"Fennec the Trickster: Three Sand Elf Folktales "

by Avrachai Westanjalawen

The oldest and best tales, say the Sand Elves, have endured so long because they exist outside of time; and so it is the way of my people to tell them in the present tense. Hear now three tales of Fennec, the long-eared desert fox; Fennec the Trickster, favorite of Huldah. Many are the accounts of his exploits, and many the fools who have fallen for his tricks. Some grow wiser by the experience, and some do not.

First Tale: Fennec and the Lions

Thus it happened long, and long, and long ago; thus it is happening now, even as I tell it.

In the desert the shadows are lengthening, and the heat of the day begins to subside. Fennec awakes from dreams of a fat desert hare and pokes his sharp nose out of his burrow. He has not eaten anything since a stringy jerboa the morning of the day before, and Fennec is hungry. So off he trots in search of some small quarry, but before long his sharp eyes spy movement in the sky afar off: kites and vultures circling, waiting. They know where their evening meal is coming from, and now the wily fox dares to hope that he does too. For in Fennec's estimation, there is one thing better than a successful hunt - and that is getting someone else to do your hunting for you.

By precarious paths known only to him, the fox makes his way up to the rim of the plateau, where he can get a better view. Then he lopes off in the direction of the gathering of carrion birds. But halfway there, his path takes him near a gentler slope leading down into a shallow valley, from which his sensitive ears detect an odd sort of growling and grunting. Curious, he trots aside to investigate.

It seems that a pride of lions has taken up residence in the valley. The whiff of musk that tickles Fennec's nose as he approaches tells him, even before his eyes do, that one of the lionesses has come into her heat, and the chieftain of the pride is taking full advantage of his opportunity. Then Fennec gives thanks to all the gods of the four-footed that he is downwind of the valley. For the fox-kind have a musk of their own, and although the alpha male and his queen have their attention focused elsewhere, the other lionesses are beginning to stir from their afternoon nap.

One might think a fox too puny for beasts so mighty to bother with, but even among lions - wise lions, at least - the Trickster's reputation is well-known. And for his part, Fennec is not inclined to strike up a conversation with lions without a very good reason. So, noting the location carefully, he backs away and resumes his journey. The fact that the vultures have not yet landed tells him that their prey either still lives, or is being guarded by some creature whose strength they respect. But hunger tends to sharpen Fennec's already considerable wits, and he presses on undeterred.

At last the fox finds himself peering over the rim of a side-canyon. A fresh fall of scree tells the story: A small chamois has broken its ankle in a landslide and hops this way and that in panic. Stalking the lame kid is a bachelor lion, bony and mangy, too old to remain with his mother's pride and too young to win one of his own.

Now, male lions are notoriously lazy creatures, who like to sleep most of the day while their harems do the hunting. Fennec himself thinks this a fine arrangement, for those who can get it. But this particular lion has no mates to hunt for him, and he clearly has not been eating well of late. Now, at last, he has the luxury to toy with the trapped, frightened chamois. For who would dare come between a hungry lion and his dinner? So he tells himself...but this lion is not particularly wise nor experienced. And he has not yet made the acquaintance of the Trickster.

Fennec studies the scene for a minute, unobserved, thinking. Then he bolts back in the direction he came from, veering his course this time to approach the lion pride from upwind, so as to announce his arrival. As expected, he finds the lion chieftain asleep after his exertions, and the lionesses rising for the evening's hunt.

"Hail, fair queens of lion-kind!" calls the fox, giving his courtliest bow. "Game is afoot! Many antelope, migrating in search of water! All may eat their fill tonight!" The lionesses glance at one another skeptically. "Fennec must be up to one of his tricks, else why would he risk coming among us?" they murmur. But the alpha female is restless and wishes to be gone. "He can do little harm to our mate in our absence," she answers. "Perhaps he hopes to feast on our leavings. Let us investigate."

As soon as the lionesses have slipped away, the Trickster puts his plan into action. Checking once more to make sure that the alpha lion is quite unconscious, he leaps into the spot where the lioness in heat had been lying and rolls about in the dust until his fur is full of her estrous odor. Then he scampers back towards the side-canyon as fast as his paws can carry him. Once again, Fennec circles about so that he may make a proper ceremonial entrance. The scrawny lion looks up from the kid that he has just begun to feed on, regarding the intruder with suspicion.

