They have made a great feast day, and no one is dying.
I have seen the like only at Whitsun, when the whole village leaves off work and the streets fill with folk in their best. But these are not their best. These are the pelts of beasts, worn whole over a man, the fox and the wolf and the great grinning hound, only the eyes are wrong, too round, too glad. A hunter wears a wolfskin for warmth and to cheat the frost. These wear them to laugh in them. I have never in my life seen a man laugh inside a wolf.
There is no snow. There is no fear of snow. They have gathered by the hundreds in a hall lit bright as noon at midnight, with no candle I can find and no smoke, and none of them are hungry. I looked. I know a hungry face; I have worn it every Lent of my life. These faces, what I can see of them, are round and easy. They embrace strangers. They caper. A grown man in a stag's head knelt to be counted like a beast at market, and the others clapped, and no one led him to slaughter.
Perhaps it is a mummers' play that never ends. Perhaps they are simple, and their lord keeps them soft the way a good lord fattens a hog. God forgive me, I stood among them a while and my back did not ache, and I forgot the field, and I did not want to leave.
That frightened me more than the wolves.