Scorpion Soup Page 5

  Carved from jade, his coffin was rolled through the streets in a special carriage fashioned from silver and from gold. With every step, the community threw flowers down, and pulled out their hair in remorse. Some of the farmers went so far as to crawl behind the hearse on hands and knees – each of them chanting a single word over and over:

  ‘Opee! Opee! Opee!’

  A master of showmanship, the head priest had a massive granite mausoleum constructed in the capital. The religious elite interred Grotesque, and lit a sacred flame – which was to burn for eternity.

  Day and night a snaking line of ordinary folk wended its way up to the tomb, with pilgrims arriving from far and wide – all eager to pay their respects to the Divine One.

  As the days went on, the head priest understood that more could be made of the mortal who had descended into their world. He devised a new faith called ‘Opee’ around the Divine One’s existence and, very soon, the new splinter religion had been embraced by much of the known world.

  The numbers of converts surged into the millions and, as the power of the new faith increased, the head priest sat down to write the Sacred Book of Opee, a tool by which the myth of religion could be spread.

  Dipping his quill in ink he had prepared himself from dry acorns, the priest began to write:

  The Book of Pure Thoughts

  Long before the earth was hard, or before the seas were wet, there was an immense temple in which the gods of the universe lived.

  Reclining on great golden sofas, they would dispense wisdom to one another, through the days and the long nights. And they would act with purity – a purity of spirit never to be known in the mortal world, a world that was to come.

  In the centre of the temple was a sacred altar, on which was kept a single volume. Bound in flaming red cloth, this book had been written before the Conquest of Nepsis, at a time when good was bad and bad was good. Along the spine of the volume were inscribed the words: ‘The Book of Pure Thoughts’. It was by this teaching that the gods lived, and by which they were in turn to counsel the rogue legions of Mankind.

  The Book of Pure Thoughts explained that, one day, long into the future, one of the gods would descend, and he would be known as ‘Opee’, the Divine One. Until that day, the earth would be in a state of limbo. And the era before this celestial arrival was to be known as the Time of Solitude.

  In this age, there was nothing that we know now – none of the trappings of civilisation, and no fragments of the natural world.

  The only exception was a fish.

  A beautiful rainbow-coloured fish.

  But because there was still no water, the fish floated through the universe, sucking its cheeks in and out. Waiting.

  It waited and waited, and waited and waited, for another form of life to join it, or for the seas to be created, so that it might take a swim.

  More millennia passed than were ever recorded. And the fish found himself to be very bored by his predicament. He longed for a river, a sea or an ocean to explore, and he sang a song of solitude to the empty space around him.

  Each moment that passed, the fish became a little sadder, and a little more forlorn, his song desolate beyond words. And this went on for an eternity, until the Protector of All Things could stand it no longer. Summoning his power, he sent the great rainbow fish a gift.

  The gift of imagination.

  All of a sudden, the rainbow-coloured fish could conjure exotic dreams. He found that by clearing his mind he could create entire seascapes, populated with other fish and sea creatures, and that he could imagine the smallest details of each one.

  As the centuries slipped by, the fish learned to hone and control his imagination, and he became expert at summoning the most amazing things to mind. He no longer needed a world, or friends, or water, and felt quite content by being entertained through the limits of his mind.

  One day, although there still were no days, the fish woke up with a start. He was floating in emptiness as he had always done, but something was making him feel warm inside.

  A dream.

  A dream he had just had.

  A dream that he remembered.

  The Fish’s Dream

  There was a miser in Persia who was so greedy that he never spent any money at all.

  He grew all the food he needed on a patch of bare ground behind his ramshackle home, and he wore clothes he found in dustbins. He had no use for a horse because he pulled the cart that he had built with his own calloused hands. People thereabouts used to shun him because he smelled so bad, and they would run away when he drew near.

  As time went on, the miser became mute or, rather, he didn’t speak, because he was so tight-fisted that he regarded talking to others as an extravagance he simply couldn’t afford.

