Islands of Difference

Inspired by the Anglo-Saxon poem, Wulf and Eadwacer

“It would be a gift, if he did.” Eadwacer laughed. It was too loud. Too tinged with menace. I knew from his sly glance the laugh was aimed at me. His face went red as he heaved the dripping fishing net out of the river, labouring breath fogging the bitter air.

“Oh, aye,” agreed Hrodgar, stalwart companion, doing his share of the work, both physical and mental. Over the dock and onto the bank they dragged the net, teeming with fish flashing silver in the gimlit light. “A gift indeed. We’ll tear him limb from mangy limb if he comes back. Imagine presenting that gift to the Cyning. They would sing about you from here to Fresia.”

Eadwacer gave a smug smile. That. The word stabbed at my heart like an ice pick. Chosen to remind me how different he, was. As if I didn’t already know he was strange and unknowable. That would not be tolerated. I had transgressed with that and now I would be punished.

I clasped to my breast the evidence of my transgression. Not out of love, but out of instinct. I had wrapped it in threadbare cloth; scrounged from the begrudging hands of the other women in the village. I had no allies here and no kin. No mother or aunt to intercede on my behalf, no sisters to share abundance or burdens. Begging for rags was all I could do, and I resented having to.

Where was my precious freedom now? Where was my forbidden delight? I looked down at the whelp that I had born. The corollary of my abandon with the one called Wulf.

Eadwacer carried on with his work, brash and confident, boasting about what he would do to Wulf if he ventured near again. All the time he watched me from the corner of his eye. An involuntary sigh rose up from deep inside me, puffing white and meek over the dun landscape. I stared at the brittle reeds in the lake, trapped amid the ice, and shivered.

Wulf was out there somewhere, ranging far and wide. We were separated not merely by distance, but by a strangeness so great it was hard to comprehend. His world was surreal, twilit, without boundaries. His freedom so raw and instinctual that at times it frightened me.

We first met by chance on a quiet, moon-hung night. He was a black and silver wolf then, staring at me with exotic yellow eyes as he stood on top of the knoll. Seeing my fear, perhaps sensing my craving, he changed before my eyes, rippling in a viscous pool of coloured light that condense into a naked man. Smooth-skinned and long-limbed, with black and silver hair running in a shaggy pile down his back. His eyes remained that bright, luminous yellow, but gazed upon me with human understanding. That was the first of many such meetings that Summer.

Slate rain began to fall from the sky, leaving puncture wounds on the surface of the water. The stabbing of an otherwise untroubled surface was a sharp and monotonous parody of my life. The roof timbers of the hut I shared with Eadwacer and his mother provided scant shelter as the winter-bitten reeds danced with gloaming grasses on the river bank.

Eadwacer continued his work, but he watched his property closely. I had loved him once, or at least, I had loved the idea of him. He had seemed so exciting when my father made the offer. I could be the wife of an important man, or I could card and weave my years under the yoke of my father. Eadwacer was the verdant leaf of a snowdrop. My father, the gnarled husk of a conker shell. But in the end, my marriage was the winter-ploughed field.

His beatings came with a purpose at first.

“Get me my drink”; fist.

“Find my shoes”; fist.

“Bend over”; slap.

They soon became a punctuation mark.

His mother cackled with arthritic pleasure at each jarring thump. Her delight shocked me, until I realised my utility: if not me, then her. There was no habour in that malign chest. I was the chattel of the household now. How naive I had been.

And so into my world Wulf blazed, like the sun. Too short and too hot. His sublime strangeness reeked of freedom and unbound possibility. I threw myself at him with every chance I got. The velvet night covered me when they were asleep, and my timid days fooled their senses.

When we came together, the wolf would lay still, letting me stroke his fur, shot through with silver and black. It made made my fingers tingle to touch. The next day the feather-like memory would float across my arms and hands as if he were still there.

His lupin gaze would invade my senses for days after, whilst the acrid scent of the supernatural perfumed the air. The memories made a life raft on which I drifted across the season, images of another world where I was not who I am. The casual violence of my marriage dissolved amid the velvet nights and fetid rutting of our meetings.

The little whelp at my chest wriggled, reminding me what dissolution brought. It yipped for more milk and I shushed it as best I could, stroking a finger down its soft muzzle. Red blood bloomed, the scent of it, sharp, metallic, and tangy, as the whelp bit my finger. Predatory interest wrinkled its nose as it sniffed and I withdrew my hand.

