377: 1001 Nights: Science and Geometry

This week, on Myths and Legends, we're in the stories of 1001 Nights, and we'll see why letting your child take off on a completely untested flying machine run by a sinister monster might be a bad idea.

The creature this time will help you find your new apartment, a cave high in the cliffs, so you can hide out from the authorities.

This is Myths and Legends, episode 377:

Science and Geometry.

This is a podcast where we tell stories from mythology and folklore.

Some are incredibly popular stories you might think you know, but with surprising origins.

Others are tales that might be new to you, but are definitely worth a listen.

Today, we're back in the story of 1001 Nights, a collection of tales from the Middle East.

We finished up the framing narrative a while ago, so we're just telling the stories now.

And today's story jumps in with a king of Persia, one who opens up his kingdom so all can can enjoy it, and who loves science and geometry.

I love science and geometry, the king mused aloud, but very loudly.

You see, twice a year he opened up his palace to the people to celebrate his three daughters and one son.

And, unlike the story of Undine, it wasn't just so they could see how much more well off their quote-unquote betters were.

It was so they could partake in the splendor of royalty.

He was being loud about his love for science and geometry as father of this people because he wanted to lead by example.

And, you know, STEM.

Like, what is it about science and geometry that you love?

His vizier asked.

Yes, the king smiled.

Okay, that...

Answers nothing.

Science is an extremely broad, general category, and geometry is a specific branch of mathematics, the vizier said.

The king pointed.

That's right.

He loved science and geometry generally and specifically.

He was a genuine Renaissance man.

The vizier was about to reply that this was 10th century Persia, that terminology didn't exist, but it wasn't worth his head.

Hey, did I hear someone say they liked science and geometry?

The king and vizier heard from the three supplicants who approached the throne.

They were men in sandy robes.

From the languages they spoke, it became apparent that they were from Greece, India, and here at home in Persia, respectively, and they were w well, wrestling and throwing elbows at one another.

The man from India emerged from the fray first, missing only two teeth, and with a quickly swelling eye.

He said he had something wondrous for the king.

A waved hand shot up from the floor, and the man from India's servants wheeled in a golden man,

a figure, an automaton.

If he was set by a gate, and if any enemy should arrive, he would blow his trumpet, and the man would be apprehended.

Not by the automaton, though.

Fully autonomous automatons were a separate purchase and would be available Q two of next year.

The king was reeling.

It was obvious that this was a technological marvel.

To be able to mimic the limited actions of a human with at least one decent eye?

Wow.

That was truly science and geometry.

The vizier face palmed.

At this point, seeing that the presentation was over, the man from Greece struggled free from the headlock and quickly waved to his own servants before skidding to a bow before the throne.

He had a peacock.

Bring in the peacock.

It was a golden peacock, surrounded by twenty-four peacock chicks of the same metal, all in a basin of silver.

The man from Greece explained that this peacock, every hour for twenty-four hours a day, pecked one of its young ones, and the chick would cry out.

At the end of the month, it would open its mouth and reveal a new moon.

I won't call it a pea clock, but that's essentially what it was.

Wow, the king reeled.

Something to tell him what time of day it was, even at night?

That

was a technological marvel.

This science and geometry was even more scientific and geometrical than the last thing.

But but but but but the man from Peugeot forced his way in between and in front of his unwelcome traveling companions who had turned out to be surprisingly good grapplers.

He had a horse.

The king blinked.

Um, that was neither scientificalistically or geometromically interesting.

Having the showmanship to keep his device under a sheet, the man from Persia nodded and unveiled the ebony horse.

Everyone looked at it.

Okay, it's a fake horse.

Could they have him executed yet?

Or

he said the ebony flying.

horse.

The king laughed.

I mean, the others were basically a security system and a clock, but this wait, was he serious?

Could this wooden horse fly?

Serious, the man from Persia grinned, then brought up a hand to hide his tusks.

I need to have all of these items verisophically tested for their scientificocity and geometropolity, the king declared.

The three sages nodded, ah, yes, inscrutably.

So dancing and feasting detained the sages while the king tested out each of their items.

The pea clock, and I, yeah, we're going to call it that, sorry, was pretty much a clock.

They released a prisoner from the dungeons with ill will against the king and told him to try to sneak back into the city to assassinate the king.

The trumpet sounded across the city from the automaton, and the man was promptly executed.

