Girls, Goddesses and Giants: Tales of Heroines from Around the World Read online

  Ninshibur grabbed Inanna’s sword, stood up tall, and drove the sword straight above her head, right into the breast of the kugulal. The blade ripped open the bird’s lung and suddenly the only noise the kugulal could make was a sad whistle as the air leaked out of her chest.

  The kugulal turned and flapped slowly home.

  And Ninshibur rowed towards the coast.

  Enki had sent a creature of the water and a creature of the air, so next he sent creatures of the earth.

  As they neared the shore, Inanna and Ninshibur saw fifty uru giants: giants so tall that their faces were hidden in the clouds, giants so big their footprints were valleys in the earth.

  The giants were standing at the harbour.

  Ninshibur said, “I will do anything for you, my lady Inanna, but I don’t think even I can defeat fifty uru giants with just an axe and a sword. So I don’t think we can land the boat at the harbour.”

  Inanna looked at the giants, at the harbour, at the roofs of her city a few miles inland, and said, “I don’t think we need to land.”

  “But how else can we get the gifts to the city?”

  Inanna smiled and put her fingers back in the water. Then she pushed the water, Enki’s own water, towards the shore.

  The seawater rose and poured over the shore, over the harbour and towards the city. The giants, being creatures of the land, moved away from the water.

  The water flooded Uruk. Not like a tidal wave, but like a jug carefully filling a glass. Water slipped into the streets, filling them gently to turn them into calm canals.

  Ninshibur kept rowing past the flooded harbour, as Inanna waved cheerfully at the retreating giants.

  The people of Uruk stood on tables, window sills and roofs to watch their goddess and her boat of heaven move across the new wider sea towards the city, then float along the streets.

  The boat floated towards Inanna’s temple, where she and her gifts would be safe until Enki’s anger and the seawater subsided.

  Inanna and Ninshibur reached the temple steps, they unpacked the gifts and they carried them into the temple.

  Well, I say they unpacked the gifts, but Inanna was a goddess, so she raised her arms and acknowledged the cheers of her people, while Ninshibur did all the heavy lifting.

  That is how Inanna brought all the arts and knowledge of civilisation to people, not just the people of Uruk, but all the people of the world. That is how Inanna become the most powerful goddess of her time.

  With a little help from her sidekick Ninshibur.

  The Wolf in the Bed

  French folktale

  Once there was a young girl who lived at the edge of the forest.

  On baking day, her mother said to the girl, “I’ve baked an extra loaf. Why don’t you take some fresh bread to your granny in the forest?”

  So the girl placed a warm loaf of bread in her basket, wrapped herself in her bright colourful cloak and said goodbye to her mother.

  Then she began to walk to her granny’s little cottage in the middle of the forest. She walked along a narrow path, through the dark shadows of the trees. Soon she came to a fork in the path, one straight path leading direct to her granny’s cottage, the other path winding the long way round.

  By the fork in the path, she saw a young man leaning against a tree. He had long hair, yellow eyes, long fingernails and gleaming white teeth.

  “Where are you going, young lady?” he asked.

  “I’m off to visit my granny, to take her a loaf of fresh bread.”

  She showed him the bread in the basket. He leant forward, towards the loaf and the girl’s hand holding the basket, and he breathed in deeply. “What a wonderful smell.”

  “Would you like me to tear off a bit of crust for you? I’m sure Granny wouldn’t mind.”

  “No, thank you. I don’t want to spoil my appetite before dinner.” He grinned, then asked, “So which path will you take?”

  She laughed. “I’ll take the straight short path, of course.”

  “Then I hope you travel safely through the forest.”

  The girl said goodbye politely and walked along the straight path.

  As soon as she was out of sight, the young man dropped to the ground, arched his back and became a wolf on four legs.

  Then the wolf took the longer path. But he ran on four legs, while the girl walked on two legs, so he reached the cottage before her.

  The wolf bounded through the door and he ate Granny up, every last little bit of her.

  Then he stood up on his hind legs and changed from the four-legged furry wolf into the two-legged hairy man. He wriggled into a flowery nightdress and a frilly nightcap, jumped into bed and pulled the quilt up to his bright yellow eyes.

  He waited.

  And he waited.

  Then the girl pushed open the door. “Granny, it’s me! I’ve brought you a loaf of bread.”

  “That’s lovely, my dear. Bring it here, to the bed.”

  “Granny,” said the girl, “what a deep voice you have!”

  “All the better to chat to you with.”

  The girl stepped closer.

  “Granny, what bright eyes you have!”

  “All the better to see you with.”

  She went closer still.

  “Granny, what hairy arms you have!”

  “All the better to hug you with. Come and sit beside me on the bed.”

  But the girl stayed where she was.

  “I’m not daft,” she said. “I know you’re not my granny. You’re the man from the path. Where is my granny?”

  “She’s somewhere warm and cosy, and she left me in charge. So come closer.”

  The girl didn’t want to go any closer. But she didn’t think she could run away either. This hairy, toothy man had reached the cottage much faster than her, so if he saw her try to run, he would chase her and catch her.

  She must get out of the cottage some other way.

  “Come closer,” he said again.

