The Chosen One From Nongkhai
J.O. Dickingson
authorsix@hotmail.com
Prologue
High in the distant mountains where the land is perpetually covered with snow and only the hardiest may travel, there exists a tiny temple where the wisest of the priests once sojourned to contemplate the destiny of man and the ways of the gods, and to record the history of the world in the old language, writing by candlelight with brush and ink on story scrolls which are stored in a sacred chamber far beneath the temple. This is one such story of an exotic land in a long forgotten past, a vignette about a great and noble Lord and a humble peasant, the one a man and the other a boy. It is intended for the enlightenment of responsible and worthy readers.
Part One: The Choosing
Two tithes were demanded of the people in the Land of the Tiger Eye. Once a year the royal collectors from Chiangmai, in their yellow robes and with their knotted counting cords, would travel across the land and collect the tithe of grain, coin, livestock, silk, or whatever the village was most noted for in payment for services from their noble and benevolent Lord, Lord Boroma Phanomyong, Favoured Son of the Great God Xiu, Fierce Tiger of the Jungle, Defender of the People, and Master Over all That Is, Was, and Will Be. The second tithe was collected by Lord Phanomyong himself. Nobody knew when he would strike out from Chiangmai, nor in which direction he would travel, nor at which village he would stop and demand his tithe. They only knew that no village was missed, and none paid any more frequently than another, for Lord Phanomyong was among other things, a fair man. The first tithe the people paid willingly, for their Lord was a powerful master who provided for them during times of extended drought or when the rice fields were destroyed by unexpected floods, and who protected them from pillage and rape by their neighbours. The second tithe, the Selection of the Chosen One, they paid because there was nobody to protect them from Lord Boroma Phanomyong.
The Tiger of the Jungle was a large man, both in height and girth, with an expansive chest and even more expansive stomach. Standing a hand taller than the average man, he had been at one time strong and muscular, more a warrior than he was a noble, who could wield a two-handed broadsword all afternoon without his arms tiring of the weight, and who pinned the best summoro wrestlers to the mat with barely breaking into a sweat. Now his muscles had turned to fat. His broad chest, once so firm that a man could break a fire-hardened brick on it, now jiggled when he laughed like the sagging breasts of an old woman. Forearms and thighs that once bulged with muscle were now heavy with fat and flapped like the wattle of a turkey when he walked. His body was smooth and hairless, like most of his countrymen, and he shaved the hair on his head to leave only a topknot, which was braided and coiled on the back of his scalp and held in place by a large jewelled pin.
He had allowed his body to succumb to the pleasures that came with age and position, but that same age and position had honed an already sharp mind, and having the leisure to pursue his interests, he had sought the knowledge of the wisest men in the land, men skilled in the arts and the sciences, in military strategy, and in governing. Lord Phanomyong was a powerful man, not because of his inheritance, but because he knew knowledge was ultimate power. He was shrewd, but also like most men of power, he was proud and self-serving, and he was as renown for his quick temper as he was for his swift justice, and his delight in good food and young boys was as well known as his bloodlust on the battlefield.
And so it was when he rode into the tiny village of Nongkhai on the sixteenth day of the month of Tas...ad and announced to the village headman and the village priest that he had come to select a Chosen One, that he was greeted with great respect and with great sadness. To provide the Lord with a Chosen One was a great honour, but it was also the greatest sacrifice the gods could demand that a village and a family make. Word was quickly spread throughout the village and the rice paddies, and the people of Nongkhai brought forth their young sons and lined them up in the village wat before the shrine to Kai, the village god of agriculture and virility. Naked three- year-old toddlers who had no idea what was happening, eight-year-old boys in loin cloths who had been down at the river looking for frogs, and thirteen-year-olds only months or weeks away from Khawrianphukta, the Coming of Age Ceremony when they would be declared men and exempted from the Selection, stood side by side in the muddy compound as a light rain began to fall.
Lord Phanomyong slowly walked before the row of forty-eight boys, every boy who was of choosing age in the village. As he paused to study one and then another more closely than the others, the adults of the village held their breath, the parents of the boy being examined guiltily praying that their child not be the Chosen One even though to be chosen was an honour and a sign of blessing from the gods. The other parents just as guiltily hoped that the child would be chosen, wishing no ill will toward his parents, but selfishly not wanting one of their own sons to be selected.
The youngest boys did not know who this tall, fat man inspecting them was, or why he was examining them, but they sensed the awe and the apprehension among the villagers and they knew this was a man to be respected and to be feared. The older boys knew of the tithe, for although the adults tried to keep it a secret to spare them the worry and fear, there were some things that were part of the culture of boyhood, and passing down the forbidden knowledge of the Selection of the Chosen One from those about to enter adulthood to those still of selectable age was one of those things.
