I find you in the graveyard, your face hidden by your sable hair. Moonlight shines on your ebony wings, gilding them in silver.

I clutch the crucifix at my neck.

Your eyes, red as hell, find mine. You don’t rise from the gravestone you are resting on. You just glare at me, with a hatred that I’m not familiar with.

“You dare bring that thing here.” You scoff. “You really are frightened of me.”

A cold October wind scatters the fringes of my white dress. I appear ghostly in this night, among these graves, among the trees skeletal and foreboding.

And you? You are a shadow, a crow, a harbinger of the realm from whence you came.

But I can’t help but love you. I can’t help but despair at your loss.

“I want to save you,” I say, my feet stepping forward on ancient earth, earth fed with dead ones.

“Liar,” he whispers—a whisper filled with venom, the utterance of a serpent.

I stare at you. I lift the crucifix from around my neck—a twinkling trinket in the moon-bright night.

Steel wraps around my words. “It’s not that you can’t be saved. You don’t want to be saved.”

You lift your pale, chiseled face to the sky. What do you see there? I see stars, and beyond them moons of a thousand colors and mysteries, but you…you, born of Heaven, child-servant of the Underworld, what do you see?

“I was cast aside like chaff, like an old wineskin, like a deformed babe.” Your eyes find mine again. “I made my home in shadow, and shadow took me. I am safe in the darkness, Eris.”

Tears burn my eyes. “And you won’t even reach for the light?”

You turn. Your wings cover you as you kneel. “No. Why would I?”

The moon beams. The wind slithers over the stones like water.

“Leave that thing,” you say.

I place the crucifix on the ground, next to a marker, the engraving long faded with time.

“Now come here, Darling.”

I walk to you, and your wings engulf me like shadow. Your breath is warm as it tickles my tongue, and your lips are hot against mine. I reach up to your neck—I am falling, and I have to grasp at something. You steady me with your strong hands.

The kiss is long. The kiss is sweet. But it ends.

“Goodbye, Eris.”

My eyes open to moonlight, trees, and stone. But you are gone. Not even the hint of your warm breath is left behind.

I am so cold.

I collapse on the ground and weep—I weep because I know never again will I lay my eyes on you. And forever now will I be alone, for I was yours, and you were mine.

But there is no one left to love me.

There is a tinkling, like the smallest, softest bell. I turn, and the crucifix is still there. It shines like a star in the dirt.

I pick it up with tear stained hands. My breath comes to me in a shudder.

Perhaps I am not alone.

My father knew that we only had an hour of light, and he wanted us to enjoy it. He took me out of the house, and we plodded through the snow. The rising sun was breaking through the clouds; a sun I hadn’t seen in weeks. It came upon the world like a gleaming god, banishing the shadows that had laid on northern Sweden for so long.

Pappa held my hand as we walked on that January day. I was six, and I still needed to be supported and guided, especially over snow-deep fields. The sky was fairy blue, a sea of sparkling white spanning beneath it.

“He’ll be too old to hold your hand one day,” Mamma had told him in the kitchen as he donned his socks.

“I know,” my father answered. “That’s why I’m going to let him hold it every chance he gets.”

We walked from our house into a swath of forest where the trees were frost-cloaked and silent. My breath was white will-o-wisps in the cold. I kept close to Pappa as he led me carefully down a hill. At the bottom was the lake, as still as a mirror.

“Isn’t it pretty, Adrian?” Pappa asked me.

“Yeah,” I piped. The water was frozen into glass, burning with colors from the winter sun’s rays.

“You know a girl is in that lake,” he said. “She died.”

My heart skipped a beat. I searched the glassy surface immediately with my eyes, looking for any sign of a face, of a hand. No limb or other protuberance was forthcoming, but now I knew that the lake held, or at one time held, a body of a girl. So I asked the question that now sparked within my child’s mind, the only logical one anyone would ask.

“How did she die, Pappa?”

“She drowned.”

“Was she not a good swimmer?” I asked.

“She was the best swimmer.” He knelt down next to me, pointing out at the lake. “She would swim from shore to shore, back and forth. She loved the water, probably more than any fish. She was an unusual girl.”

