Mr Wolf

• Emily Burton, Grade 3, Tweed Heads South Public School
• Short Story
• 2019

Excellence Award in the 'Inspired 2019' competition

Now his worst fear had come. The moon peeked through the canopy of trees. He tried to look away, but the moon seemed to want his attention. Slowly, but quietly he stepped into the moonlight, more milky white than ever before. Now he was chanting inside his head, ‘I will not turn into a wolf.’ But suddenly, he felt something warm grow on the back of his neck, then start to grow over the rest of his body. Then he realised he would be stuck in this form. Forever…
“I hate my wolf - like senses.” He said as he raced across the clearing, chasing a rabbit. He caught the rabbit with his sharp knife-like teeth and ripped off a huge chunk of the stringy rabbit meat. He had been trying to fit in with all the other animals in the woods since he had transformed into a wolf a few years ago. Every time he tried, he was set a trial to complete to enter the pack. Every time, he was rejected because he was different.
But one day, everything changed... He had gone out hunting, and when he sighted his prey, he noticed a glowing orb in the middle of the clearing. Even though the pack he had tried to join had made a rule never to touch anything suspicious, his curiosity took hold of him and he bounded across the clearing to the orb. As he got across the clearing, the closer he got, the more he felt like he was being drawn to it in a trance. He got there and touched the orb, and was swirled faster and faster into darkness. He woke up and found himself locked up in a dungeon, bound to an iron chair with steel shackles. He then noticed the gag. ‘That’s probably why I can’t breathe properly,’ he thought. The gag wasn’t even properly put on his mouth.
He remembered what the village elders had said to him about his powers of the wild and how he could manage them. They were only usable in spring and summer as those were the seasons that the nature of his power coped best with. He used the call of the wild to break free of his bonds and leave this place. He leapt out of the seat, forgetting about the gag in his mouth. But then, he fell through a swirling, purple portal, and then realised what the gag was for. The gag was laced with poison; he fell unconscious, and was swept away into a new world no-one had ever seen, but only heard of...