Chapter 43 Other/Him
Other/Him
my clothes
here in the place where I have been wolf
a place where I’ve never been human
here they are my clothes
and here in the king’s mouth my name
‘bisclavret’
as though it has always been my name
as though I’ve not been nameless through these winters
and I am remembering myself
I am feeling the pieces of myself drag themselves
back together loose stitches torn thread unravelling
‘you are bisclavret’
he says and some part of me hears the words
which has heard nothing for so long
some part of me that wakes up now after endless months and I am
—shaking, skin peeling, back arching as his spine reshapes itself, his body trying to remember how to shift. He shudders and reaches out, snatching at the clothes with one clawed hand (a hand); he clings to it but—
the wolf will not let go so easily
it’s bound itself deeply into my veins
it will always pull me back out of myself
but I had hands for a moment
I remember what it was to have hands
I remember I remember I remember and
—he shudders as he fumbles for the undertunic, feels the worn linen against his skin, and all he can think is: skin.
He hardly has the capacity to recognise that this is a tunic, to remember how to put it on; he’s still half-wolf, body warping beneath him, but he remembers this from the old days in the forest when he’d drag himself to his hidden clothing and dress between spasms of change.
He needs to convince his body that it knows its own shape.
But he’s worn another shape for so long, and his mind still runs the tracks of the wolf’s, thoughts cacophonous and rapid, past collapsing into present and other into self, and—
perhaps I don’t have a man’s mind anymore
perhaps I cannot remember that
—even clothed some things are stronger: wolflike wolfself wolfbeing, all present and hunt and rage and teeth—
perhaps I’ll never truly be bisclavret again
but I want to be dear god I want to be
I saw the look on his face when he left me here
I heard the tone of his voice as he murmured my name
he wants me here
his wanting grounds me it is a tether I can use to come back
‘you are bisclavret’
he said but what I heard was
‘please be bisclavret’
and
‘come back come back come back’
wanting is a rope thrown to a drowning man
or else to a stolen one, dragging himself
through the oozing sludge of a wolfing mind
– I remember his grief –
the way he mourned, a sorrow unending,
vigils for an unshriven soul, lit by yearning
– I remember his confessions –
secrets are less bitter shared,
until the sharing shows its teeth.
I remember the shape of me as a knight
created by his words
a memory I hardly have remade by him
I remember myself because he remembers me
I remember how to
—gasp with human lungs, and for a moment everything is still.
His body, calm – too calm, heart paused between beats, a momentary suspension into immortality, but no immediate collapse into his animal skin.
He allows himself to exist in a moment of nothingness, and then his heart thunders into life and the breath comes rushing out of him and he’s alive.
And human.
His hands – God above, he has hands, the shape of them so alien and welcome – shake as he struggles with the braies, and then untwists the undertunic, easier now he has the shape of it and a little more sense of himself.
Better that the clothes are old, simple, no laces to baffle his unsteady fingers.
The woollen tunic next, red like blood. With every layer his skin fits a little better.
Human.
Human and clothed and real, bound into himself by the garments around his body, reminded of all that he is by the warp and weft of the cloth.
He thought he’d never be human again. He thought he’d never have hands again, and he can’t stop staring at them.
He thinks his mind will burst with the saturation of the world, the colours vivid and many-hued.
He’s exhausted, the bone-deep exhaustion of remaking oneself.
He should stand, cross the room, open the door and tell them that he’s a man again, but he cannot move.
Instead he curls up on the bed he’s known only as a wolf.
He is unsettled in his new-old body, unsure how to fit in this space he thought he knew.
This room has been his home for a year and now it is made strange.
Except that the bed is the same as ever, and he’s the one who has changed.
He crawls under the heavy blankets, too weary to concern himself with manners. The king will understand, he thinks. He’ll understand that being reborn is tiring. That it takes more energy than any duel to build yourself a new body – new blood and bones and skin, new lips, new teeth, new hands.
Hands. He has missed having hands. He’s still running the fingertips of his left hand over the marvels that are the knuckles of his right when his eyes begin to drift closed, the weight of his fatigue dragging him down.
And there, in the king’s bed, Bisclavret sleeps.