“Because she loved the water so much?”

“There were other reasons, Adrian. She would stay out in the night, running with the wolves, howling at the blackened sky and its silver lights. Her shadow could be seen in the deep pines, like a monster out of dreams. She was known as the Wolf Daughter.”

“Were her parents wolves?”

“Yes. Just like me.” He howled and nuzzled my neck with his scratchy beard. I squealed and broke the cold silence around us with my laughter.

“They say she was a wolf herself,” he continued. “That she could change into wolf-skin. Gray as cloud; as winter fog; eyes as yellow as an angry moon.”

“But she drowned.”

“Yes, Little One. And it is said that she still remains in the lake. Her body was never found.”

I stared at the lake, stretching away to a horizon of trees crowned with sun. The light was on our skin, like a balm from God after so many days in the Polar Night. The night, beautiful as it was with its speckled stars and its swirling green ribbons of ethereal luminescence, had seemed to last forever, especially as a child.

“They couldn’t get her out?” I asked. Again, I looked for any sign of the girl in the translucence of the icy lake.

“I’m sure they could have if they tried. But they say a deep magic lies within this lake. It wanted to take her. As Wolf Daughter, she was known for being vicious and cunning, and many people feared her. And so the magic of the lake took her so that she could never harm anyone.”

“But did she hurt anyone?”

My father stared down at the snow at our feet, his eyes lost in thought. “I’m not sure. The stories don’t say.”

This was unfair to me. To my six-year-old mind, it seemed that the girl had been punished for being nothing more than what she was. Would the magic lake have pulled me under for just being a boy who liked to play with Legos? Would it have drowned me because I occasionally hid my mother’s reading glasses when I disliked dinner? It was an injustice.

These thoughts passed through my mind, but I said nothing to my father. Even then, I knew I was a precocious child, and I knew that some moments called for speaking, and others for silence.

We walked along the edge of the lake, taking in the apricity of the sun, watching its beams sparkle against the whiteness of snow like an argent sea of stars. The entire time we walked, my hand in his, I kept my eyes on the lake, so bright it shined like a huge pool of molten light.

Was the Wolf Daughter deep beneath the ice, held in the dark embrace of the water? Could she see the sun, feel any semblance of its warmth? Or were her cold, dead eyes hovering just beneath the frozen surface, watching my father and I as we walked?

As the sun began to fade from the sky, leaving us to the oncoming, perennial duration of darkness, we made our way home. We would warm ourselves, drink hot tea, laugh.

But my thoughts would ever dwell on the Wolf Daughter and her cold demise.

***

I was six when my father had first told me the story of the Wolf Daughter. Every year thereafter, on the first winter day when the sun finally broke its way through the sky for an ephemeral hour of daylight, we would go to the lake. And when we arrived, my father would ask me, “You know a girl is in that lake?”

And every time he asked, I would lie and say that, no, I didn’t know that. And then he would tell me once again the story of the Wolf Daughter, a story I loved to hear, over and over again.

This continued for years, until I was thirteen.

Then I started to dream about her.

***

Dreams are confusing things. If subtle events occur in them, you will stop in the middle of the day while making tea or taking out the garbage and ask yourself, “Did that really happen, or did I dream that?” Did my boss show me a picture of his son fishing? Did my wife tell me about her friend, who I care nothing about, who had just come down with the flu? Sometimes you don’t know the answer, because dreams and memories can be as fluid as a cold mountain stream and as elusive as a hare in the snow.

That is how my dreams of the Wolf Daughter began.

At first, the dreams were of snowy gales; blinding, all-encompassing, a shroud of angelic white on the world. And in those twisting winds of snowflakes and ice, I’d see a shadow, its shape undefinable, but with invisible eyes that would watch me from the heart of the winter night.

But in the winter, my life was nothing but snow, and cold, and darkness. And so I did not know if these visions of the shadow were part of nighttime fantasies, or if they were memories. For the longest time, I could not differentiate, and I told myself that they were just something I remembered from a long time ago.

