Read "Antelopes with Six Legs" by Jorge Luis Borges online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
It is said that Odin's horse, the grey-coated Sleipnir who travels on land, in the air, and down into the regions of Hell is provided (or encumbered) with eight legs; a Siberian myth attributes six legs to the first Antelopes. With such an endowment it was difficult or impossible to catch them; Tunk-poj, the divine huntsman, made some special skates with the wood of a sacred tree which creaked incessantly and that the barking of a dog had revealed to him. The skates creaked too and flew with the speed of an arrow; to control or restrain their course, he found it necessary to wedge into the skates some blocks made of the wood of another magic tree. All over heaven Tunk-poj hunted the Antelope. The beast, tired out, fell to the ground, and Tunk-poj cut off its hindmost pair of legs.
‘Men,' said Tunk-poj, ‘grow smaller and weaker every day. How are they going to hunt six-legged Antelopes if I myself am barely able to?'
From that day on, Antelopes have been quadrupeds.