Kayeri

The anthills come up first, in the wet season, when the rain has soaked the llanos and softened the ground at the roots of the trees. Where the ants break the surface, something larger is following the same tunnels up. The Cuiva of the Colombian and Venezuelan grasslands know the sign for what it is. When it rains, the Kayeri are sure to appear, rising through the holes the ants have made, and the first anyone hears of them is often the bellow of a cow that is no longer where it was tied.

They belong to the rain the way mushrooms do. In the dry months they lie underground or curled beneath the roots of a tree, dormant, and long stretches of hard sunlight keep them there. Then the season turns and the water comes and they surface with everything else that the wet ground pushes up. This is the heart of what a Kayeri is, and it makes the creature difficult to point at. All the mushrooms of the forest are Kayeri. So is the agouti that bolts through the undergrowth, so is the broad-leaved unkuaju plant, so is the Ficus vine that strangles its way up a trunk. A dragonfly can become one. The sweet coyoweri fruit was their invention. The being is less a single monster than a presence distributed through the living forest, condensing now and then into something with hands.

When it does take a shape a person can face, it is humanoid and it is large. Past that the descriptions slide. One account gives it the outline of a giant wearing a great hat the color of a mushroom cap, yellow or blue-green; another has it looming as a ficus, more plant than man. No two witnesses seem to have agreed on the edges of it. What stays constant is the size, the strength, and the hat, and the single sound it makes. The whole of a Kayeri’s language is one word, “mu,” or “mü,” which it repeats when it is angry while it beats on the trees with sticks.

Its appetite is simpler than its form. The Kayeri eats cows, only cows, and it eats them completely. It can lift a full-grown animal and run, and it runs fast. When it settles to feed it takes the flesh and the entrails and then the horn, the hoof, and the bone, leaving nothing on the ground to mark where the meal happened. A herd can thin out over a rainy season with no carcasses to explain it, and the Cuiva lay those losses at the Kayeri’s feet. The creature does not stop at livestock. The virile ones keep two wives apiece, being bigamous by nature, but they crave human women as well, and a Kayeri will entrance a woman and draw her out to it against her will. To that it adds robbery, murder, kidnapping, rape, and mischief of every other kind. It is not a subtle evil.

One story keeps its shape where the creature will not. A hunter’s two daughters were carried off by a Kayeri, and the father went after them. He caught the thing before it could do the girls any harm and put a bone-tipped arrow into it, and the Kayeri toppled into the river and became a pebble on the bottom. That is the only way it dies. Everywhere else on its body it is as good as invulnerable, but a bone point in the kidney kills it, and death turns it instantly to stone. Getting the daughters home was another matter. As the family fled they could hear the forest filling with the low “mu, mu, mu” of other Kayeri hammering the trunks in their fury. “He fell out of his hammock and broke his back,” the father shouted back at the noise, and whatever the words were meant to do, they worked. The family reached home and the drumming faded behind them.

The powers follow from what the creature is. Because it belongs to the whole wet forest it is everywhere in the rains and nowhere in the drought, and because it is a giant it carries off cattle and men without effort and outpaces anyone who chases it. Its near-total invulnerability is of a piece with the stone it becomes when it dies, as if it were only ever a hard thing wearing the shape of a soft one. The weakness is precise and small. The kidney is the one place a Kayeri can be reached, and only bone will do it, not iron and not stone, which is the kind of knowledge that gets passed down carefully because a hunter gets to use it exactly once. Kill it there and the menace collapses into a pebble a child could carry in one hand, harmless as any other rock washed up from the river.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Kayeri?

A Kayeri is a giant, cattle-eating ogre from the folklore of the Cuiva people of Colombia and Venezuela. It is a rain-season being whose essence is spread through the forest, so that the mushrooms, certain plants, the agouti, and dragonflies are all regarded as forms of the Kayeri. When it takes a solid shape it appears as a large humanoid with a broad, mushroom-like yellow or blue-green hat.

What does the Kayeri eat?

The Kayeri feeds exclusively on cows. It is strong enough to pick up a full-grown cow and run off with it, and when it eats one it consumes the entire animal, including the flesh, entrails, horns, hooves, and bones, leaving nothing behind. The Cuiva blame the Kayeri when cattle vanish or die during the rainy season.

How do you kill a Kayeri?

A Kayeri can only be killed by shooting it in the kidney with a bone-tipped arrow, because it is effectively invulnerable everywhere else on its body. Once it is struck there and dies, the Kayeri immediately turns into a harmless stone or pebble. In one Cuiva tale a hunter kills a Kayeri this way and it falls into a river and becomes a pebble.

When do Kayeri appear?

Kayeri appear in the rainy season, especially just after rainfall, rising to the surface through the holes made by ants at the base of trees. The presence of anthills during the wet months is taken as a sure sign that Kayeri are near. In the dry season they lie dormant underground or beneath tree roots.

Are Kayeri dangerous to people?

Yes. Beyond destroying cattle herds, Kayeri rob, murder, kidnap, and commit violence against humans, and they are said to entrance and abduct women. They are considered thoroughly malevolent, and Cuiva stories describe them beating on trees with sticks and repeating their only word, “mu,” when they are enraged.

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