Scorpion Soup Page 9

  The Singing Serpents

  Once upon a time there lived in Arabia a wise cat.

  This wise cat always had enough to eat and drink, and was pampered by his human masters. But he dreamed of something else. He dreamed of something magical to inspire him, something to warm his heart.

  The other cats thought he was senseless. They told him to remain quiet, to live his life as they all did, being looked after by Man.

  ‘We have existed like this for thousands of years,’ they told him, ‘and we are very good at it. We have the lifestyle perfected, a lifestyle in which humans give us plenty of food and attention, and we need to provide almost nothing in return.’

  But the wise cat didn’t listen to them.

  He knew that the only thing that mattered in life was to make his own path. A path that the foolish cats didn’t realise existed at all.

  And so, the wise cat packed a knapsack, and set off in search of his destiny.

  Within minutes of his departure, all the other cats had forgotten about him. They went back to their chunks of juicy meat, to their big bowls of milk, and to the attentions of Mankind.

  The wise cat travelled from one kingdom to the next, learning languages and immersing himself in different lands. And, with each day that passed, the wise cat became all the wiser.

  Now, one day, the cat reached a country ruled by dogs. There were big gruff dogs, little yapping dogs, dogs that were kind to cats, and others that were not. With no other cats there at all, the wise cat had no choice but to spend his time with the dogs. He found them to be quite easy-going, and less complicated than his own species.

  Dogs, as he reasoned it, were all bark and no bite.

  There was nothing that got the dogs worked up, nothing except the subject of singing snakes. The mere mention of the reptiles threw every dog in the kingdom into a wild frenzy of fear and reaction.

  ‘Singing snakes come in the night and swallow you whole,’ one of the dogs told him.

  ‘They have teeth like knitting needles,’ another revealed.

  ‘They hypnotise you with their eyes, and there’s nothing you can do to break free!’ exclaimed a third.

  The wise cat listened to the dogs and said nothing.

  When they were finished, he asked:

  ‘Have any of you dogs ever seen a singing snake?’

  The dogs shielded their eyes with their paws in terror.

  ‘No, no, of course not,’ they howled.

  ‘So, how do you know that you are really afraid of singing snakes?’ asked the cat.

  Standing on his hind legs, the smallest dog, a Pomeranian, said:

  ‘Because we all know that we are, and that’s that!’

  A few weeks passed, and the wise cat lived quietly among the dogs. He was always polite, and the majority of the dogs treated him well. From time to time he was chased. But, mostly, the dogs left him alone. Instead of disliking him, they regarded him as something of a novelty.

  Then, one night, an elderly dog had a dream.

  Or rather, it was a nightmare.

  He dreamed that a plague of singing serpents was about to strike – a race of evil reptiles dead set on swallowing all the dogs whole.

  Word of his dream spread like wildfire and, as it did so, the entire community was thrown into disarray.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ yelped the dogs. ‘We are powerless. The singing snakes will swallow us whole!’

  Sitting on a fence in the middle of the town, the wise cat listened to the fuss. And he watched as the normally level-headed dogs worked themselves into a frenzy about an old dog’s ludicrous dream.

  By the afternoon, the dogs were digging holes on a large scale, holes to hide in when the singing-snake invasion took place. After that, they convened an emergency council in their great hall, to which all dogs were invited to debate the worrying state of affairs.

  As he was the only cat in the kingdom, the wise cat was allowed to come along. He listened to the many speeches, all of them tinged with hysteria and fear. And he watched as the canine community grew ever more agitated.

  By the end of the evening, he could stand it no more.

  He jumped up onto the podium.

  ‘I may be just a cat,’ he said. ‘But that gives me an advantage.’

  The dogs looked confused.

  ‘What is it – your advantage?’ they barked.

  ‘It is that I can see your situation from the outside, while you can only see it from within.’

  ‘So what?’ snapped the dogs.

  ‘Well, it means that I can see how to solve your problem.’

