≈ The Tale of Shumyzin ≈

Shumyzin was the great conquering hero of that ancient span of Mankandikha. But if he hadn’t learned to conquer fear and anger first, no one today would know his name.

As a child Shumyzin bore many insults. He was an object of scorn from adults as well as other children because of the crooked teeth that jutted from the corners of his mouth. He had no tusks then, only two big deformed and protruding molars. With his round eyes and thrust-out jaw, he looked more amphibian than human. One day the king of Mankandikha spotted him in the main street. He halted his palanquin to get a good look at the boy. A crowd gathered around. They heard the king give Shumyzin a cruel nickname: a nickname that followed him everywhere thereafter.

“Frog,” proclaimed the king.

Shumyzin ran home in tears. The name chased him through the narrow streets. It followed him like a tail.

His mother was a mortal. Her name was Yemin. She said to him, “Don’t listen to them, little one. They know nothing about you.” She stroked his cheek. “Your father, the great god Gopurbh, weathered many insults, too, before he was given charge of all the winds. We have balmy days most of the time because he’s so hard to anger. You also are made for greatness if only you can learn to withstand their insults. I know this, because I’m your mother.” He let her voice and her promises soothe his troubled soul, and soon he fell asleep in her arms.

Now, everyone else claimed that Shumyzin’s father had been a local rich man’s son, Cabor the Drunk, who’d climbed into the wrong house one night and cruelly forced himself upon Yemin; afterward—the story went—Cabor’s father paid her a tidy sum to keep quiet about his idiot son’s indiscretion. Both she and the elder Cabor strenuously denied that such an incident had ever occurred. It was the drunken lout, Cabor himself, who spread the story. One time when the ugly child passed by, Cabor abruptly proclaimed, “That’s my bastard there. Look how he turned out!” The story spread quickly. People called Frog’s mother a whore. The boy seethed with the desire to kill them for it. But she wouldn’t let him. “I can bear their lies,” she said, “and so must you.”

He didn’t look like Cabor. He didn’t look like his mother. Or like anyone else in the entire city. Yet people often prefer scandals and gossip to rational thinking, and so the story became fact.

Frog grew up strong and steady. Unflappable. He weathered the worst taunts he could ever hear. The cruel jibes at his mother were the most awful, the hardest to bear. He worked daily for her, pushing a great grinding wheel that crushed grain into flour for bread. Yemin baked and sold the bread. Over time her son’s shoulders became striped with muscles, and his back grew wide. As he grew older, his grotesque visage changed, too. His eyes bulged more than ever and his twisted teeth straightened, forming two small vicious spikes, as if all his suppressed anger had taken form in the corners of his mouth. He became terrifying to see, and although he did nothing to suggest hostility, the taunting of him stopped.

Then one day the span was invaded by a demon army. Of all the citizens, Shumyzin alone didn’t panic. Nor did he try to flee.

All those who did try to escape were cut down or rounded up to be slain later. The king who’d once made fun of Frog tried to bargain with the demons. They stripped and paraded him before his people to destroy the will of Mankandikha. His money and property were taken from him. The leader of the demonic army rode around in the king’s fine palanquin, forcing eight naked women to carry it. They were whipped if the carriage went too slowly; and sometimes they were whipped anyway.

While all of this was happening, the avatar of Gopurbh appeared to Shumyzin in his mother’s house, cloaking them both in mist, so that not even Yemin knew he’d appeared. The avatar said, “This is your day, and I am your father. Here are the means to defeat the fiends.” The clever god gave his son a fine scimitar and shield, and golden armor.

Once Shumyzin had put the armor on, his father told him, “You can’t be harmed today, nor seen in that armor by your enemies.”

When the demon soldiers reached the street where Shumyzin and his mother lived, the smell of her bread enticed them. They entered the shop, intending to steal its goods. They saw only Yemin at her oven, unarmed and helpless. They drew their swords to kill her.

Not one of them left the bakery alive.

Like a wave of heat Shumyzin slipped unseen through the enemy’s midst, slaughtering them one after the other. With each he killed, his tusks grew larger.

Demons on the streets suddenly clutched at themselves and doubled over, spilling their life into the dust. Their limbs dropped off, their legs were slashed out from under them. The survivors fled in terror from the lethal phantom. They knocked over their leader’s stolen palanquin, smashing it as they clambered over the sides, kicking their king in their haste to get away. The whipped maidens scattered before them, shrieking.

When the demon king pushed himself out the window, Shumyzin glided invisibly over and cut off his head. Then he ran through the streets, shaking the gory trophy at the enemy. All they saw was the gaping, dripping head itself floating upon the air. Some of them jumped to their deaths in the sea. Others raced to put a thousand spans between them and that phantom. They heard a raw voice shout after them: “Tell everyone that Shumyzin, son of Gopurbh and Yemin, guards this place, and will take all your heads if you come back again.”

