Praise for
A Wolf at the Gate
“A Wolf at the Gate is a simple story that evokes profound and fundamental themes: survival, hunger, war and violence, law and justice, fear, greed, and predation. In the hands of Mark Van Steenwyk it becomes a transformative parable of truth and reconciliation, the power of community, and the dazzling force of love enacted in the public square, the very heart of justice.”
—Bill Ayers, author of Public Enemy: Confessions of an American Dissident
“Van Steenwyk retells the story of St. Francis of Assisi [with] a clever shift that adds tension and new beauty to a familiar tale. … As a result of her instruction from the Beggar King, Sister Wolf comes to understand that all life is worth preserving and that loving kindness is the greatest of all gifts. Influenced by Japanese woodblock prints, Hedstrom’s stark, solid, and lovely illustrations appear throughout.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Van Steenwyk writes in sharp, muscular prose highly suitable for the fabulistic subject matter, deftly navigating both the darker and lighter segments of the story. The true standouts of the book, however, are the illustrations by Joel Hedstrom … full-page illustrations in brilliant colors that feel simultaneously ancient and stylishly contemporary. The result is a book out of time: a coupling of narrative and illustration that should stoke the imagination of any young modern reader.”
—Kirkus (starred review)
“A profound and beautiful work, I pray that it will be widely read and shared with children and adults alike.”
—Englewood Review of Books
“What a cutting-edge book! This retelling of a timeless story through fresh eyes not only provides a deeper insight into its original values, it also gives the story contemporary relevance. And the illustrations are an absolutely perfect embodiment of the book’s soul.”
—Innosanto Nagara, author of A Is for Activist
“In a tale akin to a parable, A Wolf at the Gate presents a simple story that opens up the heart and mind to the profound truths of peace, love and compassion. A timely book for all ages.”
—Jamie Arpin-Ricci, author of The Cost of Community: Jesus, St. Francis, and Life in the Kingdom
“Adventures and travels blend with accounts of little acts of kindness and courage to create a compelling fable that all ages will enjoy in a story of promises and hard lessons learned in the forest of life.”
—Diane Donovan, Midwest Book Review
“This timely fable will make young and old alike question the way we live and the way we react to challenges.”
—Duncan Tonatiuh, author of Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote: A Migrant’s Tale
“In A Wolf at the Gate, we find a medieval fable made potently relevant. With solid prose and timeless illustrations, this book is recommended to all families passionate about social justice and living in harmony with the earth.”
—Chris Crass, author of Towards Collective Liberation: Anti-Racist Organizing, Feminist Praxis, and Movement Building Strategy
“In his wonder-filled reimagining of the legend of Saint Francis and the wolf, Mark Van Steenwyk weaves a twisting, spellbinding, always-surprising tale of fear and redemption and, ultimately, peace.”
—Arthur Salm, author of Anyway*
No animals (or people) were harmed in the process of writing this book.
A Wolf at the Gate
Text © 2015 by Mark Van Steenwyk
Illustrations © 2015 by Joel Hedstrom
This edition © PM Press 2016
Some rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording, or otherwise for commercial purposes without the prior permission of the publisher.
This book is Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
PM Press
PO Box 23912
Oakland, CA 94623
www.pmpress.org
Reach & Teach
144 W. 25th Avenue
San Mateo, CA 94403
www.reachandteach.com
ISBN: 978-1-62963-150-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016930962
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the USA by the Employee Owners of Thomson-Shore in Dexter, Michigan.
www.thomsonshore.com
For Jonas.
“Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love.”
—SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI
Contents
Chapter 1: Lords of the Forest
Chapter 2: The Blood Wolf
Chapter 3: King of the Beggars
Chapter 4: Sister Wolf
Chapter 5: The Outlaws Attack
Chapter 6: The School in the Forest
Chapter 7: The Funeral
1
Lords of the Forest
This story begins with the birth of a wolf.
She was born under the red glow of the Hunter’s Moon. She was a strange pup; her fur was blood red. None of the wolves in the pack had ever seen a wolf with such red fur. Her mother and father knew that she was destined for important things.
They slept in a small cave whose opening was hidden by the sweeping branches of a fir tree. Beast and bird proclaimed her birth throughout the forest, for the wolves ruled the forest. And this pup’s parents ruled the wolf pack.
In those days, when a royal pup was born, a holy month was declared. All were safe from the wolves’ tooth and claw. For an entire month, the beasts of the forest came to honor the little red wolf—the creeping things like snakes and frogs, the soaring things like bats and birds, and the running things like deer and foxes.
From every family of beast, all came to celebrate the birth of the red wolf.
The wolf father taught her all the wisdom passed down from his own parents. He taught her how to hunt deer near the edge of the forest, where the river meets the tall grass. He taught her how to fight as they wrestled together in the golden warmth of the setting sun. Most importantly, he taught his daughter how to hide from their greatest enemy, humankind, by sticking to the shadows, since wolves can see better in the dark.
