The Black Wolf

“My father used to tell me stories. I could tell you one, that is, if you would like to hear it?” Peter offers. He has not told a story, he thinks, in months, but now that he has the opportunity, the words seem only on the tip of his tongue, instead of far away and out of reach.

Hazel contemplates the offer, her gaze shifting from the roots of the tree below them to the web of green and brown branches above them. She inhales the scent of oak and moss. “Alright. Yes, please.”

Hazel waits patiently while Peter considers how to begin. There are so many words, tangled up, waiting to be spoken. He takes a deep breath before he begins.

“Ghosts are everywhere. They do not lurk in the dead of night on foggy moors, or in the moonlit depths of abandoned places, or the dust filled corners of attics. They do not live on in photographs and souvenirs of days gone by. They are not relegated to cemeteries and fog and haunted placed. They do not fear the sun. They do not appear at midnight. They are everywhere, at every time. They are in the heat of summer, the smell of apples, in shoe cupboards and beside beds and in front of you. They cannot be avoided. There is almost nothing that they fear. Only the wolf.

The wolf is not a mindless beast that howls at the moon from hidden corners of the forest. It is not as cunning creature that dresses in an elderly woman’s clothing to fool red clad little girls. It is a creature of strength. It is black as night, with eyes as bottomless as the ocean. Beautiful as dreams, fierce as nightmares, and he moves like a god through the world.

It guards the ghosts of the world, and keeps the balance between the living and the dead. It dwells near the portals, the doors to the other world. Were something to cross the barrier, it would retrieve them. Or it might return with another spoil. Something of equal value to maintain the balance. Were a spirit to walk from one world to another, it might take one of the living, so that the worlds do not become unbalanced. Regardless of what the price is, it must be paid.

If you were to see it, you could recognize it by the scent of cemetery loam, of starless nights and copper. By its long muzzle, and its claws as sharp and curved as the blade of a sickle. And if you were to see it, there would be no un-seeing. It would burn into your memory like a hot poker into skin.

Where there are ghosts, there is the wolf. That is why one must be weary about inviting in the past, for as surely as ghosts can whisk you away to years gone by, the wolf can curl around your feet and pull you away, to goodness knows where. It is best to keep away, to stay safe from the other world. That is why people have forgotten about ghosts. They cannot see them, though ghosts are there. They make jokes of white sheets and phantom noises in the night. They have forgotten their fear of spirits and the dead, because they wishes to forget their fear of the wolf. If they do not believe in ghosts, cannot stumble upon them, they are safe from the wolf. Their ignorance is their armour, their disbelief is their shield. And over the years the wolf has vanished from their minds.

But it is still there. It lurks, though people have explained it away, with stories and bedtime tales, and rhapsodies and fabrications of the truth.

In a way the existence of the wolf, or rather, its non-existence has become a truth. At least in their minds, and it is almost the same thing. For people see what they want to see, and most often, what they are told. They prefer a weightless truth to a heavy one. And that is why they are safe.

For those that still believe, that still shudder in the marrow of their bones when the wind picks up in the woods, for the children who have not yet been taught that such terrors do not exist, for the elderly with centuries of wisdom still alive under their logic and sense, they are constantly aware. On some plane deep within themselves, they are weary. They are cautious. They are both thankful for their knowledge, and they curse it. Those people know that ghosts are everywhere, and the wolf is ever-hiding. They carry the burden of a heavy truth. They carry it always.”

As Peter finishes his tale the leaves seem to settle, as though the tree itself had become restless throughout the story and is now relieved it has concluded.

“Thank you,” Hazel says, after a moment, hesitant to break the silence. She is unsure of how to voice the sudden anxiety in her, how to articulate her fear. “I liked it. Your father sounds like a good man.”

“He was,” Peter says. “And you’re welcome.”

Art by Sunny Master

Text by Lucie MacAulay