Folk-Tales of the Khasis Part 13

"Anoint yourself, oh my husband. Our son hath obtained the bear's grease; anoint yourself and be free from the dragon's power."

As before, the dragon was again very chagrined to find that U Babam Doh had come back alive and uninjured, so he thought of yet another plan by which he could send him into a still greater danger, and he answered the woman: "Anointing my body with bear's grease is only a part of my vow; before I can be released from the dragon's power I must be covered for one whole night with the undried skin of a python, and he who obtains the skin for me must not know for what purpose or for whom it is obtained."

The woman wept bitterly when she heard of this vow, for she feared to send her son among the reptiles. U Yak Jakor, seeing her hesitation, began to coax her, and to persuade her to feign sickness once again, and she, longing to see her husband released, yielded to his coaxing. When her son came in he found her seemingly worse than he had seen her before, and once more he knelt by her side and begged of her to tell him what he could do for her that would ease her pain.

She replied, "It is written in my nusip that I must die of this sickness unless I am covered for a whole night with the undried skin of a python"; and as before U Babam Doh answered and said that he would obtain for her whatever was written in her nusip; but he did not say that he would bring a python skin.

Taking his bow and quiver, he left the house, as on former occasions, and walked in the direction of the jungle, but this time he did not proceed far. He returned home un.o.bserved, and, climbing to the roof of the house, he quietly removed some of the thatch, which enabled him to see all that was going on inside the house, while he himself was unseen.

Very soon he saw his mother getting up, as if in her usual health, and preparing to cook a savoury meal, which, to his amazement, when it had been cooked, she took to the wooden chest where he knew the dragon to be confined. As he looked, he saw the figure of a man lying in the chest, and he knew then that U Yak Jakor had transformed himself into another likeness in order to dupe his mother. He listened, and soon he understood from their conversation that the dragon had taken the form of his own dead father, and by that means had succeeded in making his mother a tool against her own son. He now blamed himself for not having confided to his mother the secret of the chest, and determined to undeceive her without further delay.

He entered the house quickly, before his mother had time to close the lid of the chest. She stood before him fl.u.s.tered and confused, thinking that by her indiscretion she had irrevocably committed her husband to the power of the dragon; but when U Babam Doh informed her of the deception played upon her by U Yak Jakor she was overwhelmed with terror, to think how she had been duped into sending her brave son into such grave perils, and abetting the dragon in his evil designs on his life.

When U Yak Jakor saw that there was no further advantage to be gained by keeping the man's form he a.s.sumed his own shape, and, thinking to prevent them from approaching near enough to harm him, he emitted the most foul stench from his scaly body. But U Babam Doh, who had borne so much, was not to be thwarted, and without any more lingering he took the chest on his shoulders and carried it to the place of Durbar. There, before the Siem and his ministers and the whole populace, he recounted the strange story of his own adventures and his parents' history. At the end of the tale he opened the wooden chest and exhibited the great monster, who had been such a terror to travellers for many generations, and in the presence of the Durbar, amid loud cheers, he slew U Yak Jakor, and so avenged his father's death and vindicated his mother's honour.

The Siem and the Durbar unanimously appointed him the Heir-apparent, and when in the course of time he succeeded to the throne he proved himself a wise and much-loved ruler, who befriended the poor and the down-trodden and gave shelter to the stranger and the homeless. He always maintained that his own high estate was bestowed upon him in consequence of his family's generosity to a lonely and unknown mendicant, whose blessing descended upon them and raised them from a state of want and poverty to the highest position in the land.