Outside the two dogs snarled and drooled. Tied up with a heavy chain and spiked collar, they had been in a real frenzy for several hours. The livestock had been brought in, all the shutters of the house were closed as well, and inside, where it was warm and safe, a scent of rust, smoke, and human sweat floated in the air. The younger children had been sent to the house of an aunt and uncle and the older ones were lying in bed pretending they were asleep. Their father had returned from the tavern bellowing, herded along by his mother-in-law, whom he’d also like to fit with a spiked collar, a small device for controlling such a bad-natured, nervous beast.

María was already in labor and the seventh son or daughter had been on the way for hours. That might have been what the animals sensed, uncomfortable in their enclosed spaces since early evening when they had to be brought in. There was also the full moon, the prediction of an electric storm, the type that sets the village of Esgos on fire instead of flooding the whole area with water and mud.

Come on, you silly little dunce, murmured the old lady while she hopped along the big rocks guided by the glow of the full moon. A lot lighter on her feet than he was, what’s going to become of him, already seeing double, pitching back and forth at that hour, drunk and smelling like he’d been in a canteen. Come along, shitface, or we won’t make it back and we have to call for the priest, wherever he is.

Then the night is split by a sharp lightning bolt that sounds like stakes collapsing, the crazed howl of a beast, and another, more human one that joins them in a horrible thrust.

Here at last. That’s what the old woman says as she pushes the door open. It’s not clear whether she’s referring to the son-in-law, to the new baby, to the fire or to the wolf.

María. We already have a María and we can’t name all of them the same as the cows in the field so they’ll come when they’re called, right? Catalina. That’s a chicken’s name. Flor. Too short, they’d call her Floriña and that’s a name for a prostitute. Prudencia. Stop it, woman. Isolda. What? Hermelinda. Or Micaela, like you. Nah. Anuncia? Why? Because of all the signs. Shit. Manuela. Manueliña. Niniña. Nela.

Local legend has it that the seventh or ninth boy of seven or nine siblings will be a wolf and the seventh girl will be a wolf woman, which means she leads the pack of wolves. That’s what happens even if one of the seven dies in infancy or perishes in the mother’s womb before birth. That’s how both the earnings and the losses are counted.

They also say that whoever receives the hex or spiteful stare of the person who hates him or the bite of a wolf or the bite of a wolf-dog will turn into a werewolf. The beliefs of dark places say that to avoid the hex the baby must be wrapped in white linen cloth, bathed in water from seven mills and, after burning the covering in the hearth, the Christian cross must be marked on its forehead with the ashes. A ball can also be made with the residue and fed to an animal with no teeth, like a chicken. This remedy is also used to remove the hex from the breath of a dead person, an insect, and shadow.

The same beliefs say that wolves hate daylight and music, and this baby was definitely nocturnal and wailed angrily if they sang her a lullaby or clapped to a rhythm. She growled while she slept the rest of the time and at night was rocked to sleep watching everything with those slanted eyes, dark brown with strange yellowish sparks.

It was so strange, because all her brothers and sisters had their eyes closed for months. It was so strange, the way she opened hers with the baptismal water.

And the shaky handwriting of the local priest that registered that the last daughter of Miguel and María was baptized on the same day after her birth at noon, with the only, single name of Manuela. Only that. I hereby declare and sign this entry.

Manuela. You’re finally here. And your name says that you mean that God is among us.

Little Nela, Neliña, inherited the crib that had belonged to her siblings. The ones who had died and the ones that didn’t make it. Each one of them peaceful, quick-growing, none had left a mark on the wood that had rocked them and had soon gone on to the shared bed where they all slept curled up together with the warmth of their bodies, but Nela usually calmed the pain in her gums by chewing on the boards that were already shiny from age and blackened with time.

She has teeth and she’s not yet four months old. She doesn’t want to nurse now, either. Sometimes I wake up during the night and I see her lying on her belly with her neck sticking up, looking at me. It scares me. This love I feel for her scares me too, even though she frightens me. I pick her up to nurse and she won’t suckle and my milk has already dried up. It’s as if she were no one’s daughter. Or stolen from somebody. As if I were trying to nurse the cub of another animal.

