by Darryl Fabia
Angelina wept until nightfall when her sisters came looking for her. “Dear Angelina, what’s wrong?” asked one. “Did you not receive the blessing?” asked the other. Angelina felt she had no choice but to show them, so she waved a hand and led her sisters outside, where a man of the town watch went patrolling.
No sooner did she begin to say, “Halt!” than the great python appeared, its scales glimmering in the lamplight. He ate up the watchman, boots, sword and all, and then the tongue retracted into Angelina’s mouth.
Her sisters promised to help as best they could. In the morning they summoned another watchman and warned him of the tongue’s transmogrification. “Raise your sword,” said one sister. “And strike when the serpent is loose,” said the other.
Angelina began to say what a horrible plan this was when the constricting snake swelled from her tongue and the watchman’s sword swung down. At first, the snake was broken from Angelina’s mouth and melted into the ground. She thought herself cured at last, and severed tongue or no, she might go on with her life. But to everyone’s dismay, especially for the watchman, the tongue sprouted two great snakes, and together they split the man and ate him up.
Again and again, swordsmen tried to cleave the snake. Each time, more heads emerged when Angelina began to speak, cursing at the pain, until at last a mighty hydra appeared where the poor girl’s tongue used to be, and a hungry beast he was. Thirteen heads arose from Angelina’s mouth when she spoke, each as tall as a giraffe and quick as any smaller snake. They ate farmers and blacksmiths, they ate guards and children, until the village was empty. Even Angelina’s sisters were devoured by her tongue’s monstrous appetite.
“I hope the witch was eaten too,” she tried to say, but the hydra only emerged again. With no one left to eat nearby, the creature dragged Angelina along in search of prey, gulping down travelers on the road, and the people of the next village, and the next, until finally the snakes led her to the center of the kingdom.
“Enough!” Angelina wished to scream. “I grow tired of these filthy serpents!” The scream arose in the roaring and hissing of her many-headed hydra, the heads now as large as dragon heads, and in the same way they sprayed fire over houses and people. The heads roasted the city around the castle and chewed up the citizens, and then tore away the castle walls. Knights, pages, sworn swords, and sellswords fell alike, down the hydra’s thirteen throats. By now the city’s survivors had scattered, spreading tales of the many-headed beast, and when brave heroes and fools appeared to slay the monster, they too were consumed.
From the hollowed-out castle, you might have seen the great serpents in the distance, rising like weeds toward the sun, wavering from helpless Angelina’s mouth. A monster dwelled where once beat the heart of a kingdom. The hydra heads stretched and stretched, higher and higher, until at last the snakes reached the heavens. Their black silhouettes darkened only the kingdom at first as their mouths opened wide, and then the snakes swarmed over the giant, fiery egg in the sky. Darkness covered the entire world as the serpent’s tongue swallowed the sun.
When the sky went black, shining only with starlight, the hungry snakes turned their reptilian eyes to the universe and, one by one, began to devour the stars, until all things in existence turned black as pitch. Only flames gave some measure of warmth and light—the small torches people could find kept back the evil cold, and the fiery breath of the hydra reminded everyone of the creature that doomed life itself to endless winter and eternal night.
At this time, the wise witch Modee supposed the curse had gone far enough. She arose from her porch, stiffening in the chilly air, and hurried to dispense a little more wisdom and witchcraft. She found a small gathering of men who had once served the king and survived the castle’s destruction. “Who has the best bow and the best arm to draw arrows?” she asked.
One young man stepped forward, still wearing a long black bow on his back. “I am Urion. I’ve won the last three of the king’s archery tournaments. But I can’t help anyone, for no arrow has ever pierced the serpent’s hide.”
“No arrow will kill the beast now,” the witch agreed. “It should have been slain when it was small, but none thought to harm a frail woman, the root of the monster, or teach her manners that might have returned the use of her tongue. I do not need an arrow with a heavy head to kill the creature, but a well-shaped point that might lead it away.”