The flying horse, though, well, that had it.

It wasn't even close.

A wooden horse flying over the city would be a marvel in today's world, so...

When they all saw the sage from Persia zipping back and forth, they had a winner.

He could ask anything of the king, and the king would be forced to grant it.

You gave my sister away to a sorcerer?

The prince screamed at his father.

The father laughed.

The man preferred to be called a sage.

Yeah, and I bet a snail prefers to be called a slug with luggage, but we're not going to start doing that because sluggage is way snappier likewise we're not going to call a sorcerer a sage also he's way older than any other suitor he has gray hair and a beard glowing red eyes and he has gin tusks that he clearly just filed off he's an evil dude he misrepresented himself when he's really a sorcerer and he's way too old to marry my sister the prince laid out his fairly solid case against the sorcerer.

But as a counterpoint, the king pointed to the ebony flying horse that was now parked in the throne room.

Flying horse.

The man may be old and very ugly and clearly up to something, but this was a technological marvel.

The man from Persia said he could leave the room if they wanted to continue this conversation in privacy.

It was kind of starting to be a little hurtful.

The king said absolutely not.

The sorcerer, sorry, the sage was family.

Not yet, he's not.

The prince glared at his almost brother-in-law.

The sage sorcerer, the sage surrender, clasped his hands.

He had something he thought could settle this whole issue.

A ride.

He would take the son on a ride.

King gasped and squealed.

A ride?

Oh, that was so cool.

He was so jealous.

All his advisors were like, no, you can't take the experimental flying horse out.

You could fall and die and throw the kingdom into chaos, blah, blah, blah.

But his son?

Yeah, sure.

If that's what it takes to get him on board, he could be the first to ride the flying horse.

The son said he wasn't making any promises about coming around to the sorcerer, but yeah, okay, he did want to try flying.

Okay, turn that peg right there to get it airborne, the sorcerer said to the prince and heir apparent.

Prince did so, and the sorcerer stepped away from the horse as it left the ground and started hovering.

Oh no, my prince, my brother, please, the sorcerer started crying out.

Please, take the descending peg.

Please, you need to come back down.

He tried throwing the peg, but it bounced off the bottom of the horse as the prince kept rising.

Wait, what?

The sun cried out for him to try to throw it again, seriously do anything, someone help him, but for safety, everyone else had been moved back, far out of earshot.

Only the sorcerer heard him.

And from where the prince sat, it looked like he was smiling.

With a turn, the smile was tears, and the sorcerer was running toward the king, holding the peg.

It was a terrible, terrible tragedy.

His son had taken the flying horse and, in his arrogance, said he didn't need the descending peg.

He he could never come down now, and would just keep going up until he hit whatever they thought was at the top of everything in this time period.

The whole city went into mourning for the lost prince.

prince.

The prince looked at the approaching sun.

Ah, that was at the top of everything.

That made sense.

Also, he was sad and scared and going to catch on fire.

Then, sitting back and sweating on the horse, he actually stopped panicking and looked at the thing.

He thought about the sorcerer's last words, and it seemed like an iffy design choice to have the descent rely on a wooden peg you may or may not remember to bring with you, so he looked around the ebony horse and found a piece of wood jutting out of the right shoulder.

It was carved in the style of a rooster, but it could obviously be removed, so that's what the prince did, and immediately he stopped rising.

He gripped the horse as he plummeted toward the earth.

But then, quickly switching hands with the peg, he inserted it into the hole in the left shoulder.

The horse slowed until it was descending at a reasonable pace.

Actually, getting control of the horse was fairly easy, it turned out.

It was pretty intuitive.

You just moved the head with the reins.

Without the ascent peg, he couldn't move on the y-axis, except to keep going in the direction he was going faster, but he could go left and right, and soon, with quick hands and quicker thinking, he had full control over the flying ebony horse.

When you're nearly touching the sun, the slightest movement on the way down can vastly change your trajectory.

The prince learned this after he gained control of the ebony horse enough to steer it side to side, and by the time he made it to where he could make out the ground, he didn't recognize the ground at all.

So, touching down in a green and wondrous country, he hovered until nightfall, and, gliding into the city, he landed on a roof with a high outer wall, parking the horse and pulling out the peg that made it ascend.

The roof hadn't been chosen at random.

He was a prince, he knew palaces.

Just like anyone else who has ever seen a palace.

