The Beauty of the Wolf

by Wray Delaney

  ‘Do not play with me,’ she says.

  ‘I do not.’

  Her green eyes never leave mine. At last she turns and in an instant she is hanging upside down from a beam, wrapped in her wings.

  ‘Go away,’ she says. ‘Randa gave you – I gave you – you, Lord Beaumont – your freedom.’

  ‘What if I do not want it?’

  ‘Go back to your chamber. Leave there the gown you are wearing.’

  I pick up the candle and furious to be so dismissed, slam it down again.‘You think me a thief? Here, have it.’

  I tear the gown from my body, ripping the fur and the embroidered fabric, and toss it to the floor. It lies in a heap and I think my eyes perfidious for the fur lining moves of its own accord and takes on the shape of a black wolf. Stunned by such an unnatural vision my limbs that before were mine to control lose all such use. With a speed not known to man, this thing, this unmade thing of wolf fur, leaps on me and the minutes slow and it seems that the attack has lasted for all time. The thing grows, consumes me, swallows me whole. I hear Randa screech until I hear no more, smothered as I am, blinded in the suffocating darkness of fur. I cannot breathe. I cannot breathe . . .

  Sharp teeth sink into my neck and I am thrown across the chamber, by what force I know not. Then it, the thing, is gone. I look up and there is Randa, terror in her eyes. I look down and cannot believe what I see.

  THE BEAST

  LXXIV

  I did not know.

  I knew. Randa knew well.

  I had it tailored for him, a gown to match his beauty, not thinking that the precious fabric would ever be torn, that the tearing would set free – give life – to the skin that lined the garment. The vengeful spirit of a black wolf latched onto his host as a flea to a dog.

  Randa, you lie.

  Yes, I lie. It roared across my mind, excited my thoughts with its secret possibility that if he, if Beau, he who I love, should tear such a beautiful garment . . .

  I knew the fabric would enchant him, knew he would stare in awe at the embroidered tales told in such small stitches. And if such a reckless act should release the magic, it would be just punishment for the scar he left upon my heart. A heart twice scarred; the loss of a mother mocking the loss of he who does not love me. Yet the scar he left I feel all the deeper.

  Why did he search me out? I had made all clear to him, I had left open the door, not turned the key, given him, my lord, my love, his freedom.

  What then made his shoes turn towards my chamber when the road waited so obligingly for him?

  Desire made a beast of me. When he kissed my talons – my talons, not the slim, white hand of a lady – but my talons that kill – when he took them to his mouth, something stirred, unsettled all my human parts that scorn my dreams and leave me frustrated.

  Beau stares in disbelief at his fur-covered limbs, at this unexpected transformation. His hair is longer, thicker, wiry and unruly. His body near unrecognisable. My heart races to think what would have happened if I had not sunk my teeth into the spirit’s neck for the only part of Beau that I have seen before this moment is his beautiful face.

  Slowly, unsure of himself, unsure of who this new self is, he stands. Taller than he was before, his bulk made greater by the fur on his back and shoulders. I move away, for the wolf may be deeper within him than his pelt. And I feel in me fear, both great and small, and know not what I have unleashed.

  ‘I had hoped to be the alchemist of your transformation,’ he says. It is his own voice, so dear to me. ‘And now it appears I have unwittingly brought about my own.’

  His eyes are sad and I hang my head, ashamed of my vengeful heart.

  ‘You thought my words insincere. You believed I mocked you, that I played a part. You were wrong. It was only that I had forgotten the lines my soul should have spoken. I came to tell you that I missed you when you left the House of the Three Turrets. That is not a lie. For a time I thought myself glad to be free of you. But I was not. I was incomplete. Do you believe me, Mistress Randa?’ He stretches out his arms, spreads wide his fingers tipped in fur. ‘Now you meet me like this, can you believe I am speaking the truth? My truth, all I know of it?’

  These words might set fire to me. I might burn in their flame for all eternity.