But her father adored her. More than the other children. He let her have anything she wanted and gave it to her before she begged for it. He hugged her close like a man who had been cursed and was only calm when he was with her. They went together like a key in its lock. If the baby opened her mouth to ask for something, he rushed to get it for her right away. That’s why the girl took so long to learn to speak or be integrated into the rest of the pack of children – because her father wanted her all to himself, just for him, his little doll, the little puppy, too skinny and white and black and with very dark eyebrows and even with a bit of down on her small shoulders.

The children born during the winter come with long hair, the neighbor said. María had had all her children in the spring or in the summer and knew nothing about that. And those born at night are up at night and sleep during the day.

Even if they’re four years old?

Maybe she’s slow. Maybe it comes from having you and Miguel for parents. Maybe it’s because there are a lot of Blancos in your family.

And so things continued. But the things that had to do with her hair, her teeth, the noises Nela makes when she sleeps or when the day of the month approaches on which the moon pulls at the blood of all animals and they cavort in the threshing area, those were the most frequent of all that went on in the house. Everything fit together perfectly.

Her father stayed far away from the tavern and inside the house and took care of the little girl, so the rest didn’t matter. It didn’t matter that he’d seen her playing with the chicks using her bare hands to strangle them, or ripping their heads off with her mouth. Or if afterward he saw her pull a tiny little feather out from between her teeth, it was not important at all. She’s different. She’s not odd. Just different.

This is how the Blancos’ daughter grew up. Manuela learned what her sisters had learned or what any other girl of her age learned. She learned to write her name, to count on her fingers for when she needed to go sell something at the fair and so they couldn’t cheat her on the price of eggs. She learned to air out and make the beds, then some things about her personal hygiene and housecleaning, to sing nicely during mass and to tend to the church. She also knew how to pluck fowl, to get the fire going and keep it going, how to measure the milk and make heavy cream, how to sew a little, knit, and do the washing in the river. She was six years old. With hair on her thighs like a grown man.

Santa Olaia de Esgos, with its San Pedro de Rocas, with its stones cut in the shape of a ditch for the rainwater and the reed beds and that served as human sepulchers, even very small ones, for a newborn boy or girl. They horrified her. The same shudder that people felt when they saw her hanging around the houses.

Go home, girl, what are you doing there? Then they’d cry fus! and ghachiquí! and shoo her off as if she were a wild animal. Not even a dog, or a wolf pup, or a fox. Something less than a cat. She would spit on the ground and disappear, nobody knew where she went. She never left a trail. Except for the spot on the grass where she’d spit – the color there disappeared, burned away.

Foilevar. That was what they called the little place and it had gotten confused in popular speech. It had been called Foilebar from olden times, a name which in turn had come from Fox Lupar and meant the wolf’s den (foxo). This was Manuela’s favorite place to hide. She would take three or four goats to graze and lead them to the heath to nibble while she searched for the patch of soft herbs that camouflaged a ditch dug in the earth by people and reinforced on the bottom by bricks and stones from the quarry pits but that hadn’t been used for a long time. There hadn’t been many wolves around in recent years because of the hunting. The weeds had made something good out of that place where animals were tortured and now she could lie down six feet above what had been a trap for wolf pups that would get lost, would enter the corridor and then succumb to the poles, the stakes, the sharp pikes of humans.

She would lie down and take a brief nap, not a deep sleep, and rest lightly on a viscous material that afterward, when she awoke, she would always recall as a texture similar to egg white. It was hard to move quickly when she was asleep, because of that softness. And she often said that she always dreamed in red and black and without any sound whatsoever.

This color had comforted her immediately since she was small, because her parents said she often sucked on an old red rag that was nothing more than a square from a sample left by a seamstress who had stopped at the house for a few days to mend clothing and had left it for the little girl when she saw how much she loved it. Nela, who could barely walk, would rub the cloth against her face, kissing it, sucking on it, sleeping with it up against her cheek, and her mother felt a kind of prick of jealousy in the tips of her breasts, now dried up and sad.

She likes it because it’s soft, said the seamstress.

I like it because of the color, thought the little girl, but she still didn’t know how to disagree with people.

She was eleven years old when she noticed there was something odd about the movements of her oldest sister, Narda, who would take a little package and some soap chips to the river, the kind of things people used to bathe on Sundays and festival days. She piled everything up neatly on a smooth stone, in a secluded spot, but Nela could smell it and follow it from a certain distance. In her nostrils she felt a certain tickle and a scent somewhere between iron and vanilla that seemed so delectable. She thought Narda must have a dead bird or a cream cake, both of which she really loved, hidden away for herself, and she moved closer, without making a sound, just like she always walked, circling the places she went to. She hardly ever walked up to them in a straight line.

