Storytelling | The Scorpion and the Poppy Seed Cakes
The young baby in the cave who eventually becomes the scorpion will play a pivotal role throughout The Leper Messiah.
Except from the Leper Messiah:
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The priest turned toward the baby and touched the child’s face, leaving a bloody mark.
However, he is a street urchin, one of the hundreds who roam the streets of Damascus.
Excerpt from the Leper Messiah:
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The nine-year-old boy was alone.
His mother had died in the caves and the strange priest who had taught him words and symbols that now haunted his sleep as well as waking hours, had disappeared.
Magic meets Reality
All the prayers and symbols that this orphan had been schooled in are now following him along his troubled path.
He is blindly unaware of his powers and for the first time in the story, we see magic spring to life.
Spells that have been cast and prayers that have been reverently spoken through the story are realized. The mystical realm comes into contact with the real world.
Excerpt from the Leper Messiah:
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The gleam of Damascus steel was brilliant in the dark alley.
The Scorpion shoved himself into an alcove hidden from the streets as he convulsed. His shoulders and head fell against the doorway and foam appeared from his mouth. His eyes grew wide and he clutched his scar, which opened up and black scorpions crawled out from the wound.
The chapter, The Scorpion and the Poppy Seed Cakes tries to mimic One Thousand and One Nights in its tone.
A Mothers Story
Chapter five represents a wonderful moment with a friend of mine.
I thought about how to approach this chapter and decided to write in the style of One Thousand and One Arabian Nights, because it represents a great Persian oral tradition, that if I’m not mistaken, may have had its first stories told around firelight in Davids’ time – the cusp of the second Iron Age around 900 BCE.
I wanted to capture the spirit of these wonderful stories.
My friend was of Arab descent and explained what I was trying to achieve.
At first, he did not want to get involved but after a long period of time, he relented and finally read the chapter.
One day he came to me with tears in his eyes and said, “It reminds me of stories my mother would tell me when I was a child.”
Robert