It's not hard to pick one out of a skyline, especially in this time period.

He figured they'd have the easiest access to food and drink, though, since he had been flying for a day or so and the ebony horse was lacking in in-flight meal options.

He snuck around the sleepy palace, but couldn't find anything.

No food, no drink.

Everyone was locked up in their rooms.

And after about a half hour of lurking, he turned a corner.

and almost sprawled directly into the giant, sleeping in front of a curtain.

The prince froze.

That was something you didn't see all the time.

It said that the man was longer than a plank and wider than a bench, which are both somehow extremely specific yet still vague ways to measure the length and width of a person.

The ruby on the pommel of the giant's sword gleamed in the candlelight, and the prince looked over to the bag hanging on the stone hook on the wall.

Dry bread and water skins.

Okay.

He slipped the bag off the wall and tried to strike a balance between speed and stealth on his way back to the horse, quote, quitting the adventure of the castle, mainly because he was already on a quest and didn't need to get sidetracked by whatever this was.

But the night wore on, and having eaten and drank his fill, but not wanting to fly at night and get even more lost, somehow the prince found himself back in the chamber of the eunuch, as the story calls the giant.

And the prince just walked past the giant.

The prince wasn't looking for trouble, and the giant eunuch was quite sleepy.

He didn't even hear the prince pass.

The prince might be able to let sleeping giants lie, but beautiful princesses?

Well, one smooch wouldn't hurt anyone.

Despite her being a person he found beautiful who was sleeping, she was not, strictly speaking, a sleeping beauty.

And even if she was, I think that trope has kind of taught a lot of incorrect assumptions.

Her eyes popping open with the start, she asked who this man was and what brought him here.

After the initial surprise, though,

yeah, the problematic messaging continues because since he was hot, it was okay.

And yes, he's very physically attractive.

Don't worry, this will be talked about more.

She also assumed that this was the prince who came to ask about her hand in marriage earlier that day, the one her father had rejected, and the reason for the giant guard outside of her room.

Um that's not the guy, the twelve women sleeping around the room said to the princess in unison.

Yet, he, the guy who asked your father, he was ugly?

This guy...

This guy is hot.

Thank you, the prince grinned.

That's why I feel like I can kiss women in their sleep.

Yeah, don't do that.

That's actually assault, the princess said.

At the door, the giant eunuch, who had been guarding the young woman's room, pointed, reaching for his sword.

which was now gone because the prince lifted it as he walked by.

It's a it's a g-ga-ga-g-g-g- genie.

The prince shook his head.

No, no, he wasn't a genie.

He was the king's new son-in-law.

Puzzled, the eunuch cocked his head.

But the princess hadn't gotten married.

Then why am I here if I'm not the king's son-in-law?

Wouldn't that mean you are the one who's guilty of failing your one duty?

The eunuch, not really understanding quid pro quo, said he thought he would remember the princess being married.

He should go run it by the king.

We'll see how the king reacts to this strange kid in his daughter's bedroom, but that will be right after this.

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Running full tilt toward the princess's quarters, the king was swearing at the trailing eunuch for letting one of the evil djinn through to his daughter's quarters.

He would have the man's head for..

Then he parted the curtains.

Oh, the eunuch didn't say that the man was hot.

The eunuch said he didn't really know how that was relevant.

You, intruder, the king bellowed.

Be you man or genie?

Drawing the giant sword, the prince held it to his own neck.

How dare he?

How dare the king impugn his honor by implying that he was a devil?

I mean, you did kiss my daughter in her sleep, so it's kind of weird that you're trying to high road me now, but I can see that you're serious.

Let's not do anything to harm or otherwise change that beautifully symmetrical face and I'm assuming body.

I do wish you had come to seek her hand formally, though.

I have a solution to this, the prince nodded.

The king, hoping that it was a formal request to marry the princess on an appropriate timeline, quickly lost his smile when the prince challenged the king to single combat.

That, or he could go up against the king's entire army, and he, the prince, would win.

The king blinked, obviously, the second one.

He had an army of 40,000 warriors that would annihilate this kid, but the prince could just ask, Tomorrow, then, I will meet your entire army in battle and win.

And when I do, the princess's hand shall be mine.

The king

shrugged.

You sure?

Okay, yeah,

tomorrow.

They're on foot.

I want to fight them on their horses.

The prince demanded when he saw the 40,000 warriors in the field outside the city walls the following day.