What do you have hidden there, Narda? And Narda jumps, You really scared me, you know. One of these times you’ll be the death of me. Her wet hand was on her chest, trying to control her heart, which was beating wildly. What is it?, repeats Nela. They’re my rags. You have rags? Yes, can you see? You’ll have to use them soon, too. For what? For the monthly blood, don’t you know? Come, I’ll explain it to you.

Blood. Every month. And between your legs, attached, a soft rag, delicate, that you take care of and must wash in the river as if it were a soft, precious jewel. She explained to her how every twenty-eight days her body would celebrate itself by producing blood from her belly. That it was necessary to contain it because on contact with the light it could melt ice, soften bread, curdle milk and ruin the dough. And no man could see it, smell it, know it was there. Nor hear it being discussed. For men, it was something that did not exist. Ever.

And I won’t die, even if I bleed?, asked the girl. Narda laughed. Look at me, am I dead?

But she turned fourteen and that blood she hoped for had not yet come.

There are girls who take longer to become women, said her mother, speaking with Grandmother. But this girl is getting covered with hair and her breasts aren’t developing, nor does she look like she’s going to become a woman any time soon. I’m telling you, she’s under a spell, I always said that.

And Nela spends more and more time with her brothers and even begins to imitate what they do, smoking the cigarette that’s hidden in the palm of her hand, spitting on the floor, ready to swear with every sentence.

I want to be like the others. You’re like the others already, you’re like all of them. But like them, the males. I want to be a man. And the next day, when she goes to get the dry clothes from the drying rack, she tries on Antón’s shirt as well as Xosé’s pants and feels that the thing that began to grow between her legs feels a lot freer when it’s covered with those fabrics. And she also feels betrayed by Narda, who didn’t tell her that bleeding sometimes does not come to the one who desires it and she also didn’t tell her that in the pubic hair, hidden between the thighs, a tiny tail was going to grow, one she hated and put out of her mind because it made her into something like the devil. Until she saw her brothers in a row, peeing against a stone wall.

Nela opened her legs and looked. She didn’t see anything different, everything there was the same as always, but in comparison she wasn’t like Narda. Yet she wasn’t like Xosé or Antón either. She wondered if each one was unique. So she decided that she was Manuela and also Manuel and to her father’s dismay she began dressing like her brothers and cut her hair, a heavy, chestnut-colored beard began to grow and she realized that she would be a man on the outside from that moment on, even though inside there was a woman fighting against a beast.

The Manueliña who was entered on the baptismal certificate that eighteenth of November fifteen years ago is now registered with her brothers as Manuel. Her father says they should engrave her name on a stone slab, carve the date of birth and death coinciding with that day, the day of this shame, because to him she is dead now. And the son who is born out of the ashes, fifteen years old, with a full beard, can turn into a wolf and head to the mountain because he wants no more of the child. Then he goes back to drowning himself in the glasses of red wine and heads to the fields all the time.

Everyone in the village began to calm down after each explanation. They had to come up with a story, true, say that it had all been a mistake, that it had looked like a girl but wasn’t a girl and whoever called her Nela, Neliña, didn’t even name her now, just in case. A tomboy, that’s what she was for a time, but the fact was it seemed better to see her as male, and when she was with her two brothers, there was no difference, except that she was short and her gestures still had something girlish about them.

Manuel was called Nela and tended to see herself as a female when she was alone, but from the skin outward she was he or this guy or that guy, according to how close the person speaking was.

Her dreams were still red, soft, and silent, with the scent of rust that she saw as blood. I dream about blood, I dream about my own blood, the blood I never shed. That was why she thought that the woman she had inside her had decided not to come out during that part of the monthly cycle in which she felt off kilter, where the hairs on the back of her neck and her pubic area stood on end and she was ravenous and wanted to rub up against things.

She touched herself, just like her brothers did beneath the covers, and quenched that thirst a bit with her fingers, pulling and pressing, but also inserting, because she was made of entrances and exits like the stones of San Pedro de Rocas. Made to get close to a live, warm body.

