Serpents and Werewolves (3 page)

He smiled at them and walked up to the castle. He wanted to meet King Lycaon and his sons, because he'd heard rumours of their cruelty.

The King heard the praise songs of the people below. From high on the walls of his castle, he looked down and saw the traveller approach his gate, dusty and sweaty, with old-fashioned clothes and boots. Yet he could hear the people call this wretch a god...

Lycaon refused to believe this man was better than him. “He is not a god,” Lycaon said to his three oldest sons. “He is not above us. And we will prove it.”

So they invited the traveller in and asked him to wait by the fire while they prepared him a feast.

Down in the kitchens, the King summoned his youngest son, Nyctimus. Lycaon told the boy to stand beside the largest pot in the kitchen. Then Lycaon cut his son's throat, sliced him up and dropped the flesh into the
pot.
Lycaon and his three remaining sons added wine, herbs and spices to the meat, and boiled up a fragrant stew.

“Let's see if that smelly traveller can work out what
this
is,” said Lycaon.

They carried the stew up to the feasting hall, sat the traveller at the table and placed a bowl of stew in front of him.

The traveller hesitated. He sniffed the stew and frowned.

The three sons filled bowls for themselves and took big spoonfuls. “Yum, delicious, very filling,” they said.

So the traveller took a bit of meat and put it to his lips.

Then he roared with anger. He stood up, lifted the table into the air and tipped it over. Bowls and spoons clattered to the floor, stew spilled everywhere.

“HOW DARE YOU? How dare you test a god this way? How dare you treat a guest this way? And how dare you, how
dare
you eat the flesh of your own kind?”

As the god roared, his eyes flashed lightning
and
his voice boomed with thunder.

Lycaon recognised Zeus. The King fell to the ground and grovelled. “We only wished to test your power so that you could reveal your greatness to us, oh great powerful one.”

“HOW DARE YOU?” Zeus thundered again.

Lycaon and his sons ran...

They had tested the god, they had discovered his power, and now they were terrified. So they ran out of the castle, past the village and up towards the hills.

But as they ran, they tripped and stumbled, and started to run on four legs not two. Their fine clothes became ragged and grey and hairy, and the fabric stuck to their skin like fur.

They screamed in terror until their screams became howls.

And finally, they were wolves, running into the wilderness, running from the people who would always fear them and hunt them. They would never eat hot meat in a warm castle again.

Zeus waved his hand over the lumps of
stew
and pools of gravy on the floor. The boy Nyctimus stood up, brushing herbs from his shoulders and spices from his hands. Zeus lifted him onto the throne.

Then Zeus rose up to Olympus, to eat ambrosia for his supper and to tell his family about the goodness and evil he'd found as he walked the earth.

Lycaon and his oldest sons ran through the hills, as the first ever pack of werewolves. Cold and hungry and forever hunted by men.

They howled their pain and sorrow and anger. They howled their unhappiness to the gods in the sky every night. But Zeus didn't listen, because gods rarely do.

Catching Loki

Norse myth

Loki, the Viking god of mischief, was on the run.

One of his tricks had gone too far and he was hiding from the Viking gods, so they wouldn't punish him for tricking blind Hodur into killing his own brother Baldur.

Loki was sure the gods wouldn't find him, because Loki knew he was smarter than all the other gods put together.

First he climbed high into the mountains.
Then
he built himself a house with four doors, facing north, east, south and west, so he could see his pursuers approaching from any direction.

Then he worked out his escape route.

If they found him, Loki wouldn't have to run away on his two human legs. Loki was a shape-shifter. He could become a falcon or a fly or a horse. This time, he thought he'd become a fish.

He'd built his house by a narrow river just below a waterfall, and he decided that if the gods approached, he would turn into a fish and leap into the water.

So Loki hid, in his four-doored house, by his fast cold river. And the gods didn't find him.

But you know how boring it is, playing hide and seek, if no one finds you? Loki was used to tricks and mischief, and games and quests, so he became
very
bored, hiding in his four-doored house, high and lonely in the mountains.

He started to chat to himself. “None of
those
thick-headed warrior gods will be able to catch me. The only god who would ever be able to catch me, is myself.

