Attempts to Capture and Tame a Unicorn (35): The Animal Help Era, No 4: Schnizzelwort (Part One)

S…C…H…N…I…Z…Z…E…L…W…O…R…T.  It took John a good minute to spell it out as I sat watching and logging the letters.  But what is one of those, I asked.  And off he went again.  A…< end of word > (I added this tile mainly as a labour saving device and because I was too dumb to be able to separate words as I went along; I got some work experience drone to design it - it was the only good piece of work she did)…H…E…L…F…E…N…S…C…H…W…E…I…N.

“A helper pig?!” I blurted out, perhaps a little too incredulously.   How could a pig help?  Over the course of an evening the tiny white mouse explained.

At one time there had been many wizards in the forest - hence the ancient wizard stones (sinks of magic used primarily for travel, large-scale communal magic and time control) Salazar had mentioned.  They had lived alone in little stone houses - each in its own clearing, John told me.  And close by each of these houses was a mud hole kept wet mainly by magic.  And there lived the local wizard’s Helfenschwein,. 

These helper pigs were trained at a centre in the Black Forest and dispatched to wizards mainly in Europe and Asia in the Medieval period and then throughout the world as it expanded with the discovery of the New World until the centre shut down as the wizards left and the practice died out.  Exactly how they had helped was then a wizard mystery but most were sure the Helfenschwein sniffed out and gathered ingredients for their masters.  Or maybe they were just housekeepers or research staff.  One way or another, John and I hoped to find out.

It was the times of crisis that caused the wizards to slowly leave the unicorn’s forest, mainly fleeing north (though some went to more tropical climes).  Some of the Helfenschwein were left behind, suddenly seen by many as more of a luxury than a necessity, and, for the last forty years only one has been left.  A German Landrace called Schnizzelwort.

John wasn’t sure how exactly the Helfenschwein would be able to help - just that he probably would.  John the mouse it was who led me to this pig one Saturday morning.  Through a murky part of the forest that looked unkempt somehow, like it had once been kept in good order.  Like my hair a bit: vaguely neat but always with shaggy bits sticking out here and there against the natural grain. 

Then we hit what had once been a clearing.  Younger and smaller trees grew less densely among long grasses and John nodded at me to confirm the stone wreckage barely visible among a mass of brambles was an old wizard dwelling.  That of Schnizzelwort’s master.

Ten seconds later and we were there.  A great mud pool with a shallow layer of water covering it could be seen inside a grove of oak trees.  The pool was being topped up by a small trickling waterfall; the water materialising out of thin air. 

Schnizzelwort the Helfenschwein lay sleeping as we approached.  A great mass of pig, bloated from several lifetime’s worth of retirement, he had pushed the water under and around him away to create a small wall of mud that circled him, clinging to his skin. 

John obliged by climbing onto a floating leaf and used his tail to power his little boat toward the helpful pig.  Upon mooring he climbed the sleeping hulk and walked to the ears, crawling under the floppy pink ears and gently squeaking until Schnizzelwort’s eyes opened and our fun began.