Phuhoi - the white-haired fortune bearer

A folktale from Somdal.

Long ago, before time was measured in clocks and calendars, when the people of Somdal still whispered their prayers to the old gods of the hills and forests, the land thrived beneath the gaze of unseen spirits.

Life was not a struggle for survival, but a dance of sacred balance.

To plant a seed was to plant a promise to the earth.

To step across a stream was to offer respect.

To enter the forest, a negotiation.

The people did not rule the forest. They walked beside it.

Every stream had a spirit.

Every tree a towering elder holding ancient truths.

Every stone, a silent witness to forgotten times.

To move through the land without reverence was to invite misfortune. To ignore the old ways was to go unheard by the wind and unseen by the sun.

There were gods for rain, gods for hearth, spirits for millet, for childbirth, for mourning, for wind, for wild bees, and for the final breath of the dying.

And then there was Phuhoi — whispered of in unease, shrouded in silence, and feared in a way the others were not.

Not a god.

Not a ghost.

Not something that could be named without trembling.

Phuhoi did not dwell in temples or rest on altars. No songs were sung. No carvings were made. No offerings were left.

Only stories.

Stories of a figure glimpsed at the edge of sight — thin, pale, and near-naked. A being neither young nor old, but somehow before both.

Their long white hair flowed like cold smoke, spilling down past the knees and trailing far behind, too long to be gathered, too heavy with silence. The forest did not resist it — it carried the hair across roots and stones, as though the land itself bore the weight of it, letting it sweep over moss and fallen leaves like a whispered offering. Even when gathered over the shoulder, half of it still dragged behind, drawn gently along the ground like a ghost’s shadow or a broom of stars.

And the feet — oh, the feet.

Always backward. Twisted and wrong.

Toes pointed behind. Heels facing forward. No one knew why. No one dared ask.

A mark of wrongness that made the stomach turn and the skin crawl.

The backward feet were not a deformity. They were a sign. A warning. A riddle carved into flesh by forces older than words.

Phuhoi’s footprints led nowhere — or everywhere.

Follow them, and you would circle the same tree until the bark began to whisper your name.

Follow them, and you might walk into the mouth of something you didn’t believe in until it closed its teeth around you.

Some say Phuhoi was born from the first mist. Others claim they were cursed by the sky gods to walk forever alone.

But the elders say Phuhoi simply is. Not cursed. Not blessed. Not a punishment. Not a protector.

Just there—like hunger, like wind, like nightfall. A being that moves with the forest — quiet, watchful, beyond good and evil.

And fast.

Faster than hawk-flight. Faster than fear.

They say Phuhoi runs faster than sight. One blink, and they are gone. Leaves spiral in their wake. Branches tremble but do not break, and even the wind seems to hold its breath.

Phuhoi was also known as Hæi Kapho, the bearer of fortune.

It was said that to see Phuhoi — or to find a single fallen strand of their white hair was to touch the edge of miracle. Wishes would be granted. Fields would yield beyond imagining. Sickness would vanish. Some claimed he carried within his locks the blessings of all the forest gods combined.

But Phuhoi was rarely seen. And never twice by the same soul.

Still, the forest remembers. And so do the people.

There was a morning, long ago, in the mist-veiled paddy fields of Ngotā Khanāi. A family rose before the sun, as their ancestors had done, to tend to their field.

The mist was thick — not the gentle kind, but a heavy, breathing thing. It curled around their ankles and drifted up to their chins like a living veil. The bunds between the terraces gleamed damp and narrow, threading like veins across the hillside.

And then they saw it.

A figure crouched low along the bund, motionless.

At first, they thought it a lost child. Or a wild thing. Or a mad one from the hill tribes.

But they drew closer, they saw it— the long white hair. The bare, pale back. The ribs that moved gently with breath. The backward feet.

Phuhoi.

It was combing the tangled strands of hair with a shard of bone. The motion was slow, deliberate, like a ritual. Each stroke seemed to hum in the air. Dew clung to the hair like stars trapped in spiderweb. It seemed unaware of their presence, lost in the ritual of tending to his sacred locks.

The family froze.

Not one word.

Not one breath.

Phuhoi did not turn. But suddenly — utterly — it stopped moving.

The bone-comb stilled.

And then, in a blur so fast it hurt the eyes, Phuhoi stood and ran — not away from them, not toward them, but into the forest.

