The Fabulous Beast
To SH.
(The following passages have been taken from a journal found in a fireproof box in the smouldering ruins of Chalkdown Farm. I trust you to assess their worth, both as a possible record of actual events and of their financial value if the contents are proven to be factual. I would be grateful for your complete discretion on this matter until we have established those two points. How you proceed to reach a conclusion I have no idea, but I have been told you are the best person to approach on matters of this kind. I shall be in London until the end of the year and await with anticipation your findings).
Yours, R.L.S.
~
I have a room here in Amman in Khalid Ibn Al Walid Street (few of the road names consist of only single words) overlooking a market. The noise is bad but the privacy good. My Palestinian landlord is a discrete individual who knows of my interest in the Dead Sea scrolls and is of the opinion that those who sold the scrolls on the black market ought to have important parts of their anatomy removed and displayed for the benefit of the populace. He is a Christian but believes the scrolls should have remained in Jordanian hands, in the country where they were discovered.
At the time the scrolls were found at Qumran, on the north west shore of the Dead Sea, modern Jordan was only a few months old, having been governed by the British since they had wrested it in 1922 from the Ottoman Empire. The Turks had administered it as part of Syria; the British called it Transjordan. In the winter of 1946/47 it became the independent Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan under the rule of King Hussein.
A Bedu shepherd boy named romantically Muhammad-the-Wolf found the scrolls in a cave after one of his flock went missing. The archaeological treasures were in sealed earthenware jars, a total of seven, wrapped in linen. The scandal that followed the discovery, of marketing the scrolls, procrastination, incompetence, secrecy, and a host of other unfortunate occurrences, is now part of history. Those few scrolls which did remain in Jordan had been placed at my disposal due to the influence of an acquaintance of Colonel Douglass. I was in Amman to study The War scroll – to search for references for a book Douglass was writing. I had found nothing really to excite him in this scroll, though the passages where the sons of light fought with the sons of darkness might hold some interest. I had also however obtained a single fragment of a leather scroll found later in one of the nine further caves – Cave 7 in fact – on which there was a reference to a strange and marvellous beast. This was the kind of information Colonel Douglass was desperate to obtain, thin though it appeared to me.
Yesterday evening, while I was studying this fragment which, like all those in found in Cave 7 was in Greek, not Hebrew or Aramaic, there was a sharp knock on the door. I pulled back the bolt, fully expecting to see my landlord only to find a stranger confronting me.
The man stepped smartly into the room without being invited and shut the door quickly behind him.
'Mr David Wilkins? My name is Abdulla Rashid,' he said in a low tone, 'and I am known to your master, Colonel Douglass.'
'You are mistaken,’ I said.
He had been in the process of undoing a hessian sack and he gave a little cry and started to re-tie the bag.
'You are not Mr Wilkins?'
'I am David Wilkins,' I replied, to put him at his ease, ‘but Colonel Douglass is not my master, nor anything like it – I'm a freelance researcher, not a slave.'
He smiled at this, revealing several gold teeth 'Ah-ha, you joke with me, Mr Wilkins. But I have here in this bag something you will not laugh at. I have found another amphora at the Pharos site . . .’
Something dawned in my memory. ‘Ahhh, you're the man Colonel Douglass met in Egypt! I remember he told me you had found several ancient parchments for him.'
Rashid gave a little bow and smiled again.
He began undoing the sack. 'What I have here for you, this time, are two parchments – no, not parchments, hides -from the ancient time of Jesus Christ – such as those you have come to see in Jordan.'
'You mean scrolls?' I said, excitedly.
He shrugged. 'I think so. These are not made of paper or bronze, like some, but of animal skin – you know? The language is Aramaic – I have looked at it myself. The writer is talking of a strange animal that roamed the Earth before we came here – before men walked in the world.'
'You understand Aramaic?'
'And Hebrew, and Ancient Greek – what, you think I am ignorant? why do you think I peddle in such things? – because I know the worth of my goods? If I were a goatherd, I would give them to you for nothing, but unfortunately for you,' he grinned gold at me again. ‘I am a learned man.’
'Can you leave them with me until tomorrow morning? I'll meet you at the coffee shop on the corner of the market. If the scrolls are any good to me, I'll pay you then – if not, you can have your goods back.'
