Nakajima Atsushi
Rumors had it that spirits had latched onto Shak from the Neuri Tribe. All sorts of beings would seemingly take control of him. Hawks, wolves, otters—they would visit the poor Shak and inspire strange words in him.
This tribe was quite peculiar even for the standards of this primitive population Greeks would later call Scythians. They lived and built habitations atop a lake. This was to ward off attacks from wild beasts. They had planted a thousand logs in a shallow part of the lake, laid planks atop these, and erected houses on that artificial ground. They had trapdoors set up in various places, which they could open and lower a basket through to catch fish. They could also navigate dugout canoes to catch otters and castors. They knew how to manufacture hemp fabric, which they wore along with hide. They ate horses, sheep, raspberries, and water caltrop in equal proportions, and were fond of horse milk and kumis. The knowledge to obtain the latter, consisting of inserting a pipe dug from a bone into a mare’s stomach and having a slave blow into it to make the breasts come out, had been passed down since ancient times.
Shak from the Neuri Tribe was a most ordinary man from the hamlet.
He started acting weird last spring, after the death of his little brother Dek. What happened was a surprise attack from a fierce group of nomad Uyghurs from northern lands, who came like a gale, swinging down scimitars from atop their horses. The lake’s inhabitants defended it with all their might. Upon recognizing the infamous horseback soldiers from the northern plains, those who had initially ventured onto the shore to intercept the invaders retreated towards the water. They then dismantled the girders bridging to the shore and, using the houses’ windows as gun ports, fired back at the enemy with slingshots and bows. Unlearned in the handling of canoes, the nomads renounced eradicating the hamlet and merely stole the cattle abandoned on the shore before leaving for the north, yet again like a gale. They only left behind a few carcasses stripped of their heads and right hands. These parts had been cut off and taken home by the invaders. The skulls would be made into cups after plating the outside, while the right hands would be skinned and turned into gloves, with the nails still attached. The corpse of Dek, Shak’s little brother, had suffered the same disgraceful treatment. The only way to identify a headless corpse was via their clothes and possessions. When he paid a visit to the corpse that, with the mark on its belt and the decorations on its broadaxe, was undoubtedly his brother’s, Shak vacantly gazed at that pitiful sight for a long moment. Later, a few would voice the concern that his behavior seemed sensibly different from that of one mourning his brother’s death.
After that, it wasn’t long before Shak’s incoherent babbling began. At first, his neighbors weren’t sure what had latched onto the man and was making him say these strange things. The language it used brought to mind the spirit of a beast who had been skinned alive. The conclusion they reached after much deliberation was that it had to be the stolen right hand of his brother Dek speaking. A few days of respite later, Shak started voicing the words of yet another spirit. This time, it was immediately clear who it belonged to. It was evident to everyone that this spirit, lamenting their fate of having been grabbed by a greater spirit after death and thrown into an endless abyssal darkness, was his little brother Dek. The tribe’s people inferred that the brother’s soul had sneaked into Shak’s body when he vacantly gazed at his carcass.
Now, so far—being possessed by a close family member and their right hand—nothing too outlandish had befallen Shak. However, when he started babbling again after a graceful period of calm, people were flabbergasted: This time, he was reporting the words of animals and humans that were seemingly unrelated to him.
They had had a few cases of women or men being possessed in the past, but there was no precedent of a single person housing such a variety of spirits. Sometimes, a carp swimming in the lake below them would borrow Shak’s mouth and portray the griefs and joys of the lives of finned creatures. Sometimes, a falcon from the Taurus Mountains would describe a sumptuous aerial view of the lakes, plains, and mountains, as well as the faraway bodies of water acting as mirrors. At times, they might get visited by a wolf from the plains who would spread tales of how painful it is to meander under a white moon all night long on frozen land while starving.
Fascinated, many people went to listen to Shak’s blabbering. Bizarrely enough, the large audience started to make Shak (or maybe the spirits residing in him) eager. As his listeners were growing more and more numerous, one time, one of them said as follows: Maybe Shak’s words don’t belong to spirits; maybe he’s consciously making all of this up.
It could be… Thinking about it, possessed people normally speak in a more entranced, ecstatic way. Shak doesn’t really behave abnormally, your hypothesis makes a lot of sense. Thus, more people started to suspect him.
Shak himself didn’t know what exactly had been happening to him recently. Naturally, he had noticed that his behavior was unlike the standard possessed one. However, as he had no idea why he hadn’t healed from this strange behavior even after months displaying it, he figured it had to actually be a peculiar type of possession. It started with him blurting out bizarre things while saddened by his brother’s death and overwhelmed by indignation at the missing head and right hand. He was confident he hadn’t fabricated that. However, it taught Shak, who’d always had a fantasist penchant, the fun of being possessed by a mind with a structure similar to his own imagination yet existing outside of it. As his following increased, every genuine reaction his stories could draw from his audience—be it of relief or fear—elevated his joy beyond limits. His fantasies grew more elaborate by the day. He added vibrant and colorful details to the sceneries his imagination came up with. He was constantly surprising himself with the many vivid and detailed scenes that would emerge inside his mind. This surprise further reaffirmed his conviction that he was inarguably possessed. However, the idea that there could be a tool used to record and spread his words to future generations had yet to cross his mind. Needless to say, he also didn’t know the name his position would earn much later.