So it was passed from boy to boy, that the Lord from Chiangmai chose periodically a fine boy who had not yet reached the Age of Coming, and took him back to his palace, where he was treated as if he were the Lord's son, given the finest of clothes and all the jewels he might want, allowed whatever he wished to eat, and waited on by servants and presented to nobles and foreign kings. At night, or whenever the Lord desired, it was the boy's duty to please him, though exactly how was uncertain and the subject of fanciful rumours for those were the things a boy learned at the Coming of Age Ceremony. One of those rumours was that the boy was expected to please his Lord as their mothers pleased their fathers, by allowing the Lord to plant his seed in his belly, through, of course, his back entryway, the only one a boy possesses. Many greeted that suggestion with giggles and the rest scoffed with disbelief, but all clenched that backdoor closed with the thought.
It was further said that was the ultimate pleasure a boy can bring a man, and when the Lord tired of that pleasure, the boy ceased being the Chosen One, and the Lord struck out from his grand palace to find another. Having brought the Lord the greatest of pleasures a man can know, the former Chosen One was meanwhile lead to the shrine of Agka, the God of Death, and ceremoniously beheaded, for having pleased the Favoured Son of the Great God Xiu, it would not be fitting that a lesser man know the same pleasure as his Lord.
Such must have been the fate of the Chosen One from Kaing'hi, for Lord Boroma Phanomyong was at this moment seeking out the most beautiful boy the tiny village of Nongkhai had to offer. Beauty, as defined by Lord Phanomyong, depended on his mood, and like his mood, was as unpredictable as the fate of men. The boy had, of course, to be fair of face and healthy of body, a boy who had at least some wit about him, and a boy who would know his place. Sometimes the Chosen One was an innocent of three, at other times a sultry thirteen-year-old. Sometimes he was slender, at other times plump. It depended on the gods, and on Lord Phanomyong.
Now one might ask why the villagers simply did not hide their finest young men in the jungles, or dress them in skirts and send them out to the rice paddies disguised as girls. To ask would be because one is a foreigner and ignorant of the way of the people in the Land of the Tiger Eye. Which parent does not think his son to be the finest in the village? When the Lord arrived and there were no young men to be found, would it not be suspicious? Besides, what parent is going to silently allow another to hide his son who might be chosen over his own? Legends tell of attempts to avoid being Chosen, from disfiguring the face of a boy thought to be too beautiful, to hiding sons in the jungles, but always the parents were found out, and punished by death along with all their relatives, and the son they were trying to protect was sent to the border to bring pleasure to the soldiers who had been away from their wives too long. In the end, the tithe was just a boy, and making another was not that unpleasant a task.
The Lord stopped before a slim lad of average height and weight for a boy not yet in his teens, a boy dressed in thread-worn, baggy trousers spotted with mud and evidently having been brought in from the rice paddies where he'd been working. He was at that indeterminate age between ten and twelve, with a slim body that had lost its baby fat through hard work, but which had not yet developed the firmness of flesh that accompanies the first growth of genital hair nor the definition of muscle that accompanies the Age of Coming. His skin was smooth and the colour of butterscotch, his face fair, having eyes the shape of almonds and the colour of dark chocolate, and his hair was fine and thick and as black as a moonless night. He stared down at the ground respectfully like the other forty-seven boys of the village, and as the man stepped up before him, he stared at his large, sandalled feet as had the thirty-two boys before him. Unlike the other boys, he noticed the noble's toes were cramped and his ankles swollen from carrying his massive weight.
Cupping his hand under the boy's chin, the Lord raised the youngster's head and the boy looked up at him, his large almond-shaped eyes innocent but with the courage of youth, eyes that Lord Phanomyong took particular delight in. There was, however, something else, something deep in those chocolate brown eyes that spoke of smoldering lust and a confidence that were beyond his years.
"This one," Lord Phanomyong announced, and he turned and headed for his horse. The villagers sighed with relief, and the elders stepped forward cautiously to bid good travel to the Lord and to assure him he would find great delight in his Chosen One. The boy's parents and brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles cried quietly least they bring shame to their family and the wrath of the Lord who had just blessed them with the certain death of their young son, brother and nephew.
The man who saw that the orders of Lord Phanomyong were followed told the boy that from this moment forth he would be living with the Lord, and asked if there was anything that he wished to bring with him. In most cases in the past there was not, the boys being too poor or too young to have anything they could call their own, but he knew from experience that if a boy was able to bring a treasured object from his past, no matter how small, his future was that much easier to bear. The boy nodded and quickly running to his father's hut, he returned with a small rectangular basket of bamboo the length of the man's hand and with a width half as long.
No longer needing to travel in the dark or in incognito, the Lord and his retinue immediately headed back to Chiangmai. During the journey back, which took three days travelling from sunup to sunset, the man who had asked the boy if he wanted to bring anything with him ensured the peasant child was fed and was comfortable, but neither he nor anyone else spoke to him, and the boy did not see again the great Lord who had selected him.
Arriving at the palace, he was turned over to one of the old women in charge of the household affairs, who immediately ordered a tub and hot water. Despite his protests and embarrassment, she stripped him and bathed him. She lathered up his hair and remarked how thick and beautiful it was and that she hoped Lord Phanomyong would not have it shaved off as he sometimes had with previous Chosen Ones, and the boy's heart sank with the thought, for he loved his hair and had spent many nights on his mother's lap as she'd combed out the knots and remarked how fine and how beautiful it was.