  A few dogs at the front of the hall began barking ferociously.

  ‘Tell the cat to get out!’ they growled. ‘This is dog business!’

  But the old dog that had had the dream in the first place called for hush.

  ‘Let the cat speak,’ he snarled.

  And so the wise cat continued:

  ‘Because I am not one of you, I have been able to watch you with detachment,’ he said. ‘And I have seen that you dogs are easy-going. But…’ the cat paused to take in his audience, ‘the idea of singing serpents has thrown your lives upside down. Why is that?’

  ‘Because serpents swallow dogs whole!’ barked a Chihuahua anxiously at the back. ‘And every dog alive knows that!’

  ‘Let me ask a question,’ replied the wise cat. ‘How many of you have ever seen a singing serpent?’

  There was silence. Then, a Labrador pointed at the old dog.

  ‘He has,’ he yelped. ‘Old dog has seen one, in his dream!’

  The wise cat smiled demurely.

  ‘In his dream,’ he said.

  A wave of murmuring swept through the room. The dogs didn’t like the idea of a cat – however wise – trying to make fun of them. But mockery was not on the cat’s mind.

  Rather, he raised a paw very slowly, and said:

  ‘My dear dog friends, good fortune smiles on your community. You see, as chance would have it, I was sold something in the next kingdom, something very precious and very powerful… something that can protect us all from the singing snakes.’

  ‘What is it?’ barked the dogs anxiously.

  The wise cat held something above his head.

  Something very small and shiny.

  Craning forwards, the dogs were eager to know what it was. They clambered over each other, eyes wide, mouths drooling, noses sniffing.

  ‘This is an amulet of awe-inspiring power!’ exclaimed the wise cat. ‘It was made by a famous magician to protect its owner from the danger of singing serpents!’

  The dogs gasped. They yelped. Some howled.

  All were relieved.

  ‘You have all been good to me,’ the wise cat said, ‘and so I am presenting the amulet to you all as a gift – a gift of my affection!’

  ‘We will make a special shrine for it!’ yelped a Spaniel.

  ‘We’ll guard it and look after it!’ growled another dog.

  ‘We will devote our lives to it!’ barked a third.

  The cat seemed pleased.

  Jumping down from the podium, he passed the sacred amulet to the old dog.

  ‘Make sure you protect it,’ he said. Then he left.

  Clustering around, each of the dogs gave thanks to the wise cat for saving them from the invasion of the singing snakes – an invasion that was thwarted at the last moment…

  By an ordinary metal button.

  As for the wise cat, he came to realise that his work in the land of the dogs was done. Slinging his knapsack over his shoulder, he took to the road once again.

  Many lands passed beneath his paws.

  Some were at peace and others were at war. More still were in a mixture of the two, or were realms in which mediocrity reigned.

  The wise cat roamed on and on, and judged no one or no thing.

  Then, one night, he was at a bleak caravanserai beneath the glinting stars, when he overheard a story being told.

  So strange w
as it, that the tale filled him with wonder and with horror in equal measure.

  Within an hour of hearing it, the wise cat was paralysed. He was unable to move. The only thing he could do was to hum.

  None of the other listeners that night was affected in the least by the story. Indeed, they all fell straight to sleep and, next morning, forgot they had heard a tale at all.

  But then, stories have a way of working in different ways, depending on who is receiving them.

  His body stiff like wood, the wise cat managed to communicate with the young daughter of the man who owned the caravanserai, by humming. They made a language from a range of humming sounds, a language all of their own.

  Over months the little girl and the wise cat developed a friendship, the most remarkable friendship of either of their lives. It was a friendship that would not have come about had the wise cat not heard the story, and been paralysed as a result.

  Through many weeks and months, the wise cat hummed to the girl.

  And, through the hums, he recounted a tale:

  The Princess of Zilzilam

  There was once a green jinn who, tricked by a magician, had lain trapped inside an ugly lead urn for a thousand years and a day.

