Á Bao A Qu

Region/Culture: Southeast Asia
Mythos: Literary Mythology, Malaysian Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Monsters and Beasts
Mythical Attributes: A translucent threshold-creature that gains form, colour, and luminosity in direct proportion to the moral state and progress of whoever climbs the Tower of Victory’s staircase.
Role in Mythos: A bestiary creature recorded by Jorge Luis Borges, supposedly attached to the Tower of Victory at Chittor in northern India, where it waits for a climber whose soul is perfect enough to let it reach the top.
Relation to Humans: The Á Bao A Qu does no harm to the people whose footfall it follows; it merely shapes itself to the quality of their inner state and falls apart again when they falter. Every climber it has ever followed has ultimately failed it, and it has spent centuries returning to its formless sleep on the first step.

On the first step of a long red-sandstone staircase in northern India, something lies asleep. It has no shape worth speaking of yet, just a kind of translucent blue presence pressed flat against the stone, breathing faintly in the late-afternoon heat. Most who climb the staircase do not know it is there. Centuries of pilgrims and tourists have set a sandalled or trainered foot on it without feeling anything. But every once in a while, the foot belongs to someone whose intentions matter, and the formless thing on the step begins, slowly, to wake.

The staircase belongs to the Tower of Victory at Chittor, a nine-storeyed monument raised in the fifteenth century by Rana Kumbha to commemorate a battle he had won against the Sultan of Malwa. It rises in tiers of carved sandstone and marble above the ruined Rajput fortress, every wall and arch crowded with figures from Hindu cosmology, and a narrow spiral of one hundred and fifty-seven steps coils up through its dark interior to a terrace at the top from which, the old chronicles claim, you can see the loveliest landscape in the world. The thing on the first step is supposed to want that view very badly.

It is called the Á Bao A Qu, and it cannot move except when a person climbs. The slightest pressure of an upward step wakes it, and it begins to follow the climber, hugging close at the heels. With each rise it grows a little more itself. Faint colour gathers in its skin, a luminous blue with peach undertones, and small extensions push out from its surface like fingers testing the air. A traveller who pauses partway up and looks back may see a fold of light keeping company with the back of their leg, no heavier than a held breath.

By the upper storeys it has begun to glow. Its outline sharpens, its appendages lengthen and curl, the blue of it deepens until the tips burn almost golden in the failing sun. Anyone with eyes to see what is happening might think a slow, deliberate creature has been assembling itself out of the climber’s effort. The Á Bao A Qu is, in a sense, made entirely of that effort. It has no biography that belongs to it alone. It only exists, fully, in the wake of someone else’s ascent.

The terrace at the top is the only place it can achieve its complete shape, and it can only do so if the climber who brought it that far has attained perfection of soul. The old account, recorded by Jorge Luis Borges and attributed to either Sir Richard Burton’s introduction to the Arabian Nights or to a slim Argentine volume called On Malay Witchcraft, calls this state Nirvana, and is precise about its difficulty. In all the centuries the Tower has stood, the texts say, no climber has ever met the requirement.

What happens instead is this. The climber falters somewhere in the upper turns, doubts themselves, looks down at the steepening drop, and the spell breaks. The Á Bao A Qu, which had been so near full presence a moment before, lets out a small sound that the old chroniclers compare to the cry of distant silk being torn, and begins to come undone. It loses its golden edges first, then its blue, then its outline, and it slides back down the staircase ahead of the climber, faster than gravity should permit. By the time the disappointed pilgrim reaches the ground floor again, the creature is already back on the first step, flat and translucent, waiting. It always falls.

The thing’s pedigree is not what it pretends to be. Borges first set down the Á Bao A Qu in his Manual de zoología fantástica in 1957, and gave Burton as the source. By the time he expanded the book a decade later as the Book of Imaginary Beings, the source had quietly changed to one C. C. Iturvuru’s On Malay Witchcraft of 1937, a volume that does not appear to exist outside Borges’s citation. Iturvuru, conveniently, was Borges’s friend. No earlier mention of the creature has ever been found in any travellers’ account, bestiary, or Malay text, and the consensus is that Borges invented it and dressed it in just enough specific furniture to make the borrowing seem real. Borges, who never visited the Tower of Victory and almost certainly invented the creature, gave it a complete moral biography anyway.

What the creature can do is perceive the inner state of whoever happens to be on the staircase. As they ascend, the Á Bao A Qu reads their soul through their feet, the way other beings read the world through eyes, and shapes itself to the quality of what it finds. Where the climber is courageous and clear, the creature gathers form quickly. Where the climber is divided, it lags and dims. At the highest reaches it cannot deceive itself; only true completion will hold it together, and true completion does not come. Its limits follow from this. It cannot move without a climber to follow. It cannot reach the terrace without a soul perfect enough to carry it there. And it cannot do anything to make a soul more perfect, only to register what is and is not present. Its existence consists of being almost lifted into being, century after century, and never quite arriving.

That waiting is what makes the Á Bao A Qu strange among invented bestiary creatures. It does not menace, it does not feed, it does not punish or reward. It simply expects, generation after generation of climbers, to be allowed at last to finish. It is the patient half of an arrangement in which the other half keeps failing to hold up its end. Borges, who tended to populate his fictions with beings caught in elegant, incomplete loops, gave this one a staircase and called the loop a creature.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Á Bao A Qu?

The Á Bao A Qu is a translucent, shape-acquiring spirit said to live on the staircase of the Tower of Victory at Chittor in northern India. It sleeps formless on the first step and only takes on full body, colour, and luminosity when a person begins to climb, gaining definition with every step the climber rises.

Where does the Á Bao A Qu live?

The Á Bao A Qu inhabits the spiral staircase of the Tower of Victory, a nine-storeyed fifteenth-century monument built by Rana Kumbha in the Rajput fortress of Chittor. It rests on the first step until a climber’s footfall stirs it, then follows the climber upward through one hundred and fifty-seven turning stairs toward the terrace at the top.

What does the Á Bao A Qu do to the people who climb the Tower?

The Á Bao A Qu does not harm climbers. It simply follows them at the heel and shapes itself to the moral state of their ascent, gaining colour where they are clear and lagging where they falter. When the climber gives up or turns back, the creature comes apart with a faint torn-silk sound and slides back down the staircase.

Why does the Á Bao A Qu never reach the top?

The Á Bao A Qu can only achieve its complete form on the topmost terrace if the climber who brought it there has attained perfection of soul, which the old account calls Nirvana. According to Borges and the texts he cites, in all the centuries the Tower has stood, no climber has ever met that requirement, and the Á Bao A Qu has always fallen back.

Did Borges invent the Á Bao A Qu?

The scholarly consensus is yes. Jorge Luis Borges introduced the Á Bao A Qu in his 1957 Manual de zoología fantástica and attributed it to Sir Richard Burton’s introduction to the Arabian Nights, later swapping the source to C. C. Iturvuru’s On Malay Witchcraft of 1937. Neither attribution holds up: no pre-1957 source mentions the creature, and Iturvuru was Borges’s friend, which suggests the citation is a deliberate fiction.