'You think I can trust you?' he asked, but with a trace of humour in his voice.
'You most certainly can. Colonel Douglass will be my bond – you know that.'
He nodded and handed over the sack. 'Treat my goods well, until they are yours, then you may burn them for all I care.'
With that he left. I bolted the door behind him.
~
Feverishly I opened the sack and took out the two scrolls, wrapped in linen. I carefully removed the first one from its protective cover. Under the dim light of a twenty-five watt bulb I attempted to decipher the Aramaic script. The contents appeared to be a list, of arms and men, and I wondered if what I had here was simply another War Scroll, a kind of quartermaster's inventory.
The second scroll, which I laid carefully alongside the first on the wooden table top, disappointingly seemed to be a continuation of the first, though I did find a reference to ‘the creature which we call The Mother’ which seemed to me to be promising.
While I stared at the second scroll, my eyes sore from working under such poor light, something happened to make me jerk backwards and stare in disbelief. It seemed to me that the two scrolls had moved closer together, independently, as if attracted to each other magnetically.
Indeed, I subsequently only managed to keep them separated by some effort. It seemed as if the edges were melding together, melting into one another, as if made of soft hot wax.
Unsurprisingly, this strange phenomenon interested me more than the texts on the hides. I studied the edges of the scrolls and found their rippling hems locked easily together like pieces of a jigsaw. From their markings they appeared to be two halves of one animal skin – possibly a goatskin, or gazelle hide – which had been cut right down the middle into two sections.
I placed the two edges together again. Once more they merged at the edges. It was astonishing. This time I left the two parts to join thoroughly, seeing no harm in allowing their union. Within in an hour it was impossible to part them without the use of a sharp implement.
This incredible curiosity excited me a great deal and I knew now that Rashid had made a definite sale, whatever his price.
~
I have acquired three more pieces of the strange hide. One was a covering for a scabbard which sheathed an antique Oriental sword belonging to the Museum of Macau. I recognised the hide by the unique markings, which revealed a close relationship with the two (now one) piece I already own. Chinese pirates obtained it for me while it was on its way across the mouth of the Pearl River to Hong Kong airport, destined for an exhibition in Paris. The second, a strip, was a large bookmark in a sacred volume owned by Buddhist priests in Burma. And finally, the best and largest, there was a Zulu war shield, said to belong to Shaka himself and used to decorate the gate to his kraal.
The extraordinary markings – their singularity, for in all my years of research in and around the museums of the world I have never come across such hide – lead me to believe that they belonged to a creature which has been lost to human knowledge. A marvellous beast of some kind, like the sabre-toothed tiger, or the mammoth, yet even more distinct, more rare than either of those prehistoric creatures. If I can obtain more pieces – and I certainly intend to try – I shall endeavour to recreate the original shape. I am helped in this by the ability of the material to join with itself at the appropriate positions.
~
Colonel Douglass is dead. In a way I am relieved. My research for him was getting in the way of my true work: to restore the beast. Since discovering the first two skins, which were luckily part of the same document, I have gradually been gathering more of the whole hide. Most of the sections – though certainly not all – have been used to record sacred works. (Not surprising considering the nature of the pelt and the creature from which it came.) Among those gathered, stolen, purchased and permanently borrowed, are:
~
An ancient and sacred Native American (Pawnee) drumskin.
~
A Tibetan religious banner, supposedly carried by those priests guarding the Dalai Lama, when he was taken to India after the Chinese invaded Tibet. It was stolen by badmashes on one of the mountain passes and sold on by them to a curio collector in New York.
~
Three khana or sections of a Mongol-Kalmuck ceremonial yurt.
~
A cloak used in the rituals of the two Afghanistan Pushtun tribal divisions – the Ghilzai and the Durrani. (These two groups were forever fighting over ownership of the garment.)
~
Book covers for a uniform edition of the works of Aleister Crowley, including his writings on Thelema and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. (It was in one of these books that I found my first insight as to the original owner of the whole hide. Crowley writes of a unique fabulous creature which roamed the earth in prehistoric times, from whose womb sprang other forms of life.)
