“The Evil Animal”, a snakelike monster with many horns, kills and devours all other animals. But God comes from the four corners, being in fact four separate gods, and gives rebirth to all the dead animals.

Carl Gustav Jung, Man and His Symbols

Across that river live the lepers and flesh-rot. To touch them is forbidden, and they are not allowed to drink the water. After harvest, the farmers up shore sometimes leave their surplus crops on the bank, but contact otherwise is minimal. The lepers camp a mile or so from the bank and drink from a small creek that runs beside their encampment. No one knows what lies in the wilderness beyond, but the farmers have their stories.

I’ll tell you a story I heard about someone they say crossed over into that wilderness.

It happened several years ago when summer was waning and the days were still hot. Animals began to go missing; something was eating them, and no one knew what it was. Foxes, coyotes, and wildcats are common here on the delta, but no tracks were found, only trampled grass and leaves.

One farm, tended by a widower and his son, was hit especially hard. Within a single week, they lost twenty hens and found their prized milk goat with its throat ripped open on the riverbank.

The father and his son went to the town’s wise woman and asked what thing could have killed their animals this way, and she told of a monster that came from the forest, past the lepers’ creek. She could not say what it looked like, only that it would devour all the rest if they did not kill it.

Now, the boy was nearly grown, and he was curious about the wilderness, so he boldly took his father’s hunting knife and went to the river. He waded through the water and walked through the bogs until he came to the lepers’ camp. He asked if they had seen the monster, and no one could answer him. Instead, they told him of a man who lived in the forest and sometimes visited their camp. The boy had never heard of such a man, though folks in the town often talked of criminals banished to the Wastelands. If this man lived in the forest, as they said, then he might know something of the monster.

So the boy walked on, even while clouds filled the sky, dark with late summer rain. He walked for nearly an hour, until he came to a house that looked unlike any in town, a misshapen, mutated mess of clapboard and rusted metal hidden beneath the trees. All around him, the boy heard a humming noise, and it was then that he saw the monster crawling through the bushes. The thing resembled a black rat snake, only longer and fatter, its body covered in horns like a goat or a sheep. Towards the head, long bird legs stretched and dragged its slow, slithering body.

The boy didn’t move; he was too scared to kill it. He raised his knife for fear that it might come closer, but watched instead as it headed towards the house. A man stepped out with a long crook in his hands, with which he lifted the monster from the ground. His head was wrapped in bandages, and the skin on his face was red and peeling. He stroked the monster’s horns and looked up as he heard the boy’s feet rustle the leaves.

“Who are you?” he asked. “What are you doing here?”

“Your monster killed our chickens and our goat. I’ve come to kill it.”

The man denied this and asked the boy to come inside. The boy was afraid, but the storm was picking up, and the thought of walking home through the rain and the mud seemed unappealing. So he followed the stranger inside.

As he led the boy through the rooms, he told him his story. He had been a scientist in one of the domed cities out east, what they called a genetic engineer. He was a good one, too, but he had stretched the boundaries of that magic and done some things they considered wrong, things that went against nature. “Cloning malpractice,” the stranger called it. For this, he had been banished to the Wastelands, and to this delta he came to build a laboratory, generating his own power from the sun.

He showed the boy the things he had collected–webbed toed pigs, long-tailed rats with wings, rabbits with two heads, strange birds, creatures the boy could not name–all dead, and floating in jars. There were cages filled with live animals, every color scale, feather, and fur. But the boy was most surprised to find hens that looked precisely like the ones that had been lost, down to the black feathers and bright red combs.

“How is this possible?” the boy asked.

“All it takes is a single feather, a scrap of fur,” the stranger answered. “Whatever he catches I remake.”

“You’re some kind of sorcerer,” said the boy. “Or a god.”

The stranger laughed and said, “I suppose it looks that way to a primitive such as yourself, but it is not magic, I assure you.

“But these hens belong to us. You must give them back.”

“Don’t you see, boy, that these are not your hens? Even if I were to give them to you, they’re not ready. There are more tests to run, things to fix.”

Impatient with the stranger, the boy grew bold and flashed his knife. “Then I must kill your monster.”

The stranger held his monster close like an infant and pleaded with the boy. “Perhaps we cut can a deal,” he said. “The goat you lost–I have its blood. I can make you a new one, a better one. Give me some time. If you do not kill him, you shall have whatever animals you desire.”

The boy stared at the monster and again looked at the jars and cages, wondering what new, strange shapes these animals would take. Disgusted, he thrust the knife against a bare spot on the creature’s body. Against the blade, it squirmed and spat.

The stranger gasped and pulled back. “Do you realize how many years I spent building him? They said I was wrong, but what do they know about beauty? For this monster, as you call him, I was banished. I will not give him up so easily. Take your hens. Leave. Tell no one what you’ve seen.”

“Fine,” said the boy, “but your monster must never cross the river again. If it does, I will kill it.”

An agreement was made. The boy took two of the hens and ran from the house.

Outside, a great storm was brewing, wind from all corners and a hard, heavy rain. The boy slogged through the forest, crossed the stream and the bogs, and made it home before nightfall.

The two hens he brought back with him were not enough to replace all that had been lost, but no sign of the monster was ever found again. The hens were said to produce as well as any, though the farmers say all their kin are mysteriously silent. The chicks do not twitter, and the roosters do not crow. They have been cursed, the farmers say, as though something were lost in the remaking.

Whether this story is true or not, I cannot say. I’ve been floating along this delta for many years, and I have seen many strange things on these shores. One night, years ago, I thought I heard something rising from the water, crawling up the bank. I looked up and saw a long snake-shape, but this thing was slower, heavier than any snake I’ve ever seen. Perhaps I caught a glimpse of horn, I do not know. I only knew then that I was glad to be on the river, and I have never longed since to go deeper into the wilderness.