MICHAEL DE VALLE
The wolf speaks
You have me wrong. You
think I feed my hunger but it is my hunger that feeds on me. The darkest part of the heart
keeps beating. There is no escape. Eat lives in the mouth of death and that is how we
live. No matter what you call it we are all beasts. What I stalk in you is what you stalk
in me.
I never asked for this.
This fur, these claws and teeth are carried like your cross. This endless need for flesh.
I run away from it, hide myself in the forest, away from farm houses, from cities and
towns, away from men with their axes and guns, away from their livestock, their women and
daughters, deep in these woods, away from the sun. My life is a shadow, a shade so deep
that the sky is a dream. I run through the night, but hunger hunts me like the moon. And
so I keep howling.
Even then you can't stay
away. You walk through the woods in a blood coloured coat, searching for me. I become
prey. What instinct brings you here? Lamb of God, what is it you want? Am I not also a
creature of God? Granted, not a lamb, but none the less a living feeling creature, like
yourself.
And so you are here, and
I have become your grandmother, and yes, I have big teeth.
Don't pity her, for she
wanted me. The cruelty of youth is that you outlive it. Time is a hunter that traps us
all. Our scent of love goes stale, and yet, inside the witch remains the girl, imprisoned
in herself, still needing, yet no longer needed, still wanting, yet no longer wanted. Live
long enough and you will see. The desire of youth belongs to youth. Live beyond it and
there is nothing to do but live lonely, resent and await death.
Your grandmother was
waiting for me. There'd been decades since anyone wanted her in the way I did. You could
see it in her eyes, the reawakened flicker of that yearning girl, wanting out, her body
warming, quivering, once again ready to receive. Granted she was afraid. Mortality makes
us all afraid to live. Wary she was, but also weary, ready and resigned to fate. I did her
a favour.
So here we are, but fear
not me, for I am your saviour.
Fear your woodcutter. He
is not to be trusted. Do you not see? I am true and honest to my nature. True to the world
as you are to me. I am as you see. I live in my skin. Yet look at him. He feigns goodness,
conceals his true self. Lamb of God, look at his coat of lambskin. Look at his rawhide
boots. Your righteous protector, wielding his axe in the name of peace, in the name of
love, yet without question, he is a murderer.
We are the same, you and
me. Do you not see how he looks upon your flesh? Do you not see it is you he wants to
possess? His tired act of hero and villain is trickery, designed to keep you indebted to
him and to make me a terrorist, to make me the enemy.
See him now. See him
wield his axe in the name of God. Watch him cut me open until I bleed. Weep for your
grandmother, yes, but my blood is red, the same as yours. See him cover my fur with it, so
much red, until my coat is just like yours.
He is a fool. A
dangerous fool who will not stop. He will certainly kill me and, like your grandmother, I
will be glad of it, for I am ready to rest. But even when I am dead he will not stop. For
he is hungry and he will kill, thinking he is right to do so, thinking he is wielding
justice in the name of God. He will not rest until we are all dead. He will kill you and
then he will turn on the world. He will kill and kill and kill and never stop because he
will never know that what he is trying to kill will always live. What he is trying to kill
is what he fears most. It is the darkest part of the heart, and it is not only in me, it
is not only in you. It is in the deepest part of himself.