Robier's Vegetable Garden

 is a book in.

Content
''A rich Breton named Robier, often called "Uncle" by his neighbors, owned a great plantation whose crops fed dozens of villages. Day and night his serfs worked the fields, plucking aphids and worms out by their fingernails if they had to in order to make the produce the best and most delicious in all of High Rock.

Then the Creature invaded his fields. Beneath the noses of the workers, it devoured potatoes and cabbages, carrots and lettuce, radishes and beans.

It stumped the efforts of the serfs to catch it. Sometimes, people would think they had it, dive forward to grab it, and impale themselves on tools left upon the ground! Other times, the Creature would sneak up behind them in broad daylight and push them over to break their necks!

It was believed that Uncle Robier was cursed somehow, and the Creature was some kind of revenge for a person he had wronged in his past. The serfs abandoned the fields, willing to risk a week in the stocks rather than death at the hands of the Creature. Soon Uncle Robier's fields were stripped bare by the ravenous Creature, and even he began to believe the superstition himself. He locked himself in his chateau and pleaded to the Divines, but they were silent. All Robier could hear was the sound of the Creature scratching beneath the floorboards, inside the walls, and in his cupboards as it devoured all he had left to eat.

Huddled inside his bedroom in the dark of night, Robier watched as his last candle burned itself to a nub and went out. Then the Creature devoured him as well.''