was whelped by a slave woman, the legends say, on a mountain crag by night; cries of the polar bears echoing below, I was Left to die in the savage snows. A bitch wolf found me and gave suck. I was with the pack ten years before men came.
They took me for a curiosity. I was hauled to their cities in chains, a thing to leer at. One night I bit out my jailer’s throat and ran free under the sky that never seemed to stop raining. By then I knew speech. I made my way to south first on a steamship, then through wilderness with fur hunters.
By the time hair sprouted on my **** I’d tamed lands, beasts, and women. Dark eyed servant girls laughed and filled my cup with wine; my cellars were stacked high with gold. Yet I was still troubled by dreams that came to me at nights: talons of snow in the dark, the wind that consumed all warmth from those barren planes I once thought of as the entire world.
Now I live in Helsinki.