~
Several of the pieces of the precious hide have come into my possession through diligent research. There are medieval stories of knights on quests: I have been on many quests in search of many grails. Fortunately I have no concerns about money. To put it bluntly, since Colonel Douglass died and made me his benefactor I am a rich man. Inherited wealth. I can think of no better purpose for my money than using it to restore a creature previously lost to natural history. In any case, it is an investment. The colonel stipulated in his will that his fortune should only go to me if I continued with his work: well, I believe I am continuing with his obsession. Oh, yes, it has also become an obsession with me now. When I have gone as far as I can go with it, I am sure the museums of the world will be bidding for possession of it. What dreams I have in that recreation! My head is spinning with the wonder of it all. I am so lucky. So very lucky. To have found – albeit by accident – a previously unknown extinct creature which will ensure my immortality in the world. I will be up there with the Leonardo de Vincis, the Isaac Newtons. I will be the man who found and recognised an unknown fabulous beast.
~
Despite its age the thatched cottage in Wiltshire is proving an ideal central location for the pursuit of fragments of the beast's skin and their painstaking and oddly dangerous re-assembly. Not far from the cottage itself is a huge barn, out of time with the dwelling, but standing on secluded land common to both. As tenant of the cottage I am entitled to use of the barn. It is a massive wooden structure, criss-crossed with beams, at one time used not only to store hay, but also to house cattle during the winter on two storeys. There is a kind of drawbridge arrangement which drops front the first floor of the building to the ground which once allowed the animals a sloping run up to the top stalls. When the beast is ready to enter the world, it will be by this ramp.
Colonel Douglass himself was too obsessed with his personal goal to bother with the barn, but it is the perfect place to store and examine fragments of the beast as I uncover them. when I first discovered the barn the structure was sound: the cross members, purlins and yoke braces are all of solid oak, as strong now as when they were in Elizabethan times. Some of the jack rafters needed attention and the planking on the walls has grown flimsy, but my handyman William Enifer is a fair carpenter and is up to renovating any rotten struts. The illumination is good, through the skylight windows which William fitted and is almost of an artist's studio quality: a soft, dusty light, falls obliquely on the subject from both sides. Like most of the older buildings which look out over the moors, there is a window in the shape of a crucifix under the gables at the east end. A lamp within this window, when lit, helps to comfort and guide lost souls on the wasteland at night.
Much to William’s chagrin I no longer light the lamp within the cross, since I want no strangers entering the barn, lost or otherwise.
~
Even as I acquire my pieces, my strips, my sheets of hide, the great three-dimensional jigsaw begins to take shape in the the barn. I ponder on Crowley’s sentence, especially on that word, unique. He surely could not have meant there was only one beast? A single creature with no means of reproducing its own kind? That would make it a direct creation of God or nature, depending on your beliefs. An Adam without an Eve. Or perhaps – since Crowley seems to believe the beast produces other creatures, an Eve without an Adam. Yet – and the thought makes my heart pound in my chest with excitement – perhaps it could be so? If it were true, what would be the creature’s lifespan? A hundred years? A thousand? Ten thousand? Or even – forever? The pieces join, as if life were still in them. Perhaps the creature has not died at all, its many parts merely scattered too widely for it to show signs of life?
~
This is unbelievably wonderful! I do not have to find all the pieces to the complete hide. Where there are gaps it grows between them. The area around these spaces has to be complete, but a hole the size of a broad-brimmed hat simply fills itself overnight. Even more astonishing it is becoming a solid entity, not an empty skin which I later have to stuff. The beast constructs its own shape not only from without but now also from within. It continues to grow like a fungus feeding on its own remains, filling the empty sac.
Bones have formed within, and flesh around those bones. Behold, the marvellous an old poem begins. I now behold it. I don’t know how it’s happening. It’s not magic, I know that much. I don’t believe in magic. It has some sort of science behind it – a tree-grafting, flesh-grafting science – which has been lost to, or was never ever discovered by humankind. Once the hide was on its way to completion some sort of chemistry took over, began to produce secretions which encouraged the growth and reproduced the cells from what it already had. There is a racial memory there amongst those cells, which has been unlocked, and is now rampant. The beast forms itself by the hour, the day, the month. It will be whole before long.
~
I decided to show my beast to William this morning. I took him into the barn, up the wooden stairs where he stopped dead at the top, stunned by the sight which he beheld in the shafts of dusty sunlight coming through the windows.
