The howl comes every night without fail. Urging me out into the woods, to the trees beyond the gates of my ancestral estate. Calling, calling, calling. It reaches to my skin and pulls hard, tearing away to the bone beneath. My flesh wants only to answer but I know better. The call is not something to be answered. I do not truly know what would happen should I venture outside into the cold, but my instincts tell me the fate met there would be a grim one.

The noise started a year ago, the night after my husband passed away. Since then I have tried everything imaginable to cover up the awful sound, but it penetrates every board, every swath of fabric and every material I have tried to wrap myself in. I’ve asked those who help maintain my ancestral home if they ever heard anything but after several dismissive comments and looks I stopped asking.

I laid awake in my bed one night, bracing for the cry once more as I did every night. I waited and waited but was granted only the silence I had wanted for years. I couldn’t not sleep that night, for fear it would come the second I closed my eyes. But it never came. 

I carried myself through the day shaky and paranoid, worried someone would say something. I was but a lonely widow- It would not take many words from my help to see me placed in a mental ward. I hoped the following night would go better but it did not. Nights of silence spilled into weeks and I grew increasingly frantic. Why had the howling stopped, what had changed? I needed answers.

I left the house on a foggy cold night in search of my old constant. The sting of the air on my bare arms made me want for a coat but the darkness was enticing. I walked further and further out beyond the grassy rolling hills of the estate to the edges of the trees. I was freezing but I needed to find what had happened to the creature that had called for me for so long. 

The trees were tall and close together, closer than I remembered. Snow clung to their thin branches, reflecting moonlight as I walked ever onwards. My heart was searching in the dark for what I felt could be there. The air was silent, but I could sense that draw once more. I came to a clearing and stopped in my tracks.

A large canid beast loomed over me, its peppered fur glowing like the snow-covered trees. I felt at peace in its presence, in the warmth that emanated from it. I opened my mouth to speak but could not think of the right words to say to it. I had been so alone for the last year, so afraid of my future without my husband at my side. I fear that no longer.

“Thank you.” I said.

A howl pierced the night and I was happy.