text: I live where the wind never stops blowing, where the rain never stops hammering, where the wolves howl in the middle of the day. I am as sleek as an otter, cunning as a crow, and as fierce as the black rat himself. But unlike these beasts I was not born to a mother. I was made from the silt in the stream and the spit of every animal in the wood. My maker mixed me up in a hollow tree, found red roan berries for my eyes and shards of flint for my teeth. Then he summoned a storm and made the lightning strike the hollow tree again and again, until fire lashed about me and baked me into something hard. When evening settled about us I awoke among the ashes. My maker led me through the woods on a rope because I was a wild and frightened thing. He showed me the untamed country, let all the animals inspect me in turn, taking little pieces of me into their mouths so they would recognise me when they met me again. He taught me how to speak and found me a home in the mountains. Then he left me there to live my own life. For the first few centuries I waited for my maker to come back. I was still a child then and hungered for his love and protection. But in time I became more resilient. I no longer needed anyone to care for me and, besides, everything else lived so briefly and died in so many clumsy ways. So perhaps my maker was already dead. At first I imagined that he would be as long-lived and canny as myself, but perhaps he is like the potter whose ceramics will stay whole and perfect long after he himself, the product of an inferior craftsmen, has crumbled into dust. No I do not miss my maker. I choose not to think of him. Besides I have not always been alone through the years. I have known many of *your* kind. Such clever beasts. If you come boldly into my cave and address me respectfully I will welcome you. I will make soup from the bones of field mice flavoured with wild garlic and let you sip the broth which will strengthen you and make your eyes as keen as mine. And we will go hunting in the forest. I will show you how to climb the tallest pine without bending its branches and we will gorge ourselves on the nesting birds. We will dive from the highest rock into the deepest pools and we will tease the monsters who dwell in its black depths. Then later I will take you to my bed of furs and feathers and we will make a perfect circle. But, if you skulk into my home, keep to the shadows and don’t properly announce yourself I will take you for a thief and an enemy and I will close up the mouth of my cave behind you. Then I will play games with you in the dark. And if I ever let you out your eyes will never be able to take the light again. The sun will burn and blind you, and you’ll be keeping to the shadows till the day you die. The people you loved will not recognise you, they will take you for a fiend or a spectre and they will hunt you with axes and burning branches for fear you’d hurt their children. There have been times in my solitude or when I have come across a former lover, grown old and near death, that I have thought about making a companion for myself, making a husband or a daughter. I would make them better than myself. Make a thing that didn’t feel my loneliness, that did not have my instinct for cruelty. I would not birth them out fire. I would shape them from the wind and the water. They would flow and dance with such grace and I would never be alone again.