over a city should be? Especially when that city might eject her if it knew she was a woman.” He pointed his bronze sword at her.
She shook her head. Had he somehow read her thoughts? She tried to gauge whether she could get to the end of the tower and reach the rungs before he caught her.
“If you’re so certain of your divinity,” he said, “show me what you do. Tell me my story.”
“Tell?”
“That is what you do, isn’t it?” He looked at himself, at his colorless feet where encroaching night had cut off the sunlight. “And you had better be quick, too, or I’ll be stone again and it won’t count for anything.”
She goggled at him, unable to think.
“So, it was just empty talk, then,” Shumyzin derided her. “A child’s whimsy. A true god would know another god’s story. They know all the stories that are.”
Her jaw set defiantly. She didn’t like being taunted, not by anyone. She knew his tale, all right. Soter had taught it to her five years ago, when she was eleven.
“Well?” challenged the demigod.
Leodora drew a deep breath and recited.
THE TALE OF SHUMYZIN
Shumyzin was the great conquering hero of that ancient span of Mankandikha. But if he hadn’t learned to conquer fear and anger first, no one today would know his name.
As a child Shumyzin bore many insults. He was an object of scorn from adults as well as other children because of the crooked teeth that jutted from the corners of his mouth. He had no tusks then, only two big deformed and protruding molars. With his round eyes and thrust-out jaw, he looked more amphibian than human. One day the king of Mankandikha spotted him in the main street. He halted his palanquin to get a good look at the boy. A crowd gathered around. They heard the king give Shumyzin a cruel nickname: a nickname that followed him everywhere thereafter.
“Frog,” proclaimed the king.
Shumyzin ran home in tears. The name chased him through the narrow streets. It followed him like a tail.
His mother was a mortal. Her name was Yemin. She said to him, “Don’t listen to them, little one. They know nothing about you.” She stroked his cheek. “Your father, the great god Gopurbh, weathered many insults, too, before he was given charge of all the winds. We have balmy days most of the time because he’s so hard to anger. You also are made for greatness if only you can learn to withstand their insults. I know this, because I’m your mother.” He let her voice and her promises soothe his troubled soul, and soon he fell asleep in her arms.
Now, everyone else claimed that Shumyzin’s father had been a local rich man’s son, Cabor the Drunk, who’d climbed into the wrong house one night and cruelly forced himself upon Yemin; afterward—the story went—Cabor’s father paid her a tidy sum to keep quiet about his idiot son’s indiscretion. Both she and the elder Cabor strenuously denied that such an incident had ever occurred. It was the drunken lout, Cabor himself, who spread the tale. One time when the ugly child passed by, Cabor abruptly proclaimed, “That’s my bastard there. Look how he turned out!” The story spread quickly. People called Frog’s mother a whore. The boy seethed with the desire to kill them for it. But she wouldn’t let him. “I can bear their lies,” she said, “and so must you.”
He didn’t look like Cabor. He didn’t look like his mother. Or like anyone else in the entire city. Yet people often prefer scandals and gossip to rational thinking, and so the story became fact.
Frog grew up strong and steady. Unflappable. He weathered the worst taunts he could ever hear. The cruel jibes at his mother were the most awful, the hardest to bear. He worked daily for her, pushing a great grinding wheel that crushed grain into flour for bread. Yemin baked and sold the bread. Over time her son’s shoulders became striped with muscles, and his back grew wide. As he grew older his grotesque visage changed, too. His eyes bulged more than ever and his twisted teeth straightened, forming two small vicious spikes, as if all his suppressed anger had taken form in the corners of his mouth. He became terrifying to see, and although he did nothing to suggest hostility, the taunting of him stopped.
Then one day the span was invaded by a demon army. Of all the citizens, Shumyzin alone didn’t panic. Nor did he