  “Not yet,” she said. “I need to go to the loo.”

  “What?”

  “I drank lots at breakfast-time and now I need to nip outside to go to the loo.”

  “No you don’t, just come closer.”

  “I do need the loo, I really do.” She crossed her legs and jiggled around a bit.

  “Come and sit on the bed, girl.”

  “No. If I sit on the bed, I’ll have a little accident. I’ll wet the bed, then the quilt will be all damp and stinky. Just let me go out for a minute and I’ll come straight back.”

  “You’ll come straight back?”

  “Oh yes.”

  To make sure she did come straight back, the wolf in the bed tied one end of a long string to the girl’s ankle and he held the other end in his long fingers.

  “Back in a minute…” she said, as she shuffled to the door with her legs crossed.

  As soon as she stepped outside, instead of going behind a bush and squatting down, she tried to untie the string.

  But it was tied very tightly and her fingers were shaking.

  The wolf inside the cottage yelled, “Come on, get back in here!”

  The girl was struggling to loosen the knot.

  “You’re taking too long. You can’t have drunk that much. Come back in here!”

  She was pulling so hard on the string that her nails were breaking and her ankle was bleeding.

  “Hurry up, girl!”

  She untangled the last knot, pulled the string off, tied the string round a tree, then she ran.

  She ran as fast as she could, along the straight path out of the forest.

  The wolf in the bed yelled, “Come back in here now!”

  She ran as fast as she could, through the shadows of the forest.

  And the wolf pulled on the string, but the girl didn’t come back through the door. The wolf tugged and hauled on the string, and by the time he realised he was trying to pull a tree into the cottage, the girl was half-way home.

  He leapt
out of bed, ripped off the nightdress and nightcap, and changed back into a wolf on four legs. Then he ran after her.

  She raced.

  And he chased.

  The wolf was much faster on his four legs than the girl was on her two legs, even with his belly full of granny. But the girl had a head start, she didn’t slow down and she didn’t look back. She simply ran and ran and ran.

  The wolf was just behind her when she reached the edge of the forest, but she didn’t turn round, she didn’t falter. She ran right out of the shadow of the trees. She reached her house, she pushed the door open and she stepped inside.

  The wolf reached the edge of the forest.

  The girl looked back and saw him. He saw her, just a few steps away.

  But he wouldn’t leave the forest. And she never went back into the forest.

  So that is how the first-ever Little Red Riding Hood escaped the first-ever wolf to wear a nightie, all on her very own, without the help of any hunters or woodcutters.

  But there was no happy ever after for her granny. Because no-one has ever really come out of a wolf’s belly alive.

  Telesilla and the Gates of Argos

  Greek legend

  Two and a half thousand years ago, the Spartan army, led by their king Kleomenes, attacked the city of Argos.

  The men of Argos armed themselves and marched out of the city gates to meet the Spartan army, while the city’s best-known poet, Telesilla, sang her songs of loyalty and bravery.

  The two armies clashed and battled, but the Spartans were the best trained, hardiest and most vicious warriors in ancient Greece, so they defeated the men of Argos.

  Soon, most of the men of Argos lay injured and dying on the land they had tried to defend. The men who were still able to run took shelter in a sacred grove of trees.

  The Spartans surrounded the grove, but they were unwilling to go in for fear of angering the gods. So Kleomenes tricked the men of Argos by calling out their names individually and claiming that their families in the city had paid ransoms for their safety. The men came out one by one, and the Spartans killed them one by one.

  When the few men left in the grove finally realised they were being tricked and refused to come out, Kleomenes ordered the grove burned down.

  Then the Spartans started to march on the city.

  The women of Argos, who had watched from the walls, had seen their men defeated and murdered, and had sung Telesilla’s songs of lamentation, now gathered together.

  Telesilla said, “We can expect no mercy from these dishonourable Spartans if they enter our city.”

  One woman said, “We should run.”

  Another said, “We should bar the gates.”

  But Telesilla shook her head. “If we run, the Spartans will chase us and catch us. If we bar the gates, the Spartans will break them down, or burn our city like they burned the sacred grove. We must drive the Spartans away.”

  “How?”

  Telesilla explained her plan.

  She posted all the children and slaves, all the old men and old women, round the top of the city walls, with pots to look like helmets and brooms to look like javelins.

  Then she gathered all the spare armour, shields, helmets, swords and javelins in the city and armed all the able women.

  She led them out of the city and she lined them up to defend the gates of Argos.

  There was no time for Telesilla to recite a stirring poem about courage and honour, because the Spartans were already upon them.

  The Spartans ran at the gates, their long spears and short swords still dripping with the blood of the men of Argos, their faces still smeared with ash from the burning sacred grove.

  The women of Argos had never trained with weapons. They didn’t know how to throw a spear or wield a sword. But they did know how to stand together and how to stand strong. So they stood in a line with Telesilla at their centre, their shields overlapping and their blades pointing forward.

  And they screamed their defiance.

  As the first Spartan blows fell on the women of Argos, and the screams of defiance mixed with screams of pain, Kleomenes shouted: “What voices are those? Are those women’s voices? Are we fighting women?” He called on his men to halt.

