Tale 91- The Tamer of Beasts

 The Traveler wandered down a path, in the opposite direction to where she would usually go. She came to another part of the city, meeting a snake charmer who was performing for a crowd. Growing interested, the Traveler watched the man in action, his melodies hypnotising the snake and causing it to curl upwards in a strange fashion, almost as if it were dancing. As everyone clapped, the performer finished his act and stood, offering to tell the masses a story before he began again. The Traveler and many others eagerly nodded, the snake charmer smiling and preparing to tell the tale of ‘the Tamer of Beasts’

‘Once, there lived a young boy who had a magical whistle that he inherited from his grandfather. Every time the boy blew the whistle in front of a creature, it would obey him, the boy being able to tame even the fiercest and most frightening of monsters, creatures of night made of shadow now under the command of that small tin whistle. Snakes, boars, bulls were under his jurisdiction, but also butterflies, deer and canaries. Followed by a menagerie of creatures, the boy believed he could use his gift for good and began to try and approach people to see if they needed help. However, the majority of people would flee and claim him to be a crazed sorcerer, afraid that he could unleash the beasts upon them if they wronged him, which the sweet boy would never even dream of enacting upon others. As the boy began to become more and more isolated, he made a bet with fate that if he didn’t make a friend in the next week, he would throw himself into the huge lake in his town, taking the tin whistle with him and leaving both to the mercy of the water, where they would be lost. And on the seventh day, just as the boy was losing hope, he met a snake charmer.’

The Traveler completed writing and drawing as the snake charmer resumed his hypnosis of the snake, sending it toward the crowd jokingly and causing several squeals of both fear and delight. As the act resumed, the Traveler moved on, feeling as if her shackles and weights were being removed with each tale she collected. And so, once more, she disappeared.

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