Beastial

Never leave, my son. Do not go. For down the road lies trouble. Nothing but sorrow. Never leave, my son. For out there they will never see what I see. They will never understand. They will think you are just a monster. They will not see the man. Never leave, my son. Stay safe within these walls. Let these arms protect you always, and I promise, you will never fall.

I am five years old, and I am playing outside the cave. My mother is out hunting and even though I am not allowed to go outside when she is not around, when I hear her coming, I can easily dart inside and she will never know. There is a snap of a twig to my right. I stop. I look around but see nothing. I keep playing. Hitting rocks with other rocks; playing catch with myself. I hear it again. A snap of a twig, this time to my left. I look and at first see nothing, but when I am about to turn away, I notice. A pair of eyes in the bush. Staring. I crouch and snarl just like my mother has taught me. And the Creature stands and it is taller than I thought, and bigger than I am, and it points its long stick in my direction. “Freak,” the Creature whispers at me, its eyes widening in disbelief, and I stare at the two holes at the end of the stick and have been told enough stories by my mother to know that nothing good comes out of those holes and right when I am about to try and run, she appears. She attacks the Creature from behind, sinking her teeth into its neck. I watch as she nearly takes off its head. And when she is sure that it is dead, she looks at me and through her snarl says,

“Maybe now you will listen when I tell you to stay inside the cave.”

When I ask my mother what the word, “freak,” means she stares at me for a while before answering. And then she says,

“Freak means you. It means me. We are freaks.”

She tells me that beyond the woods lies a whole other world that I can never know. She tells me that if I venture beyond the wood, more Creatures like the one who came will attack me. She tells me that those Creatures will kill what they do not understand and that we are things they will never understand. She tells me that if I ever see one in the wood, to kill it before it kills me.

I am ten years old, out hunting with my mother. She teaches me how to stay low, and to walk silently so our prey will never hear us coming. And then, through the trees, we see one of them. A Creature. He is facing the opposite direction with his long stick pointed at a fawn. She signals for me to stay where I am, and I watch as she slices his throat before he even knows what is coming; I watch as the life goes out from his eyes.

“He was just hunting like us,” I whisper.

“No,” my mother responds vehemently, “Not like us. We hunt to eat. He and all of those like him, hunt for sport. He would have killed that fawn and stuck its lifeless body up on his wall. Just because. We are NOTHING like them, do you understand?”

I nod and she comes closer, taking my face between her bloody paws,

“No sympathy for them, my son. None. If one saw you, they would kill you instantly. You MUST do the same to them if you are to survive. Tell me you understand.”

“I understand,” I say, even though the doubt is there, blossoming in my mind, taking root deep inside my chest.

I am fifteen-years-old and out hunting, finally old enough to hunt by myself. I am crouching in a tall bush, watching a doe drink from the river. I am getting ready to pounce when I see her emerge from a cluster of trees. A Creature. The doe gets ready to flee, but the Creature puts her hands up, as if proclaiming peace. The doe and Creature regard each other. The Creature pulls some bread from her basket and offers some to the doe who eats it. After a few moments, the doe walks off and the Creature stands there smiling. She hums to herself and continues walking along the river. My mother’s voice in my head is telling me to kill this Creature before she kills me. But could this gentle Creature really be capable of hunting without cause?

Every day I go to the spot where I saw her and every day I am disappointed. After what seems like weeks, I decide that I am never going to see her again and should give her up. I am searching for her when I trip over something that has been hidden in a bush. Something rotten. I pull back the leaves to see and there, lying in the middle of the bush, is the body of a decapitated doe. It could have been killed by anything, I think. Many predators live in the forest. But the thought doesn’t stop a chill from creeping up my spine. Not her, I insist. Definitely not her.

One day, I am dozing in the treetops when I am woken by a soft humming. I open my eyes and look down, and there she is. She has lain out a blanket and is pulling various food items from her bag. I watch as she throws pieces of bread and cheese to the squirrels and birds. I climb down to try and get a closer look. I am about to reach the ground when I slip on a branch and fall the rest of the way down, landing with a loud thud. I scramble up and peer through the brush, where she is now standing, with a knife ready in her hands.

“Who’s there?” she cries.

I stay completely still, watching her narrowed eyes trying to peer through the bush.

After a few moments she packs up her stuff and continues toward the village.

I am not ready to lose her just yet, so I follow at a distance, watching her red cape sway back and forth with each step.

Suddenly, she begins to run. She is faster than I expected and I actually have to work to keep up with her. She makes a quick right through a thick group of trees and I lose her. I turn in all directions, trying to catch a glimpse of that red cape but see nothing. She’s vanished. And then I hear it. An intake of breath from up above. I slowly look up and she is crouching on a tree branch. I am staring directly into those deep dark eyes, so dark they are almost black. Her eyes are wide as she stares at me, knife raised high in her hand. We stare at each other for what feels like forever before she slowly lowers the knife and whispers,

“What are you?”

Her voice snaps me from my trance and I run. I run as fast as I can without looking back. I can hear my mother’s voice screaming in my head, demanding why I didn’t kill the Creature who will surely tell other Creatures what she saw. I am cursing myself for not following my mother’s orders, for possibly endangering us both. And it is only when I am back in the safety of our cave, that I realize she didn’t call me a freak. She simply asked me what I was. And she lowered her knife.