  The miser would make sculptures out of scraps of wood he collected in a nearby forest, and he would sell them in the market. Feeling pity on him and, assuming he was mute, strangers sometimes bought his pieces.

  One day the king of Persia was visiting the market in disguise.

  Pointing to one of the sculptures, he asked how much it was. The miser acted out a number with his hands.

  ‘I will give you a quarter of that,’ said the king.

  The miser shook his head, jumped up and down, and chased the customer away.

  A few days passed and the king was sitting in his counting house, when he thought of the miser. Interested in why people behaved as they did, he sent his vizier to ask about the miser who made sculptures out of wood.

  ‘He’s the meanest man that ever lived,’ said one man.

  ‘He would sell his own mother for a penny,’ said another.

  ‘He has such greed,’ said a third, ‘that he would do anything for a purse of gold.’

  The vizier’s report came back that evening, while the king was seated in his throne room.

  ‘Would do anything for a purse of gold?’ echoed the monarch. ‘Could that really be true?’

  Wiping a hand over his mouth in reflection, the king had an idea.

  He ordered the vizier to go to the treasure vaults and ask the treasurer for a small bag of gold.

  ‘Bring it here,’ he said, ‘and bring me the miser as well.’

  An hour later, the miser was escorted into the throne room, his eyes wide from being dazzled with opulence for the first time in his life. He pinched himself, wondering whether he was dreaming. But he wasn’t, and he knew he wasn’t because the king was standing before him, and he was holding a purse filled with golden sovereigns.

  ‘Hello,’ said the king graciously.

  The miser squinted a smile. He couldn’t bring himself to speak, not even for his king.

  ‘Do you recognise me?’ asked the monarch.

  The miser nodded and the king jingled the purse.

  ‘Can you hear what this is?’

  The miser, who was salivating, nodded all the more.

  ‘Well, I will give it to you,’ said the king. ‘On one condition.’

  The miser shrugged his shoulders expectantly.

  ‘On the condition that you can turn from the meanest, to the most generous man in the kingdom.’

  The king stepped forward and placed a gold sovereign on the miser’s palm.

  ‘Feel it,’ he said, ‘enjoy the sense of having pure gold on your skin.’

  The miser closed his eyes, his short fingers cupped around the coin. He breathed in deep, perspiration beading on his brow.

  ‘You have one week,’ said the king. ‘After which time I will myself judge whether the leopard has changed his spots.’

  The gold coin was wrested from the miser’s grasp, put back in the purse, and returned to the treasure vault. The next thing the miser knew, he was back home in his hovel.

  But all he could think about was the piece of gold, and the king’s offer.

  At first he spat at the thought of it – of becoming generous. Pah! But then, as the afternoon wore into evening, and into night, the miser felt his toes tingle.<
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  And tingling toes meant only one thing – that he had to do anything and everything to get his hands on the gold.

  The next day, long before the sun had risen, the miser set off for the market with his sculptures carved from scraps of wood. Arranging his pieces on the stall, he stepped back and waited.

  Very soon a wealthy-looking man approached him, and asked the price of the largest of the sculptures.

  The miser did as he always did. He acted out a high price, then stuck his nose in the air when the customer attempted to bargain.

  But, remembering the gold sovereigns, the miser agreed grudgingly to the customer’s price with a taut, angry flick of the head.

  Another buyer arrived a little later, and another, and a fourth.

  Each one of them was sold the sculptures at a discount.

  That night, as the miser was counting and recounting gold sovereigns in his head, there was a knock at his door.

  It was his neighbour asking to borrow a quilt.

  The miser screwed up his face and slammed the door shut. Then, remembering the gold coin, he unbolted the door, and called out through gritted teeth:

  ‘Neighbour, dear neighbour! Do come back!’

  The quilt was handed over and the miser went to bed vexed at having to be generous. Surprised that the miserly neighbour had agreed to lend him anything at all, the neighbour dropped in the next day with a plan.

