Scorpion Soup Read online

  An hour before dusk, Rintin paddled the canoe a little closer to the wall, which was now deep in chill shadow. Approaching, he noticed something strange. Where the walls disappeared at the waterline, there was a knotted mesh of reeds.

  The palace was, it seemed, constructed on a kind of giant woven raft, one made from bulrushes. It was incredible that such a mighty structure could sit securely as it did on a foundation so flimsy and feeble.

  Scanning the zigzag lines between the blocks of stone, Rintin noticed that there was an unevenness near the waterline. A piece of marble had been wedged into a crack where the zigzag joins were broken, and a definite force was being exerted upon it. But, even stranger still, was the fact that a fragment of wood, no bigger than a matchbox, had been hammered into place beside the sliver of marble.

  The wood was held in place with a nail, a bent brown rusty nail.

  Touching a finger to his chin in contemplation, Rintin made a series of calculations.

  By his reckoning, the entire palace was being held by this single nail.

  How extraordinary, he thought, that the emperor’s mighty seat of power was so precariously in the balance, and all because a craftsman had cut a corner he imagined no one would ever spot.

  Paddling his canoe over to the nail, Rintin knocked it up and down with his oar, until it was loose. Then, taking a deep breath, he pulled it away from the wood.

  Nothing happened.

  Not at first, anyway.

  A minute passed. And another. The boy cupped a hand to his right ear. He had heard something – a faintest undertone of sound. He gasped, grabbed the oar, and paddled away as fast as he could.

  A moment later, there was a deafening noise, as the zigzag joins began to part, and the palace began to fall.

  Lost in his treasure vaults, the emperor was counting the sacks, ordering them to be rearranged in a new way.

  All of a sudden he heard the sound of masonry collapsing in the distance.

  ‘What’s that?!’ he thundered.

  His vizier swiped a hand through the air and oozed reassurance.

  ‘Surely it’s nothing, Your Importantness,’ he whispered unctuously. ‘But I will…’

  Before he had time to finish his sentence, the floor of the treasure vault disappeared clean away beneath them.

  The vizier, the emperor, and all the precious treasure, were plunged into the now choppy waters of the River Walaqa.

  Spying their monarch struggling for his life, the guards fled, the palace nothing more than rubble around them. With the sun touching the horizon, the townspeople flocked to the imperial gate.

  Rintin clapped his hands and addressed them.

  ‘You are free!’ he yelled. ‘And never again will you be prisoners!’

  He held up the rusty nail, with a bend at one end.

  ‘This nail is a symbol that even the worst despot can be brought down in the simplest way. The great power is power that hangs by a thread.’

  The crowd cheered.

  Then a wizened old man pushed to the front.

  Rintin recognised him as his neighbour, saved from the gallows in the nick of time.

  ‘This boy has saved us,’ the man exclaimed, ‘and so I vote that we make him our king!’

  There were more cheers, and Rintin was carried at shoulder height through the streets. The emperor’s launch took him across to the island where he was reunited with his parents.

  In due course Rintin was indeed made the king and he ruled for many years.

  He married the little girl with the doll, and had six sons, each one wiser and more handsome than the last.

  On his desk he kept an orb, and a walnut-coloured box.

  And in the box he kept the nail.

  After a great many years, King Rintin breathed his last, his beloved queen and many sons clustered around his bed. The royal family and their kingdom mourned the loss. And, according to his wishes, they buried their monarch in a simple grave on the island where the Slate Tower once stood.

  In a letter left to his children, King Rintin decreed that the son with the keenest power of observation should follow him as ruler of the land.

  ‘But how shall we decide which that is?’ asked the queen.

  The lord chamberlain, who was reading the letter aloud, motioned to the page.

  ‘“The one of you who can glimpse a secret level in a story,” he read, “will take my orb, my sacred wooden box, and my throne.”’

  There was a pause as the sons eyed each other anxiously. The eldest took a step forwards.

