The Beasts: A Winter's Tale

When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

-Friedrich Nietzsche

The book of Pamela Strauss

Why prolong what happened? Hagano certainly didn’t think I should. I came out to see him every day, to walk through the spring and summer country with him. He told me tales I had never heard before, that some knew very well, that you must have known in some version.

When the Great Wolf, Fenris, began to run amok, he first went back to the place where he was born. Tyr and the other Aesir had tried to keep him from going back to the Iron Wood, but one day he escaped and fled to his birthplace, and was reunited with his mother Angrboda, and his werewolf half-siblings. It is not known what happened to him there, save that when he left, his maddened devouring rage had begun in earnest, and a wolf-woman of the Jarnvidur had borne two wolf-pups, the very image of their father. In another account, the mother of Hati and Skoll was Angrboda herself, by Fenris her son, but we may never know the truth of this. Skoll's name means "treachery" while Hati's name means "Hater". Hati is also sometimes given two different last names – Hróðvitnisson, Son of Rage and Managarm, the Hound of the Moon-hound.

When Fenris was chained, Hati and Skoll were the only ones who came to defend him. Loki and Angrboda themselves did not interfere, knowing the necessity of the binding, but his young sons tumbled forth in a vain attempt to free their father. Instead, they were captured by the Aesir, and Odin put them to use, bespelling them as he had bespelled the Great Snake. Sunna and Mani had often been known to dawdle or change their course, which meant that the days and nights were not always dependable and on time. Mani was especially bad at this, as he liked to look down on what was happening, and the adventures played out below his feet enchanted and delayed him. There had been complaints about this from many mouths, and so Odin put the two wolves into the sky as a way to make the chariots run on time, as it were. Skoll was bespelled to chase Sunna's chariot as a dog herds sheep, keeping it to its path, and Hati, called Hati Hridvitisson, and Managarm, was similarly charged with herding Mani's dog-cart.

While they do not spend all of their time in the sky, the wolves can run free on the earth below - if either sky-etin is late, they are lifted into the sky to do their job. Skoll is the quieter of the two, and says little; he does not love the involuntary nature of his job, although he gets some fun out of racing Sunna, but he is aware that it is a better deal than the one that befell his father. Hati is more outgoing and more moody; he veers from cheery mischief to wrath, and deeply resents the spell that pulls him so often to the sky. Both are aware that if Ragnarok comes, they will be able to chase and kill Sunna and Mani, and free themselves from Odin's spell, and they look forward to that day.

When he told these stories, he explained nothing.

While we were walking once, conversationally, Hagano spoke to me.

Once upon a time there was a dear little girl who was loved by everyone who looked at her, but most of all by her grandmother, and there was nothing that she would not have given to the child. Once she gave her a little riding hood of red velvet, which suited her so well that she would never wear anything else; so she was always called 'Little Red Riding Hood.'

It was only after this that I realized he was telling a story.

One day her mother said to her: 'Come, Little Red Riding Hood, here is a piece of cake and a bottle of wine; take them to your grandmother, she is ill and weak, and they will do her good. Set out before it gets hot, and when you are going, walk nicely and quietly and do not run off the path, or you may fall and break the bottle, and then your grandmother will get nothing; and when you go into her room, don't forget to say, "Good morning", and don't peep into every corner before you do it.'

'I will take great care,' said Little Red Riding Hood to her mother, and gave her hand on it.

The grandmother lived out in the wood, half a league from the village, and just as Little Red Riding Hood entered the wood, a wolf met her. Red Riding Hood did not know what a wicked creature he was, and was not at all afraid of him.

'Good day, Little Red Riding Hood,' said he.

'Thank you kindly, wolf.'

'Whither away so early, Little Red Riding Hood?'

'To my grandmother's.'

'What have you got in your apron?'

'Cake and wine; yesterday was baking-day, so poor sick grandmother is to have something good, to make her stronger.'

'Where does your grandmother live, Little Red Riding Hood?'

'A good quarter of a league farther on in the wood; her house stands under the three large oak-trees, the nut-trees are just below; you surely must know it,' replied Little Red Riding Hood.

The wolf thought to himself: 'What a tender young creature! what a nice plump mouthful - she will be better to eat than the old woman. I must act craftily, so as to catch both.'

So he walked for a short time by the side of Little Red Riding Hood, and then he said: 'See, Little Red Riding Hood, how pretty the flowers are about here - why do you not look round? I believe, too, that you do not hear how sweetly the little birds are singing; you walk gravely along as if you were going to school, while everything else out here in the wood is merry.'