  As he languished there, the jinn vowed that he would wreak havoc on Mankind if he were ever to get free.

  He waited. And he waited.

  And he vowed and he vowed.

  But the urn in which the jinn was imprisoned had been thrown by the magician into the deepest stretch of the Red Sea.

  And there it lay for an eternity.

  Until, one dark night, it was moved by a rogue current, and then swept up in a fisherman’s net as it raked across the sea floor.

  The net was hauled up onto the decks, and the urn was discovered.

  Hopeful of finding treasure, the captain wasted no time in breaking the lead seal.

  Within an instant, the green jinn had surged from the container, slain the captain and his men, and drunk all the blood in their veins.

  Soaring up and up into the night, his form billowed outwards and upwards, until he became the sky and the heavens.

  ‘I vow to slaughter every living thing on this earth!’ he declared. ‘And shall not rest until every heart – human or animal – has been extinguished, and until I have devoured every last drop of blood!’

  With that, the green jinn opened his mouth and bore down on the city of Alexandria.

  Believing that an eclipse was taking place, the people ran into the twisting streets of the old city and gazed up at the sky.

  What they saw in its place was more terrifying than any far-fetched nightmare.

  The green jinn’s mouth was leering down towards them, a kaleidoscope of carnage: fifty rows of blood-stained teeth, the rotting, festering cadavers of unknown dead.

  The diseased.

  The putrefying stench of death.

  Blood, blood, blood.

  The people of Alexandria charged about in all directions, fleeing for their lives. Some hid under their beds. Others dived into empty barrels. More still threw themselves into the sea.

  Standing in the middle of the main street was a young man called Adam. Unlike the other people panicking around him, he was not fearful of the sight.

  Rather, he was intrigued.

  A fraction of a second before the jinn’s mouth claimed its prey, Adam raised an index finger high above his head, and called out:

  ‘Whatever depraved creature you are, desist for a moment, until you have heard what I have to say! Not to allow me to speak would be an act of despicable cowardice!’

  It just so happened that the green jinn was troubled by almost nothing at all. But the thought of being regarded as a coward vexed him greatly.

  So he paused, his mouth in mid-attack, his eyes rolling with rage.

  ‘How could you consume us,’ shouted Adam as loudly as he was able, ‘without informing us why you are doing so?’

  The green jinn shook with rage. And, as he shook, the heavens shook, and the world shook as well.

  ‘Your pitiable race entrapped me in an urn for a thousand years and a day!’ he roared, ‘and you, and all other living things, shall now pay the price of my wrath!’

  With the people of the city hastening about in terror around him, Adam touched a fingertip to his chin.

  He thought for a moment, then he said:

  ‘Well, O mighty creature, surely you would wish to talk to me before you snuff out my life.’

  The jinn drew breath to speak. And, as he did so, the palm trees on the coast were sucked back, as if a storm was about to make landfall.

  ‘I have no time to waste in meeting my victims one by one!’ he spat.

  But, just before the monster could utter another syllable, Adam held up his finger again.

  ‘I feel embarrassed to tell you this,’ he said slowly, ‘but everyone is gossiping about you in the lanes of the old city.’

  ‘No doubt they are declaring how fearsome I am!’ cried the monster.

  ‘Alas, they are not, O great one,’ Adam replied.

  The jinn narrowed his eyes, each one the size of the moon.

  ‘I shall slay you first for uttering lies!’

  Adam held his ground, his head cocked back as he took in the creature’s immense form.

  ‘They are saying that you’re attacking us out of fear,’ he said, ‘and out of sheer cowardice. They say that you couldn’t harm an ant let alone a great city such as Alexandria!’

  ‘Pah!’ exclaimed the green jinn. ‘I could swallow the entire city whole! And I will!’

  Swelling in size until even larger than before, the monster once again bore down.

  But Adam laughed at the sight.

  ‘Your cowardice is surely proven by your size,’ he said. ‘Any creature so enormous could destroy an entire city. The challenge would be to cause the same harm when smaller in scale.’

