A Tale of Fur and Flesh

by Unknown

  Wolf pulled out of her as quickly as he had entered. “Am I that, now?” he asked with a cruel lilt in his voice. Lally kept her cheek to the ground. “So the wee alley cat wants to be buggered, does she?”

  “Do to me what you must, you hideous animal,” Lally replied with contained exhilaration.

  His rough fingers slipped inside her, searching for juice to coat her clutching anus. “Brace yerself, lass,” warned the wolf. “This is going to burn.”

  He rammed his meat in her hole. The cruel pleasure-pain of Wolf’s infiltration caused an internal scream that jumped to her toes and her throat at once. Every muscle in her body clenched, holding Wolf’s cock in place as he attempted to thrust in the depths of her rear. Oh, the pain was horrible and thrilling at once. “I told ye I was well-favoured, wee scruffer.”

  “And so you are,” Lally winced as Wolf ran his nails across the flesh of her ass.

  “Ye must relax, wee lass. It will’nt hurt so much.”

  “You monster! How may I relax with your deviant cock in my ass?”

  Hollering helped. When Lally allowed her muscles to ease, she discovered the wonderful pressure this act generated in her core. Wolf barely moved, and every subtle motion wove reams of coarse gratification through her flesh. His cock massaged her insides. She felt heavy and warm. Wolf thrust faster until he was pushing too rapidly and the pressure was too much.

  When she shrieked, Wolf pulled out, howling at the sliver moon. Fresh cream heated a trail from her hip, down the cleave of her backside and onto her thigh. She made no move to wipe the filthy stuff from her skin. Exhaustion set in fast. After Wolf’s ravage, Lally welcomed the sweet embrace of dream-filled sleep.

  * * * *

  Waking with a start, Lally turned to find Wolf watching over her. He was just a man. No fur on his belly, no animal tail, no silver mane. His mismatched eyes gleamed in the pre-dawn light. Under his naked bottom sat the hide for her mantle. Rolling the cramp from her neck, Lally asked, “Why have you stayed?” After their encounter the night before, she imagined him incapable of having noble intentions.

  “To guard ye as ye slept, wee lass,” he responded, staring up at the stars.

  “Yes, well, thank you for that, Wolf, but I really must be off,” she replied in a haughtier tone than intended.

  “No,” he exclaimed almost before she had finished her thought. “No, lass. Ye’re heading in the wrong direction. Ye ought to be roving northward rather than westward.”

  “Preposterous,” she replied. It wasn’t until she tried to stand that she realized how sore her body was. “To the North are my father’s enemies. Why should I wish to entangle myself in that debacle?”

  She trembled against the early morning air. Wolf stood to drape his skins around her scraped and bruised shoulders. Their rough coupling seemed distant now, like it had happened in another lifetime.

  “Thank you,” she said, touched by the rough creature’s kindness. Her heart opened to him. With a hollow sob, she fell against his chest. She wept in his arms. “Oh Wolf, I cannot live out my days in the forest!”

  “Aye, lass, ye can if ye must,” he encouraged. “Ye’re a survivor. Ye’ve proven that already, escaping yer crazy da.”

  Lally ran her hand across the soft silver fur Wolf sacrificed for her salvation. Her heart beat tentatively, hoping not to make a sound. When he shifted away from her, she buried her head in the hide tent encircling her frozen body. “What will become of me?” she asked him.

  There was no response.

  “What fate awaits me now?” Lally repeated, popping her head out from the heat of the fur.

  Wolf was gone. She was alone, abandoned by him as by everyone else. Every time her heart began to open, tentatively, as a chick taps at the shell of its egg, the beloved disappeared. Lally was left alone to begin again. With the skins of Wolf and Hare draped over her slouched shoulders, she travelled the countryside by the light of the morning moon.

  During her journey northward, Lally stopped only to relate to the enchanted creatures of the woods. None were quite as thrilling as her encounter with Wolf, but she took pleasure in them all. She was able to secure the skins of the eager beaver, the great bear, the sly fox and the putrid skunk. By day, she hid in a cave or the hollow of a tree, where she slept and sewed her pelts into a mantle using her mother’s golden needle and thread.