Horses are like murder platforms in ancient battles.

Are you sure?

The king asked.

Just as the exhausted, sweaty eunuch who had the job of notifying and organizing 40,000 warriors in a morning, returned panting.

Whatever, get them on their horses, the king commanded of the eunuch, who, crying on the inside and also on the outside, went to get 40,000 horses.

I want my horse now, the prince said.

The king said that that only seemed fair.

Okay, where was it?

The roof.

Sure, go get your horse down from the roof, the king threw up his hands.

A lot of preparation was going into this for a battle that would last all of the 10 seconds it would take for this kid to get eviscerated by a literal army.

They all saw the kid sitting on his horse on the roof.

At that distance, they couldn't tell it wasn't a living horse, and they also couldn't tell that he was putting the peg in the ascent shoulder, and he rode his horse off into the clouds.

Go after him, I guess?

He's getting away?

The king screamed.

Then the warriors said, how?

He's technically retreating, right?

They won?

The kid was flying home.

In the time it took them to assemble the army, he reviewed some of the maps and figured out what rivers, mountains, and forests he needed to fly over to find his father's kingdom.

Back with the king of Senna, as he's called.

Bad news chased the good to confusing news of the retreat.

His daughter was in love with the hot intruder.

She wasn't eating until she could marry him, and he just flew away on a horse.

Probably forever.

Fantastic.

I'm not sure what the prince's gambit was here.

I thought he was going to use the advantage of being the only one able to fly to defeat the army, even if it took all day.

He really did just go home.

He learned that the sage sorcerer who had been betrothed to his sister was in the dungeon.

On account of giving the prince a ride on his flying horse without safety precautions, I guess.

He wasn't the princess's husband to be, which had been the whole point of this, but now that the prince was home, he actually did miss the princess of Sena.

After spending a dinner singing the praises of the flying horse, he excused himself, rushed to the roof, and didn't come back down.

The watchman reported seeing the horse rise into the night sky, and the king groaned.

If his son ever came back, he was destroying that horse the first chance he got.

It was the small hours of the morning before the prince was back in Sena.

He slipped past the eunuch, who was not only inexplicably posted as a guard for the princess again, but who was, once again, sleeping.

Seems like almost being executed for doing that exact thing should keep you from doing said thing again the very next night, but it had been a long day.

The prince woke her, quietly this time, and asked why she was sleep weeping.

And they went through a whole thing.

If you've ever read the seemingly endless romance chapters of the Count of Monte Cristo, it's the same vibe.

The whole, my lady, why were you weeping?

I have wearied for thee.

Nay, it is I who have wearied for thee.

If thou had tarried long, I surely would have died.

And it just keeps going like that.

He explained that he ran not because he was scared of the 40,000 men he said he would fight, but out of love for her.

They spent the night together, but no.

The ladies in waiting woke, and while, yes, a guy in the princess's room was kind of the reason they all slept there, they were also glad that the princess had stopped twelve straight hours of weeping and all the these and thou's that went with it.

They made the pair a midnight snack, presumably stepping over the sleeping giant eunuch guard.

When the horizon began to brighten with the first light of morning, the prince rose.

He had to leave.

The princess took his hand, begging him to take her with him.

The difference between eloping and kidnapping being, well, exactly that sentence, the prince happily agreed, and the princess began stuffing clothes into a trunk.

When the prince hefted the trunk on his shoulder and the pair began making for the roof, stepping gingerly around a blinking, well-rested guard, the ladies in waiting began to think that maybe this was taking things just a step too far and ran to get the king.

The king roused himself and rushed upstairs with enough time to see the pair, his daughter and the very attractive prince, disappear into the soft orange of the morning sky.

Where's the horse?

The king asked the prince when he rushed, out of breath, into the palace that evening.

The prince, all smiles, said it was with his betrothed in a garden.

The king nodded.

Cool?

Wait, what?

The prince grinned and did a little dance.

Yep, married.

He had found her and kissed her while she was sleeping.

It was amazing.

The prince stopped as his father grimaced.

What?

Ew, he taught him better than that.

And the prince looked, what were all those metal clubs for?

The king shook his head, don't worry about it.

The prince should tell him where the princess was and, most importantly, this flying horse that kept taking people into the sky.

It was a surprise for her as as much him, because he really wanted to look the part.

All their wealth had to be on display.