Memories bleed into the fabric of your brain, and you can’t say from whence they came. For me, the shadow with no shape was just too many nights of lonely cold and darkness. And so they were mere memory.

And so, for the first year, I dreamed of nothing but snow.

But after my fourteenth birthday, after I had heard the Wolf Daughter’s story for the eighth time, I had a clear dream. On the far shore of the lake, I saw her, her shadow melting like frost from a fire. And as it melted, I beheld her as she was: a wild, savage thing; fierce, yet noble and imposing. She watched me from the veil of snow, those moon-yellow eyes like piercing lights that knew all the secrets I had ever hidden, and would hide forevermore.

For months I dreamed of her wolf-shape and I knew they were dreams. There was no longer any confusion of the line between remembrance and dreaming. But I did not dwell on these dreams. For me, they were not important. I was too focused on being a teenager. I helped around the house. I started playing metal guitar. I kissed a girl for the first time. I read books, played soccer, and devoured video games.

I lived my life.

Then came my fifteenth birthday on the first of January, and soon after that, the first daylight of the year. I was too old to hold my father’s hand to the lake now, but still we went. I smiled as we approached the gray lake, identical to what I had seen nearly a decade prior when he had first brought me out there.

“You know a girl is in that lake,” my father said.

The beginning to the tale that I never grew tired of. A story that was cyclical, like a serpent eating its own tale, that started over and over again.

“How did she get there?” I asked. “Did she drown?”

“Yes. She drowned.”

I was about to ask him for the ninth time if she had been a good swimmer, when the words died in my mouth. There was a shape on the far side of the lake.

It was a wolf.

“Pappa, Pappa, look!”

I pointed and my father squinted at the far shore where the wolf had been. But now there was nothing there.

“What Adrian? What did you see?”

“A wolf! I saw a wolf!”

“Really? Pity, it must have run.” A smile crossed his lips. “Maybe it was the Wolf Daughter’s ghost.”

His words struck me. I had seen the beast for only a moment, but in that moment, a familiarity had dawned upon me.

I knew it was the same wolf from my dreams.

We went on our walk around the lake, but we saw no other sign of the wolf. By the time the light faded from the sky, and we were back in the warmth of our house, I realized that this was the first year that my father did not finish telling the story of the Wolf Daughter.

***

On my sixteenth birthday, my father was in the hospital recovering from surgery. He had been diagnosed with lung cancer, but they had caught it early and removed a small wedge. He was staying on for a couple of days for observation to make sure he was completely cleared. My mother was with him, so I was left at home, keeping the house intact. It was nice. I cranked up my guitar amp as loud as I wanted and practiced my heart out. My hair was down to my shoulder blades at this point, and I had started my first band. We were even working on a demo.

But the darkness had been long, and on the day of winter’s first sunrise, I left the house, and made my way to the lake. It was strange not having my father with me–an alien feeling, as if I were doing something forbidden, like walking naked into a church or flirting with my best friend’s girlfriend. For years my father had been with me, but this time he wasn’t, and though I knew he’d be home soon, I missed him greatly.

The world was as beautiful as ever by the time I reached the lake. The sunlight was weak, but it painted the world in soft colors, a kind of alpenglow gloom that settled gently on the earth.

I stared at the frozen water for a long time before I realized that there was someone else there, farther up the shore.

Her hair was golden and lovely, tied in an array of fairy braids as they cascaded down her slim back. She hugged her knees to her chest as she sat on the snowy ground, staring out at the frozen water. She wore only a gray dress that had to be too thin to protect her from the cold; but she didn’t seem to mind. Her eyes found mine as I approached her, and she smiled.

“Hello, Adrian,” she said.

“Hello.”

“You’re back again.” She grinned, and her canines were startlingly sharp. “I knew you would be.”

I had no idea who this beautiful girl was. She was at least five years older than me, and I didn’t recognize her from school. Maybe she was one of the local village girls who I hadn’t seen in a while. I searched my brain for a name, but I came up blank.

“How did you know I would be here?” I asked.

“You and your father come with First Light every year. However, your father is not with you.”

“He’s sick. In the hospital.” How did she know we came every year?

