Animal Lore | The Snow Leopard

In the high valleys of Shimshal, where the wind carries the scent of snow and stone, people speak of the mergichan — the mountain spirits.

They say these beings dwell in the mergich realm, among the peaks and high pastures where no impurity dares enter. It is their sacred home — pure, bright, and alive with the bleating of their wild flocks of ibex and mountain sheep.

When summer comes, humans climb into that realm. Before they do, they call out to the mergichan, announcing their arrival and asking for kindness — that their cattle may grow fat, their milk be plentiful, and their hunts be blessed.

For the mergichan are powerful, and though not cruel, they do not forgive disrespect. A careless act, a polluted spring, or a word spoken in arrogance can stir their anger.

Among these spirits, the mergichan who takes the shape of a snow leopard is the most mysterious of all — fierce, beautiful, and elusive. It is said that sometimes she befriends men, guiding them in dreams, showing them where the game hides, or protecting them from harm. But to others, she remains unseen — a silent watcher among the cliffs.

One such story is told in Shimshal — of a man whose fate became tied to a mergichan in the form of a snow leopard.

It happened long ago. The man and his uncle had gone to the summer pastures near Lemarz Keshk, below Furzin. One evening, as the sky turned the colour of embers, the man went to fetch water from a spring. There, he saw a woman standing by the stream — her scarf white as snow.

He froze, hidden behind a rock, wondering who she could be. No one came to that place. No woman would wander there alone.

When his uncle joined him, he whispered, “I saw a woman here. She vanished just now.”

“Ya Maula,” said his uncle, “what could it be?”

Night fell. The men shared an old blanket and went to sleep. But in the middle of the night, the man dreamed that two horses rode toward him. One passed by; the other bit his leg.

He woke with a start. Something heavy pressed on his chest. Half-asleep, he tried to move — and then saw it: a snow leopard, its eyes glinting in the dark. It sat upon him like a weight of stone before slipping away into the night.

When he called out, his uncle lit a fire. Blood stained the man’s leg. “What thing was this?” they wondered, trembling.

They barred the door with a stone and lay still. But before dawn, the creature returned. It tossed aside the stone, dragged their blanket outside, and vanished into the trees.

The next day, they went downriver to the settlement and begged for help. “Send us someone,” the man said, “and a dog for protection.”

But no one dared go. That night, the snow leopard came again. It seized the dog and flung it away. All night it prowled around the hut, its shadow flickering in the firelight.

When they returned home to Shimshal, the village khalifa — the spiritual leader — said, “It was no animal. It was a pari, a mergichan in the guise of a snow leopard.”

From that day on, the spirit stayed with the man. She became his unseen companion — a guardian of the mountains. Sometimes she came to him in dreams, warning him where not to hunt, guiding him to places where game was plentiful.

“My father was with her,” his son would later say. “We saw the snow leopard ourselves once, standing on the far side of the ridge. It did not harm us — it only watched, and then turned away.”

Until the day he died, the mergichan never left him. It was said she had chosen him as her human counterpart. When he died, the bond was broken. The mountains grew quieter.

Now, people of Shimshal say the mergichan no longer walk so close to humans. “We live more at ease,” they say. “But in the time of our father’s time, the snow leopards came. It used to happen.”

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Source: Mock, 1998