Francisca. I can smell you from here. Your mother says, like mine did when I was the one I used to be, that drinking a glass of cane liquor or gin on an empty stomach after tossing and turning all night, the blood would be deposited on my clean rag. You drank that glass, I can smell it from here, five pews behind you, and I can feel the pulsing of those blue veins on your back end, hidden by your skirt, you’re wearing it long now. The blood runs to my groin and temples and throbs there and I think I can start adjusting the rhythm of my heart to match your red flow at those points where your blood is most visible. Blood, which is red but makes threads, long and thin, like hair, colors with false hues of blue and mauve the cobwebs on your wrists, around your ear, along the thickest vein in your neck. On your worried forehead.

And I am the only one who knows that when you return to your house you’ll bear an orchid of blood, open and sitting on your snowy white rag. Something even you don’t know.

I liked Manuel the moment I saw him. He was small, so everybody called him Canicha, Poodle, and he would smile happily with those soft, fine teeth, all close together, the eye teeth a little long and a bit too white. I might even say they were kind of like a dog laughing, a dog that belonged to a rich girl, the ones that sleep inside the house. His stiff hair, also like a dog’s, the heavy, dark beard that was already like a man’s, even though his expression was gentle, feminine, sweet. Round, full thighs, almost like a woman’s, but sometimes you have to find something of the feminine in order for things to work.

Dance we did one day at a festival and he invented new steps and there was a lot of laughing and the people were whispering about how there was going to be a wedding for Paquita and Canicha and it wouldn’t be long. And that’s how it was, it didn’t take long. He wore a suit that he had cut and sewn himself and I wore a skirt and corset that he gave me, the best quality and with the tiniest of stitches. I wanted those very same hands, which were chubby and with such soft fingertips, with rounded nails, I longed for them to baste my whole body with their ticklish caress.

But the night of the wedding all we did was sleep, and talk a little about our future and wait until my monthly indisposition passed, because that’s what he wanted, to get married on the day it came was the obsession he had from the start, which is why the abbot of Esgos thought it was strange we had to get married on a Thursday. So tell me something… why on Thursday? Because it was the day we met. But we’d always known each other, there never had been a first day, we’d always been together, close, in the eyes of the neighborhood. But I don’t know how to explain now what his obsession with my blood is all about.

There wasn’t much to hide between the sheets and blankets of the naked body and the darkness of the night, what shouldn’t be revealed. It’s also easy to trade one piece of flesh for another at the climax of emotion. What was a gulf of a woman being transformed into a peninsula of a man, and if desire weren’t enough, use the fingers, the tongues, the whole hand. She probably didn’t know the difference between the parts because she’d never measured the size of any flesh except for her own, her own body, so she couldn’t tell. Trust. That’s what I’d told her. Trust me, because I don’t want to hurt you. Just enjoy what makes us the same and different. And tonight there’s a lovely moon, a full moon’s distance since the day of the wedding, and she covers the hole they all have with rags and the blood beast makes the long-awaited event pure pleasure and makes the wolf in me awaken with blood on my mouth for the first time ever.

This thirst.

Manuel isn’t the type of man who goes to the tavern; he doesn’t even drink wine. He is not a man who likes alcohol. The high jinks of drunkenness scare him, the same way loud, noisy music, high-pitched sounds, frighten him. It must be because he’s got extraordinary hearing, just like his sense of smell, which is out of this world. I caress him as if he were my dog and sometimes he’s uneasy and whines. He knows what I’m cooking when he’s a long ways from the house, even with the door that faces the threshing area closed. He knows, even with the door bolted tight, if my mother is in the house or about to arrive and what mood she was in when she woke up this morning. He tries to avoid her whenever he can, that’s the way the two of them get along, they can’t get used to living together. He flees like a beast that’s been whacked by the rod and she watches him with her slitted eyes, always sideways, always expecting something terrible.

There’s something I don’t like about him, Paquiña, and I still don’t know what it is. I thought this obsession with getting married so quickly, any way you could, was because you were pregnant, but now that I think about it, I don’t get it.

She was obsessed, not wanting me to end up disgraced, without a man, and object of all the talk by people because Canicha had been courting me.

And is he still affectionate with you?

He is, yes.

Well, let’s see if that’s so. And she sketches a half moon with her hand over her own old lady’s belly. Shut up, mother, shut up, what do you know about what’s lurking around me?

