A myth (or collection of myths) for a goddess of a particular pantheon heavily inspired by @thestalkerbunny’s “Grandmother Beetroot” comic.
Tabha is the goddess of familial ties and volcanoes. Within the pantheon she is associated more with the sun god, which means that she does not abide outright lies and does not kill.
Also worth noting: Rozia is the goddess of privacy, medicine, and magic, and the River Zed is domain of Zayla, an aromantic, asexual goddess whose preisthood serves a legitimate way for people to escape the obligations of marriage in this setting. ‘Jadda’ is an anglicisation of the Modern Standard Arabic for grandmother.
Jadda Tabha
Jadda Tabha lives high up on the slopes of the mountain, growing her crops in the rich volcanic soil. She does not live alone; the hunting cats and soaring eagles keep her company and she keeps many hives. When people ask her about what sort of company such wild companions can provide, she laughs and tells them that the creatures help her keep an eye on things. She never specifies what things.
Jadda Tabha has a mane of grey hair that glimmers with gold when the sun hits it. It frames her face like an old lion’s mane, making her stone-grey eyes seem fiercer and her olive-brown skin more weathered. This is merely an appearance, however, she is always pleasantly warm whatever the weather and gives the best hugs.
Like many old people, Jadda Tabha moves slowly. She makes her way down the mountainside at the same steady pace in torrential rain as she does in the blistering sun. Travellers who have accompanied her up or down say that the paths she knows are less steep than the ones they can find on their own. Children who take it into their heads to attempt to climb to the peak are guided back down in less time than it takes to organise a search party with their scrapes tended to and their fears soothed by a piece of honey candy.
If you make the journey up to Jadda Tabha’s hut, you can hear the magma inside the mountain bubbling away in the crater further up the track and it sounds almost like a huge cauldron. She smiles when people tell her this and says that she has no need for a cauldron that big, she is only cooking for herself. Much of the food she grows she gives to the village people — she says she plants so much to give the bees something to do.
It is easy to talk to Jadda Tabha. She is a solid presence.
Dependable.
Once she overheard a young man boasting that he would marry only the ugliest eligible person because they were sure to be grateful and not ask him to do work around the house. Jadda Tabha gave him a cream to rub on his face before bed that would surely make even the prettiest person grateful to marry him.
He did so but noticed no change, so he when he next saw Jadda Tabha in town, he accosted her. “The cream did not work,” he told her. “I haven’t received any proposals since I used it.”
“Ah,” she said in her slow and steady way, “what did you do in the waking hours before you used the cream?” The man spluttered that he didn’t see how it mattered, but under her inexorable stare he admitted that he had spent the days lying around his parents’ house and drinking with his friends. Jadda Tabha clucked her tongue. “The cream requires the sweat of a day’s labour to work,” she explained. “Do you have a patch of land to clear, perhaps?”
“Why?” the young man demanded, brash like young men often are. “What sort of medicine are you giving me that requires me to help it?”
“Would you rather I give you someone else’s sweat to rub on your face?” Jadda Tabha asked, and the man admitted that he would not.
And so he went to work, tilling the plot of land his ageing parents struggled with and applying the cream to his face each night. Each day he needed to do slightly more work to work up a sweat, and before the tub was half done he was tending to the farm all by himself and attracting many admiring glances from those that valued a committed partner who knew how to moisturise.
One time a pair of feuding siblings came to her, a frosty silence hanging between the two broken only by pointed remarks made to a third party. It was difficult to tease out the reasons for the broken relationship, but Jadda Tabha was patient and while the siblings broke their silence to scream at each other she pieced together that a new baby sister was at the centre of the current storm. The elder sibling, having moved out before the arrival of the sister, accused the younger of trying to keep her away from the baby while the younger accused her sibling of trying to ‘steal’ her little sister from her.
“A baby is not a toy,” Jadda Tabha said, easily making her voice heard over the warring siblings. “Just because she can’t talk yet doesn’t mean that she’s an object to be stolen.”
“Yes, Jadda Tabha,” the siblings chorused, showing that they had been taught their manners, at least. But Jadda Tabha discerned that these were just words, and the sentiments here would not be so easily changed.
“Perhaps there is a way to test which of you is best equipped to play with this child,” she said carefully. “There are a few kittens I have been nursing after their mother tragically died. You will each take one and look after it for three nights; when you return them they will tell me which of you did the better job.”
