The Wolf

Illustration: Ansellia Kulikku.

I can’t remember the first day Wolf arrived. He was always there, lurking on the sidelines. Of course, later, he became many things to me, and tooth, and fur, and pain. But to begin with he was just Wolf—ferocious, hairy, and something to be feared.

It was my father who first told me about him. I learned the same way most children did, in the evenings just after dinnertime when I was freshly warm and pink and soft after a bath. My father would have begun, Once upon a time, and there Wolf would appear, walking along the path to ask that young girl in the forest where she was going on such a fine day. First impressions last, and in that story he wasn’t to be trusted.

When he appeared later, dutifully raising a small boy in the Indian jungles, I was suspicious. And although my father said it was okay and smoothed my brow, I had already been taught to distrust him, and so I always watched his movements in the background of the story.

Wolf remained like that for many years, a blur of meat and bones on the periphery. Something to be aware of, but mainly forgotten as our lives ticked on.

But he watched my father and me.

He stalked the suburbs as my father taught me to whistle and spit on the concrete. He lurked in playgrounds while I whispered secrets in my father’s ear and we played one-two-one hopscotch together.

“But it’s true, you know,” my father would say. “There have been cases where a wolf really has raised a child.”

“No,” I would say, that bit older and that bit more skeptical. “It’s a story.”

“That may be, but there was a curious incident in India where a girl, Kamala, was found in the forests. She spoke no language that we use. She only knew snarls and groans. Her elbows were rough, and patches