It is a magnificent, enormous creature. No animal beauty, but awesome in its length and girth. At least twice the size of an elephant and, if I were to liken its shape to another animal form, I would say it resembles an Artic musk ox, though the hair is not quite so shaggy, nor so long as on that shambling herbivore. It has grown horns: marvellous high curving horns that start by going in, towards its massive skull, then sweeping outwards, slimming elegantly to finely-pointed tips. They grow with some kind of indigo pattern which appears to be etched in their surfaces. These resemble tattoos, on much the same design as the markings on the actual hide: centripetals, swirls, mazes. There are great hooves, these not cleft, on the end of its legs, and a broad, bushy tail trails the dust on the floor of the barn like a bridal train.
As Crowley has written, it is of the female gender.
William viewed my creation with awe in his eyes.
‘Oh, Lord save us,’ said William, crossing himself. ‘I’m lost what to say, sir.’
‘Say nothing, William,’ I murmured. ‘Just drink in the sight of a creature seen by no human before you and me. When this beast roamed the earth Man was just a twinkle in God’s eye.’
‘What are you goin’ to do with ‘im?’
‘I’m not sure yet.’
William looked me directly. ‘Why show it to me, sir?’
This was a good question and one to which I had no satisfactory answer. I suppose I wanted a reaction, even from someone like William; some praise possibly, for my work to date; a boost to the ego. I had performed a miracle and I needed to be supported in my sense of achievement. There was no other living person I could show the beast to, except William, whose simple discretion I knew I could rely upon. Colonel Douglass had trusted William completely, because he was of that eremite breed which holds things close, does not gossip to friends let alone strangers, and guards his secrets more jealously than the sphinx does hers.
‘I thought you might like to see it. You must have wondered what I was up to in here. I wanted to satisfy your curiosity on that score.’
William gazed at the beast, his critical Wiltshire yoeman’s eye roving over the creature as it might do over some strange giant which had stumbled off the Salisbury Plain. He shook his head, wonderingly.
‘What is it?’ he asked at last.
‘Honestly? I don’t know.’
‘You’re not having a joke a with me, are you?’ He looked up and around, into the rafters and towards the back of the barn. ‘You got some sort of mechanics? Bellows and what not? Some sort of wind pump, eh? You made it up, didn’t you?’
I was confused. ‘You mean did I construct it myself? A fake? No, no. This is an actual creature which once lived on our planet. It is destined for some museum, I suppose.’
‘Museum?’ retorted William, edging back down the stairs. ‘Zoo, more like. It’s bloody breathin’. That bugger’s alive.’
A chill went through me. I turned and stared hard at the beast. As I did so, it slowly lifted its great head and looked at me with clear hazel eyes.
~
Thankfully William had the good sense not to rush out and blurt the discovery to the first person he might meet on the road. He did run away, but only as for as the nearest public house, The White Horse. There he quietly downed several pints of beer, slept the night in ditch, and returned to the cottage the following morning. He was still in a state of shock, but I managed to sit him down in a warm kitchen and put several mugs of coffee into him. All the while I explained to him that he and I were special human beings, chosen by some higher entity to witness the rebirth of an extinct creature.
‘Who knows the secret of life?’ I said to him, as I plied him with coffee. ‘Life as we know it simply sprang from the Earth in the beginning of the prehistory of the world and though no such similar scientific miracle has occurred since, there is no reason why such a thing can’t repeat itself . . .’
I was making it up as I went along, trying to persuade this pragmatic man that such a thing was not supernatural, but simply the regeneration of a natural episode in the history of mother earth. In the end, so long as I could allay his superstitious suspicion that witchcraft was involved, that it was simply an unusal and rare kind of science that was responsible, a science that was of course sanctioned by God, he seemed willing to remain as the handyman at the cottage. My work, he told me, was nothing to do with him. He was a practical man, with not much learning, he told me. He didn’t hold with woodland magic nor any of that wayland smithy stuff, but if I said it was a natural thing, though not usual these days, then he would try not to make a fuss.
But I could see he was still not totally convinced, so I continued my gentle argument.
‘There are patients in hospitals,’ I said, ‘who have died on the operating table and they have been brought back to life with by administering a bolt electricity to their hearts. You must have heard about things like that?’ I followed this with an outright lie. ‘And you know, in Siberia mammoths – you know what they are? yes of course you do – well, mammoths have been found frozen whole in tombs of ice. They have been encased and preserved there since prehistory. Yet, when thawed out and treated with – with electricity – their hearts begin to beat again . . .’
