The Dog, the Devil, and the King of HeavenONCE UPON A time, there was a king who was so very much a king—so regal, so puissant, so blessed—that his word, on occasion, became truth, as with the time when a great pale beast of a foreigner came to our court, spouting absurdities regarding the wondrous animals he had supposedly encountered in the course of his extensive travels, including “unicorns” and “kraken” and “lions.”
The lion, so he claimed, was a magnificent animal with a proud ruff of hair about its face, sharp claws and teeth, and a deep, throaty cry that set all lesser creatures atremble. It was fierce in battle, he recounted, and likewise fierce in its devotion to its kith and kin.
“Ah,” said the king, nodding in imagined comprehension, “it is very like a dog, then.”
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