the villagers called the boy vlček, or “little wolf.” He had a long, lupine face, a cloud of white hair like a mane about his head, and the guttural growls and snarls of a cornered animal. It was hard to say how old the wolf-child was; he was small, no more than the size of the baker’s youngest, Karolína, who was three. The priest thought the boy might be older, for he was as agile as a cat, and more cunning besides.
It was a long time before anyone could come close enough to the child to bathe and tend to his wounds. A long gash ran across his chest and over his heart, inflamed and infected. The priest was afraid the cut would turn septic, but no one could approach the boy without risking a few fingers and toes. The priest himself wore a bandage and poultice about his forearm where the vlček had torn out a large chunk with his teeth.
Only Mahieu, another orphan of the Great Winter several seasons past and himself a ward of the church, was able to tame the wolf-child.
Faithful Mahieu, the villagers called him. The youth was good and kind, a lover of growing things and the wild things in the woods. Touched by God, the priest proclaimed. Mahieu could coax even the flowers to bloom in the snow. Little by little, like a shepherd with a recalcitrant flock, the youth called the boy out of the wolf. He taught the child the rudiments of being human, cleanliness, of posture, of manners, of clothing. The process was long and slow, the vlček eventually learned to use his fingers instead of claws, wear cotton instead of fur, and eat cooked meat instead of raw. When it came time for the boy to be christened, he did not struggle or resist the dunking of his head in the baptismal font. He was given the name Kašpar by the priest, recorded in the church register along with the note Given to us by the Lord and delivered from the wild and the woods.
The taming was complete, but for one small matter.
The vlček did not speak, nor did he respond to his name.
It was not that the boy lacked intelligence, even beyond the animal cunning of his wolf kin. He was quick and clever, solving the puzzles and riddles set for him by the priest, following orders, obediently cleaning the small cell in the church he had been given. He was of the age to be taught the alchemy of language and written speech in the local grammar school, and learned his letters competently alongside the other children of the village.
The boy was not dumb. When given leave to explore the village and the edges of the forest beyond, the townsfolk overheard whispered conversations between the vlček and the trees, between the boy and the beasts. It was a tongue half remembered by babies and babblers, a curious murmur and chatter understood only by the innocent, the mad, and Mahieu. What was he whispering? they wondered. It sounded like eldritch spells.
Father, Father, they entreated the priest. There is something wrong with the child.
The good Father tried his best to appease his flock but fear, the priest would come to know, was greater than faith.
The boy’s silence was no longer regarded a symptom of a shy, retiring nature; it was the stubbornness of animal cunning. More and more, the villagers became convinced that the vlček could speak but wouldn’t; it was in the way those mismatched eyes watched everything and everyone around them. The vlček thinks, they would say to one another in the market place. He schemes. He spies.
What secrets do the voiceless keep? Only their own. But the townsfolk were afraid of what the vlček knew. The butcher and his mistress, two years younger than his own daughter. The blacksmith’s wife and her stash of stolen sweets, eaten on Lenten Sundays when the pious fasted. The goatherd and the baker, their hearts and lips still warm with the scent of each other’s breaths.
On the day the old year died, the butcher’s mistress was found dead in her bed.
There had been no mark upon her: no gash, no wound, no bruise. She was found blue and glassy, as though winter had turned her to ice from within.
Elf-struck! the villagers cried. The goblins have preyed upon Ludmila in her sleep!
The cold deepened, and with it came other deaths, other betrayals. Jakub the goatherd’s flock went astray, the blacksmith’s tongs turned brittle and broke, and the villagers came to understand that there was something deeply broken with the balance of the world.
It was because they had brought a monster into their midst. Who was the vlček? Where had he come from? Stories and rumors began to spread from house to house, tales of a kobold with mismatched eyes that stole trinkets and totems to do its owners mischief and harm.
Could it be, could it be? the townsfolk whispered.
But the vlček remained blameless, separate, distant. He went about his day, silent and sure-footed, a ghost among the living.
Then Karolína, the baker’s youngest, became possessed of a demon.
It began with biting pains on her hands and feet. The poor child cried that a wolf was devouring her limbs in her sleep, and she awoke with red, weeping sores and deep, suppurating wounds. Goblin bites, the villagers said, and they sent for the priest for an exorcism.
He came with incense, he came with holy water, and he came with two companions: the vlček and Mahieu. But when the wolf-child approached the sickbed, Karolína screamed as though she were being burned at the stake.
It was a sign.
It’s him, it’s him! the villagers cried. He’s the one!
The priest and the villagers began to crowd around the boy, who snarled and dropped to all fours, for he had not yet learned to suffer another’s touch. They came with kettles, they came with pans, and the men outside went in search of pitchforks and shovels, as the cornered vlček lashed and kicked out in fear.
It was Mahieu who betrayed them all.
Run, Kašpar! he yelled, leaping forward to shield the villagers from the wolf-child’s snapping white teeth and rolling, panicked eyes. The boy startled at the youth, his one and only friend, then ran, tearing through the crowd before disappearing into the dark beyond.
Torches sprang to life, voices were raised in eager shouts, as the fever of the hunt spread through the town like a plague, like a wildfire. While little Karolína wailed on in pain and fear, her mother and father, the priest and the mayor, the butcher and blacksmith gathered their tools as weapons and went in search of the wolf-boy.
Kill him, kill him! they chanted. De-mon! De-mon!
Mahieu knew where the vlček would go, and did not follow the others into the night. Instead he ran toward the church, toward the cemetery, toward the crypts, where a lost little boy might hide in the dark with the dead, the only humans who never asked him to speak.
Inside, Mahieu found the wolf-child hunched amidst a pile of rags, a collection of odds and ends and secrets stolen from the villagers. A little blue glass vial, the shards of a shattered sword, a goatherd’s bell, last seen draped about the neck of Jakub’s prize billy.
“Oh, Kašpar,” Mahieu said.
The vlček looked at him, stubbornness writ in his gaze. He knew Mahieu was calling him, but refused to respond.
“Kašpar,” Mahieu repeated, fighting against the panic rising with him. “Please. We must flee.”
The wolf-child growled.
Faithful Mahieu, blessed by God to commune with bird and beast, could not find the words to reach this boy, half wild, half tame.
“I know it is not your name,” he whispered to the vlček. “But until you give it to me, I cannot call you home.”
Whether or it was the kindness or plea that undid the wolf-child, Mahieu did not know, but the vlček dropped his treasures and began to weep. The boy had endured much since he emerged from the beast’s lair, kicking and spitting, had learned how to eat and dress and walk, but what he had never done was cry. The shine of tears had turned his mismatched eyes brilliant, and their glittering beauty stole Mahieu’s breath away.
“Come,” he whispered. “Come, we must flee.”
He held out his hand to the vlček, who stared at the outstretched palm with neither suspicion nor fear on his face. The wolf-boy held Mahieu’s gaze, and for a moment, eternity and a question stretched between them.
“Yes,” the vlček said. “Yes.”
His voice was rough and hoarse, his tongue thick and unused. But it was words, real words, more words than anyone had ever heard him say. The vlček grasped Faithful Mahieu’s hand, and the two of them ran into the forest, into the beyond, and the unknown.