“If I was chasing me, how would I catch me?”

Loki sat by the fire in the centre of his four-doored house, glancing north, east, south and west. He fiddled with a bit of string. And he wondered, if he wanted to catch a fish in the river, what would he use?

He would need something that would let water through but not let a fish through. Something light but strong. Something flexible. Loki fiddled with the string. He imagined catching a fish. He knotted, he twisted and he invented...

He invented a net. The very first fishing net.

He looked at it and laughed. “A net. That's the only thing that could catch me! And those muscle-bound idiots couldn't invent this. They need me to do their thinking for them. I will always be safe from them, because I will always be smarter than them.”

Then
he saw them. Through the east door, he saw the gods approach. Big, tall gods with axes, hammers, spears, swords and daggers.

Loki wasn't scared. He knew his brains were a match for their weapons.

So he stepped to the north door, which led to the river and the waterfall.

Then he glanced back and saw the fishing net on the floor. “I can't leave that for them.” So he kicked the net towards the fire, ran out the door and dived into the river, changing into a salmon as he dived.

Loki hid under the water, hoping to return to his four-doored house once the search party moved on.

The gods stood outside the house.

“Four doors,” said Thor, god of thunder. “That's clever. That has the smell of Loki.”

The gods stepped inside the house.

“He's not here,” said Tir, god of war. “He saw us coming and fled. Tricksy coward. We'll have to keep searching.”

But Honir, the god of silence, was pointing at the fire.

There
were dark marks on the floor near the fire. A pattern of ash, a latticework of burnt lines and knots.

The gods stared at it.

“What is it?”

“Why would he make that?”

“Why would he
burn
that?”

The god of silence pointed at the river.

The gods smiled.

“What would that pattern catch?” said Thor.

“That might catch a fish...” said Tir.

So they sat down, they copied the pattern on the floor and they made the second fishing net.

They took it outside, they stretched it across the river, then Thor and Tir walked slowly up the riverbanks, pulling the net between them, driving any fish in the river towards the waterfall.

As the gods and their net forced Loki upriver, towards the trap of the high rocky fall, Loki realised he had no option but to reveal himself. He leapt out of the
water,
hoping to jump over the net and swim away.

But Thor's fast hand grabbed the fish as he leapt. Thor slammed the fish down on the bank so hard that Loki became man-shaped again, then bound Loki so tightly that the shape-shifter couldn't shift again.

And Loki was taken back to Odin to face justice. Loki, the trickster god, finally caught in a net he'd invented himself. Finally caught by his own cleverness.

The Ashkelon Witches

Jewish folktale

Once there was a coven of eighty witches, who lived in a cave above the town of Ashkelon and enjoyed tormenting the people of the town.

They often caused fires to blow out and cows to run dry of milk. Then one day, they turned a whole family into winged creatures. The father and sons turned into birds, the mother and daughters turned into butterflies, and the new baby turned into a caterpillar.

The local rabbi, Rabbi Shimon ben Shetah, decided the witches had gone too far and it was time to get rid of them.

He waited for a day of heavy rain, because in his wisdom he knew that witches are terrified of rain. He called seventy-nine of his students to him. He told each student to fetch two robes and a large pot, then to wear one robe, to fold the other up and to place it in the pot.

The rabbi and his students walked up the hill to the cave, balancing the pots upside down on their heads, keeping the second robes dry in the rain. Just inside the entrance to the cave, they changed into their dry robes and rolled the pots containing the wet robes out of sight down the hill.

Then the rabbi called, “Witches, come out to dance with me and my fine young students!”

The witches replied from the depths of the cave. “We can't come out today. It's raining.”

“But our robes are dry!” said the rabbi.
“
How could we be standing here completely dry in our best robes if it was raining? Here, touch my robe.”

Hands reached out of the darkness: pale hands and dark hands, old wrinkled hands and young smooth hands, hands with long claws and hands with bitten-down nails.

The hands stroked the rabbi's dry robe.

There was a moment's silence. The students held their breath.

“It's not raining!” the witches yelled. “If it's not raining, we can dance!”

“We'll wait for you outside, ladies.” The rabbi led his students out of the cave onto the hillside.