"Feral" by Clarissa Hunter

Hello. This may be difficult for me. For a significant portion of my life I communicated with my family through snarls and growls. I have been learning, with Adam, but it is still hard to learn to talk again. I know this needs some explaining, so I will try.

I first came to this island 11 years ago, when I was only 4. I was with my parents. My dad was called Erik and he was a rich American, owning a company that made yachts. My mom was called Murya and was his maid many years ago, and they feel in love and married. Even though she was a poor, Hungarian immigrant he didn't mind. Love is love, and they didn't care what anyone else thought.

We were in one of my dad's yachts at the time. He could take long holidays, and he wanted to see the Northern Lights, so we took a yacht out from Norway. The weather was good, but we needed to wrap up warm because it could get very cold that far north.

Our last day on the boat was like any other to start with, but it kept getting colder and colder. It hurt after a while, and then the snow started to come. It changed to hail before long, blinding us and damaging the sail. We drifted off of our course towards a dark shape we could just make out through the snow.

There was a loud crack and we were thrown onto our backs. Then we slid to the side of the boat as it tilted into the water. I felt the freezing water as my legs went under, and the boat kept sinking lower and lower. Before I knew it the three of us were struggling to stay afloat as the icy grip of the water tried to pull us down. In the end, the water won.

I woke up on a beach, wet and cold. Colder than I'd ever been. I was alone, and so very cold, so I curled up and cried. Not little tears either. I sobbed and wailed like it was going o save my life. But I think it did.

After what felt like hours of screaming and crying I felt some warmth. It was warm breath on the back of my head. I felt fur brush through my hair, and then something grabbed the back of my coat and dragged me off of the beach and into the woods of the island.

I was scared. More afraid than I was cold. I didn't know what was taking me or why. But when I got to its cave I grew more afraid.

Unfurling from my ball, I saw that I was surrounded by at least five wolves. Their breaths hung in the cold like tiny clouds as they panted, tongues hanging out of their mouths, which were open enough to show off their teeth. Enough books describe wolf teeth, but you never know quite what to make of them until you're a four year old orphan trapped by them.

I wish I could say that I had the intuition to expect them to rip me to shreds at any second, but I was very young. At the time I had no way of separating these furry, four legged creatures from the eight dogs I'd had to play with at home. So I can't say I was surprised when they gathered around me to keep me warm, and when they would roll onto their backs if I tickled their bellies. They started out just like dogs to me, but soon they became family.

I started to run with the wolves, down on all fours like they did. The mother of the pack breastfed me until I was ready to move onto the rabbits the rest of the pack brought back. When one of the younger wolves was killed by an older wolf as he tried to become the alpha, I used some sharp stones to skin it and wear the fur, both to keep me warm and to fit in. I became a part of the pack, becoming more like them than a normal person.

I stayed with the wolves for years, spending all of my time as one of them. A strange thing happened in that time and I'm sure it was because of all the time I spent with those wolves. My senses of smell and hearing improved drastically, so I could pinpoint the direction of a freshly broken branch or nearby rabbit very easily in our thickly wooded home. My teeth grew sharper to better tear through flesh. I started to growl, both understanding and being understood by my new family.

I never thought about any of that at the time. I wonder now about how it all happened, how I changed in that time, but it never mattered to me then. Like the wolves, I only thought about one thing: survival.

We had a good life in the woods, for wolves at least. A regular human wouldn't have enjoyed it, but we had family, and I was so young when I joined the pack that I didn't know any better. It was so good in there that none of us would leave the forest. But that didn't mean other things would come in.

I smelt it first, a fragrant smell like I'd never experienced before. There was something earthy, which I was no stranger to, but something sweet, which I hadn't known since before I came to the island. Next came the sound. Not the gentle noise of rabbits disturbing snow, or wolves bounding through it, but the heavy crunch of something walking slowly, one foot at a time through the woods.

Then we saw the shadow in the distance. This was no wolf, it walked on two legs like nothing any of us had seen since I arrived at the island. All of us did what we rarely did, arching our backs and baring our teeth, growling at the imminent threat. The pack had never been threatened before, but we all knew how to react to the approaching man, as though some ancient instinct was now controlling us.

As he drew closer I saw he was a he. The short brown hair and muscular build gave it away. The face was hard, more like my father's than the soft features of my mother. The clothes were baggy and looked warm, but all I had known of warmth for the past few years was to be curled up with wolves, so human clothes were strange to me.

