Origin Myth

“Once upon a time, there was a yellow sun in the sky.”

Timoi put down his sandwich and looked at her in horror.

“Yellow? How come? Was it very hot?”

Mama came and sat in front of him at the kitchen table. She folded her pale arms in front of her, as if wanting to make a pillow for her head. 

“Yes, very hot. Some places were so hot that they nearly died. Some places had no water. It was very hard for the people of some countries. Eat your sandwich.”

“And what happened to make the sun black, Mama?” He took a small bite, and washed it down with weak tea.

Mama smiled wearily, as it was possibly the ten thousandth question she had answered that day. Timoi was going through a phase. “It isn’t black, Timoi, didn’t anyone ever tell you that? It’s an eclipse.”

“What’s a klips?”

“No, an eclipse. It’s … well, the yellow sun is constantly blocked out by a large body a bit like a moon.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Well, if it were impossible, it wouldn’t be true, would it?”

Mama got up from her chair. She switched on the light in the corner of the room.

Then she walked all the way over to the side table and picked up a big tea tray.

“Look, if I put this tea tray in front of the light, it mostly blocks it out, doesn’t it?”

“I suppose so. But how does anyone know that’s what it is?”

“It’s a big piece of rock like a moon. Scientists have seen it with their telescopes.” She decided to answer his next question before he asked it. “Telescopes are big, tall cameras that can see a long way into space. But unlike our normal moons, instead of orbiting our planet in different directions, ours stays right in between us and the sun.”

Timoi appeared to be processing this new information.

“How does it know? How to stay between us and the sun?”

“It’s a long story. Would you like to hear it from the beginning?”

Timoi nodded.

“In the old, old days, when the sun was hot and the lands were dry, there were two gods: Earth Mother and Earth Father. And they got married and had millions of little children, who scurried around the earth trying to make things grow. But it was hard, because the sun was so hot.

  “One morning, Earth Mother was standing in her kitchen. And she wasn’t pleased with Earth Father at all. She wasn’t pleased in the slightest. Earth Father had been … he had been having relations with a lot of the river goddesses and he had kept it a secret from her. And nobody likes lies in a relationship, and a relationship built on lies, so Earth Mother got very angry with Earth Father.

“Now, Earth Father tried to appease her. He loved her dearly, you see. Even though he liked the river goddesses a lot for a night or two, he didn’t love them from the depths of his heart like he did the Earth Mother. They belonged together, like two matching … anyway, they belonged together. So he promised her that if she would take him back, he would give her a very special gift.

“Well, that calmed Earth Mother right down. ‘What kind of gift?’ she asked. For she had a weakness for shiny things, even though shiny things came from within her, being the earth. She was just fond of the way they glinted in the light of the yellow sun or the purple moons. Earth Father hemmed and hawed, and he finally said, ‘A child like you’ve never had before. One that’s big like you and me. A god-child.’ 

“The Earth Mother was a bit annoyed because she’d hoped for something shiny, but she was curious, and said, okay, try me. So the next night and the next they lay together, and not many months later she was pregnant with a huge, huge baby. 

“Her belly grew, and grew, and got bigger and bigger, and eventually it got so big that the Earth Mother couldn’t walk on her feet; she had to lie down because her belly was nearly as big as her! And at the end she gave birth in a terrible landslide, that created the whole mountain range of Cara-Ur.

“Now when the god-child was born, he was a massive giant. Even as a baby, he was the biggest creature on the planet. His steps caused earthquakes. His breath caused tornadoes. And when he was hungry or thirsty, the animals and forests of Ur ran in terror because he would eat everything in sight.

“And the Earth Mother loved her god-child as all mothers do. But one day, Earth Father came back to the house looking all greasy and guilty. Immediately, Earth Mother knew what had happened. ‘You promised you wouldn’t go near the river goddesses again,’ she said. ‘You promised.’