So nobody knows – or at least they don’t talk about it – that Manuel still retains some of the characteristics of that Nela who is buried deep within his soft body. The same goes for the chestnut grove where he still goes to seek shelter and sort out the thoughts that torment him, the place where the wolf ditch is hidden. There he can be his real self, feel at ease in the soft murmur of semi-darkness. At home he acts nervous, full of tics that make his hands tremble, and he knits, sews, keeps taking out and redoing the hems of all three of their clothes while his mother-in-law looks at him from the darkness of her seat. She stopped her task in order to watch him, doesn’t take her eyes off him for a single minute. In Portugal tailors are famous, I don’t know why she thinks what he does is so strange. He also says the rosary with his beads with a fervor that is unheard of in a man who has not chosen the path of a clergyman. Sometimes he does penance with naked knees on kernels of dry corn strewn over the floor and then he cleans his wounds with spit and his fingers. He grits his teeth as if in pain, but it looks like he enjoys it, as if he enjoys the cure. His mother-in-law has begun to suspect that he derives pleasure from pain, which is the same as the desire to please. Because this Manuel is a strange one, in the warp of his basting, in prayer, and in dealing with people. He’s what they call a seducer. He speaks calmly and never gets involved in arguments or uses irony, our native humor. Conflict and loud voices upset him and he leaves when there are outbursts. And when he speaks and gets worked up he makes hand movements in a different manner, as if spreading something with a viscous and invisible surface. That’s why the old woman’s daughter almost always has a contented smile, she suspects, but bellies don’t grow when the moon grows fuller.

So should we consult with a pharmacist or a doctor in the town? They say that in Francelos de Ribadavia, I know it’s a bit far away, but there’s a specialist in these things who… Mother, shut your mouth. Don’t make me lose my temper.

But, daughter, you two have been together so long and nothing has happened, are you doing what you need to do?

And it’s been ten months but everything is still cold and dried up in this house. Shh, Mother.

But there are lambs and piglets and baby chicks. A real fertility party in the chicken coop. A silence in disarray inside the house.

Circling around is something wolves and junkmen do. The wolf is known to be an animal that runs in packs, is social, family-loving, but people preferred to believe it’s a solitary animal. They say it hunts in a pack and shares its prey with its group. If it hunts alone, it hides the prey and goes to tell the rest of the pack. It’s a social animal considered to be selfish and a loner by men, who are the selfish ones, who hunt for pleasure and steal the biggest and best part for themselves instead of giving it to the weaker ones in the group. The human animal couldn’t care less about other people’s hunger.

The junkman is also a loner; he spends time with others, but doesn’t split things up in divisions and he doesn’t share what little he has or the big jobs. He bargains, tends to things, pays his debts and keeps his word using just complete trust and a handshake.

The wolf stalks and watches, marks his territory with sharp-smelling urine, then just tries to set his sights on a victim in order to circle around it, in pairs, with a wolf not far from each elbow of the unfortunate person (or animal), in order to separate it from open paths that are used by everyone. That’s why they consider him an animal not to be trusted, evil. On account of that trickery.

It can be said that both the wolf and the rag picker plan their ruse to achieve their goal. And they get pleasure from their deception in the way they treat their prey beforehand. They enjoy planning it all out. They make money off the scraps of meat and enjoy it.

It happens that the Serra de San Mamede is covered with trails and walkways that the human junkman created, ones that are perpendicular to the paths that the wolves made to fool their prey and hunt. That’s the cause of the fear and the beating all around the brush, but for some time now they haven’t seen the meat or the claw. These paths are used for traveling when there’s hunger and submission, trafficking and commerce. Here is where the one leaving and the one going from one place to another meet. Here the person who is afraid makes the sign of the cross and on some tree bark there are blessings and signs carved that act as a guide and as a wayside shrine. Protect me from all evil, amen. It’s signed by someone who knew how to write and went on. The person who can’t write but believes in the protection of the images draws with the point of a knife a heart, a crown of thorns, the wings of a guardian angel. That is how the road to the outside is created from the mixture of thickets and plains. That’s how the long road to the neighboring region is marked. To the north, Asturias; to the south, Portugal. Hopefully you are lucky, my dear, and you’ll return.

And on the road that goes to Portugal, quite close to the entry point at Chaves coming from the sierra here, there are some pharmacies where they have a remedy for all the evils, which they store in a tall, opaque jar. You have to know the password that’s required when you knock three times on the back door, in the middle of the night, with everything all dark, and a single eye asks who’s there from the other side. That’s where they sell creams for illnesses of the head and the body, ointments for the spirit, tonics and tinctures that can cure serious ailments just by soaking poultices and applying them to the skin. By the light of day everything seems to indicate that botany and chemistry get along well and complement each other. After midnight, knock knock knock and who is it that’s disturbing the spirits? And say the secret name, a storeroom that’s very dark and tightly enclosed. It has a nasty smell. These pharmacists sell, but they also buy. The crime isn’t contraband; instead, it’s in the merchandise. Everything is gray ash, yellow suet, red blood.

