Tales of the Gobi Desert
St Joseph’s College, Humphrey Yan, Fiction: Group 4
A
streak of lightning ran across the sky and the loud cry of a baby boy shook the earth.
The mother cuddled the baby closer in her arms. She sang in a low but sweet voice,
comforting the baby to sleep. Outside the tent, the aunt of the baby boy stood with
the oracle. The oracle said, “It is unusual for a child to be born with the lightning. He
would be special… and someday, he would be a great man.”
However, things were not that smooth on the father’s side. The baby boy’s father was a
merchant. He sold whatever he got, horses, camels and sheep; leather, silk and dyed clothes; gold,
silver and various gemstones. He travelled on the Silk Road, with his brother, a few servants and
a fleet of camels. Each journey took him one month to arrive and one month back. A tragedy
happened on the morning of the twenty-fifth day. The father was lying unconscious in his tent
after a good night’s sleep. His arm swollen and became red because of the sting of a scorpion.
The blue scorpion, known as the petrifier, is the deadliest creature on the desert and feared even
by the strongest man. The venom in its sting could paralyse a man in three minutes. Then his
muscles start to harden, it is then in about two-hour-time, the venom would reach the heart and
the heart would stop beating because of the hardened muscles. Nonetheless, there is no cure for
the venom.
Two days after the baby boy’s birth, the merchants returned. The uncle was holding the
father’s body and everyone was weeping. The uncle announced the cause of death of the father. He
also claimed that the baby boy was born with a curse that would kill his own father, according to
the prophet in the west. Everyone was shocked and puzzled, but on one dared to speak. The uncle
became the leader of the whole merchandise in the tribe. As a result, the mother and the baby boy
were exiled. The above was what my mother told me about my birth, and that was all that I knew.
I lived with my mother in the mountains for ten whole years. We fed ourselves with wild
fruits and we drank from rivers. We travelled from the grassy planes higher and higher into the
mountains. The surroundings changed from the endless green slopes into white icy snow caps.
The weather differentiated from the warm moist air into cool, chilling breezes. While we ventured
across the mountains, my mother got a cold. She coughed all day and night, when it got worse,
she would stay in bed all day, shivering and coughing.
On the third of August, a fine mid-summer’s day, the coughing stopped. Everything was
silent. The world seemed to have stopped at the split second. I sat before my mother, but it was
too late. I held up my mother’s body and walked slowly out of the tent. Outside our tent, stood an
eight feet tall white giant, he had hair covering his whole body. He just stood there, gazing at me.
About five minutes later. He turned away. I hastily buried my mother in a solemn manner and
went into the tent to call it a day. The next morning, when I got out of my tent, my mother’s grave
was surrounded with flowers. I unpinned my tent and followed the big footsteps left behind in the
snow. I arrived in a valley and found a cave in the mountain. I knocked on the door and the big
white giant appeared. To my surprise, he spoke in a harsh but stern voice. He called himself a yeti,
an ancient creature that witnessed seas turned into mountains. For the next whole week, I stayed
with the yeti. We talked about everything and I was amazed by his wisdom.
When I left his cave, I felt hopeful and made up my mind to reclaim my father’s business from
