Read by Stephen Butterton. Inspired by Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg's Twitter thread "Fantastic Beasts and Whether to Eat Them."
"I'm not sure about this," said the knight.
The dragon rolled his eyes. They were bloodshot around the edges. It reminded the knight of - well - blood. His blood.
"It's perfectly simple," said the dragon. "You go to the rabbi and you ask him which creatures are kosher and which aren't. I've made a list." He held it up for the knight to see. It was skewered by one claw and slightly singed at the edges.
"I've never been to the Jewish Quarter before." The knight scraped one toe in the ashes at the edge of the fire.
"You came into my Jewish quarter, didn't you?"
"I didn't know there were any Jewish dragons."
"Of course there are Jewish dragons! The Bible is full of dragons."
"I can't read," said the knight. "And our priest only reads aloud in Latin."
"Of course. You military types don't have any kind of useful education, do you? You learn how to serve at a man's table, how to tend to his horse, and then when you're old enough, how to kill him a dozen different ways with pointy bits of metal."
The knight opened his mouth to speak, then thought better of it.
The dragon sighed. It felt like the blast from a bread oven. "I could just eat you." It narrowed its eyes.
The knight remained silent. The possibility of being eaten had occurred to him several times already, and it didn't get any better with the rethinking. He had already wondered if the dragon would boil him in his armour like a lobster or if he would roll him in mud as the Roma people were said to do with hedgehogs, before roasting him over the fire. Or perhaps the heat from the dragon's throat would cook him on the way down. The knight thought of the painting of Hell on the wall of his local chapel, a gaping mouth filled with teeth and flames that swallowed naked humans, while coal-black monstrosities stabbed them with pitchforks.
"There's hardly any meat on a knight, though," said the dragon. "And now I come to think of it, I believe kosher animals have to be herbivores.”
“Oh, well that’s all right, then. I eat meat.” The knight gave a nervous smile. Then his face fell.
“But what about during Lent? Or on Fridays?” The dragon could just keep him until Lent and eat him then. Or force-feed him cabbage. “You see my dilemma." The dragon waved the piece of parchment at the knight.
"Of course. I understand completely," the knight lied. He couldn't get those pitchforks out of his head. The sooner he got back to town, the better.
"Just mind you hurry and get back with the rabbi’s answer,” said the dragon. "I'm absolutely ravenous."
*
The rabbi pushed his spectacles up his nose.
"It's certainly an interesting conundrum. Unicorns, now. Definitely kosher. It's in the Talmud. But, as for the Capricorn ..." He scratched his beard. "In all outward appearance, a goat, which would make it kosher. But on the other hand, it is a sea creature without scales or fins, so ..." He made a fluttering gesture with his hand and said some words the knight didn't know. "A most interesting conundrum. Have you read this?” He lifted the piece of parchment.
"I can't read," said the knight. It annoyed him more the second time.
"Yale, cockatrice, bonnacon, minotaur." The rabbi checked them off on his fingers. "What's a bonnacon?"
The knight shrugged.
"Hirocervus, caladrius, parandrus. Your dragon certainly knows how to set a puzzle." The rabbi rolled up the parchment and took off his spectacles. "I might have to consult Rabbi Dama on this. Of course, it'll have to wait until after Rosh Hashanah. And then there's the travelling time ..."
"Travelling time!" The knight choked. "Look here, I don't think you’ve grasped the urgency of the situation. There's a dragon. A big. Hungry. Dragon. He's eaten all the deer in the Royal Forest. And most of the sheep in the pasturelands. And now he's sitting in a cave about a league north of here, wondering what to eat next."
"Knights aren't kosher, if that's what's worrying you," said the rabbi. "On several counts."
The knight thought for a moment. "Are rabbis?"
"No."
There was a pause. A grey cat in the casement opened its eyes, stretched, and went back to sleep. Cats, the knight decided, were not kosher.
"What I don't understand," said the rabbi, "is why you didn't slay the dragon."
"Because that's the meathead's job, right? Stick him with pointy bits of metal? Well, I've got news for you, pal. Dragons are smart. Wily. He got me talking. Sort of caught me off my guard. He said …”
What the dragon had said - what the knight was prepared to tell people the dragon had said - was, “What’s wrong with eating sheep?” Which was true. Technically. The dragon had said something of that nature. After the knight had extracted his broken sword from the dragon’s surprisingly tough underside. But what he had actually said first was, “Are you going to keep tickling me with that toothpick all day or are you going to do something useful?” The knight sighed. Questing wasn’t what it used to be. Dragons had evolved. The feudal system couldn’t keep up.
“Like I said, dragons are wily,” he told the rabbi.
The rabbi raised an eyebrow.
"Just a thought, son, but maybe you're in the wrong job.”
*
“Can you light a torch for me? I can’t read this,” said the dragon.
The knight folded his arms. He hadn’t wanted to come back to the cave, but the rabbi had insisted. And he couldn’t face the Guild of Wool Merchants until he came up with a foolproof assurance that the dragon would stop devouring valuable livestock. Preferably the dragon’s head. Or maybe just its tongue. Did dragon’s tongues grow back if you cut them out? Maybe he could persuade the dragon to donate his for the sake of diplomacy.
“Light it yourself. You’re the one with fire-breath,” he said.
“On the Sabbath? What do you take me for?” said the dragon.
The knight made a rude gesture behind the dragon’s back.
