Free The Bestiary by Nicholas Christopher

you’re giving it. But now you’re on your own.” He started packing his briefcase. “And I have a class in five minutes.”
    I stood up reluctantly; I had so many questions. “Thank you for your help, sir.”
    “It was my pleasure.”
    I held up the facsimile of the Hereford bestiary. “I’ll return this as soon as I can.”
    “No, you won’t.” He opened the door for me. “It’s a gift, from me to you.”
    I was very moved. Not since Evgénia had anyone taken such a close interest in me.
    “I know you’ll make good use of it,” he said, starting down the hall.
    “I will, sir. Thank you.”
    This was a fateful encounter for me. Mr. Hood’s generosity and encouragement would carry me a long way—to places he could never have anticipated.
             
             

    T HRILLED BY ALL I’d heard, I was determined to undertake my own quest for the
Caravan Bestiary.
I wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but later realized it was one of those rare instances in which a youthful enthusiasm that could have evaporated instead grew more powerful each year. Even the fact I was a schoolboy with no credentials ended up working to my advantage: who else in his right mind would have had the hubris even to contemplate such a project—searching for something that had disappeared seven hundred years before I was born—undaunted by the failures of expert predecessors and ignorant of the obstacles before him? I now know how fortunate I had been, not just to have a man like Mr. Hood come into my life, but to have learned of the
Caravan Bestiary
when I was so young, equipped with vast stores of energy and little knowledge of the world.
    I began reading more voraciously than ever. By way of their bibliographies, indices, footnotes, and appendices, each author led me to other authors—and other creatures. For example, in
Mythical Monsters,
published in 1884, Charles Gould, the Royal Geological Surveyor of Tasmania, refers to the geographer Strabo’s description of “nocturnal serpents with bat wings” then to Strabo’s source, the Greek naturalist Megasthenes; and, in a footnote, to a chapter on flying snakes in
Folk Lore of China
by Dr. N. P. Dennys of Singapore, who in turn credits a monograph on fantastic herpetology by Hans Spuyfel, a Dutch professor in Jakarta. Though I would learn more formal research methods as my education progressed, I never abandoned the eclectic approach that seemed to suit my subject matter. Perhaps the more rigid, academic mind-set of those who preceded me had helped to doom their efforts. They were professionals, trained to be skeptical, while I was an enthusiastist, open to all possibilities and unencumbered by obligatory doubts. I was bound to make a lot of errors, but, by taking chances, and following even the most far-fetched leads, I was also liable to get lucky. As Mr. Hood had pointed out, when it came to the
Caravan Bestiary,
the miraculous ought to be embraced, not discounted. Pursuing such an elusive prize, you walked a road bound on the one side by history and on the other by a luminous, shifting terrain defined by faith as well as facts.
    All my reading served a single purpose: I was keeping a notebook in which I recorded all the beasts I thought might be in the
Caravan Bestiary.
Inclusive to a fault, I tried to keep my entries short and precise, focusing—in the spirit of bestiaries—on the animals’ most unique characteristics. Unable as yet to venture into the world, I decided that one way of searching for the bestiary was by attempting to re-create it.
    In my juvenile script, in red ink, my initial notebook entry read:

    T HE P HOENIX
    A large bird with feathers the color of fire.
    Like fire, it is sustained by air alone, and neither eats nor drinks.
    It lives in paradise, and every thousand years dies and is reborn.

    And is known by many names. The Bird of the Sun. Of Fire. Longevity. Resurrection.
    The Bird of Assyria, Arabia, the Ganges.
    A bird with