Ivar merely laughed. If the beast wished for a challenge, then a challenge it would have. The hunters dressed as women, since the beast had been known to attack women traveling alone. They tried luring the monster with the still-fresh bodies of its most recent victims. They painted the trees with pig blood.
Days passed and no kill was made. Meanwhile, a young girl went to fetch eggs from the henhouse and was torn apart, pieces of her limbs found in a damp cloud of bloody chicken feathers. Three schoolchildren vanished on their way home—there one moment, then gone, leaving nothing behind but the echoes of their cries.
Soon the townspeople were mocking the great hunter. They stood outside his lodgings, dressed in cheap imitations of his fancy furs and velvet cloak, howling in the early morning hours.
Tired of their abuse, Dag Ivar petitioned the king to return home. These people were heathens and undeserving of the king’s attentions; surely the beast that preyed upon them was just punishment for their devilish ways. But the hunter did not receive a letter back. Instead, on the next mail coach, a holy man arrived, a monk known as Mattheus.
“I will go talk to the wolves,” he told Dag Ivar, and into the woods he went.
The hunter laughed heartily and promised to bury him with much ceremony—if they could find the remnants of his body. Mattheus had no fear. He knew the Saints went with him.
When the monk had been in the woods less than an hour, he spotted a gray shape moving between the trees. The wolf stalked closer, moving in circles, her yellow eyes like sullen moons in the gathering dark. Mattheus did not shy away. He had packed his bag with meat and salt fish, and he offered the wolf food from his own hand.
Now, had he not been so holy, who knows what might have happened. But because he was a good man and beloved by the Saints, the wolf approached and did not simply devour him where he stood. The creature sniffed the meat, cautious lest the food be poisoned, and at last, ate from Mattheus’ palm. They sat for awhile, Mattheus feeding the wolf and talking of events from his journey.
After a fair time had passed, he said, “You have eaten many people from the town, and they wish to hunt you to your death.”
“They may try,” said the wolf.
“I fear the wolfhunter will set fire to the woods to salve his pride.”
“What am I to do?” said the wolf. “My children must eat too.”
Mattheus had no answer, so he did what he could. Every day, he went into the woods with prayers upon his lips and food in his hands, and every day he sat with the wolf and eventually her pups.
The wolves were well fed and so the killings stopped. The townspeople could till their fields and their children played near the woods without fear.
But the wolfhunter Dag Ivar could not walk down the street without people laughing at him. He ranted and raged, and when he could bear the snickers and jeers no longer, he strode to the center of the town square to denounce Mattheus. He claimed the holy man was in league with the beasts and had drawn them to the village in the first place.
The good people of the village set the hem of the wolfhunter’s fine velvet coat alight and chased Dag Ivar down the road and out of town. Mattheus continued to visit with the pups until they were grown wolves themselves. They came when he called, lay at his feet, thumped their tails when he told them stories. Their pups were tame in the very same way, and took to guarding the doorways and hearths of the village their grandmother had once terrorized.
These were the first dogs, and this is why Sankt Mattheus is the patron saint of those who love and care for animals.
SANKT DIMITRI
Dimitri was the son of a king but wished he had been born otherwise. From his early days, he wanted only to contemplate the works of the Saints and study scripture rather than statecraft.
When the time came for him to assume his responsibilities as a future ruler and to find a bride, he begged his parents’ pardon and informed them that he had no intention of marrying or of ever assuming the throne. He would give his life over to piety and prayer.
The king had no other heirs, so he and his wife tried every manner of persuasion—some kind, some cruel—to reach their son. Always, Dimitri met their arguments and attacks with the same calm refusal. He would not take a bride. He would not wear a crown. He would have the life he’d chosen and no other.
At their wits’ end, the king and queen ordered their only son locked in a tower, vowing that he would be denied food until he agreed to wed and become the prince he was meant to be. Each day, the queen knocked on the door to the tower, and each day Dimitri told her that he would not come down. She offered him sweets and savories, dishes he’d loved as a child, meats roasted with spices from faraway lands, but Dimitri always replied that he needed no sustenance but faith.
This went on for more than a year. The queen and king were certain the servants were sneaking their son food, so they ordered the door sealed up and guards placed beneath the tower window. No one came or went, and yet still Dimitri refused to emerge.
At last the queen demanded that the tower be opened so that she could see her son. When the guards broke through the door, they found a skeleton sitting at Dimitri’s desk. It cheerfully waved to the queen and invited her to pray with him. The queen ran screaming from the tower, and the king and
