Once There Were Wolves

by Charlotte McConaghy

Today, wolves once again walk upon this ground, which has not seen their kind in hundreds of years. Does something in their bodies remember this land, as it remembers them? It knows them well; it has been waiting for them to wake it from its long slumber.

I wonder if she knows her fury will kill her, if maybe she’s fine with that, maybe she would charge toward oblivion rather than return to whatever she fled.

“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.”

This is how the trees speak with and care for each other. Their roots tangle together, dozens of trees with dozens more in a web that reaches on forever, and they whisper to each other through their roots. They warn of danger and they share sustenance. They’re like us, a family. Stronger together. Nothing gets through this life alone.” He smiled then, and asked, “Can you hear the beating?” and we could, somehow we could.

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?

He cares deeply; it is the fabric of his life here. I think he must be a good man. But nobody is only one thing.

I am moving for the door when through the kitchen window I see Aggie. She’s outside. My feet stop. I watch my sister walk to the horse and reach up to Gall’s mane and swing herself onto her back. She presses her body and my body against the horse’s spine, laying herself flat and heavy and ardent, calming her with our heartbeat, our firm, gentle hands, our breathing. Gall’s hooves fall still on the grass, her whole being falls still, one with the woman on her back. Bewitched by that whispering touch, that knowing my sister was born with. When Aggie places her face against the neck of the creature and smiles, I sit down on the kitchen floor and weep.

“You don’t have to be a victim to care,” she says. “You just have to have empathy in bucket loads.”

My hope stutters out. I think he will leave me here. An end to his problems. But he lifts me into his arms and says, “It’s all right, sweetheart, you’re safe now,” 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.