  ‘Secret level,’ he spluttered… ‘Story… what story?!’

  The lord chamberlain broke the wax seal on a second envelope, and removed several sheets of paper, written in the king’s own hand.

  ‘This story,’ he said.

  The six sons eyed one another again.

  ‘Read it to us,’ they all said at once.

  And so the lord chamberlain did.

  The Shop That Sold Truth

  A lifetime ago, in Upper Egypt, there lived a farmer and his wife.

  They had very little money, and every month they grew a little more impoverished until, one day, the farmer could stand it no more.

  ‘Tomorrow I am going to the town,’ he said, ‘where I am going to sell the last of our possessions, so that we can have one good meal before the landlord ousts us from his land.’

  ‘But what will we do after that?’ asked his wife.

  ‘We will throw ourselves into the hands of fate,’ the farmer replied.

  And so the next day, he piled the kitchen table, the chairs, the bedstead and the pots and pans onto the cart, and pulled them himself into the town, a handful of miles away.

  By dusk, all the possessions were sold, and the farmer had a pocket jingling with coins.

  He was about to go to the market to buy some food to take home, when he noticed a rather grand shop at one corner of the town square. Having not seenj it before, he approached it cautiously, and pressed his face up to the window.

  The walls inside were lined with tall glass jars. Each one had a label but was quite empty of contents. His curiosity piqued, the farmer dusted himself down, and pushed open the door.

  The unfilled jars were a little larger than they had appeared from the outside, their labels written neatly in gold script. And it was the labels that caught the farmer’s eye. Although he had left school well before his time, he had learned to read, and he read the labels one by one.

  ‘Wisdom, Hope, Perception, Deceit, Truth, Goodwill, Remorse, Bravery, Melancholy…’ he frowned and, as he did so, a hunchbacked sales clerk appeared.

  ‘Can I help you, sir?’ he enquired in an even tone.

  The farmer jumped back.

  ‘I noticed the jars through the window,’ he spluttered, ‘and was so intrigued that I simply had to come in.’

  The clerk dusted a hair from his shoulder.

  ‘And what, may I ask, was it that you found so intriguing?’

  The farmer pointed to the empty jars.

  ‘Those,’ he said.

  The hunchbacked clerk narrowed his eyes.

  ‘And...?’ he hissed. ‘And what is so strange about them?’

  ‘Well, er, how can you sell Wisdom, or Truth… or whatever?’ he said. ‘The jars are empty. It’s as plain as day.’

  The clerk, who was growing impatient, cracked his knuckles.

  ‘Whoever said that qualities had a colour or a texture?’ he asked angrily.

  ‘But whoever said they could be bought and sold?’ the farmer replied.

  ‘Who said they could not?’

  The farmer blinked.

  ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I fancy you’re a trickster, who’s set up shop to dupe god-fearing men like me.’

  The clerk stepped over to the door and pushed it open.

  ‘It was you who came in here uninvited,’ he said calmly.

  The farmer was about to str
ide out, but something caused him to pause.

  He slid the tip of his tongue over his upper lip.

  ‘You think I can’t afford your wares,’ he said. ‘Well, I’ve got money.’

  He pulled out a pocket full of coins.

  ‘So what is it you would like to buy?’ asked the clerk.

  The farmer scanned an eye over the shelves.

  ‘Well, it depends how much they cost,’ he said.

  ‘They are all priced differently and sold in small bottles of their own,’ the clerk replied. ‘The most expensive is Wisdom, and the least is Shyness.’

  ‘Why would anyone want Shyness?’ the farmer asked.

  ‘You would be surprised, sir.’

  ‘Well, for a handful of coins, could I get a selection? You know, so I can test some of them out.’

  The clerk was about to refuse, when he was overcome with goodwill. He glanced up at the jar, fearing its stopper was loose.

  ‘Very well,’ he said, ‘after all, I am about to close for the night.’

  Five minutes later, the farmer found himself clutching a sackcloth bag in which were jangling six miniature bottles.

