Week 11: Two Travelers and a Dare (Storytelling)

“Let’s stop here for a rest,” Salem said. He and his friend Ganem were far away from home, traveling to find work and wealth.

This place had trees dotted around, offering shade from the high sun. A fast running stream was to their left with plenty of fresh, cool water. The thick, green grass gave a comfortable place for the two men to rest before they resumed their journey.

After they sat, Salem went to work pulling food out of their bags. Ganem took some bowls and went to the stream. Not long after, Ganem returned without the water.

“You’ll never guess what I found, Salem.” His eyes danced and he kept fidgeting, unable to contain his glee.

Salem watched his friend calmly. “Obviously not water. What happened?” The men had often been through this routine together. Ganem was easily excited and always came up with great schemes to get them rich. Well, Ganem always thought they were great schemes. So far, none of his hundreds of ideas have become anything. Salem on the other hand was much more practical and rarely got as excited as his friend.

Ganem shouted, “You’re going to love this! There was some writing on a boulder by the river. It said that there is a city on top of that mountain,” Ganem pointed to the closest mountain on the other side of the stream. “And there is wealth and food and whatever else we want there.”

Salem looked at his friend skeptically. “There are not towns or even villages on the map, Ganem. The closest thing is a farm a few miles from here. And even if there was a city, I don’t think they just let anyone come up and take their wealth.”

“Of course they wouldn’t give it to just anyone.” Ganem rolled his eyes at Salem’s hesitation. Salem was always too cautious with new adventures. “There are tests you have to go through. You have to swim through the stream, then pick up a lion statue, then run up the mountain with the lion statue. They want you to prove your bravery and strength.”

Salem raised his eyebrows. “First of all,” he said, “that river has a fast current. If you didn’t die, you’d be lucky. And I saw that lion statue when we were getting settled. It’s huge. There’s no way you could carry that thing up a mountain. It’s probably a prank. If there was some huge wealthy city, I think it’d be on the map and those tasks just sound deadly. That would be stupid, not brave.”

Ganem quit pacing and looked between his friend and the stream. “Fine,” he said. “You don’t have to do it, but I am. I’m going to find that city and become rich.”

With that, Ganem strode purposefully towards the stream, Salem close at his heels. When they approached, Ganem took off his shirt and jumped in. Salem watched anxiously as his friend struggled in the current. As he had said, the current kept pulling Ganem under and downstream.

Salem grabbed a rope from his bag, ready in case Ganem called out. He followed along on the bank as his friend continued. Almost half an hour later, Ganem crawled, exhausted, onto the other bank. He shook and coughed up water.

After resting enough to stand up, he slowly trudged back towards the lion. Ganem was already weak from his fight across the river, but even on his best day, the lion was impossibly heavy. The statue barely budged when he tried to scoot it, much less pick it up.

In defeat and exhaustion, he sat up against the lion statue. He could feel Salem watching him from the other side.

“Okay,” he called. “You were right! But I can’t make it back across the river.”

“When you’ve rested up, I’ll throw you the rope and help pull you across.” The men sat on opposite bands for hours before Ganem was finally ready. When they were both together again, they continued on their journey, slower than before as Ganem was still exhausted.

That evening they reached the nearby farm. The farmer invited the travelers to stay for dinner. Salem asked about the inscription on the boulder up stream and the farmer laughed.

“Oh, that was my boy,” he said lightly. “He just got good at writing and he wrote that yesterday. I figured it wasn’t a big deal; it’ll wear off with the first rainstorm. And who would actually think they could swim across a stream like that and pick up a huge statue?”

Salem smiled a little and glanced at his friend who did not find the child’s prank amusing.

Stone Lion Statue. Pixabay

Author's Note: This story was from the Bidpai Fables unit of the Un-Textbook. The original story was called the Two Travelers.

The original story was about two travelers who come across an inscription by a stream. The inscription tells them to do seemingly impossible tasks and if they do, they will be given all the wealth they could want. One man thinks it's a joke, because the tasks are so impossible, and he leaves. But the other thinks it's a test for bravery, and he sets upon doing he tasks. The tasks he must accomplish are swimming across a fast stream, carrying a stone lion up a mountain through thorns and wild animals until he reaches the top. He accomplishes the task and is made king of the city atop the mountain. 

While I was reading this story, I thought the moral could have gone one of two ways: brave men get money and glory and wealth, or practical men don't die. I figured, based on the stories and epics we read, that the moral would be the first. However, if I came across this same situation, I would have responded the same way as the man saying it was impossible, so I decided to switch the morals of the story to where that man ended up being right. 

So I changed the end of the story by having the brave man unable to perform the tasks and changed it to where the inscription was a prank by a child. I also had the man who didn't try the tasks stay with his friend and in the end help him back across after he almost dies in the river the first time. 

Story source: The Tortoise and the Geese and Other Fables of Bidpai by Maude Barrows Dutton, with illustrations by E. Boyd Smith, 1908.