Tantivy,Tantivy!

This another scene from The Once and Future King that just begged to be made into a visual.

For some backstory, you must know that King Pellinore spent a great chunk of his knighthood tracking down The Questing Beast, which was an intelligent and playful creature that possessed the head/neck of a serpent, the body of a leopard, the hind quarters of a lion, and the feet of a deer.

Later on in the book, Pellinore leaves his hunt to help out in other matters. The Q-Beast ends up tracking him. Meanwhile, Sir Palomides and Sir Grummore notice that King Pellinore is depressed after being separated from his new lady-interest. To cheer him up, they decide to masquerade as the Q-Beast in an attempt to get the king to give chase and raise his spirits.

The scenes of Grummore and Palomides discussing and constructing and testing out the costume are hilarious. As are the events that follow. Check it out!

OH, right! "Tantivy!" is apparently an old hunting cry from the Middle Ages. Fun!

Giving a Hoot

A scene from The Once and Future King that has stuck with me was the introduction of Archimedes. He's Merlyn's owly friend. I mean that he is an owl. I'm not sure that "owly" is an adjective otherwise.

Anyways, young Wart (Arthur), fresh after meeting Merlyn, is introduced to Archimedes inside Merlyn's scatter-cluttered cottage. To Wart's surprise, the owl can talk. And as he finds out, so can all animals! But Archimedes is rather shy until he warms up to you. So, while Wart and Merlyn go into a particularly interesting conversation, one forgets about the owl (since he is being rather sheepish. An owl being sheepish. A showl).

All of a sudden, Wart hears a voice in his ear: How d'you do?

And there is Archie (ohhh don't call them by any nicknames; they do take offense), playfully nibbling on Wart's ear lobe. At some point during the Merlyn/Wart conversation, he had warmed up to the newcomer, and decided to introduce himself. The way that the author described the surprise just stuck with me. Luckily, I have retained my child-like imagination and can perfectly imagine it, haha.

Hocus Joke-Us

You! Having trouble pulling some sort of item out of solid stone? Do you crave to experience swimming like a fish, or perhaps flying like a spar-hawk? Want to talk to animals? Then you'd probably love being tutored by Merlyn, right?

Merlyn, from T.H. White's The Once and Future King, is a sometimes-muddled and always-entertaining sort of wizard/tutor. Of course, he's the same "Merlin" from Arthurian legend. Only in White's version of the story, Merlyn ages reverse of everyone else. As the story progresses, he becomes younger. Interestingly enough, in the book Hyperion, which I have also read, there is "Merlin's Sickness," where the afflicted individual ages in reverse. I assume until they turn into a fetus? I can't remember the specifics; it has been a few years. I'm not getting any younger.

Anyway, when Wart (young pre-king Arthur) first happens upon our friendly wizard, Merlyn is trying to draw water from a well outside of his ramshackled cabin. The image kind of stuck in my head (as well as Merlyn's attire), so here it is! I'll have more sketches from this book (which I am currently reading) on the way, so check back!