  When the mantle was complete, it covered Allerleirauh entirely. She felt safe and protected inside. It was almost like being invisible. No one perceived that a woman lived inside the cloak. She became a horrific animal roaming northward through the forest. Terror flashed in the eyes of all who beheld her. They had no idea the appalling beast from which they ran was only a frightened girl under layers of peltry.

  Winter was harsh in the North, and it came on out of nowhere. The bitterness of the cold and the darkness of the days produced in Allerleirauh the desire to crawl into a lonely cave and not emerge until springtime. When the snow rose to her knees, it was time to take refuge. With no caves in sight, she climbed into the hollow of a chestnut tree and curled up inside her warm pelts.

  “Mother,” said she, holding her enchanted walnut against her cheek. “Am I not hopeless enough to warrant your help? Gott im Himmel, I live in a tree!”

  But the walnut did not crack.

  “Mother,” Allerleirauh despaired. “Why have you forsaken me?”

  Chapter Five

  In the hollow of the great tree, Allerleirauh slept. With the peltry mantle covering her eyes, her slumber endured as the sun rose. She slept on as it set, until many days and nights had passed by. Then it so happened that a huntsman was tracking his prey in the vast forest. All the world was white with snow when his dogs came to the great chestnut tree. They sniffed it at length, and ran barking around it. Their howls and yelps awoke Lally with a start, but she kept very still. Perhaps they would move on.

  Footsteps crunched warily against ice-encrusted snow, like father’s as they had approached the chamber on the morning of her escape from his house. And now his dogs had caught her scent and father would apprehend her and force her into marriage! Her only hope was to remain perfectly quiet.

  “What kind of a wondrous beast is this?” a man’s voice asked. He seemed to be talking to the dogs. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  He spoke the dialect of the Northerners, which Lally had learned from the merchants of her father’s court. This was not one of father’s huntsmen at all! He was most certainly a Northern fellow. Nevertheless, when he laid hands upon Allerleirauh’s back, she let out a terrified scream and bolted upright in the crook of the tree.

  “Pray, do not harm me!” Lally pleaded. “I am not a beast, but a girl. My name is Allerleirauh.”

  The head of Wolf’s pelt cloaked her face, and she looked at the huntsman through holes where the creature’s eye had once been. The huntsman assessed her hairy form with an incredulous glare. “You sure don’t look like any girl I’ve ever seen,” he replied.

  “My trials have rendered me hairy and hideous,” Lally said in agreement. “I am a frightful monster. I implore, have pity on me and take me with you.”

  “Where do you live?” the huntsman inquired.

  She hesitated. “I live in this tree.”

  “Well, aren’t you cold?”

  “Very cold indeed,” she said, “but I have nowhere else to go.”

  The huntsman had kind eyes. He took pity on her and agreed to take her home to his wife, the king’s cook. Knowing full well his wife detested the dirtier tasks of her employment, he suggested Allerleirauh might help in her duties. A fire-warmed kitchen inhabited by jolly old cook seemed preferable to a lonely tree hollow. Lally consented immediately. Though she said very little to the huntsman as they trudged through the vast expanses of snow-covered Northern land, Lally felt tremendously indebted to him. The huntsman’s caring warmed her heart.

  When Cook caught sight of the mongrel, she clapped him over the ears with a carrot. “What are
you playing at, bringing that hairy animal into my kitchen? How am I supposed to work with that beast about?”

  Lally felt uncomfortable, conspicuous, ashamed that the huntsman’s sympathy had brought on his wife’s wrath. Perhaps she ought to go. There was nowhere she belonged now. Not in the turrets of her own castle, not in the subterranean kitchen of the Northern Palace. She might as well return to the comatose comfort of her frozen tree.

  “She isn’t an animal, she’s a girl. Poor creature’s been sleeping rough. She’ll catch her death out there. I figured she might help you with your dirty work, what with you always saying you hate to do it.”

  A malignant grin spread across the plump woman’s face as she assessed Allerleirauh once again. “I suppose you’re right, husband mine.”