Even after suspicions rose that Shak was creating his stories himself, his audience didn’t diminish in the slightest. Rather, he was getting asked to create more and more new stories. Even if these were his creations, a spirit still had to be at work for a man as mediocre as Shak to be able to tell such wonderful stories—they’d reached the same conclusion as the author. For these people, who hadn’t experienced possession first-hand, conjuring such detailed portrayals of events that he hadn’t even seen himself was inimaginable. Be it in the shade of a rock on the shore, under a fir tree in the nearby forest, or at Shak’s door from which goat hide was dangling, they surrounded Shak in a semi-circle and enjoyed his tales. About a group of thirty thieves living in a northern mountain, a monster dwelling in the forest at night, a young ox living in the plains, and more.
When they noticed that young people were so absorbed by Shak’s stories they were forgetting to work, the tribe’s elders grimaced. One of them spoke: It was a bad omen to have a man like Shak appear. If he really is possessed, his case would be unprecedented, and if he isn’t, I’ve never seen anyone produce such rubbish nonsense at a pace even close to his. Either way, he has to be a harbinger of something running counter to nature. As this elder happened to be the most influential in the tribe for having leopard claws decorate his house’s crest, all the other one supported his claim. They secretly laid out a plan to evict Shak.
Shak’s stories progressively borrowed more and more from human society. Tales of falcons and oxes weren’t sufficient to satisfy his audience anymore. He began telling the tales of a beautiful, young couple; of a stingy and jealous old lady; of a chieftain who, despite putting on airs in front of everyone, cannot stand his own against his old wife. When he told the story of an old lady who, despite looking like a bald vulture, tried to compete with a beautiful, young girl and met a miserable defeat, his audience burst into laughter. Surprised at the reaction, he enquired why everyone found it so amusing and learned that, according to rumors, the very elder who’d suggested his eviction recently had a similarly pitiful experience.
The elder was running out of patience. He worked his snake-like shrewdness to produce a ruse. A man who had recently been cheated on by his wife joined him in this endeavor. He was motivated by his belief that Shak had created a story satirizing him. The two of them used all the tricks they could come up with to focus everyone’s attention on the fact that Shak was never fulfilling his duty as a resident. Shak doesn’t fish. Shak doesn’t tend to the horses. Shake doesn’t cut down trees in the forest. He doesn’t skin otters either. Has anyone here seen Shak work for the hamlet even once since the northern mountains sent a fierce flock of snowflakes our way, ages ago?
The people were persuaded. In fact, Shak really wasn’t doing anything. They especially felt that way when time came to share goods necessary to pass the winter inside. Even Shak’s most passionate fans did. Even so, since they were fascinated by Shak’s entertaining tales, the residents reluctantly shared their winter food with him.
And thus they spent the winter—hiding from the cold wind under a thick blanket, sipping on kumis next to a stone-made fireplace where animal feces and branches were burning. When reeds started budding on the shore, they finally stepped out and resumed working.
Shak also came out, but a dull gleam inhabited his eyes; he appeared dazed. People realized he wasn’t telling stories anymore. Even when they expressly asked him to, the best he could muster was a rehashing of his old accounts. And even these he couldn’t tell satisfyingly. His phrasings had lost all vividness. People thus concluded: Shak’s possession has been lifted. The spirit that made him tell all these stories finally, clearly left him.
Although he had been freed from the spirit, his past hard-working habits didn’t return to him. Shak spent every day vacantly staring into the lake—not telling stories, and certainly not working. Every time one of his past listeners saw him in this state, they felt a growing anger at the thought of sharing their hard-earned food with this lazy cretin in the upcoming winter. The elder who loathed Shak was gloating over this situation. The law stipulated that one who has been unanimously agreed to be either harmful or useless to the hamlet could be disposed of after discussions.
The hamlet’s powerful figures, wearing jadeite necklaces around their long beards, deliberated on the subject every now and then. No one dared to step up for Shak, as he no longer had any relatives.
That was right about when the thundering season started. Lightning was what this tribe feared and dreaded the most. To them, it was the growl of a conceited, one-eyed giant cursing them in anger. Once such a growl resounds, they must cease all work and humbly purify the wicked spirit responsible for it until it stops. The dishonest elder successfully bribed the hamlet’s fortune-teller with two cups made out of cow horns, and had him connect Shak’s ominous existence with the frequent thundering that has been sounding as of late. The people took the following decision: If, on a certain day, during the time it takes for the sun to graze the large buna tree to the west after it peaks above the heart of the lake, thunder roared three or more times, the next day, Shak would be disposed of according to their ancestors’ passed-down customs.
On the fateful day’s afternoon, some said they heard thunder resound four times. Others said they heard it five times.
The next evening, they held a banquet around a fire on the shore. A large pot was simmering, filled with sheep and horse meat in addition to the poor Shak’s flesh. As this region wasn’t abundant in foodstuff, it was common for its inhabitants to turn fresh carcasses into meals—as long as they weren’t from someone bearing an illness. A young man with curly hair, who used to be Shak’s most fervent fan, was biting into the flesh from Shak’s shoulder, his face illuminated by the fire. That one elder was holding his nemesis’ femur in his right hand, sucking the succulent flesh from in-between the bones. Once he was done with it, he flung the leg in the distance, after which he heard a splash; the bone was sinking into the lake.
Long, long before the blind Maeonides called Homer would recite his beautiful songs, one poet was thus devoured, unbeknownst to anyone.
(Nakajima Atsushi, Hound-Haunted)
Sway Translations 