The Girl who Howls with the Wolves

In the greatest depths of the human soul, lies a wild animal waiting to come out

Down by the river was an ideal example of a pastoral village. Located in the middle of a vast and beautiful meadow with the sun’s rays eternally spreading across the horizon, it was a provincial paradise. In the village, days would begin and end the same way each day. The sun would rise slowly over the horizon, its rays spreading across the fields of the meadow encircling the village. Soon, the rays would begin to move along until they gently grazed the rooftops of the homes and shops that made up the small town itself. Lastly, the sun would illuminate the town, signaling the moment the villagers would begin stirring, preparing for the day ahead.

The village was a small one, filled with the right amount of people to keep the town functioning. The people within the village lived in parallel to the sun rising and setting each day, in monotony. Men would eat porridge in the morning while their wives began to tidy up the house, but as soon as the church bell struck at eight, the village would come alive. People would then start on their daily routines such as going to the market or opening up their shops. This was life in the village every single day, people went on with their chores as if the town was a machine and the villagers were its screws and wedges.

The people in the village were no different. Everyone acted the same way, believed in the same things and everyone was expected to live a certain lifestyle. Boys were sent to school to learn the basics of reading and writing, then they would eventually turn into the heads of the households with jobs to provide for their families. Girls on the other hand, were taught how to cook, clean and sew in order for them to ultimately bear children and take the role of the doting housewife. This was the cycle the villagers lived by and it has been so through the years. But in that same village lived a girl, who was unlike any other.

This girl was no doubt different than the rest. When the girl was a child, she was climbing trees while the other girls were learning how to sew. When she was a teenager she would be running barefoot across the meadow while the others were in pursuit to find future husbands. Now, at the ripe of age twenty and just about to reach adulthood, the girl was no different than who she was growing up. The villagers called her “the peculiar one” or would assume she was ill for her divergent behavior. As she’d wildly run through the streets people would whisper about how unladylike she was or how her head was up on some cloud. If she was not running off somewhere, her nose was stuck in some book. No one could say she was unintelligent for she had an extraordinary vocabulary when one got the chance to actually speak to her, they all just found her unusual. “What a funny girl!” they would say, and not in a good way. Despite her outlandish behavior, no one could take away from her how beautiful she was. Her almond shaped eyes were light brown and her skin was fair and smooth. She had long raven colored hair that perfectly framed her face and floated in the air whenever she ran. She was a striking young woman that captivated the people around her.

The men longed after her despite her wild nature while the women despised her. They did not understand how someone could be so beautiful yet so strange. Men still sought after her, giving her gifts and trying to woo her with extravagant gestures. One man even left roses on the path she walked for a whole week. No matter how great the effort men put into trying to win her affection, she simply smiled at them and continued on being lost in her own world. It wasn’t that she did not want a husband or a mate, it was just that the men in the village tried to control her wildness, which was something she simply would not, and could not do.

It was the attention she got from the men that made the women envy her. Yes, she was beautiful but so very odd and unusual, how could anyone be attracted to someone so untamed? The elders in the village said she was too curious for her own good and predicted she would grow old without a husband, living a life of sadness and solitude.

The girl’s parents were kind and generous people. Everyone in the village knew of them as being helpful whenever they could and were welcoming to anyone they’d come across. The girl was lucky to have such parents especially with her erratic behavior. Her parents did not force her to cook, sew or clean, they simply let her be. Most of the people thought that her parents were to blame for not disciplining her enough while others thought it was brave to raise a child with such wild-like nature.

They were the only ones in the village who truly let her wildness flow. Despite her parents accepting who she was and how she behaved, they too like the villagers, had no clue where she went each day. For the girl would only be seen running out of her house early in the morning, running back before night falls, and some even swore they saw her sneak out of her window at night and run out into the dark. Nobody knew where she’d go but they all knew she left the village.

What no one knew was, she would spend her days in the deepest part of the forest past the meadow, among the wolves.

The forest was known as a place where only the brave would dare step foot in. It was used as a way to scare children from running away from their parents and from straying from the village. Only passing soldiers would dare to use the path within the forest as the villagers were too scared to even go near it, for they believed dangerous creatures lived within it, and they were right.

Wolves were known to reside in the deepest part of the forest where the largest caves were located. The caves served as their dens and the whole forest was their hunting ground. These wolves weren’t like any other wolves. They were bigger, more ferocious, faster and smarter than the average wolf. When they hunted, they did it in such a strategic matter that no prey was safe from escaping their clutches. When they ran, they did so in a single entity and they moved as one machine. These wolves were the reason the villagers were so frightened of the forest and never had the nerve to even try to step foot in it.

