The Stag with the Crystal Horns

A fairy tale for Gabe who asked for something less scary than Beowulf. 

National Gallery, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Once upon a time, there was a young knight. He was mostly good, in the way of the young man, and he was very brave. The only problem was that the kingdom he lived in was so very peaceful that there were never any battles, so he could never show how brave he was. 

“If only there was some way I could show how brave I am!“ he complained one day. “For how am I to marry my lady love if she can’t tell me from a common coward?“ 

The knight was in love with the princess of the land, the lady Dora, who was both virtuous and beautiful. Though he loved her and would have dared to fight a thousand dragons for her hand, all of the dragons had taken their gold and moved beyond the edges of the kingdom long before the knight had even learned to ride a horse. 

And what a horse the knight had! The horse was a fine chestnut stallion with rippling muscles across his back and a broad, sturdy chest for cutting through the wind on fast gallops across the land surrounding the castle. The horse’s mother had named him Hesychius, but since he couldn’t exactly tell that to the knight, the knight called him Ethello, so that’s what the horse went by. 

One evening, the knight was so distressed that he could not prove his bravery to his lady love that he couldn’t sleep a wink. He stayed up all night, staring into the fire, puzzling and thinking, almost to the point of despair. When morning came, the knight looked out the window and saw the rosy gilded tree tops of the forest just beyond the castle walls. 

All of a sudden, the knight’s eyes opened wide and he gasped out loud and even grabbed the hilt of his sword, which he hadn’t  taken off the night before. For he saw stepping out from the forest into the misty dawn light a majestic white stag, a cloud of breath swirling from  its nostrils, its large dark eyes rising up to the castle, seemingly right at the knight. Startled by this vision and struck by the beauty of the  creature, the knight dove behind a curtain and peeked just over the window ledge to keep watching the strange white hart. As the stag continued stepping out from the woods and into the grass, lush with clover and drenched with dew, the knight watched, mesmerized. 

The hart raised its head from a patch of clover to listen for danger, as deer have always done since Adam. And as the creature did so, a single beam of the rising sun cut across the tops of the trees and illuminated the stag’s antlers. The knight hadn’t noticed the stag’s antlers at first in the darkness of the early morning; but he gasped now to see the two perfect, branched horns, not made of bone like one would expect, but like crystal secretly formed in the earth, glittering and sending out shaking little flames of light on the surrounding grass. 

To be sure there is some magic in this stag, the knight thought to himself as he watched the beast moving slowly along the edge of the woods. The trouble with magic creatures is that you can hardly tell if they want to lead you to untold riches or capture you to be their butler forever. Or trick you into eating poisoned fruit, if they’re bad, or, if they’re good, give you your very own kingdom. 

There must have been some kind of disturbance that frightened the stag, for its large tuft of a tail stood at attention right before the rest of it leaped one big leap back into the forest. 

“I am going to hunt that hart,“ the knight solemnly announced to himself. It was a simple thing to say, but packed into that simple declaration, “I’m going to hunt that hart,” was really, “I’m going to hunt that hart— because it is magical and thus mysterious and thus dangerous. I’m going to hunt that hart, and when I’ve caught and killed it, I’m going to cut its beautiful horns from it and bring them as an offering to the lady Dora who must then see that I am her brave knight, who will fearlessly charge into the jaws of danger and mystery to emerge victorious and bearing the glittering spoils.” Surely, she will want to give her hand to no one but me after this, the knight decided. 

Realizing that the longer he stood there pondering the farther away the white stag was getting, the knight quickly raced to the stables, where he found Ethello serenely munching his morning oats. There is no way the knight could know this, but Ethello had just been thinking about the time in his colthood when  his mother had seen him nibbling his morning oats and whinnied to him, “Hesychius, I declare, if you continue eating like a good monk in the middle of Lent, I’m sure you won’t be strong enough to carry even a little knight at the castle!“ From that day on, Ethello—Hesychius—had made an effort to eat more like a good monk breaking his fast on Easter Sunday, though, being a horse, he hardly understood what any of it meant. 

At the approach of his master, the horse saw the fiery glint in the knight’s eyes. Knowing this could only mean a long and fast journey that day, Ethello hastily gobbled his oats so he could be sure of keeping his strength up. “Come, Ethello,” the knight affectionately patted the horse’s back. “We are going to hunt the hart today.” 

Ethello had been hunting many times, of course, so it took mere moments for him and the knight to be off, racing across the castle bridge and past the castle walls, and leaping right into the woods like the crystal-horned stag had leaped minutes before. 

Although the land was  peaceful  and the kingdom free from strife, the forest was a different story. The woods were very thick and dark and tangled and ancient, and when a forest is all of those things it is most likely dangerous, no matter how peaceful the land right next to it is. 

No matter, thought the knight. I have Ethello, who has been faithful to me since I was a child and he a colt, and I have my sword and my bravery, all of which will help me catch the hart and bring its horns as a trophy to win the lady Dora’s love. 

The knight and Ethello rode this-a-way-that-a-way, leaping over old, fallen trees and looking for any sign of the white stag. The knight was a natural hunter, and Ethello a natural hunter’s steed, so it was only a little while before they caught a glimpse of the stag’s tail, majestically swishing like the sail of a grand ship caught suddenly by a pleasant breeze. 

Now the knight and Ethello moved as one; in fact, as they continued to race this-a-way-that-a-way, it was as if their common purpose fused man and beast into a new creature of muscular power. They raced faster and still faster with each new glimpse of the hart’s tail flicking up anew around a tree trunk. A glint of the stag’s crystal horns set Ethello’s hooves off at a murderous speed, and the knight coolly urged him on, saying in a low voice, “Come on, Ethello, there’s a good man,”  and gripping the horse’s thick coal black mane tighter and tighter with each passing moment. 

