chamber. And in the chamber was a plinth, on which stood a cedarwood box, the colour of walnuts, all cracked with age.

  No one in the kingdom had ever seen the contents of the box. It’s not that they didn’t want to, rather that they were so fearful that no one had ever dared to open it.

  From time to time children, as they drifted to sleep, would ask their mothers what was in the shrine.

  The answer was always the same:

  ‘There is a box, my dear.’

  ‘But what’s in it?’

  Every mother in the land always gave the same reply:

  ‘Never you mind. Go to sleep now and l
eave it at that.’

  One day, a boy of about eight or nine found that he couldn’t stop thinking about the box.

  His name was Mittle-Mittle, which meant Good-hearted in the language of the kingdom. He begged and begged, and he begged and begged, but his mother refused to reveal anything more than she knew – that in the sacred shrine was a box, a box the colour of walnuts, all cracked with age.

  Disgruntled at getting a less than satisfactory answer to his question, Mittle-Mittle decided to venture to the shrine and have a look for himself.

  The next morning, when all other little boys were huddled over their desks in school, Mittle-Mittle slipped unnoticed through the streets, passed the Toad Palace, and scampered up the great long staircase, just as it had been deluged in a rinsing of fresh tears.

  The guards didn’t notice the boy because they wore special helmets which made seeing anything shorter than themselves very difficult indeed.

  With care and on tiptoes, Mittle-Mittle zigzagged his way through the gold-walled chambers, until he came to the room in which the box was kept.

  At that very moment, his mother was chopping onions and blinking into a silver bucket, quite unaware that her favourite son was up to no good. But the last thing on Mittle-Mittle’s mind was his mother, and the part she played in the tradition of the land.

  As he entered the chamber in which the box was kept, the boy wiped a hand down over his mouth, and glanced around carefully, making certain he wasn’t about to be caught. No one seemed to be watching, and so, very quietly, he crept forwards until he was standing beside the box.

  The keyhole was in line with his lips.

  Reaching up, he prised the lid open, his small fingers forcing the hinges apart.

  He craned forwards, straining on tiptoes, holding his breath.

  ‘Oh,’ said Mittle-Mittle in a whisper. ‘I see.’

  A few inches away in the box, laid on a bed of dusty green felt, was a nail.

  It was rusty, bent at one end, and appeared to be very old. Without thinking, Mittle-Mittle snatched up the nail.

  Leaving the lid of the box wide open, he hurried away backwards, so that if anyone saw him they would imagine he was arriving rather than on his way out.

  In his bedroom that night Mittle-Mittle made a careful inspection of the nail. But, after a considerable amount of examining, even with a scratched magnifying glass, he came to the conclusion that there was nothing unusual about it at all.

  As he regarded it again, his mother slipped in to kiss him goodnight. Her face was fraught with worry, her eyes red from weeping.

  ‘A terrible thing has happened,’ she said.

  Mittle-Mittle asked her what.

  ‘The sacred box in the sacred shrine has been opened, and its contents have been stolen! The entire kingdom is in disarray. Every home is being searched by the guards, and every woman is weeping a little extra, to rinse the sacred steps that have been so unpardonably defiled.’

  ‘But how can the guards find what is missing if they don’t know what was in the box in the first place?’

  Mittle-Mittle’s mother frowned.

  ‘They will know,’ she said decisively. ‘Believe me, they will know.’

  When his mother had tucked him in bed and was gone, the boy opened the window a crack. He was about to toss the nail out, when he had an idea. He had often heard his father talk of a wise man that lived in the dark impenetrable Forest of Empty Souls – a wise man who wore an amulet made from a dodo’s skull.

  The wise man would know why there was an ordinary nail kept in the box.

  Slipping on his clothes, Mittle-Mittle climbed through the window, the old nail clutched tight in his palm. He hurried through the empty streets until he was at the edge of town.

  A little further, and he found himself at the forest.

  Most other boys might have felt a pang of fear in their gut, but Mittle-Mittle wasn’t fearful of anything at all. Slinking between the trees, he snaked his way towards the middle of the forest where he expected the wise man to live.

  Meanwhile, in the town, the guards were searching from house to house, questioning one family after the next. Eventually they arrived at Mittle-Mittle’s home. The boy’s father opened the door to them courteously, inviting them in. A moment later, their son’s empty bed was discovered, the window open.

  Mittle-Mittle’s parents were dragged away to the cells.

  Deep in the Forest of Empty Souls, an elderly man was huddled over a fire at the base of a towering green winter oak. With eyes closed, he was murmuring incantations, scribbling figures in the air with the tip of one finger.

  Around his neck was an amulet fashioned from a dodo’s skull.

  Mittle-Mittle watched from a distance.