The strange woman furiously scrubbed his armpits and cautioned him that when he was responsible for his own bathing that he was to be sure to wash them particularly well. Her hands ran deftly over his thin chest and flat stomach, and down his thighs and calves. She had him turn around and bend over and she washed his buttocks and his little pucker and lamented that it would be a shame to see such a tender and beautiful thing brutalized, but she said so softly and in her own dialect so the boy could not understand, nor anyone else, for if the Lord heard of her making such a comment he would have her tongue cut out and served to her for her evening meal. When she bade the boy to turn around and face her and he refused, she laughed and chided him and told him what had happened to him only proved that he was a real boy.
He flushed with embarrassment as she, being the stronger and an adult, turned him around and looked down at his little reed standing up straight and firm, the result of her gentle bathing and prodding of that back entryway. She told him with a sudden laugh that he might be the Lord's now, but the Lord would not be the first to feel and delight in what made him a boy. She soaped up his loins, causing his reed to jerk, much to the boy's dismay, and causing the old crone to laugh. Her fingers, boney and wrinkled with age, rubbed the soap over his smooth, hairless pubes, and she gently and carefully rolled his tiny, hairless testicles between her thumb and fingers. The boy stood helplessly as she slipped her soapy fingers about his slender erection. As she squeezed it tightly, it felt good and he hoped she would hold it awhile. She grasped it by the base and tugged on it, which felt even better than just being squeezed. Lathering up her fingers, she coated the slightly bulging head of his little cocklet with soap, which caused him to squirm. Ever so slowly and carefully, she rolled back the tight skin of his penis to reveal the swollen, purplish plum. She observed approvingly that he kept the hidden fruit clean, and again she cautioned him that he was to keep it above all other things clean for his Lord.
Rinsing his body and then drying him off with the largest and softest towel he had ever seen, she cut and filed his toenails and his fingernails and combed out his hair, which covered his ears but which was neatly tapered and trimmed in the back as was the style of his village. His coarse peasant trousers, which had been discarded, were replaced with pale blue pajamas made of silk and embroidered with delicate pink and yellow flowers, and his rough pullover shirt was replaced with a sleeveless vest, also of silk and pale blue with a floral design, and which she left open. A long, thin, silver chain of the finest links was coiled about his neck in six long loops, and the six loops were joined in the middle of his chest with a small but beautiful topaz. Finally, fine silk slippers were slipped over his feet, which felt strange as he'd spent all his life barefoot.
Properly groomed and dressed, he was presented to Lord Phanomyong, who had also bathed and changed out of his travelling clothes. He was wearing a rich satin robe of burgundy, tied at his waist with a wide pink sash. Several thick, gold necklaces hung from his fat neck, the longest having a large amethyst set in gold with six tiny red rubies equally spaced around it. The Favourite Son of Xiu was sitting cross legged on a large pile of cushions before a low, wide table of fine mahogany. Motioning for the boy to sit opposite him, he picked up an intricately carved club of black ironwood and struck the large ornate gong beside him.
Immediately servants entered carrying the most wonderful and delicious smelling plates of food the boy had ever seen and which they set on the table before them. There were plates of fine noodles as thin as a man's hair beside bowls of a creamy sauce with wild mushrooms, plates of red and green peppers stuffed with crab meat, bowls of steaming rice, a clay pot containing chicken breasts and green beans in a dark gravy, and a platter upon which sat a rabbit in an orange and raison sauce garnished with orange slices.
They bowed their heads and the Lord praised and thanked the gods for the bounty before them, and as he looked at the boy, the boy sensed that the blessing included him. The blessing done, the Lord commenced to eat. The boy respectfully waited for his Lord to finish, his empty stomach aching and his mouth watering with the mixture of unfamiliar aromas. He was surprised when the Lord gestured for him to begin eating, and he paused to be certain until the Lord gestured a second time. He did not need to be told a third time. He marvelled at the flavours his taste buds had never before experienced, and at the delicacy of the food. He had eaten well at home, but never had he eaten anything like he had that night. When he figured he could eat no more, a servant girl brought in two plates, one large and one small, and set the larger before the Lord and the smaller before him. Upon the plate sat a dessert consisting of several layers of a pastry so thin he could not imagine such a thing possible, and between each layer were fresh peach slices. Poured over the top was a dark brown, bitter sauce that he learned later was called chocolate and that he also discovered later also came in solid bars and in a sweetened form.
"What is your name, boy?" Lord Phanomyong asked after the plates had been cleared away and the Lord had been served a steaming dark brown brew with an aroma the boy had never smelled before.
"Luan, my Lord, Luan Ramayana," the boy said respectfully. "But my grandmother also calls me Kh...a."
"And are you as sharp and as delightful?" Lord Phanomyong asked with a slight grin as he thought of the ginger spice the grandmother had named the boy for.
"I do not know, my Lord," the boy replied.
"Well, we will find out," the Lord smiled. "But not tonight. You have had a long journey. You are dismissed for now. We will sample your delights another night."
"Yes, my Lord," Luan said, respectfully nodding his head and getting to his feet.
Next: Part Two: The Days of Admiration and Display