The Legend of Cush

His Birth

Chapter 2: His Birth

Queen Aqamasi led the hounds of the Underworld to the palace of Matella Kingdom in search of her arch-foe, Queen Ro, in the heat of the invasion when she was told the King has fallen. But Queen Ro was taken by invisible hands and found herself in the strangest place on the surface of the earth.  She was surrounded by trees of different sizes, tall, short, and all of the thick trunks and different species of cedar, sycamore, mahogany and beautiful flowers.  It is here she was dropped gently by strong invisible hands at an incredible speed that left her panting for breathe. Under her feet was foliage of green grass, soft to the touch and she wondered aloud, “Where am I, oh guardian, where I am”, and suddenly she was hit by an intense pain below her waist which only can be birth pangs.

 She shot tight her eyes to brave such stinging birth pangs; with no one to attend her, an unusual development for a queen of Matella, she labored all alone for the birth of her second child, having waited for seven years to have another. Now, all the elaborate plans King Ukal 1V has put in place to welcome their second child has been aborted by a war nobody knew from where. And for this baby, what shall befall the child is unimaginable, whether male or female, even now uncertain and fearful is the child’s fate. But the very Sun god, the guardian of Abyssinia Empire, her savior from the hounds of Memuka was standing by her side, invisible, incapable of offering any help as he wishes to do, but rather watched helplessly, as Queen Ro labored on.

Amid birth pangs, making those sounds induced by childbirth, now so indifferent to her strange environment, the Forest of Death, especially, when she is her midwife, the irony of life when ordinarily the Queen ought to be surrendered by a dozen midwives led by the kingdom’s leading midwife and caregivers of that time, she is now all alone tending to herself, never knowing the fate of her husband, the king. Suddenly, but gently as she gave the last push, she felt the baby slipped out from her womb but still attached to her by the yet uncut umbilical cord, and after calming her frayed nerves, gently opened her eyes briefly to severe the slippery cord with a flatten golden pin object used to pin her thick black hairs woven in two strands, though she was dead tired and after succeeding in the task closed her eyes again all to regain lost strength.

And then, suddenly the cry of the baby rang out like the sound of a baby thunder which is what she waited to hear, an assurance that her baby is alive. That was her energy source and that sound reaching her ears resuscitated her, and as she opened them again to have a look at her baby as they lay together on that mash of soft foliage of green grass, exhausted, what she saw paralyzed her with fear that reached her heart; four creatures, centaurs stood before her and the crying baby. Her heart collapsed.

The creatures were of a human and animal body; the upper body is human and the lower limb of a horse body and what seems a perfect family of centaurs, the parents and their little ones staring at her as she screamed a piercing cry that shook the forested lands. It was her last in the land of the living. She passed on to joined her husband gone ahead to prepare a home for them in their immortal reunion. As the child was picked up by the centaur, the fierce guardian god of the Seven seas, hissed a terrible sound in anger, and vanished in a flame of rage. King Isasda has dared the serpent of the Seven seas with seven heads.

The centaurs picked up the crying baby boy, still wet from the blood of his birth, and galloped away to their abode at the heart of the Forest of Death. The centaur family, a race of people who are half-human and half-horse with the body of a horse and the torso, arms, and head of a man, together with other wild animals occupy the Forest of Death where no mortal dare, though they have carved out their own special territory within the forest where no other beast is allowed to encroach. The male father Ara and female mother Zira and their two children lived in a community of centaurs numbering about half a hundred and here they brought the perfect human, a human being never to see his kind, the human species, not until the divine intervention of fate.

The human baby grew up among the centaurs, playing with their little ones, his mates, understanding their language of communication, some strange syllable of screams, measured in their sounds and intensity to mean and stand for one thing or the other. The physical appearances of the beasts as opposed to his, their makeup was of little interest to him, neither was he bothered by their mode of communication for to the best of his primitive knowledge, this is all there is to life, his life. For all he knows, this is his family and he functioned perfectly with them and in it. Perhaps the child has grown so perfectly among these beastly humans due to their exceptional goodness and wisdom the centaurs are known for, though, given to violent behavior at times towards other beasts, they exhibited a different behavior towards this total stranger maybe because centaurs are not known to be violent towards humans except when provoked.