  For the first time in his life, he sensed fear. It was not so much a fear of the wise man, so much as a fear of something he didn’t understand. Why would the people of the land in which he lived keep an old rusty nail in a box, and protect it from one generation to the next?

  Very slowly, with sure footsteps over moss, the boy approached the wise man. As he drew nearer, Mittle-Mittle could feel the heat of the flames on his face.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said when he was close.

  The wise man froze. He opened an eye. Then the other.

  ‘And who are you?’ he asked.

  ‘I am Mittle-Mittle.’

  ‘And what do you want?’

  ‘I want to know why the people of our kingdom keep an old rusty nail in a box, guarding it day and night, and washing the steps to its shrine with tears.’

  The boy held up the nail and, as he did so, the old man smiled, his teeth reflecting the firelight.

  ‘Come and sit beside me,’ he said, ‘and I shall tell you.’

  The boy sat down on the soft green moss. As soon as he was comfortable, the wise man began to talk:

  The Tale of the Rusty Nail

  There was once a tyrannical emperor in Ethiopia who spent his days counting the sacks of treasure in his many vaults. They were piled from floor to ceiling in rows of a hundred and one – each of them bursting with rubies and emeralds, diamonds and with gold.

  Each year, as his wealth doubled once and then again through taxes and foreign wars, the people grew eager for change. Their sons slaughtered in battle, their precious savings confiscated to satisfy their ruler’s insatiable greed, they sought a secret way by which to end his run of tyranny.

  The problem was that the emperor rarely left his palace, a vast marble structure twenty storeys high, set on the banks of the sprawling River Walaqa, a tributary of the Blue Nile. The kingdom had been plundered to construct the palace, and to fill its magazines with treasure. And, with such poverty surrounding him, the emperor had no interest in ever leaving the luxurious quarters of his home.

  So, instead, he reclined in his gardens, or in his grand salons, and allowed his retinue of servants to drop peeled grapes into his mouth, one at a time.

  Every so often the secret police caught a group of citizens conspiring against their emperor. The conspirators would be dragged away, hung, drawn and quartered in the main square.

  Then their heads were skewered onto spikes as a warning to others.

  Now, in this land there lived a small boy, about your age. He had never known his parents because they had been imprisoned in the Slate Tower, which lay on an island in the middle of the River Walaqa. Their crime was daring to question out loud why their emperor required so many sacks of loot when beyond his palace walls there wasn’t enough food to eat. So the boy lived with his aunt, a fresh-faced woman with a limp, who was very good to him indeed.

  His name was Rintin, and he was the cleverest boy in his school. He never said much, but when he did say something others listened, because what he said tended to be very clever indeed.

  One day, Rintin was on his way back from school, when he saw his elderly neighbour in chains, being led towards the gallows in the main square. On that day there were so many others in line to
be hanged that the neighbour was forced to crouch down and wait his turn.

  Nimbly, Rintin hurried over to the old man, greeted him, and said:

  ‘I will save you, I promise, I will save you.’

  The wizened old man smiled at seeing the boy, then held up his wrists, weighed down with manacles.

  ‘Keep away from me dear Rintin,’ he said softly, ‘before they take you too.’

  The boy charged off into the back streets, and stopped at the first house he could find. A little girl was playing with her doll outside.

  ‘Tell your parents to go to the palace gates at dusk,’ he said. ‘The emperor is going to make an announcement. Your parents must spread the word.’

  Clutching her doll, the little girl ran into the house.

  As for Rintin, he ran on, through the streets, warning everyone he passed to gather at the palace at dusk. Once he had reached the end of the town, he made his way to the banks of the river.

  With the palace itself so heavily guarded, the only way to observe it unobserved was from the water.

  Borrowing a canoe from a fisherman, he pushed out and paddled his way into the middle, halfway between the palace and the Slate Tower, in which his parents were imprisoned.

  Turning his back on the island, Rintin looked carefully at the pleasure dome of the emperor. He scanned the walls, taking in every detail, questioning why it was as it was.

  Now, the lad’s cleverness derived from the fact that he observed very keenly. Almost nothing ever escaped his attention. He knew, for example, when a storm was approaching because he could sense the trembling of the leaves. And he could tell when his aunt was unhappy because her handkerchief smelled very faintly of salt from her tears.

  Rintin’s gaze moved over the blocks of marble, looking for gaps, or for an unguarded window amongst the sheering white walls. The stones were flush together, joined in a zigzag edge so that nothing could ever prise them apart.

  All afternoon, the boy gazed at the palace.

  As the shadows lengthened, he felt a pang of worry, after all the townspeople would be making their way to the gates to hear the announcement. No one would dare stay away, for the emperor was very strict indeed about announcements.