"Hail, young prince of lion-kind!" calls the fox. "Why has so handsome a fellow as yourself no mate to hunt for you?" The foolish lion preens at his words of praise. Then he notices the female lion-scent that wafts from Fennec's direction, and he pricks up his ears. "What is that I smell, fox? Have you seen a lioness hereabouts?" he inquires, forgetting all about his dinner. "Indeed I have," says his visitor confidently. "I heard her with my own two ears, moaning for a lover." For it is Fennec's philosophy that half a truth is better than none at all - even when dealing with his mental inferiors.

"Tell me where she is to be found!" demands the young lion impatiently, and Fennec obliges, giving clear directions back to the spot where the alpha lion sleeps in the shadows. But as he is about to leave, the lion's eye falls regretfully on his abandoned dinner. "If I go find her now, the vultures will come down and eat the chamois. It will be all gone by the time I get back!" he grumbles. Fennec smiles his foxy grin. "No need to fear about that. I will stay and chase the birds away while you are gone, if you will promise me a share of your leavings."

The lion ponders. "That seems like a fair bargain. But how do I know that you will not eat it yourself when I am not watching?" Struggling hard to keep from smiling at how simple this is, the Trickster assumes an expression of wounded pride. "I swear by my mother's ears, I will watch the carcass for you. Go quickly now, ere the lioness wanders away!" Little does the lion know that Fennec's mother is long dead, and her ears long ago turned to dust!

So the impatient lion lopes off with scarcely a backward glance, and the famished fox immediately sets to. After eating his fill and more, he begins to gnaw off a haunch to take home for his breakfast. It is then that he hears angry roaring far away, and knows that the young lion will soon be limping back, covered with claw-marks and in a very foul mood. So the Trickster takes the chamois haunch in his jaws and picks his way up the side of the canyon in the dusk, feeling well-pleased with his own cleverness.

The last thing he sees of that place is a cloud of kites and vultures descending on the remains of the carcass. But all the way home Fennec follows the rimrock, where he will leave no trail, and he resolves to give lions a wide berth for a good long time to come.

Second Tale: Fennec and the Pit Viper

Thus it happened long, and long, and long ago; thus it is happening now, even as I tell it.

In the desert the sun grows higher, drying up the morning dew and shortening the cool shadows. Yet Fennec has not yet found his breakfast, though he has hunted since first light. Looking about him, the fox sees that he has wandered far from his shady burrow. He is in a place of many rockfalls and fissured ground, and a smell of sulfur in the air: the Badlands of Ushnish.

Cresting a rise, Fennec looks down into a cleft riven from the rock by centuries of earth tremors. Water is there, but not water that even the dying would desire to drink: steaming hot and bitter to the taste. Gas bubbles rise from deep fissures and burst at the surface, leaving rings of mineral scum to harden at the edges of the stinking pools.

Yet life, as the desert people know full well, will find a way to establish itself in even the most inhospitable places. Fennec can see from the tiny droppings scattered about that the Badlands harbor creatures small enough to creep into the hollows under rocks and subsist on the moisture of the morning dew. What he has in mind this morning is a breakfast of rodents, but in truth the rockfalls and crevices of this place also offer shelter to other creeping things - some of them cold-blooded.

The agile fox picks his way carefully down into the clove and treads gingerly around the edges of the pools, until he finds something that looks like a footpath. This he follows around a bend, and soon comes in sight of a crude shrine. Three heavy slabs of stone have been stacked into a table, with the image of a viper etched into the top. At each corner, facing the four directions, stands a cairn of small stones offered by devout or desperate souls who find themselves passing through this dreary landscape.

Now Fennec knows that it is Huldah, not Ushnish, who watches over all Tricksters; nevertheless he casts about until he finds a pretty shard of agate, picks it up and drops it onto one of the cairns for luck. No sooner has he done so than the fox catches a darting movement out of the corner of his eye. In a flash he is after the mouse, pursuing it into a blind crevasse with no way up, even for one so sure-footed as Fennec.