  He pulls me back to him but I am lifted off the floor and fly hard against the wall. He has the strength of the wolf. And he is as surprised as I. For a moment my tongue loses all words and my head spins. He asks forgiveness if he has hurt me.

  ‘I always thought myself a feeble man,’ he says. ‘Is this my punishment for being careless of your feelings?’

  I shake my feathers, willing this all to go away. I have no words, only sounds. I think the spirit of the black wolf is a mighty one and I think it will protect him from the beasts in Herkain’s realm.

  ‘But will it protect you from me?’ he says, and I am unnerved.

  He comes to me, this man of wolf fur. I turn my head away. He turns it back to him, holding me tight about the waist.

  He kisses me.

  I knew not what passion such a tender kiss can kindle. He strokes my feathers.

  ‘You are beautiful,’ he says, ‘far more beautiful than you know.’

  It is on my tongue to say that these are but the words of the wolf spirit but he kisses me again.

  I have two chambers. The empty one of wooden beams where, after I have hunted, often at night I hang; the other for the woman I wish I could be. It is lined with books that I can no longer hold, whose words I yearn to read, but my talons that when small were soft and malleable have grown to be instruments of slaughter. Here is where I sleep and in my quiet mind I envy mortals their hands that can turn the leaves of books and gather wisdom there.

  We speak not and all the thoughts in my head are peaceful and here we lie and fit together in a different way than ever that I dreamed of. I wonder how such things have turned around to be this, and do not feel honourable in the part I played.

  He says, ‘You did nothing wrong. Had I known the consequences I would have done the same.’

  I think, I am too slow. He has outwitted me. He is in my head and hears my thoughts.

  ‘As I always have,’ he says.

  He kisses me again.

  I taste a yearning in the sweetness of his tongue and recognise in it my own longing. Perhaps any other way than this I would have been too shy to let the rest unfold. He has such kisses in him and he strokes my feathers, caresses my fur, tenderly sucks upon my breast. And all the longing that I feel, the ache where my body holds the imprint of woman, the part that talons prove useless to satisfy, into that dark mystery of me he enters.

  This act that in my mind made knots of love, I see in all its simplicity. He fills me and in that instant I am me, I am a woman, white-skinned and pale, my cunny clothed in its dark bush.

  We sleep. I wrap him in my wings, hold his heartbeat close and trust myself to fall. In the morning I am I and he is half man, half wolf, all mine.

  THE BEAUTY

  LXXV

  When we make love, in her wildness she sinks her talons into my back, the pain exquisite in its moment of bliss. She says that if she had hands she would stroke me as I do her.

  ‘Your touch makes me feel a human, as if I am a woman who could be loved.’

  From the scars on my back more fur grows.

  I whisper into her feathers, ‘How is it to have wings, to feel the air, to come home bearing the scent of clouds and snow?’

  She hunts alone. I wait, feeling such hunger – for her return, and for her kill. The two emotions become one. It is with a sense of revulsion that I remember eating charred meat from the fire; the very thought is barbaric. I relish the soft, buttery taste of meat that still pulses with life, the warm blood of animals just killed. We eat together and nothing has ever tasted more vital than this. Sated, I take each of her talons in my mouth and suck the meat from them, lick the blood that runs down her feathers as she does my pelt.

&
nbsp; This is all I want. This and for it to never cease. Here in our kingdom we rule.

  The fox takes his time to sniff out and understand the change in me. He keep his distance.

  Full from loving, from eating, we go into the chamber with the library and the furnishings from a life that is receding from me. I read to her, she hungry for words that I feel to be less important. I speak a different language without the past or future tense. This she notes. I reassure her: I am free, there are no strings of guilt, no ties of conscience, no chains of church to torment me.

  When she asks me, what of the curse? I search my mind to remember what it is, why it is important, and tell her I cannot.

  I beg her to take me hunting with her, to teach me to kill as she does.

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘This is not you.’ I howl and she holds me to her, saying, ‘I fear the spirit of the vengeful wolf is becoming the master of you.’

  It does not concern me. Why should it concern me? I am wolf.