The wolf father also taught the red wolf legends passed down from pack to pack since wolves first hunted in the mountains they called home.
One night, as the sky grew dark and the crickets began their nightly chorus, the red wolf and her father stood at the top of a small mountain. Looking down upon the village of Stonebriar at the foot of the mountain, the wolf father snarled and told her of the wolves’ first clash with humankind:
Once, there was no village below … no walls of stone or houses of wood. No humans with their weapons of steel and iron. No plowed fields, no row upon row of wheat. No humans building fences to enslave wild things. The forest was in balance. The streams teemed with trout. The trees chimed with birdsong. Deer danced through the fields. There was enough food for the pack, and our pack was large.
We were the Lords of the Forest.
Then the humans came.
I tell you this story as my father told it to me. And now I tell it to you. Listen, and remember.
At first, the ancient wolves lived at peace with the humans. But food became scarce. The humans uprooted the trees and planted fields. They tore stones from the earth and built walls. And they began to hunt the wolves, so they could have the deer and rabbits for themselves. Their fields and villages grew as the forest shrank.
Desperate and hungry, the ancient wolves fought back. But the humans’ metal claws reach farther than ours. Their metal teeth cut deeper than our teeth of bone. In the first battle between wol
ves and humans, many wolves died. Only a few survived.
Humans don’t just kill to survive. Sometimes, they kill out of rage. And they don’t just eat to survive; sometimes, they eat when their belly is already full. They are violent and greedy. They aren’t like any of the other beasts in the forest; they want to own it all.
That is why we, the Lords of the Forest, hide deep in the shadows and high in the mountains. We wait and watch. We live in fear.
Early one morning, the wolf mother caught the red wolf eating more than her share of food.
The wolf mother looked at her daughter with sad eyes and said, “Let’s go for a walk.”
As the orange oak leaves basked in warm light of the sun, the red wolf and her mother walked along the path to the river. They listened as the cawing of the ravens joined the bubbling laughter of a nearby stream. A chittering squirrel ran across their path. As they stopped to listen, the wolf mother told this tale:
There once was a raven. He was clever, but lazy. Every day, he perched in the upper branches of the tallest tree in the forest to watch the animals rushing about, storing food for the coming winter. Of all the creatures of the forest, one squirrel worked hardest. She gathered food from sunrise to sunset.
Raven wanted all those nuts for himself. Instead of working hard like Squirrel to lay aside food for the coming winter, he simply waited for Squirrel to go out searching for nuts. While she was out, Raven would swoop down, steal from her store, and hide the nuts in the hollow of a tree.
Squirrel noticed that, no matter how hard she worked, her store of nuts grew smaller, not larger.
One day, Squirrel came home to find her store completely empty. She suspected that Raven was the thief but had no proof. Discouraged, she moved to another part of the forest to start over.
Next, Raven watched a jay gather and bury acorns. While Jay was out, Raven would dig up his acorns, making sure to cover the hole again, and hide them in the hollow of a tree.
Jay noticed that, no matter how hard he worked, his store of acorns was growing smaller, not larger. One day, Jay came home to find his stash of acorns completely empty. Jay suspected Raven had stolen from him but had no proof. Discouraged, Jay moved to another part of the forest to start over.
Raven continued his tricksy ways with the other animals below. In the end, Raven was all alone; his neighbors had moved to other parts of the forest in search of food.
Raven said to himself, “I don’t mind! I’d rather be well-fed and lonely than hungry with neighbors!”
One day, while Raven was in his tree hollow eating like a king, a terrible storm blew through the forest. Lightning struck the tree, setting it aflame. The Raven was able to fly to safety, but all of his ill-gotten food burned to ash.
He flew throughout the forest. Finding Squirrel’s new home, he begged, “Squirrel, I am hungry, share your food with me!”
Squirrel replied, “Go away! I have little enough for myself and can’t trust you.”
Raven flew away, sad. Next, he found Jay’s new home. He said, “Jay, I am hungry, share your food with me!”
Angry, Jay yelled, “Leave me alone! I have little enough for myself and can’t trust you.”
Raven flew throughout the forest in search of his old neighbors. Each time they responded the same way. Alone and hungry, Raven flew away; none of the other animals ever saw him again.
The wolf mother looked into her daughter’s eyes and said, “It is better to be hungry with neighbors than to be well-fed alone.”
The wolf mother and father continued to share wisdom with their daughter as she grew.
Seasons passed. The wolf father and mother grew old and died. After a time of mourning, the red wolf became the unchallenged chief of her pack.
At first, she led her pack wisely. She was respected for her hunting skills and her ability to keep the pack safe from the humans. Every night, under the pale glow of the moon, she taught her pack all the tales of their wolf ancestors.
No amount of wisdom, however, could keep the humans who lived in the valley below from hunting more and more deer and rabbits. There wasn’t enough food for the wolves. Some of the weaker wolves died of hunger.