After that, Shumyzin’s heroic deeds fell upon the span like drops of monsoon rain. He became a legend, the defender of his city, the slayer of a thousand foes. Grateful for his protection, the citizens rejected their king—the same one who had belittled Shumyzin years earlier—when he tried to take back his office. They placed Shumyzin on the throne in his place. The hero proved to be a generous ruler. He married the maiden, Kyai, daughter of the sun. Although they’d humiliated him for so long, he exacted no penalty from the people . . . save for one episode.

One afternoon he was alerted that Cabor the Drunk was causing trouble. He found Cabor in a narrow side street. The new king’s self-proclaimed father was whipping a dwarf with a bamboo rod. Beside him lay a maiden whom he’d beaten unconscious. Shumyzin flung Cabor against a wall hard enough to knock him senseless. He had his soldiers arrest the villain, and for a week exhibited him in a cage hanging outside his own house. He confiscated all of Cabor’s property and wealth and gave it to the two people who’d been harmed. When the week was up, Shumyzin cut off Cabor’s nose and ears, and threw him out of the city, off the span.

Thus did the hero save Mankandikha and exact retribution on the cruel Cabor.

“And that is the tale of how Shumyzin the Sufferer, once called ‘Frog,’ gained renown, but not how he and Kyai found bliss, which is another tale altogether.” She concluded with the traditional ending, the promise of the next story, spontaneously. She had become so caught up by it that she’d forgotten herself. Her hands were extended, fingers pressing together, as if she’d been maneuvering her puppets. She supposed that she had. Self-consciously, she glanced at the demigod. He had tears on his cheeks.

He said, “I haven’t heard my beautiful Kyai mentioned in a very long time.”

“It’s better with puppets,” she responded, and when he growled she thought she’d angered him, but realized after a moment that the gravelly rumble was laughter.

He said, “Ah, Leodora. You tell the world of your genius but you doubt it to yourself.”

“You know my name.”

“I’m a god, girl. I have to do something to warrant it besides killing a few mouth-breathing Jatos. Add that to your tale when you speak of those demons: Jatos is what they were, straight out of a sewer.”

She took note of the name, but was more curious about something else. “You haven’t heard your wife’s name in a long time? Isn’t she with you?” Even as she spoke she sought among the eikons for the figure of Kyai. The goddess was not represented in the statues nearby.

Shumyzin replied, “Death doesn’t work like that. You tell the stories—I know you know about Death, Jax.” When she looked surprised, he added, “Just as I know the identity you travel under.” He made to shake his head, and a look of alarm strained his features. He glanced down at his torso. The shadow of night had reached his collarbone. “Quick now, Leodora, come here. I must tell you something.”

She got to her feet and took a reluctant step toward the frightening god.

“Closer!” he snapped.

She edged nearer.

“Listen,” said Shumyzin. “I know the one you travel with. We’re old acquaintances, he and I.”

“Soter?” she asked.

“Pah! Not the lush. The other one. The deathless one. The one who visits you in your sleep.”

She stared at him in awe.

The tiny black pupils fixed her. “I know the riddle of your coral friend.” The shadows touched his throat, and his voice shrank to a whisper. “And a warning. Jax rattles the darkness where he travels. A piece of it is sure to come calling.” His neck was now in shadow. His intense goggle-eyes regarded her in a way that imparted both his regard and his great concern for her. She had to look away from such intensity. He wheezed, “One more thing, and the most important.” He fell silent abruptly, and that drew her gaze to him again. Shumyzin’s head had turned back into stone. He faced the gorgon, a statue, as she had found him. She realized that a purple cloud now masked the sun.

“The most important thing,” she muttered.

For an eternity she stared at the streaks of water on the polished cheeks—the only evidence to convince her that she hadn’t dreamt the conversation with him. She waited, hesitant, hopeful, but when the cloud passed and the dying sunlight touched him again, he did not return to life.

The overhead sky, a crepuscular blue, now twinkled with stars as if it were an inverted sea reflecting the lights of Vijganar. Before the dusk disappeared altogether she must make the climb back to the ground. She hastily rebraided her hair, curled the braid around her fist, and then tied it up and stuffed it inside the collar of her tunic. She pulled the hood up on the back of her head. Across the horizon, only a magenta swath remained, as if the sun had bled out upon the sky.

She turned and knelt, placing her fingers in the handholds. With her left foot she felt for the first of the rungs carved in the side of the bridge, then pushed herself over the edge. At the last moment, she gave a final glance up, but Shumyzin remained gray and still.

The way down she took much more slowly and carefully than she had climbing up.

By the time she reached the pier, night owned the sky. All illumination now came from torches and lamps and the crescent of bold Saphon shining over the massive tower. Gyjio still hid behind it.

She easily replaced her mask as she circled the pier and then set off along the street paralleling the tower wall.

People paid her no mind. No one could tell that she among them all had just conversed with a god.