  THE BEAST

  LXVI

  It is the fox who shows me what I have refused to see. His hackles rise, his teeth bravely bared, he backs away from Beau. Beau, my lover, who has in devastating stitches changed into this other, this wolf, into a different kind of creature, one who I do not know, his beauty stripped from him.

  Look, Randa, look at what he has become.

  Where are his soft, golden eyes, his tender hands that stroked me, his gentle tongue that spoke to me of love, the love he had for me? This is not my lover, this animal is not he.

  If passion is blind, then I possess no eyes. How could I love him yet not see these changes? His hands, his beautiful hands that once took me to a different sky . . . claws now, arrows in my heart.

  Be I a jester to the truth? Have I killed him, my lover? Has Randa killed again?

  Beau turns to me and I see him now for what he has become: a savage wolf with eyes of burning embers. With speed far faster than mine he tries to snatch the fox. The fox keeps Beau at bay. I fly at Beau, my talons the only weapons that have the power to hold him back. I seize the fox and take him up to the rafters with me. Beneath us, Beau, he that was Beau, circles, waiting for one of us, both of us to fall.

  Have I left it too late? Have I? Papio is gone and there is no one here in this house of endless chambers. Only the wolf and me.

  My world spins. I hold tight to the fox, rock him, powerless to calm the savage below. Beau has vanished into that vengeful pelt. He has grown in size, walks on all fours, from his fangs saliva drips. I hear his steel claws on the wooden floor, I hear his heavy breath, I hear him growl for meat, raw meat.

  He throws his weight against the doors. Again, again, again. No words now, words all gone. Unable to escape, in his fury he turns upon the furnishings, tears the drapes to shreds, pulls down the books, snaps chairs and bed as if they be but kindling.

  ‘Beau, my love, where are you?’

  My cry drives him wilder and he leaps up as if he would kill me if he could only reach this high.

  He stops as abruptly as he started and stands for a moment in a fallen forest of ruined objects. He stops, so I think and hope the man in him will return.

  An explosion. Glass shards fly across the chamber, the lattice window shattered. He, the wolf, is no longer here.

  I rush to the window, will myself to look down, fearing to see the wolf’s body, Beau’s body, crushed on the ground below. A scream is caught in my throat and I think I have let it out until I realise the sound does not come from me but from outside. It is the howl of the wolf and in the moonlight he shakes a shower of silver glass from his pelt and is gone.

  A hunter am I. I follow him. Glad am I to feel the icy sky fill my wings. I glide, cushioned on pockets of air. Below me the great forest lies, brooding in all its dark secrecy, waiting for the dawn. Where is he? Where is my love? Snow falls. If I find him, persuade him to come home, perhaps make right what my jealousy has made wrong. All night I fly, I search, I pray. I think of my father and of his prayers, those endless prayers that his god never heard.

  The day breaks, cracks the night sky. The bare branches of the great oak trees reach out to me. Fresh white snow covers the ground. Sharp be my eyes. The deer, the stag run criss-crossing through the trees but Beau I cannot see. Soon he will be returning from the hunt, aching to find a safe place to sleep until the moon calls him again.

  I am close by the House of the Three Turrets. Below me a man mounts his horse and with his hounds rides out into the new day. I swoop down. There is no mistaking Lord Rodermere. He canters into the forest, followed by the wild barking of his dogs. The call of his hunting horn wakes the forest and rooks fly from their nests.

  The sight of him brings a feeling of such foreboding: I know what Beau, my love, the wolf means to do and I am powerless to stop him.

  Beau cannot be far away but the dogs have no scent of him. The rush of wind from my wings makes Lord Rodermere look up. He sees me and raises his crossbow, pulls back the bolt, takes aim at me and in that moment he does not see what I see. The wolf, my lover, springs at Lord Rodermere. The crossbow falls, the horse falls, the rider falls . . . the horse, wild with panic, scrambles to stand then gallops away, the terrified hounds following in its wake.