Scant inches from diving into its burrow, the rodent squeals its death cry as sharp fox teeth close around its tiny body, and answering squeaks issue forth from under the tumbled rocks. Smiling with pleasure at the prospect of unearthing the den of an entire family of mice, Fennec offers up a brief prayer of thanks to the god of this place.

Having slaked his hunger, the hunter takes the carcasses of the last two half-grown mice in his mouth and trots back the way he came. But as he is about to exit the crevasse, he find that this time his way is blocked by a more formidable adversary. The full light of the sun now beats down on a flat boulder that the fox passed on his way in. There, basking in the heat in the way of its kind, lies the guardian of this desolate place: a pit viper, the serpent of Ushnish.

Now, Fennec knows that in a one-on-one contest he might break the viper's neck, but not before its venom sealed his doom. And the fox has no wish to leave his bones behind in this place as a sacrificial offering to the local deity. Ducking back out of sight before the serpent spies him, the Trickster suffers a rare and fleeting moment of panic. What if this viper on the rock is no less than an apparition of the god himself? If that is the case, then Fennec cannot hope to prevail, for all his notorious wiles.

On the other hand, he ponders, perhaps this is no more than an ordinary snake. If that is so, then the fox's superior intellect gives him a fighting chance. For although serpents are proverbially called subtle, and sometimes are sent by the gods as messengers to mortals bearing gifts of divine wisdom, your average desert-variety snake is not among the brightest of creatures.

Fennec has little time to gather his wits before the viper lifts its head and begins licking the air. "Who intrudes on my domain?" demands the scaled one. "I smell you back there. Do not imagine that you can hide from me. I can crawl into the narrowest of crevices and fetch you out. Nor can you flee faster than I can strike." Fennec realizes that, whether dark god incarnate or mere poisonous predator, the serpent's words are true. The fox has no choice but to confront his inquisitor. Perhaps his next trick will be his last.

The only way to fight one god who opposes you is by enlisting another who looks favorably upon you, reasons the fox. And so he invokes the name of his patron - not in reverence, but in such a twisted, foxlike way that it could scarcely fail to tickle the heart of the god of all Tricksters.

"Who am I?" bellows Fennec, peering from his hiding place. His courage almost quails as he spies a drop of venom glistening in the corner of the viper's mouth, but he swallows his fear and bluffs on. "Why, I am the Trickster. You may call me Huldah, and bow down to me, impious one." For as I have said, it is Fennec's philosophy that half a truth is better than none at all.

The snake chuckles - and if you have never heard a snake chuckle, thank your god, for it is an evil sound, like the first dry rattle of wind that presages a sandstorm. "If you are so powerful a being, why do you cower behind a rock?" it asks. "Come forth! Let me spit in the eye of Huldah!"

This blasphemy, of course, is just what the wily fox has been hoping for. In a matter of moments the harsh sky clouds over with a magical storm, and the imp-god lets loose a bolt of lightning that splits the boulder in half and leaves nothing behind of the foolish viper but some charred rib bones.

Then Fennec scoops up the two dead mice and flees that place as fast as he may. He nearly slips into one of the volcanic pools on his way out, and pauses only long enough to drop one of the mice as an offering on the altar of Ushnish. Through the heat of the day Fennec runs, and only when he comes at last to the shrine that he has built to Huldah in his home canyon and offers the last mouse to his patron does he dare to collapse, exhausted but grateful.

And from the Badlands of Ushnish far behind him, the uncanny thunder still rumbles in the fox's long ears, like a dark god's amused laughter.

Third Tale: Fennec and the Eagles

Thus it happened long, and long, and long ago; thus it is happening now, even as I tell it.

It is spring in the desert, the glorious brief season of bloom - where plants can grow at all - and Fennec is feeling just as smug and clever as a professional Trickster has the right to be, so long as his belly is full. Drinking water is now less scarce, as the scanty snow melts off the highest peaks, and the small plant-eating animals that are a fox's usual prey grow sleek and plump. It is the fleeting time of easy pickings in a hard country. Best of all, in Fennec's estimation, it is the season when succulent golden treasure is to be found in abundance by those sure-footed enough to scale the desert cliffs: birds'-nesting time!

