The Jade Story Book; Stories from the Orient

by Penrhyn Wingfield Coussens

It was the custom at that time for opposing armies to watch when a champion from each side should engage in a duel, and so the armies of Shiku and Korkwi had stood awaiting the result. Shiku now ordered his soldiers to charge the enemy, and this they did, defeating them utterly.

Korkwi saw that fate was against him. His magic was useless to him, because Shiku knew more than he did, so, frenzied with pain and disappointment, he dashed his head against the rocks of Mount Kuri, and so perished. With such force did he strike the rocks that he made a great hole in the mountain, in which were embedded some of the pillars which upheld the heavens, and one of these pillars was broken. One corner of the sky thereupon began to drop, and at length it touched the earth.

Then Shiku, taking with him the body of his enemy, returned to the Empress Janqwi, victorious.

But trouble had not ceased for Janqwi. Fire was bursting out from the mountain in which was the broken pillar, and was doing great damage to the country round about. The Empress hastened to the scene of the disaster, and found that considerable damage had been done to both Heaven and earth.

The problem now was how to repair this damage, so she gathered together the wise men of the kingdom to see what could be done.

Under their advice she ordered her subjects to collect all the stones they could find of these five colors—red, blue, yellow, white and black. These she had boiled in a huge cauldron, and the result was a cement which would mend anything.

With Shiku’s magic help she then mounted the clouds, taking the cement with her, and having reached that corner of the sky which was broken, she mended it. She then repaired the broken pillar.

Now all of this was the more difficult to do because ever since the hole was made in the mountain the moon had ceased to shine by night, and the sun by day, so that it was quite dark, and even now it remained so.

She called another meeting of the wise men, and they decided that neither the sun nor the moon could travel because the roads by which they made their daily and nightly journeys had been damaged by the accident to the pillar, and it was now necessary to inform them that repairs had been made, and they could safely venture forth again.

But the sun and moon were millions of miles away, and the problem was how to reach them. Then Shiku had recourse to his magic, and he produced a chariot which could race through the air at unbelievable speed.