He came closer, but still a little way off, and held up a box that he had with him up to his face. I heard a little click and then something came out of it, which he shook, looked at, and then walked away. We thought that was the end, but that was only the beginning of my family being torn apart again.

A few days later the man came back, this time with another man. I liked the new man a lot more. He had a lot of hair on his face, so reminded me of the wolves. Him being there made me feel less threatened, but it didn't do much for the rest of the pack. They all grouped together and backed off, but I never moved.

The new man crouched down and gestured for me to come to him. I heard growling behind me, but I chose to go forward to this stranger. I came within a few feet when I stopped.

"Hello," I heard him say. It sounded familiar, but I didn't really know what it meant. "Your name is Clarissa, do you understand me?"

I knew one of those words. He called me Clarissa. I hadn't heard it in years, and suddenly my head was filled with images of my old family, images that hadn't crosses my mind since I felt the warm breath of my adoptive mother on the beach all those years ago.

He walked towards me, and asked me if I could stand up. I didn't understand him, but he held out his hand for me to take, and I did it. He pulled his hand up gently, supporting me as he did so, so I could get up to my two feet. It hurt, but felt a lot more natural than being on all fours.

He then made me turn around so I couldn't see him, and I felt him remove the fur from my shoulders. I was naked, and very cold, but then he wrapped a warm blanket around me and gestured me to come with him. He put his arm around my shoulders and pushed me gently to encourage me, but as soon as I started walking, stumbling really, the wolves began to growl. I heard them run, but turned and put out my hand to tell them to stop. Their teeth were still bared, but they did as I instructed and backed off.

It was strange, walking on two feet with the bearded man and his friend. With every step I wanted to get down on all fours and break into a sprint, but the old man held my hand and made me feel more comfortable. There was something about him that made me calm, but he worried me too. All things had a smell. The wolves, the rabbits we hunted, the man who came earlier. But this old man had no smell, like the snow we were walking through. My instincts were telling me this was wrong.

Before long we came to a building. It was wooden, unlike the cave that had been my previous home. There were Windows to let in light, and doors that covered the openings. This would have been very helpful in the cave, as it would have kept out the cold winds that seemed to go on forever on this strange island. I could tell the old man was smart.

The inside was nice. There aren't many other words to use. There were carpets that felt as soft as the moss that grew in the cave, and chairs and sofas that were even softer. I was allowed to curl up on one and fall asleep under the blanket I had been given when they found me, and it was the best sleep I ever remember having.

When I woke up the old man had made me a meal. There was meat, yes, but it wasn't the raw flesh I was used to. And there were other things also. Green things that looked like small trees, small orange disks, and crisp brown half spheres with a fluffy inside. It was strange for my food to be fluffy on the inside, but it tasted good, and as the first meal I hadn't had to catch in years I enjoyed it even more than usual.

I think I was around ten years old when the old man found me, and I've been here for five years now. Over those years I've been retaught to talk English again, taught how to act like a person again. I sleep in a bed now, not a cave, and I eat vegetables and fruit as well as meat, which I now prefer cooked (although I still like it pink in the middle). I talk with words, not growls, and I can write just like I am doing now.

But none of this stops me looking out of the window at the top of the house with longing. I was so free out in the wilderness, and it's not rare for me to still howl at the full moon, hoping that my old friends can still hear me. You see, I haven't lost touch with them yet, I've asked Dean to make my costume using the furs I used to wear out in the woods.

That's the thing with me, that's why I'm here. Everyone at this place has some strange ability, and I'm no different. Every time I make contact with an animal, a part of it stays with me. I don't know how, but my time with the wolves has left me with plenty. I can run faster than average, my senses of smell and hearing are much better, I can even still communicate with them.

There aren't many other animals on the island, and those that are don't seem to have any useful features. Rabbits won't do me much good, and for all the birds I've come into contact with I can't fly, but at least I'm getting real good at whistling. The old man, I call him professor now, has shown me many different animals, and I think I'd like to meet a bear. The hibernation thing is very appealing to me.

So that is my story. I would not consider myself fully human again yet, but I would not want to. My experiences have made me who I am today, and without that bit of inhumanity I will never lose touch with the scared girl that was cared for by wolves. The piece of me that is still broken shows me how far I have come in fixing the rest, and even though I miss my parents, I know that they would be proud of what I am doing now, of how I have turned the past eleven years from a negative into a positive.