Book 3, letter 6: To Herodotus - the Scythian Sun Devil

Book 3, Letter 6

Part 1 of 2

To Herodotus: The Scythian Sun Devil

*

Dear Herodotus, father of history, father of lies.

Father of Stories.

I write to you today to share the legend of the Sun Devil, a Scythian cautionary tale. I'm not sure what it cautions, but when I put on my shaman's mask and stared into the mirror asking myself, What is the story of the Sun Devil...

This is the story my mask told me.

*

In the frozen north, where the land is a painting shaded white.

In the furthest peaks of the ice mountains, where the land flattens into a tabletop of stone and snow.

In the wasteland where the sun shines ceaselessly half of the year, and, grows darker every night thereafter.

In the frozen north, in the furthest peaks, upon the plateau of the sun, in the wasteland of ice and stone.

In that place dwells the Sun Devil.

Though this story is the only proof, you must believe that what I say is true, for my father taught it to me, as his father had taught it to him, and I have told the story every day to myself to keep it fresh in my mind, and you must believe it, even if you do not want to.

Even if it is not true.

In the frozen north, where the land is a painting shaded white, the Sun Devil wanders, his shivering lamentations mingling with the howling Arctic winds. He has been seen at the borders of all parts of that place we call the Plateau of the Sun, and so it is that we call it his place. For a terrible price is paid by all who dare to walk in the endless day, or remain there through the endless night. For in that place the days last for many months, and the nights also.

It is known that any who stay too long in these endless places, are taken from themselves and pulled asunder by the frozen winds, their minds returning only after they have submitted to the will of the Sun Devil, and let all sanity be taken from them, all semblance of self replaced with an untranslatable poetry of sounds both animal and human, a useless corruption of all useful intelligence, subverted to utter madness.

There is a wanderer in the frozen north, in the furthest peaks, upon the plateau of the sun, in the wasteland of ice and stone, he is The Sun Devil. He was once a man. He was one of us, one of our people.

And this is his story.

*

Born during a terrible drought, he was named Soguda, because of the sun, and all through his youth, people called him Ende-nuono, the weather maker, for it seemed that wherever he went, the weather would change as he arrived at his destination. If the land was hot and dry, when Soguda arrived it would rain. If the snow piled thick upon the domes of tents buried in a long winter, when Soguda arrived the sun would come out and spring would follow in the hoof-prints of his horse.

As such, he was welcomed everywhere he travelled, and he lived a life of plenty, and of ease, as his life was of continuous benefit to everyone he saw. He was not however, an aimless wanderer, he made a careful study of maps, and of all that our people knew about the seasons and how the climate differs from one part of the land to the next, so as to plan his pilgrimage to bring the greatest benefit where it would be needed at each time of the year.

If some emergency pulled him from his intended path, we would let himself be diverted to address the greater need, but he always returned to his seasonal roads, living a life governed in every way, by the forces of nature, and the needs of his fellow men.

But a man cannot only be a servant to others, he must also be a servant to himself.

This is a truth our people have always known.

So it is that Soguda grew weary of happy faces and welcoming feasts. He grew weary of the greatness of his spirit, he grew tired of the gratitude he received, and he grew hungry for change.

For this is the irreconcilable spirit of man. We are creatures of creation, and destruction.

There is a saying among our people, first you must destroy yourself, before you might seek to destroy others, and so Soguda took his horse to the borders of our land, and kept riding.

For ten years Soguda's name was not spoken in the land of the Scythians, for we are a mistrustful people, and do not take kindly to those of our kind who take on the customs of foreigners. He was considered an exile, until the day that he returned and brought with him a summer of such abundance and fertility that his absence was forgotten and everyone hailed the return of the weather maker, Ende-nuono.

His mother Tisafrene did not welcome her son's return. She saw the way the people showered him with gifts, how young women threw themselves at him, how men clamoured to serve him, to guard him. She saw that he had come back changed, she was mistrustful and suspected that he had made sacrilegious pacts with foreign gods.

That night as Soguda slept, his head dizzy with wine, his belly heavy with meat and his bed crowded with maidens, Tisafrene snuck into her son's tent and slit his throat. Her crime was undetected, the knife was cleaned, her hands were washed, and she returned to her tent to sleep until morning.

In the morning when she woke, there was no sound of wailing and weeping. There were no shouts, no warriors at her door to tell her of her son's murder. It were as if any ordinary summer day were rising unobserved on the steppe. Tisafrene stepped from her tent and saw her son sitting at a campfire, a blanket wrapped round his shoulders and a smouldering pipe in his hand. She could not disguise her shock, and actually fell to the ground as she approached him. Soguda stood to help his mother up, and as they stood close he whispered in her ear.

Be careful what you dream, mother, the weather can change very quickly on the steppe.

Tisafrene looked her son in the eye and she saw, glimmering within his shining green irises, a pale sunrise cresting a white mountain.

The next night Tisafrene disappeared, and was never seen again.

Soguda however, grew in power and prestige, living as a nomad king might, forever received by grateful families and tribes. The boon of his magical nature paved for him a destiny wrought with gold and burdened by the lavish gifts of his people who grew more worshipful of him with each passing season.

Until the year of the Earthquakes.

How many villages were swallowed up by the sudden and savage gaping jaws of the earth, will never be known. People were drowned in rivers suddenly flooding like seas across the swampy lowlands, or were boiled to death as the fury of hell turned all the water to steam. Mountain men were thrown from their well trod paths, cattle herders were crushed in stampedes, and grass fires swept across the fawn hills, smudging the summer sky black with the smoke of pasture turning to ash.

Soguda now received the begging, wailing and sorrowful cries of his people and for a long time he travelled from valley to mountain and across the lowlands and plains, bringing rain to put out the fires, and calling sun to dry out the flooded marshes, but no matter what changes he brought to the weather, he could not heal the wounded, nor bring back the dead.

So once more, Soguda rode his horse to the borders of our land, and kept riding.

(...to be continued...)