Part 2. “The attacks upon the infant Weo” or “Homa’s Struggle.”

Unfortunately, so famous did the story of Homa and Weo become that it spread across the great, black Tieroga, that lies on the western coast of Kenglund, to the savage islands of Garog and their evil ruler, Klawhanna.

Klawhanna and her kind had long ago abandoned the worship of the good, green Mother and, instead, cut horrid demon idols out of the black rocks of Garog; giant black monsters that loomed over the shoreline and glared out of the fog at passing ships and, should any of those ships sail too close to the island, it was told that the idols would reach out and crush the ship to splinters in one enormous, stone taloned
hand.

Klawhanna’s jet black fortress was built upon the top of a volcano called Black Horn and, in the centre of her fortress, she kept an evil, magic well which she called her ‘Hell-Well” and, whenever she summoned up evil, she would lower the bucket of her Hell-well down into the mouth of the infernal volcano and it would dredge up something monstrous.

When news of Weo reached Klawhanna’s pointy ears, she went to her Hell-well and summoned up a terrible monster from the demon realm. The monster was called a “Lemongrin” and it was a sort of giant, except that it had a nose as long as a winding road and two ears as huge as albatross wings and teeth as large as craggy rocks and claws so long and sharp that they could cut through tree trunks and the Lemongrin travelled by sneezing because, so large was its nose, that just one of its sneezes was enough to propel it for hundreds of miles and Klawhanna commanded the terrible creature to fly to the village where the infant Weo lived and kill the child and anyone who got in its path and the foul Lemongrin smiled a wicked smile as wide as half a mile and, with one great sneeze, propelled itself across the Tieroga and over the hills of Nuan, landing outside the farmhouse of Homa and her husband and Homa was the one who saw it first and who, screaming, picked up her baby in her arms and ran out of her house just in time to avoid being crushed as the wicked Lemongrin stomped upon the roof of the house, squashing it flat.

Homa couldn’t think what to do to protect her baby but, luckily for her, just touching the infant Weo seemed to give Homa amazing strength, wisdom and skill and, without hesitating, Weo picked up a pitchfork and hurled it, like a javelin, striking the Lemongrin in its enormous left eye.

Clutching its left eye, the Lemongrin howled in pain, leting out a scream like a wild, winter storm but, after plucking the pitchfork out of its eye and snapping its handle like a toothpick between finger and thumb, the Lemongrin looked down at Homa with its remaining right eye, boiling with hatred, and continued to grasp and claw after her with hands as large as the cars on a fairground ride and so Homa, with all of her magical might, picked up a hot iron stove, filled with hot coals and, with only one hand, hurled the stove at the Lemongrins right eye and the stove hurtled upwards as fast as if it had been thrown by a huge catapult and it hit the Lemongrin right in the centre of his right eye and the hot coals burned his right eye so that now he was blind in both eyes.

However, after screaming and howling in pain, the Lemongrin roared and snorted with vicious laughter and boomed, in a voice like summer thunder, “ I don’t need my eyes to hunt you down little mouse. My nose is so powerful that it can smell a fart upon the moon and it will sniff out you and your little baby and, when it finds you, it will grab you up like a tentacle and throw you into my sharp, hungry mouth”, and, with its nose, just like a tentacle or like a wriggling sea serpent, it sniffed out Homa and the infant Weo and so, without a second thought, Homa snatched up a big sack of ground pepper in one hand and, emptying the contents onto the ground, used the superhuman strength, which she drew from her magical baby, to blow up a big sandstorm of ground pepper and the pepper was sucked by sniffing, up into the enormous nostrils of the Lemongrin and sent the monster into a terrible fit of sneezing and its sneezes were so powerful that it shot up into space and didn’t stop until it hit the red,hot coals of the sun which immediately burned it to a cinder.

When she was sure that the Lemongrin would not return , Homa hugged Weo close to her bosom and kissed the childs head and rejoiced. Her only sadness was that her farmhouse had been crushed into straw,sticks and rubble by the Lemongrin's giant foot, however, the moment that she kissed Weo’s head, to her astonishment, her farmhouse
rose up out of its ruins and was restored, miraculously, to its former wholeness and,
again, Homa rejoiced and thanked the goddess for her kindness and mercy.

However, the evil witch Klawhanna did not rejoice when she heard of the Lemongrin's defeat and her attempts to kill the infant Weo never ceased. So many shapes and sizes of monster crawled from Klawhanna’s wicked well; Belgums and Squeechers; Fangruels and Skrikes, Vangoms, Blugrocks and the creeping, purple death but, everytime she sent out a new monster to kill the infant Weo, it was always defeated and the child was kept safe.