A Tale of Fur and Flesh (8 page)

Her throat gasped for air as Lally pressed herself
close to the king.  They danced, though her face no doubt betrayed her raw
pain.  Could she not feel happy for even a moment without remembering the
past?  There was no justice.  The world was a place of suffering.  Snake knew
suffering.  He died because of her.

“Allerlierauh?” King Aelwyn said, interrupting her
self-loathing.  Only the pan flute played now, its lilting tones floating into
the sky.  “You are from the South, are you not?”

A nervous pang hit Lally in the pit of her stomach. 
She could not admit that she originated from a warring kingdom.  “No, of course
I am not from the South.  I am a Northerner like you.”

The king stopped dancing.  He glared at Allerleirauh
as though he were waiting for something.  He must have known it was a lie. 
Perhaps he knew who she really was.  “Most people call me ‘your highness,’” he
remarked.  Offering a crooked smile, he picked up the dance.

“Oh!” she cried. A wave of relief washed over her. 
She could hardly afford to make these silly mistakes, but she was used to
meeting royalty on equal terms.  “Yes, of course!  Your highness.  I forget
myself.  Pray, do forgive me, only I’m unaccustomed to socializing with
royals.”

Would the king believe these lies?  Of course he
would not.  If Lally did not fill the silence, he would ask where a non-royal
might have received such a stunning silver gown.  “From whence come you, King
Aelwyn?  I mean, your highness.  Only, your appearance is not as that of most
Northerners.  I hope you take no offence at my remarking so.”

The king’s countenance hardened.  He looked away from
Lally.  Silence sat between them like a mountain of stone.  Offering her
apologies, she begged King Aelwyn to disregard the question. “You see the tone
of my flesh and assume my origin to be in the Hot Kingdoms.”  His gaze softened
as he sighed in frustration.  “True, my mother hailed from the Hot Western
Kingdom, but I myself have never visited that area.  I was born in the North
and have lived through its balmy summers and frigid winters my entire life.”

“How did it come to pass that you were born here in
the North?” Lally asked.  Why anyone would leave the hot kingdoms for the cold
ones puzzled her.

The flautist was joined by the drummer and a fiddler
too.  “In the time of my grandparents, the Hot West and Northern Kingdoms were
keen trading partners.  It was decided that, in order to contribute variety to
our monarchies’ bloodlines, the kingdoms would also trade royals.  When my mother,
the heiress of the Hot Western throne, reached a marriageable age, she was sent
here to wed my father, the Northern prince.  My father’s younger sister was
sent to the Hot West, where she rules to this day.  This has prevented our
royal bloodlines from becoming too pure.  When a monarchy’s lineage is unmixed,
illness and insanity become rampant.  The Southern Kingdom is a perfect
example…”

Lally suffered a cramp at the mention of her father’s
kingdom, but she did not allow the king to see her suffering.  He continued,
“Our neighbours have obsessed about pure bloodlines, and what is the result? 
We all know the tale.  Lunacy has consumed King Galyn’s once-brilliant mind, to
the point where he obsesses about marrying his own daughter!”

A sweat broke on Lally’s palms.  The king’s statement
was true, but why did he have to speak of it so loudly?  Others were certainly
listening.  Must everybody know of her misfortune?  They knew already, perhaps…

 “Are you talking of the bawdy princess Lally?” an
excessively fat man asked.  “She was asking for it, with all her gallivanting
around the kingdom!”  The man snorted with drunken laughter at Lally’s
misfortune. She bit her lip with all her might. 
Any pain but that pain!
 
She would rather feel the sting in her physical self than think upon her
father’s lunacy, or imagine the maltreatment she might have endured had she not
fled his castle.

“I heard it was the other way ‘round,” a skinny but
equally obnoxious man accused.  “I heard it was she who snuck into bed with the
old king Galyn!  He was the only man left in the whole of the kingdom she
hadn’t firked.”

All went quiet to Lally’s ears.  The dancing
continued, but she no longer heard the music.  King Aelwyn’s lips moved, but
she did not hear his words.  Her ears pounded with the polluted blood pumping
through her veins.  She wanted to run, but her feet were stone.  Her arms fell
like weights at her sides.  The bony man continued to laugh.  Lally heard
nothing, but when he threw his head back and his mouth wide open, she saw the
specs of food in holes where teeth had once been.