The red wolf’s wisdom began to give way to rage. She hated the human beings for what they had done to wolfkind throughout generations. Desperately, foolishly, she believed the pack could drive the humans from the land.
Most of the pack wanted to leave the forest in search of a new home, but the red wolf stubbornly refused. “Since ancient times, this has been our forest. We were here long before the humans came. We will never leave,” she said, day after day.
As food grew scarcer, the pack grew angrier. They blamed the red wolf for their troubles. So it was that another wolf in the pack challenged her leadership; the winner of a fight would be the chief.
The red wolf was faster and stronger and fiercer. The two wolves slashed at each other with their claws and snapped at each other with their teeth. The red wolf kept the upper paw … until she stumbled over the twisted root of an old oak tree. Seizing the moment, the challenger attacked, brutally gnawing on the red wolf’s hind leg. The red wolf had been defeated.
Following their new chief, the pack left, leaving the red wolf bleeding in the shadow of that oak tree. Both her leg and her heart stung with pain.
She never saw any of them again.
Slowly, painfully, she limped into a nearby cave … the cave where she had been born.
The red wolf was now the last wolf in the forest.
2
The Blood Wolf
Without a pack, the red wolf hunted alone. With a wounded leg, she was too slow to catch most prey; everything from the gracefully loping deer to the scurry-footed squirrels were too quick to catch.
For a few days, the red wolf was able to fill her belly with wild berries and mice. But winter was near. Berry bushes would sleep for the winter and mice would find refuge under the snow. When that happened, the red wolf would die of hunger.
She had one chance. Humans kept animals in barns and fences. They were easy prey. Although sheep and cows and chickens are delicious, they are a risky meal. The clever humans set traps with iron jaws and shoot arrows with iron tips. Through such tools of violence, humans kill wolves from afar.
As the days passed, the red wolf’s fear lessened as her hunger grew.
Late one night in early autumn, when thick clouds covered the moon, the red wolf sneaked onto a farm at the edge of the village of Stonebriar. Following the scent of chickens carried in the cool air, she slid under a heavy wooden fence and made her way to the chicken coop. The door to the coop was latched shut. This would have been a challenge to a duller creature, but the red wolf easily pulled the wooden latch open with her teeth.
The chickens, of course, weren’t happy to find a wolf in their coop. They clucked in terror as the red wolf seized one of the hens and hobbled off to her cave in the cover of darkness. That night, she ate better than she had in months … even better than before her pack abandoned her, since she didn’t have to share her meal with anyone else.
The red wolf slept well with a belly filled with meat and a soul filled with revenge; it felt good to take food from the humans.
The next night, the red wolf sneaked onto the farm again. As the nights continued, she grew bolder. Soon, chickens weren’t enough; her mouth watered as she imagined cat or lamb or beef for dinner.
The farmers set traps, of course, but the red wolf carefully avoided them. The traps were poorly hidden and stunk of human. They must have thought she was a dumb beast, rather than a Lord of the Forest!
Her rage grew with her hunger. Since the days of the ancient wolves, humans had only brought death and slavery. Now, she was the last wolf in the forest. She needed to teach the humans to fear her teeth and claws more than she feared their iron weapons.
She began to feast earlier and earlier in the day. Soon, she was walking onto farms in broad daylight. She ate whenever she felt like it. She grew stro
nger and angrier with each passing day. Her hind leg no longer hurt, though she wasn’t as fast as she once was.
The farmers tried to shoot her with arrows, of course. But wolf senses are much better than human senses. The red wolf’s ears heard even the smallest shifting of leaves under human feet. Her eyes caught the quick motion of human hands reaching for arrows. By the time an arrow sprung from the bow, the red wolf had already stepped aside.
News spread of a clever red wolf who evaded the arrows and traps of farmers. Anxiously, the village sent two brave hunters to slay the troublesome wolf.
Nobody saw the hunters again.
The village sent a few soldiers. They never returned. Fear gripped the people.
News spread; as families gathered around the fireplace, they told stories of the “blood wolf” who not only outwitted farmers but murdered hunters. As fear rooted in the hearts of the people of Stonebriar, the tales grew wilder.
Some said the Blood Wolf was as large as a cow with teeth as long as daggers. Others said the wolf wasn’t a wolf at all but a demon that escaped from hell. Some said that the Blood Wolf ate disobedient children. None of these, of course, were true. People tell strange stories when they are afraid.
The people wouldn’t leave the village, night or day. Few ventured outside their homes, fearing the Blood Wolf. At night, when the red wolf howled at the moon, old men and women would faint with fear. Children would pull their blankets over their heads. Even the bravest of men and women would shiver with dread.
3
King of the Beggars
Stonebriar was under siege.
In those days, a beggar came to the village. He wore a simple brown robe and his feet were bare. The people of Stonebriar called him “the Beggar King.”
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