  ‘Where’s my quilt?’ snapped the miser.

  ‘Oh,’ the neighbour replied, ‘I will get it back to you later in the day. But my guest is using it and he still hasn’t woken up.’

  The miser gritted his teeth once again. He was about to grunt an obscenity, when the neighbour said:

  ‘Our guests are staying longer than expected. Could we borrow your dining-table and chairs?’

  Remembering the gold sovereigns, the miser had no choice but to agree.

  And then, another neighbour caught wind of the miser’s change of heart, and dropped in as well.

  ‘Dear friend,’ he said, ‘could I borrow your bed because my in-laws have just arrived. You know how it is…’

  The miser was again going to snarl, when the thought of the coins dazzled him.

  ‘Take it away,’ he winced.

  For an entire week, the miser struggled to prove he was as generous as anyone else. He had lost most of his few possessions, and was the brunt of a hundred local jokes.

  After seven days, the king’s guard arrived at his home, and dragged him to the palace. Finding himself in the throne room once again, the miser dusted himself down and dabbed a kerchief to his brow, hoping to quell the stream of perspiration.

  The king arrived.

  He was in a foul mood, and had forgotten about the appointment with the miser.

  ‘Who are you?’ he growled.

  ‘I am the man who was just a week ago regarded as thrifty,’ he said.

  The king frowned, scratched a set of manicured nails through his hair, and remembered.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ he said. ‘The meanest man in all the land.’

  The miser held up a finger.

  ‘Formerly the meanest,’ he corrected, ‘but now the most generous man that there is, except for you, Majesty.’

  ‘How can you prove it?’ asked the monarch.

  ‘Well, Your Majesty,’ he said, ‘I sold my sculptures for next to nothing, and lent one neighbour a quilt and my table and chairs, and another borrowed my bed for his mother-in-law. I have actually spoken to people as well, just as I am speaking to you now – surely a reflection of my change of heart.’

  The king thought for a moment.

  ‘What can you give me?’ he asked.

  The miser froze.

  He was shabby at best, and nothing he owned was even remotely suitable for royalty. Gulping, he fell to his knees, and kissed the monarch’s signet ring.

  ‘I give you myself, Your Majesty,’ he said.

  The ruler considered the situation, then he grinned.

  ‘That is indeed an act of supreme generosity,’ he said. ‘But how will you know what I plan for you?’

  Sensing a pain in his gut, the miser shook his head.

  ‘I would never hope or expect to know,’ he replied meekly.

  Again, the king smiled.

  He clicked his fingers and a salver was borne through the throne room at chest height. Upon it was the purse filled with gold sovereigns.

  ‘You have earned these,’ he said. ‘But now you are mine, you will be my Court storyteller. Can you tell stories? I hope so for your sake. Fail me and I’ll have your tongue cut out!’

  Pawing his fingers through the coins, the miser nodded.

  ‘Oh yes, Your Majesty, I can relate the strangest tales ever told.’

  ‘Well, don’t dilly-dally,’ said the king, ‘tell me one now.’

  But the miser had already begun:

  Scorpion Soup

  Four wizened old witches were clustered around their cauldron one night under the stars. Behind them was a sheering rock cliff face, impenetrable and bleak. And a short distance ahead was a chasm filled with thunder clouds and rain.

  One of the hags was stirring the brew with a dead man’s hand, the others tossing in ingredients for the spell.

  ‘Blood from a murdered child,’ said one.

  ‘Pickled eye of an ostrich,’ croaked another.

  ‘Egg of an albino crocodile,’ hissed a third.

  The hand stirred seven times to the right, then seven to the left.

  After a long span of silence, the first witch raised the hand in the air.

  ‘It is ready,’ she said. ‘But who will be the first to taste?’

  Each of the witches jostled forwards. But the one who was stirring thrust the dead man’s hand deep into the piping hot brew.

