Copyright © Q-sian Kahmei 2022

  All Rights Reserved.

  eISBN 979-8-88805-359-1

  This book has been published with all efforts taken to make the material error-free after the consent of the author. However, the author and the publisher do not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss, damage, or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause.

  While every effort has been made to avoid any mistake or omission, this publication is being sold on the condition and understanding that neither the author nor the publishers or printers would be liable in any manner to any person by reason of any mistake or omission in this publication or for any action taken or omitted to be taken or advice rendered or accepted on the basis of this work. For any defect in printing or binding the publishers will be liable only to replace the defective copy by another copy of this work then available.

  © 2022 Reserved with the author

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  Preface

  “The Consequence Of Lilium’s Choice” is a fascinating invention of creative writing based partly on a virtually forgotten ancient folktale and partly on the powerful imagination of the writer, making it an amusingly distinct narrative. This story is written with an attempt to breathe life back into the past legends and to replenish the magnitude of ancient tales which are now on the perimeter of disappearing from human memory. The purported transformation of the natural earth into an innovative world by the rapid advancement in literature, science and technology makes people too full of activities to bother about the chronicles which were once narrated every night by the elders as a form of recreation. The younger members of the people in the past so keenly listened to this sort of tales that the tale-tellers were enthused to create more such stories to keep them amused when no other form of entertainment was prevalent.

  The story in this miniature novel is about a family ancestry who were razed by the bad gods but later reinstated by the influence of the creator. The vital attraction of the story is roving across the lead characters ‘Uglyface’ who is presented as the king of the bad gods, ‘Seraphie’ a daughter from heaven, ‘Jothamus’ the youngest of Seraphie’s seven sons and ‘Ajubel’ the youngest of Uglyface’s seven daughters.

  The way the bad gods, in their futile effort, tried to become the dominant part of the human’s social order in the past, is what is very importantly mirrored in the story.

  The last part of the story fabulously describes the world being monopolized by Jothamus and his goddess wife Ajubel and also forecasts an unprecedented event that will transpire in the near future of the world.

  The chapters in this book are arranged in such a way as to make the readers enjoy and understand clearly the sequence of the events that occur in the story.

  I believe my humble effort to revitalize the historical tale in a remixed fictitious version which is typically based on my mind’s eye, will not only entertain the readers but also help them envisage the immense power and wisdom of the creator of this world. This volume will also help readers reminisce the rich story culture of the past golden days when civilization was at its inaugural stage.

  - Author

  Acknowledgement

  I would like to thank the following individuals for their contributions towards the making of this book without which it would have been a vain attempt to bring it about into reality.

  1. My father RD Meiri Kahmei and mother Aguiliu Kahmeipui for recounting the original part of the story on which the present story is partly rooted.

  2. My wife Pouchangsuiliu Kahmeipui, for her constant ethical support.

  3. My children namely, Malianglu Kahmei (Leeyang), Azubiah Kahmei (Zuzu) and D Elltone Kahmei for being part of this project.

  4. My sister Ajuana Kamei for her incessant comfort that keeps me writing.

  5. Mr Jeanchui Kamei for his permission to use his photo in the book.

  Contents

  1. The Underworld of Uglyface

  2. The Yellow River and Eight Brothers

  3. The End of the Eight Brothers

  4. The Lustful Angel

  5. Lilium and the Lustful Angel

  6. Seraphie

  7. The Seven Sisters’ Trap

  8. Jothamus and Ajubel

  9. Lilium Dreams Again

  10. Seraphie’s Fortieth Birthday

  11. The Magic Whip

  12. Blood on the Moon

  13. Uglyface is Beaten

  14. The Man Behind Everything

  Annotation

  A Bit About the Author

  1

  The Underworld of Uglyface

  Once long and incredibly long ago, the earth was divided into eight directions where there were kingdoms and territories subject to their own rulers. Seven of these directions were inhabited by pure human mortals and kept under sovereign control of kings and queens. But one was an unexplored terrain hidden from the eyes of an ordinary people’s view which was a locale to the immortal spirits ruled by an immoral, shape-shifting blood-drinker called Uglyface.

  The populace of this hidden kingdom would always trespass human territory and take advantage of the feeble and ill-fated human beings whereas on the other hand their territory was not even visible to the people, and so the people could find no means to get even with them. They were undead creatures whose main tasks were to destroy the well-built, corrupt the good and to mutilate what was good-looking and spoil what was blessed on earth.

  Uglyface was a man-eater whose head was like that of a lion, the torso like that of a human and the limbs like those of a bear. He was Abaddon, the fallen angel of destruction. The name ‘Uglyface’ was given by the human population for his awfully ugly and frightful look. He was the lord and king of the unexplored hidden territory of the eighth direction on earth. He was given the power over the earth by his master, the blasphemous Beast who ruled the Hades and the sea.

