The Inner Beast

The Inner Beast, part 1

It was much too early. 

Too early for anything, really.

Definitely too early to be wandering the late winter woods. Walking alone between dark trunks and drooping branches, avoiding the patches of rotting snow, trying not to get tripped by grasping roots and moss-covered stones.

Too early by far.

But then again, when sleep is denied you yet again, what else is there to do but walk the world without aim or purpose?

One foot in front of the other. Always looking forward, never back, lest the ghosts of the past overtake me.

I stopped and looked up at the sky. Not yet a glimmer of light. At least an hour before dawn, then. The darkness didn't bother me - if anything, my vision was better at night than under the bright midday sun.

A ghost or three glided past.

Always right behind me. Never a moment's respite.

"Fuck off," I told them.

They laughed silently at me and danced away into the darkness on ethereal feet.

Lovers of ages past, enemies long rotted, battles won, treasures claimed, fortunes lost, lifetimes wasted. I'd given up that existence, had walked away from it, but it came back to torment me all the same.

I wished I had a bottle of the red. Or a bottle of anything, really.

But no, my rucksack was long empty. The only drink available to me for the past few days was meltwater from the many pregnant streams I had waded across.

Not much for conversation, the bottle, but willing to give me its all. No friend better.

The trees came to an abrupt, unnatural end. I stopped at the foot of a stone fence at the forest's edge and looked across dark, muddy fields.

A hedgerow here, a homestead there. Stone fences, ditches, streams, and copses of trees. A village by the road, and in the far distance, a walled town straddling the river.

I knew the place. Of course, I did. I had sworn never to return, but I always did.

The town had grown over the years. They'd built a wall and cut down the hanging willow. Not that it mattered. The stream was full of filth now, not fit for bathing. As was the town. Vile human filth. Masses of it. Thousands of people crammed into too small a place.

I started to turn, knowing how poorly a visit to town would go - for them and me both - when I caught movement in the corner of my eye.

A young woman in a thoroughly wet dress clawed her way up the muddy banks of a stream some two hundred yards away. She stumbled forward, slipped and fell, got to her feet, and ran towards a stand of trees.

She feel again, her shoe or whatever she was wearing, stuck in the mud. The girl-woman - it was hard to get a sense of her age covered as she was covered now with layers of dirt - crawled back to find it, but in the dark, she could not.

She slumped down then, maybe crying, maybe not - I couldn't tell for sure. The poor thing was probably exhausted. Shoe-less, wet, and cold. And not yet dawn on the first day of her flight from whatever or whoever.

The distant baying of dogs, however, brought an end to her lethargy. A whole pack of them, it sounded like. Big ones too.

Dogs barking. And horses neighing. A pack of the former, maybe half a dozen of the latter.

The hunt was on. I shouldn't get involved. I really shouldn't.

The girl struggled forward, one cold, slippery, exhausting step at a time. As I watched, it started raining. A cold, steady drizzle. The girl really had picked the wrong day to run away.

She was going to reach the forest well before her pursuers, which would work in her favor. In between the trees, daylight wouldn't betray her.

But how long before the dogs would be snapping at her her shoe-less heels? Not long. Were they trained to attack, I wondered. Would the slavering beasts rip the girl apart? Or would they just signal the riders? It might be the crueler fate - the things men are capable of... far worse than any beast. I knew all about that.

Closer and closer she came, one terrible, sucking step at a time. I should turn, walk away. But I remained rooted to the spot, a dark shape against the black forest.

The girl reached the fence. She leaned against the rough stones, body shaking, heaving for air.

She wouldn't get far. Not far at all.

Her body suddenly went rigid, and her head came up, sniffing. She looked right at me, peering through the gloom with yellow-tinted eyes. She recoiled, taking an involuntary step backward, stumbled, and fell on her ass in the muddy field.

Clearly, she saw me for what I was, not for what I appeared to be.

Not what I had expected.

Then I did something equally unexpected. I leaped over the fence, landed at her feet, and put out my hand.

"We are different," I heard myself saying. "But we are also the same. The inner beast will out - it cannot forever be held inside."

The waif didn't seem to take my words to heart. Instead, she tried to crawl away through the muddy field. Well, if she saw me for what I was, I couldn't really blame her. Maybe it was my mighty horns, the devil eyes, or the razor claws. Or maybe it was all seven feet of me.

The dogs were across the stream now, four in number, vying against each other for the honor of reaching their prey first.

The girl was back on her bare feet - having lost the other shoe at some point - scrambling to get away from the beast - me. Across the stone fence she went, one final, frightened look over her shoulder, and she was gone, swallowed by the dark woods.

Looking her walk out on me like that - mud or not, she had all the right shapes and curves.

How long since last I had looked upon a woman like that?

So long, I could not remember.

The dogs came flying across the field, big, grey, shaggy shapes in the predawn darkness. Eager as only trained hounds can be... and then they caught my scent. All their speed and confidence evaporated like morning dew before the summer sun. They sniffed the air, ears back, tails between legs, cautiously circling me.

They were magnificent. Wolf-hounds, not far removed from the great northern wolves they had been bred from. In ages past, I had counted dogs such as these among my most loyal companions - these specimens were as fine as any I had seen.

I hunched down, called softly to the dogs, and spoke the words that bind men and beasts. Soon I had them eating out of my hand - the last of the venison from my pack.

The riders were still a way off, probably wondering why their bloodhounds had fallen silent.

"Come, my beauties," I told the dogs. "Let us find the girl. She will not have gone far."

The hounds looked silently back at me with yellow wolf eyes, not unlike my own.

"She's a beast like us," I explained to my silent companions as we made our way across the fence and back into the forest. "Can't let those men have their way with her."