WILD - A Short Story

The feral child stares back at me from the darkest corner of the room. 

She crouches on a nest of scattered straw, strewn with rabbit bones. Her ebony hair is a wild tangle of mats and curls, with fragments of moss and tangleweed entwined. The child’s skin is dark with dirt, and she is etched with scratches and scars. Her body is thin, sinew on top of bone, but she looks strong. She has wide, angry eyes; and their colour is remarkable, irises so dark they are almost black, but flecked with gold and red. They seem to glow like the embers of a fire. She shifts her position, drawing back into the shadows away from my gaze. Her sharp claws scrape on the wooden floor. 

I am distressed at her condition and the way they are keeping her. Shackles and chains look barbaric on a child, but I am assured it is necessary. I have had instructions not to get too close, even though she is chained. Her keepers have drawn a line on the floor in chalk, so that I know how far she can venture. I’m warned that she will attack at random and with the most tremendous strength, biting and scratching with primitive ferocity.

I sit in an old, high backed chair at the far end of the room, where all the furniture has been pushed back out of the girl’s reach. There is a small table to the right of me, and a window in the middle of the wall to the left. Outside, snow is drifting down silently. A fire crackles in the corner behind me.

I’ve waited a long time for my turn to see this child. Word of her existence has enraptured all those who study the human mind. Thirteen months have passed since they found her, throttled and unconscious in a snare meant for wolves. Since then, almost fifty other doctors have sat in this chair and watched her. I had feared she might be tamed by the time I got here, but I needn’t have worried. The child is as wild as when they first caught her. Her aggression has worsened with each new visitor, and that is why I am here. They think that, being a woman, I may perhaps be met with less hostility. 

Despite the danger I have grasped the opportunity with both hands. In a world dominated by men, I am one of the first women to study psychology. And I am determined to prove myself. I have been given the child’s paperwork to read through. It contains all of the girl’s medical notes and observations. I open the file and leaf through the pages. 

6th October 1899 - The date of her finding. Two hunters had found her deep in the woodlands, unconscious and tangled in one of their snares. They removed the wire from the girl’s neck, and set about taking her to a nearby doctor. But she had awoken in the carriage and flown into a rage. One of the hunters had lost a finger, bitten clean off. They managed to bind her with rope, screaming and gnashing, and delivered her to the hospital. The hospital refused entry and so she came here, to High Ridge Mental Asylum.

Police can find no reports, recently nor in the past years, that document the disappearance of a girl that would fit her description. She seems to have appeared from nowhere. 

She’s believed to be about sixteen years old. Her teeth are healthy but she has unusually long canines. Her nails are long and sharpened. Her posture and movement is strange. She is animalistic in almost every aspect. The girl is immensely strong and they recommend no less than three men be present in order to handle her in any way. They have been unable to bathe her, and she rips clothing from her body the moment it is put on. She refuses to eat anything other than raw meat. She cannot talk, except in snarls and hisses. Her weight was healthy on arrival but has decreased steadily since she was brought here. 

Due to her violent outbursts, attempts at rehabilitation have been halted. Bloodletting and cold water therapy has only served to increase the aggression. She has hospitalised three nurses so far and seriously disfigured a doctor. 

The next step in her treatment will be a frontal lobe lobotomy. 

The last lines shock me somewhat, and as I turn the pages I fumble, and the heavy paperwork slides off my knees and onto the floor with a thud. The child presses her back to the wall and bares her teeth at me. 

“I’m sorry about that.” I apologize. 

She growls deep in her throat upon hearing my voice, and I am not surprised, given the treatment she has received here. I gather the papers together and arrange them again within the file, before placing it at the foot of the chair. All the time she is watching me. 

I have no real plan for my observations today. I don’t expect that the girl will accept me so easily on our first meeting. So I have brought a book with me to read to her, in the hope to habituate her to my voice and eventually gain her trust. She tilts her head as I rummage in my bag for it. 

“The Jungle Book.” I say the title out loud and hold up the book for her to see. 

The cover is a deep blue colour, with a gilded gold elephant that shimmers. For a moment 

her scowl lifts and she seems almost curious. I open it, smooth out the pages, clear my throat, and begin to read in the most soothing voice I can muster. 

“Now Rann the Kite brings home the night

That Mang the Bat sets free,

The herds are shut in byre and hut

For loosed till dawn are we.

This is the hour of pride and power,

Talon and tush and claw.

Oh, hear the call! Good hunting all

That keep the Jungle Law.”

I look up and notice that the girl has shuffled a little closer, which makes me feel pleased and yet terribly uneasy at the same time. I continue to read and the girl listens. I wonder whether she understands anything of what I say. I turn the book to face her, to show her one of the drawings, and she leaps backwards and growls at me. 

“Pictures.” I say to her gently. “Come, look.”

Gradually her wary gaze shifts from me and settles on the pages, where she notices the picture of the wolves. Her eyes soften and she crawls closer for a better look. Her chains scrape on the ground. 

“Wolves,” I say, pointing to the picture. “Wolves.” 

The girl stares at the picture for a long time, which gives me time to make a few notes. Finally I turn the page and begin to read again. I wonder if the story matters, seeing as she can’t understand words. It seems fitting for her anyway. It is a fanciful tale, of a young boy raised by wolves, and all the animals talk to each other, like human beings. 

