Two Scorpions

 

In Cathay’s far west, beyond the snowy mountains, a vast brown desert the size of several kingdoms stretches from horizon to horizon.  Sometimes, the waste of hot pebbles and soot-colored dust is crossed by caravans of men leading patient, plodding camels.  But mostly, it is only the winds, hot as a furnace, that traverse the barren terrain.  The desert is the home of the scorpion and these poisonous little creatures hide under every stone and within every arid crack in the boulders piled on hilltops there.

Monks have made an oasis around a spring from which water seeps.  The oasis is lush with willows and desert cottonwood, trees crowded around several ponds created by the religious order.  Canals irrigate fields where pistachio nuts, poppies, and pomegranates are grown.  The monks wear white linen fashioned from cotton that they raise near a warm marsh where white heron stalk about spearing frogs with their long beaks.  The holy men live in dwellings quarried into the hillsides and, in stone alcoves, ancient statues of the Buddha are covered in shadow and, sometimes, even wear a garland of living bats around their brows.  A pagoda made from stone as white as porcelain casts its pale reflection on the lagoon in the oasis.  Several of the pools near the pagoda are “ponds of mercy” – this means that the water is filled with bright gold and silver fish that the monks feed daily and that they protect against birds that might otherwise feed on these swarms of colorful, inquisitive fish.  

Sometimes, amber-colored scorpions with heavy black stings scuttle into the brush and grass in the oasis seeking prey.  The scorpions move swiftly on their eight crooked legs and hold small creatures in their pincers to stab them to death with their agile, arched stings.  The scorpions are very fierce and, if they can’t catch beetles or small mice, they eat one another.

One day, as it is said, a scorpion ventured to the edge of a “pond of mercy” and saw the fish thronging in the crystal water.  The scorpion scented some crickets living in a hollow log on the other side of the pool.  Scorpions can’t swim – their articulated bodies are too heavy for that and their diamond-shaped stings are hard and dense as stone.  The scorpion ventured to the edge of the pond, looking wistfully across the water to the crickets sporting in the rotten wood.  A bullfrog, playing in the pond, swam to the shore and, then, squirted itself up on the pebbles at the edge of the pool.

“Brother frog,” the scorpion said, “will you ferry me across this water to those crickets that I hear chirping on the other side of the pond?”  

The frog kept his distance from the scorpion.  Such creatures, the frog knew, are unpredictable and impulsive.

“No,” the bullfrog said, “I’m afraid of your venomous sting.  If I were to let you ride on my back, I fear you would sting me to death.”

“Nonsense,” the scorpion said, courteously gesturing with his crab-like pincers.  “Why would I sting you?  My sting is deadly and, if I stabbed you in the middle of the pond, we would both sink into the water and drown among those dim-witted goldfish.”

“I suppose that’s true,” the bullfrog said.  He ventured a little closer to the scorpion.

“Come,” the scorpion said.  “Let me climb onto your back and, then, you can swim across the water to where those crickets are playing.”

“You won’t sting me?” the frog asked.

“No, that would just result in both of us dying,” the scorpion reassured the frog.

So the frog inched a little closer to the scorpion and, then, flinching a bit as he felt the creature’s sharp claws on his back, allowed the scorpion to grip him along his spine.  Then, the frog set forth, kicking his powerful legs against the water, and propelling himself, and the scorpion on his back, across the pond.

The gold fish looked up in wonder to see the scorpion, pincers like the horns of a bull and the deadly crooked staff of the arachnid’s sting, flying across the water on the green back of the bullfrog.

In the middle of the pond, the scorpion reared up and thrust the dagger of his sting into the frog’s emerald side.  The frog gasped and rolled over.  The gold fish, witnessing the murder, fled to the sides of the pool.

“Why did you sting me?” the frog cried.

“It is my nature,” the scorpion said.

The dying frog twitched and the scorpion was flung by that convulsion into the water.  He sank like a stone and perished at the bottom of the pool.  Unaware of the deadly peril from which they had been spared, the crickets sang and danced in their rotten log.

A few days later, another scorpion ventured to the edge of the pond.  An old monk with a novice was feeding grains of rice to the goldfish.  

The scorpion and looked down and saw another arachnid just like himself sitting at the bottom of the pond.  Although the water seemed dangerous to him, the scorpion wondered about his fellow creature who seemed to be enjoying the pebbles and small feathery sea-weed amidst the schools of bright gold fish.  

“Perhaps, that fellow down there is fat with gold fish that he spears and eats,” the scorpion said to himself.  And, so, with tiny mincing steps, the scorpion ventured into the sunny pool of water.  But the stone ledges at the edge of the pond were slick and the scorpion’s little clawed feet couldn’t grip the rounded pebbles and, so, the creature slid into the water and began to sink.  

The old monk, turning from the hungry goldfish, saw the scorpion drowning..  He reached into the pool, and, taking the scorpion, in the palm of his hand, lifted it up out of the water.  But it is the nature of a scorpion to sting and, so, the arachnid plunged his sting into the monk’s thumb.  The sting of a scorpion is painful, much more sharp than that of a wasp, and the monk, crying out, dropped the scorpion into the pond.  Again, the arachnid, helplessly flailing at the water with his pincers, sank into the pond.  The monk bent forward again and, once more, took hold of the scorpion, seizing him by his jointed back.  But, again, the scorpion couldn’t resist stinging the monk and, so, once more, he fell into the water and began to settle down to the bottom of the pond.

The monk’s hand was bloodied by his encounters with scorpion’s sting.  A flush of fever made the monk’s breath come short and he felt clammy, cold chills running up and down his spine.  But, again, he bent toward the drowning scorpion.

The novice monk, stepping forward, restrained the monk, holding back his hand.  

“Don’t you see,” the boy said, “it is the nature of the scorpion to sting you?”

“But it is my nature,” the monk replied, “to save.”

“I don’t understand,” the novice monk said.

“It is human nature to care for others, even scorpions, and to endeavor to save them,” the old monk said.

The novice pulled up a large lily-pad anchored in the bottom of the “pond of mercy.”  Then, he scooped the scorpion up out of bottom of the pool so that the creature rested on lily-pad.  The boy, then, used a twig to prod the raft of the lily-pad and its passenger to the edge of the pool.  Without showing any gratitude at all, the scorpion darted onto dry land and hid among the stones and grass at the edge of the pool.  The brilliantly colored goldfish bobbed again to the surface, hungrily opening their mouths of the specks of rice thrown down to them.