He said, ‘I gave you a gift’. Now everyone knows that it is very stupid to mention the gifts you have given in the past as an excuse for bad behaviour in the present. Earth Mother was angry. She was angry like she had never been before. Her eyes glowed red, and out of the top of her head poured massive plumes of smoke. Lava flowed from her fingers, and poured over everything.

Now, you would think Earth Mother could do anything in that moment. And what she did was very, very stupid. She picked up the god-baby, and she threw him into the sun.”

“She what?” said Timoi. “She can’t throw her own child away, mothers don’t do that.”

“Well, right at that moment she was not thinking straight, Timoi, and I expect she regretted it for the rest of her life.”

“She should have thrown the Earth Father.”

“Yes, that might have been a better idea. Maybe she wasn’t strong enough to lift him just yet.”

Timoi contemplated this, as he licked his index finger and mopped up the last crumbs of bread from his plate. “Is there any dessert?” 

Mama shook her head.

“Anyway, when she threw the god-baby into space he was so heavy that instead of hurtling into the sun and burning to death, he slowed down, and slowed down, until he was five hundred thousand miles away from Mother Earth. And there he stopped. He was very surprised to be hurled off like that. And there he stayed. Instead of entering Ur’s orbit, he stayed looking night and day, longing to get his mama back. And his mama kept looking and looking at him, wishing she hadn’t thrown him so far away. 

“But you know, this funny thing happened. That huge baby grew bigger still, up there in space. It was as if he was eating the light of the sun itself. And the bigger he grew, the better he sheltered Ur. The plants grew. The animals didn’t shrivel up and die of thirst. The rivers and lakes grew bigger.

“And that god-child, he never moved out of the way. He never once budged. So you can imagine he must be a stubborn child. One day, they say, he will come back to Ur. And you’d better watch out, because he’ll be bigger than he was before, and scarier.”

“Why did you tell me that story, Mama?” asked Timoi, leaning his head on his elbow. He was in a half-daze, listening.

“I don’t know,” said Mama. “I wanted you to know the story, so you didn’t think it was just a piece of rock.”

“But it is a piece of rock really, isn’t it?”

Mama sighed. “Well, yes, but I mean, origin myths can tell us things we need to know, Timoi. Don’t you think it’s a bit strange that it doesn’ t move like the other moons? Haven’t you ever felt like something is watching you from up there?”

“Maybe a couple of times. I thought it was a bird, not the sun.”

“It’s not the sun, Timoi, it’s an eclipse.”

Timoi puffed hair out of his eyes. “Yeah, yeah.”

Mama watched him as he peeled himself away from the table and went towards the door. She wished she could tell him more. But children should be able to live their lives and develop, shouldn’t they? Without knowing what might happen, and when? 

Her hands shook as she tidied some papers she had pushed to the end of the table. The myths were there for a reason. And there was reason to worry. The papers were mostly letters printed on thin, glossy paper, giving the date and time that the “sun” would land on Ur. 

Piece of rock, my foot. The thing was circling. And waiting. And she didn’t like it. Maybe she had put it there that day, when Pa-Ur had left her. She didn’t know how, but she remembered how the light went out everywhere, inside and out. She could barely see for days. And maybe she regretted what she did. Maybe she had birthed the spacecraft in the sky. Mama held her head. You’re crazy, she told herself. All this happened millions of years ago; it was just a myth. Impossible.

But the papers. The adoption papers.

Those kept coming. And she was terrified.

Before Timoi, there had been another baby, not with Pa-Ur, but with Ke-Rem, and she hadn’t been well at the time, and she was only young. Now, the people were apparently un-adopting him. Why? It was meant to be a one-way process.

He would be almost an adult. A violent adult like his father. Perhaps there had been something in the small print that she had been too traumatized to read. Perhaps they had decided he was faulty and had returned him to the manufacturer.

She wouldn't sign.

The days were slipping away. And then what would happen?

The sun, for sure, would turn yellow.