It all began when the girl was around seven years old when the other girls were learning how to weave baskets in the farmhouse. She did not see the importance of weaving baskets when the farmhouse was right next to the meadow where she could play. The teacher gave up on trying to get her to come inside because the girl would continue to sneak out every time she was brought back into the farmhouse.

The girl spent the whole morning running around the meadow barefoot, and playing with the dandelions that grew there. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something moving amidst the grass. Slowly, she crouched down and began to crawl towards the grey figure hiding within the lush stems. As soon as she was in front of the entity, she peeked through the greens and there she saw a tiny wolf pup staring right back at her. It looked at her with curious eyes and started to sniff her hands and at her feet. The girl was amazed at how curious and brave the wolf pup was even though she was a stranger to the creature. Yet, the wolf pup approached her with no caution whatsoever. She admired the way the pup was so comfortable with something alien to him, the opposite of how the villagers treated her who was different from the rest of them. The girl began to play with the pup, running around the meadow with wolf pup happily trailing behind her and following her every move.

When the sun began to go down, the wolf pup started to make its way back to the forest. 

The girl was still in pure bliss playing with the wolf pup, she finally found something as free and wild as she was. When she saw the wolf pup trotting back to the forest, the girl followed it despite all the stories she heard about the dangerous place. She followed the pup to the deepest part where great caves were carved into the mountains. The wolf pup entered one of the caves and before she was able to follow it inside, bright yellow eyes shone through the darkness of the cave. A large black wolf emerged out of it, growling, its teeth bare. The girl backed up slowly farther away from the cave and stopped when the enormous wolf was now in sight. Despite being afraid of the sight in front of her, the girl stood her ground, glaring back into the eyes of the wolf.

Soon, other wolves emerged out of the caves and surrounded the girl. They were all of different colors and they were huge as well, but none of them were as big as the one standing in front of her. The wolf continued to growl at her but she did not move, it barked, the girl stood still, the wolf began to move towards her, the girl stood her ground. When the wolf’s face was only inches away from hers, she began to smile, as she’s seen nothing so majestic in her life. 

The wolf’s anger turned into curiosity, was she not afraid? The girl was surrounded by dozens of enormous wolves that could tear her to pieces in just minutes but here she was, standing in front of him, the alpha, with only curiosity burning in her eyes.

The wolf sat down in front of her and just stared at her. The girl thought about the bravery of the wolf pup, how curious he was when he first approached her. With caution the girl raised her hand, and slowly, placed it on the wolf's face. The wolf started to growl once more, but soon stopped as he sensed something familiar with the girl he has never seen within any human before. Her touch soothed him, he felt a sort of warmth with her palm. He was not used to this feeling since humans were known to hunt wolves or be afraid of them. This girl was brave and he saw something in her that he saw within other wolves, she was wild. The wolf saw within her what the villagers found strange about her, and the girl saw in the wolf the familiarity of how she lived her life, by instinct.

The girl did not fit well with the villagers because she thought they were not truly themselves by living a monotonous life of continuously molding who they were to appease a certain social construct. She made her decisions with what felt good, with what her heart told her to do and that’s what she saw among the wolves. A pure instinctual behavior where they lived by what was deep in their soul.

After her first meeting with the pack, the girl continued to visit the forest every day and spent her days amongst the wolves. She ran with them, howled with them and spent most of her time with them. As the wolves ran in harmony with one another around the forest she did too, as they howled at the moon every night she did too. This let her set her soul free, showing what it was to be a woman entwined with her wild-like nature. 

Those who were too busy trying to be someone they were not to conform to society were not being whom they truly were deep down in their souls. It was her instinctual behavior and wildness that made her so striking and what attracted people towards her. The women in the village did not know or understand how men could be drawn to someone so untamed, but it was her wildness and her instinctual being that they were so drawn to.

As she ran and lived among the wolves, she felt as if she was letting her soul run free as well. She was living to the core of who she was, because she believed that inside every human being, there was a wild animal screaming to get out.

Author's Note

My first short story I've ever written! please leave comments and suggestions, still thinking if I should pursue writing or not.

Inspired by Clarissa Pinkola Estés' “Women Who Run With the Wolves

Reviews

[Maria]

I loved it. I was actually wondering if the wolves would find a way to communicate with her, yet it seems she was taken as part of the pack, and allowed to be amongst them. This was very captivating, and reminded me of of the Jungle Book as well. With the exception being that in your story we have a girl in the midst of wolves vs a boy.
Very well done, and I was wondering if she would somehow find a mate, maybe not from her village perhaps from somewhere else, that would also possess the same wild spirit as she.