“Well, I suppose it’s a start,” he said, when the knight had complied and was standing in a niche above the dragon, holding the torch aloft, like an ornamental lamp stand. “He says I’d better stay off the capricorn and cockatrice until he’s consulted the other rabbi, but the yale and hirocervus sound fine. Half goat, half stag, you see.”
He grinned. At least, the knight hoped it was a grin. It contained an awful lot of teeth.
“And he asks whether a minotaur’s neck is human or bull. I can’t remember, can you?”
The knight shrugged.
“Oh, and he says to make sure all beasts are properly slaughtered and the blood drained before being burnt and devoured.” The dragon looked at his claws. “This is much tougher than I expected.”
“Didn’t you know this stuff before?” said the knight. “Being Jewish and all.”
The dragon sighed and eased onto his belly. Smoke plumed into the cave’s upper regions, extinguishing the torch. After an awkward moment, the knight put his arm down.
“My parents weren’t particularly observant,” the dragon said. “You know how it is. Move away from the family, lose touch. But one day, I caught this satyr. Tasty little morsel. And he started cursing me, calling me every name under the sun. And I thought, fair enough, he’s about to be eaten. But then he started saying, did he look like someone who chewed the cud? Just because he had goat feet, he still wasn’t kosher. And anyway, I couldn’t eat him on the grounds of tzaer ba’alei because he was sentient enough to know what I was doing. And on, and on, and on …”
“He was Jewish too, then?” said the knight.
“Jewish?” said the dragon. “He was a rabbi!”
The knight thought for a moment.
“If the satyr was a rabbi, why didn’t you ask him all these bloody questions?”
The dragon looked uncomfortable.
“I sort of ... broke him.”
*
“Yes, I can see that’s going to be a problem.” The rabbi put down his book and looked at the knight. “It can’t be easy to butcher your prey in the correct way with just claws and teeth.”
The knight shrugged.
“I don’t know. He can hold a pen.”
“Yes, but even so. Once the bloodlust is on him, you know.”
“Hmm,” said the knight, absently. He was peering at the rabbi’s book. So much writing! The pen-strokes looked like twigs and branches, with berries scattered in between. How did you turn that into words a man could understand? Was it magic?
“An interesting argument Rabbi ben Yohai puts forth there, isn’t it?” said the rabbi. “Oh, I forget. You can’t read Hebrew.”
“I can’t read at all.” The knight forced the words between his teeth. A week or two ago, the knight had been proud to be a man of action. What boy dreamed of being a clerk? Now - between the dragon and the rabbi - he felt ashamed that the mystery of the twigs and berries was beyond him. This was the way of the future, thought the knight. Mankind would be solving problems with writing when swords and lances were obsolete.
He noticed the rabbi was still talking.
“It’s a pity about the satyr,” he said. “A great pity. I had no idea how many fantastic beasts belong to our faith.” He took another book down from the shelf. “What that dragon needs right now is a shochet.”
“A what?” said the knight.
“A Jewish butcher. Someone who knows which beasts to kill, how to apply the knife, to take care of the blade …”
“To stick them with pointy bits of metal,” said the knight. His gaze returned to the rabbi’s books.
The rabbi gave a little smile. He opened the book he had just retrieved and pushed it towards the knight.
“Would you like to learn how to read? You can start with this.”
The knight squinted at the page of twigs.
“Is it the Bible?”
The rabbi grinned, looking not unlike the dragon.
“No. It’s a recipe book.”
*
The Council of Wool Merchants often wondered what had become of the knight they had sent to deal with the dragon. However, as nothing had been heard of the dragon either - and the flocks were growing in numbers once more - they decided it wasn’t important. Some things were best left alone.
Had one of them passed the knight in the street, they probably wouldn’t have recognised him. He no longer wore armour, and his beard had grown down to his chest. He also had many new words in his vocabulary these days. Words like cholent, kugel and latkes. And the merchants would be particularly surprised to learn that, not only could he pronounce these words correctly, but read them too.
But none of the merchants were likely to pass the former knight in the street. He hadn’t been to the town in years. And when he did pay a visit, he would always stay in the Jewish Quarter with his friend, the rabbi, with whom he would sit up late at night, debating the finer points of kosher law.
But generally, he was to be found in his restaurant. The finest - and indeed the only - kosher restaurant catering exclusively to the tastes of Jewish dragons and other fantastical predators.
“I’ve got to hand it to you,” said the dragon. “This bonnacon brisket is perfection. How do you get it so tender?”
The ex-knight winked. “Trade secret. Come back next week. I’m getting some cuts of yale in.”
The dragon grinned. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
(c) Elizabeth Hopkinson, 2021
Elizabeth Hopkinson is the author of Asexual Fairy Tales and many short stories, including “A Short History of the Dream Library”, which won the James White Award. Elizabeth has appeared at Leeds LGBT+ Literature Festival and Ilkley Literature Festival Fringe. She lives in Bradford with her husband, daughter and cat.
Stephen Butterton trained at the London Centre for Theatre Studies in 2002, finishing his training with a run in The Accrington Pals at Jermyn Street Theatre. He then spent time in Fringe Theatre and student film productions, and of course several appearances for Liars' League, before leaving London in 2007. He now lives in Hastings, drowning in his day job as a vet. With very little time left over for acting and the written world, he is delighted to be taking to the stage once more for Liars' League!
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