I was now a permanent outcast; a despised prisoner of my own rashness. Unwanted yet watched. Shameful yet fascinating. There was no hiding it, once it was birthed. The reproach followed me like a miasma. It was not just Eadwacer who watched me. I belonged to the whole village now, my body its property, my actions its scandal, my emotions its gossip. Even if I could go elsewhere in this winter-trapped world, they would hunt me down and delight in my subjugation.

And besides, we had another use now. A trap for the animal who had made Eadwacer a cuckold. Wulf was free, he took what he wanted, when he wanted. The jealousy crystallised to hate in their gelid eyes.

Wulf, oh my Wulf, where are you?

The grey morning slowly sagged into a sallow afternoon, with the weak winter sun fighting clouds for a space to claim as its own. A morose, tan-tinged light crept over the land, devoid of heat or hope. The men continued their bone-grinding work into the chilly afternoon, fishing in the sluggish river, then removing and scaling before repairing the nets and starting again. The smell of reedy water and mud filled the air as their nets dredged up the fathoms below the surface. Dull. Repetitive. Tedious. Safe. The little whelp’s nose twitched constantly at the scent of more prey. The baiting from the men continued, forced and loud in this frigid, enclosed atmosphere.

“When that wolf comes back, I’m going to stab him in the guts, and carve him up from dick to head.” Vicious laughter pealed through the air.

“I’m going to make his pelt a cloak, and present his head to the Cyning.”

“Take out the fangs, so you can make a pretty necklace for your darling wife!” Giggling broke out, a strange juxtaposition to the spite.

I glowered, but couldn’t stop myself from imagining Wulf’s head, bloody and disembodied, his yellow eyes flat and dull, and his perfect mouth withered and toothless, as if his teeth were the source of his magic.

I stood up abruptly, and moved to the far side of the hut, Eadwacer’s eyes watching my every move. His mother was hunched on a stool, carding wool. The grey plaits of her hair lay over her chest like a trophy for all the years she had suffered.

The carding should have been my work, but nursing her newborn was a woman’s prerogative, so I made an obvious show of rocking the whelp whenever I could. It was either that, or cast the creature aside and resume my previous life. The thought both horrified and delighted me.

What kind of mother was I? Would I feel remorse if I abandoned him? I didn’t think so.

“Lazy, worthless bitch. Slut. You should drown it. I’ll do it myself.”

My head jerked at the old crone’s words. Her eyes glittered hate and drove me away as sure as any beating stick would. The winter grasses upstream from the fishing dock made a comfortable seat. Eadwacer would complain. He would beat me for going so far, even though I was still clearly in sight, but right now he was busy, and the respite seemed worth it. The sky was turning dark. I felt water on my cheeks, but there was no rain yet.

Theowin’s approached while I pondered the weather and my wet face. I squeezed the little whelp with alarm when he sat down next to me. It yelped in surprise.

“It barks?” He asked, shaggy blond eyebrows meeting shaggy blond hairline. I murmured something non-committal. He gave the bundle a look of disgust.

“Why don’t you drown it? Let the river take your sins away and start afresh on the morrow?”

Cold drenched my skin. Was he reading my mind? Could I? It would be an answer, and the whelp was going to die anyway. Eadwacer would see to that. A sigh wracked my body.

“It won’t change anything. Eadwacer would not forgive me.”

“Aw, Eadwacer,” Theowin said with a wave of his beefy hand. “He’s a bully and always has been. Ignore him. The rest of us do.” I gazed at Theowin, his great bulk and taut muscles held like springs as he sat next to me. The assertions came easily, backed up by all that might. I could not afford to ignore Eadwacer so easily.

“You are not the first to walk that path, after all.” He watched for my reaction.

“Huh?”

“You don’t know about the wolf in these parts? How it leads our women astray?”

My world, what little there was of it, collapsed. I was silent, suffocated by the powerful urge to escape, as Theowin continued to speak.

“The wolf is well known, here and among our neighbours downstream. He has roamed these parts for many summers, luring women into reckless trysts. When autumn comes, he heads back into the mountains, passions slaked for another season. The lucky ones are merely nursing a broken heart come winter, cursing their own folly. The unlucky ones, well…”

He didn’t need to finish. I could barely hear him through the roaring urge to run away from it all. I wanted to shout, to cry, to rage that it was not true. Our love had to be real. If it wasn’t, my suffering had no point at all. But the truth rang through Theowin’s words.

Of course it was true. No creature as primal and unshackled as the wolf, my Wulf, could be tamed by mere love. The whole idea of us split apart like a husk of a chestnut, peeling back with layers of pain.