He wanted to show off all the people they enslaved and all the jewel-encrusted stuff they had.

Because while he knew none of that mattered when it came to true love, it also kind of did.

A sharp inhale and a groan.

Okay, a bath and a parade until the king could finally smash this horrible, horrible horse.

Sorry, he meant meet his new daughter-in-law.

When the entourage of enslaved Greek, Indian, and Abyssinian girls, and way too much jewelry opened the door to the garden a few miles outside of the city the following morning, they found a nice garden, but no princess and definitely no flying ebony horse.

The prince looked everywhere.

Where was she?

He called the guards in.

Yeah, we let that, I don't know, he was, he was really ugly.

What are we calling him?

The sage sererer now?

They looked to each other.

Yeah, that's right.

He wanted to go in the garden and gather herbs, and they thought, hey, he's really ugly.

What's the harm?

And that's almost a direct quote.

The harm was, of course, he could drive the horse and still possessed one of the pegs.

But it's even doing out of prison.

The prince was on the verge of tearing out his hair.

The king shrugged.

The prince raved so much about the flying horse and used it again that the king figured it was just a misunderstanding that it all went wrong in the first place.

It seemed unjust to keep the man imprisoned, and while as an autocracy they were completely down with unjust imprisonment, it just seemed wasteful.

He was so hunched and ugly.

What harm could he possibly do, right?

He kidnapped my wife, the prince screamed.

Holding up a hand, the king said, betrothed.

Big, big difference.

In his mind, this whole story, it was all good, all settled, arrived back at the beginning.

The prince could marry one of the many, many unkidnapped women who were waiting to be his wife.

They all learned a lesson about the dangers of technology and not listening to your parents and running away with some hot guy you barely know.

Honestly,

this felt good.

They started the story without the horse, and they were ending it without the horse.

The

and wait, the prince sighed as he was ordering one of the guards to strip.

The king blinked.

All right, this was taking a weird turn.

It was also taking a shocking and frankly, exasperating turn, for the king, at least, because the prince was leaving.

Wrenching his arm from his dad's panicked, sweaty fingers, the prince declared that he would search the world over for her if he needed to.

He would never give up, no matter how difficult it was.

No matter how many nights he went hungry or had to sleep in the rain, he would find her and he would bring her home.

We'll see that if you're gonna go questing, it helps to be very, very good looking, but that will, once again, be read after this.

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He is a skirled knave, the sage Surer had cackled as they took flight from the garden.

He was careful only to reveal that he wasn't helpfully serving his master, the prince, and taking her to a garden closer to the city, but instead kidnapping her when they were too high for her to safely jump.

She was shocked first, yes, by a servant speaking ill of their master, which Weird thing to be shocked by, but when the other part set in, the part about her being kidnapped, she was just as mad about that, maybe even madder.

She settled in until, seeing a castle and a city on the horizon, the horse began to descend.

Now, when we land, I will do all the speaking.

Do you understand?

The sage serer sneered.

They met the king in Greece as he was riding back from a hunt with some of his nobles.

He slowed by the man and the young woman, and the ebony horse.

He greeted them.

She's my wife, the sorcerer blurted out.

Oh, okay, the king smiled.

Good day.

She's the daughter of my father's brother.

Enough about her, though.

Would you like to see my amazing device?

The sorcerer asked.

The king said this had a kind of a desperate feel to it, and the man was providing a lot of info, but now that he was able to look at the man more closely, he...

The sorcerer did look, no offense,

quite ugly.

The sorcerer said, okay, that's a little mean, but beauty was really in the eye of the beholder.

His wife thought he was handsome, and that's all that really mattered to him.

Turning to the young woman who was very mismatched in attractiveness, the king asked if this was the case.

No judgment.

It's just that he has tusks that are filed down like an orc from warcraft.

I mean, I know love is blind, but it does also have a sense of touch, and the king recoiled, smell.

Oh no, I definitely don't think he's attractive.

He actually kidnapped me, the princess said.

The king's hunting companions turned to look at the sorcerer.

Uh what?

The sorcerer laughed.

Who are they going to believe?

Him, a man, or her, a woman?

Her, definitely, the king said.

Not even close, it's middle ages.

Beautiful equals good.

He asked the princess where she was from, and she said the Sena kingdom.

She was a princess, betrothed to a prince just over the sea.

How exactly did you think this was going to go?