‘There’s much in the world I’m not good at understandin’,’ he said, ‘and one of them’s scientific things. Someone once tried to tell me how electric works and it seemed like magic to me.’
‘Exactly, William. No one alive really understands electricity, but we know it’s there and we know it’s natural. Who’s to say our creature out there in the barn did not experience a bolt of electricity during that lightning storm we had the other night? Yes, that must have been it. That wild storm that came off Salisbury Plain? You remember, William. There’s our answer, eh?’
In the end, I had William in the palm of my hand.
So, the beast is alive. How that has occurred is indeed an unsolvable mystery to me, but something in the original nature of the hides contained the secret of regeneration of life. No wonder indeed that those hides had been venerated by holy men since the beginning of history. No wonder that they had been used as parchment for sacred scripts. Priests and shamans had recognised in them something unique and wonderful. Here was a new and marvellous discovery, my discovery, and a huge wave of elation went through me as I studied the beast in the mellow light from the barn’s dirty windows.
~
She is huge, but docile and bovine looking. Her coat is now covered in symbols – the indigo tattoos of which I wrote earlier – and it would seem they are her camouflage. They look strangely like an enigmatic alphabet of some kind, though this might be just my imagination working overtime. Her fodder is hay and she will eat fresh grass if allowed to roam in a meadow. I am still at a loss to know what to do next. Whom should I contact? What will happen to her when I do? I feel a strong possessiveness towards my beast. Why should I hand her over to others to do with as they wish? Would I be believed if I told the story of her creation or would people think me mad? I have no doubt they would be intrigued by this creature which appears to be unique, but would they believe she was given life by my hands? I very much doubt it. They will invent stories of me finding her alive on the plain and proclaim her origin to be an unsolvable mystery. If the worst comes to the worst, they might even put her in a zoo, or some freak circus for the ‘public benefit’!
I listen to her slow, laboured breathing, her munching of the hay, and I’m left in this quandary as to how I’m going to launch her into the world. In the meantime we have begun to allow her out to pasture. She is so camouflaged by her indigo markings as to be almost invisible from a distance. Certainly one has to be within fifty yards of her to make out any sort of realistic shape. She is able to roam over an area of the plain closely watched by one of us. We discourage the odd trespassing rambler and keep a keen eye for any legal army personnel. A vast area of Salisbury Plain has been the property of the Ministry of Defence for many a long year and is used for army exercises and manoeuvres. In truth the farm is just inside the border of MOD property, but farms such as mine are permitted to continue their livelihood and ownership of private land that has been theirs for centuries on the understanding that the ministry has rights of access on occasion. Thankfully neither William nor I have ever seen a tank or unit of swaddies anywhere near the farm.
I have purchased rifles for William and myself so that we might protect her from any harmful animals, such as foxes or wild dogs. William asked whether he was to fire on any humans that approached our creature. I told him it was inadvisable, even though we were protecting our rights, but I voiced it in such a way as to give him the idea that the law would understand it if we found it a necessary action to take. William grew up with firearms – shotguns to fill the pot and rifles to rid the land of rooks – and is an excellent marksman. I have not had such an upbringing but my own weapon is of the best quality, and with telescopic sights is easy to handle, aim and fire with accuracy.
~
Staggering! Incredible!
It was William who three weeks ago discovered that the beast had given birth to a creature, as prophesised by Crowley. But what an amazing creature! Since then there have been one or two more births, as astonishing as the first. My plain-thinking William is again upset and shaken of course by the wild strangeness of this turn of events. One would be. But I shall bring him round to my way of thinking, which is that this is a link that has been missing from Creation since Man came into the world.
The first birth was a half-grown unicorn, its symbolic single horn unmistakable, though this appendage was pliable at first and only hardened later. There followed a griffin, then a fox-like creature but clearly one we would term ‘mythical’, followed by a senmurv and a winged lion known as a lammasu. All are fabled creatures that over the centuries have formed part of our different national cultures, but which most today regard as fictional. We all know the red dragon, and the green, both of which have been adopted as symbols of national pride. However, no one in today’s civilised world recognises the dragon as a real creature, living or extinct, and simply accepts that it was an invention of Man’s vivid creativity.
