The Nyam was a Great and Grumpy Beast, and he had no respect for lovers
The children rush around squealing. Vatu tries desperately to corral them, looking over at his wife Pania for help. She shrugs at him, then laughs at his frown. She is reclining on their couch, stomach round and full as a bag of sugar. He smiles at how soft and lovely she looks, before turning his attention back to his renegade children.
He catches his daughter first, laughing, but his son shoots past him. “Come on,” Vatu called after him. “If you promise to get dressed for the
festival right after, I will tell you a story”.
Slowly, the young boy peeks his head from around the corner. “What story?” he asks suspiciously. Vatu shrugs, “Any story you want.” The boy comes closer. “Will you tell me the festival myth? About the Nyam?” Vatu looks over at Pania.
“It is okay, Vatu,” Pania smiles. “They will hear it someday; it should come from you.” Vatu settles down on the woven mat in their living room. The girl settles down in front of him and his son scoots over to them. “You first have to know that the Nyam was a grumpy beast,” Vatu begins. “And when the world was younger, he had no respect for love or lovers.”
The Nyam took its time waking up. If the human thought that being louder would command its attention faster — he was wrong.
“Oh, great and powerful guardian of the Lover’s Gate! I beseech you! You must let me pass!” he calls up. The Nyam snorts through its great nostrils. ‘Must’, a word that betrayed his humanness.
Immortals did not have ‘musts.’ The Nyam guarded the Seventh Gate because it was tradition. He took his nap on Sundays because it was his habit. He ate the carp at the bottom of the world because it was his right. But he did not have to do anything at all. “Please,” the man continues.
“At least allow me to tell you the tale of my lover!” The Nyam sighs and finally opens its massive eyes, blinking and shaking its head. It emerges from its hollow above the gate and rides the air down to where the human stands in his boat.
The serpent brings its eyes down to scrutinize the creature. Its great webbed ears flap slowly, disrupting the water beneath it and filling the gargantuan cave with the soft sound of water pulsing. The Nyam clears its throat, and
speaks with an annoyance as old as humankind, “I need not hear of your lover. I have heard a thousand such tales. Leave me alone so that I may nap.” The Nyam watches the human tremble.
The form in the rickety wooden boat is miniscule in comparison to it. But the man speaks anyway, “I cannot.”
“Do you not think,” the Nyam begins, “That I have not heard every lover’s story imaginable? Do you not know how long I have guarded this gate to the Underworld? How long I have watched souls come and try to bargain for their lovers back? You have nothing new to tell.”
The man rubs his shoulders and then steels his gaze at the Nyam. “My name is Kai.” The Nyam blinks. Well! The human had a spine at least. “I did not ask you your name, mortal,” it huffed at him. Kai is unwavering.
“Great serpent, I have traveled across the ocean and fought many battles to come here. Please let me tell you my story.”
Why did humans always think their quests unique? As if a thousand “brave” members of their kind had not also fought and sailed and ran like fire spreading to get back what they’d lost. But, as the Nyam brought its eyes even closer, it could see the traveler’s scars and wounds from his journey.
Some on his skin, some in his heart. “My lover, Manu is behind that gate.” Kai says. “I need to bring him back home.” The Nyam is quiet as Kai sits down in his boat.
“There was a tsunami.”
The Nyam can see how much pain is in the words, they sting the man as they leave his lips. “Everyone else went out fishing, far from the village. I asked Manu to come in my boat and he wouldn’t, he said he wanted to stay home and relax.” Kai smiles through the first tears that come.
“We were fishing all day, far out at sea, we didn’t even feel any wave beneath us. But when we rowed back into shore at sunset, everything was -” The truth’s acid struggles its way out, “Everything was gone.” Kai covers his face with his hands as the tears come, but the Nyam is unmoved. Humans always cry.
The Nyam closes its eyes and thinks. Had it ever loved anything? Had it ever been so brazen and foolhardy as to challenge fate for any beast? What made humans so reckless for love… No. Such foolish, mortal thoughts. The boy should leave.
“How do you know this Manu is not happy in the Underworld?” The Nyam asks, opening its eyes again. “Perhaps he has found another soul to spend eternity with, and he no longer wants you.” Kai’s heart is struck, and the Nyam can see visions of Manu pour out of his mind and dance around him. The two of them racing together as boys down the coast. Scaring old women
and running away laughing. Swimming in the river near their village. A hundred perfect, golden summers.