So I came to Chaves to find a cure for these illnesses. The ones my body has, stained as it is with red on the inside and black on the outside. To find out if by pressing on a part of the skin, like on a boil, this worm that’s gnawing at me would come out. To see if what I’m suffering from is a question of my spirit, or if it’s my head, or if it’s my internal organs. To know. Just to know. To escape from the blackness.

This thirst.

This pain.

I hope the Devil devours him. I hope a bad crab bites him. Born under a bad sign, son of a witch. And the door slamming that is heard like trembling on all the stones of the village. Everybody goes around with their backs stiff and throbbing now to see what’s happening in that house at this hour.

What seemed to be a pregnancy conceived discreetly and borne in secret turned out to be an intestinal problem, and Manuel, who knew where he was, there was yet another slam of the door, that one at dawn when he went out with bags full of scrap metal to sell on the border with Portugal. He took trinkets. He came back with trinkets. Useless knick-knacks. Between comings and goings he could take months because he stopped to talk with every Tom, Dick, and Harry to find out what they liked and go off to find it and bring back what they wanted. Francisca stayed home, confused and happy. Although she was no longer young, she was strong of faith and even believed in miracles. That was why she was silent and at ease, because that way her mother would be, too. But that was another matter, that hurt, she lost her appetite and couldn’t sleep and sent a slow, continuous burning all through her innards that wouldn’t leave her in peace. She cried when nobody saw her or heard her. She was afraid she was carrying the child of a wolf inside her, because once she’d heard Manuel say he had a wolf inside him. Anything was possible. She was candid and in love and hopeful.

Her mother watched her out of the corner of her eye. She’d detected something uncertain in the dark circles under her eyes and her pallor, something between pregnancy and misfortune, but she didn’t want to talk to her about one thing and make fate give her the other, especially with the difference between the first and the second.

But it turned out that, soon after, Francisca died with an enormously swollen belly. Her mother was utterly enraged when the doctor came and explained this isn’t from giving birth, this is an inner disease, something rotten gnawing on her insides, a terrible, excruciating disease, why didn’t you call me sooner?

Francisca wanted to dictate a letter, because she didn’t know the alphabet or how to sign her name. But there wasn’t enough time to choose between the doctor, the priest, and the scrivener to visit for the last time and they ended up with the first of the three. Save the body before saving the soul or the memory.

And so they condemned Canicha. Again. They condemned him as a woman, a man, a son – or daughter – and as a son-in-law. For not being the father of a single child. For being the widower of a silent, religious woman.

People talked about the fate of the seventh son or seventh daughter of a couple. If it’s a boy, it’s a wolf. If it’s a girl, it’s a wolf spirit, captain of the wolf cubs. That begins at birth.

Also, being cursed three times makes the teeth sharp, your hair grow wild and stiff all over the body, pulls the claws up into the wrist and each knuckle. If the fur burns, the wolf doesn’t return. If you burn the wolfman’s clothing, the beast will remain forever. It’s what will happen, they know, it’s what comes with the birth. The wolf of the people. Put a piece of bread or a white stone in your mouth when you sense a disembodied danger, signs of fear; do not sleep beside a crossroad, make the sign of the cross first from right to left, then again, from left to right. We all, male and female, live in the company of wolves. We’re always passing through their circuit of shadows. In their line of sight.

And they cursed Manuel three times. The first time soon after birth and because he was a girl, another hungry mouth to feed in that house. They cursed Nela, the girl who ate piles of meat, you’ll turn into a wolf, daughter, you’re going to be the ruin of us with that appetite of yours. They cursed her when hair grew on her small body instead of blood and she had to change her name, her clothes, her place at the table. When her parents were ashamed. The third time was when he wasn’t man enough to make a child.