The king motioned to his guards, who dismounted their horses and closed in on him before he could leap atop his ebony steed.

They laid into him for a good ten minutes for kidnapping the princess before dragging him into the city.

Now, the king smiled at the princess.

He had an offer for her.

He knew she was betrothed, but she was so far from home.

He said, fun new opportunity, a spot opened up in his harem.

She would really

rather not,

she said.

When seen, the king said he'd really hate for the men here to have to change their mind with the punches.

The princess hung her head, but as they walked into the city, she devised her plan.

Yeah, it's it's not really far down the road, the farmer said to the prince.

Funny thing happened.

An ugly man showed up in a field, offering a fake horse to the king.

Turned out he kidnapped the princess who was with him, and the king had him beaten, quote, nigh unto death, and dragged into the dungeon.

No one knew where the princess was.

City wasn't far, though.

The prince, our protagonist, sat back at the table.

Well, if he was close, he should probably go try and get to the city.

Also, he thinks he couldn't eat another bite.

They really didn't have to slaughter their best cow just for him.

He was just a weary traveler.

Nothing special about him.

Oh, of course we did.

The farmer smiled.

You're so, so beautiful.

Could he give the prince anything else?

His fastest horse?

His daughter in marriage?

The prince said he would

take the horse.

Snapping his fingers, the farmer laughed.

Almost got him.

Alright, he would get the horse tacked up for the beautiful, beautiful man.

Traveling the countryside and questing and living off the land for the prince was surprisingly extremely easy there's an episode of 30 rock where john ham's character is so attractive that he lives in a bubble where the world accommodates him because well he's pretty that's exactly what happened for the prince when even when he showed up at the city and demanded to see the king the guards who were supposed to take him straight to the dungeon for some reason stopped and fed him because he was, yes, so attractive.

I am not making this up.

It is in the the story.

Over dinner, they laughed.

He was from Persia?

There was a Persian guy in the dungeon right now.

Huge liar.

Said he was a sorcerer, but like, sorcerer your way out of that cell, am I right?

Ugly too, like tusks like a 90s orc.

The prince held out his wrists.

He'd like to be taken to the dungeon now.

The guards looked at each other.

They were going to get him a room in the inn.

On account of him being so good looking.

No, he wanted the dungeon?

Alright, they would try to make it as nice as could.

Woe is me for my sin, the hunched form in the next cell with the moldy tack and louse-ridden mattress croaked, that I sinned against myself and against the king's son, in that which I did with the damsel, for I neither left her nor got my desire of her.

All this comes of my want of sense, in that I sought for myself that which I deserved not, and which benefited not the like of me, for he, who seeks what benefits him not, falleth into the like of my predicament.

How long wilt thou keep up this weeping and wailing?

Thinkest now that there hath befallen thee what never befell other than thou?

The prince barked in the man's native tongue, something that would be a somewhat inscrutable sentence in any language.

I included those bits so you can see what kind of dialogue we're working with here.

Whatever that meant, the prince, who had blown out the dozen candles the guards had placed in the cell to make it a little more cozy for the night, the prince won the man over, who, not knowing it was the prince he hated, began to tell him all about what was happening in the kingdom.

What caught the prince's attention, though, was the madness, the madness of the princess that had arrived with the sorcerer, a madness that came on the moment she entered the city.

No one knew of any cure, and for months she had been in isolation, not letting anyone approach.

Yeah, I travel from kingdom to kingdom, healing the sick, the prince said, when, after a light breakfast, he was brought from his cell and set before the king.

The king gasped.

Really?

Okay, so this woman he kitten this woman he recruited into his harem with her consent, she went mad, like, the first day she joined.

She was locked away, but he would love for this healer to cure her so they could well, so she could do the duties she completely consensually consented to.

The prince nodded.

He would see what he could do.

When they arrived at the princess's room, the chamber pots piled in the corner and the dishes thrown against the wall, the remnants of food attracting the rats and the roaches.

The princess was sleeping.

She gets super violent if you try to wake her up.

Ask me how I know, the king laughed.

For real, though, one of his guys was in pretty critical condition.

It wasn't looking good.

I've dealt with this before.

The prince winked, and about half the room felt their hearts flutter.

Hey there, he whispered into her ear, princess stopping herself from plunging the broken piece of dinner plate into his neck by only about a half a second.

She smiled, and she fainted.

Get her up!

Get her up!