Since he had not encountered the humankind, never experienced the vocal ability of man, he spoke the language of the centaurs, which the most notable audible sounds come near something like drawn out drawls, and particularly he was constantly addressed as ‘cuuussshh’ and he took that for his name. His playmates, the centaur children had names, the actual family he belongs to; Eamon, pronounced ‘eeeamooooonnn’ and Safiza as’ sssffizzzzzi’ and from their constant referral to him as Cush, as the sound he never actually knew the meaning, but for want of explanation, he generally assumed that was his name. So ‘cuuussshhh’ became his name, which is pronounced Cush, in the human tongue.

Living among the centaurs presented no difficulty for a child born among beasts, ignorant of humanity, with no idea of a human facial, and from three years old Cush began to performed simple tasks which centaurs with their arms and horse legs are unable to; at five, he ran around easily on two legs, the centaurs galloped even furiously at times to his amazement, so he climbed trees, clinging from branch to branch and even swam in the seas at the head of the forest. This, the centaurs couldn’t so they watched him with delight, crackling their peculiar kind of laughter.

He ate the food they ate, consisting of green herbs, fruits, roots, and vegetables. He was naked as they were all, but at some point, he began to be human as he neared adolescence. The human instinct began to hone and emerge, he started to hunt, first foxes and other animals followed, not for food but a child’s fun. Shortly, he had a garden of animals to play with, including a gorilla, tiger and boa constrictor, and to the wonderment of the centaurs, these beasts that are not friendly to them are so friendly with this being to the point of doting on him and joyous in his presence. And even more surprising was that they became less hostile to Eamon and Safiza because of Cush as they all play together.

In one of his hunting expedition which he undertook with Eamon, he caught a baby serpent with two heads, a dragon family serpent, beautifully colored wings, and scaled body and began to domesticate it and at some point, when the dragon serpent grew stronger, he began to fly in the air atop the body of the beautiful creature while the centaurs looked on with awed interest. He fondly called it ‘Tata’ and the name stock.

Two seasons of the year presented problems to Cush as he grew up, the wet and winter periods. The centaurs huddle under thick tree trunks when it rains and the effect of water on their bodies doesn’t feel the same as it does on Cush’s own body and in the winter, with chilled winds overcoming the dense environment he keeps wondering how the centaurs feel because they seem not to feel the cold in their bodies as he does. The mystery surrounding his birth and survival till date and how the centaurs preserved him as a child from adverse weathers remains with the centaurs, but as he grew they possibly assumed he feels alike as they do under the elements of diverse weather. But Cush is human and they are not.

He was uncomfortable and so at a young age Cush by instinct, knew he had to shade himself from the falling water, and so constructed a booth for a shade for himself using wood which he pinned on the ground using carpet grass found in rich quantity at the bank of the river as it top cover and leaves to for the body which the centaurs could not access due to their structure and in winter he spent more time inside the shade than outside. The human nature in him was showing, but the centaur nurture largely ruled his mind as yet.

When he was seventeen years old, the human nature in him emerged completely; he was a carbon copy of Ukal 1V, a shade taller than his lineage at 6.1, a well-built body of expanded biceps and shoulders from pulling uprooted cords which he used in swinging from tree to tree, lifting of stones and tree trunks to construct and deconstruct to keep body better protected from the weather, piercing brown eyes, a hooked nose, a cooler tan skin, which is her mothers’ and black long hairs falling to his waist.

“The time has come”, said the Lesser spirit, messenger of the Sun god, who has been monitoring Cush’s growth process and progress among the centaurs, to the Sun god, guardian of the Seven seas, whom he is beholden to.

 “It is time the son of Ukal save his people”, “No”, said, the husky voice, fiery eye god, ‘he must mature to handle firmly the sword, and you must find one such that will teach him the swordsman skills, and now.”

“Yes, my lord”, answered the Lesser spirit, and instantly he was in Matella walking among the still-visible ruins left behind by the invasion of King Isasda almost two decades gone.