But communities also knew that anyone who was loved by the Spirit World and who harbored its secret inside him would inevitably succeed in a pursuit — even if he lost in some other one he had perfected for the public good when people did not acknowledge his skill.
4
A captivating widow, whose beloved husband died on a business trip to the forestlands, was said to have inspired the sorcerer to construct that abominable scarecrow. She had gone into mourning, secluded herself, and rejected suitors and prospective husbands. She lived alone in the oasis, occupying her time with crooning plaintive ballads and supervising the herd of livestock she had inherited from her deceased lord.
This herd was devastated by a calamity that led her to the metalsmiths’ market, where she fell under the influence of the sorcerer.
It was said that she claimed at first she thought some epidemic had infected her livestock. Wise herdsmen, however, informed her that the calamity was caused not by some mysterious epidemic but by the ravages of the vermin that creep across the face of the wasteland. She consulted a clairvoyant, who confirmed that the Spirit World was not responsible for this bloodshed. He spoke cryptically about evil intentions and concluded that the crime demonstrated the existence of a culprit. So she proceeded to set up scary figures around her livestock’s corral to frighten away wild beasts. These resembled the effigies that farmers set up in their fields to scare away birds but did not save her herd from destruction. Every morning she would discover the disappearance of one or two head of livestock overnight. Outside the palm-stalk fence she would find the remaining vestiges of this nocturnal bloodbath. There were pools of blood that the dirt had absorbed till it hardened and coagulated and skeletons with their bones stripped clean of flesh with alarming efficiency — as if it had been trimmed off with a knife. Intestines were strewn about — split open and begrimed with dirt and pebbles — as digestive juices spilled from them, mixed with cud. The skins had been flayed from the body and cut into many pieces as if the perpetrator had intentionally destroyed them to ward off suspicion and to destroy the traces of his heinous deed.
At first suspicions centered on wild beasts. Many people told her that the gully the spring’s waters had created at the base of the eastern section of the city wall frequently attracted reptiles, vermin, and wild beasts from the wasteland and that it was certainly not out of the question that dieb jackals had slipped in from there too. When she asked why jackals would prefer her animals to the herds of other people, they ignored this question and claimed this aspect of the mystery pertained exclusively to the Spirit World, because creatures like jackals held no grudge against her and did not descend on the oasis to slay one person’s livestock instead of another’s — except to deliver a message. She would need to appease the Spirit World with sacrificial offerings if she wanted to save herself and her flocks from this calamity.
The poor woman hurried to the temple and slaughtered a ewe on the tomb’s threshold, but the ghoul attacked the corral that same night and slew two of the nanny goats that gave the most bountiful amounts of milk. So she despaired. She despaired without knowing that despair is the only amulet capable of conquering every calamity.
She despaired, and her despair led her to the scion of the foreigners. In the oasis they said he practiced saddle making only as a cover for the dread craft that arrogant people typically conceal whenever they migrate from their homelands. This tactician would not have succeeded in his carpentry and in fashioning poles had it not been for his mastery of that other craft — from which tribes were never secure because veils of mystery always encompassed it; its masters practiced deferential rites and demonstrated their apprehension and wariness many times.
On that day, the widow heard a boast of the type that flows from the mouths of migrants.
It is said that, after hearing the beautiful woman’s recital, the clever artisan offered, “With my own hands I will build you a scarecrow unlike any ever seen in the oases. I shall give my lady an idol so sacred that not even flies will dare approach it — if my lady will allow me to carry her to the fields in my arms and carry her back as well.”
At first the belle did not understand what he meant by saying he would “carry her to the fields” in his arms. She suspected the matter was some sort of joke that foreigners enjoy or an innocent caprice that citizens encounter in the conduct of artisans and that the tribes know in the eccentricities of poets. She was offended, however, and bolted away after doubt whispered in her breast and she grasped the hidden meaning of this allusion. She confided his offer to her girlfriends, who winked at each other, laughed, mocked her, and told their grannies who then asked her, “What’s the harm in that? Will a man do something to a woman she does not want — even if he is alone with her in the fields? Fool, you should realize that the fool we call ‘man’ is merely a puppet that only does with a woman what the woman wants. Which is the lesser of the two evils: letting your herds be destroyed when their destruction entails your own, or going to the fields to play with a doll called ‘man’?”
The beautiful woman hesitated for a time, but her hesitation did not last long because the nightly massacres of her flocks drove her to the cunning artisan.
5
Once the scarecrow was erected in the fields to guard over the herd’s corral, the unidentified enemy vanished.
The enemy did not merely vanish; people were astounded to find a rascal’s corpse stretched out beside the corral a few days later. On the slain man’s neck they found blue marks that clearly showed the wretch had been strangled. Then they spread a rumor that this scarecrow differed from all the others, because it had a real creature hidden inside it. Some went even further and contended that this august body contained the person of the sorcerer himself, who had constructed this fearsome puppet with wooden poles that he clad with camel skin. Finally he stretched strips of fabric and scraps of linen over the hollow body. Then, as darkness fell, the despicable man glided through the twilight gloom to enter his vile hideout, where he spent the night, to emerge at dawn and slip back to his workshop. Others said that slaughtering the entire herd was merely a sorcerer’s trick the astute artisan had used to conquer the poor widow, with whom he had fallen in love the first day. Her livestock corral had seemed the best way to win her, because sorcerers know better than anyone else that a person’s heart is a pawn of his wealth and that a creature’s weak point is what he possesses. When spiteful people pointed out the scarecrow’s true nature in hopes of smoking out the cunning strategist, they were surprised to hear him say, “The scarecrow is twofold. One scarecrow frightens away the wasteland’s beasts and predatory birds. The second terrifies human jackals, who would not be scared if it weren’t the real thing.” Then he released an evil laugh, which was muffled and as hoarse as the rattle of a man choking or the hiss of a serpent. This was the laugh they heard repeatedly from the mouth of his detestable dummy once it was erected in an empty place in the fields.
Sages, trying to be fair to this ignoble man, said that the scion of strangers had not wished to cause any harm, for if his work had not been beneficial, he would not have freed the oasis from the evil of the rascal whose body was dumped at the feet of the scarecrow when it was first erected. Mean-spirited men, however, considered this action a crime of the most repulsive sort and asserted that, since the damn rotter had feared he might be discovered, he had tempted to the site an innocent fool, whom he had killed with his own hands to provide people evidence of the culprit’s existence (to which the seer had alluded), and to dispel doubts concerning his own plot.