  Just before he left the shop, the clerk gave a caution:

  ‘Although they are magical,’ he said, ‘you have only purchased samples of my wares, and in this size the effect of each bottle lasts only a single day.’

  It was dark by the time the farmer returned home. His wife was standing outside the shack and she was weeping.

  ‘We can’t go in,’ she said. ‘The landlord has thrown us out. I hope you made us enough money so that at least we can eat.’

  Her husband pulled the sackcloth bag out from behind his back.

  ‘I bought something far better than food,’ he said.

  His wife looked at him expectantly.

  ‘I bought these little bottles.’

  ‘We need more than liquid, we need food.’

  ‘But they don’t contain liquid.’

  The farmer’s eyes were wide.

  ‘Then what’s in them?’ asked the woman, snatching one and holding it up to the moon.

  ‘It’s empty!’ she scowled.

  ‘They all are,’ the farmer explained. ‘And that’s the point.’

  The next thing the farmer knew, a clenched fist had hit him between the eyes. His wife’s fury knew no bounds. As he came to his senses, he thought of something.

  Picking up the little bottle that his wife has thrown on the ground, he uncorked it, and held the rim to his pursed lips. He felt something strange enter his mouth, something intangible and warm.

  ‘You’ve ruined us,’ said his wife, as she began to weep again.

  The farmer stood up.

  ‘My dear, dear woman,’ he replied, ‘please forgive me. I can never find the words to apologise enough. You deserve a far better man than I, and so I will take leave of you and return only when I have made something of myself.’

  ‘Good riddance to you!’ barked the old woman.

  But her husband had already gone.

  On the ground where he had been standing was a tiny bottle. Squinting, and holding it to the full moon as she had done before, she read the handwritten label – Remorse.

  Within a day, the farmer had crossed the fields and reached the edge of the neighbouring town. He met a fisherman beside a stream, approached him and said:

  ‘Hello friend, do forgive me for disturbing you. Oh, how very sorry I am. Truly, I really mean it.’

  Struck by the stranger’s politeness, the fisherman offered him some grilled fish for lunch. The two men became instant friends and, before he knew it, the farmer was invited to stay in the fisherman’s home.

  That night, he reflected on the day’s events and how the course of his life had changed. His mind wandering, he opened the bag and pulled out the first bottle he could find.

  The label read, Bravery.

  ‘Hmmm,’ thought the farmer to himself. ‘I’d like to be brave.’ And, without giving it too much thought at all, he prised out the cork and sucked down the bottle’s contents.

  That night, while the fisherman and his family slept, a band of thieves broke into the house, each one armed with a scimitar. They came in over the roof, and in through the windows, moving in complete silence.

  Then they sprang.

  The fisherman and his family were roused from their beds, tied up and relieved of all that they owned.

  In the clamour of the attack, no one noticed the farmer sleeping in the kitchen beside the fire. Hearing a commotion, he crept stealthily into the sleeping quarters, armed with a cleaver. And, hardly knowing how he did it, he took the attackers by surprise.

  Within less time than it takes to tell, he fought them all at once, and disarmed them all in a feat of unbridled bravery. Minutes later, the band of thieves lay dead, their bodies dismembered on the floor of the fisherman’s home.

  News of the farmer’s bravery spread.

  The corpses were taken into the town’s main square, where they were hung up for all to see. A passer-by recognised them as the most feared bandits in the realm, with a handsome reward on their heads.

  Before he knew it, the farmer was being received in the royal palace, where he was decorated by the king, and rewarded with six bags of gold. Hardly able to believe his luck, he bought an ornate carriage and fine clothes for himself.

  Then he set off back to his village to be reunited with his wife.

  Unaccustomed to luxury of any kind, the farmer ordered the coach driver to pull up at dusk on the banks of a brook. He selected a spot beneath a sprawling neem tree, protected from the wind by an outcrop of rocks.

