Nine Goblins(15)

But the leg had gotten splinted and wrapped, and the doe was walking more easily on it already, and beyond that, it was in the hands of whatever gods looked after the articulated skeletons of deer.

He pulled on the rusted handle of the pump until water gushed out. He washed his hands, then plunged his whole head briefly under it. Refreshed and spluttering, he headed back up to the farmhouse to look something up.

Sings-to-Trees, while not having many fragile things, did own a small library, which he kept locked in a cedar chest for safekeeping. One look at the outside of the chest—it was scorched by fire, scored by claws, chewed by teeth, and some kind of acid had etched a random design in the lid—made it obvious why something as fragile as paper was on the inside.

He had several herbals, full of small, neat drawings of plants and careful notes (two of which he’d written himself.) He had Sleestak’s Guide to Common Farmyard Maladies, and Diseases of the Goat, (it was amazing how many of those showed up in trolls) and Thee Goode Elf’s Alamanack (which contained many, many ‘E’s, and not much useful information), and the exhaustive Herbal Remedies, which was six inches thick and full of bookmarks. He even had a dog-eared copy of Medica Magica, which was full of outright lies and falsehoods, but every now and then had something worth paying attention to.

The book he really wanted was near the bottom. Sings-to-Trees dug down, building up precarious stacks of leather bindings on either side of the trunk, until he found the volume and lifted it into the light.

The silver leaf had long since flaked off the cover and the letters had become a series of flat spaces in a sea of tooled leather, read as much with the hand as the eye. In the language of humans, it read Bestiary.

The elf sat down and began turning pages carefully.

There was no index. The author had been a wizard, and had been doing well to hold it together long enough to write the descriptions, which were rambling in places and painfully abrupt in others, when they weren’t downright insane. There were no chapters, and nothing resembling alphabetical order. The entries showed up where they showed up, and given the nature of some of the comments interspersing the text, the reader was generally grateful to get that much.

The pictures, though…the pictures practically moved on the page. Even in scratchy black and white, they shone like little gems. The elegant neck of the unicorn flexed, the serpentine mane of the catoblepas writhed, muscles pulsed in the shoulders of the great boar.

Magic may have been involved. Sings-to-Trees rather thought that the author’s gift had been visions, because the creatures gave every evidence of being drawn from life, and in some cases, like the kraken or the ice-moles, that would have been quite a feat.

He was two thirds of the way through the book, scrutinizing each illustration carefully, before he saw it.

The carefully articulated skeleton of a stag gazed back at him from the page.

“…thee cervidine or cervidian does range widely through the wold, being in all ways like unto a true deer, saving that it be made of Bones and not of Flesh. (Whyfor are you poking at me? Stop! Stop, I implore you!) The cervidian reproduces by manner unknown, though it is said that they may build a fawn of bones, and so imbue it with essential life, (the poking to cease! To cease!) but I have not been witness to this and consider it may be folly. It is known the cervidian is much fond of magic and very curious, like unto a magpie, and will oft be found in areas of great mystical disturbance, which perhaps it may eat, for it takes no sustenance of grass, (I will become angry if there is more poking!) and only damps its bones in water and dew.

(Why do you not stop…?!)”

It went on in that vein for quite a while, and by the time the author had gotten control of himself again, he was talking about the limerick contests held by manticores.

Sings-to-Trees closed the book thoughtfully. Of course, just because the cervidian was attracted by magical disturbance, it didn’t follow that there was one happening nearby, but it was still…interesting. He hadn’t seen such a creature in all the years he’d been out here.

He should probably send a pigeon to the rangers and ask them if anything weird was happening.

There was an almighty crash from the hearth. Sings-to-Trees bolted to his feet.

The raccoon had learned how to open the hutch, and had celebrated its newfound freedom by knocking the hutch over, along with the iron fire grate and the tea kettle that had been warming there. It sat in the midst of the wreckage, paws clasped in glee, and greeted Sings-to-Trees with a happy “Clur-r-r-r-r-p!”

The elf sighed. He had enough trouble without borrowing more. He scooped up the raccoon cub, rescued the kettle, and began putting books away before his patient got any more bright ideas.