By Irene Kappes

Long ago there lived a small boy. Every night a wolf came to his door and every night the small boy would leave his house in the woods and spend until dawn running with the wolves. He would hunt with them and take his share of the kill. At the first sign of the sun peeping over the horizon, the wolf would accompany him back to his home and he would sleep until the sun had risen high in the sky. Each day he would eat his mother’s porridge, help his father chopping wood and do his lessons on his slate. Then he would climb the stairs of the old cottage, lie in his bed and wait for the wolf.

Then one night, when he was twelve years old, the wolf came and said, “You will not run with us tonight. You are twelve years old and it is time for you to choose. Will you be wolf or man? To be a wolf you must leave your parents’ house and live with the pack. You must never return. To be a man, you must stay with your parents and never run with us again. Wolf and man cannot live together. I will return on the third night. You must make your decision.”

The boy was overwhelmed. He loved his parents and could not imagine leaving them. But he also loved the wolves; they were part of him. For two nights he stayed awake, watching the stars from his window, listening to the wolves howling in the distance. His limbs ached with the desire to run and his heart ached with the decision he must make. What if he refused to decide? Perhaps he could put the decision off, for a while at least? But he knew that by doing so he would be abandoned by the wolves. He must choose. But how?

On the third night, the boy stayed awake as usual. When he heard the wolf below, he descended the stairs and opened the door.

“What have you decided?” asked the wolf.

The boy replied, “You have presented me with a choice, but you know it is impossible for me to choose either way. I can no more leave my parents than I can abandon the pack. And so I have made my own decision. From now on this is how it will be. I shall stay with my parents and be a dutiful son, but once every month, when the moon is full in the sky, I shall seek out the pack and run with you. I will run swiftly and kill ferociously. I will become completely wolf and no human thought or feeling shall enter my head. Then, when the sun rises, I will return to my house and become a man again. Every sign of my wolfness will disappear until the next full moon. This is how it will be.”

The wolf could see that the boy was not to be moved.

“Very well,” he said, “but you have placed a curse upon your own head and now you must live with it. As a wolf, you may have to kill men, or be killed by other wolves. As a man, you will be no friend of wolves. You will suffer greatly. But I can see your decision is made. So be it.”

Then the boy closed his front door and they ran like the wind together towards the woods and the waiting pack.

And so, the years passed and the boy became a young man. He ran with the wolves every full moon and nothing passed that caused any great disturbance to his life. From time to time he was required as a wolf to attack a man, but this he did without remorse or guilt or any other human feeling. And occasionally a wolf would be hunted and shot, but as a wolf he responded only with a desire to safeguard the pack and its territory. As a man, he felt sorry when he saw the dumb beast slain and carried away for a trophy. And as a man, he felt guilt when he watched the widow and her children mourning their loss at the churchyard. But still he continued to pass from one form of existence to another, his former feelings forgotten as soon as he ran wild and free under the full moon.

Then, one day, when he had reached his sixteenth birthday and the moon was in its first quarter, he went out into the woods to help his father fell some new trees to swell the woodpile. He was by now tall and strong and handsome, and more than one girl had begun to look at him with longing in her eyes.

He and his father chopped wood all day and, just as the sun was beginning to set, they packed the newly hewn timber on their cart, slung their shotguns over their shoulders and prepared to set off for home.

Suddenly, there appeared in the shadows of the trees a pair of glistening eyes. The father stopped and quickly reached for his shotgun, but all at once the son was filled with fear for the wolf. He grabbed his father by the arm and shouted, “No! It will not harm us!” The wolf bared its teeth, but then turned and ran swiftly into the trees, disappearing as fast as it had come. The young man was relieved; the father was amazed.

On the way home, they were silent, both deep in their own thoughts. But eventually the father looked at his son and asked, “Son, how did you know the wolf would not harm us? And why would you not let me shoot it? Now it will live to terrorise another family and kill another husband or son.”

The young man replied, “Wolves do not attack unless they are hungry father and this wolf was not hungry. It had eaten its fill two nights ago.”

“But still,” the father insisted, “you did wrong. You let the wolf go free. No good will come of it. Never do this again.”

“No father,” said the son.

When the next full moon arrived, the wolves looked at the young man strangely, with distrust in their eyes. He was aware that he had broken some unspoken rule. On their way back to his house at dawn the wolf that always accompanied him asked, “Why did you not let your father shoot the wolf who disturbed you in the woods?”

The young man responded, “I knew he would not attack us and I felt sorry that he should die for no reason.”

The old wolf replied, “You did wrong. Your allegiances are divided; your worlds cannot be kept separate as you imagined. No good will come of this.” The young man went to bed that night much disturbed by all that had happened. 

Eventually the incident faded and life continued much the same, although he could see that the wolves treated him differently now. The young man went less frequently into the woods with his father, finding more and more excuses to relieve himself of the woodcutting duty. He began to think of building his own small cottage for himself and the young woman with whom he had fallen in love.

Then, one day he was walking in the fields with the young woman by his side, when they came across a sheep’s carcass lying stiff in the grass. He could see immediately that the animal had been savaged by wolves. The young woman became fearful.

“I did not think the wolves came this far,” she said.

The young man assured her that they were safe because no wolf would venture this far during the day. But as he spoke, he noticed that they had stayed too long on their walk and the sun was already beginning to set large and red on the horizon. And on the other side of the sky, the full moon could be seen faintly rising.

The young man panicked and began to run, dragging the girl behind him. “We must return before it is dark,” he cried. But his efforts were in vain. By the time they had reached the edge of the woods they needed to go through, the sun had disappeared completely and the moon was shining bright and full to light their way instead.

At a clearing the wolves were waiting. The old wolf stepped forward. He said to the young man, “Now you must pay for your foolishness. Now you will understand that you must finally choose. Are you wolf or man? This time there will be no putting off, no compromise. Are you man or wolf?”

The young man turned to the girl. He adored her. He loved her with all his human heart. And he knew he could save her. And yet it was not enough.

“I am sorry,” he said and he made his choice. 

© Irene Kappes, 2020. All rights reserved