After giving Urion his instructions, Modee sent the young man near to the castle ruins. Sneaking through the darkness, he dipped an arrowhead in oil and set it alight before shooting it off toward the horizon.
The hydra spotted the bright light soaring through the sky, dipping past the horizon like the sun used to do, and stretched its necks to give chase. The heads crossed rivers and plains, valleys and hills, the necks stretching and stretching in the desperate hunger of eating another sun, for now the snakes could find nothing so grand that would sate their appetite. When the heads had disappeared beyond the horizon as well, Modee set Urion to work on another arrow, much bigger, bulkier, and more prone to combustion.
“This arrow will never fly,” Urion said.
“It doesn’t need to fly,” Modee said. “The snake heads need only see it.”
The arrow was used to keep the shape, but it was carried by Urion and five other men to the center of the castle, where Angelina remained, and she was a pitiful sight by torchlight. She sat on the king’s throne, as such a vain woman must do. Her clothes ran in rags down her thin body, her lips cracked from holding them open so long, and she seemed scarcely able to lift her head. If the snakes’ food passed to her like a mother to child in her womb, it only showed in that Angelina still lived, for she was a gaunt, pale thing, her limbs as thin and brittle as twigs, her hair breaking and falling out, and her gut stuck out in a miserable paunch beneath her protruding ribs.
“Dear child,” Modee said. “You need only have spoken more kindly and birds would have sung from your tongue instead of serpents. When they grew large, they would have flown away to join the sunbirds of the heavens, a blessing on you and your children to come, and you would have had the freedom to speak once more. But a snake does not leave the nest it has stolen—it only devours and grows large. I cannot allow you to damn the world to night and cold death. Fortunately for us, snakes too clustered in their nests will devour each other, and it is so hard to tell one tail from another before swallowing.” The witch closed Angelina’s eyes, patting her head, and bade the men bring the arrow forth.
They jammed the great shaft through Angelina’s gut and set it alight, to burn brightly in the deep night. Modee then led everyone away as the flame grew larger and burst, engulfing the old throne room in flames. The arrow’s inferno blazed more magnificently than any other fire, fed by oil and the witch’s spells.
When the serpent heads arose from the other horizon, stretching around the entire world, they spotted the bright light in the castle and believed they had found the resting place of the new sun. Without hesitation, their jaws widened and they tore fiery Angelina apart, each head swallowing its small portion. When they each found more meat to this meal, they went on eating and eating, swallowing more and more of a snake’s long body. Soon their necks tightened against the world in all places and the hydra was unable to move.
Modee approached the serpent heads then. “Snake, you seem to have let yourself catch your tongue,” she taunted, and the heads twitched, hungering for her and for their own bodies, yet unable to eat another morsel. “If you ever wish to taste another scrap of food, you’ll need to toss up all you’ve eaten, in all your many stomachs, or lay there and starve, choking on your own ends.”
Famished and desperate, the snakes’ body swelled against all the lands it covered, and then it began to regurgitate its food. First it spit up its tails and Angelina, and had it any control, it would have stopped there. Yet once the eating had begun, the serpent’s tongue could not stop, and the same was true when it forced all the food back out. It spit up peop
le and livestock, thousands and thousands of men, women, and children. Those torn apart were beyond saving, but many of those who returned could live again. Then came shields and swords, horses and cattle, trees and birds. Finally, as if holding the best of all for last, the stars emerged from the mouths, scattering across the sky, and then they vanished in the light of the true sun, hanging high in the heavens.
The thirteen heads, now deprived of food, shrank back into one, and then this snake shrank back into one small, hungry serpent, its tail as red as a woman’s tongue. Modee picked up the frail, writhing creature from behind its venomous head.
“So now, tiny serpent,” the witch said. “Have you anything to say for yourself?”
The snake tried to hiss, but when its forked tongue emerged, two small faces poked from the tips. They wore Angelina’s appearance and spoke with her voice. “I am starving, lady. I must eat and regain all I have lost, the people and their homes, the sun and stars, and all my mouths with which to feed.”
