Date: Sat, 27 Dec 2003 15:57:45 -0700
From: Dream Spinner <authorsix@hotmail.com>
Subject: The Chosen One From Nongkhai.  Part One: The Choosing (m/b)

                  The Chosen One From Nongkhai
                        J.O. Dickingson
                     authorsix@hotmail.com

                            Prologue

High in the distant mountains where the land is perpetually covered with
snow and only the hardiest may travel, there exists a tiny temple where the
wisest of the priests once sojourned to contemplate the destiny of man and
the ways of the gods, and to record the history of the world in the old
language, writing by candlelight with brush and ink on story scrolls which
are stored in a sacred chamber far beneath the temple. This is one such
story of an exotic land in a long forgotten past, a vignette about a great
and noble Lord and a humble peasant, the one a man and the other a boy. It
is intended for the enlightenment of responsible and worthy readers.

                     Part One: The Choosing

Two tithes were demanded of the people in the Land of the Tiger Eye. Once a
year the royal collectors from Chiangmai, in their yellow robes and with
their knotted counting cords, would travel across the land and collect the
tithe of grain, coin, livestock, silk, or whatever the village was most
noted for in payment for services from their noble and benevolent Lord,
Lord Boroma Phanomyong, Favoured Son of the Great God Xiu, Fierce Tiger of
the Jungle, Defender of the People, and Master Over all That Is, Was, and
Will Be. The second tithe was collected by Lord Phanomyong himself. Nobody
knew when he would strike out from Chiangmai, nor in which direction he
would travel, nor at which village he would stop and demand his tithe. They
only knew that no village was missed, and none paid any more frequently
than another, for Lord Phanomyong was among other things, a fair man. The
first tithe the people paid willingly, for their Lord was a powerful master
who provided for them during times of extended drought or when the rice
fields were destroyed by unexpected floods, and who protected them from
pillage and rape by their neighbours. The second tithe, the Selection of
the Chosen One, they paid because there was nobody to protect them from
Lord Boroma Phanomyong.

The Tiger of the Jungle was a large man, both in height and girth, with an
expansive chest and even more expansive stomach. Standing a hand taller
than the average man, he had been at one time strong and muscular, more a
warrior than he was a noble, who could wield a two-handed broadsword all
afternoon without his arms tiring of the weight, and who pinned the best
summoro wrestlers to the mat with barely breaking into a sweat. Now his
muscles had turned to fat. His broad chest, once so firm that a man could
break a fire-hardened brick on it, now jiggled when he laughed like the
sagging breasts of an old woman. Forearms and thighs that once bulged with
muscle were now heavy with fat and flapped like the wattle of a turkey when
he walked. His body was smooth and hairless, like most of his countrymen,
and he shaved the hair on his head to leave only a topknot, which was
braided and coiled on the back of his scalp and held in place by a large
jewelled pin.

He had allowed his body to succumb to the pleasures that came with age and
position, but that same age and position had honed an already sharp mind,
and having the leisure to pursue his interests, he had sought the knowledge
of the wisest men in the land, men skilled in the arts and the sciences, in
military strategy, and in governing. Lord Phanomyong was a powerful man,
not because of his inheritance, but because he knew knowledge was ultimate
power. He was shrewd, but also like most men of power, he was proud and
self-serving, and he was as renown for his quick temper as he was for his
swift justice, and his delight in good food and young boys was as well
known as his bloodlust on the battlefield.

And so it was when he rode into the tiny village of Nongkhai on the
sixteenth day of the month of Tas...ad and announced to the village headman
and the village priest that he had come to select a Chosen One, that he was
greeted with great respect and with great sadness.  To provide the Lord
with a Chosen One was a great honour, but it was also the greatest
sacrifice the gods could demand that a village and a family make. Word was
quickly spread throughout the village and the rice paddies, and the people
of Nongkhai brought forth their young sons and lined them up in the village
wat before the shrine to Kai, the village god of agriculture and
virility. Naked three- year-old toddlers who had no idea what was
happening, eight-year-old boys in loin cloths who had been down at the
river looking for frogs, and thirteen-year-olds only months or weeks away
from Khawrianphukta, the Coming of Age Ceremony when they would be declared
men and exempted from the Selection, stood side by side in the muddy
compound as a light rain began to fall.

