Adventures of a Cameo Merchant -2
The Riddle of the Sphincter
The RIDDLE of The SPHINCTER
It took several months, but after meeting hundreds of other merchants and wanderers from everywhere on the globe, our friend the cameo merchant discovered the location of the most famous riddle in those days. It was one which he had heard stories about even as a small boy, about a great snake called “The Sphincter” which let none pass who could not solve its riddle.
After many questions and even more bribes he discovered that the great snake guarded a small and unlikely path through the fenlands which many lone travelers took, preferring to face the Sphincter than death by gangs of thieves who camped by all the main roads. For all roads through the miles of bogs led to a famous Thieves Market, where no one, even a thief, was safe coming in ones and twos.
As he rode back and forth around the bogs looking for this small path, he asked himself again why he was going to such trouble, and reminded himself that his purpose in life was now to find riddles to solve.
Finally, he noticed a dip in the side of the road, and saw a break in the ferns and cat-tails below him. Perhaps this was it.
As he turned his donkey down the slope and into a break in the briars, he began thinking it over again. This riddle might come with a price, for the Sphincter squeezed its victims to death, crushing all the bones in their bodies, and leaving of the dead only their head. Only then did he remember his mother’s words, that he should find his end chasing riddles, and he briefly shuddered.
He sat upright, resolved to forget any fears, since, after all, he had lived a wonderful life thus far, and wished only to understand the riddle of life’s ugliness. He was helped in this resolve, however, when he saw the path was well-traveled. He passed several horse droppings which could not be more than a few days old. If that.
Apparently there was another little-known path to the thief’s market. He might expect an ambush by one or two thieves at most; nothing he couldn’t handle – for no large caravans worth a whole gang would cross the fenlands this way.
Thinking these kinds of thoughts, and preparing himself for an ambush for several miles, it was not very long before a bandit leapt on him from a large boulder, hoping to slit the merchant’s throat.
This was child’s play for the merchant, who had defended the oracle for many years, learning his moves and tricks from the some of the very best.
“I should not bother repainting the sign by your boulder,” he said as he ran the highwayman through, “For it hardly needs any more blood than that which already stains its sides. It looks like we shall have to give it a fresh coat.”
Then he sat the thoughtless thief down dead against the boulder which had obviously served many a previous ambush.
Not long after, however, the path came to slight rise above a fork in the road. The merchant now saw something very large gliding to the middle of the path as he approached, not twenty paces away. It was not another ambush, nor a robber at all.
He stopped and it stopped. While he couldn’t make out its shape, it seemed about the size of cow, which is very big indeed for something in the middle of marshes. In the sun it was glistening a dozen hues of the brightest blue.
Amazed and excited he got off his donkey, but the moment his feet touched the ground a filthy skull came bouncing towards him, and his donkey bolted into the bogs braying at the top of her lungs.
Seeing the skull, the merchant winced. The tales were all true. He had, in fact, found the right path, and it was this snake which gave its name to the sphincter muscles in our bodies that squeeze out filth. A stench covered the skull gently rolling off the road by his feet, and the merchant took a deep breath from the opposite direction.
Holding his breath while deciding what to do, the creature began to uncoil. His donkey’s braying cut short, and he was glad he’d gotten off, for it was said the Sphincter’s children lived in the bogs on either side, and they’d make short shrift of anything that came their way. The Sphincter, at least, gave you a chance of living or dying by asking you its riddle. And since many adventurers had gotten through the crossroads alive to tell of the Sphincter, the merchant knew he had a good chance at solving the riddle and staying alive.
He’d heard stories of this Sphincter from the merchants who bought his pearls as a boy. To meet it one day had been one of his childhood ambitions. So here he was at last!
The Sphincter’s tail ended in the body of a squat little man, and like the tail of a rattle-snake it warned intruders to back off. It was this tail which had bowled the dirty skull down the road. The man-rattle had only arms, belly, and legs. But out of his middle came the end of the monster’s tail looking just like a large male organ, nearly twice as big as that little man’s body.
Sometimes he dragged this tail along with two hands, flailing it and waving it about. Other times it stiffened, becoming the tail of the giant Sphincter itself, lifting the man-rattle’s feet off the ground and taking him where it willed, much as any man’s tool is said to do.
The merchant was transfixed by this spectacle. Meanwhile, the headless man’s body was hopping in front of the Sphincter like a frog, holding a skull on its shoulders where its head should have been.
Stifling a laugh, the merchant remembered he had worries enough on his own shoulders, for the glistening blue scales behind the man-rattle had begun sliding silently towards him.
Meanwhile, little old Rattle-man put down the skull which had lately served as his head. He squatted on it and let out a steaming whoosh, like a cow lifting its tail. Then he grabbed his limp tail like a croquet mallet and swatted the steaming skull right at the merchant.
The merchant deftly moved out of the way, and sighed with relief.
The headless little man lined up another shot and the merchant jumped again. But he was being tricked, for the eyes that lined up the shot were now at his side, and he had jumped closer to the Sphincter.
The third shot came closely behind him, and the merchant jumped again, but instead of breathing a sigh of relief, he gasped as he realized his error. He had unwittingly jumped into a silky curtain of golden hair, and stood only an arm’s length from a wall of blue scales.