I read slowly and keep my voice low and steady, and a couple of hours drift away. I show her each picture as I find it, and every time she shuffles a little closer. She is almost at the end of her chain now, right by the chalk line, but there is still enough distance between us to keep me safe. She studies each of the drawings with wonder, and it’s obvious that it’s the wolves she likes best, her face lights up when she sees them. And despite the dirt and the scars she almost becomes beautiful, like a woodland sprite from my childhood stories. 

We are disturbed when a nurse comes to bring us a meal, and the girl hisses and retreats again to the dark corner. There is fresh bread, butter and jam for me, and a steaming pot of tea. The girl, to my horror, is tossed a skinned rabbit. 

“Oh!” I exclaim in horror. “Could you not have cut it up at least?” 

“She prefers it that way.” The nurse shrugs, and then she leaves the room. 

The door closes behind her, and as soon as it does, the feral child scurries forward and snatches up the rabbit. She turns her back to me while she devours it, tearing at the little carcass and crunching the bones between her teeth. I look down at my bread and jam and my stomach lurches. I place the tray on the table and push it away. 

Eventually, I have to get up and light some candles. It is only just tea time but the snowfall is smothering the winter sunlight. I arrange the candles all around me, taking care to keep on the right side of the chalk line and out of the girl’s reach. Then finally I place a candle in the window, and when I look up I am startled by what I see. I blink a few times and look again. I hear a shriek from another room and I know that someone else sees it too. 

A pack of wolves is outside. Black and bristling, they watch the building with jack-o-lantern 

eyes. 

I hear a muffled commotion from down the corridor, nurses wailing and a man shouting orders. A gunshot rings out. I watch the wolves slink back to the shadows of the forest. 

I sit down again, shaken, and carry on with my reading. But the girl is distracted now and doesn’t seem to listen. She crawls towards the window, but her chain is too short for her to reach it. The child cranes her neck to see outside. She is looking for the wolves, but she is not frightened like me. She is eager to see them. 

The girl claws at the shackle around her ankle and whimpers. I make soft shushing noises to placate her but it only serves to irritate. She snarls a warning at me. 

I have lost my place in the story now, but I open it to a random page and begin to read again, desperately hoping to regain the trust that she gave me before. My voice quivers. 

“I will remember what I was, I am sick of rope and chain,

I will remember my old strength and all my forest affairs.

I will not sell my back to man for a bundle of sugar-cane:

I will go out to my own kind, and the wood-folk in their lairs.

I will go out until the day, until the morning break,

Out to the wind’s untainted kiss, the water’s clean caress;

I will forget my ankle-ring and snap my picket stake.

I will revisit my lost loves, and playmates masterless.”

I stare at the page for a few minutes, reading the words again silently in my head. 

When I look up, what I see out of the window astounds me. I stand up in a daze and walk closer. Caution cast aside, I slide open the window to make sure my eyes don’t deceive me. A gust of freezing wind takes my breath away. 

Not just wolves now, but bears, and elk, raccoons and wildcats, squirrels and rabbits and mice. All the animals of the forest surround this building. They are silent. Waiting. The snow drifts down and settles on their fur and whiskers. They all look in the same direction, towards this very window. Sitting like statues, they wait. Predator and prey side by side in alliance, it is like nothing I’ve ever seen. An act of God, or something else, but I’m certain I’m witnessing an act of a great force, whatever that may be.

They know where she is. 

I turn around to face her. She is not crouched and cowering anymore, but standing tall. She is filthy and wild but her stance is regal. Her tangled hair dances with the bitter breeze. Her eyes gleam. This girl is not simply a feral child. She is something else. Other worldly. 

She stamps her foot at me, and the chains rattle. 

I am sick of rope and chain.

She wants me to set her free. I freeze. It will be the end of my career, the end of me. Surely I cannot just set her free? 

I think of what awaits her here, torture and subjugation. Her fierceness neutralized by a crude surgery. Not just her wildness tamed, but everything that she is, erased. She will be nothing but a shell.

She stamps her foot at me again. 

But I don’t have a key. 

I take two pins from my hair and I approach her cautiously. She doesn’t snarl or hiss, but her eyes watch my every move. I get on my knees and start to pick the lock with shaking fingers. I have done this before, a long time ago, but I am different now and out of practice. I take a deep breath and concentrate. The first hairpins break, and then the next two, and soon my hair is all undone and it falls around my face. As I pick at the lock with my last pins, I start to shake with fear. 

And then it clicks. 

The shackle falls from her ankle and I rise very slowly until I am standing face to face with the wild girl. She smells fragrant and earthy, like autumn leaves after rainfall. The girl smiles at me with pointed fangs, and reaches out to touch my loosened locks. My heart pounds in my chest and I almost expect it to burst out. She takes a strand of hair, and smoothes it in her fingers, smells it, and then touches it to her face.

And then, as swift and nimble as a forest fawn, she turns and leaps through the open window and out into the gloom. 

Out to the wind’s untainted kiss, the water’s clean caress;

I will forget my ankle-ring and snap my picket stake.

I stumble after her to see where she has gone. She runs up to the animals and they swarm around her. They nuzzle and lick her in greeting, and she disappears amongst a mass of fur. The snow is falling heavily now and I can’t make her out. 

I will revisit my lost loves, and playmates masterless

I will go out to my own kind, and the wood-folk in their lairs.

Slowly the animals disperse, prey and predator each going peacefully their separate ways. I still can’t see the girl. One by one each animal melts back into the forest and soon all that is left is a lone black wolf. 

The wolf regards me for a few moments with a wild but gentle grace, and then it too, turns back to the forest and disappears into the darkness of the trees. 

                                                      I will remember what I was.