  ‘We will camp here for the night,’ he said, ‘and set off at dawn.’

  The moon full above him, the farmer found himself unable to sleep. And, eventually, his mind turned to the little bottles he had left.

  Opening his sackcloth bag, he removed the remaining bottles and held them up to the moon for light. But his water bottle had leaked some of its precious fluid and the writing on the labels had been smudged.

  As much as he squinted, he was unable to read a word.

  ‘I should open them all and release their contents into the air,’ he thought aloud, ‘after all, they could contain harmful elements.’

  But something niggled at him and, before he could reason with himself, he had snatched one of the bottles out, pulled away the stopper, and drunk down its contents.

  A few minutes passed and the farmer began to sense something. He could hear a distant sound, like the clatter of hooves galloping far away. He looked to the right, then the left, and realised that the sound was coming from the base of the neem tree.

  He leant down, cupped a hand to his ear.

  A procession of ants was marching across a root, exposed above the surface of the ground. The farmer watched as they made their way across a stretch of barren land beside the brook, and down a hole no wider than his thumb.

  The bizarre thing was that he could hear them walking, and talking as well, and he could understand exactly what they said. He could hear the sound of fish, too, swimming through the nearby water, and a nest of magpies up in the highest branches of the tree.

  But that was not all.

  The farmer walked over to the coachman, who was asleep on the grass. Without quite knowing how, he knew that the man had an eye condition that would very soon make him blind. And he knew that the carriage he drove was stolen, the yellow lacquer having been painted over the red livery of the king.

  With his heightened perception, the farmer felt truly alive, for the first time. He thought of all the possibilities, all the things he could do with such a gift.

  But then something caught his attention.

  The ants.

  He overheard one complaining to another.

  ‘What a nuisance it is that we have to dig this mine shaft,’ said the first.

  ‘And that there are these great big yellow blocks of metal hindering our way,’ said the other.
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  ‘If only someone would move them for us,’ the first replied.

  Wasting no time, the farmer started digging.

  Within an hour he had unearthed forty bars of gold, the pure metal glinting in the moon’s light.

  ‘I’m rich!’ he exclaimed, ‘richer than in my wildest dreams!’

  The coachman was woken by the farmer’s outcry. He sat upright, rubbed his eyes, and screamed.

  ‘I’m blind! I can’t see a thing!’

  Loading the treasure into the carriage, the farmer helped the old coachman aboard as well. Then, fearing that the people of his own town would recognise him as the impoverished farmer that he was, he rode on and on until he came to the next kingdom.

  Once there, he rented a fine mansion for himself, found wealthy new friends, and set himself up as a member of the landed gentry.

  As the weeks slipped away, and as his funds were invested, the farmer became the wealthiest man in the land.

  Then, one morning, he remembered his wife.

  In all the excitement of his new life he had quite forgotten about her or, rather, had suppressed all thought of her because he was having such a good time.

  Changing back into less opulent clothing, he set off in a simple cart to find her.

  A few days later, he found her in the town near to where their farm had stood. A few feet away from where she was squatting, hand outstretched, was the shop that had sold the farmer the glass bottles so many weeks before.

  But the shop was abandoned, all the windows smashed, the door hanging off its hinges.

  ‘Dear wife,’ said the farmer, approaching the huddled figure. ‘I have returned and, as I promised, I have made something of myself.’

  The old woman glanced up, squinted, and slipped back into the shade. She was imagining things again.

  ‘It’s me, your husband!’ cried the farmer.

  Within a week or two, the couple were installed in their mansion. And as the days went by the farmer’s wife grew increasingly used to the lavish lifestyle that instant wealth can bring. She spent a fortune on fine dresses for herself, and was soon bossing her husband around, as she had always done.

  As for himself, the farmer spent more and more of his time in leisure until, one morning, he remembered the three remaining bottles. He asked one of the servants where his old sackcloth bag had been kept. It was brought to him on a golden salver, rose petals sprinkled around the edges.