Kitty in the Underworld by Carrie Vaughn (red queen ebook .txt) 📕

“Do you really believe that?” I asked. “You can’t believe it, or you wouldn’t be here explaining it to me. Apologizing to me.” Because that was what they were doing, essentially.

They didn’t answer.

If I was behind the microphone at my studio, and I’d gotten a call during the ">I rolled my eyes. “se">Chapter 1show explaining this in as serious a tone—I wasn’t sure how I’d respond. It would depend on my mood. I might have humored him, picked at his explanation, pounced on details, encouraged him to dig himself deeper. I might have mocked him outright and then hung up on him. I might have just felt sorry for him.

I wanted to pretend like I was hosting my show, so I could rake them over the coals of my sarcasm. But for all the time I’d spent unconscious over the last day or so, I was too tired. Not to mention my life was pretty much in their hands. Best not make them too angry.

I sighed. “Can you at least tell me your names?”

The werewolf nodded. “I am Enkidu. She is Sakhmet.”

Oh, give me a … “That’s what he called you—those aren’t really your names.”

“They are now,” he said. “We are their avatars. We speak for them.”

“And you are Regina Luporum,” said the were-lion.

“I’m Kitty,” I said. “I will always be Kitty. Katherine Norville, Kitty.”

“Kumarbis is hoping to convince you otherwise.” His tone didn’t invite doubt that Kumarbis would succeed.

“Kumarbis—is that his name, or is he supposed to be an avatar, too? I’ve never even heard of any Kumarbis—”

The werewolf hurried to explain. “Kumarbis is a god of the Hittites, a father-god, a source of power.”

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Chapter 10

AFTER THAT, I started telling myself stories.

The research I’d been doing for my book, all the stories I’d been reading and analyzing, flooded out of my hindbrain and to the front of my memory. The Epic of Gilgamesh was one of my favorites. Not Kumarbis’s version. The ancient Sumerian tale is famous for being one of the first articulate, literary, and, most important, recorded stories in human civilization. Like most of the stories coming out of the first 90 percent of human civilization, this one’s about a mighty king who is part divine and can do no wrong. Except he’s also arrogant and oppressive, and the gods decide to create another person who will be a match for him and take him down a peg: Enkidu.

Enkidu was the reason this was one of my favorite stories. He was a wild man who lived in the mountains, clothed in fur like one of the beasts, drinking with them at the water holes, and generally representing all that was natural and uncivilized about humanity. He also had a habit of rescuing animals and sabotaging hunters’ traps, so one of the hunters brought a temple prostitute into the mountains to seduce Enkidu and lure him into civilization. That’s right—sex soothed the savage beast. She also taught him about language and clothing, and brought him to the city, hoping that he could stop Gilgamesh’s dominance. As expected, Gilgamesh and Enkidu fought, and then, seeing in the other a true equal, became fast friends. Maybe even lovers, depending on the interpretation you agreed with. They went off and had many fine adventures, battling monsters, hunting for treasure, angering the gods, all that good stuff.

The Epic of Gilgamesh does not end well. Another common trait of epics. There’s a price for all that glory, and it’s usually loss. Heartbreaking, unendurable loss. Enkidu dies a slow, terrible death, not in battle, but by the whim of the gods. Gilgamesh is inconsolable. I wonder if this says something about civilization in opposition to humanity’s wild roots: the wild cannot survive. If I were to take the analysis further, from a purely literary, symbolic standpoint, I’d say that lycanthropy isn’t a curse—it’s a reminder of what humanity used to be. Of what we lost. We used to be able to talk to wolves. And now we fear them as monsters or worship them as paragons.

Enkidu’s strength came from the opposite source of Gilgamesh’s strength—one was wild and the other was a king, one preferred mountains and the other preferred cities. But the world needed both to be in balance. Together, they were unstoppable. The metaphor was appealing to a werewolf like me.

Enkidu, if he had been a real person, must have been a Rex Luporum.

My friend TJ—one of the first werewolves I ever met, one of the ones who found me after the attack that infected me and helped bring me into the Denver pack, the one who held me and comforted me during my first to make a difference. "> from ed, the full-moon night of Change—used to tell me that lycanthropy could be a strength, if I knew how to use it. If I accepted and controlled it rather than fought against it. This was hard to remember sometimes when I thought of all I had lost because of being a werewolf. When the full moon approached and blood lust rose up in me and I wanted to rip off my clothes, howl at the sky, and flee into wilderness, never to return. But I had gained so much by being a werewolf. My career, my life, my friends. My husband. It could be a strength. Wolves weren’t monsters—they were hunters, careful and intelligent. They stalked with great patience, and defended their packs with ferocity. That was the strength I chose. Enkidu’s strength. Enkidu, both man and beast, the first such being to cross from the wilderness and choose civilization over the wild. He did it, the stories said, for love. Or at least lust. Translations could be tricky sometimes. He was one of the characters from myth and legend I classified as maybe a werewolf, and I looked up to him.

Now I thought how dare this man, this kidnapper, call himself Enkidu. What did he know about the ancient hero? What made him think he could claim such