  ‘Uglyface’ was a remark dreaded by every living mortal in the whole landform. He was a greedy, immoral and fearful devil who would extensively roam and mercilessly kill every living creature that came his way. He had an allocated duty to carry out. His job was to conquer the whole world and get the better of men on earth. But somehow that was a task too difficult to be fulfilled since the humans were morally stronger and were continually favored by the angels of heaven. Uglyface was sensitive to this favoritism but he knew that he would always have a way out. He victimized easy prey, taking benefit from the weaker part of human beings, subduing them and crushing under his feet, all those morally as well as physically lacking humans.

  Even babies seemed to understand the remark. The mention of his name was used as a means to discipline children and to keep babies quiet from crying.

  And thus, there existed a time when human civilizations co-existed with the unseen territory of the gods and goddesses who were driven out of heaven along with their masters for rebelling against their creator. Some of these driven-outs remained on the earth while others went farther away to the hades. Those that remained on the earth and co-existed with the humans, constantly tried to swindle the humans of their lives and properties.

  And so began this legendary tale of the exciting exploration of the underworld of Uglyface and his subjects by a family kin who came to avenge the death of their father.

  2

  The Yellow River and Eight Brothers

  In a certain village close to the unexplored territory of Uglyface and his masses, there lived a beautiful, flaxen, well-built kind of a young woman called Lilium who was dear to a diligent young man called Ahisamak.

  Nobody got in the way of the two lovers but a certain old lady of the village predicted an uncanny preview of separation between the two and yet a great big family that would arise out of Lilium’s labour. That was neither a forewarning nor an omen for the true lovers. They soon tied the knots and were declared as married husband and wife following a traditional ritual.

  Lilium soon got conceived and became oddly heavier than a normal expectant woman. She felt no pain when her time came and effortlessly gave birth to three lookalike sons without much labour. She got infused again much too early and gave birth to another triplets a year later, who were all boys.

  Much to her burden, Ahisamak, her husband, could not let go off any more than one night without the share of pleasure that he could extract from his wife. She was with child again and in no time gave birth to two identical twin brothers in her third childbirth.

  Lilium thus became the first ordinary woman on earth to have given birth to eight sons in such a manner of child delivery – six triplets and two twins in just three years!

  But unlike their parents, these triplets and twins grew up to be an unappealing idle set of brothers who were good for nothing save to eat and sleep. They would get up only when the entire village had gone to their fields for work.

  Cultivation being the main livelihood, Ahisamak had to do everything all by himself and work so hard to sustain the life of his family. But when the boys were all grown and their diet intake was substantial, he knew that he had to grow more crops and bring in more harvest to meet the needs of the family. He knew that he would have to get his boys to help
him in the field now.

  So one day, he managed to convince his eight sons to go with him to a nearby forest to help him chop down trees and clear a larger area of jungle for a new cultivable ground. Since the boys were lazy and unwilling to do a thing, the father warned them with a regretful curse that was incidentally overheard by Uglyface. He divided the forest which was to be mowed, into nine segments, one segment for him and one each for his eight sons according to his age and strength. He swore to them an oath that each of them must finish cutting down the trees and chop up his own segment of the forest, lest Uglyface, the monstrous man-eater and king of the unidentified world, should kill the one who failed.

  Fearing that the curse might befall on them, the eight brothers started the work as if battling for their own life.

  During noontime, when the father stopped and looked around to see how each of his sons was doing, he discovered that his youngest son, the last of the twins, was making a comparatively slow advancement.

  Feeling compassion for him, the father gave himself a moment to see as to why his youngest son could not make much progress. Then he found out that his youngest son’s blade was too blunt to cut into anything. So, he gave his son his better tool and took the blunt one for him instead. At the end of the day, surely it was the curse speller himself who could not finish doing his self-allotted work because he had the bad tool.

  And subsequently, having heard the man’s curse and taking advantage of the spell, Uglyface appeared from nowhere and slew the man and dragged him away. The adolescent triplet and twin brothers were unable to do anything upon the immediate realization of the curse. They beat their chests and tore their clothes feeling weak and frail; crying as they watched the brute dragged the lifeless body of their father away into the woods.

  Later in the evening when the brothers returned home without their father to tell their mother and the villagers what had happened, the village was already in a hue and cry.

  A boy who had gone to the forest to catch some birds, came running back to the village at nightfall and reported that he had seen a monster that dragged a dead man. As he hid in an oak and watched in the evening twilight, the monster twisted the corpse’s neck, drank his blood and gorged his flesh. Then he also saw a woman coming from the opposite direction not knowing the monster was there gorging a human. She had been to the field to gather cucumbers. He immediately recognized her and wanted to warn her. She was Agnethas, the elder sister of his friend. But before he could do anything to save her, the monster had seen the woman coming with her head held low because of the weight on her head. She carried a bamboo plaited basket on her back and the whole weight was on the head to the neck through the head band.