So it is that we find him one morning carefully climbing a high, stony slope, setting his paws down delicately where the meagre spring runoff has left behind a scattering of loose stones. It is a trail that changes every year, but trail enough for the Trickster. At the top of the slope he pauses to catch his breath. A vertical cliff face rises above him, and he ponders whether to head left or right around the base in search of a way up to the land of windy ledges and precarious overhangs where the desert birds make their nests.

He remembers having gone left the last few times he was here, but decides to scout to the right this time, out of curiosity. Rounding a bend, he is surprised to see that the mighty force of expanding ice has widened what was formerly a narrow crack in the cliff into a wide, deep crevice. Boulders and debris spill out of the crevice's mouth, but the wily fox can make out fine ledges and footholds along its sides, as far up as he can see. Quickly he chooses a route that will take him, by many a leap and switchback, all the way to the top of the cliff, and up he goes.

At the top, Fennec emerges feeling lightheaded from exertion at the unaccustomed high altitude. Images of fat-breasted rock doves and clutches of their dainty eggs seem to dance before his eyes as he looks about him, sniffing the thin air. "Eggs!" says the Trickster to himself excitedly. "I smell a nest! Or many nests!" For the pungent scent of feathers and guano comes to his nose every time the shifting wind gusts from a certain quarter.

On shaky legs the fox scouts along the cliff edge in the direction that the bird odor is coming from, peering down in search of the ledge that houses what he imagines to be a great colony of small feathered prey. But what he finally finds is something else entirely.

A steep drop of some 50 feet below him, standing out like a flying buttress from the cliff wall, is a hoodoo, a thin minaret of stone. At its apex lies the most enormous bird's nest that Fennec has ever seen: an eyrie of the majestic mountain eagle. And in it lie four eggs, each one as big around as a fat desert hare. But how to get to it? Even more important and twice as difficult: once there, how to get down again? A fox would need to sprout wings and fly, he ponders, as desire and despair contend in his Trickster's heart.

As he gazes covetously at the alluring prize, trying with all his altitude-addled wits to think up a plan, Fennec glimpses a huge bird-shadow skimming across the far canyon wall, and instinctively crouches down. But the rimrock is still slippery from snowmelt, and over the edge he tumbles!

The fox claws desperately at the cliff with all four paws as he skids down, trying to slow his fall, and yips an urgent prayer to Huldah. Indeed it is little short of a miracle when he comes to a halt, bruised but unbroken, on the narrow saddle that connects the hoodoo to the main face of the cliff. But there is no time for relief, nor even to contemplate his predicament; for Mother Eagle has come home to the defense of her nest, and her cry of challenge rings shrilly in Fennec's great ears as she dives at him, talons forward.

There is no survivable way down, and no climbable way back up to the clifftop; staying where he is means instant death. So the fox takes his only other option: He darts up the side of the hoodoo itself, with a momentum born of sheer terror, and takes a flying leap...right into the middle of the eagle's nest!

Incredulous at such a brazen act, the mighty she-eagle flutters to a perch atop the ring of sticks and fixes her steely gaze on the intruder. "Would you threaten my eggs before my very eyes, fox?" she screeches. "You have saved me a hunting trip; your stringy flesh will make my chicks' very first meal!" But even now, the Trickster's cunning has not altogether abandoned him. Summoning all his aplomb, he assumes an air of dignity, lays one forepaw over his heart and says to the eagle, "By the gentle goddess Tamsine, I claim the hospitality of this hearth...er, nest...and the protection of all who here reside."

Well, if the eagle was stunned before at his audacity, she is speechless now. Never before has someone dared to invoke Tamsine's Law in her own dwelling-place. But amazement soon gives way to perplexity as she realizes that she is indeed bound by that Law. "Very well, fox," says the eagle, "you have bought yourself a little time. But just as I am now forbidden by the sacred Law of Hospitality to kill you outright, so are you forbidden to harm my offspring. You have merely traded a quick, relatively painless death for a slow, agonizing one by hunger and thirst."

"Not so, my kind hostess!" exclaims the Trickster, rapidly recovering his shaken wits in the face of mortal danger. "For by all the traditions of the desert folk, Tamsine's Law specifies that you must treat your guest as you would a member of your own family. It is your obligation to bri ng me meat and drink." If a bird could scowl, this one would do so. "Then you will eat what an eaglet eats, until all of mine are fully fledged and can fly away from this nest on their own. I hope for your own sake that you will be prepared to do the same, for I am under no obligation to help anyone get down from here on four legs."