  Cook pointed to a kitchen cupboard, where no daylight entered. “There you can live and sleep. You’ll eat what scraps you find. Might as well get you started. You’ll be carrying the wood and water, and then I’ll need you to sweep the hearth. And I’ll have no dilly-dallying, because after that you’ll be plucking the fowls for supper. Don’t think you’re finished your day yet, though. You also need to rake the ashes, and do whatever other dirty work I can find for you. Can you do all that, hairy beast?”

  From within her layers of peltry, Allerleirauh nodded despondently. Tears soaked her cheeks. Alas, fair princess, what is to become of you now?

  * * * *

  Allerleirauh lived for a long time in great wretchedness. It happened, however, that one day a feast was held in the palace. When food was prepared and the event well underway, she asked the cook if she might she go upstairs for a while and look on. She would place herself outside the door, of course. She had never seen the Palace beyond the kitchen. Every day she worked from dawn to dusk, then collapsed upon her straw bed. Might she enjoy some gaiety?

  “Yes, go,” the cook answered in a surprising show of goodwill, “but you must be back here in half an hour to sweep the hearth.”

  A long-forgotten feeling of delight bubbled up in Allerleirauh. She took her oil-lamp and went to her den to wash the soot from her face and hands before journeying upstairs. Just as she sought to enter her small closet, she beheld a sight most peculiar. A brilliant light shone through the cracks in the wooden boards of her door. Lally had not seen anything so spectacular since her mother was alive. Suddenly, she knew what was contained in her enchanted walnut.

  Throwing open the door, she found upon her straw mat the late queen’s three loveliest gowns. One was golden as the sun, one silvery as the moon, and one bright as the stars. Forgetting her wretchedness, Lally leapt smiling upon the three gleaming gowns. She hugged them as though they were her mother’s own person.

  “Make haste in there, will you?” the cook called out. Lally froze. In her mind, she cried, Please, oh please, do not open the door! She couldn’t bear the thought of Cook seeing her mother’s precious things. Here in the North, her safety was in peril if anyone should discover her true identity.

  She breathed a sigh of relief when the cook went on, “I’ll be heading out of doors for a moment. Remember to come back down for the soot, hairy beast.”

  It then occurred to Allerleirauh what her mother meant for her do to. Her heart ceased its joyful thumping. For so many months, she had hidden her pretty face and golden hair beneath Wolf’s repulsive head. There was comfort inside her warm, dark mantle. There was security in knowing others could look her straight in the face and not see her at all. She was shielded, guarded, protected by the cloak. Those who sought to harm young women could not harm her; they knew not a woman resided within the layers of fur. They saw only the beast.

  But, was it not safe where she endeavoured to go? The king of her own castle—her father, no less—was a diseased old man, but the Northern king was said to be gentle and kind. Seeing these dresses of mother’s once again, Lally was overcome with the ebullient desire to bring her full beauty to light. Were her golden hair and lovely features not also gifts from her devoted mother? And the long-forgotten lessons in humility and grace?

  Princess Lally removed the wolf’s head and cast off her heavy mantle of furs. The night air shocked her bare arms. It had been so very long since she had removed the pelts. In a small pot of water, she bathed her skin and washed the soot from her hands.

  From the hip of her tattered skirts, she untied the knife with which Snake was slain. Poor creature. All that remained of him were the boots Lally wore for want of other shoes, and the bustier she peeled from her breasts. Snake’s skin left an embossed impression on her flesh. Dropping her blackened skirts to the floor, she selected the dress which shone like the sun. In this gown of her mother’s, Lally was a monarch again.

  Bubbling with pride, Lally bolted up the kitchen steps and into a corridor of the Palace. It was nothing like the stone castle of her childhood. The floors gleamed. The stone had been polished smooth. The corridor was not dreary grey, but warm like the colour of butter. Following the sound of laughing voices, Lally arrived at the entrance to the main hall. The dining had finished and all inside were dancing.

  When she entered the place of the king’s feast, the guests made way. She recognized their expressions of awe. Never had they seen a dress so gold as sunlight. All guests gazed upon her, the stranger in their land. Two eyes to each head. Lally’s heart pounded in her chest. It had been so many months since anyone had looked upon her face. If only she had her protective mantle. She wished to flee to the safety of the subterranean kitchen, but mother’s dress propelled her through the crowds. It held her firmly in place before the king.

