The Beauty of the Wolf

‘Randa, come back . . . Randa . . . in all your doings be still . . .’

Thomas’s words collapse in on him. The sorceress lights the candle. He is on his knees in the passage. Blood runs down the torn ribbons of his face, he looks like a martyr and she has little sympathy.

Revenge, she thinks, is the sweetest sweetmeat of all.

‘My hem,’ she says. ‘Give me my hem.’

THE BEAST

’Tis my sole plague to be alone,

I am a beast, a monster grown . . .

THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY ROBERT BURTON

XXVIII

In my dreams I am not the beast. I am the child with childish thoughts. I run free on two stout legs, no spiked leather wings to weigh me down. I sing with unformed words that one day will turn into song, a language that will define me. I see my mother smiling, I see my father wake into a nightmare. Who am I, Mother, who am I?

She called me Randa.

She lied. I was no child. I was a malformed, half-wished-for babe. After only three summers I was a thing too strong for chains to bind.

And he, my father, thought me an abomination. I heard his thoughts, caught on the wishbone of his sorrows, tied to his mean regret. I was his greatest triumph and his greatest failure. No word dare he speak of this to her, his love, his beloved, his Bess, my mother.

Soft be she, kind be she, loving be she. She who knew what darkness filled my father’s dreams.

I am old bones wrapped in young skin. I am the beginning and the end without end. I was plunged into mercury vapour and under those metallic waters, in that mirror, I caught a glimpse of time beyond understanding, of a past beyond regret. I knew things no infant should know, wisdom soaked into a deep, an ancient soul.

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