The Huntsman and the Wolf

I sometimes wonder why the Wolf howls to the night sky. It seems a foolish act, warning those around him of his nearness, as if he were shouting, “Here I am! Here I am!”. For a silent predator, a creature of quietness, it was uncharacteristic of him to say the least. It was as if for brief moments in the star-lit gloom, a madness would come over him, and he would howl, filled with longing and hopes, with worn-out memories.
A faerie then told me, one day, when I inquired about this strange state of affairs. She was the only one who would speak of it, for though she knew of Wolf’s sadness, she bore no affection for Wolf, and thus did not keep the same unspoken vow of silence that the other animals bore.
It begins thusly:
It was through Fox that Wolf met the Huntsman. Fox had long since been friends with the Huntsman, (having previously made an arrangement with him concerning chickens and trails), and had encouraged Wolf to meet him, to benefit too from knowing a Human. Wolf, being his usual self, had been wary and paranoid, reluctant to meet one who walked so close to the edge of cruelty. Sure enough, when they first met, the Huntsman was skinning a deer he had taken down. The naked carcass filled Wolf with unease. He growled.
“I see before me a killer, not a Huntsman, Fox. This is foolish.”
The Huntsman looked up, offended. Then, pausing for a moment, he smiled.
“Oh? The Wolf calls me a killer? With claws that sharp and teeth that eager? We are the same, Wolf, you and I. The same, but in different bodies.”
Considering this, Wolf too began to smile, for he realized the folly of his own prejudice, his own thoughts.
“True. Tell me, Huntsman, tell me of how you hunt.”
And so it was that the Wolf and the Huntsman sat down, human and beast, beside the warm fireplace of a wooden hut, and talked away the hours of hunting and slaying, the joy and the thrill of their lives. There began a strong friendship, a closeness that could only be bred through affinity.
And all the while, Fox sat by, astonished by the burgeoning friendship, and a little jealous, for she was not the same as Wolf, though she wanted to be, and it shamed her for Huntsman to have found such a closeness with him instead.
Many months passed, and the friendship of the Huntsman and Wolf became the talk of the forest. It was met mostly with disapproval, for Wolf would hunt with the Huntsman, and slowly he began to interact less and less with the other animals.
Then, one day, Wolf stumbled across the Huntsman’s trophy room. In a neat row, there stood, stuffed, three hounds. That was when Wolf knew, he was not the first such friend of the Huntsman, and he was sad indeed. He confronted the Huntsman, that night, growled at what he saw was betrayal, was deception.
Wolf went far away from the Huntsman, and they both ignored each other for days at end. But their loneliness, their silent war ate away at each other, and before long, they met once again, in the forest.
Wolf shook his head at his foolishness, not for being angry at the Huntsman, but instead at what he was about to say.
“I don’t care anymore. Even if you had a hundred hounds before me. I still want to hunt with you. Even if you will leave me, kill me, stuff me.”
“Wolf… the hounds. They attacked me, one night. They thought I was going to leave them. I did what I had to.”
And there, their friendship once again bloomed, but both Wolf and the Huntsman knew - something was wrong. This couldn’t last.
For slowly, Wolf was growing distant from the forest, and all the creatures knew it was the Huntsman that caused him to do so. And none despaired at this more than Fox, Wolf’s best friend. She grew sick with worry, green with jealousy, until her fur began to shrivel and fall and she paced about the forest, unable to tell Wolf her true feelings. But Wolf knew.
And the Huntsman too faced difficulties. For the village knew of his strange friendship with Wolf, and shook their heads at it, warning their children away from his hut. It became cold and lonely, save for the presence of Wolf at its fireplace.
So they met, one last time, amidst the forest. And there, they knew that they would not part on good terms, for that would not be the right parting to have. It was painful. But it was necessary.
And that is why, every once in a while, Wolf howls to the night sky. It is so that some distance away, the Huntsman, sitting at his hut amongst the village children, could look up and know, somewhere, far away, Wolf was crying. “Here I am! Here I am!”.