  Holding its cupped palm to her mouth, she drank.

  No sooner had the potion touched her lips, than the witch collapsed.

  ‘She is dead!’ cackled one.

  ‘Hah!’ hooted the next.

  But the third fell silent. She jabbed a finger at the ground.

  ‘L-l-l-l-look!’ she stammered.

  The witches peered down at their sister’s body.

  Its appearance began to change.

  The layers of skin were peeling slowly back and vanishing. The blood vessels became visible first, then the muscles, the tendons and the nerves. As each of them fell away, the jawline and the skull were exposed, and a gleaming white skeleton beneath.

  Her sisters gasped in both horror and delight.

  ‘She is being reborn,’ said one.

  ‘Purity,’ said the next.

  ‘And when she is pure she will have pure sight.’

  Only when every trace of flesh had disappeared, did the skeleton begin to move. Sitting upright, the torso scratched a hand to its face, and the legs struggled to stand.

  As it did so, the three sisters sat motionless, the cauldron’s fire giving glow to their rapt expressions.

  Very slowly, the witch skeleton stood upright, as if hampered by the loss of muscle and flesh. She examined her arm, the empty eye sockets scanning the lengths of bone from elbow to wrist, before moving on to the hand. Then, glancing around her, she recognised her sisters, who looked both hopeful and timid.

  ‘The potion has worked, my sisters,’ said the skeleton witch. ‘I am ready to open the door.’

  Turning, she strode fitfully to the sheering cliff face and held out her arms.

  ‘Mountain! O mountain,’ she cried, ‘I command you to open your sacred sanctuary and welcome me in!’

  A minute passed. Then another.

  And, gradually, a grand doorway was revealed, a portico above it adorned with supernatural symbols. The skeleton witch clapped her hands together three times and the door opened.

  Beyond it lay a passage, lit by fiery torches.

  The witch stepped forwards across the threshold. As she did so, the door closed shut and the doorway itself disappeared.


  Squatting around the cauldron outside, the other witches looked on as their skeleton sister vanished. With their impure sight, they had not seen the doorway, or what lay beyond it.

  Inside the mountain, the skeleton witch paced through the low tunnel, the torch flames throwing shadows over her bones. Eventually she arrived at a staircase carved from the granite, the steps covered in a sea of tarantulas.

  She descended the stairs, the bones of her feet crushing the spiders as she took the steps one by one.

  The stairway ended in a sheering wall of carved lapis lazuli. The witch skeleton clapped her hands together once again, the stone barrier shattered, revealing a gigantic cavern – illuminated by phosphorescent fires.

  A boiling stream ran through the middle of the cavern, its waters yellow and sulphurous. Around its edge there were hundreds of large turquoise urns, all of them adorned with Chinese characters, each one brimming with the ingredients for supernatural spells.

  And, at the centre of the cavern, was a golden basin filled with squirming black scorpions. Beside it was a pitcher. Without haste, the skeleton witch filled the pitcher from the stream, and filled the basin, boiling the scorpions alive.

  When they had cooked sufficiently, she cupped her bony hands together, and quaffed a few drops of the scorpion soup.

  Instantly, the witch’s skeleton was overlaid with arteries and veins, with muscles, tissue, and skin. But, rather than being haggard and old as she had so recently been, she was restored to the radiance of her youth. Her skin was pink and fresh, her eyes bright green, her long hair blonde and vibrant.

  Examining her delicate features in the soup’s oily surface, the witch grinned.

  ‘Now I am ready,’ she said.

  Moving sleekly through the cavern, she stopped at a stone slab at the east end of the floor. There was dried blood on the sides, as if someone had at one time scrabbled desperately to open it.

  Leaning down, the witch blew very softly, and the stone crumbled into dust.

  Beneath, in another cavern, was a library – a vast and imposing library – thousands and thousands of books. Each was devoted to the dark arts, each one bound in identical blue morocco leather, all covered in dust.