Once There Were Wolves

by Charlotte McConaghy

Is that the way of all love? That it should carry the risk of death?

Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours everywhere with him; he believed it was a book to live by.

It is easy to tell myself that what passes between them is only biology, nature, but then who said love does not exist in the nature of all things?

“My stepdad,” she says suddenly, softly, breathing out a long lungful of smoke. I’ve never met any grandparents, or stepgrandparents. “Oh,” I say, on a long breath of my own. “I’m sorry. How long, Mum? How long until you got past it?” “Sweetheart,” she says, “I sleep with dead women watching me from the walls.”

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.

and 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.