But Cacus had always been different from the others. They walked with an even gait; Cacus shambled, because one of his legs was too short and oddly bent. The others could stand tall and straight with their arms at their sides; Cacus’s back was hunched and his arms mismatched. His eyes were sharp, but there seemed to be something wrong with his mouth; he never learned to speak, and could make only a garbled noise which sounded like “cacus”; it was from this noise that he acquired his name. His face was grossly misshapen; another child once told him that a potter made his face out of clay, then threw it down and stepped on it.

Few people ever looked at him directly. Those who knew him looked away out of pity; strangers drew back in fear. His deformities should have marked him for death in the hour of his birth, but his mother had contrived to spare him, pleading that the infant’s prodigious size-he was so big that she very nearly died in bearing him-was a promise of future strength. She had been correct. While still a child, Cacus grew to be bigger and stronger than even the biggest, strongest man in the village.

When that happened, the villagers who had pitied him began to fear him.

Then came the Hunger.

The winter was dry and cold. The spring was dry and hot. The summer was drier and hotter still. Streams dwindled to a trickle, then to nothing. Crops withered and died. The sheep could not be fed. When it seemed that things could not become worse, one night the mountain shook so severely that some of the huts collapsed. Not long after that, black clouds came from the west; they promised rain, but sent down only lightning bolts. A lightning strike started a fire that swept across the mountainside and destroyed the hut in which the grain was stored.

The villagers turned to the elders for advice. Had things ever gone so badly before? What could be done?