To the Bone

How civilisation slays legendary beasts, a story

This week’s post is a mysterious story first published in Dark Mountain: Issue 1 by our co-director, Nick Hunt. Introducing his collection of short fiction, Loss Soup and Other Stories, he wrote the project’s original call for uncivilised writing and art had ‘put into words something that I had been feeling for a long time but did not have the words to say. All I had was my stories: strange, misshapen, ill-fitting things that I had tried and failed to publish in more mainstream magazines. They did not have beginnings, middles and ends, as creative writing classes taught; they did not have proper characters with satisfying narrative arcs; they were not conventionally “good”. But they had something, I hoped, that got under the skin of our times; they felt troubling in the right ways, and did not present easy answers. I saw them less as short stories than unknowable artefacts I’d found, smoothed the roughest edges of but mostly left as they were, and did not know what to do with.’

‘To the Bone’ is one of those troubling tales, about a mythical creature dragged from a Welsh lake by ‘civilising’ human hands, seeking to break what they cannot understand. You can also listen to the special audio version Nick made for this post below.

Earth Rites by Stuart Turner (from Dark Mountain: Issue 7)

WE DIDN’T STOP CLUBBING THE AFANC with our paddles until we were sure its back was broken. On this point Reverend Williams had been most specific. ‘Don’t stop clubbing the afanc, boys, until you are sure its back is broken,’ he’d said. ‘Merely battering the bugger will not suffice. You must cleave its spine.’

He was sitting on a pony at the top of the first slope, where the track wound up into the mountain. He was wearing a black hat stiff with frost; his spectacles were steamed. His left hand held a small black book, in which his right hand diligently recorded which men were on their way up to the lake, and which men were on their way down.

We quickly climbed the rocky slope that ran up to the first great peak, beyond which the black lake lay. The land below was black and white, with no smudge of colour in between. The rock of the mountain stuck here and there through the drifted snow in a way that resembled porpoises breaking through a wave.

‘Don’t forget the head!’ the reverend called, his voice unsteady in the wind. Already we were high enough above him to make him appear just a black spot in the snow.

There were eleven men from my village altogether. We had played together as children. The anticipation made us children again, tripping each other on the narrow track, flinging echoes off the mountain walls. We teased fat Rhys, who had a face like a trout, that he might be mistaken for the afanc himself and get clubbed in its place. Our spirits were high with the reverend’s whisky and the sense of being part of something bigger than ourselves.

But it was a tricky climb to the lake, and soon enough the quietness overtook us. Before we were halfway to the top a light snow began to fall. We started to ache in our fingers and thumbs. The cold made us shrink inside our bodies, turned us to men once again.

Word of the afanc’s capture had spread far and wide. It had reached our village the previous night, and everyone knew that Reverend Williams of Beddgelert was requesting the help of every able-bodied man in the land. Bells had clanged between villages; summonses had gone out. They had even lit the old beacon on the cliff-top at Aberdaren, and now men from as far away as Ynys Enlli had come to lend a hand in the clubbing.

I’d have liked to have been there when the afanc was caught. I think I’d have preferred the beginning to the end. It must have been a powerful sight to see it bellowing on the shore, water spurting from its nose, lashing out with its tail. Chains had been fastened around its body, attached to teams of oxen. It was said that these oxen strained so hard in dragging the afanc from the lake that one of them popped an eye. It was also said that a chain had snapped, the creature had lurched and maliciously rolled over, and a father and son had had the lives crushed out of them.

I’d also have liked to have seen the maiden: the beautiful virgin they’d stationed there to lure the afanc to shore. If I closed my eyes I could picture her, all alone at the water’s edge. Her eyes nervously watching the lake, pretty face flushed with cold. Icicles sparkling in her hair, frost on her perfect lips. It was said that the beast couldn’t help itself: it had dragged its body from the murky depths, and laid its hideous head in the maiden’s lap.

It was also said that the maiden had offered to kiss the man who finished it off, the one who delivered that last blow. This was in all of our minds as we climbed; even fat Rhys, with the face like a trout. We gripped the wooden paddles the reverend had provided, swung them to feel their weight. The paddles felt serious and smooth in our hands. Anything was possible that morning.