A small cluster of ‘mythological’ animals have been given birth. All of these creatures are, it seems, sexless. They appear to have no means of reproducing themselves, which was obviously why there was a need for a ‘mother’ creature to provide the birthing function. The beast, the fabulous being which I have recreated, is the mother of those legendary creatures.
William and I corralled our collection of fabled beasts in a large spreading outhouse once used for housing pigs, the individual stalls perfect for the job. Our minds were reeling with possibilities. Even William, in his state of ignorance, was now aware that we had the makings of everlasting fame and fortune in our hands. I needed time and space to think, it being crucial to make the right decision on how to present this discovery to the world. It is so big, so earth-shattering in its revelation, I know that even so-called incorrupt governments would have no hesitation in ignoring laws regarding ownership. I do not want my discovery taken out of my hands immediately I make it known to the world, which is what will happen if I do not take firm, prior steps to protect my proprietorial rights. I am uncertain how to do this, but I do not intend to proceed without establishing some sort of defence.
As an aside, with each new birth the mother beast sloughs her skin. This shedding is not of the thickness of the original hides which I had fitted together to give life to my beast, but is nevertheless strong enough to serve as a fabric. I have made shirts out of the skins for William and myself to wear when we are out with the mother beast as she roams her pastures. I have also fashioned blankets for our horses. These provide camouflage and make us as invisible as she is herself on the rugged Wiltshire landscape.
We are her outriders, ever watchful and jealous of her safety, our rifles always loaded and cocked ready for use. I have reached the point where I would have no hesitation in preventing anyone who tries to harm her. I am her protector. She is more precious to me, to the world, than any other living creature. There is not one other animal alive, including man or woman, who is more valuable to the heritage of our planet. A heritage lost until my discovery.
~
The shirts have become impossible to remove. They first stuck to our bodies, then melded, and now they form a new skin over the old. I joke with William that we have become Maori warriors, but he is quite traumatized by this state of affairs and scrubs himself with a floor brush incessantly, trying to remove the indigo markings. For myself I am happy with this new situation. I feel it brings me closer to the mother beast and her offspring, as if they are my siblings, the unicorn, the griffin, the wonderful dragon. I feel refreshed in my mind and am experiencing a new beginning to my life. The rest of the world may rush by and headlong into new forms of music, pastimes and fashion, but we here in our hidden corner of Wiltshire are happy to wait for the right moment to reveal to humankind a new page in the history of our planet.
~
Disaster.
I woke just three hours ago, at 2 o’clock in the morning, with William shaking me by the shoulder.
‘Fire!’ he yelled at me. ‘Fire! Fire!’
Roused from a deep sleep I was befuddled and all I could see by the strange flickering light coming through my window was a mad-eyed William. His voice was shrill and he appeared almost demented. I sat up quickly and shook my head, trying to clear it sufficiently to listen to his shouts.
‘The piggery, sir! It’s on fire.’
The piggery? I leapt out of bed and pulled on a pair of trousers. Then we both rushed outside and William pointed, unnecessarily. Indeed, the old pig sties were blazing, the flames reaching thirty feet in the air. There was the stink of burning hair and flesh, which made me gag on my breath. The heat was tremendous as the red and yellow inferno swallowed the blackness above it and oxygen rushed in from beneath to further fuel the disaster. Thankfully the screams of the trapped residents ceased after a very short while.
‘Did you manage to save any?’ I cried, hopefully. ‘The creatures, are any still alive?’
William shook his head as we both stared at the conflagration. Nothing inside that building was going to escape. The lower part, perhaps reaching three feet from the ground, was brick, but the upper walls and roof were timber. Inside the piggery there had been heaps of hay and straw everywhere. Once a fire started in there, it would have spread very quickly. I now see how inflammable the building was, but now is too late. I should have thought about it earlier, though if I am honest with myself I have not been attentive to ordinary matters lately, being on a higher plane with my dreams of triumph.
‘William,’ I said, ‘how did it start? Did you drop the hurricane lamp?’
‘No – no, sir. I was in with Her Majesty,’ he answered, pointing to the old barn, ‘but then there’s more bad news there, eh?’