“Stop that!” the Nyam roars, and Kai struggles not to fall to his knees. “Stop what?” he asks. “Stop polluting my air with your feelings.” The Nyam’s ears flap in irritation. “I know who you are. I know about your great quest and your passion. I have no patience for either. Go back to your village.” The Nyam turns its head to fly back to its cave and hears the unmistakable sound of an arrow notched into a bow.
Arrogant human.
The Nyam turns its head to face Kai, who is clearly terrified but holding his bow steady, aimed at the Nyam’s right eye. The Nyam growls low in its throat, a rumble that echoes throughout the large cave before the gate. “Thousands of years and ten thousand warriors have tried to do what you are threatening. Not one of them,” Steam pours from its nostrils, “Not one of them ever
made it out of this cave alive.”
Kai is unwavering. “Let me pass.” The Nyam continues, “My six brothers and sisters will fly from all corners of the world to help me destroy you so thoroughly, you will have no soul left to enter into the Underworld.”
“Let. Me. Pass.”
“Do you even understand what will happen if you attack me? You will never make it through the Seventh Gate. I will drown you, and smash your pathetic boat into the rocks as a warning sign for every human who comes after you.”
But the Nyam understood neither the power of love nor how it makes men brave. Kai raised his already sore arms higher, drawing the arrow back taut. “I would rather die in this way than live without him.” He says. The Nyam almost laughs. So be it then.
It ducks its head down, but Kai is too fast. He looses his arrow, and it whistles in the air of the cave, before lodging in the Nyam’s eye. Ichor, the blood of immortals, pours from it and the Nyam roars so loudly that rocks tumble loose from the cave walls. Kai is knocked flat on his back.
The Nyam roars again to call his brothers and sisters, and Kai prays to the goddess of love to aid him.
Their answers collide.
The seven beasts are together, flying and hissing in front of Kai, when the goddess comes down to stand next to him in his boat. “What is all this?” she asks, brushing her long, flowing hair behind her ear and tapping her feet impatiently. Kai kneels, but the Nyams continue to steam and growl.
“The human has wounded me!” The Seventh Nyam says. “It is my right to kill him now, and bar his soul from the Underworld.” The goddess floats up to the seventh Nyam and examines it briefly. “The eye will heal Nyam, calm yourself.”
“Calm himself!” The Third Nyam asks, incredulously, “My lady. This is a grave insult. Tradition demands-”
“I know what tradition demands,” the goddess says, looking down on the human below them all. “I know you cannot go without justice. But I sent this man here for you to let him pass, Cobai, and you did not.”
The Nyam flaps its ears in disbelief. “My lady, how can you say my sacred name in front of this human?”
She muses for a moment before answering. “Because I have decided his punishment. He will stay with you, as your servant, for a hundred years before he may pass through the Lover’s Gate. His service will be your justice, and afterwards he will see Manu. Then all will be balanced and right.”
The Nyam snorts at the word right, but bows its head anyway, “Yes my lady.”
The goddess waves her hand over its eye, healing it. Then she floats back down to Kai, to tell him her decision. The Nyam watches him react with surprising cool, looking up at it, then back down at the goddess, nodding.
And so it came to be, Kai worked for a hundred years before he saw his lover again. He watched many hopefuls sail into the mouth of the cave, hearts brave and bodies tired. The Nyam learned to listen when lovers came to plead their cases (the goddess saw to that) and Kai learned some of the secrets of immortals. When a hundred years passed, Kai and Manu came to live on their own special island. There they were looked after by immortals until their souls traveled to the Underworld together. And the great grumpy Nyam always held his right eye closed. That is why, when we depict him, we black out this eye.
Vatu finishes the story to the rapt faces of his children. He continues, “The festival of love is always celebrated on this day, in honor of the day Manu and Kai were reunited.” His daughter is obstinate, “Kai was crazy,” she says. His son pushes her playfully. “I mean it. The Nyam could have hurt him. Plus, it had all those scary brothers and sisters?”
Vatu’s son disagrees, “Kai was brave.”
“I believe so,” Vatu says. “I hope you can be as brave someday.”
His son Kane would hold those words with him for the rest of his life. When he was grown, and a tsunami once again struck his small village, he traveled across the sea to the Seventh Gate with nothing but a small boat and a sword. When he pulled into the mouth of the cave, the Nyam rode the air down to meet him and smiled. The Nyam recognized this kind of soul, braving his way towards it. Hello old friend
Kane rowed closer before speaking the words. “Great serpent, I beseech you. You must let me pass”.
The goddess looked down closely, amused at how cycles repeated themselves before her.
Atira C. © 2020. All rights reserved.
