Once There Were Wolves

by Charlotte McConaghy

“We hunt only what we need and we give back to the ecosystem, we grow food, too, we live as self-sufficiently as we can,” I said. “That’s right. So we pay our respects to this creature and thank it for sustaining us.” “Thank you,” Aggie and I chimed. I had the feeling the rabbit could have cared less about our gratitude. Silently I bid it a glum apology.

The tip of his blade went to the fur of the rabbit’s throat and I knew I had made a mistake. Before I could slam my eyes shut the knife opened my throat and sliced my skin in one long swift motion to my tummy. I hit the floor hard, cut open and spilling. It felt so real,

I had always known there was something different about me,

Not long ago, not in the grand scheme of things, this forest was not small and sparse but strong and bursting with life. Lush with rowan trees, aspen, birch, juniper and oak, it stretched itself across a vast swathe of land, coloring Scotland’s now-bare hills, providing food and shelter to all manner of untamed thing. And within these roots and trunks and canopies, there ran wolves. 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.

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.

Once upon a time I took delight in feeling what others felt. Now the constant stream of sensory information exhausts me. Now I’d give anything to be cut free.

The world is a dangerous place for wolves. Most of them will be dead soon.

“They free yet?” “Not yet. But they will be.” “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.” He gazes at me, taken aback.

“The forest has a beating heart we can’t see,” Dad told us once. He lay flat on the earth and we copied him, placing our hands on the warm ground and our ears to the underbrush, listening. “It’s here, beneath us. 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.”

Your mirror-touch makes you vulnerable and on top of that you’re too kind, Inti. If you’re not careful—if you’re not vigilant—someone’s going to hurt you.

The vital predation element of the ecosystem has been missing in this land for hundreds of years, since wolves were hunted to extinction. Killing the wolves was a massive blunder on our part. Ecosystems need apex predators because they elicit dynamic ecological changes that ripple down the food chain, and these are known as ‘trophic cascades.’ With their return the landscape will change for the better—more habitats for wildlife will be created, soil health increased, flood waters reduced, carbon emissions captured. Animals of all shapes and sizes will return to these lands.”

“Deer eat tree and plant shoots so that nothing has a chance to grow. We are overrun with deer. But wolves cull that deer population, and keep it moving, which allows for natural growth of plants and vegetation, which encourages pollinating insects and smaller mammals and rodents to return, which in turn allows the return of birds of prey, and by keeping the fox population in check the wolves also allow medium-sized animals to thrive, such as badgers and beavers. Trees can grow again, creating the air we breathe. When an ecosystem is varied, it is healthy, and everything benefits from a healthy natural ecosystem.”

This world he describes, empty of wild creatures and places, overrun instead by people and their agriculture, is a dying world.

“The chance of a person getting attacked by a wolf is almost nonexistent,” Evan assures them. “This is a shy, family-oriented, gentle creature. We should never have been taught to fear them.”

“If you truly think wolves are the blood spillers, then you’re blind,” I say. “We do that. We are the people killers, the children killers. We’re the monsters.”

He also taught us that compassion was the most important thing we could learn. If someone hurt us, we needed only empathy, and forgiveness would be easy.

My mother never agreed. She had no kindred ocean of kindness inside her, no forgiveness. She had a different knowledge of what people do to each other. I shied from it. It felt rough and hard and those were not the instincts I was born with. I chose to live by my dad’s code, and it was easy until it wasn’t.

“When the wolves begin to hunt the deer, the deer will return to what deer are meant to do, they’ll start to move again. Everything underfoot will have a chance to grow. Life breathed back into the land. You’ll see your hills turn green. The shape of the earth will begin to change.” I meet her swollen eye and ignore the tingling of mine. “I’ve seen wolves change the course of rivers.”

wondered if this was what he felt all the time now, that hurt, so much that it paralyzed him. Or if it was the memory of the things he himself had torn down.

have to do our bit to slow the changing of our planet’s climate, to halt its degradation. That means reducing our impact as much as we can, living as lightly upon this Earth as we’re able. We’re not here to consume until everything’s gone—we are custodians, not owners. And if others won’t do their part in turning the tide then we must do more than our share. You know this.”

This is how the world dies, he said, with laziness.

