Bear Skin: Author's Comments

‘Hazel...’ He rose up suddenly and planted his forepaws to either side of my hips. His fur was damp from the rain. I flinched, shutting my eyes though it made no difference to either of us. His breath smelled of honey, as it had done the day we met. Oh God, I moaned inwardly, my heart running riot. ‘Arailt,’ my lips whispered as I reached for him, plunging my hand into the soft pelt of his chest – and encountered smooth skin. For a moment I froze, speechless. Under my moving palm the fur parted as if along a seam, and I slid my hand beneath it down a hard musculature: pecs and flat breastbone, the torso of a man. I touched his forelimb and the fur fell away to disclose an elbow, a hard bicep, a shoulder. ‘Oh God – What-’ Arailt’s fingers covered my lips, pressing the words back. ‘No questions, ever,’ he whispered in my ear, his voice the bear’s voice and a man’s voice, the same as it always had been.  Fingers, not claws or paws, I thought – and then they were withdrawn and his mouth took their place and any questions I had were stolen from my lips along with my breath as he kissed me. He tasted of honey, and of my sex. I ran my fingers along his jaw and felt stubble a week old but no fur, then down his throat and found his Adam’s apple. His lips were hungry, his kisses laden with intent, but his teeth were not like shears. When he caught my bottom lip between them he drew no blood, only a leaping stab in my heart and a low cry from my throat. Gently, he released my mouth. I passed one hand over his face. His eyelids trembled under my fingertips. He kissed the palm of my hand. ‘Arailt,’ I repeated as if it were a spell, a word of profound magic. My other hand slid across his shoulder and I felt the bear-pelt finally slip from his back, heavy as sodden velvet, heavy as a bear-hide would be with skin and fat still adhering, sliding to the carpet. Underneath he was naked. Plot: Bear Skin is a novella retelling the Norwegian folk-story  East of the Sun, West of the Moon. This is a very old story (it has its roots in the Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche, which was also retold in one of my all-time favourite books, Til We Have Faces by CS Lewis) and it attracted me because it’s a story of a woman going on a quest. The basic plot of East of the Sun, West of the Moon goes: a young woman agrees to marry a bear who turns up to woo her one day. He’s a very well-spoken and wealthy bear, mind. She goes off to his house and is quite relieved to find that at night the bear turns back into a man; however, she doesn’t know what he looks like because he always comes to her under cover of darkness and no light is allowed in the house. After a few months she pays a visit back to her parents’ house, where her mother and sisters persuade her that she should sneak a look at her husband while he sleeps, and give her a bit of candle. She succumbs to curiosity and finds that her hubby is gorgeous – but he wakes and is furious, because he is under a curse and if she had just held out for a year she would have broken it. As it is, he has to go and marry an evil sorceress/troll who lives East of the Sun, West of the Moon and must leave our heroine forever. She is full of remorse but it doesn’t make any difference; he is dragged away to his marriage and she is dumped back home. Our heroine decides to rescue her husband and sets off walking around the world, asking the way East of the Sun and West of the Moon … I did make up a lot of new stuff, but I stuck to the original storyline for most of this novella. I decided to set the story in contemporary Britain - but a fairy-tale Britain where the weird stuff has never gone away. When a huge brown bear turns up in a bookshop and talks to one of the shop assistants, people go "Eek! This is dangerous!" but not "Eek! This is impossible!" I did change the ending somewhat  because in the Grimm version of the fairytale the heroine only succeeds at the end by the connivance of the troll's servants who have taken pity on her when she weeps (boring!) and who recommend an extremely Christian plot-device (a shirt may only be cleaned by the hands of a good Christian girl) and the sudden inexplicable ability of the Prince to choose his wife after all. Er, no: that makes no sense. My version involves a more proactive heroine and no bloody interference by God, thank you. Arailt and Hazel 'Arailt' is the Gaelic version of 'Harold' - but oh what a lovely name! I knew the moment I saw it that it was right for this character. He was my first (and to date only) romantic hero with really short hair. At the time of writing I was getting into watching rugby so you've got to imagine him as a big beefy bloke with a broken nose. And a Scottish accent. Okay, so a certain Scottish actor might have been involved as a template... And Titus Pullo from the BBC series Rome, too. Hazel goes with Arailt in the first place because she is bored and has lost her aspirations and is desperate to find a purpose in life. She finds the months of isolation terribly difficult to cope with, but she falls head over heels in love with Arailt and for his sake endures for nearly a year. Unfortunately "nearly" is not good enough. Provoked by her jealous friends, she breaks the rules she has agreed to, thus betraying him into the clutches of the Queen of Shadows. She then decides that because she loves him she has to make amends. The Quest When Hazel sets off to find and rescue Arailt, she encounters and is helped by a number of not-really-human beings. Each encounter is sexually charged, tests her resolve and has something to teach her.  