  The man-eater suddenly disappeared behind somewhere. The boy was reassured and was about to come out of his hiding place to warn the woman but he saw, all of a sudden, a fine-looking man coming from the course where the monster had disappeared. The man soon greeted the woman and they walked along. But when the boy came out of the oak and quietly followed behind in fear and doubt, he was horror-stricken to find only the woman’s load thrown at sixes and sevens on the road side. The boy had suspected that the man must be the same monster who was gorging a man’s flesh. The monster had transformed into a man to entice the woman!

  And so, with already two people dead in the village, first Ahisamak the father of eight, and then Agnethas, a young beautiful lass, both in the jaws of Uglyface on a single day, the eldest son Arpaksad was determined to avenge the death of his father and his clandestine love, Agnethas. Arpaksad had indeed wanted to tell Agnethas that he loved her but he couldn’t yet approach her, fearing that he would be rejected by her for being a lazy fellow that he was. ‘I will have to change,’ he had thought, ‘and I must marry her.’ But then she was gone, most probably killed by his father’s killer. Life without a father was shameful and to live without having married his only love was insignificant for him. He made up his mind and started working out to keep himself robust to avenge both his father and his lost love.

  The lazy eight, as the triplets and the twins were often known as, were no longer an idle brood of brothers. They became conscious of the implication of life and regretted the death of their father. They felt responsible for the incident for they knew that their father wouldn’t have spelt the curse and died had they been always willing to help in his work.

  Twelve months after the tragic end of the good man and the admired woman, when the gruesome story had subsided, and when Arpaksad was close to giving up his training and preparation, Agnethas, the woman who had gone missing and was believed to have been devoured or enslaved by Uglyface, came back one day, looking all creepy, seeking for her family. But the village elders believed she was possessed and no more a human. They chased her out of the community, considering her as an outcast, an untouchable. This reignited the eldest brother with the desire of vengeance against the wicked murderer who deprived him the right to marry the woman he loved.

  Nobody knew where exactly the returnee had gone but it was spoken that she had turned into a witch and lived in a dark woodland.

  Six months later, Arpaksad was all set to go to the monster’s den for his father’s revenge in spite of his mother’s strong objection.

  So, this brave young man, who was refueled with determination after the return of Agnethas, started his trip one early morning to avenge his dear father and to make the devil pay the price of his dream girl. It was going to be a trip of his defeat or victory, his death or life. He took with him a bow and a quiver holding ten arrows and a pack of few loaves of bread prepared by his mother. ‘This,’ he thought, ‘would serve to keep me quite strong until I reach the border.’ The journey to this unsafe passage was believed to take several weeks unless one was guided.

  On the first day of his journey, he came to a small village inhabited by primates. The primates saw him and asked him why he had come to their village. He told them about his mission to kill ‘Uglyface’. “Then you must first go to our chief. He will give you a test. If you pass the test, you can go ahead, but if you don’t, you might better retreat,” said the primates that seemed to be quite concerned about him. So the avenger went to the chief of the ape who asked him to shoot one of his arrows at the biggest of his herd of wild pigs.

  Twang! went the man’s arrow and it hit the side of the pig that made it run round grunting loudly. The arrow was not strong enough to kill anything more than an ordinary life. And the fellow was not quite a proficient archer. But the chief nodded his head which meant that the man would be a nice treat for Uglyface, the king that he served behind closed doors.

  Having misunderstood the nod as a green signal, the big brother continued his journey with much enthusiasm to counter his father’s killer.

  Towards the evening of the second day, he came across a half-green rocky land where someone was living in solitude in a hermitage near a rivulet. He went inside the small thatch hut from which a thin streak of smoke was coming out. To his surprise, the dweller was a woman recluse, a woman none other than the woman of his heart Agnethas, who was now an outcast and believed to be dangerous and harmful.

  When she was told about his intention to avenge his father, the woman recluse asked him to spend the night with her first. So he conceded though he was fairly startled. He did not tell her that he had wanted to marry her in the past but ‘she seemed to know,’ he thought.

  When dinner was being served, he suddenly noticed that she was still juvenile and good-looking. He could feel that he still had his soft corner for her. It made him forget that she was a witch. After all, she didn’t even live in a dark woodland.

  But when he was about to begin eating, he was frightened by the sight of what was being served as food – leaf insects, leatherjackets, leeches and tadpoles. He ate his bread instead of what was served by his dream-woman. And he couldn’t drink a drop of her breast milk that was served as a beverage for it was hard like acid and sour as quince juice.

  When they were naked on the hay bed and started to make love, he couldn’t do it because her genitals were thickly bushy and pricked like thorns. He came out only when orally drawn - a symptom of weak manliness.