Witchlines: Wedding The Troll-Hag

Here is a second Witchlines tale inspired by The White Bear King Valemon, looking at things from the point of view of the troll-hag who takes Valemon captive. 

Wedding the Troll-Hag

Do you think me ugly? Do you fear my stony gaze, my teeth sharp as knives, my spiderweb hair, my blood-red lips? 

It’s true: I would have him—that handsome bear-king, Valemon. I would pull him into my bone-crushing embrace, bind him to my earthen breast, merge his wild beauty with my own wild monstrousness. I would draw him down deep into my body, to sleep with me as one.

I love the smell of decay. I love munching on bones, and reducing flesh to ashes and dust. I love to bring all life back to its beginning. I simply can’t help it, you see, for it is in my nature to do as Nature does.

Some see the rot, the darkness, the unknown, and they call it ugly, they call it frightening.

I have a hard, stony body, it’s so, hairy with root tendrils and mycelia. I am black and cold and unyielding. Yet if that is all you see you do not see true.

I would have Valemon—yes!—and I will, in time, for there is no avoiding Death. Yet I don’t take without giving first; and after I take I give yet again.

Don’t you see? That young woman would never have found him without me, would never have become a bear-wife, married to the wild; nor would she have lost him either. I drew them together, I pulled them asunder, and then led them both towards me. While I held him close, I ripped her clothes, tore her lily-white skin, half-starved her, and put some dirt under her fingernails. I steered her towards each fateful old crone—flesh of my flesh, knowing of my knowing—and I tested her, with each breath she breathed, each step she stepped, each word she spoke.

Is she kind? I asked. Is she courageous? Is she clever and resourceful? And most importantly of all: Does she love him as much as life itself?

You may think my methods harsh, my ways all too earthy. But if you want soft, you must be prepared to take the hard; if you want light, you’ll have to walk into the darkness. Show me that you can be unyielding, and only then will I yield. 

I am not so cruel as to take all. I am always willing to be generous, for I know that Life must have Valemon and his bear-bride before Death claims them. They have wild gifts that they must bring back to the tamed world; gifts gleaned from contact with my own chthonic realm. I will give them that.

Look again. Am I still hideous? Or do you see a glimmer of beauty in my eye, like the morning sun cresting the horizon? 

If you haven’t seen true yet, then let me reveal all: I am Life just as much as I am Death, for one cannot be without the other. I am the marriage of light and the darkness, night and day, fertile black soil and bleached white bones, plump juicy fruit and the sweet stench of decay. I am mother and lover to the bear-king, and to his bear-bride; and they are just as much me as any other earth-born being.

Know this: the wild must be free to wed itself to the human, and the human must be free to wed itself to the wild. The bear-husband must have his bear-wife, so that wild and human merge, furred, clawed, and kindly wild, else there is no wholeness or beauty.

And in the end, I’ll still have him, for everything is wed to me.

White Bear King Valemon, by Theodor Kittelsen
(Source: Wikimedia)