This Manuel isn’t a bad man. If I were pressed to speak ill of him, I could only say he’s a bit of a weakling. How can I put it… it doesn’t bother me, you know, so don’t be shocked, sir, but I’d say he’s kind of like halfway between one thing and another, you’ll have to forgive me. I gave him shelter and even a job in exchange for all the things he knows how to do so well, which is quite a lot, and it’s very interesting how he knows how to do men’s jobs as well as women’s, so having him on hand, only him, it’s like I have four helping me. That’s the thing about him, he’s like a priest who is good for getting everything done, the stuff on land and the stuff up in heaven, you know what I mean. The one thing I didn’t like about him was the part about only knowing bits and pieces of his story. There were also all those ‘they says’ and ‘maybes’, that he’s been a certain way, that his wife hadn’t lasted very long, that his family didn’t speak to him, but he did good work and didn’t cost me anything, except bed and board and a little wine, but he wasn’t a big drinker, and from time to time he got off so he could go into town. It seemed he was courting one they called Manuela, who had a daughter. God is their maker and, of course, who was going to love them if they don’t do it themselves, one loving the other and vice versa, stones with teeth are only for people who are starving, and Manuel, who was so slight, so thin, they only wanted him for something bad, to take advantage of him or to toss him away. Don’t get me wrong, sir, because in my case I didn’t do either one of these, because I cared a lot for him and I’m an honest person. Plus, look at how empty my house is without his help and company. It’s as if I were waiting for him to return, don’t misunderstand me. It’s just that he was good and very entertaining, like having a servant, a wife and a dog, all in the same body. You have to forgive me. So what did you say happened to him?

Francisca. It’s your fault, all yours. When I got home you weren’t there anymore. Our house had grown cold and your mother had burned all our sheets and the bedspread. She’d even burned my only dress shirt. I don’t know what she was screaming at me while she kicked me out of the house punching me and spitting in my face and sliding the bolt across the door, something about burning my shirt because that way the beast who had to escape along the paths would be all that was left. Your fault. I’m aware that you didn’t know how to write, but you knew how to send for me like you’d done before, passing on your requests to me through other people, and you didn’t do that. How was I to know that when I returned you would already be dead and buried? Now those dreams have returned, those terrible nightmares I had before you, and it’s all your fault, those red dreams, the rusty things, the damp dreams and, with them, the desire to pull you from your shroud so I could see you again. I want that so much that this desire makes me howl like a dog beside the walls of the cemetery. Your fault, Francisca, that the neighbors beat the bushes trying to kill the wolf they hear at the darkest hour of night and don’t know how to see what I’m feeling inside my pain, pass by so close and wave at me while they’re searching for the beast. The beast. Scared off, running away, following the paths.

I tore a rabbit apart. I never would have done such a thing before, but the pain, the thirst, the hunger I felt, I can’t control them when they get inside the part of me that isn’t human. In my house they used to say that when I was little I was already able to crush a chick grabbing it by the neck and squeezing it tight with my bare hands. I would laugh out loud when those tiny bones made that cracking sound. Childish nature, people say when kids do that. Just playing. It’s the same today. First I heard it, near the den. A creaking of dry grass, nothing much, but it was as if I could move one ear sideways like dogs do, when they turn it and straighten it at the same time in the exact direction where the sounds are coming from. Then there was a smell that was like strong urine, raw meat, and mud. Everything at once, like a heartbeat, a flash, and I was trying to suffocate it between the dirt and that claw that was but wasn’t mine. I’m not going to describe the cruelest detail. I’ll only say that everything turned red and sticky, hot and steamy. And the nausea became pleasure somewhere near my groin, because my stomach was full of a terrible sick feeling.

When I finished, I hid the fur under some stones and cried.

I don’t know why this happens to me but I’m not like that and you know it. I don’t recognize myself when the beast takes over me. I only want to be in the house and not walk along the paths that are unfamiliar yet still tug at me as if something ancient inside me knew them all. The woods that frighten me constantly those days of the month call to me with a howling that only I can hear, my heart beats with a thundering gallop that shakes the furniture, the headboard knocks against the wall and makes a noise that confuses me and I have to go out and sniff all the scents in the air. I can locate the smallest animals by my sense of smell. I don’t need to open my eyes to know there’s an army of vermin and insects hidden away, I can even hear the larvae, the maggots, the inner liquid of the eggs that are made up of yolk and white. I can smell the plant bulbs and their shoots and feel how the worms fit to the pads on my paws when I walk over them on the ground. Through the bones and pads on my paws I can feel the painful moan of the vole and how everyone senses I’m around and flees.

Text © Emma Pedreira

Translation © Kathleen March

Other books by Emma Pedreira are available to read in English – see the pages “YA Novels” and “Stories”.