  The green jinn emitted a crazed shriek of fury. So loud and violent was it, that the ground buckled as though struck by an earthquake.

  ‘I could slay you all if I were half the size!’ he boasted, before instantly reducing his form to the size of a mountain.

  Adam held up a finger.

  ‘You are still very big,’ he said, ‘and it is making conversing with you challenging. Could you not make yourself a little smaller?’

  The green jinn shrank again, from the size of a mountain, until he was the height of a giant, a giant in human form. His mouth packed with sharp yellow teeth, each one framed in red, he loomed down over Adam.

  ‘Speak your last words O mortal!’ he bellowed.

  Adam touched a finger to his chin once again.

  ‘Surely even a giant could exact terrible damage on a place like this,’ he said. ‘But that’s not what the people of Alexandria think. As I told you, they say that you couldn’t harm an ant!’

  The green jinn turned purple with wrath, his mouth dripping with blood.

  ‘Show me an ant, and I shall smite it!’ he exclaimed.

  Adam leant down, and pretended to pick a speck from the ground.

  ‘Here is an ant,’ he said.

  Filling his lungs with air, the jinn was about to blow a jet of fire down at the ant, when Adam said:

  ‘As everyone knows, the people of Alexandria are very hard to impress. They take any opportunity to make fun of people from outside the city. And if they see a giant killing an ant – well, that’s not going to impress them at all.’

  The green jinn released his breath. He frowned.

  ‘Well, what would impress them?’ he asked. ‘And tell me swiftly, or I shall snuff you out as soon as look at you.’

  Adam thought for a moment, and replied:

  ‘Well, surely, what would impress them would be an ant to be dispatched by something even smaller than it, like a flea.’

  The green jinn spat blood.

  ‘I have dignity, you know!’ he exclaimed. ‘I am a great jinn, and am not going to transform myself into a fle
a.’

  ‘A pity,’ said Adam. ‘Then the people will gossip about you all the more.’

  ‘But I am just about to kill every last one of them!’ bawled the green jinn. ‘So I really don’t care what they say!’

  Adam sighed.

  ‘But surely as a creature of such dignity and poise, you would feel all the more satisfied were you to prove your strength by such an insignificant act as killing an ant.’

  Spitting more blood and then fire, the green jinn reduced his size from that of a giant to that of a flea.

  ‘Show me the ant,’ said a faint voice, ‘so that I may smite it at once!’

  But Adam wasn’t listening. Instead, he stepped forwards and ground the sole of his sandal into the dirt, until the green jinn was quite definitely dead.

  Word of his bravery and cunning spread through Alexandria, and Adam was hailed as the city’s saviour. Gifts and titles were lavished upon him, and the wealthiest members of society sought to marry him to their most beautiful daughters.

  But, courteously, Adam refused all the awards, the gifts, and the invitations to wed.

  Packing a simple leather satchel, he set out into the desert, hoping to have a little time and space to think.

  With the stars glinting in the heavens above, he sat beside his campfire. Staring into the flames, his mind thought about the frailty of jinn and of men.

  Suddenly, Adam heard a voice.

  ‘Adam, dear Adam,’ it said. ‘My name is Leila, and I am the daughter of the King of Zilzilam. I am trapped beneath the very sands on which you are camped. Rescue me and I promise to fill your heart with joy.’

  Adam twisted round to the left, then the right. The enveloping darkness was empty of any life.

  ‘I can’t see you,’ Adam whispered. ‘Am I imagining you?’

  The voice came again, a little louder than before, running on the breeze.

  ‘I am trapped beneath the sands. Walk ten paces south of the fire. Dig down with your hands, and you will find a stone slab. Pull it back and descend.’

  Half-wondering whether he was dreaming, Adam glanced back at the fire. The embers were glowing now, fanned by the wind.

  He was about to curl up on his blanket and sleep, but the voice came a third time: