Sam and The Wolf

Kids know. They know a lot. They’re born with connections—threads tied to something the rest of us forget over time. Most lose them, some slower than others. And maybe, just maybe, a few never really lose them at all.

My son Sam still has some of his. He had more when he was younger, I think. These days, they come out in the form of fantasies, stories he acts out with his toys or tells me at bedtime in a whisper. But I still remember him at two-and-a-half, just a little thing in a fire truck T-shirt, walking across the kitchen with apple juice on his chin. I was clearing the dinner table, half-listening to a podcast, when he looked up at me with those serious brown eyes and said, “Aunty Jen baby?”

It made no sense. Jen was dating someone new back then, a few months at best. They weren’t planning anything. I laughed—maybe nervously, maybe to shake off the chill I didn’t want to acknowledge—and said, “Nah, Sam. Not yet.” But I think about that moment more often than I should.

Four hours later, Jen called me crying. Shocked. “I didn’t even know until yesterday. We weren’t trying, we weren’t anything. I just... I don’t understand.” I told her I was happy for her, offered all the right words, then hung up the phone and sat in silence, staring at the wall. All I could think of was Sam’s tiny face and the way he’d said it—not asking, not guessing. Knowing.

You tell yourself kids overhear things. That they guess. That it’s a coincidence. But some moments don’t leave you. They wedge themselves deep behind your ribs, like a splinter in the bone, next to all the other things you don’t talk about—Losing his mom. Learning to parent alone.

There are days the house feels too quiet, waiting for someone who forgot to come home. 

I know Sam feels the same, and he has more of those moments. Little things. Waking up crying from dreams he couldn’t explain. Drawing circles filled with staring eyes, over and over, until the page went soft with pencil. Standing by the front door in the late afternoon glow, not playing, not talking, just watching the trees and whispering, “It’s behind the trees now, but it’s coming closer.”

Maybe that’s why he still knows things. Maybe it’s his way of holding on to her, in the places I can’t reach. I try not to feed into it. I read parenting blogs. I talk to the daycare teachers. I do what you’re supposed to do—I smile, I redirect, I chalk it all up to imagination. And yet every time, deep down, I know what I’m really doing.

I’m lying to him. And to myself. Because Sam still has his connections. Fragile threads stretching from whatever kids are born knowing to whatever it is we all forget.

They’re fading though. He’s six now, and the last two years have been quieter. He hasn’t mentioned things like that in a long time. Not until recently.

Not until he started talking about The Wolf.

I didn’t notice the shift at first, not really, even though I probably should’ve. Wolves aren’t exactly common around here. For decades, they were something out of storybooks or wilderness documentaries—kept to the deep forests and borderlands, not creeping through farmland and village outskirts. But over the last year or two, they’ve started showing up in places they don’t belong. Crossing rivers. Appearing in suburban streets. Staring into kitchen windows in the early hours, like they forgot they were supposed to be afraid of us.

Locals say they shouldn’t be here. That it’s unnatural. That it's dangerous.

To me, that always sounded a bit contradictory. Because we’re the ones who pushed them out in the first place. We took their place—cut the forests into squares, built fences and fences beyond fences, laid down roads like scars. If anything, maybe what’s unnatural is that they stayed gone for so long.

But then again, the thing Sam talks about when he says the Wolf… it doesn’t sound like something that ever left.

I spoke with the neighbors about the wolves. One had been spotted near the edge of the village, slipping through the treeline, watching. It’s the season for the young ones to start scouting—finding a territory of their own, preparing to leave the pack. A rite of passage, they said. Perfectly normal for the time of year.

He must’ve overheard. That was my first thought. The only logical one, really.

A few days later, we were walking to the grocery store, hand in hand, when Sam suddenly looked up at me and said, “I’ll keep us safe, Dad. You don’t have to worry.”

It stopped me mid-step.

“What do you mean, Sam? Safe from what?”

He gave me the same look he did that day he told me Jen was pregnant. Steady. Certain. As if he was repeating something the world had whispered into his ear while no one else was listening.

“The Wolf,” he said. “I’m stronger. I can beat him.”

It’s not the kind of bravery you use against monsters. It’s the kind that surfaces when something deeper is at stake—something soft. Something sacred. It made me smile. We do arm wrestling contests on the floor all the time. We started doing it after his mom passed. Something silly, something simple. A way to show him he’s strong, and I’m okay with showing weakness. Sometimes I’m tempted to show him what I’ve really got, to remind him. Still, when it comes down to it, I never seem to manage it. Somehow, I always lose.

In a way, maybe he is stronger.

“Sure thing,” I said, giving his hand a squeeze. “You’ll whoop his ass.”

As we walked on, he launched into his plan—how he’d stand in front of the Wolf, look it dead in the eye, growl right back and send it flying if it tried to jump at us.

“I’ll just smack him in the face,” he said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Nothing wrong with my imaginations, and for a moment I saw it: the Wolf sailing over a fence, tail between its legs, landing in a clumsy tumble before slinking off into the trees.

“That’ll teach him!” I said.

Sam lit up, eyes wide with delight. He was probably seeing the exact same thing I was. We often think alike—great minds, right?

I didn’t recognize it then, but I did that weekend.

We went to the playground, something we often do. It’s near the edge of the forest, not far from the trail where the dog walkers go. Usually, there are kids running around, their parents sitting on the benches with coffee cups and half-watched conversations. But that Saturday, it was empty.

No bikes scattered near the rack, no jackets hanging from the climbing frame. Just the wind, and the slide glinting in the sun.

As we passed the swings, Sam let go of my hand. Off to the slide, that’s always the first thing. It comes first in the little routine we’ve built together—slide, climbing wall, then the bouncy log thing that throws him off every time. When he lets go, it’s my cue to sit, watch him go, let the world unfold for him. “That’s parenting, right? Not the controlling part, but the watching. The wondering. The part his mom was always so good at.”

“All the place to yourself, Sam,” I said. “What’cha wanna do?”

He didn’t even look at me. “I think they’re scared,” he said, like it was nothing.

That made me blink. “How come?”

He turned, slid down the slide in a lazy half-spin, and said it before he hit the ground.

“The Wolf, Dad. He lives in the forest.”

“How do you know?”

“Everyone knows wolves live in the forest.”

I smiled. Fair point. There’s a certain logic to it, isn’t there? He pointed toward the trees like it was obvious.

“But Sam,” I said gently, “there are no wolves in the forest here.”

He walked back to me, eyes steady, voice low.

“No wolves,” he said, putting extra weight on the last word. “One Wolf.”

Just one fear, maybe. One thing he doesn’t want to lose. One thing he’s afraid will slip away if he stops holding so tight. He held my gaze a moment longer, then turned and climbed the ladder to the slide again, as if the conversation was finished. As if he hadn’t just said something that made the air feel thinner.

I looked toward the tree line.

They weren’t far—maybe twenty meters from the edge of the playground, old pines packed tightly together, their trunks dark and straight like bars. Usually, I’d hear the wind shifting through them, that soft rustling that fills up the silence between thoughts.

But not today.

The breeze that had been trailing around us just moments ago was gone. No rustle. No birdsong. Nothing. The branches didn’t sway. The leaves didn’t twitch. It was as if the entire forest was holding its breath.

I stared a moment longer, then gave myself a shake. It’s probably just the weather, I told myself. A passing lull in the wind. Nothing more.

Still, I didn’t sit down. I stayed standing. Watching the trees. Listening to the silence press in.

That night, I woke to the sound of the front door clicking shut.

I was on my feet before I was fully conscious, the cold floor sharp under my heels as I stumbled through the hallway. The porch light was off, but moonlight spilled across the yard—and there, past the edge of the garden, stood Sam.

Barefoot. Pajamas soaked from the dew. Facing the forest.

“Sam!”

He didn’t turn around.

I ran to him, heart hammering, expecting him to cry or startle or do something—anything—but he kept staring into the trees, into the dark.

“She’s here,” he said. 

And somehow, I knew he wasn’t lying.

The forest didn’t move. The silence was wrong again. Not empty—waiting. Something moved, it moved like her. The way it hovered, waiting. Not like a predator, not quite. Like someone afraid to be forgotten.

I knelt beside him, gripping his shoulders. “We’re going inside, right now.”

“I can’t,” he said softly. “If I go, she comes too.”

Then, finally, he looked at me—and in that moment, I saw how afraid he was. Not of the Wolf, but of what he had to do.

“I have to forget,” he whispered. “That’s how I stop her.”

“What are you talking about? Forget what?”

He raised a hand and pressed his fingers gently to his temple, then to his heart.

“The dreams. The places. The names that don’t belong here. All the things I knew before I was yours.”

He wasn’t just protecting me. He was doing what I still couldn’t. Letting go. Not because he wanted to—but because he had to, for both of us. I felt the wind return then, a whisper curling around us like smoke. The trees trembled. A shape shifted between them—nothing solid, just suggestion. Long. Low. Hungry.

“You don’t have to do anything,” I said, gripping him tighter. “You’re a kid, Sam. Just a kid.”

He smiled, remembering something beautiful one last time.

“Mom used to say I was special. But it’s okay now. I don’t have to be special anymore.”

He stepped forward. One foot. Then he whispered something I couldn’t understand, a sound that felt old and round and hollow, like a bell struck in a buried temple.

The wind howled, deep and hollow. Not rage—something sadder. Something undone.

Not out loud—inside. A sound in my bones, in my blood. The trees snapped backward like something had been pulled out of them. The air went sharp. Cold. And then it was over.

Just… gone.

Sam swayed on his feet. I caught him before he fell.

“Buddy?” I asked. “You okay?”

He blinked up at me, confused. “Dad? Why are we outside?”

He didn’t remember the dream. Or the drawings. Or the slide. Or the Wolf.

He yawned, heavy and blank.

I carried him back inside, heart full of something I couldn’t name. Grief, maybe. Or awe. Or both.

He’s been different since then. Normal. He laughs, he runs, he tells knock-knock jokes. He doesn’t wake crying anymore. He doesn’t talk about things he shouldn’t know. He’s happy. And maybe I should be too.

But sometimes, in the stillness, I miss the way he used to see her—in the trees, in the dreams, in the drawings he can’t remember.

The Wolf is gone.

And I miss her more than I should. I miss him—the version of him that still searched for her in the dark.

Maybe that makes me selfish. Maybe that just makes me human.

But I know what he gave up so we could keep going, the two of us.