For days I stay close to the cave. I can see my mother staring at me, knowing something is wrong but not asking. And then, one day, while mother is out hunting, and I am sitting by the river thinking about the Creature, I hear the snapping of a twig somewhere to my right. I leap up and look and see a flash of red.

“What do you want?” I ask.

There are a few moments of silence and I start to wonder if she ran off, and then I see it again. A flash of red, and she peers out from a thicket of trees.

We stare at each other.

Her eyes move up and down my body and I’m too afraid to move. To even breathe.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about you,” she says, “I had to see you again. To see if you were real.”

“To see if the freak was a true story, you mean?” I growl at her, my back arched, the beginnings of anger starting to boil in the pit of my stomach.

She shakes her head, “No, no not that at all,” she says, “I mean, yes, I’ve heard stories. Who hasn’t? My grandmother has told me since I was very small that if I should ever see one of you, I should run as fast as I could. That I should tell our hunters so we can keep our village safe. But after years and years of never seeing you, I began to think you were just a myth. A warning for children to stay on the path.”

“And now,” I growl, “What do you think now?”

After a long pause she says, “I think you’re the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen.”

It takes me a while to find my voice after she says that. I don’t know how to react at all. And a part of me wonders if this is some kind of trick on her part to catch me off guard. But there is no one else around. And she looks so sincere. I have to fight the urge to look down at my own body. I have never thought of myself as beautiful. I have never really thought of myself at all. I know the Creatures think we are freaks and a part of me has always agreed. I am not a beast. I am not a man. I am somewhere in between, something unlike anything else in the wood or the world as far as I know, though my mother says that more of us must be around somewhere. Regardless, the last thing I have ever thought was that I was something worth looking at.

“What’s your name?” she asks me.

“Son,” I say.

I realize it’s not the kind of name she was expecting, but it’s the only thing my mother has ever called me.

“Red,” she says, gesturing to the cape.

Not the kind of name I was expecting either.

She sits and beckons me over to her but I stay where I am.

“Tell me about you,” she says, "Is it just you? Are there more?" She is resting her face in her hands, gazing at me with something like wonderment and awe. Such a strange feeling to be looked at in this way, to be looked at, at all; to be looked at by anyone who isn’t my mother.

I tell her about me and mother. That it has always only been just us. I tell her about our lives here in the wood. Resting and hunting and sleeping and little else. I tell her that even though the Creatures say that our kind are the children of witches and devils, my mother tells me that we are the children of gods and man. That a nymph fell in love with a human and we were born. Sometimes I’m not sure which one is true since both seem possible. I tell her that I have never known a life beyond the trees. I tell her what my mother has said about Creatures.

Red listens silently and when I’m finished she tells me of her own kind. She says that she has been told that creatures like me are more animal than man. Beasts who simply want to murder for sport. She tells me that Creatures hunt to eat also, but that yes, sometimes Creatures will put the skin of their prey on mantels and walls like trophies. She tells me of her village, of her beloved grandmother who has raised her on the stories of the wood and how to survive in the forest.

We stay like this for what seems like hours, swapping stories of our worlds and I don’t realize that I’ve edged closer to her until her face is inches from my own. She is staring at my mouth and I have forgotten how to breathe.

“My grandmother says that creatures like you are made of magic,” she whispers, “And that that’s why there are so few of you left. That we craved your magic.”

I say nothing because I don’t know what to say.

“Are you?” she asks, “Are you made of magic?”

“I don’t know,” I answer honestly.

“Let’s find out,” she says, and before I know it her knife is in my side.

I howl with pain and she is smiling from ear to ear, the sweet face I thought I saw replaced with that of a hunter.

“My grandmother will be so pleased when I bring back your heads to mount above her fireplace,” she snarls in my ear.

I howl again when I realize that she means to wait for my mother, that I have indeed placed my mother in mortal danger.

Red begins to cackle and the world is fading from my sight. Right before it disappears completely, I hear someone wail in the distance.

When I come to, I am lying in our cave, my mother standing over me, eyes wild, her face covered in blood.

“My son,” she whispers, “Are you alive?”

I groan in response.

I raise my head and behind my mother is Red’s lifeless body, her cape torn to shreds.

And while I am grateful to be alive, fully realizing just how much my mother was right, I cannot help the overwhelming pain that comes from deep inside. The knowledge that I will never have a friend.

And then we hear it, a snap of a twig from somewhere outside our cave.

My mother turns quickly, ready to pounce, and out from the bushes comes a creature like us. Not quite girl, not quite beast.

“You killed her,” she whispers gesturing to Red.

We nod in silence, both stunned by this strange arrival.

She tells us that her pack, who lives in another forest, is all but destroyed because of Red. That Red would do to others what she had tried to do to me: lure and attack. She told us that it was her mission to hunt Red down.

She asks us if she can stay in our cave for a while and my mother quickly agrees, smiling at me and telling us that she will go hunting and be back soon.

The creature and I stare at one another before she asks me for my name. My story. She tells me of her family, of others like us and I begin to understand that I am not alone. That there might be a world beyond my cave that I can call home. And the despair that I had felt just a moment earlier begins to ease, and for the first time in my life, I feel like more of a man than a beast.