How dare he?
  Lally’s skin pricked.  She felt like she was being
stabbed with hot tapestry needles.  What cruelty and malice of spirit would
drive anyone to make such an accusation?  She heard nothing but the thumping of
her own heart.  Without considering the consequences, Lally formed a fist and
swung it sideways, up and into his laughing jaw.

The emaciated man looked at her incredulously.  For a
moment, she felt nothing but self-satisfaction. And then Lally could hear
again.  Over the din of the hurdy-gurdy, the skinny man yelled and the fat man
backed him. 
What was she playing at?  Where did she get off hitting a
stranger out of the blue like that?
  A stinging pain shot through Lally’s
arm. Her hand throbbed.  When had this tremendous crowd appeared?

When she turned to flee, she ran directly into the
king’s chest.  She dared not look into his eyes, fearing the disappointment she
would find there.  Ducking under his arm, she flew as fast as her feet would
carry her, through the dark night, to the palace.  Stomping down the kitchen
stairs, she scooped up her mantle and threw it over her silver dress before
Cook caught sight of it.  “Well, where in the name of all that’s good have you
been?  I said half an hour, hairy animal!”

“My apologies,” Lally panted, wincing at the pain in
her knuckles.  “But the girl with the golden hair appeared at the festivities
once again.  She wore a gown as silver as moonlight and she punched a man in
the jaw.  There was such excitement, I simply couldn’t leave.”

“The girl is back?  Is she still out there?” Cooked
begged, racing towards the staircase.  “I’m going to have a look.  You make the
soup and be sure not to…”

“Not to get any hair in it,” Lally said to herself,
for the cook was out of earshot.

Slipping the mantle from her shoulders and throwing
it in the corner, Lally filled a bowl with cold water and seated herself on the
furs.  Plunging her sore hand into the soothing liquid, she hoped that
malicious man’s jaw stung worse.  What horrendous cruelty.  How could people
say such things?

In her small closet, Lally removed her gown and
replaced it with snakeskin and tattered silk.  But, then, what if there was
some truth in what those horrible men said of her?  She collapsed into layers
of peltry.  What if tales of her rampant carnality had lured her father from
his hermetic life?  Or was her womanly form to blame?  Her father had not seen
her since childhood, and suddenly she was full-grown and looking too much like
her mother.  Perhaps she had tempted him in the copper gown with the low
front.  Perhaps her face, her hair, her body, were too lovely to resist. 
Perhaps father’s lunacy was entirely her fault.

No!
  How could she think that way?  Father was
affected.  Lally petted her scalp where he’d pulled her hair.  Did it still
feel tender, even one year later, or was she imagining the ache?  A queer sense
of emptiness took over as she sat staring into the oven’s flames.  Feeling
nothing, neither pain nor joy, she watched the fire dance.  Red, orange,
yellow. Its heat warmed her face.  Again, her knuckles ached.

Rising to prepare the bread soup, Lally reflected on
life’s unfairness.  Endlessly, she toiled for the king and in returned received
nothing more than a dark closet in which to sleep.  What did he know of her
efforts?  Nothing!  What did he care for her?  The whole world hated the hairy
animal she’d become.

When the king’s soup was prepared, Lally placed in
the bottom of the bowl the golden needle from her mother’s dresser.  Perhaps
the king would choke on it.  He deserved to.  As she waited for Liam to arrive
for the soup, Lally paced the floor.  She stood, she sat, she lay in her
closet, but pain shot through her hand.  Her legs were a bundle of nerves.  Too
restless to remain indoors, she enrobed herself in peltry and left the kitchen,
traipsing through the vegetable garden and into the woods.

Chapter Seven

Wandering wounded and alone, Lally came to the cave
in which she had met Great Bear on her journey northward.  Now it was
deserted.  She sat in the pile of leaves and thought about their encounter. 
She had feared him, at first.  He was massive.  Even after his transformation,
he had the hairiest body Lally had ever seen.  She lay on her side, facing away
from him, and begged him to be quick.

