Once There Were Wolves

by Charlotte McConaghy

I am crying still but now it is for the beauty of the world, and for its gentle pull, for the mystery of it and its timing, for its deep, deep knowing,

One thing I learned from spending time on Dad’s land: never close a gate you find open, never leave open one you find closed.

I have truly had enough violence for a thousand lifetimes.

I thought her fear was madness but there is nothing insane about learning from your experiences.

“If you come across a wolf in the forest and it doesn’t flee from you, I want you to remember one thing. Never run from it. If you face a wolf you will scare it. If you run, it will hunt you.”

But they are wild creatures and we are something tamer. We’ve forgotten how to move through the wilderness as though we belong to it.

isn’t that the way of animals, to break your heart with their courage, with their love.

He was afraid, I saw it so clearly. It felt good. He’d made me into something that enjoyed his fear.

There is a fluidity between us for which I thank my dad, for all those years on horseback and for his understanding of the love that could pass between a rider and her mount. And then we are away, dissolving into moonlit forest.

I have to leave here. The pull to stay is strong, the feel of them too visceral. I feel wolf; I am forgetting myself.

My fury has none of the same calm. The wolf is provoking it into something frenzied. There is violence in me, in my hands, which vibrate with the need to exert some kind of control, some defiance, and if it is revenge for the things that have been taken from me then fine, I will have that too. I am done with falling prey. I will be predator, at last. I will forget the walls and the self-protection and I will become the thing I hunt and feel it all.

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

I sink to the ground and place my hand on her forehead, stroking her soft fur. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry.” Her eyes look up at me and I open myself to her completely, lay myself bare for her to see, and she does, and dies. All creatures know love. I stroke her for a long time.

Not for the first time I hate my job, the humanness of it. I would leave her out here to feed the other animals, to feed the earth, if I didn’t need to show Red and the hunters proof of her death, if my job didn’t require me to study her remains.

I’m struggling not to push, I don’t know how to push and yet I can’t not, I have to. I’ve never been more frightened. Never calmer. I take off my boots and pants and underwear, leaving my socks, and I make a bed on the ground with my coat. The trees above and around. They sway. I am home here, and so glad. It is right that I’m here after all. It was always going to be here.

The pain starts to take over and swell up from within me, exploding in a mighty roar that startles the birds from the trees. She is tearing through me and everything is clenched so tightly I forget to breathe and there are spots in front of my eyes and I think the human body is a failure of evolution because it was not meant to withstand this, our shape is wrong, our capacity is wrong, and yet women do this every day and they survive and so that’s what I’ll do, I will do this and survive because afterward I will need to get the baby to safety.

With my fingers I feel for her head, there is certainly something hard and wet there but I have no way to tell if it’s her skull, I must hope. I am moving still, unable to find the right position, on my back is a nightmare but on my hands and knees I can’t reach to catch her, so in the end I stand up, leaning my forehead against a tree. It holds all of me up, and I bend my knees and reach down to catch her. Within me is a certainty I have never known. This is my pain. It is no trick, not stolen; it belongs to no one but me. This is my body, my child. I can feel her and she is mine and in this moment the truth of that is so powerful I am able to give a mighty push. Her head and shoulders force their way out and then the rest of her slips free, my hands catching her by the leg and swinging her up into my arms. She is a bruised shade and covered in bloody, pussy muck so I lower my mouth to her face and suck her airways clean. She t...

I sink to the ground on my makeshift bed and place her on my chest, against my skin, and I guide her to my breast so she can latch on. She does it straight away, with very little struggle. I vaguely feel the placenta coming free of me, but I’m too intent on her face to take much notice of it. She is so tiny. I don’t know if she’s getting anything out of my unprepared breast. I bite her umbilical cord with my teeth, and then I wrap her in my thick thermal undershirt. I can’t bear to put her down, to let go of her for a single second, but I have to get dressed or I’ll freeze to death. So I lie her down and clumsily draw on my clothes and then press her to my chest inside the warm coat. I have no strength left in my body, my legs are almost paralyzed with weakness. I am bleeding quite a lot, a...

She sleeps in my arms, this little creature. We are both calmed by the smell of each other. I give her what warmth I ha...

I press my body warmth around my daughter, whose calm I take courage from. “We’ll start walking again as soon as the light changes,” I whisper to her. “We’ll walk forever if we have to. I won’t ever stop. You’re safe, little one.” I’m bleeding even more now, but I will get back up again soon.

But she doesn’t attack me, this smallest of the wolves, nearly grown now but still white as the day I held her in my hands. She lies her body next to mine. And as the rest of her pack move to join her, pressing their warmth around us and saving us from the cold, I lower my face into the white of her neck and I weep.

she’s here, my sister is here, and so it doesn’t matter that I won’t get back up. There is no life in which she will let harm come to little one. She protects.

thinking I know nothing about hatred or love, about cruelty or kindness. I know nothing.

But, as it turns out, we were the ones who couldn’t be trusted.

“You were with me. You’re always with me.”

I hate him so much for what he’s done, for what he’s taken from her. And from me, too. So much time, wasted in fear of others. “I love you,” she tells me. “I love you.”

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. That is what we hold inside, what we take with us, the way we look after each other.

She will become legend and the wolves will suffer for it, because it was not them who came to this place and spilled blood. It was my sister and me.

Yeah, people do bad things to each other. And we remember those stories, we remember the pain, but we remember it because it stands out. It’s the blip in the timeline, the thing that doesn’t fit, and that’s because the rest of the timeline, which is our whole lives really, is made of kindness. That’s what’s normal, it’s so normal we don’t even notice it.”

You have gone into the wild to die. Or maybe, you have gone to live.