He looked up, and the giant Sphincter was swaying directly above him, looking down.
The stories told of the Sphincter said that whether you were man, woman or beast, its face was so beautiful you couldn't take your eyes from it. Indeed, the merchant found himself confronted by the prettiest face he could imagine. For the Sphincter had the head of a goddess with a glowing hood of soft copper hair that flowed around its victim like a fountain, as her liquid eyes softened her victim’s nerves.
To meet with the Sphincter was anybody’s trial, man or woman. Its eyes would reach inside you, holding you transfixed while it’s tongue slipped into your ear to speak the riddle. Having you dazed and immobile, its tail would molest you from behind.
Tickling your ear with its tongue and your bottom with its tail, no one could concentrate on a riddle. But for the merchant, to wager his life against his skill at riddles was his oldest fantasy.
He suddenly heard a beautiful voice whispering melodious words into his head. But for the merchant, each word of the riddle announced itself like a trumpet:
"What has NO shape and all shapes and none can bear to live with?"
Now merchants everywhere can hold onto their wits as they bargain and bluff over the most seductive business deals; and merchants in this part of the world were used to the roving hands of barbarian guides and camel drivers. Without another thought he kicked the tail away, as he closed his eyes and covered his ears to better ponder the question.
"The snake's question is difficult, yet all in all there are perhaps three dozen skulls which the tail kicks about. A dozen travelers pass this way each month – for I have already noted how frequently the road is traveled! Over the years there must have been thousands who have passed through safely!! In fact it is probably the favorite path of thieves, who know they have nothing to fear.”
“This,” he thought,"is the REAL riddle!! For thieves know the answer for thieves, which is they have nothing to worry if they answer wrong, or merely anything they can think of, for I have just proven it is those who guess the riddle CORRECTLY who are crushed to death!!”
He held his breath as he repeated the riddle to himself: "What has no shape and all shapes and none can bear to live with?”
A strategy was running through his head. “I could say ‘death,’ or ‘love,’ or ‘hunger,’ which are surely not correct –and so I would live. Is this what I came for, simply to pass this test as every thief has passed before me?”
“Certainly the idea of such a riddle, as if those who guess the riddle of life shall be squeezed to death, this would be a horrible and shapeless truth that none can bear to live with!”
He longed to look into the Sphincter’s eyes, as he smelled her hair washing over his face and ears.
“Why not answer ‘longing,’” he thought, “and be done with this, for the Sphincter has given me a longing to give up this quest for truth!”
He heard the Sphincter whisper its riddle again softly, as he began to swoon and his eyes flutter open. Its tongue suggested he let them now open to the riddle and its most perfect answer, and thus he was reminded to close them all the tighter. Then he thought of screaming out “My Longing for the Sphincter has all shapes and no shape and I cannot bear to live with it!” Indeed this seemed the very answer to the Sphincter’s riddle, but as he heard his mouth begin to speak he was reminded of the voice of any thief, the commonest slug calling out such an answer, for this was the most obvious truth to come to any of her victim’s minds.
Suddenly he heard a voice inside him ask yet again:
“What truth would destroy those who would guess it?” for this, indeed, was the nature of the real riddle, and certainly its answer.
At the same time he heard a tremendous whoosh and perceived a drastic change come over reality, as the perfume of excrement overtook his excitement and his longing for the Sphincter.
With a triumphant yell instead he exclaimed:
“What a remarkable load of crap!
Why THIS is the kind of truth that would destroy anyone!!”
Drawing his sword with one hand he leapt at the Sphincter's tail and impaled it to the dirt screaming:
“Both Truth and Crap have no shape and all shapes,
and no one can bear to live with either of them!"
Pulling out his skinning knife with the other hand, he slit the snake from stern to gullet yelling:
“Those who say they can’t live with crap
can’t accept the truth that we must live with it.
But to accept that truth will destroy us
if we don’t fight it to the end for the sake of our souls!!
And because the Sphincter’s beautiful head was totally caught up in herself, hearing sweet nothings it whispered into the ears of its victims til it chose to release them, the head was still at his shoulders when he sliced it off with a clean sweep of his sword and rolled it, its entrails, and the twitching ugly dirty tail into the bog to rot.
And so as not to deprive the next traveler of a riddle, he made two crude signs as a memorial, and placed one at each path. The signpost to left said: “Guess Wrong. Live Long !”
On the signpost to the right was written:
“A head with no head on a tail on tails no longer.”
Then, after a prayer of thanks, the merchant picked up his bag (which had fallen from the donkey’s back) and continued on his way… to the right.
Here ends the story of the Merchant and the Sphincter, which I know you have never heard before. It’s a secret story hated by the guardians of every truth that was ever proclaimed.
The crossroads is still there, and one of the Sphincter’s beautiful children has taken its place. But very few people who have been there brag about solving its riddle, for they want to keep it a secret to avoid long lines to the path. For there vicious fights continually break out continually between those jealous of their knowledge of the thief’s version of the answer, the easy answer, and of each other’s secret longing for the Sphincter.