“You will never be the hydra again.” Modee bent again and released the snake into the grass. “But perhaps if you act kindly, against a serpent’s nature, and avoid being eaten by the sunbirds, your head may turn human, you will grow arms and legs, and your scales shall shy away, leaving you as a human woman. Perhaps then you will have a chance to find happiness in this life. If not, those human heads will grow all the worse from your tongue, and I shudder to think what those twins may do to you.”
With the evil snake gone and the heavens and Earth made right again, the people set to rebuilding. Many homes and villages needed remaking, and astrologers and sailors were forced to learn new positions for the stars. Families had to grow and maps had to be redrawn where the land’s geography had been changed by the world-squeezing serpent. A new king was needed and a new castle for the kingdom where Modee lived, and she went in search of a village in need of a new wise-woman. Times of hardship and hard work lay ahead for the people.
But at least they weren’t being eaten by snakes.
The Horn of Plenty
Nemmit Trunt’s family had survived a year of disaster in the farmlands. First came the drought that withered the crops, yellowed the grass, and struck the trees small and barren. Then came the famine, as bread grew scarce, and vegetables, and even meat as cows shriveled, like skeletons wearing saggy skin, and goats dropped to the ground as skeletons wearing nothing. Then came the plague, as rotting bodies filled the alleys, streets, and roadsides, gnawed on by flies and rats that spread disease in their search for more food. Not only that, but there were vagrants and bandits hunting for easy marks, and even upstanding gentlemen became desperate in their hunger.
Many farming families had died off and had their land taken by bandits or city people escaping the plague. Nemmit and his parents and siblings were fortunate to have survived the year, but until their crops came in this season, they had little to eat. They walked as skeletons, much like the cows had done before they were eaten, and worried that their farm would be taken like the neighboring lands if they were too weak to defend it.
One day, as Nemmit led a haggard donkey to plow, he spotted a man walking toward the farm from the road. He carried two wicker baskets on each arm and a hefty cloth sack on his back. His skin looked sickly pale and Nemmit at first worried he might carry diseases from the plagued cities.
“Stay back, stranger,” he called. “We want no illness here.”
“My body is healthy,” the stranger said. “Yet I can see yours is not.”
Nemmit looked himself over as if he hadn’t realized how loosely his clothing hung from his torso, how scrawny his limbs had become, how well his ribs showed, and how his belly hung like an empty sack from his gut. He had been skipping his portions so his younger brothers and sisters might have a better chance at growing up and growing strong. “We Trunts have seen better days,” Nemmit agreed.
“You may see better days again,” the stranger said. “Let one of your brothers take the plow today. If you follow me to a farm and help me in a small task, I will give you a magic cornucopia. It may appear to be an ordinary wicker horn on the outside, but the food it spills will never run out, no matter how much is poured from its mouth.”
Nemmit thought this sounded ridiculous, and that he’d make an ass of himself following the stranger, especially if the stranger was a thief. He made sure to take nothing of value when he told one of his little brothers to lead the donkey, and then he let himself be led like an animal by the stranger, up the road to this other farm. They walked until noon before Nemmit saw a farm of the famine year—barren of crops and livestock, and not a human sound came from there either.
“A family here owned the Horn of Plenty,” the stranger told Nemmit as they stood at the edge of the dry fields. “They weathered this past year’s troubles, only for three starving ogres to wander down from the mountains and eat every man, woman, and child. When I was last here, they were dining from the Horn themselves. If you wish to have this endless supply of food for your family, you must retrieve it from them.”
“I’m no knight or archer,” Nemmit said. “I’m only a farmhand. I cannot kill ogres.”
“But you can kill dogs, cats, and mice, can’t you?” The strange smiled wickedly. “Convince the ogres to change shape, one into a mouse, one into a cat, and one into a dog. The cat will eat the mouse, as is its nature, and the dog will kill the cat in play. Then you have only to kill the dog before the final ogre realizes he’s been tricked. With the ogres gone, the Horn is yours.”