  She admired the striking king the moment she saw him. The rumours of his handsomeness did not do him justice. Though an aura of wisdom hung about his noble head, he appeared far too young to rule a kingdom. His eyes were warm brown, and his skin was the colour of cocoa. The lines of his jaw were strong and square, and his hair was black, and tightly curled against his scalp. Lally imagined herself pressing her mouth against his full pink lips. Bowing her head, she smiled.

  The king took no notice of Lally. He was rapt in a discussion of philosophy. She hoped he would glance in her direction, but also dreaded the moment his wise eyes beheld her. He might not see in her what she saw in him: a perfect partner. Time seemed to slow to a crawl as he turned his head in her direction. She stood tall, shining like the summer sun. When he cast his gaze over her, all other eyes disappeared. The room was empty but for Lally and the handsome king. For months, she’d helped Cook prepare this man’s meals, and he had no idea who she was. What would he say if he knew she lived in the cabinet of the cellar-kitchen, plucking foul and raking ashes, disguised under layers of peltry?

  “Why, hello,” the king said to Lally. His deep voice might have been frightening if it weren’t so jovial. She wheezed, nodding in response. Her throat constricted. She felt as though she were breathing through a reed. The king extended his hand. When she grasped it, warmth enveloped her. “I’m King Aelwyn,” he continued.

  She ought to tell him her name. What was it, again? Ah yes, Allerleirauh. But this man was her father’s enemy. Then again, was not she her father’s enemy too? None of that mattered as long as she concealed her true identity. But if she were to reveal her identity, would this man imprison her or protect her? It was all too much to process. And the cook! How long had Lally been away from the kitchen? Cook would come searching for her.

  “I must go,” she yelped, releasing the king’s warm hand and darting for the door.

  Fleeing through the shimmering corridor, Allerleirauh stumbled down the stairs to the underground kitchen. She threw her comforting mantle over the dress as gold as the sun. Falling to her knees at the hearth, she panted as she swept the ashes.

  “Why, there you are, hairy animal!” the cook cried. “Leave that sweeping ‘til morning. I’ve another task for you. I’m going upstairs to take a gander at the goings-on. I’ll need you to fix the king’s soup. Just don’t let any hair fall in it, or I’ll not be feedin
g you in future. Not even scraps. You hearing me, hairy beast?”

  Allerleirauh nodded beneath her wolf’s head. Anything for a moment’s peace! Sitting in cinders, she reflected on the king. Aelwyn. What a wonderful man. “Aelwyn,” she said, tasting his name in her mouth. King Aelwyn and Queen Allerleirauh.

  Ah, yes, the soup. Cook had never asked her to prepare food unsupervised, and she had never done so at home. How did one go about making soup? It was soupy, so it must contain broth. Where did they keep the broth? Oh, it was hopeless! And if she shed hair in it, which she was sure to do, she might never eat again. Just while the cook was upstairs, she took off her hairy cloak and set it in the corner.

  Into the pot, she threw carrots and onions and bread and stock. What else went into soup? And how did one judge when it was ready to serve? Staring at the violently erupting bubbles, Lally’s thoughts returned to king Aelwyn: his gleaming skin, his large hands, and his noble but kind demeanor. This soup was for him. It must be perfect.

  She went to her little den and searched for some small object she could put into the soup to make it special. What had she to give? Ah, yes. She knew just the thing! Into the bowl, Lally placed a small cord of golden thread. Aelwyn would drink Allerleirauh’s bread soup and recognize that someone special had prepared it, lovingly, for him.

  Heavy footsteps fell against the stairs. Lally’s heart went cold. Cook could not see her in her mother’s dress! Fleeing to the corner, she slipped the mantle over her shoulders, and the wolf’s head over her golden hair. Whirling around, she saw through Wolf’s eyes that it was not Cook at all. “Oh, Liam! ‘Tis only you,” Lally sighed with relief. “Cook has gone above ground to observe the feast. I had to make this soup myself. I fear the good King will find it a most unsavory meal.”

  “I’m sure he will and all, wild beast,” retorted young Liam, the excessively proud server. “Your soup is probably hairy as you are!”