With that the eagle flaps her great wings and flies off in search of small game. The eggs feel warm beneath him, but Fennec knows that his hostess will be released from all constraints of Tamsine's Law if he breaks it first by eating one. So he sits patiently, racking his brains for a way out; but for once in his life, no clever scheme occurs to him.

At first the mother eagle keeps a close eye on him, but as the days pass, she begins to make longer forays away from the nest. Fennec is not happy. In the eyrie there is no place to hide from the noonday sun, and the salty blood of small animals and an occasional beakful of water do little to slake his thirst. One day, as he dozes in the narrow sliver of shadow cast by the wall of the nest with Mother Eagle nowhere in sight, a small tapping sound startles him awake. As he looks about for the source, the largest of the four eggs suddenly tips over of its own accord. Within an hour's time, a soggy but sturdy newborn eaglet is gazing at him with a look of adoration.

Now, as any student of the ways of wild creatures can tell you, there are many species of birds whose young will fixate their affections on the first living thing that they see upon hatching, and the great mountain eagle is no exception. Imagine the fox's disbelief when the chick opens his small beak and peeps out his first word: "Ma-ma!" The newborn eaglet watches Fennec's every move with avid fascination, and by the time his mother comes home, the damage is irreversible. She preens and cuddles him, but he has eyes only for the fox.

Amused by Fennec's discomfiture but annoyed by the alienation of her firstborn's affections, the great she-eagle takes no more chances. She does not leave the nest again until the remaining three eggs have hatched. Now the fox must compete for his meals with four ravenous eagle chicks - but not too aggressively, for he knows that their mother is ever watching him for some excuse to default on her obligations as a hostess. As the eaglets grow larger and stronger, Fennec grows ever thinner.

By summer the eaglets are fledged, and the three youngest begin to soar behind their mother. But the eldest keeps to the nest, watching the flightless fox for his cues, preening his fur by day and snuggling up to him at night. Irritable from hunger and captivity, Fennec finds him a mere nuisance, not yet recognizing his one hope of escape.

One by one the younger birds take off to find hunting grounds of their own, and the mother is ready to abandon the nest, along with all hope for her firstborn's survival. "Well, fox," she cackles at her guest, "this nomad is folding her tents for the season. You are an eaglet's mother, it seems; teach him to fly, if you can!"

As Mother Eagle vanishes beyond the horizon, Fennec and the eaglet look each other in the eye. For the first time the fox notices that the chick is now bigger than he is, and easily outweighs him. A glimmer of a plan begins to take shape in his mind. "Chick!" exclaims Fennec, "the time has come for you to learn to fly!" The big eaglet regards him blissfully, awaiting his instructions. The fox points to the nearest bit of ground with an apparent way down for the four-footed. "That plateau will be our target." The eaglet nods. "Whatever you say, Ma-ma."

Fennec ponders that his luck has finally run out, and that he is probably about to launch the last trick of his life. But it will be worth it to get this silly bird to stop mooning at him. "This is your first flight, so I want you to ride on my back," he orders. "Now stretch out your wings, hold tight to my fur and don't let go!" Putting his paws over his eyes, the Trickster leaps out of the nest with the eaglet clinging to his back. For a few dizzying seconds they plummet like a stone; then slowly, majestically, the young bird's wings begin to beat.

Together they float down to the plateau and land in a tumble and a puff of dust. Though he is weak, hungry and thirsty, sore all over from his rough landing and has talon punctures in his back, the fox capers about with joy at his release from captivity. He even hugs the bird. "Thank you, my son," says Fennec with feigned solemnity. "You are a grown eagle now, and it is time to be on your own. I must go back to my own home, but I will remember you as long as I live."

From that day forward, a truce exists between the fox and the eagles. He always gives their eyries a wide berth when he goes birds'-nesting, and keeps one eye on the skies for the one enormous eagle who always dips his wings in salutation. As for the firstborn eaglet's kin: For many generations, they refrain from attacking the Trickster; for they all know, from the stories told when they are but nestlings, that this is the he-fox who once was an eagle's mother.

Thus it happened long, and long, and long ago; thus it is happening now, even as I tell it.