Orion and King Arthur

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For the first time that bitterly cold winter, Heorot was bright again, ringing with song and a king’s gratitude to the hero.

And then the beast roared, out in the icy darkness.

“But he’s dead!” King Hrothgar bellowed, pointing to the shaggy monster’s arm that now was affixed over the mead-hall’s entrance doorway.

“I killed him,” exclaimed Beowulf, “with these bare hands.”

Hrothgar turned to his queen, Wealhtheow, sitting beside him on the dais between the royal torches. She was as beautiful as a starry spring night, her raven-dark hair tumbling past her shoulders, her lustrous gray eyes focused beyond the beyond.

Wealhtheow was a seer. Gripping the carved arms of her throne, shuddering under the spell of her magic, she pronounced in a hollow voice, “The monster is truly dead. Now its mother has come to claim vengeance upon us.”

Hrothgar turned as white as his beard. His thanes, who had been sloshing mead and singing their old battle songs, fell into the silence of cold terror.

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