Lord Phanomyong slowly walked before the row of forty-eight boys, every boy
who was of choosing age in the village. As he paused to study one and then
another more closely than the others, the adults of the village held their
breath, the parents of the boy being examined guiltily praying that their
child not be the Chosen One even though to be chosen was an honour and a
sign of blessing from the gods. The other parents just as guiltily hoped
that the child would be chosen, wishing no ill will toward his parents, but
selfishly not wanting one of their own sons to be selected.

The youngest boys did not know who this tall, fat man inspecting them was,
or why he was examining them, but they sensed the awe and the apprehension
among the villagers and they knew this was a man to be respected and to be
feared. The older boys knew of the tithe, for although the adults tried to
keep it a secret to spare them the worry and fear, there were some things
that were part of the culture of boyhood, and passing down the forbidden
knowledge of the Selection of the Chosen One from those about to enter
adulthood to those still of selectable age was one of those things.

So it was passed from boy to boy, that the Lord from Chiangmai chose
periodically a fine boy who had not yet reached the Age of Coming, and took
him back to his palace, where he was treated as if he were the Lord's son,
given the finest of clothes and all the jewels he might want, allowed
whatever he wished to eat, and waited on by servants and presented to
nobles and foreign kings. At night, or whenever the Lord desired, it was
the boy's duty to please him, though exactly how was uncertain and the
subject of fanciful rumours for those were the things a boy learned at the
Coming of Age Ceremony. One of those rumours was that the boy was expected
to please his Lord as their mothers pleased their fathers, by allowing the
Lord to plant his seed in his belly, through, of course, his back entryway,
the only one a boy possesses. Many greeted that suggestion with giggles and
the rest scoffed with disbelief, but all clenched that backdoor closed with
the thought.

It was further said that was the ultimate pleasure a boy can bring a man,
and when the Lord tired of that pleasure, the boy ceased being the Chosen
One, and the Lord struck out from his grand palace to find another. Having
brought the Lord the greatest of pleasures a man can know, the former
Chosen One was meanwhile lead to the shrine of Agka, the God of Death, and
ceremoniously beheaded, for having pleased the Favoured Son of the Great
God Xiu, it would not be fitting that a lesser man know the same pleasure
as his Lord.

Such must have been the fate of the Chosen One from Kaing'hi, for Lord
Boroma Phanomyong was at this moment seeking out the most beautiful boy the
tiny village of Nongkhai had to offer.  Beauty, as defined by Lord
Phanomyong, depended on his mood, and like his mood, was as unpredictable
as the fate of men. The boy had, of course, to be fair of face and healthy
of body, a boy who had at least some wit about him, and a boy who would
know his place.  Sometimes the Chosen One was an innocent of three, at
other times a sultry thirteen-year-old. Sometimes he was slender, at other
times plump. It depended on the gods, and on Lord Phanomyong.

Now one might ask why the villagers simply did not hide their finest young
men in the jungles, or dress them in skirts and send them out to the rice
paddies disguised as girls. To ask would be because one is a foreigner and
ignorant of the way of the people in the Land of the Tiger Eye.  Which
parent does not think his son to be the finest in the village? When the
Lord arrived and there were no young men to be found, would it not be
suspicious? Besides, what parent is going to silently allow another to hide
his son who might be chosen over his own?  Legends tell of attempts to
avoid being Chosen, from disfiguring the face of a boy thought to be too
beautiful, to hiding sons in the jungles, but always the parents were found
out, and punished by death along with all their relatives, and the son they
were trying to protect was sent to the border to bring pleasure to the
soldiers who had been away from their wives too long. In the end, the tithe
was just a boy, and making another was not that unpleasant a task.

