Chapter 32 Other
Other
the woods breed hunters like decay
but this time the rot’s not distant,
baying of the hounds made phantom by remove;
this time the impact of the horses’ hooves
shakes the world, crumbling earth
into trembling pieces; this time the circle
closes like a trap, sprung unknowing.
they don’t know I’m here
the months have woven a new tapestry
from the colours of the forest,
trees shifting orange to skeletal to new growth
as the flowers keep time, scents and shoots
a wolf’s only calendar. but change
has been an external thing, a forgotten thing.
I thought I had nothing to be afraid of
now that the worst has happened
but there are hunters in these woods
not being afraid is a luxury
but riches ever fade
– if they knew it was me would they still hunt me –
and there’s a royal bloodlust to be slaked.
he is not a king who thirsts for blood
he is bright prince sword swinging laughter
he is king with heavy crown and banked fire and yearning
it is a peaceful man who is lost to me
stories scavenged from the edge of the forest
cannot slake the thirst of loneliness,
but there’s a sanity to be found in them.
at least the half-lost sanity of a memory of a man
scattered and incoherent in a wolf’s body.
RUN
I don’t have to run
I could stay here and let him find me –
poetic, really, for a king to kill his knight,
unmake the one he made,
unname the one he named.
I remember that first hunt
how he watched me
how I pretended I was lost to it
and to the thrill of being a predator
no novelty in that except the human taste of it
I wasn’t lost
I let him watch me
I dared him to do anything but watch me
sometimes others are a better mirror
– I want him to watch me again
but I am not me I cannot even watch myself –
and the wolf’s a bitter armour
he believes I killed me –
so the stories say, in their way, a classic tragedy:
a man wandering, half-mad, stolen by a wolf’s teeth
– perhaps it’s true
I lost my wits and my skin together
it was a wolf who stole me from my wife
and from my home
and for a king to wage war on a wolf
is as much the stuff of stories as the rest,
an ill-fitting vengeance.
let him
what good am I alive
what life is this that I lead
RUN
not this time
I will face him like a man
I will make them face me
I will make them look me in the eyes when they kill me
see that a thinking creature wears this skin
they will live with that knowledge
HUNT
I will not hunt the king
he has my oath he has my life
but this is the way of things the way it always is
he is man and I am beast
that is ever the difference between us
RUN
not any more