Her lips opened up as she howled so that she offered him, without her own iion or volition, a view of a set of ese boxes of whorled flesh that seemed to open one upon another into herself, drawing him into an inner, secret pla which destinatioually receded before him, his first, devastating, vertiginous intimation of infinity.
She howled.
A on howling until, from the mountain, first singly, then in a plex polyphony, answered at last voices in the same language. She tio howl, though now with a less tragic resonance. Soon it was impossible for the octs of the house to deny to themselves that the wolves were desded on the village in a pack.
Then she was soled, sank down, laid her head on her forepaws so that her hair trailed in the cooling soup, and so closed up her forbidden book without the least notion she had ever ope or that it was banned. Her heavy eyelids closed on her brown, bloodshot eyes. The household gun hung on a nail over the fireplace where Peters father had put it when he came in but when the ma his foot o of the ladder in order to e down for his on, the girl jumped up, snarling and showing her long yellow es.
The howling outside was now mixed with the agitated dismay of the domestic beasts. All the other villagers were well locked up at home. The wolves were at the door.
The boy took hold of his grandmothers uninjured hand. First the old woman would not budge but he gave her a good tug and she came to herself. The girl raised her head suspiciously but let them by. The boy pushed his grandmother up the ladder in front of him and drew it up behind them. He was full of nervous dread. He would have given anything to turn time back, so that he might have run, shouting a warning, when he first caught sight of the wolves, and never seehe door shook as the wolves outside jumped up at it and the screws that held the socket of the bolt to the frame cracked, squeaked and started to give. The girl jumped up, at that, and began to make excited little sallies bad forth in front of the door. The screws tore out of the frame quite soon. The pack tumbled over one ao get inside.
Dissoerror. The clamour within the house was that of all the winds of wirapped in a box. That which they feared most, outside, was now indoors with them. The baby in the hayloft whimpered and its mother crushed it to her breast as if the wolves might snatch this one away, too; but the rescue party had arrived only in order to collect their f.
They left behind a riotous sten the house, and white tracks of flour everywhere. The broken door creaked backwards and forwards on its hinges. Black sticks of dead wood from the extinguished fire were scattered on the floor.
Peter thought the old woman would cry, now, but she seemed unmoved. When all was safe, they came down the ladder one by one and, as if released from a spell of silence, burst ied speech except for the mute old woman and the distraught boy. Although it was well past midnight, the daughter-in-law went to the well for water to scrub the wild smell out of the house. The broken things were cleared up and thrown aeters father he table and the dresser back together. The neighbours came out of their houses, full of amazement; the wolves had not taken so much as a chi from the hen-coops, not snatched even a single egg.
People brought beer into the starlight, and sapps made from potatoes, and snacks, because the excitement had made them hungry. That terrible n