“You must know monsters well, wolf girl.” “I’ve never met one in the wild. They don’t live there.”

I try to explain that she’s a wild creature in mourning. But the thought of a beast grieving her mate in such a confronting, almost human way is too much for most folk.

They were not trees he recognized. But he said once that forests are all of our homes, no matter where in the world,

I pressed my cheek to one of the tender, elegant trunks. Wind whispered through its naked branches and against my eyelids, my lips. A kiss. I could almost hear it breathing, could feel its heartbeat beneath and around and above me, the oldest language of all.

I want never to see another human again, I want it more than I’ve ever wanted anything. The aloneness is exquisite; it is calm.

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.

“Raising pups is a family thing for wolves. Every wolf in a pack takes on a role. They rely heavily on each other for survival.

“When wolves do this,” I say, “they do it slowly. They’re patient. They spend days following a herd and watching its deer. They pick the weaker animals. The slower ones. They watch those in particular, and they learn their traits, their personalities. They will know a deer so well by the time they attack that they can predict what will happen. They won’t waste energy. They’ll wait until they know without doubt that they can kill.”

“What about your mother?” I ask. “What was she like?” “She was kind,” he says. “That’s what I remember best. You couldn’t offend her. She cared about everyone, even if they didn’t behave well. In the face of anything, she had compassion to offer. It’s a kind of strength I think women know better than men, maybe.” “Not all women.”

It’s just that if you paint a picture of him as a monster then you make him mythical, but men who hurt women are just men. They’re all of us. Too fucking many of us and all too human. And the women they hurt aren’t passive victims, or Freud’s masochists who like to be punished either. They’re all women, and all they’re doing, minute by minute, is strategizing how best to survive the man they loved, and that’s not a thing anyone should have to do.”

I came here to get away.” “And die slowly of loneliness.” “What would be so wrong with that?” I shake my head. “You’re being dramatic. I have the wolves. I’m here to work.” “They’re more dangerous than we are.” “Are they?” I ask. “They are wilder, certainly.” “Isn’t it the same?” “I don’t think so. I think it’s civilization makes us violent. We infect each other.”

“I used to think people were good, too,” I say. “I used to think we were mostly kind, all of us forgivable.” “And now?” “Now I know better.”

this planet doesn’t belong to them,” I snap. “We aren’t entitled to it, we aren’t owed.”

“You can rely on the land and you can work it, and you can feed it and care for it at the same time. You can reduce your impact. That’s got nothing to do with money. We have a responsibility to reduce our impact. Rewilding is how we fight climate change, and everyone seems to have forgotten that that’s the only thing that matters anymore.

the table; they’re shaking. “Shouldn’t we all be? How many women have to get killed before we get angry?” My voice breaks. “Why aren’t we all angry? Why aren’t we furious,

I dream again, but this time not of monsters. Of wolves. Of running with them into the shadow of the mountain.

We stomped through the world and crumpled things where we walked, too human, not creature enough.

they were out here doing this heinous thing, hunting for the sake of it, not to survive, not to eat, only to feel power over another creature.

Many animals are capable of this, we see it time and again. I believe they are more inherently loyal than we are and that connections are built deep within, where instinct lives.

All creatures know love, Dad used to say. All creatures.

I also understand what violence does to people, what it makes us capable of,

I think he must be a good man. But nobody is only one thing.

There has to be a way to heal, and if she has not the will for it, then I will be strong enough and sure enough for her. She can have my soul in place of hers, if she needs it.

“It turned me into something I hadn’t been,” I admit. “Something I’d never imagined I could be. I wanted to kill him. I wanted it so badly. I was feral. Duncan, I—you have no idea how gentle I used to be. I believed there was magic in the space between our bodies, and now I’m just this … hard, angry thing.”

“I didn’t know … that that could happen. To a person. That they could just be snuffed out. That we have the power to undo each other.”

“Some people need wildness in their life.”

“These trees are directly descended from the Ice Age,” he says. “The first pines in Scotland arrived here around 7000 BC, and these are what remain, an unbroken evolutionary chain.”

“No such thing as trust in the wilderness,” I say softly. “It’s only people need that word.”

I wanted to end it for them but didn’t know how, knew that only they could do that, and yet I hated my position as bystander and wondered if I would regret not taking action.