The Accursed / Claude Seignolle

The story is about a naive peasant girl who is haunted by a terrible curse. Eighteen-year-old Marie has an uncanny wolfish behaviour, passed on to her by a wolf-herder who visited her at home when she was a little girl and put her hand in the mouth of a wolf-boy. This, the man claimed, gave Marie the ability to communicate with wolves and heal their bites, but only until the man’s death, because then Marie’s powers go out. This may or may not mean that Marie is the werewolf that seems to be on the loose in her village, although the ignorance of Marie’s fellow villagers turns out to be the real evil.

There is far more to this story than the above summary suggests, for it is a triumph of invention and erudition, apart from its quality as a play on age-old folklore. Claude Seignolle has many faces, and this story is a first-class introduction to his ever-unpredictable genius.