Little Red Riding Hood raised her eyes, and when she saw the sunbeams dancing here and there through the trees, and pretty flowers growing everywhere, she thought: 'Suppose I take grandmother a fresh nosegay; that would please her too. It is so early in the day that I shall still get there in good time.'

So she ran from the path into the wood to look for flowers. And whenever she had picked one, she fancied that she saw a still prettier one farther on, and ran after it, and so got deeper and deeper into the wood.

Meanwhile the wolf ran straight to the grandmother's house and knocked at the door.

'Who is there?'

'Little Red Riding Hood,' replied the wolf. 'She is bringing cake and wine; open the door.'

'Lift the latch,' called out the grandmother, 'I am too weak, and cannot get up.'

The wolf lifted the latch, the door sprang open, and without saying a word he went straight to the grandmother's bed, and devoured her. Then he put on her clothes, dressed himself in her cap, laid himself in bed and drew the curtains.

Little Red Riding Hood, however, had been running about picking flowers, and when she had gathered so many that she could carry no more, she remembered her grandmother, and set out on the way to her.

She was surprised to find the cottage-door standing open, and when she went into the room, she had such a strange feeling that she said to herself: 'Oh dear! how uneasy I feel today, and at other times I like being with grandmother so much.' She called out: 'Good morning,' but received no answer; so she went to the bed and drew back the curtains. There lay her grandmother with her cap pulled far over her face, and looking very strange.

'Oh! Grandmother,' she said, 'what big ears you have!'

'All the better to hear you with, my child,' was the reply.

'But, Grandmother, what big eyes you have!' she said.

'All the better to see you with, my dear.'

'But, Grandmother, what large hands you have!'

'All the better to hug you with.'

'Oh! but, Grandmother, what a terrible big mouth you have!'

'All the better to eat you with!'

And scarcely had the wolf said this, than with one bound he was out of bed and swallowed up Red Riding Hood.

When the wolf had appeased his appetite, he lay down again in the bed, fell asleep and began to snore very loud.”

Hagano stopped talking, and continued walking.

“But what else happened?” I demanded.

“What else?” Hagano said. “Nothing else. That is the story.”

“The story ends with the wolf eating the girl?”

“The story always ends with the wolf eating the girl, though some who do not understand it, have added endings they think are happier.”

We continued walking in silence and finally Hagano said, “It is time for the wolf to eat the girl.”

I did not know what he meant. He took me in his arms, under the wolf cloak, and I did not stop him. We were under the wolf cloak and he began to undress me. My body shivered with something that was different from desire. I felt like I was melting. I was afraid because, until recently, I had been with no man at all, and now not only did I lay down with Friederich every night, but this was happening. I reached forward, then afraid I pulled back. Hagano laughed low in his throat, his voice hot around me in the tent of his cloak.

“Do not be ashamed to reach forward, little Pamela. There is nothing without reaching forward.”

And so I did. He removed my garments while I removed his, and as our bodies joined together our skins were hot, like fire almost, but now in our movements our limbs stretched and stretched, and when he entered me, his teeth bit into my shoulder. They were hard, and were becoming harder, and as his teeth clenched on me, my flesh became strong and thick and… lustrous. And my fingers in his back became claws, and I arched my head back and gave a great cry which ended in a triumphant howl.

He could have shown me in many ways, but this was possibly the best, and a way we both wanted. Through ecstasy he taught my body to move through changes so now in that forest, under the light of day, underneath his grey body, I too became the wolf. The desire that would have been sex at any other time became the great racing across the hills, filled with energy and the joy of my new agility, I ran with Hagano through the hills and under the shadow of the mountain. When we were hungry, we chased down a deer and with wolf teeth, I ripped into its sinews and pulled out gleaming organs like bags of cords. When we were done, we refreshed ourselves in the cold river, and when we were done with this, we gave up our wolf forms and made love in the moss.

“I thought this was only possible in the full moon.”

“In my experience it is only possible for most men in the full moon.”

“And women?”

“Most women never unlock the gift, but when they possess it, they possess it at will.”

Marabeth sat up. She sat down on the edge off the bed, running a hand up and down her arm. She shivered, and wanted to close her bedroom door even as she knew she was not truly cold.

“A little more,” she said, “then I have to put this book away.”

“BUT YOU CAN CHANGE.”

“Yes,” Hagano said. “That is a different story. I am older. From another time.”

“How much older?”

“Oh, much older,” Hagano said, lying down and drawing me to his strong warm body covered in its human pelt of rich blond fur. “Much older, my Pamela, and full of sad stories I do not wish to tell.”

And so, for the time being, I lay with him under the branches of a tree, on the mossy bank by the river, and contented myself with his silence.