The Legend of YoDan!

Once upon a time in a land far, far away there was a cruel and wicked Emperor who ruled over the lands with a fist of iron and a heart of stone. What he wanted he conquered, what he couldn´t get he destroyed. And so it was a young mother cradling her infant child came across the path of the Evil Emperor one day. For rumors of her beauty had spread far and wide across the lands and had reached the ears of the Emperor. Her husband had been in the Peoples Army who had risen to fight against the Emperor in the revolution but who´s brave leaders were tricked into a false peace meeting with the Emperor who then slaughtered them and hung their broken bodies outside his palace for 60 days till the carrion birds had picked clean the skeletons as a warning to other would be heroes.

The revolution had left the people devastated and hungry with taxes increased and food scarce. Employment was few especially for widower with child.  Her name was Ellanah and although near starvation and with a face and body that had grown lean through hard times she was surely the beauty of the land. Her eyes told a sad story though to all that spoke with her of an anguish eating away at her soul for the loss of her husband. The village women would tell her to move on and find another mate who could help with the raising of the child and would endlessly try to match her with yokels and idiots from neighbouring villages. Heroes of the war would come to romance her but they all left fuming at her rejection. She was once beat badly by a disgruntled nobleman for her refusal and the bruises were so bad she could not see for two weeks. But still she said no to suitors and busy-body villagers. Her heart, she would say, had ceased to beat on the day, nay the hour, nay the minute, nay the very second that her love had passed on to paradise. How could she love another when her heart had ceased to beat? Wasn´t she dead already and her body had not caught up yet? She would say that she had wept for two whole months after her husbands death and physically had run out of tears. She would say the only reason her body had warmth was to comfort the child. She would say that the gods had stolen into her chest and ripped out her swollen heart when her grief was too much to bear and she prays to them everyday for their mercy but thinks their kindness was really desperation as they could not stand such suffering that had never been known before and needed to silence their minds and guilty feelings for allowing such pain in the world. But she thanked them anyway

This, of course, made her sour company and would find herself on her own most of the time which is the way she liked it for then she could sing to her child. For in truth all her claims were false. She had suffered greatly, that was true, but in reality her love and passion and feeling had grown since her husbands death. And it was all focused on the sweet child in front of her. She wanted people to stay away so she could let loose privately her feelings of love and hope to the infant. For if this kind of pure love were to be discovered then the Emperor would kill them at once, surely. He would never permit happiness of this level. So, she would pretend her heart was broken and her suffering had robbed her of meaning.

But, oh, her singing. Ellanah would visit a cave on the very edges of the realm where a mountain river would be available to wash clothes or bodies and there she would find a private haven from the evils of the world. She had been shown the area by her late husband when he had first wooed her and she had been coming back every week to the same spot. It took two days to travel there and back and she would stay for one whole day doing her chores and singing softly to the child asleep by the tree or paddling in the shallow river. After she had done her chores they would sit and have food on a blanket as the stars started to come out one by one as the daylight faded and she would tell stories of the child’s father to him. And they would be great stories of bravery and strength, evil lords and pure hearted people. And the joy these two supposedly lonely people would experience seemed to have the flowers and trees swaying to a happy beat for hearing it, and the stars seemed to twinkle just that bit more like it was bright with agreement of how wonderful life could be if you gave all you love to a person. And nobody had ever been there during her time at the cave. The area seemed like a perfect isolated paradise where she could be who she was and break free of her trappings.

But one day as she sheltered in the cave, with the setting sun drifting languidly by its mouth, she sang the softest and most beautiful song she knew to the babe who cooed and clicked in joy.

From down the barren hills rode a warrior heading for the river to quench  his thirst and that of his steed. He stopped suddenly, his raging thirst forgotten in an instant, and listened to the melodic sound coming from the cave. Entranced he rode up to the mouth and stared in. A woman barely out of her teens sat on the cave floor singing a haunting lullaby to an infant of only a couple of years. He could not see her face as it was bent over the child but knew that he must have this woman sing from him and his friends. Her voice was bewitching and she must be the star of the land. But to find a talent such as this dressed in clothes that looked rather closer to rags and seemed to live out of a cave….

He had stopped in his thoughts so abruptly that it took a moment to realise the woman had stopped singing and had addressed him quite plainly. She was beautiful. Her face, although lean and a little faded, was stunning, even more so then her voice, which seemed impossible only a moment ago.

The warrior collected his wits after she demanded to know his presence for the second time but could still only come out with a grunt of some kind of acknowledgment. She returned this sound with a look that although it took barely half a second to happen stated so clearly that she thought him a mad fool and too good for him. His humbleness vanished and his arrogance rallied immediately as it had many times before and would for years after. He felt in that moment he could have destroyed her for the look that in his heart he knew was probably true but instead conceded to a simple phrase

“Marry me.”

It wasn´t a question. She shook her head slowly.

“Why not?”

She took a deep breath and sighed, kissed the infant’s head in her arms as a tear fell from her cheek, laid the child away in some reeds by the river and, rising, flicked her long golden hair away from her face and her eyes, which burned with a fury rarely seen in one so beautiful, and stood to face the warrior who had in his daze yet to dismount. Stillness descended on the place as if expecting a mighty roar and the river to flood the area to relieve the suspense. She simply said

“You took my husband´s life, maggot, and robbed your people of their very freedom and peace. And I can do no damage to you in violence, as my frame is weak and yours strong, but know this, if I lived to a million and every year you grew more handsome, I would not marry you. If I became mad and you nursed my sickness out of me and cared tenderly till the end of your days I would not marry you. If you became kind and benevolent and gave all your riches to the people you have stolen from, if you renounced your thrown and lived a frugal generous life, if you cut out your tongue for its lies and your eyes for their evilness and your hands for its cruelty and presented all this to me for my hand in marriage then I would still call you the biggest coward alive and the most disgusting creature vomited on this land for you can never take back the evil you have done the world by killing my husband, the most brave and honest man to walk the land.

“For all your might, Emperor, you are nothing next to him. You are a weak snivelling baby with no more power then this infant here in the reeds and I stand sad, for I can see my life is soon to end by your barely concealed wrath, but I want you to understand clearly I love this child more then I have it´s father and I am still willing to die for my words. For the shame and hurt you have caused us will be avenged and this if I can not turn you to dust with my thoughts then my son will one claim your heart as a trophy as revenge.

“So I say again , for the last time, disgusting, worthless, cowardly, stupid pig…

“I will not marry you.

Does that answer your question?”

Without a word the Emperor drew his sword and plunged it into the woman’s heart. A soft, sorrowful sigh escaped her parted lips and seemed to carry on the wind as if the elements wished her last breadth to go on forever.

At last he dismounted his horse and made his way to the reeds where the infant lay and sword held high slashed furiously down into the thicket. But to no avail. The woman must of sunk the child in the river so to save it a bloody death and rob the Emperor of his kill. But the vengeful words played on his mind. She must of been bluffing hoping he would cower under the curse. Little did she know of the great Emperor.

But the Emperor was wrong. Ellanah had long before prepared a method for escape of her child should danger arive and built a little reed basket that would float the child down the river to a soft bank a few miles down.

So it was that YoDan was born into this world under a cruel sky and with only revenge in his heart and the memeory of a tender kiss to drive him on.

The Legend continues….