The chase went on, the white stag bounding majestically and the knight and steed close behind—until, all at once, the knight felt a sharp tingling all through his body, like thousands of little needles. 

Ethello must have felt it, too, because he thought to himself, “Oh, is there a storm close by? I hope we aren’t about to be struck by lightning.”  The horse reared and started ever so slightly from the discomfort, and the knight was about to spur Ethello on when they both realized the magical hart was about a stone's throw away, standing serene and magnificent before them. The stag looked into the knight’s eyes with its own dark ones, both soft and luminous while also fired with some terrible inner power. 

All of a sudden, the knight felt as if every other thing had become silence and that he and the stag were like two ancient athletes circling each other before a wrestling match. The knight moved to kick the horse’s flanks to charge and immediately felt a great breath of wind crash into his chest—indeed, it somehow went through him, it was so terrible. 

In a moment the knight found himself and Ethello no longer in the dark woods but standing in blinding light. When his eyes adjusted to the unworldly glare the knight could see that he and Ethello were in a smooth valley of some strange white stone that jutted up in sharp, slender, crystalline points on either side. Before them, still about a stone’s throw away, was the white stag. 

The stag then spoke to them, which might come as a surprise to a good and decent person like yourself, but it didn’t bother our hero because he had heard at many a fireside from the mouths of very old knights tales of talking beasts in the time of past adventures. The white hart’s voice was clear and strong: “You have hunted me well, sir knight, and bravely. There is none who has sought me as far as you have this day.” The knight and Ethello watched the magical hart silently, still as the white stone around them. 

The hart raised his head to the white hot sky, his crystal horns glittering, and, like a gift from heaven, a golden rope dropped heavily to the smooth white ground between the hunter and the stag. No sooner had the golden rope fallen did the ground break into rough, gritty sand under the horse. The knight jumped quickly to the firm ground by the rope while Ethello struggled and whinnied and slowly began to sink. 

There was no way for the knight to know this, but as Ethello’s front hooves clicked and clacked helplessly on the edge of the trap, the horse couldn’t help but think, “Oh dear.”  

The stag spoke again in his sonorous voice, “You have indeed hunted me bravely, sir knight, and now you may catch me. Take the golden rope and weave it through my crystal antlers and I will follow you wherever you go.”  The knight looked desperately between the white hart and his horse, whose head was the only visible part of him, the rest of him sinking in the hole. 

“You may save your friend, or you may claim your trophy, but not both,”  the stag commanded. 

Ethello could barely see what was happening; the strange sandy grit stung his eyes as he sank , and a salty taste began to scratch into his mouth. 

The knight took up the golden rope and tied a long loop. The white hart stepped its hooves up and down, preparing for another chase. Ethello’s head sank  below the sand, and he thought about his mother. 

Underneath the sand, the horse began to cough, which only made things worse, and he felt the breath being squeezed out of him until his neck might break. Ethello thought, “This surely is the end for me—but shouldn't I be sinking instead of moving upward?” With the last pull on his neck, Ethello found himself above the sand and able to step up out of the trap. The knight removed the golden rope from the horse’s neck and affectionately patted his back while Ethello wheezed and sneezed all the grit from his nostrils and mouth. 

The magical stag had gone, freed by his own cruel trick. The jutting stones on the closer side of the valley opened to let the knight and his steed pass into a wooded glen—not the dark forest they had chased the hart through. They would never visit that wood again. 

As the knight rode through the glen, they stopped at a little brook to refresh themselves. After taking a long cold drink, the horse looked at his master splashing the cold water on his face and neck and thought, “Pity about Dora, though.” There was no way for the knight to know that’s what the horse was thinking, but he patted Ethello affectionately on his back when he saw his friend’s equine expression of concern.

“Come, Ethello,”  the knight said, and he and his steed rode on until they saw familiar trees and valleys and the castle on the horizon. 

As they approached the castle walls, the knight looked up to see a strange, luminous vision coming across the castle bridge to meet him. Ethello slowed to a stop, and the knight leaped off the horse’s back and fell to  one knee, his head bowed in noble reverence. For before him, walking slowly across the bridge, surrounded by light and somehow glowing from her very self, was the lady Dora. 

“Raise your head, sir knight,”  the lady Dora intoned. The knight obeyed immediately and found himself gazing up into two dark eyes, both soft and terrible. He did not seem surprised to see that on her head was  a crown of delicate crystal points. Her gown seemed to be made of light itself. 

“My lady,”  the knight dared to speak, “It gives me great pain that I could not finish the hunt for the white hart. I cannot be your knight.”  At last, the knight had surrendered. But he kept looking into the lady‘s dark eyes. 

She spoke: “It is well you call me ‘my lady,’ sir knight, because this very day that is what I will become.”  The knight looked up, confused. “For I was there, sir knight, when you first glimpsed the white hart from the window after a sleepless night. I was there when you pursued the white hart through the dark and ancient wood, and I was there when you let the white hart go free to save your friend.” Ethello bowed deeply. 

The lady Dora continued, “This very day, my life, which by a long reaching spell had been bound to that of the white hart and its caprices, is now free. And I now give my life to be bound up with yours.” 

The knight saw the lady Dora’s eye’s gazing down on him, and with this gracious gaze came true knowledge. And that true knowledge suffused the knight’s mind and very being with a single word: Gift. 

The lady Dora and the knight were wed that very day, and their rule was one of peace and light and great joy. Their many children loved Ethello, who grew to a ripe old age, sunning himself in the clover meadow and munching his oats as slowly and as thoughtfully as he wished. 

The End

Grace Fitzpatrick is a Catholic wife, mother, and iconographer living in New Orleans. Her art can be found at gracefitzpatrick.art.