I could hear wolves scratching like dogs at my door again. It was a full moon, or close to it, and I still felt a stirring deep in my soul, a longing to join them for the hunt, just as they longed to join me. I fought it, as I always did, and those wolfish instincts subsided for a time.

As I pulled back the shade and peered out, I marveled at he crystalline perfection of a crisp Montana night. It was January, and a coating of frost had silvered the land, etching a light pattern of crystals around the window panes.

I couldn't help myself. I opened the window and leaned out, sniffing the air, letting my senses heighten and expand well beyond the human norm.

Six gray wolves stood on the ridge behind my house, noses up, smelling the air this way and that, letting loose yips and soft communicative growls. Their leader, who called himself Bear-Hunter, was an old male with a long white scar down the left side of his haunches. He'd gotten it years ago in a brief fight with a bear (he lost). Bear-Hunter glanced at me and gave a plaintive cry.

"Not tonight," I whispered. "It's too cold. I'm human."

I leaned back and shut the window. Suddenly I shivered uncontrollably. It was a bitterly cold out there. I didn't envy them their freedom. On nights like this one I knew I'd made the right choice in trying to remain a man. If I'd given in to my wolf instincts and let myself go, given in to my desires to be a wolf, I'd be suffering like them. No, I was better off holed up in my house with its oil heat and its thermal windows and its wood-burning stove, a human safe and secure and, if not entirely happy, at least warm.

The wolves began to bay, calling one to another, pack to pack, and other wolf howls answered through the still night air. There were at least thirty separate voices, probably more, and as I listened to the rich timbred sounds I began to identify one and another and another. Rabbit-Hunter, Silverpaw, Snowfoot, all the rest, coming down from the hills to see me.

They knew I had a soft heart. And finally, as they circled my house, crying, I could resist their calls no longer.

I strode to my door, threw it open, and one by one they slunk into my living room. Old Bear-Hunter came last, gazing up into my face with his piercing yellow eyes, as if searching for some trace of my lost wolfhood. I met his gaze for a second, then looked away, submissive. He could be leader; I didn't want the responsibility.

And on that cold, cold, bitterly cold night, as I stretched out on my sofa before the crackling fire, I could hear the soft lapping of water from my toilet bowl, hear the soft rustling of paws prying open the refrigerator door and rummaging through the meat bin for coldcuts and steaks, hear the squeaking of springs as heavy feet circled three times on my bed before lying down.

And, as often happened on these cold and lonely nights, all these wolves who had once been men joined me for a brief time in my humanity, and I joined them in their wolfishness, laying my head upon my paws and pulling my tail around my nose for the night with a reluctant yet somehow happy sigh, and the pack was whole.

Copyright © 2002 by John Gregory Betancourt