The Lord stopped before a slim lad of average height and weight for a boy
not yet in his teens, a boy dressed in thread-worn, baggy trousers spotted
with mud and evidently having been brought in from the rice paddies where
he'd been working. He was at that indeterminate age between ten and twelve,
with a slim body that had lost its baby fat through hard work, but which
had not yet developed the firmness of flesh that accompanies the first
growth of genital hair nor the definition of muscle that accompanies the
Age of Coming. His skin was smooth and the colour of butterscotch, his face
fair, having eyes the shape of almonds and the colour of dark chocolate,
and his hair was fine and thick and as black as a moonless night. He stared
down at the ground respectfully like the other forty-seven boys of the
village, and as the man stepped up before him, he stared at his large,
sandalled feet as had the thirty-two boys before him. Unlike the other
boys, he noticed the noble's toes were cramped and his ankles swollen from
carrying his massive weight.

Cupping his hand under the boy's chin, the Lord raised the youngster's head
and the boy looked up at him, his large almond-shaped eyes innocent but
with the courage of youth, eyes that Lord Phanomyong took particular
delight in. There was, however, something else, something deep in those
chocolate brown eyes that spoke of smoldering lust and a confidence that
were beyond his years.

"This one," Lord Phanomyong announced, and he turned and headed for his
horse. The villagers sighed with relief, and the elders stepped forward
cautiously to bid good travel to the Lord and to assure him he would find
great delight in his Chosen One. The boy's parents and brothers and sisters
and aunts and uncles cried quietly least they bring shame to their family
and the wrath of the Lord who had just blessed them with the certain death
of their young son, brother and nephew.

The man who saw that the orders of Lord Phanomyong were followed told the
boy that from this moment forth he would be living with the Lord, and asked
if there was anything that he wished to bring with him. In most cases in
the past there was not, the boys being too poor or too young to have
anything they could call their own, but he knew from experience that if a
boy was able to bring a treasured object from his past, no matter how
small, his future was that much easier to bear. The boy nodded and quickly
running to his father's hut, he returned with a small rectangular basket of
bamboo the length of the man's hand and with a width half as long.

No longer needing to travel in the dark or in incognito, the Lord and his
retinue immediately headed back to Chiangmai. During the journey back,
which took three days travelling from sunup to sunset, the man who had
asked the boy if he wanted to bring anything with him ensured the peasant
child was fed and was comfortable, but neither he nor anyone else spoke to
him, and the boy did not see again the great Lord who had selected him.

Arriving at the palace, he was turned over to one of the old women in
charge of the household affairs, who immediately ordered a tub and hot
water. Despite his protests and embarrassment, she stripped him and bathed
him. She lathered up his hair and remarked how thick and beautiful it was
and that she hoped Lord Phanomyong would not have it shaved off as he
sometimes had with previous Chosen Ones, and the boy's heart sank with the
thought, for he loved his hair and had spent many nights on his mother's
lap as she'd combed out the knots and remarked how fine and how beautiful
it was.

The strange woman furiously scrubbed his armpits and cautioned him that
when he was responsible for his own bathing that he was to be sure to wash
them particularly well. Her hands ran deftly over his thin chest and flat
stomach, and down his thighs and calves. She had him turn around and bend
over and she washed his buttocks and his little pucker and lamented that it
would be a shame to see such a tender and beautiful thing brutalized, but
she said so softly and in her own dialect so the boy could not understand,
nor anyone else, for if the Lord heard of her making such a comment he
would have her tongue cut out and served to her for her evening meal. When
she bade the boy to turn around and face her and he refused, she laughed
and chided him and told him what had happened to him only proved that he
was a real boy.

He flushed with embarrassment as she, being the stronger and an adult,
turned him around and looked down at his little reed standing up straight
and firm, the result of her gentle bathing and prodding of that back
entryway. She told him with a sudden laugh that he might be the Lord's now,
but the Lord would not be the first to feel and delight in what made him a
boy. She soaped up his loins, causing his reed to jerk, much to the boy's
dismay, and causing the old crone to laugh. Her fingers, boney and wrinkled
with age, rubbed the soap over his smooth, hairless pubes, and she gently
and carefully rolled his tiny, hairless testicles between her thumb and
fingers. The boy stood helplessly as she slipped her soapy fingers about
his slender erection. As she squeezed it tightly, it felt good and he hoped
she would hold it awhile.  She grasped it by the base and tugged on it,
which felt even better than just being squeezed.  Lathering up her fingers,
she coated the slightly bulging head of his little cocklet with soap, which
caused him to squirm.  Ever so slowly and carefully, she rolled back the
tight skin of his penis to reveal the swollen, purplish plum. She observed
approvingly that he kept the hidden fruit clean, and again she cautioned
him that he was to keep it above all other things clean for his Lord.

