Epilogue Him
Epilogue
Him
Bisclavret is human.
Every morning he wakes and thinks: this is it.
Today will be the day he loses himself again.
The dread of the change haunts him, no matter how often the king reminds him that he’s safe, his lands restored to him and his wife and cousin banished to an even more distant exile than that which once kept him from the world.
They cannot hurt him further, and he will not be cast out for what he is.
Nothing, his king promises, can change this.
This: waking in the king’s bed. This: soft kisses that feel like promises, that knit together all the small wounds left weeping after his two years away from himself. This: being held, being known, being loved.
These days, when the king’s gaze shears through his mask and down to the truth of him, he doesn’t shudder away from it, for he has been witnessed in his monstrosity and still – still this man whispers his name with love, unafraid of the worst of him.
Bisclavret isn’t sure when he stopped hiding, or when that affection ceased to be something to shy from.
Maybe when he saw the king on his knees, praying for his soul.
It’s not the same as the love his wife gave to him, to Bisclavret-the-man; this is a love that knows he is always already Bisclavret-the-wolf, somewhere beneath his skin.
His king sees him for who and what he is, and has not walked away.
He’s done nothing to deserve this. But he’ll cling to it anyway with both hands and he will not let it go.
Over time, he comes to think that perhaps the wolf in him is exorcised after all.
Perhaps he has finally done his penance and freed himself of the curse, those long months a scourge cleansing him of sin.
Perhaps the king is blessed with a healing touch.
It’s been so long since he felt the wolf stir in his blood, it’s almost as though he’s human. Human, and no longer alone.
When the change comes, it rips through him so violently he hardly has time to catch his breath.
He remembers little of the night. It’s hard to recall how he got out of the castle, but he must have done, for he finds himself in the king’s forest shortly after dawn, wracked by spasms with the threat of the shift ever-present, naked and unstable.
His breath gathers in sobs in his throat. He is still wolf. Still lost.
Of course none of this could last.
And his clothes – he has no clothes here.
Those he was wearing yesterday must be rags by now, torn when his body threw him out of his skin so fast he had no chance to undress.
He senses the chains of wolf-form tightening around him, threatening to steal him for a season, a year, the rest of his life, and he wants to scream with the unfairness of it.
He thought this was over. He thought he was cured. Why isn’t he cured?
He staggers to the edge of the forest without knowing how he’ll get home, naked as he is, and stops short when he sees the figure standing there.
The king.
His king.
He doesn’t look surprised to see Bisclavret.
He has a bundle in his arms: clothes. Bisclavret is unfairly reminded of another man who once brought him garments when he was lost among the trees, and the pang of remembering his cousin’s betrayal is an unwelcome bitterness too slowly pushed aside by relief at his rescue. It is a hurt he has not healed from.
The king steps forward, unafraid, and says, ‘I brought you these.’
Bisclavret reaches out to take them, but his shaking hands send them tumbling to the earth, and he’s clumsy and slow as he bends to gather them. The king kneels and picks them up, gently brushing away the dirt, and then he helps Bisclavret to dress with careful tenderness.
His bones settle with every touch, the cloth and the king’s fingers like thread stitching him back together. Human.
The wolf inside him subsides – neither dead nor gone, but sleeping, for now.
Soon Bisclavret is clothed, and the shaking lessens, his trembling limbs stilled.
‘I told you I’d be here when you came back,’ says the king. ‘But that was wrong of me. I should have told you that I’d come and find you.’ His lips are soft and taste of truth. ‘I will always come and find you.’
He interlaces their fingers, the miracle of hands as astounding as ever, the miracle of affection more so.
Bisclavret looks down at them and feels the hot sting of tears, a tightness in his chest born of some unnameable emotion no wolf has ever been capable of feeling.
It washes through him in a wave, as bright as hope and as deep as grief.
He says, ‘I am already found.’
Because he is human, for now, and he is loved, regardless, and that is enough.