This month I bring you a different approach to the Bestiary. I have been working on a series of folk tales to incorporate into my new novel, tentatively title The Hand and the Eye. I found a wonderful Medieval Bestiary maintained by David Badke in Victoria, British Columbia. The inspiration for this folk tale came from his Leucrota entry.

Leucrota’s Feast

Leucrota was lonely. He was hungry and lonely. The emptiness gnawed inside him. He paced the empty land, and found only spiders and beetles. Both were poor fare and poorer companions for a hungry, lonely leucrota. When he opened his mouth to sigh, his one great tooth-bone stretched from ear to ear. Lifting his bulbous nose to the wind, he searched for the scent of his dreams. His grandmother’s grandmother told a story about a magic stone that granted wishes. He never heard that story aloud, but remembered it in his blood, the way he remembered to hunt and to bury his skat.

Leucrota dropped to all fours and loped off toward the Eye as it sunk below the mountains. Running soothed his hungry heart. Luecrota had the body of an ass, but with a horse's head, chest and legs like a lion, hind-quarters of a stag, and cloven hoofs. He loped along the desert scrub-brush, here and there catching the faintest whiff of magic. How many wishes would he be granted? What distinguished life that awaited him, full of riches and food and companions?

The desert sand gave over to desert rock, and Leucrota lost the trail of his stone. Nothing, not even the poisonous Seps could live in this inferno. Leucrota blew great gobs of dust from his nose and raised it again to the frail wind. He sniffed toward the Hand and toward the Eye, until there, under the stink of austerity, he found the faintest odor of magic.

Leucrota grinned his one-tooth grin, and set his gargantuan nose to the ground to follow the scent. He walked a long way. When he could find no water, his legs cramped. He sucked the dew off morning leaves and kept going.

He walked until he came upon a green stone set high above his head, atop a cairn.

My wishing stone, thought Leucrota. He called his wishes up to it.

“I wish for food! Tasty rabbits and grouse!”

The stone did not move. It did not shine or speak. Leucrota thought the stone could not hear him, so he climbed the precarious cairn, one rock at a time. Weak with the effort, barely able to speak, Leucrota whispered to the stone.

“I wish for a family, and children.”

The stone did not move. It did not shine or speak. When Leucrota could hang on no longer, he fell heavily to the ground. Bones cracked. Leucrota did not care. He would not be getting up again.

“I am so lonely,” he cried. “And hungry. So hungry, my heart is eating my liver.”

His lament caused the stone to weep. Great green tears fell down to rocks and when they splashed into the ground, they grew into rabbits and grouse and squirrels and foxes and all manner of animals that scurried away to hide in the underbrush. Leucrota watched them go and grinned his one-tooth grin.

“As soon as my bones heal, I’m going to have a feast.”