Once upon a time, there was a hunter who lived in a village of two dozen men and women.The village was nestled between two towering, jagged mountains—one called Bear, the other, Wolf.
That was all the boy would later remember of his home.
The hunter had a beautiful family: his wife, a young woman with striking green eyes and jet-black hair, and his son—whose appearance he would also forget in time.
One day, when the boy reached the age of earning a name—ten years old—his father promised to take him hunting the next morning. The only way to receive his name was by hunting a fawn, so the boy spent the entire day eagerly preparing, practicing with his bow and spear. But when dawn arrived, a relentless rain poured down, so heavy that neither the mountains nor the village stream were visible beyond the tipi. Worst of all, after a thunderous lightning strike sent a deafening roar through his ears, a fever overtook him.
By the end of the day, the boy was vomiting things that should never leave a body.
His mother wanted to call for the shaman, but at first, his father refused—for there were few things the man loved more than his pride and the hunt, and one of them was his son.
The storm was still raging when the shaman arrived, just before nightfall. The boy had always been afraid of that woman—short and skeletal, dressed in furs embroidered with red, blue, and yellow threads. A necklace of teeth hung from her neck, and her eyes were white as milk. They can see another world, the boy would later understand.
The shaman knelt beside him and placed a hand on his forehead.
"Heal him," the hunter commanded with authority.
The old woman clicked her tongue.
"What the gods do not wish to be healed cannot be fixed."
The veins on the hunter's face bulged.
"No god would let an innocent child die. You only say this to spite me."
The old woman sighed. From the enormous sleeves covering her left arm, she pulled out a needle. From the right, a small vial of water. She pricked the boy's right thumb, letting a single drop of blood fall into the vial.
Though feverish and barely able to see, for a fleeting moment, the boy thought he saw his blood move within the water. Later, he would remember not just seeing it shift but dance—taking the shape of an animal.
"What does your magic say, witch?" his father demanded, stepping forward and unintentionally dragging his wife along—she clung to his arm with desperate strength.
The shaman gave him a quick glance and hastily tucked the vial away.
"It says what it must say," she replied. "There are tongues men cannot understand. Had you listened, none of this would have happened."
"Lies!" the hunter roared. "This is not my fault! I cannot speak the language of beasts to understand them!"
"One does not need to speak the language of beasts to understand them." The shaman stood and pointed a finger at him. "Within each of us is woven a code that tells us what is right and what is wrong." She narrowed her eyes. "You have broken that code. You have hunted recklessly, left and right. I warned you, oh, I warned you, hunter, that the gods would punish you if you continued down this path. You have shattered the balance!"
The hunter tore free from his wife's grasp and seized the shaman by the throat.
"Save him!" His face turned red—red as the evening sun—while his wife pleaded for him to let her go, saying this would accomplish nothing. "Use your magic and save him! Or I—"
"Or what?" the shaman rasped, her voice like a sparrow's song.
Then, his father released her and collapsed to his knees.
"You have to save him... please. Beg the gods to spare him."
With eerie grace—despite being an old woman who had just been throttled by a man built like an oak—the shaman straightened herself.
"The will of the gods," she said, "is not always understood. Not even by me. But know this, hunter—you have received what you deserve."
At that very moment, the shaman walked out of the tipi, out of the village, and out of their lives.
There was much weeping, especially from the boy's mother. There were arguments too, but by then, the boy was too weak to understand them.
If he had one final memory, it was of Darkness.
It was difficult to describe, but you would know it if you imagined staring into the mouth of a tunnel—one so long and winding that no light could be seen at the other end. Suddenly, without a defined threshold, the boy vanished entirely into a void—uniform and absolute, like the edge of a moonless, starless night.
And it all would have ended there...
There was a rumble. Like thunder striking the earth. And there was a melody—deep yet light, like a song carried by the sea. In that moment, the boy was like a ghost in the night, seeing a stormy sky beneath his feet and a starry sky above his head. At the same time, he realized the melody was actually voices, singing in a language he did not know, coming from the four directions.
As the voices reached their peak, a great light descended from above, engulfing his spectral form.
When the boy awoke, the rain had subsided. The air was thick with the fresh scent of damp earth, but there was something else—something trembling, vibrating, hanging in the air like an invisible echo. He couldn't describe it in human words, but he knew at once it came from the skittish squirrels watching him from the treetops. He tried to rise, but his body responded in a strange way. Where once there had been two feet, now there were four strong, agile legs. A shiver ran down his spine as he felt the weight of a tail swaying with his movements.
Disoriented, he wobbled toward a puddle.
In the rippling surface, a beast stared back at him. A creature with brown fur, pointed ears, and green eyes that gleamed like emeralds beneath a clearing sky.
He had only one thought:
At that moment, he was no longer a child of men—he was a child of wolves.