"The Company of Wolves"- Alex Van Pelt

"She will lay his fearful head on her lap and she will pick out the lice from his pelt and perhaps she will put the lice into her mouth and eat them, as he will bid her, as she would do in a savage marriage ceremony."

In "The Company of Wolves," the heroine is depicted as virginal and angelic, with pale skin and near-white hair. The wolf is carnal, extremely visceral and sexual, a 'carnivore incarnate'. However, in this line, the roles are somewhat reversed. The wolf is 'fearful' and submissive, laying across her lap while she sullies her pure persona by eating the insects that crawl on him. The act is willing on her part, showing that she wants to be tainted just as much as he is. In the end, the 'savage marriage ceremony' during the winter solstice allows her to not be made a meal of, but instead to be a consumer of their future feasts as a wolf herself, eternally bound to an 'unholy' creature.