Hibernation

Prompt: Sleep

Word Count: 2,652

The village I grew up in was nestled in a shallow valley, unsheltered from the wind and harsh weather. The valley encircled a ribbon lake which at some time might have been a glacier. All of its buildings, including my childhood home, were painted in copper-infused crimson on the outside to protect the wood from the harsh conditions we had become so used to. Snow was very common even outside of winter. When I was little, I remember once waking up with my family one day in October and seeing that the snowdrift outside our front door was of a height with my father’s chest.

As a village, several generations of seasonal cold spells taught us to be hardy and resistant to the gelidity of northern climates, but one especially frigid winter, the cold weather brought something very strange with it.

In mid-November, when the weather was still clement, we were hauling the last of the felled timber from the nearby forest to our woodsheds. My father was pulling the logs with the use of a sledge, and I would help him unload and stack the chunks of timber in the woodshed adjacent to our house. Just when we were finishing up and stowing the sledge, I noticed several of our fellow villagers who, like us, had been working hard that day, were leaving either their homes or their implements of work, and were starting to drift towards the cobblestones of village square.

Since my work was almost done, and I was curious, I followed them and quickly came upon a crowd encircling something or someone. Many townspeople were craning their necks to get a better view. At first, I did likewise, hearing gasps of shock and surprise from those closer to the centre of the crowd.

Being small, I was able to wedge myself through the mass of larger bodies until I came upon the centre. There, I found that the adults had made a space, and at the centre of the space was a woman. She was unlike anything I had ever seen. Firstly, she was dressed in clothes which were lighter than the clothes that I or any of the villagers were wearing. It was as if the cold did not trouble her at all. Secondly, her complexion was bizarre: her skin was unnaturally pale, her eyes were large and cornflour blue, her small mouth was pink and when she smiled I thought I could discern that her teeth were slightly pointed. I could not have guessed her age. Her skin was smooth but something about her cold eyes suggested a wisdom not usually found in the young.

What interested me more was what she was doing. At first, it looked like she was performing magic tricks for the assembled inhabitants of our hamlet. Watching her closely, I saw her scoop up a handful of snow from the ground with one hand, cover it with the other, and then reveal it to be yellow flames which crackled and gave off heat but did not seem to burn her skin. The sight of this made the congregation gasp. Some clapped.

Strangely, I remember reacting to the odd woman in an opposite way. From the first I did not like her proud bearing and how gratified she seemed with the crowd’s attention.

Now she was lifting a few small fragments from a cobblestone which had cracked. Like before, she hid what she was holding, but this time revealed glittering pieces of gold. There was no crackle this time, but the sight of the gleaming metal made everybody catch their breath. Everybody except me. I did not like the way the sorceress showed her white pointed teeth and or the way her eyes shone.

Being a petulant child, I said: ‘It’s just a trick’. The crowd went silent after I had spoken. The woman’s grinning face turned to a cold glare.

‘I bet she had that gold up her sleeve or something’, I added.

The woman’s glower now turned into a more sinister expression. She addressed me directly.

‘I could show something more convincing if you’d like’, she said with both malice and amusement. Her bright blue eyes were trained on me. Being no more than a callow child, I only realised then that I really shouldn’t have interrupted her performance, and that perhaps she was dangerous. Yet having never met a person like her in my life I answered with a blithe, ‘alright’.

With a sudden snap which resounded in everyone’s ears, she clapped her hands together, the air between her and me seemed to ripple, and suddenly I had fallen forward onto the cobbles of the square. I was on all fours. The startled crowd had moved back to make a space for me. I looked up to see the woman’s face staring down at me, contorted into something malevolent and entirely inhuman.

Looking down again, I could both see and feel that something strange was happening to my hands. Bristling brown hairs were thickening there, covering my fingers and the backs of my hands. Now my fingers started to shrink and harden into pointed claws. It was all I could do to scratch at the cold, hard cobbles.

Panicking, I tried to lift myself into a standing position. For a second or two I succeeded, but then fell forward again onto all fours. I could hear the witch’s shrill laughter echoing in my ears. Many of the villagers, seeing what had just happened to me, had screamed and fled. Others remained, transfixed. Even the oldest among them had never seen anything like this in their entire lives.

Under my warm winter clothes, I could feel the sprouting hairs spreading. I could feel my torso and limbs bulking up, and then I could hear my attire bursting at the seams.

All I could think to do was run home. I ran from the square and through the snow-covered streets, on my hands and feet like a beast, until I came to the small cottage I called home. At this point, only a few scraps of my clothes still clung to me. The rest of it had dropped onto the snow as my body had swelled.

As I approached I could see my mother and sisters looking through one of the small windows. I saw the terror on their faces. I let out what I thought would be a cry of fear and I tried to call their names, but all that came out was a harsh and guttural bellow. Nearing the door, I could see my father standing on the threshold. I slowed and tried to speak again, but the result was the same as before. He slammed the door in my face and I heard the lock click.

Several hours passed. Not knowing what else I could do, I lingered around my family home, no doubt terrifying my mother, father, and sisters.

Eventually, the other townspeople, hearing that a dangerous wild animal was lumbering around, lit firebrands and, as a group, drove me off into the nearby forest, the same forest where I had helped my father gather firewood that very morning.

I was reluctant to leave, but the villagers, people I had known my whole life and counting many as friends, would not have me hanging around the village.

Many of the villagers, dozens even, hand witnessed what had happened to me, and perhaps might have spread the word that I was not a beast, but a transformed human. However, the townspeople either did not hear of this or did not believe it. They did not rest until I had moved far into the woods.

I spent days wandering under the evergreen canopy and between ancient fir trees. I grew tired and hungry. When I came upon a river I drank from it and even managed to catch a few fish which wriggled between my razor-sharp fangs. This satisfied my hunger but not my weariness.