All this seemed doable, if not terribly frightening for Nemmit, and he strolled up the barren fields to the farmhouse where the ogres waited. He rehearsed various lines in his head, first to keep the ogres from eating him the moment he crossed their threshold, and then to make them change their shape exactly as the stranger suggested. He was not sure he’d ever see his family again as he knocked on the door.
No one answered. He knocked again, and then a third time before letting himself inside. The house reeked of rotting meat. Flies swarmed in the halls over thickened blood pools and cracked bones left scattered on the floor. Nemmit moved carefully through the rooms, in case the ogres had already changed shape and were watching him, preparing to strike secretly despite a reputation that said ogres were too stupid to ever be sneaky.
When he entered the kitchen, he spotted the Horn of Plenty on a table surrounded by human bones. Shaped like a bull’s horn, only much larger and woven from light brown wicker, the cornucopia did look like a plain old basket, except for the food flowing from its mouth, an opening as large as Nemmit’s head. The young man’s tongue went wet at the sight of plush grapes, thick potatoes, a leg of lamb, turnips, crisp bread, cherries, gooseberries, and a block of yellow cheese, all pouring from the Horn. When he lifted it from the table, gently as if lifting a baby, the food spilled across the floor and the mouth filled again, now with beets, a roasted chicken’s breast, tomatoes, a small pumpkin, sweet breads, and a block of butter.
Unsure if he’d passed some supernatural test and wary of upsetting the stranger, Nemmit didn’t touch a morsel despite his hunger and instead carried the Horn outside. “There was not an ogre in the house,” he said. “But I’ve found the magic horn.”
The stranger did not look surprised. “The ogres must have left in search of sport,” he said. “The Horn of Plenty can make life quite easy, and a dulled mind may grow restless and greedy. You must be wary of who partakes of this gift. Nonetheless, it now belongs to you and the Trunt family. Use it well.” With that, the stranger left him, walking up the road with his baskets and sack. Nemmit never found out who he was.
He did make good use of the cornucopia though. His father stood outside waiting for him in the late afternoon, furious for his abandoning the plow, until Nemmit showed him the Horn and what it could do. The Trunt family feasted that evening like never before, devouring all their favorite fruits, vegetables, meats, and sweets. Then they vomited much of what they’d devoured, for their st
omachs weren’t ready for it all right away. Soon they were able to eat again, and the Horn gave the children their favorite pies, gave the mother old recipes that her own mother had taken to the grave, and gave the father strange fruits and delicacies he had not tasted since he’d been a young soldier fighting a war in the east, where these odder foods grew in abundance.
They went on farming, for the Trunts didn’t want their less fortunate neighbors to grow curious, but often Nemmit or his father traveled far away to town, having poured salted meats and dried fruits from the Horn of Plenty. They sold the food at market and brought home plenty of coins every day. Soon the family could hire others to do the farming while they stuffed their mouths with the Horn’s bounty, and many of Nemmit’s brothers and sisters grew lethargic. In time, they forgot their troubled days, and many of them became greedy.
One morning, one of his brothers and one of his sisters wanted their breakfast, wanted it first, wanted it now, but neither wanted the same food. The brother wanted whole eggs and a fat helping of bacon, while the sister wanted running eggs and a steak of ham. Their swollen fingers gripped the Horn on either side as their siblings and parents looked on in fascination. They each struggled and squirmed for control of the wicker miracle, until a split formed in the front of its mouth.
Nemmit jumped up to stop his idiot siblings from destroying the family’s prosperity, but he reached them too late. The weaving came undone along the top of the Horn, as if it had been split and mended once before. Nemmit hoped this could be done again as he watched what food had been sitting in the Horn’s mouth spill onto the dining table, an omelet of eggs bubbling with bacon and ham, so thick you’d think a whole pig had dropped dead inside.
The Horn of Plenty itself laid cracked open between the quivering, teary-eyed siblings. Its innards appeared black, as if the wicker had been charred within. No food sat inside and no source of power obvious to Nemmit’s eyes.