Rinsing his body and then drying him off with the largest and softest towel
he had ever seen, she cut and filed his toenails and his fingernails and
combed out his hair, which covered his ears but which was neatly tapered
and trimmed in the back as was the style of his village. His coarse peasant
trousers, which had been discarded, were replaced with pale blue pajamas
made of silk and embroidered with delicate pink and yellow flowers, and his
rough pullover shirt was replaced with a sleeveless vest, also of silk and
pale blue with a floral design, and which she left open. A long, thin,
silver chain of the finest links was coiled about his neck in six long
loops, and the six loops were joined in the middle of his chest with a
small but beautiful topaz. Finally, fine silk slippers were slipped over
his feet, which felt strange as he'd spent all his life barefoot.

Properly groomed and dressed, he was presented to Lord Phanomyong, who had
also bathed and changed out of his travelling clothes. He was wearing a
rich satin robe of burgundy, tied at his waist with a wide pink
sash. Several thick, gold necklaces hung from his fat neck, the longest
having a large amethyst set in gold with six tiny red rubies equally spaced
around it. The Favourite Son of Xiu was sitting cross legged on a large
pile of cushions before a low, wide table of fine mahogany. Motioning for
the boy to sit opposite him, he picked up an intricately carved club of
black ironwood and struck the large ornate gong beside him.

Immediately servants entered carrying the most wonderful and delicious
smelling plates of food the boy had ever seen and which they set on the
table before them. There were plates of fine noodles as thin as a man's
hair beside bowls of a creamy sauce with wild mushrooms, plates of red and
green peppers stuffed with crab meat, bowls of steaming rice, a clay pot
containing chicken breasts and green beans in a dark gravy, and a platter
upon which sat a rabbit in an orange and raison sauce garnished with orange
slices.

They bowed their heads and the Lord praised and thanked the gods for the
bounty before them, and as he looked at the boy, the boy sensed that the
blessing included him.  The blessing done, the Lord commenced to eat. The
boy respectfully waited for his Lord to finish, his empty stomach aching
and his mouth watering with the mixture of unfamiliar aromas. He was
surprised when the Lord gestured for him to begin eating, and he paused to
be certain until the Lord gestured a second time. He did not need to be
told a third time. He marvelled at the flavours his taste buds had never
before experienced, and at the delicacy of the food. He had eaten well at
home, but never had he eaten anything like he had that night. When he
figured he could eat no more, a servant girl brought in two plates, one
large and one small, and set the larger before the Lord and the smaller
before him. Upon the plate sat a dessert consisting of several layers of a
pastry so thin he could not imagine such a thing possible, and between each
layer were fresh peach slices.  Poured over the top was a dark brown,
bitter sauce that he learned later was called chocolate and that he also
discovered later also came in solid bars and in a sweetened form.

"What is your name, boy?" Lord Phanomyong asked after the plates had been
cleared away and the Lord had been served a steaming dark brown brew with
an aroma the boy had never smelled before.

"Luan, my Lord, Luan Ramayana," the boy said respectfully. "But my
grandmother also calls me Kh...a."

"And are you as sharp and as delightful?" Lord Phanomyong asked with a
slight grin as he thought of the ginger spice the grandmother had named the
boy for.

"I do not know, my Lord," the boy replied.

"Well, we will find out," the Lord smiled. "But not tonight. You have had a
long journey. You are dismissed for now. We will sample your delights
another night."

"Yes, my Lord," Luan said, respectfully nodding his head and getting to his
feet.

Next: Part Two: The Days of Admiration and Display