Taste and Texture

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Manueline sat by the fire listening to the sounds of the winter night. She occasionally heard the wolves. Once there was a great noise of howling and snarling, which she knew came from where they had left the corpses. Much later in the night, she went and stood outside the door listening to the forest around her. There were owls and the occasional thud of snow falling out of a tree but otherwise the night was still. She was sure the wolves were no longer in the valley. She did not dare to walk the path to the clearing where they had left corpses, not for fear of the wolves but because she was afraid of what they would have made of the men and of what she might find on the path. She stood there for a while in an agony of uncertainty and then gave up on any expectations, going inside, back up to the hearth where she sat the rest of the night.

In the morning, a little before the sunrise, Wals returned. He still held the stick and he looked tired but settled in himself as though he had found something of himself again.

There were tears in the cloth of his pants and his jacket and bite marks on his hands but he was otherwise unhurt. Manueline took the stick from him, seeing fur and blood on it. She carefully put it to one side then turned back to Wals taking his clothes, stripping him completely and washing him. He stood quietly allowing her to do what she needed to but watching her as well. He took an interest in what she saw of him and apparently listened when she spoke.

She dressed the bites, dressed him and then fed him and they both lay down and slept by the hearth, waking late in the day. She gave him something hot to drink and she asked him, "Wals, what happened, what happened with the wolves?" She pointed and spoke; she pointed to the stick and the bits of fur and blood on it and asked again.

Then he seemed to understand. He put on his boots and jacket, indicating she should do the same. He took her by the hand, leading her downstairs and out into the afternoon light. They followed the path to where they had left the dead men the previous day.

Manueline remembered the dread she had felt in the night but she felt it only as a memory. His hand was warm and strong. Whatever was out there, he had already faced it and she knew she could use him as a shield so long as he was strong enough. In coming back to her, he had demonstrated the strength to deal with this thing.

They went down the side path to the clearing. There the path was thick with markings from the wolves' feet. Other than the markings, there was nothing else to see; no sign of the men, no sign of the wolves apart from the tracks in the snow. When they came into the clearing, Wals turned her round pointing back the way they had just come, pointing up in the air at a tree branch hanging over the path.

Looking at it, she could see some of the twigs and leaves left from autumn round the branch had been broken and disturbed. She pointed up at the branch and asked, "You waited for them up there?"

He nodded his head and spoke to her at length, sometimes miming his words, telling her the story of what happened in the night. He had jumped down among the wolves, striking at them with the stick, killing two of them. He fought one wolf killing it as well then he let them in and he stood by and watched as the others ate the men.

Manueline wondered why the others hadn't attacked him and asked him. Again, he understood and showed her. The clearing was a natural courtyard, there was only one way in. The rest of it either backed up against a cliff that no wolf could come down or was surrounded by brambles so thick that the wolves could not get through. He pointed at posts either side of the trees guarding the path and she realized it had been made this way. Someone had set it up as a shelter from predators and Wals had known it when he went out the previous night, knowing what he intended to do.

She asked, "What of the rest of the night, what did you do?"

He looked somber, not looking at her for a while. Then he pointed with one hand to the ground of the clearing where they stood and held up three fingers of the other hand. Then he pointed up the hill, up the path that had brought them into the valley and he held up one finger.

Manueline looked at him knowing exactly what he meant. He and the wolves had hunted down the other young man and killed him. No doubt there was nothing left of him by the time the wolves were done.

She put an arm round him, "Come, we should get back to the house." They went back. She cleaned and mended his clothes, made the evening meal and they sat in the gathering dark listening to the night.

The wolves came again and Wals went out to them only returning a little before sunrise. This time he had taken a knife and he brought meat back with him.

Manueline found it hard to touch the meat and even harder to eat it. It reminded her too much of the contact with the dead flesh when dragging the men down the path, of what the wolves had done to the men after Wals had fought with them, of what they did to the young man who ran away. The only difference in her mind with the meat that Wals brought back from the night with the wolves was that they cooked it before they ate it, otherwise she might have been eating one of the men and she gagged and choked as the taste and texture of it came into her mouth.

They slept again during the day and she thought about the meat, it came into her dreams. When they woke, before he went out again that night, she said to him, "No more meat, do not bring any more of the meat home with you." She made negative gestures towards the remains of the meat. He looked at the ground, seemingly ashamed of himself and nodded his head, acknowledging the rightness of what she said. There was plenty of food in the house; there was no need to bring in death to sustain them.

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