  Lord Rodermere, stunned, is slow to find his feet. The wolf waits, watches. Only when the earl can see the glint in the wolf’s eye, see his savagery, does the creature pounce and sink his steely teeth into the heart of Lord Rodermere. Into the heart of his father. A scream gurgles in his lordship’s throat. He falls backwards, his arms and legs spread wide as the wolf tears his heart from his chest.

  The rooks caw, the sun dances in the trees, the snow turns crimson in the morning light. The wolf has his prey by the throat, shakes him, shakes him, and I hear his neck snap. Only then does the wolf, does Beau, look up at me. He howls and drags his kill into the undergrowth.

  Stillness returns to the forest. Bloodied snow is all that is left of the killing.

  What have I done?

  I have made a monster of a man.

  THE BEAUTY OF THE WOLF

  LXXVII

  I be wolf, no man my master.

  All beast, all man, is one in me.

  I, born in the beginning

  before trees were named,

  when the river ran blue,

  I will be at the end of all ends.

  A furnace my sinews of molten iron,

  my claws are steel, vision blood red,

  tongue black as my fur,

  my mind ruled by the hammers of revenge.

  I will find my killer.

  This night is mine, his death my freedom.

  To the house of the oakman’s dead trees.

  The moon, my light. I know the way.

  I be the wolf, no man my master.

  Morning snow untouched.

  Comes the man, high on his horse,

  hounds singing to the cry of a horn.

  Hunger is all I know;

  hunger is all I am.

  In the morning forest I smell his blood,

  Sluggish in sleepy veins.

  He rides out,

  the hounds do not follow,

  wise to the scent of me.

  This moment:

  no man’s past, no man’s tomorrow,

  the howl of eternity now.

  I rise from the ground, cross space and time

  to reach him.

  To sink my teeth into his beating heart,

  tear it from him.

  Take him by his throat,

  shake him until neck snaps.

  A broken branch.

  His eyes, wild, stare into flakes of falling snow.

  By the arm I drag him,

  let his blood replenish the soil,

  feed the roots of barren trees.

  My bones are from the earth,

  Iron roots of the forest my skeleton.

  I be wolf. No man my master.

  THE BEAST

  LXXVIII

 
I return to the house where the silence is loud, accusing. What has Randa done?

  I scream my answer into the void. I, I, Randa, have caused my love to fulfil the sorceress’s curse.

  The silence is unforgiving.

  I took a good man, a brave man and turned him into a murderer. How do I live knowing this?

  I wish as I have never wished before that I could make time reverse itself. Have I lost him, my love?

  All that he destroyed I leave where it fell; the broken chairs, my carved bed, the scattered books, spines split, autumn leaves their pages. I crouch to see the words, read one page then move to another book. Disjointed tales, the chattering of curious minds. Hope have I that I might come across a charm, a spell, to free him from the wolf spirit, to bring home to me my kind, gentle Beau.

  I sleep. On the floor where I sleep objects from the chaos of his rage are illuminated in pools of of sunlight.

  My faithful fox keeps me company, catches mice for me and lays them in rows. I have no desire to eat, to live. A name is all I own. I am The Beast.

  I do not dream.

  I wake at twilight to find Herkain standing over me. Behind him is Papio, returned.

  The King of the Beasts says Randa will be queen here, but not with the spirit of a vengeful man-wolf at her side.

  I realise the impossible weight of my grief and with bowed head I ask him, ask Herkain, how do I undo this enchantment? This cruel act, my terrible mistake. Is there a charm, I ask, that might take away Beau’s wolf madness?

  ‘You should have left the pelt be,’ he says. ‘But I am not here to talk of mundane matters. You must marry one of my sons. They are lazy beasts and not as handsome as you, yet they are of royal blood. You, Randa, must choose yourself a lord to be your master.’

  What is he asking? No. Randa could not, I could not . . .

  ‘Which one would you take?’ he says.

  Neither, I want to scream, neither, never. They are both idle creatures with stunted wings, one plump, one lean, and each near drowned in Narcissus’s pool. Neither one have I a liking for.

  The King of the Beasts says he would choose for me the elder of his sons.