“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that. Not too serious I hope?”

“He should be home soon.”

“Wonderful! Will you sit and watch the sun with me?”

She was lovely, and her voice was like cool water on a hot wound. I sat with her on the snow as light gleamed on the lake.

“I’m afraid you have the advantage,” I said. “I don’t know your name.”

“I don’t know it either. Or rather, I don’t remember it.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that, so I said, “Do we know each other?”

“Of course we do, Adrian. I’ve watched you for a very long time, every winter, when my lake is covered in ice. But when the ice is gone, I sink back into the depths, and I’m left missing you all summer.”

I stared at her. Her eyes were blue like flowers, but they had drops of liquid gold in them, like ink from a sacred pen. “You’re the Wolf Daughter?”

“Yes.”

“You seem pretty lively for a girl who drowned.”

“Stories are exaggerated, Adrian. I was imprisoned in the water, but I did not die. I have been in this lake longer than anyone in this land has been alive.”

I licked my lips. “And how is that so?”

“Do you know of the old gods?”

“Of course. My grandfather had an idol of Odin. But my mother and father are both Christians. At least, that’s what it says in the census records.”

The Wolf Daughter smiled. “Well, I do not blame them. The Christ is a wrathful god, but also gentle and kind. Unlike the gods of the north who know nothing but spite and discord. I am one of them, Adrian. My father was Fenrir, my grandfather Loki; instruments of Ragnarok and the destruction of the gods.”

Her words did not ring with any hint of deceit. Each word she spoke seemed to find its way into my skin, into my bones, into my soul, and resonate. Though it went against all reason, I knew that what she spoke was true.

“I’ve never heard of Fenrir having a daughter. It’s not recorded in any of the literature.”

She laughed, which startled me, because it sounded like a dog yipping. “And how many things do you think have been lost over the centuries? Each year is a turning of the page of history, and with every page turned, the ink fades more and more. Many of the stories of the old gods are long lost, Adrian. But I promise you, before Fenrir was imprisoned on an island of iron trees, I was here. And I roamed the wilds with those of my kind, and during the summer when Frey’s fields were fresh and abundant, I came to this lake to play and hunt with my father.”

“Did they fear you as they feared your father?” I asked her. “Is that why you were imprisoned in this lake?”

She stared at the sky longingly, as if she could not soak in enough of its light. How much light came down to her in the cold shadows of the dark water? How much warmth made its way to the bottom of that freezing oblivion?

“I was imprisoned because I was spawn of my father. And like my father, I was thought to be dangerous. The dwarves took me in my human shape and wrapped me in a piece of the chain Gleipnir. They did not put me on the island with my father, which has long ago sunk to the bottom of this lake. Instead they threw me into the water to sleep for all eternity. But the chain was not as tight as they believed, and I survived Ragnarok. Now I am here.”

“You lasted through Ragnarok? Ragnarok actually happened?”

She scoffed. “Look at the world around you, Adrian. Ragnarok was to be the death of the gods–and they have died. They are gone from this land, and those few that worship them only worship shadows and pale memories. Now the Christ reigns supreme as God in this land, as well as many of the other lands where Odin and his kin ruled.” She grew quiet. “Perhaps that’s how it was meant to be.”

Meant to be? Could she really mean that?

“What do you want from me?” I asked.

Her eyes drifted to the hills forested with white trees. She took a handful of snow and touched it to her lips. She placed some in her mouth and drank it.

“I want my freedom, Adrian. I have waited so long for someone to come along and give it to me. And now, here you are.”

She looked at me, and my heart wanted to die. How could anyone throw someone who carried so much loveliness into a horrid lake, leaving her to drown?

“But why me?” I asked.

She laughed, and this time, it was the laughter of a young, pretty girl, not a dog or wolf. “Why do you ask me such silly questions, child? Why is that for you to know, and what good would it do you? There’s only one question you should ask me.”

And I knew she was right. There was only one question that I needed to ask her.

“What must I do?”

“Kiss me,” she said. “Like so many tales that find their roots in the blood-veins of the earth, a great truth revealed is that a kiss can break any enchantment. So please, Adrian, kiss me. Kiss me so that I can be who I am.”