“All phenomena shall transpire in their own time,”
Great Bear told her.

Looking out into the wilderness through the mouth of
the cave, she listened to Great Bear’s low rumbling voice and no longer felt
anxious.  “What does that mean?” Lally asked, folding her hair into a pillow
beneath her head.

“It means it is for neither you nor I to decide when
a nutshell will crack.”

Allerleirauh understood now.  What good would three
gowns have done her in the woods?  What good would they have done her when she
put the nut under the bedstead with councillor Offal?  If anything, they would
have been cumbersome and added to Lally’s already-weighty burden.  Looking
back, she realized how fortunate it was that mother’s walnut cracked in its own
time.  But back then, in the cave with Great Bear, she was anxious for the
shell to open up and reveal its contents.  “But what of my will?” Lally
protested.  “If I put my best efforts into some endeavour, should it not
succeed?”

“Perhaps,” replied Great Bear.  “Perhaps not.  Your
will does not determine the success of your endeavours.”

“What?  That makes no sense,” Lally argued.  “My
parents taught me that if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.  Is that
not so?”

“That is indeed so,” Great Bear agreed.  “But after
trying a great many times and being unsuccessful, one must re-evaluate.  There
is a reason for your failure.  It could be your method.  It could be your
intention.  Those are reasons easy to accept.  But it could also simply be the wrong
time.  All phenomena shall transpire in their own time.”

Lally shivered.  “Will you lie with me?” she
surprised herself by asking.  “I tremble in the cold.”

“You see?” asked Great Bear.  “All phenomena shall
transpire in their own time.” 

When his furry chest met her back, his heat soothed
her.  His breath was hot against her neck.  Taking Great Bear’s hand in hers,
she found his palm covered in fur.  Lally laughed, reminded of an old wive’s
tale she’d heard from a shepherd of her acquaintance.  Great Bear placed his
warm palm over her heart.  She gasped.  The sensation was akin to being held
tight in her parents’ arms as a child, but the sentiment was tinged with
physical passion and psychological fascination.  Great Bear’s warmth opened her
heart and poured into it the love of all creation.

The affection spread through her body until she ached
for Great Bear’s hands to touch her everywhere.  She pulled her black bustier
down, releasing her pale breasts into his fuzzy hands.  It was the height of
luxury, that sensation of fur against the tender flesh of her nipples.  They
hardened under Great Bear’s expert caress.  When she closed her eyes, she was
transported.  No longer was she in a damp, dark cave, but back in her castle
with all her sumptuous belongings.

Great Bear’s other hand wandered down her front until
his hairless fingers found her mound.  Her flesh warmed as he stroked there.
Just as she craved for her cunt to be filled by the great male, his thick meat
appeared at its gateway.  Great Bear entered her cavern with heaving effort,
despite her flowing juices.  As they loved in comforting silence, Bear swaddled
her in his warm fur.  She was safer than she’d ever been.  Closing her eyes and
cuddling back into the bear’s chest, she felt like a butterfly in its
chrysalis.  Perfect serenity, perfect peace.  Could they not stay like this
forever?

As Great Bear rubbed her mound in broad circles,
Lally writhed against his fingers.  She pressed his hand hard against her flesh
as he thrust calmly, firmly within her.  His furry palm caressed her tender
breasts and Lally felt secure.  She was loved.  Before encountering Great Bear,
Lally had never experienced a truly explosive reaction to a lover.  The furry
creature rocked inside her core as he stroked the sensitive flesh of her
mound.  She felt as though her heart had burst into thousands of tiny
butterflies and taken flight throughout her body.  Warmth enveloped her form
and serenity, her mind.  Time stopped.  She felt safe and protected in Great
Bear’s hold.  His body led hers to ecstasy.  She cried out as though her soul
were leaving her body.  Consciousness escaped her.  Sleep took hold.  When she
awoke, she was wrapped in Great Bear’s huge pelt.  It had been more than enough
to complete her mantle, but her heart ached for the man inside the fur.  He had
gifted her with peace and wisdom.