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Angela Carter, “The Company of Wolves”
Published in The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories (1979).
One beast and only one howls in the woods by
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night.
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The wolf is carnivore incarnate and he’s as
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cunning as he is ferocious; once he’s had a taste
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of flesh then nothing else will do.
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At night, the eyes of wolves shine like candle
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flames, yellowish, reddish, but that is because
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the pupils of their eyes fatten on darkness and
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catch the light from your lantern to flash it
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back to you – red for danger; if a wolf’s eyes
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reflect only moonlight, then they gleam a cold
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and unnatural green, a mineral, a piercing
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colour. If the benighted traveller spies those
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luminous, terrible sequins stitched suddenly on
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the black thickets, then he knows he must run,
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if fear has not struck him stock-still.
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But those eyes are all you will be able to
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glimpse of the forest assassins as they cluster
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invisibly round your smell of meat as you go
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through the wood unwisely late. They will be
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like shadows, they will be like wraiths, grey
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members of a congregation of nightmare; hark!
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his long, wavering howl . . . an aria of fear
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made audible.
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The wolfsong is the sound of the rending you
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will suffer, in itself a murdering.
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It is winter and cold weather. In this region of
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mountain and forest, there is now nothing for
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the wolves to eat. Goats and sheep are locked
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up in the byre,1 the deer departed for the
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remaining pasturage on the southern slopes –
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wolves grow lean and famished. There is so
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little flesh on them that you could count the
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starveling ribs through their pelts, if they gave
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you time before they pounced. Those slavering
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jaws; the lolling tongue; the rime of saliva on
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the grizzled chops – of all the teeming perils of
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the night and the forest, ghosts, hobgoblins,
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ogres that grill babies upon gridirons, witches
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that fatten their captives in cages for cannibal
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tables, the wolf is worst for he cannot listen to
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reason.
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You are always in danger in the forest, where
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no people are. Step between the portals of the
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great pines where the shaggy branches tangle
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about you, trapping the unwary traveller in nets
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as if the vegetation itself were in a plot with the
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wolves who live there, as though the wicked
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trees go fishing on behalf of their friends – step
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between the gateposts of the forest with the
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greatest trepidation and infinite precautions, for
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if you stray from the path for one instant, the
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wolves will eat you. They are grey as famine,
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they are as unkind as plague. .
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The grave-eyed children of the sparse villages
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always carry knives with them when they go
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out to tend the little flocks of goats that
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provide the homesteads with acrid milk and
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rank, maggoty cheeses. Their knives are half as
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big as they are, the blades are sharpened daily.
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But the wolves have ways of arriving at your
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own hearthside. We try and try but sometimes
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we cannot keep them out. There is no winter’s
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night the cottager does not fear to see a lean,
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grey, famished snout questing under the door,
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and there was a woman once bitten in her own
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kitchen as she was straining the macaroni.
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Fear and flee the wolf; for, worst of all, the
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wolf may be more than he seems.
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There was a hunter once, near here, that
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trapped a wolf in a pit. This wolf had
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massacred the sheep and goats; eaten up a mad
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old man who used to live by himself in a hut
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halfway up the mountain and sing to Jesus all
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day; pounced on a girl looking after the sheep,
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but she made such a commotion that men
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came with rifles and scared him away and tried
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to track him into the forest but he was cunning
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and easily gave them the slip. So this hunter
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dug a pit and put a duck in it, for bait, all alive-
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oh; and he covered the pit with straw smeared
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with wolf dung. Quack, quack! went the duck
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and a wolf came slinking out of the forest, a big
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one, a heavy one, he weighed as much as a
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grown man and the straw gave way beneath
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him – into the pit he tumbled. The hunter
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jumped down after him, slit his throat, cut off
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all his paws for a trophy.
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And then no wolf at all lay in front of the
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hunter but the bloody trunk of a man, headless,
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footless, dying, dead.
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A witch from up the valley once turned an
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entire wedding party into wolves because the
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groom had settled on another girl. She used to
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order them to visit her, at night, from spite, and
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they would sit and howl around her cottage for
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her, serenading her with their misery.
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Not so very long ago, a young woman in our
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village married a man who vanished clean away
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on her wedding night. The bed was made with
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new sheets and the bride lay down in it; the
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