The prince cried, leaving the room.

He had seen this before.

She was possessed by a genie.

Can the gjin can they do that?

The king wondered.

Apparently, yes, the traveling healer nodded.

Now he needed some things from the king.

The horse she was on was, apparently, critical to healing her.

The king had it brought from his storeroom, and it had to be placed in the exact spot where the sorcerer and the woman arrived in the kingdom.

The king marveled at the ebony horse.

There was so much he didn't understand.

Your craft is amazing.

We have so much to learn from you, the king marveled.

I know, right, the prince said.

And as the princess awoke, he inserted the ascent peg into the side of the horse, and they took off into the clouds.

The king and his nobles shielded their eyes from the dust and the dirt kicked up in the ebony horse's stead and watched the pair disappear.

Wait, they're

they're coming back, right?

The king squinted.

Right?

The prince and the princess had no way of knowing, but it took several hours to comfort the king with the knowledge that they were all sorcerers or something, and he didn't need her.

There are other fish in the sea, and yes, other women in his harem.

Upon landing, the princess was bathed, the prince lauded, and the ebony horse utterly and completely destroyed.

And if that is what science and geometry were all about, the king wanted nothing to do with it.

He was off science and geometry now.

It was all magic and whatever the opposite of geometry was, they'd have to research that.

No, no, no research.

That was science talk.

Old habits.

To wrap up our story, I like to think that the sage talked his way out of prison with his wondrous offers of magical items, and he and that king had some sort of sleazy revenge team-up until they both stabbed each other in the back, both metaphorically and literally.

But sadly, we just don't know.

We do know what happens to the prince and princess, though.

The story ends on a happy note.

The princess's father eventually got on board with the marriage because what else was he gonna do?

Hopefully, he fired the eunuch guard, though, and the princess and the prince lived happily and, once the old king abdicated, ruled together in peace.

That's where we'll leave things this week.

Next week is a semi-rare week off for us, but we'll be back in two weeks.

If you'd like more episodes in the meantime, though, we have a membership thing on the site, where there are 90-plus bonus episodes and ad-free member shows.

Check it out at mythpodcast.com slash membership or find us on Apple Podcasts.

The creature this week is Tangy from the Shetland Islands in Scotland.

Tangy might be Tangy.

Not sure, no one's ever eaten one.

It's pretty similar to the Kelpie.

It's a horse that will convey its rider into the water and then consume them.

So once again, always be wary of unattended saddled horses that want to be ridden on the road at night.

This one can transform into an elderly human man and mostly hassles women.

It's not cool, but mythological creatures who consume humans rarely are.

It has seaweed hair, which is so distinct that Wikipedia apparently knows the genus of the seaweed.

In addition to free rides, it will drive humans and animals to derangement.

In a rare instance of friendship between a human-eating monster and a human-robbing human, The Tangy is famous for being the horse of choice for Black Eric, a sheep rustler in medieval Scotland, who was able to get away with his crimes for so long because he made friends with the Tangy.

Black Eric was something of a Robinhood character, if Robin Hood never gave back to the poor and always kept it for himself, so basically like the earliest of Robin Hood stories.

He didn't have the then-massive Sherwood Forest to hide out in, but instead made his home in the Fitful Head Cliffs, in a spot unreachable by everything but a magic horse.

The problem with pinning your whole sheep-stealing venture on the whims of a murder horse is, well, that.

The horse couldn't be tamed, and one day, just stopped coming around.

So Black Eric had to abandon his hideout in the cliffs.

His nemesis, Sandy Bremer, a local sheep owner who owned far fewer sheep thanks to Eric, found Eric's newer, more accessible hideout and his easily spookable horse.

Sandy tied one end of the rope to the horse and the other to Eric's feet as he slept, and the man was dragged out and arrested.

Eric got away, briefly, stealing back his horse, but being so long accustomed to riding his horse on dangerous cliff faces with ease, both he and the non-magical horse tumbled to their deaths almost immediately.

So yeah, it maybe goes without saying, but a good way to stay alive is, well, one, not continuously robbing an island of their sheep and then hiding on said island, but also maybe you don't ride your horse directly off a cliff.

That's it for this time.

Myths and Legends is by Jason and Carissa Weiser.

Our theme song is by Broke for Free, and the Creature of the Week music is by Steve Combs.

There are links to even more of the music we used in the show notes.

Thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you next time.

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