I hesitated only a moment more so that I could gaze upon her radiance. I leaned forward, and in the snowy sunlight, I placed my lips to hers. I wanted her to put her hand to my neck, or for her to twine her fingers in my hair, but she did neither of those things, and I did not touch her with my hands.

When I pulled away, and opened my eyes, she was gone.

There was only snow, ice, and sky.

There was waning light.

***

I never loved any other woman as I loved the Wolf Daughter. In her had been all the beauty of the divine and the mysterious, and after that one kiss, it was taken from me forever. I waited, hoping that she would come back, but to this day, she never has.

She took my heart. That was the price of her freedom.

As an old man, I still come to the lake. I have no children, or grandchildren to call my own, and so I whisper to myself under that first Winter Sunrise, every year until I lay myself in the grave:

“You know a girl drowned in there?”

Though I have never seen her again, I know she is out there, wandering the wilds. She is hunting the prey that is hers to feed on, howling at the yellow moon that grins and weeps. My heart longs for her, but she is a wild thing, and I cannot have her.

But she has not killed, as the gods feared. She has not harmed, as the gods foresaw. She only lives to be alive, she only exists to be who she is.

The end has not come.

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From my window, I stare down at the garden. A light dusting of snow has fallen. The stone form of the angel in the garden is adorned with a soft mantle of white. Its face is somber, with empty eyes, wreathed in tendrils of black roses that have not shirked against winter’s chill. It is a dark idol in the shadows of this cold night.

My heart aches with longing.

***

I place my hand against the cold glass of the mirror. I stare back, a haggard, lonely soul.

“Mirror, mirror, on the wall: who is the fairest of them all?”

The reflection in the mirror morphs and changes, and there I see her. She is in the snow, her face deep within a hood. But that is not enough to obscure the brightness of her eyes, eyes that enchant me, eyes that haunt me.

I leave the mirror. I find myself in the garden, staring at the bright smile of the shadowed moon.   The sky is frosted with stars, the air lonely with cold. I kneel before the statue of the angel, the shadows of its wings swallowing me in darkness. My fingers caress the dark petals of one of the flowers.

Desire pierces my heart. It weeps and bleeds. I cry out.

A choir of wolves answers.

***

When she arrives, she is hurt. The wolves had to draw blood in order to bring her to me. Her eyes are closed, and a stream of red pours down from the cut on her brow. I touch the blood with the tips of my fingers and taste it. It is sweet to me.

I lay her in a bed. There I bathe her wounds and dress them. I whisper spells so that her perfect skin will not scar. I cannot tear my eyes away from her lovely face, her lips so full and perfect that my desire to kiss her threatens to drive me insane.

I watch her sleep through the night.

When she awakens, I am there, standing near the window in the light of the rising sun. She is frightened of me. No doubt it is because of my appearance.

After all, who could ever learn to love one such as myself?

But I explain to her that I rescued her from the wolves. I cared for her, and healed her, the tender creature that she is.

The fear in her eyes subsides for the slightest moment.

***

When she is well enough, I show her my home. The long, dark corridors, the tall towers, the spacious rooms. She gazes at the paintings, the suits of armor, the library with its menagerie of books and stained-glass windows.

“This is a fairy tale…” she whispers.

I smile at her words.

 I insist that she is not well enough to leave the castle. And though I can see her nervousness, she obliges. She has begun to trust me.

And why should she not?

After all, I love her.

 I knew that I loved her from the very first moment that I saw her.  

In a week, I watch her eyes fill with wonder as she devours the books in the library. I hear her singing to herself in my garden. I taste her scent when she passes me at the dinner table, as intoxicating as the first dawn of spring.

She seems to be curious. The angel in the garden intrigues her, I can tell. Despite the cold, she will sit next to it with a book. Every few pages, she looks up at the statue, as if it is some marvel of nature. She gazes at it with awe, taking in its beauty.

I know it too finds her beautiful.

***

One night, I ask her to dance. She puts her hands in my own—I am careful not to nick her with my claws. We listen to the harpsichord that I enchant to play on its own, and we spin across the marble floor.

