chapter 4 vioce of the Beast
let me tell you a story.
It was Midsummer's Eve in the year 1899. The moon was full over Brynmawr Hill in Central Wales. A farmer was out with his dog. He was waiting for animal which had killed several of his sheep. a gun was under his arm. In the moonlight, he suddenly the sheep run acroos the field. Something large and dark was following them, moving fast. He held up his gun and shot. The thing cried out with a terrible sound, like a wolf, and stood up on it's back legs. To the farmer, it seemed more than three meters tall. It was hurt, but it ran off on two legs down the hill into the woods. The farmer's dog turned and ran for home as fast as it could. The farmer shoot his gun into the trees a few time and then followed his dog back. His face was white. He was cold and afraid. When he arrived home, he said nothing to his wife about the thing in the woods. But that night he couldn't sleep. The next moring the farmer's wife went into the village to do her shopping. Someone told her about something that had happened to the son of a rich family who lived near the village. Soon everyone was talking about the young man.
"What do you think?" the farmer's wife said to her husband when she returned. "The boy has shot himself in the leg. He was playing with his gun and it wnet off by mistake. Really. He's nearly a man now. He old old enough to know better." The farmer said nothing but only shook his head.
After a while, everyone forgot about what happened to the young man. Everyone except the farmer. he could not forget what he had seen on Brynmawr Hill. He noticed too, that the young man had disappeared. No-one ever saw him again.
On the nights when he could not sleep, the farmer sat and wrote in a notebook. He wrote about the strange night on Midsummer's Eve.
After he died, a few years later, his wife found the note. When the story came out, everyone said the farmer had been completey mad. Of course, people did not think that the story was true. But by that time the rich family had moved away and their large was empty. Strangely, no-one wanted to buy it.
Why am I telling you all this?
Well, I was that young man.
After I was hurt, I travelled to that part of Europe which goes from Hungary in the east, across Austria, Slovenia and the norht of Italy. There I lived with others of my kind, in the hills and mountains, until I was better. Then I went further to the east to China. I visited Mount Shendu, the place where Shendu was changed into a wolf, the place where it all began.
I was careful, hiding in the woods all the time. I took people's sheep or goats to eat only when there were not enough wild animals. For many years, I was not seen again but then I started to get careless. I went to many in Europe. A soldier saw me in Germany in 1988 - outside a place called Morbach. I know that people tell stories about this.
Ah, but now I have returned. I have come back to the hills and old woodlands of Wales. this my home, the right place I think, to welcome tin the new millenium.