Ex Bibliotheca

The life and times of Zack Weinberg.

Thursday, 5 September 2002

# 4:40 PM

I dreamed a fairy tale last night. Rather than recount it as I saw it, I think I'll tell the tale the way it would be told in a book:

once upon a time...

there was a monastery, and in that monastery there was a young monk. Next to the monastery was an apple orchard. In the apple orchard lived a farmer, his wife, and their son. The monk and the son were great friends. But what the monk didn't know was that all three of that family were secretly man-eating giants.

One day all the monks were to go on a pilgrimage. Our hero made an error calculating the supplies that would be needed. When the abbot found out, he was furious, and he forbade the monk to come on the pilgrimage with the rest of them. He had to stay behind and copy books in the scriptorium.

The apple farmer saw all the monks leave, so he snuck into the monastery to steal a pig (when you're secretly a man-eating giant, you take what you can find). He found the monk asleep on his lectern. He decided to steal the monk and eat him instead. But when he brought the monk home, his son protested: "That's my friend, we can't eat him!" So instead they let him wake up, and traded him some of their magic apple cider for a pig.

What the monk did with the magic cider ... is another story.¹