Once There Were Wolves

by Charlotte McConaghy

Mirror-touch synesthesia. My brain re-creates the sensory experiences of living creatures, of all people and even sometimes animals; if I see it I feel it, and for just a moment I am them, we are one and their pain or pleasure is my own. It can seem like magic and for a long time I thought it was, but really it’s not so far removed from how other brains behave: the physiological response to witnessing someone’s pain is a cringe, a recoil, a wince. We are hardwired for empathy.

“I’ll alert the villagers to lock up their wives and daughters. The big bad wolves are coming.” I meet his eyes. “If I were you I’d be more worried about the wives and daughters going out to run with the wolves.”

My father used to say the world turned wrong when we started separating ourselves from the wild, when we stopped being one with the rest of nature, and sat apart. He said we might survive this mistake if we found a way to rewild ourselves. But I don’t know how to do that when our existence frightens the creatures we must reconnect with.

Later in his bed he holds me, his body so hot it’s as though he has laid the fireplace within himself. I realize how cold I have been, for so long.

“I don’t have anything to give you.” “Then take from me. I have more than enough.”

“I’m trying to work out why you’re so protective of a woman you hardly know.” “Because someone ought to be.”

But too quickly I realize I was so inside the wolf I didn’t feel what the deer did. No tearing at my flesh, no being eaten. Only the taste of blood. I turn away from Duncan.

“Animals learn their lessons. They’re smarter than people that way.”

No one can meet your trust if you don’t offer it.

But she says to my daughter, with her voice, “Little one,” and I am crying again, and she is, too.

I hold on to him as he carries me home, thinking I know nothing about hatred or love, about cruelty or kindness. I know nothing.

He could have become his father but he chose to become his mother instead. We all have that choice, and most of us make it. There is cruelty to survive, to fight against, but there is gentleness more than anything, our roots deep and entangled.

You have gone the way Dad did, like the animals do. You have gone into the wild to die. Or maybe, you have gone to live.