Early springtime came to Outer Mongolia. Unusual warmth was felt in that latitude, unusual for the entire planet in the first year of the Great Warming.
As evening settled in the suburbs of Ulan Baator, three camel herders went drinking in a tavern. After a few rounds, their tongues grew loose, and they began telling the story of a hungry beast, howling in a distant land, a land that still had ice and snow.
Verse after verse, they told the legend of the White Werewolf…
When you see its eyes of red,
Then, will you greet the dead…
Eventually, the herdsmen became terrified of their own story. “It is a horror-beast sent from Hell!” the first cried out, fearfully.
“Yes! It…it is from Hell, I tell you!” his friend spoke in assent.
Another herdsman, their companion, smiled and raised his drink from the table. He gently advised them of the folly of their insatiable fears.
“But when you see its evil red eyes,” the first continued, “then you die! You die!”
Their eyes turned to the companion, who confidently assured them of the remoteness of the creature of which they spoke. He described the beast’s habitat, the Plain of Aurigainia, located thousands of kilometers from where they reside. He stroked his beard and speculated: would they ever encounter it prowling in the vicinity of Ulan Baator? There was much doubt.
“It is the Werewolf! The White Werewolf!” cried the other herdsman, not to be tempered. “At one time, it slaughtered a whole town of people in the icy wilds of the North!”
“They say you see it only by its burning red eyes,” cried the first, “and when it sees you, then you know no more!”
The companion remembered the story well. Far away in the northland, there was once a beautiful woman with flowing tresses of hair, wearing a white gown, who, on occasion, transformed herself into a blood-thirsty Werewolf. One night, in a remote peasant town named Muzhenghaak, she slaughtered the whole populace in a single blow. Thereafter, the creature came to be known as the White Werewolf of Muzhenghaak.
The other two herdsmen shivered in fear. After a round of silence, the first herdsman said, in a more subdued voice, “When it lashes out at your neck and draws blood from your throat, then you know no more!"
The companion dwelled on the vast distance between themselves and the creature, roaming about in a remote plain by the northernmost sea. It had no purpose in their land at all.
There was another round of silence. Then, the first repeated his fears and said, “I am afraid it will eat all of our herds, and then, not satisfied, craving more blood, it will eat us as well!”
The companion described the infamous covenant of the White Werewolf: you only die by it after making a contract with it, and if you never have agreement with that beast, you will never meet your demise by it. Except for those who are sworn to that pact, deadly encounters with the creature are figments of imagination.
“They say, when you see the evil red eye, you are frozen in fear,” the other herdsman said, staring at the companion. “You cannot move. Not even a finger!”
The companion was exasperated. “Since you have not sworn a pact with that creature,” he asked, “how in hell could it get you?”
As if on cue, all three arose from the table. “I tell you,” the first said, “I will not sleep well, thinking that the hell-beast is lurking in the dark!”
“Yes, we will retire to our yurt,” the other whispered, “constantly looking over our shoulder in fear of the blood-creature.”
“For every sound we hear,” the first replied, “we will turn in horror, for fear the creature is creeping behind us!”
The companion was tired of their talk. Wearily, he promised they would sleep through the night in their yurts, wake up to another day, and life would go on. They left the tavern.
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