Though the woods were vast, after a few weeks I knew them quite well. I discovered a cave under the great roots of an ancient pine which was well hidden. This became my home.

In this refuge, I had plenty of time to think. Though I had the body of a beast, my mind was still very much human. There were plenty of things I wanted to do. I would have spoken with my family and the villagers, explaining that I was still me on the inside. I would have used my human hands to catch food and use tools. However, none of that was possible in my present state.

Being a beast limits you in so many ways. Humans never realise how empowered they are just by having the bodies of humans. A beast with the mind of a human is essentially still just a beast.

As the winter solstice approached I grew more and more weary, so much so that I was finding it harder to search for food. Eventually, one morning, I decided to remain in my hollow. I thought I was dying, perhaps it was another effect of the witch’s spell.

The snow got heavier, even with the evergreen canopy above me, and soon the snowdrift almost covered the entrance to my cave. I no longer moved. My breathing got deeper and less frequent, and I could feel my heartbeat slowing.

I slept and slept. Now and then I would wake for a few minutes at a time. The fat I had put on from fishing in the river quickly burned off. Finally, I felt a fatigue so great that I thought for certain that this time I would fall asleep and never wake. I learned later that it was not one winter I slept through, but several. I slumbered for years.

One morning, I began to rouse. I felt the sun on my face, filtering through the leaf-covered branches above. At first, I did not know where I was, or who I was. It was as if I had just awakened from a dream. Memories of my past life, both as a human and a beast, almost escaped me.

I crawled out of my den and basked in the sun for some time. It must have been summer. My limbs felt weak and my body emaciated. I had been an animal for so long that I no longer saw myself as a human on the inside.  

My knowledge of the forest remained, however. I found my way to the river and gorged myself on fish, and felt stronger for it. Looking into the less turbulent part of the river, I could see my reflection. At first, I thought the ripples were warping my appearance, but I grew more and more certain that what was looking back at me was not an animal, but a human. I could only just make out the image of a hairless face, a nose, a mouth, and a familiar pair of eyes. Bearing myself stiffly up onto my two legs, I noticed for the first time that morning that my fur was falling out in clumps. I didn’t dare get my hopes up, however. My claws remained, and I couldn’t manage walking on two feet for very long. Nonetheless, I started myself on the path towards my home village.

The last time I had seen my home, much of it had been covered in snow. Now verdant grass covered the surrounding area and I could hear the song of birds nesting in the thickets. Still, I felt something was wrong. Where there should have been people going about their business, the roads and central square were deserted. Weeds were sprouting up here and there. It seemed possible that the place had been abandoned.

I wandered the streets of the home I used to know, still shedding bunches of brown hair. All of a sudden I became aware of snuffling noises coming from huts and lodgings. I noticed wild pigs poking their heads from windows, and bedraggled dogs gazing fearfully at me from behind old barrels and discarded farming equipment. There were mountain cats, woolly sheep, and speckled deer, all lingering here and there, both inside houses and without, as if this village was where they belonged.

Before coming here I had been worried that I would be driven off once again by townspeople waving torches, but that no longer seemed likely. Something strange had happened to my home town. I became curious. I wanted to know what had happened here.

I padded over the cobblestones of the central square until I arrived at what used to be the house of the village chieftain, a homestead larger than all the others. I could see smoke rising from its chimney. Around this dwelling there didn’t seem to be any animals hanging about, as if they feared to go near the place.

I approached the door, which was slightly ajar, and pushed it open with one claw. I could hear flames crackling in the fireplace and facing it was an opulent chair. The person seated in it heard the noise I had made as I entered.

From the chair, a woman’s voice called, ‘I told you creatures to stay outside. The outdoors is where you belong!’

I made no sound. No doubt she expected to hear animal feet scrabbling away. When she didn’t, she rose from her chair in irritation. When she saw me her face went white as a sheet.

‘I remember you’, she said carefully. ‘You were my first alteration. That is, in this village’.

I did not try to reply. No doubt it would be nothing but senseless bellowing.

She continued. ‘You’ve been gone a long time. Since you disappeared I’ve made animals of everyone here. Animals are so much easier to govern than people, you see. I’ve made quite an agreeable life for myself here’. She grinned, showing her pointed teeth. Her malevolent gaze brought memories back to the day I was changed and driven away from my home.

‘I never run out of food here’, she said with a sinister laugh. ‘Not with all the pigs around. I never run short of bacon’.

She moved closer, no doubt to get a better look at me.  

‘Look at you’, she whispered. ‘My spell has almost worn off. Do you realise, you look almost human now? That won’t do. What would you like to be this time? A wolf? A bull? A bird of some kind?’

As she said this she began to rub her hands together, readying to cast a spell, and I would have to spend another eternity as some other beast.

All in a rush, the last few years of my life came back to me. All my wasted years spent in hibernation, my transformed family, my freakish, beastly appearance. If I did nothing now the rest of my life would be taken from me.

Her mistake had been to move too close to me. I rose onto my hind legs and lunged at her. My claws were still long and sharp. Her cornflour blue eyes blinked in surprise, and before she could take a step backwards my huge forearm swung and her throat was torn out. She dropped onto the thickly carpeted floor which rapidly began to stain with her blood.

Looking down at her body, her eyes now staring vacantly up at the rafters, I started to feel a change in myself. Handfuls of fur were falling from my body, my claws began to reform and shape into fingers. Soon I had no trouble balancing on my firm, flat feet. I turned and strode out of the house, revealing in the knowledge that I was finally human again.

Out in the sunshine, I could see I was not the only one. Villagers were reforming into their old selves, all as naked as I was. Reborn into the world.