Wolf Mother, by Shantell Powell

Sarah Jackson -

Content warnings

Pregnancy and birth.

Long lean legs, a tongue dripping with hot saliva, tail held arrow straight. The timber wolf stands at the edge of the trees almost, but not quite, hidden from me by the penumbral pines. She is grey, white, and black, the colours of snow in shadows, her legs planted as firmly as the trees behind her. She pants, but not from the heat. Blood speckles her muzzle, and from just inside the treeline slides a whine of pain.

Her pack stalked a moose, but the hunt did not go well. A moose is a fearsome adversary. This bull won the battle.

The wolf watches me warily. She’s accustomed to the sight of people. We are everywhere. Townships expand as forests contract. She watches me, and I can’t help but wonder if she wants to trade places. Would she prefer living in a little cottage, eating cake and sipping wine, to living on the edge, hunting diminishing stocks of prey? Would she rather have a doting granddaughter than a mate with ribs crushed by the mighty kick of a bull moose?

I dip my head to her and her ears perk. Recognition? Have we made contact? I close my eyes, inhale deeply, and howl up to the moon, and a moment later, I hear her answering cry. In this sacred moment, we share the Hunter’s Moon.

When I collapse to the ground, she is gone. I don’t know where she went. Maybe to lick the wounds of her mate. I get up and lope through the forest. Long, straight trees bite into the sky. Pine needles cushion the impact of my feet as I move in silence. I smell the smoke of chimneys, northern wildfires, the exhaust from cars. I hear the constant drone of the highway intersecting the forest.

People get lost here all the time. The lodgepole pines in this dense stand are all of a size and evenly spaced, but I never lose my way. Scattered underbrush and boles of trees are community bulletin boards. Low below identical boughs, scent marks gleam bright as the glowing moon. Scat and scuff speak of oestrus and food caches. Pheromone-rich urine marks territory and game trails. I follow my nose all the way home then leap through the kitchen window, knocking over dishes, pots, pans. My feet skid out from beneath me on the smooth tile floor. I sprawl there for a moment, panting in exertion.

I get up, a tak-tik-tak of claws on tile, and pad my way into the bedroom. I stick my nose under the covers and climb into bed. My granddaughter will be here soon, and I want to teach her about our connection to nature. The words of transformation. She doesn’t know of the power she holds. I will show it to her.

There are fewer of us now. Wolves are vilified by the city people, the ranchers, the government. Reports fill reams of paper produced by the destruction of the trees, the shrinking of the ecosystems, the pulping of cellulose a wholesale slaughter of the natural world. Instead of orangey-red pine needles softening the ground, holding in the moisture, instead of trees purifying the air, we have asphalt and concrete, flooded by unimpeded rains, no roots to hold the water in the soil. The sun’s heat is magnified by this world of glass and metal and clouds of exhaust. These days, the huntsmen ride in helicopters, chasing down the last packs of wolves. The wolves are dropped by strafing gunfire or they run themselves to death. The government says these are conservation methods. Only by getting rid of the wolves can we save the caribou. But no mention is ever made of the towering concrete dams which flood the habitat and fill the vanishing fish with mercury. No mention is made of the mining operations poisoning water and land. No mention is made of fracking quaking the earth, or of towering plumes of methane darkening the sky. The official statement: the loss of caribou isn’t the fault of industry. It’s the fault of wolves.

When my granddaughter arrives, she lets herself in with the key hidden beneath the geranium pot. She always comes here after school. My ears twitch to hear the click of the lock and the squeak of the door. Her hair smells of chamomile. A moment of silence, and I hear her exclaim at the mess in the kitchen.

“Nana?” she calls.

I forget for a moment that I can no longer form human words. I whine, and hear the thump of her book bag hit the floor before she enters my bedroom. The curtains are closed, and it is cool and dark. She comes over to my bed in her favourite red hoodie, and before she has a chance to be frightened, I open my jaws wide and swallow her whole.

I feel her inside me. She tastes of confusion and alarm. I speak from my gut. Do not fear, child. You are safe within my belly.

But she does fear. Not because she is within me, but because I grow old, and she doesn’t want to lose me. She’s brought me fresh apples and homemade cookies. A mask for the days when the smoke is bad.

Our thoughts braid like sweetgrass. Anime and an online dance craze, the shy glance of a dark-eyed boy named Toby, a pretty orange bird on the way here, the wolf at the edge of the trees, the sharp scent of sap, the words of transformation, the prickle of pine needles on paws, the beginning and end and cycle of all things.

This is the crucible of change, child. You will learn what it is to be one with our plant and animal relations, to feel the roots of trees stretching their ways deep into the earth’s crust, to experience the fungal bloom in the predawn hours, when the birds have not yet begun their song. We live upon the souls of the ones who breathe. Their life is our life. We eat them, they eat us, and this collection of deaths go on to create more life. Today we do not have that equilibrium. Our animal relations die in far greater numbers than our human ones.

Her alarm quells. She is soothed by my inner voice, by the juices in my belly. She is broken down into mush in the cocoon of my stomach. She is broken down and reforming. I have faith in her resilience.

My hairy body is swollen with this child within me. Milk drips from my swollen dugs. Birth is rarely easy for humans. Transformation is painful. I brace for the familiar agony of childbirth, but this wolf birth is much easier than when I pushed out her mother. Human heads are large, and pelvises must separate, flesh must rend to allow egress. I am grateful when my wolf pup granddaughter slides out of me headfirst. I lick her clean, devouring the caul and placenta. Her eyes are tightly closed.

What small eyes you have. I can’t wait until they open wide and see the beauty of a world we can save together.

Author’s note

“Wolf Mother” first appeared in Augur Magazine issue 6.2 and was nominated for an Aurora Award. It began in a fairytale workshop hosted by Saraswathi Sukumar. It was inspired by the author's hunting/foraging experiences in the Rocky Mountains during her tween years.

Shantell Powell

Shantell Powell is a Pushcart-nominated swamp hag raised on the land and off the grid. A graduate of the Writers’ Studio at SFU, her writing is in The Deadlands, SolarPunk Magazine, MetaStellar, and more. She writes, wrangles chinchillas, and gets filthy in the woods.