myth for black mustard

A band of honorable warriors were in search for a remedy for their sick king. They were used to battle, but this was a different mission. They were weatherworn. On their faces was written the rain and storms they had walked through. Lining their brows were the struggles with beasts. And each doctor who heard of the good king’s symptoms told them to go ever further east, into the horizons of the sun. They had nothing to show for their travels, nothing at all but the wounds on their skin. They had been gone for ten years.

The woman on the hill told them that when it was time they should give their knives to the ground. “Let the one star in cluster guide you in the long night,” the wiseman at the bend of the river had informed them. 

And for many days they traveled in complete darkness, with nothing to guide them but that single star.

The light began slowly at first. The horizon was made visible as a golden thread, and then a knot of light appeared. The knot got bigger and bigger until it rushed like a flood over the land, and the warriors saw the way it ran to every single rock and tree, every plant, and embraced them a golden light. In the fields of the sun’s first light they found a mountain that had no end. It disappeared into the sky. 

Here, at the beginning of the world stood a figure of pure light. They were tall and thin and looked almost like an animal, peering at them, as if about to take off; unsure of how to trust them. 

The leader was the first to bend his knees and place his weapon upon the earth. Then all of the men placed their knives into the dirt.

Except for the youngest, who was also the good king’s youngest son was untrustworthy and kept a small knife sheathed in his sleeve. They all approached the being like they would approach a deer. Each of the men drew their hand toward the heavenly body and received some beautiful message in the touch. The last, the young prince, severed the hand from the being - who immediately ran. The sky turned red. We don’t know what kind of remedy the being would give. We don’t know what knowledge the being had. The youngest yelped, dropped the shimmering appendage to the earth and was never seen again. But in that field were the first mustard plants where all the knives had been laid. The light from the being shines at the top of the mustard, and, until this day, you can’t eat black mustard without feeling pain. It was this mustard that cured the king, yet he wept each time he took the medicine.