 I can see it in her eyes. Without mistake, I can see the love she has for me. It has grown, and she wishes to cast it upon me. She just has not found the words to do so yet.

We go out on the balcony. The moon bathes the winter night in startling white and our breath mists the air. Her hand is warm in mine. 

She asks about the angel in the garden.

The old ache swells in my breast. “It is a grave marker. She was my first love.”

I see the change in her face, a sea of emotion. Pity, sympathy, questions that touch the tip of her tongue.

She says that she is sorry. She asks what happened to her.

Before I can quench it, a familiar spark of anger and pain flares within me. The words come without thought.

“She did not love me in return.”

A familiar, dark shadow flits through her eyes. Ever so quickly, she draws her hand away, and a heavy silence fills the space between us. She gives me the same look that first appeared on her face when she awoke to find me lingering by the window, watching her sleep.

She says she is tired. She withdraws back into the castle, to her room. I watch her go, in the dark gown that I gave her for the evening. I am left alone with the stars.  

***

Oh, why does she shirk from me? She will not share meals with me at our table. She will not sit with me in the library.

She will not leave her room at all.

My window looks down on her room. At night, I can see her graceful shadow silhouetted against the glass. She is looking down; down on the angel, standing vigilant and sorrowful in the garden.

It has been days since I have seen her beautiful face. I come to her door, but she says she is tired. She is ill. But she will not let me heal her with my magic. I can hear the distrust in her voice behind the heavy oak door, a fear of me and what I am. I try to open the door, but she has locked it.

Ah. So she has come to fear me.

That is when the old spark ignites into a hungry, devouring flame.

“You plan to escape!” I roar. My claws rake against the door, leaving deep gashes. I pound with my large fists. “You fear me! After all I have done, I thought you would see me for who I am and not be concerned with the vileness of my face. I love you, and how do you return my love? I just want to share my heart with you! Love me! Love me, curse you!”

There is the sound of shattering glass. Going out the window, is she? Is that her plan? No doubt she will try to escape through the garden.

But I will not let her.

It will not let her.

She is mine.

***

She struggles in the snow. She is covered in black roses, the thorns pricking deep into her skin, cascading in serpent-like tendrils down from the angel. Her eyes are full of fear, like a rabbit who has been snared by a hunter’s trap.

I kneel next to her. The anger is slowly ebbing away into a dull ache, like cold seeping into bones. “Stay with me,” I say, pleading. “You can have anything your heart desires, just stay with me, my love.”

For the briefest instance, the fear in her eyes flares into hate. “I do not love you,” she says. “You are a beast.”

I stare at her. Her words cut deeper than any blade. I bow my head and close my eyes.

“Nevertheless, I still love you,” I whisper. I raise a hand. “Now sleep, my beloved.”

I whisper the words of a spell, and she falls into a deep slumber, wrapped in the embrace of flowers and thorns.

***

I carry her into the secret chamber that is hidden beneath the angel. I lay her in a coffin made of glass. I close the lid and seal it, watching her sleep. The cuts of the thorns start to fade away till her skin is perfect once again.

“I love you so dearly,” I whisper, though I know she cannot hear me. Still, the words must be said.

I look around the chamber at the other glass coffins, resting on the stone floor, surrounding me in a large circle. I gaze at the beauties sleeping, their hands folded on their chests, in dreamless slumber. I love them all, from the very core of my heart. Each of them rejected me, but still I love them.

On the far wall of the chamber is my mirror. It shows the terrible, horrid beast that I am. But I know there is beauty within me, beauty that will cause one to fall in love with me. I just have to find her.

I place my hand on the cold glass, staring at my reflection, the bright yellow of my eyes, the sharp fangs that protrude from my mouth. I will find her. I will find her…even if I have to search forever.

“Mirror, mirror, on the wall: who is the fairest of them all?”

This story appears in the collection Roses and Blood, Shadows and Magic. You can purchase a copy of the book by clicking here.

Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/loganart-665411/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=656206">LoganArt</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com//?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=656206">Pixabay</a>