“You didn’t know?” Theowin asked, sensing my shock. And then, naming the fear in my heart with a nod to himself, he added, “You knew. But you closed your eyes to the truth.”

Rain started to fall in a gentle mist that coated my face where tears now ran freely. I still held the whelp in a death-grip close to my bosom. It wriggled, perhaps out of pain, perhaps it was sensing a threat. Theowin lifted a hand and smudged away some of the wetness of my cheeks with his rough thumb.

“No need for tears pretty one.” The susurration of the grasses filled my ears as he moved a little closer.

“It’s not the end for you. If it were, half the women in the village would need to follow you. Why do you think Eadwacer’s mother has such a hate for you?” His voice was implacable, his words cunning.

I shuddered and closed my eyes. His laughter etched my nerves like filigree.

“Come on, you can be happy again. What did the wolf give you, a little fun in the moonlight? I can give you that. I’ve got plenty to spare. Eadwacer won’t care. He’ll be glad to be rid of you.” He paused, measuring the effect of his words.

“Put down that little burden,” he encouraged. “Leave it right here on the bank, if you can’t face drowning it. Follow the path so many have walked down. Come on, come with me.”

It could not be, my mind screamed into the infinite silence. Wulf was my freedom, my escape. He was meant to save me, not trap me further in the shackles of mundanity and servitude. How could he betray me so deeply? How could our love mean so little? I thought of Eadwacer’s mother and shivered. Please gods, don’t let this be my life.

I felt Theowin’s hand close over mine as I held the whelp, his fingers forcing a space between us. I loosened my grip, just a little, and his fingers tugged firmly. As I let go, letting the bundle fall into the long grasses, I felt my mind drift to numbness. I could not save the whelp, nothing could. I couldn’t even save myself.

“Come on,” Theowin purred, predator-like. He had done this before, perhaps many times. “You’ve already thrown caution to the wind. You can have excitement and pleasure with me, pretty one. It doesn’t have to end yet. Have a bit more fun until you settle back in with Eadwacer, eh?”

He was no different from Wulf, offering nothing more and nothing less. It was a temporary distraction from my trapped and curtailed life. How could I see it so plainly with Theowin, and yet be so blinded by Wulf?

Eadwacer would care. That was just Theowin’s easy lie to smooth my path, but there was no need. All my spirit, all my hopes and dreams, were blackened and dead like the winter rot the trees. I didn’t care what became of me now. If Eadwacer’s mother was my destination, then there was nothing left to hope for. I let him drag me away. Thoughts of what Eadwacer would do was mist on the lake. Tripping through the rain as Theowin led me on, I let my mind drift like a leaf on the river.

He led me to his hut, and an evening of lust passed by in a haze of skin and sweat. Our bodies entwined like the black smoke from the fire curling up to the ceiling. It scented the air with a heavy musk. When he was done, he slept, and I lay staring at the flames, my thoughts scattered like winter blown leaves. I could not seem to concentrate or follow any one of them to a conclusion, as if my mind was protecting itself by refusing to think too deeply about the past or the future. I lay staring at the dancing flames, waiting out a night that seemed to last forever.

If Eadwacer knew, he raised no complaint. I did not hear him protesting outside Theowin’s hut for the return of his property. There were no angry recriminations or demands for retribution echoing in the dark night. Theowin slept peacefully, safe in the knowledge of a well worn path.

It was midnight when I heard the howl. It struck like lightning on my soul, charging my spirit with an energy I had forgotten. I knew it was him. I dressed quietly and slipped outside. Frost had gathered her pleated skirts and walked across the landscape, turning it hard and white. My breath fogged around me like shrouds of misery circling my head and I shivered in the bitter air.

The riverbank was where I saw him again, gloriously strong and sleek, with eyes that shone in the moonlight. He was leaning over the place where I had left it; all my guilt and shame and fears. The little bundle that I could not put down, but did, because I could not love what would slowly kill me.

He didn’t speak or smile as I approached. He looked at me as if I were the monster. Then he looked down at the bundle and I saw love in his eyes for the first time. He had never looked at me that way, perhaps he never could. He had known from the start that what separated us could not be overcome. We were different, Wulf and I. Islands of difference.

I stood cloaked in loneliness and regret as the pool of colourful magic coalesced around him and he grew a long, silky muzzle, strong, clawed limbs and thick black fur streaked with white. He howled, long, and loud into the night. A warning and a challenge, but also a victory. His white, jagged teeth picked up the bundle with infinite gentleness, and they disappeared, cloaked by the harsh night. I turned back to the monsters I knew, the monsters I recognised, and took cold comfort in that.