THE WEREWOLF It was a huge one, with red eyes and running, grizzled chops; any but

a mountaineer’s child would have died of fright at the sight of it. It went
It is in a northern country; they have cold weather, they have cold hearts. for her throat as wolves do, but she made a great swipe at it with her
Cold; tempest; wild beasts in the forest. It is a hard life. Their houses father’s knife and slashed off its right paw.
are built of logs, dark and smoky within. There will be a crude icon of the The wolf let out a gulp, almost a sob, when she saw what had
virgin behind a guttering candle, the leg of a pig hung up to cure, a string happened to it; wolves are less brave than they seem. It went lolloping off
of drying mushrooms. A bed, a stool, a table. Harsh, poor lives. disconsolately between the trees as well as it could on three legs, leaving
To these upland woodsmen, the Devil is as real as you or I. More so; a trail of blood behind it. The child wiped the blade of her knife clean on
they have not seen us nor even know we exist, but the Devil they glimpse her apron, wrapped the wolf’s paw in the cloth in which her mother had
often in the graveyards, those bleak and touching townships of the dead packed the oatcakes and went on to her grandmother’s house. Soon it
where graves are marked with portraits of the deceased in the naïf style came on to snow so thickly that the path and any footsteps, track or spoor
and there are no flowers to put in front of them, no flowers grow there, so that might have been upon it were obscured.
they put out small, votive offerings, little loaves, sometimes a cake that She found her grandmother was so sick she had taken to her bed and
bears come lumbering from the margins of the forest to snatch away. At fallen into a fretful sleep, moaning and shaking so that the child guessed
midnight especially on Walpurgisnacht, the Devil holds picnics in the she had a fever. She felt the forehead, it burned. She shook out the cloth
graveyards and invites witches; then they dig up fresh corpses and eat from her basket, to use it to make the old woman a cold compress, and the
them. Anyone will tell you that. wolf’s paw fell to the ground.
Wreaths of garlic on the doors keep out the vampires. A blue-eyed But it was no longer a wolf’s paw. It was a hand, chopped off at the
child born feet first on the night of St John’s Eve will have second sight. wrist, a hand toughened with work and freckled with age. There was a
When they discover a witch - some old woman whose cheeses ripen when wedding ring on the third finger and a wart on the index finger. By the
her neighbour’s do not, another old woman whose black cat, oh sinister ! wart, she knew it for her grandmother’s hand.
follows her about all the time, they strip the crone, search her for marks, She pulled back the sheet but the old woman woke up, at that, and
for the supernumerary nipple her familiar sucks. They soon find it. They began to struggle, squawking, and shrieking like a thing possessed. But
stone her to death. the child was strong, and armed with her father’s hunting knife; she
Winter and cold weather. managed to hold her grandmother down long enough to see the cause of
Go and visit grandmother, who has been sick. Take her the oatcakes her fever. There was a bloody stump where her right hand should have
I’ve baked for her on the hearthstone and a little pot of butter. been, festering already.
The good child does as her mother bids - five miles’ trudge through The child crossed herself and cried out so loud the neighbours heard
the forest; do not leave the path because of the bears, the wild boar, the her and came rushing in. They knew the wart on the hand at once for a
starving wolves. Here, take your father’s hunting knife; you know how to witch’s nipple; they drove the old woman, in her shift as she was, out into
use it. the snow with sticks, beating her old carcass as far as the edge of the
The child has a scabby coat of sheepskin to keep out the cold, she forest, and pelted her with stones until she fell down dead.
knew the forest too well to fear it but she must always be on her guard. Now the child lived on in her grandmother’s house; she prospered.
When she heard the freezing howl of a wolf, she dropped her gifts, seized
her knife and turned on the beast.
“ The Werewolf ”, in Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber, 1979.