Let\u2019s step back a night or two.<\/p>\n
Saul\u2019s in bed. He is dreaming. He is sweating blood; it is rolling in rivulets from his fingertips and his face.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s dreaming of a rising river. He\u2019s dreaming of the screaming of the river men: their clawed hands coming up from beneath him; them hooking him, pulling him down.<\/p>\n
He dreams of his puppy.<\/p>\n
His marvelous, wonderful three-headed puppy, so goofy and so wriggly and so sleek. His puppy that swam in and ate them \u2014 three, four, five, six<\/em> of the folk of the river! \u2014 before \u201cBarnface\u201d drank the whole river down.<\/p>\n Then Barnface had gotten sick, and its sneezing had agitated Lake Pepsi, and it was the worst that could possibly happen \u2014<\/p>\n But that isn\u2019t the point.<\/p>\n The point<\/em> is the soul-aching knowledge that is filling him when he wakes.<\/p>\n \u201cOnce I had a puppy,\u201d he says, to St. Peter. \u201cI was a svart-elf, and I had a puppy, but I left. I left it behind and Hans melted the puppy in his pot and turned it into gold.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s poor parenting,\u201d Peter criticizes.<\/p>\n \u201cThey hit it with a nuke,\u201d Saul says. \u201cThey fried it to ashes. And they shot it with death rays. And they tied it up. Oh, God.\u201d<\/p>\n He can see it, suddenly, there in the Gulley basement.<\/p>\n The fetter rubs raw on the wolf\u2019s four legs. It cuts it, makes sores rise up, and saws its way \u2014 over fourteen hundred years \u2014 into the bone. If the wolf were allowed the respite<\/em> of dismemberment, it would have lost its four feet by now, and its muzzle too; but that, of course, was unacceptable, as this would have let it slip the cord.<\/p>\n Instead it heals, as has healed the titan Prometheus; it heals, like the Ouroboros in the sea.<\/p>\n It is its own vitality, of course, at least in part, that heals it \u2014 Edmund has shown echoes of that regeneration, that vitality, by virtue of his connection to the wolf \u2014 but also it\u2019s the nature of the cord.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s so cruel,\u201d Saul says.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d says Peter. He tilts his head to the side. \u201cIs gout a meaningful hazard here?\u201d<\/p>\n Saul gives him an anguished look. Then he looks confused. Then he shrugs.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not a doctor,\u201d Saul says. He just has a miraculous blessing that protects people against gout. \u201cI just have a miraculous blessing,\u201d he explains, \u201cthat protects people against gout.\u201d<\/p>\n Sorry! That was a little redundant.<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe?\u201d says Saul. But he looks away.<\/p>\n If the wolf has gout it is not the wolf\u2019s biggest problem. Its biggest problem would be that it\u2019s been tied up for fourteen hundred years with an awful cord.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s why St. Saul has hunted Edmund down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Let\u2019s step back a night or two. Saul\u2019s in bed. He is dreaming. He is sweating blood; it is rolling in rivulets from his fingertips and his face. He\u2019s dreaming of a rising river. He\u2019s dreaming of the screaming of the river men: their clawed hands coming up from beneath him; them hooking him, pulling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":814,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"series":[50],"class_list":["post-5613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-vidars-boot-chapter-4","series-vidars-boot"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/Gold-from-a-Wolf.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5613"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6061,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5613\/revisions\/6061"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5613"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fseries&post=5613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}