The backward feet kicked up no mud. The body blurred like a dream just before waking. The trees parted. The air broke. The world seemed to hold its breath.

No sound.

No footprints.

Only silence.

The family crept to the spot. The earth was undisturbed. But the air… it pulsed. It held something. They did not speak of what they saw.

Not that day. Not for weeks.

But the harvest came — and it came beyond reason.

Their field yielded twice the grain. No pests, no rot, no drought. The golden heads of rice stood proud and fat, almost glowing in the sun. The elders nodded, and the family knew, deep in their hearts, that Phuhoi’s blessing had remained.

They say one of his sacred hairs must have fallen there, unseen, woven into the soil by fate itself.

The Ngotā Khanāi paddy field, became legendary. It was never sold, not for gold, not for land, not even in times of famine. Instead, it was passed down through the bloodline, from one generation to the next.

Even now, hands of the same lineage till its sacred soil, speaking of the field not as property, but as a living story—one held in awe, spoken with reverence, and guarded like a gift from the ancestors.

But that was not the only tale.

Another tale breathes on colder nights—murmured quietly when the fire dims and shadows stretch long across the walls.

A tale not yet lost to time, barely older than ten winters, still clear in the memories of the old, and never fully cast aside by the young.

They scoff, as youth often do, yet they lean in when the tale is told—eyes wide, lips still—as if deep down, they sense that some stories, no matter how strange, are too rooted in truth to be forgotten.

It speaks of an evening unlike any other, on the winding forest path that leads to Kasomtā—one of the seven sacred settlements of Somdal. Perched high on the upper ridge, where the mist lingers longer and the wind carries the earthy scent of damp leaves and wild ginger.

The sun had just slipped behind the western ridges, leaving the sky painted in streaks of gold and ash.

Two sisters — the elder and her younger shadow — walked the ancestors’ road that wound through Somdal. The cicadas had fallen silent, and the forest held its breath, as if listening for something long forgotten.

At Letko — the shadowed slope where, in the season of rains, spring water sings through stone and root, its voice rising like a ghost-song among the trees — they passed the sharp bend beyond Letyantā. There, beneath the hush of old branches, they began the slow, silent climb toward Phāchāmtā — the hill where stories do not sleep. Then they stopped — all at once.

Not from fear. No. But from something older, deeper. A stirring older than memory. An instinct woven into flesh and bone, rising from the soles of their feet, prickling the back of their necks — that strange, unshakable knowing that the forest had just spoken their names.

And there, ahead of them, where the path curved into shadow and moonlight — stood a figure.

Pale. Still. Thin as hunger.

White hair spilled down the back like a waterfall. The body was bare, lean as bone. And the feet — unmistakable.

Backward.

The older sister stopped. Her heart thudded like a drum.

The younger whispered, “It’s them.”

The figure twitched — then, in a blink, vanished into the underbrush. Not walked. Not stumbled. Ran. Faster than any deer, without a sound, swallowed by the green.

The siblings came running, shouting toward the house of the old woman who lived just below the road—frightened by what they had seen, desperate for comfort and safety in her familiar home.

They rarely spoke of what they had seen. But the memory never left them. It clung like mist to the edges of their minds — vivid, impossible, unforgettable.

And in the years that followed, something curious happened.

The lives of their family began to shift — not in leaps, but in quiet, graceful turns. Hardships eased. Paths opened. Dreams once too distant came within reach.

Some called it luck, others credited their determination. But the villagers of Somdal nodded knowingly.

They had seen Phuhoi.

And those who encounter him are never left untouched. No one in the village laughs at the tale.

Not in Somdal.

Because here, people know: Phuhoi is not a legend.

They are a truth that walks.

Even now, in Somdal, if you walk the bunds before sunrise — when the mist hangs low and the wind carries the scent of bamboo leaves —  you may find a single white hair glistening in the dew.

Pick it up with care.

Hold it gently in your palm.

And speak your wish.

But remember: Phuhoi gives only what the forest allows.

He cannot be bought.

He cannot be summoned.

He walks when he chooses, leaves what he will, and touches the lives of those who believe — truly believe — in the old ways.

So walk softly.

Step lightly.

And listen closely.

If the forest holds its breath…

If soft footsteps echo behind you on the misted path…

Do not turn your head.

For the forest sees you. And Phuhoi may be near

Because if you glimpse the backward feet…

You will not walk home alone.