SOURCE: "Eena" (Weird Tales, September 1947 ) by Manly Banister

DESCRIPTION: "The change shook her with ecstacy.  Bubbling rapture accompanied the smooth flowing of supple muscles, the adjusting of bones in their socket. An excitement of sensual pleasure engulfed every nerve and sinew..."

PLOT: Joel Cameron shoots a mother wolf and raises its white-hairred cub. When he must move back to the city he plans to sell the cub to a friend but it escapes. The she-cub grows up to be a large white wolf, that leads the local wolves on raids of farms and ranches. One full moon the she-wolf feels a change and becomes a beautiful womam. She visits Joel at his cabin, then runs off into the night.  The bounty on the she-wolf reaches a thousand dollars. Hunters corner the wolf, wounding its shoulder. She races to Joel's cabin as the moon-change is upon her. Joel shoots the wolf only to find the dead girl.

WEREWOLF FACTS: Banister doesn't bog his tragic romance down with tons of facts. The wolf feels the pull of the full moon and changes. She is only human during the night of the full moon. "Eena" is a rarity for WT, a sympathetic werewolf, much as the medieval writers used.

INTERESTING FACTS: This sad tale from Weird Tales has a suggestion of the lure of sexual power of the female werewolf. It remains largely between the lines. The transformation from wolf to woman sounds orgamic. The change back painful. Peter S. Beagle's "Lila the Werewolf" uses a very similar plot with a more open discussion of the sexual elements.

SEE ALSO: Manly Banister's "A Werewolf Western" (Weird Tales , September 1942)

---