The siblings agreed eagerly, enthusiasm waning slightly when Jadda Tabha presented them with a pair of fuzzy cheetah cubs rather than the housecats they had expected. After listening intently to Jadda Tabha’s instructions, they took the cubs home, each determined to procure the very best toys for the small creatures.
They spent their respective evenings keeping the cubs entertained with feathers and balls, but when night fell, they did not grow less active. They squeaked constantly and wriggled out of blankets, no matter how cosily they were arranged. They refused to eat, seeming to prefer instead to stand at the window and cry piteously at the moon. For such small creatures, they seemed capable of shockingly piercing cries. Finally, the younger sibling bundled her cub up and rushed to her other sibling, finding her in a similar sleepless predicament.
No sooner had she entered the home of her eldest sibling than the cheetah cub had wriggled itself free, flung itself on the other, and soon the pair of them lay in a purring heap. The eldest sibling silently made up a bed for her younger sibling and the two of them went to sleep as quietly as possible.
The very next day, they returned the cubs to Jadda Tabha.
“We see what you were teaching us,” the elder sibling said respectfully. “When we force each other away, we bring suffering.”
“And that something small and cute can be insufferable,” the younger added.
“I’m glad to see you are such fast learners,” Jadda Tabha said, lifting a cub into her lap. “Though I half hoped I could spend another two nights without little claws tearing up my floors.”
The siblings accepted the compliment and beat a hasty retreat before Jadda Tabha could think of more lessons that could be learnt by fostering cheetah cubs.
Once a young woman climbed the mountain to knock on Jadda Tabha’s door. She accepted the cup of honeyed tea that she was offered, but almost before the proper observances had been made she requested a healing balm. Her excuses about being clumsy and prone to accidents shattered on Jadda Tabha’s stony stare and before she knew it she was detailing her husband’s rages, how he told neighbours that she was crazy and made her half believe it herself, how he never hit her where it showed. Jadda Tabha clucked her tongue.
“Ah, child,” she said, “this is more hurt than one of my balms can heal. Why don’t you head east, where a temple of Rozia sits on the banks of the River Zed? They will be able to help you more there.”
“Oh, but my husband!” the woman cried. “He will be angry that I’ve been away as long as I already have been.”
“Don’t fret, child,” Jadda Tabha said, getting to her feet in her slow and steady way. “I will explain to your husband.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” the woman said. But Jadda Tabha would hear none of it, providing her with provisions and sending her on her way before she made her own journey to the village. The young woman and her abuser lived on the outskirts of the village, so it was not as long a walk as it might have been. Jadda Tabha did not hurry, however, and arrived just as night began to fall.
As soon as the man heard footsteps on the porch he started shouting, only to stop and stare in disbelief when the door opened to reveal Jadda Tabha. “Where is my wife!” he demanded, scowling.
“Away,” Jadda Tabha said calmly. “I’ve come to tell you that she will not return for some time. Possibly ever.”
“Where did she go? What did she say to you? The dumb bitch is always lying,” the man sneered.
“I know a lie when I’m told it,” Jadda Tabha said, her grey eyes sharpening to something more like steel. “You should worry less about what she has told me and more about what you are telling me now.”
“Insolent old woman!” the man proclaimed and he moved to hit her, as he had learned that this was a way to escape truths that he’d rather not hear. This is not true.
And, particularly in the case of Jadda Tabha, a mistake.
The man screamed as his hand broke across the old woman’s cheek. “You would be better off beating the mountain,” Jadda Tabha said as the moon rose in the east and the air rang with the cries of night hunters. She sighed, looking down at him as he sat crying in his own doorstep. “Ah, what am I to do with you, child? The priests of the sun would have you do penance, the priests of the moon would have you hunted. Either way, you would end up dead.”
“Mercy,” the man begged and Jadda Tabha raised an eyebrow.
“You ask for mercy? You, who hurt those you think can’t or won’t hurt you back? Who spread lies to hide your misdeeds? You ask me for mercy? Very well.” Jadda Tabha stepped back, holding the man in place with her steely gaze. “Perhaps you will be redeemed, after all. But if you harm another living being, it will be the end of you.”
And with that, Jadda Tabha turned him into a bee; another worker for her hives.
It is said that if a person is being abused by their family or lover and can not make the trek up to Jadda Tabha’s hut, it is enough to tell the bees. Even if uttering the words is too much, it can be worthwhile setting up a hive. The bees are eager to earn Jadda Tabha’s forgiveness. They help her keep an eye on things.
