How the Wolf Domesticated Herself

My mother said never go near men; they only want you for your coat. She took me close to the village where I met a man’s gaze from across his fire and recognized his hunger—and something else I couldn’t place in my youth, that I now know as hate.

My mother was wrong—they wanted more. My mate—sly, mischievous, unheeding of my warnings—became white teeth ripped from death-paled gums for a necklace, blood spilled to bind her spirit to a knife, lean meat dripping over a fire, cracked bones sucked dry of marrow and discarded in the sluggish embers at the end of the night, and finally, a coat, dappled in every color of the deep winter, stretched thin on a rack. I watched from where the tree’s shadows touched the village fields as the man gave it to his mate, who wore my love’s face over her own. It didn’t fit, but snagged and lumped oddly, the way a rabbit’s skull looked after I crushed it in my jaws.

When the hunter ventured into the forest again, I killed him. There would be no second coat, not from a wolf. I wanted to see my mate again, and so once I had eaten his steaming innards, I slipped into his skin. It fit awkwardly; I was not as precise with my teeth as he’d been with his cutting. I pawed the knife forged with my mate’s blood at his hip—my hip— and wondered if I kept it close enough, would I hear her song emanating from it? I wanted was to taste her scent again, sun-warmed and oak-heavy.

I returned to the village late at night when none might remark on my unsteady two-legged gait or the snarl in my long teeth. The woman was asleep, still wrapped in my mate. She shifted into wakefulness as I stood over her. Beneath the coat she was soft and pink like the newborn mice we ate in spring.

Gentle, she said. I didn’t know what she meant. When I said nothing, she turned away from me, curled into herself. I took the knife made from my lover’s blood and tucked it under the bedding. I wrapped around the curve of her back, dug clumsy fingers into the fur and breathed in deep. She smelled like the wolf she’d been, though I also smelled the woman inside her. She stiffened beneath my touch but didn’t shy away, and still buried against her I slept the wary half-sleep brought on by an unfamiliar place. The knife sang its wolf song beneath us.

Illuminated by the morning sun, the woman inside my mate stood on her hind legs, pacing between bed and hearth, a mortar and pestle in her arms as she grinded wheat into flour. My hackles raised at the strangeness of her scurrying. Her ears didn’t perk when she caught me watching; she stood still as prey. The eyes staring back at me were not amber. But still I wanted to pretend all was as it should be.

Hunt with me, I said. She put down her tools and followed me outside, wordless, obedient.

We were clumsy together. I knew nothing about the bow on my back and I longed to drop to my feet and run, to feel something snap between my teeth. She feared the forest and couldn’t move without stepping on every brittle twig and autumn leaf, scattering all the birds, who cried their raucous warnings to the deer and rabbits.

She did not deserve the coat she wore.

She might’ve felt the frustration I left unvoiced as another rabbit scurried away. She leaned her head against me, found the seam on my arm where my fur pushed out against the skin, and brushed her fingers down it. I wondered what she saw—or didn’t see—of her mate when she looked up at me.

I’m cold, she said. Let us return home. It wasn’t home, but I returned and sat at her table and watched her knead flour into dough. Again I slept beside her, breathing in her scent and the fading wolf smell.

Hunt with me, I insisted again the next morning.

When she followed me into the forest, I ran wild and free as she watched, that she might learn to love the forest as I did.

But it was too much. The skin became loose and fell apart around me in ribbons of shredded flesh. She watched me gather what I could. I feared that, seeing what I truly was, she would flee and I would lose the last piece of my mate with her. But she took me back and sat me by the fire in her home. With needle and thread, she sewed the skin tighter around me.

You needn’t worry about losing it, she said. And then she did the same with the fur, binding it about herself until I couldn’t see the pinkness beneath.

I stopped trying to hunt the way I used to. We walked the woods until she learned not to fear them, until she stopped hating the cold. When we returned each day to the kitchen table, she hummed a familiar song as she baked and when we laid in bed at night, the knife was silent beneath us. Eventually I put it aside, tucked into a chest of the man’s old hunting gear.

It took time to notice that we were neither wolves nor women. We’d become something unto ourselves. Spring came, and she complained about her coat shedding. When autumn drifted into winter again and there was nothing to do but wait for the snow to stop, I kissed the dimpled flesh behind her knees, the same tender place where I might have once snapped a deer’s tendon. The urge came to bite. When I did, my teeth were dull, useless. She laughed from deep in her throat.

Hunt with me, she said.

© 2022 December Cuccaro

About the Author

December Cuccaro is a south Floridian living in the high desert of Reno with her spouse, cat, and two goblinesque chihuahuas. In 2021, she received her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Nevada, Reno, and attended the Clarion West Writers Workshop. Her mini-chapbook The Price of a Feather was published by Sword & Kettle Press in 2021. She can be found talking about fantasy and fairy tales on Twitter @BespokeChaos.