Wolf Skins

They moved like ghosts, claws hovering over the gnarled roots of woods, fur tangled with clods of dirt and bits of birds’ nests. Trees bent away, desperate to stay clear of their path, for anything that came in their way was toppled, easily pushed aside by their broad shoulders and crushed underfoot.

Ghosts are stuff of myth, as tangible to the villagers as gods in wolf skins. We had no boys calling wolf, wolves in the dark of the forest were of no concern. It was ghosts, wisp-like and tortured, that children were taught to fear. In the midst of grappling with one’s morals, a child had only to recall bedtime tales of haunting and apparitions, warnings as punishment for their sins. Of course, parents didn’t think of telling their children not to ponder such fanciful things as phantomwise wolves.

That hid in the woods where the moss and trees and fern grew on them as though they were the soil.

Nobody thought of wolves, they thought of safety and sacrifice. That is why we’re here.

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Art by Abby Diamond