  Then Telesilla pulled off her helmet and said, “We are the women of Argos and we are defending our homes.”

  Kleomenes frowned. He didn’t mind being called a bully or a tyrant or even a cheat. He didn’t mind how he won battles against other warriors. But he knew there was no way he could emerge from a battle against women looking strong and glorious.

  If he beat them, no-one would respect it as a serious victory.

  If they beat him, he would be remembered as the king defeated by an army of women.

  So he ordered his men to step back and he led them away from the city of Argos.

  Telesilla led the women of Argos back through the gates.

  As Kleomenes marched his men towards Sparta, he blamed his failure to take Argos on the gods he’d annoyed when he burned the sacred grove.

  But the people of Argos knew who had saved them. They put up a marble statue to Telesilla, a statue of a woman with books at her feet and a warrior’s helmet in her hand. A statue to celebrate a woman who knew the power of the word and the power of the sword.

  Durga and the Demon

  Indian myth

  Once there was a demon named Mahisha. He was a shape-shifting demon, who could take on the shape of any animal, but also any shape he invented or desired.

  He might choose skin of deep purple or bright pink or pale grey. He might choose scales down his arms, or fur on his back, or feathers on his feet. He might choose claws on his hands, or tusks on his jaws, or horns on his elbows for jabbing people who got in his way. He might choose black eyeballs, or golden teeth. He might choose long barbed tails snaking and flicking round his legs.

  But Mahisha wasn’t content with his incredible shape-changing powers. He wanted to earn more and greater powers.

  So Mahisha denied himself everything for one thousand years. He denied himself food and water, he denied himself light and love and air and warmth. For ten centuries, he denied himself all pleasure and comfort.

  This supreme act of denial and determination earned him the right to ask the universe for one more power.

  The power he asked for was immortality.

  But no-one and nothing, not even the universe, can guarantee that you will never die. Mahisha had to ask for something else. So he asked for the next best thing. He asked that he could be killed by no man and no god. And his request was granted.

  Armed with that invincibility, the demon set out to conquer the earth. Because he could not be killed by a man, there was no warrior or general or king or emperor who could defeat him and soon the demon controlled the whole of the earth.

  Then he looked up to heaven. He clawed his way upwards, and because he couldn’t be killed by a god, he soon conquered heaven too. He grabbed the gods in his huge brightly coloured hands and threw them from heaven. He threw Vishnu and Shiva and Brahma and all the rest down to earth.

  The gods were homeless and humiliated, and the gods were angry.

  They allowed the heat of their anger to burst from their mouths and their bellies. The white hot flames melted together into one bright ball of fury.

  And out of that fire stepped… a woman.

  A tall dark woman named Durga.

  Durga was dressed in a bright red sari, and she had ten long strong elegant arms.

  The gods gave her ten objects to hold in her ten hands:

  A thunderbolt

  A spear

  A bow and arrows

  A rope

  An axe

  A discus

  A sword

  A trident

  A conch shell

  And a lotus flower.

  Then the gods gave her a tiger to ride on.

  Durga rode her tiger up to heaven, where she saw Mahisha, in splendid purple scales, lounging
on a golden throne, picking his teeth with a claw, flicking his three tails.

  She challenged him by throwing her thunderbolt at his feet.

  He laughed. “I can be killed by no man and no god!”

  Durga leapt off her tiger and called back, “Do I look like a man?”

  And she threw her spear at Mahisha’s chest.

  The sharp point struck him true, driving right through his ribcage. But before his purple body could die, Mahisha changed shape, into a huge lion, which leapt roaring at Durga.

  Durga shot the lion in the face with her bow and arrows, and the lion fell whining to the ground. But before the lion’s body could die, Mahisha changed into a giant.

  He was a giant so tall that his head was above the clouds of heaven. Durga took her rope and threw it round the giant’s ankles to trip him up, then as he fell she used her axe to slice open his belly. But before the giant’s body could die, Mahisha changed into an elephant.

  The elephant wrapped its trunk round the tiger and Durga together, and whirled them round to throw them out of heaven. Durga took her spinning silver discus and sliced off the elephant’s trunk. But before the elephant’s body could die, Mahisha changed into a buffalo, which charged heavy-hooved towards Durga.

  Durga wrapped all her free hands round the hilt of her sword, swung it, and cut off the buffalo’s head.

  And fast as fire, before Mahisha could change shape again, Durga leapt on the buffalo’s back, wrapped her legs round its ribcage and squeezed…

  She squeezed the demon’s true form out.

  She squeezed a bald scrawny creature, wrinkled and twisted from his years of denial, out of the bleeding neck of the buffalo.

  Durga forced Mahisha’s true form out into the light, then she stabbed him through the heart with her trident.

  That is how the gods returned home to heaven. That is how people regained control of the earth.

  And that is how Mahisha, who couldn’t be killed by man or god, was killed by a woman.

  Kopecho and the Two Suns

  Venezuelan myth

  Once there were two suns in the sky. Two hot flaming suns, both of them heating and parching the earth. They didn’t shine at the same time. They took turns dancing round the earth, so that it was always bright burning day, never cool dark night.