The hairs on the nape of my neck rose. ‘What bad news?’
‘She’s gone. Busted out. Ran off somewhere.’
‘What?’
‘Not my fault,’ cried William, backing away from me. ‘She just lit out, when the fire started and them animals started wailin’.’
I ran over to the barn, but it was dark inside and I had no torch or lamp with me. I fetched a torch and then returned to inspect the interior. The beast had indeed broken out, through the back wall of the barn. The planks there, old and somewhat rotten, had been shattered leaving a huge hole. I gathered my thoughts. This was a terrible occurrence, but not a catastrophe. Once we had saddled the horses, we would probably soon overtake the mother beast and persuade her to return, as we always did when she was put out to pasture. No doubt she would be highly strung after the night’s events, but with calm handling I thought we would get her home safely.
It was then I heard a sound, a low moan. I looked at her straw bedding and shining my torch I saw a naked form there, slick with afterbirth. It was the latest arrival from her anomalous womb, obviously abandoned by the mother when she panicked and crashed through the wall of the barn and out into a dark night on the plain. I stared at the creature caught in my torchlight. It blinked and then did something that chilled me to the bone, a signal that this new ‘mythical’ creature was more than just another fabled animal. There was astuteness there and other major differences. I knew for one thing for absolute certainty, that though it might have originally been born androgynous, somewhere in its history on the Earth it had developed the means to procreate.
‘Oh my God,’ I whispered.
I stood staring down at this fresh birth in horror. The implications raced through my mind as the creature reached out to touch me with one extended limb. William was just coming through the barn doorway carrying rifles and saying, ‘Horses are saddled and ready, sir.’ He stepped up beside me and looked down at the thing lying in the straw.
William let out a strangled cry, then croaked, ‘Lord have mercy!’
I believe his next action was instinctive rather than deliberate. The rifle shot sounded monstrously loud in my ear and I reeled backwards half-stunned by the sound. When I had gathered my wits it took me some long moments before I realised that William had shot the creature through the head. There were shards of bone and pieces of flesh flying everywhere. Despite my feelings of revulsion, I half-understood why William reacted thus.
But William was gone from my side. When I ran out of the barn he was already riding through the gateway, out onto Salisbury Plain.
He shouted over his shoulder, ‘We have to kill her too, Mr Wilkins. She’s breedin’ monsters. We have to kill her and burn her.’
Then he and his horse was swallowed by the darkness.
I carried the remains of the creature William has shot to the burning piggery and threw them into the flames. The place was still blazing and hot enough to melt the iron hinges on the doors. Such a fire would soon destroy any evidence and we could return later and bury the ashes out on the plain.
Staring at the blackened carcasses of our erstwhile brood of so-called myths, I could make out certain shapes and suddenly realised what had started the fire. It must have been the small green dragon, of course, who no doubt had just discovered his special gift. The dragon would have experimented with its fiery breath, once its throat had developed its potential to blast away, thus destroying not only its siblings, but itself in the bargain.
I now had to ride out and find William, before he killed the mother beast and . . . what was it he intended to do? Burn her? Had he taken inflammable liquid with him? There was plenty of it lying around. Paraffin for the lamps. Petrol for the farm machinery. I realised the urgency now. I had to stop him destroying my chance of fame and fortune. Possibly William, who was not a stupid man, believed that if humankind were to discover we are not a natural species, but an aberrant lifeform produced by a deviant offshoot from what is regarded as normal and scientifically sound, then society would descend into chaos.
It is possible that such a revelation might eventually be welcomed as a wonderful and marvellous thing, but initially it would undoubtedly send the human race reeling from the shock of a discovery that might take decades and many violent upheavals to overcome. Old religions, cultures, beliefs and scientific philosophies would fall, new ones arise, and in that terrible mix there would be chaos and confusion, madness, terror and despair.
Yet, we had been through many shocks in our history on the Earth and have managed to overcome them without.
I swung myself into the saddle, just as a new dawn was putting her torch to the sky in the East. There is absolutely no doubt that what we had seen, that final birth of the mother before she stampeded from the barn, was mankind’s close kith and kin. I saw the expression on the creature’s face, clearly in the torchlight. There was no mistaking what kind of being lay in that straw at my feet.
We are the only animals on earth able to smile.