The first grouping of these entities are three "sisters". In the original folk-story they are 3 anonymous old women, who each give the heroine a gift which she can use to trade with the Troll Queen. There's no explanation who these women are, so I decided that in keeping with the Northern tradition they had to be the Norns or fates: Verlandi, Urd and Skuld. Verlandi is the youngest and rides a motorbike. She takes Hazel to a lesbian club for a dance. She gives Hazel a fabulous dress. Lesson: "You are still alive." Urd is middle-ages and frumpy. She sets Hazel a seemingly-endless task and when she quits in a fit of self-pity gives her a good spanking. She gives Hazel an irresistable pair of shoes. Lesson: "Stop wallowing in self-pity and defeatism." Skuld is sophisticated and a dom. She throws a party at which Hazel is ordered to be the Drinks Girl - which pushes her to the limit when she discovers exactly what it is she has to drink all night. She gives Hazel a piece of Darkness - not to trade, but to use as a weapon of last resort. Lesson: "Keep your promises and stick it out until the end." The second group are the Four Winds, all characterised as male. The North Wind is the strongest. They don't have lessons to teach Hazel; they have questions that she must answer for herself before she can move on. BTW,  by this point it might be spotted that the seasons are horribly mixed up: Hazel jumps from Autumn to Spring to Summer  depending on who she is meeting. She is effectively outside time from the moment she puts herself in Verlandi's hands. These people are not human and live in a different version of the world. The East Wind lives in a penthouse flat overlooking a marsh, and is a photographer. He wants to take nude photos of Hazel. Question: "Are you looking for Arailt just because you feel guilty - rightly so - and you want his forgivness so you will feel better?" The West Wind is a surfer-dude hanging out on a Cornish beach with a mob of his teenaged friends. He induces Hazel to having sex with them all. Question: "Do you really love Arailt or is it just that  you're afraid of never having sex that good anywhere else?" The South Wind lives in a seafront house and is not that into girls. He introduces Hazel to anal sex. Question: "Do you think by rescuing Arailt you are proving yourself good enough to deserve him?" The North Wind lives in a Scottish broch. He's impotent and doesn't want sex with Hazel at all (and thus won't help her). But here she takes control. She has worked out the reason for her going to rescue Arailt: because she has chosen to take responsibility for what happened, and for what will happen. She's no longer being used by others for their ends, or being protected by others, or submitting to their will, but chosing her own path. When she gets to the castle East of the Sun, West of the Moon, Hazel uses her magic gifts to gain access to Arialt, her passion to wake him from his enchanted sleep, and the Darkness to shield them both from the Queen of Shadows. Arailt himself decides to fight the Queen (I didn't want a passive romantic hero either). And after that ... After that a very bad pun. Editorial Changes After the editing pains of Burning Bright and the horror that was getting Wildwood to a state the publisher would accept, I was extremely careful about pushing boundaries for Bear Skin. It does revolve around someone who is effectively a werebear but I managed to keep the action just the acceptable side of bestiality - I was asked to add one paragraph to a masturbation scene, that was all: Funny, but I'd pictured hands sliding between me and the mattress, cupping my breasts as he entered me. Hands, not paws. The only other change I was asked to make was to the Drinks Girl scene, which I thought I'd made as spare and terse as possible. Not quite. Here's what I originally wrote: I grabbed all my courage and I sank to my knees, the tight rubber sheath that smelled of talcum hobbling my movements. The man unzipped his fly and pushed his flaccid cock between my cold lips. I took it right to the back of my mouth, not wanting to taste it, and as he began to piss I swallowed gulp after gulp. By the time he finished he was no longer entirely flaccid, but he seemed satisfied with the service. I licked the last acrid drops from my lips, my cheeks burning in shame. Before I could find some way to rise in that constricting dress, another man stuck his head in from the veranda. ‘Aha. The Drinks Girl?’   ‘Be my guest,’ said the first.   After that there was little let-up. Between customers I stayed on my knees, too stupified to move. Women were the worst; I’d get a crick in the neck from the angle and didn’t always manage to catch it all without some running down my cleavage and my dress. And here's what I changed it to in order to avoid the "squik" factor: I grabbed all my courage and I sank to my knees, the tight rubber sheath that smelled of talcum hobbling my movements. The man unzipped his fly and stepped closer. It didn't take long - it was the shame that I found difficult to endure, not the physical act. And he seemed satisfied with the service. But before I could find some way to rise in that constricting dress, another man stuck his head in from the veranda. ‘Aha. The Drinks Girl?’ ‘Be my guest,’ said the first. After that there was little let-up. Between customers I stayed on my knees, too stupified to move. Women were the worst; I’d get a crick in the neck from the angle I had to tilt back my head and didn’t always manage to catch it all. Spot the differences? The defining feature of  erotica for the female market, I'm beginning to suspect, is that nothing smells or tastes bad. At least I know now!