The Wolf Within

It was a silent night except for the chirping of the crickets, and the sighing of the wind among the high grasses. A lad with bare feet was sitting on a branch in deep Gwari forest, observing the moon. His name was Jona, but the wolves who had been his particular parents since their birth had no use of names. He was just another member of the pack to them. His hair was wild, his body was thin and strong, and his eyes could shine with the savageness of a wild thing, when rangers found him at the age of twelve. They took him out of the forest and took him to the city of Kaduna where a foster family accepted him. At first, Jona barely spoke. Strange was words, and awkward in his tongue. The little daughter of the family Amara had attempted to instruct him in simple sentences. "This is water," she would say, containing a cup. "Say it." He would repeat, "Waa-ter," though he would always stare out of the window, out to the expanse of sky above the walls.  [Image Source](https://pixabay.com/photos/wolf-canine-forest-predator-wild-1336229/) Months turned into years. Treatment, education and unending forbearance made Jona appear a little more like the other children. He became tall, his voice got deeper, he was able to read and write. but even when he was sixteen he was jumpy. Amara one day, as she was descending the garden one evening, saw him squatting there with his hands buried in the soil. "You will never cease doing that, will you?" she teased. Jona looked up, startled. "Home, home, it feels like home," He said. Amara sat beside him. "But this is your home now. Here. With us." Jona did not reply. His silence was even greater than speech. His teachers at school saw something different. He was a physical genius, so fast in running than any boy and climbed ropes easily. However, he had difficulties in subjects that required him to sit still, memorize dates or solve equations. He can, said Mr. Ade, his math teacher, on occasion when he was meeting the foster parents. "But something in him resists. Like he fights himself."  [Image Source](https://pixabay.com/photos/grey-wolf-wolf-animal-mammal-8492789/) Jona caught these words, and knotted his fists. That night he got out of the house and walked and walked, the city lights behind him, till he got to the fringe of the woods. The stench of soil and wild grass enfolded him. He wished to remain; but he flashed back before daybreak upon the face of Amara. The struggle became stronger in his last year in secondary school. One of the career counselors asked him, "What do you want to be, Jona? A doctor? An engineer?" Jona hesitated. He could visualize what he had heard: the woods, the cry of the owls, the silence of the moonlit night. "I... don't know," he admitted. Later he was urged by his foster father, Mr. Bello. "Son, you have to think of the future. You are not a wolf anymore." Jona's jaw tightened. "What if I still am?" Months later he was confronted by Amara in the living room. "Why will you always fight yourself? You drive all away and you will not even go to the forest. What do you really want?" Her voice shook, her eyes were firm. Jona long gazed at her. Then words spilled out. "I was born in the forest. It taught me who I am. But you, you have also provided me with another life. I don't know which is true. I don't know which is me." Amara touched his arm. "Maybe you're both." This solution was found on a hot afternoon, when the rangers invited Jona to attend a new program on wildlife preservation. They required youths with knowledge on nature and the community, youths who would be able to connect two worlds. Jona heartened when Mr. Bello told him. He could see himself again, walking between the trees, but no longer as a wild creature, but something different, as a guardian. He fancied coming back to Amara every night with the tales, not of fugitive conduct, but of work which united both parts of himself. "I will, I will," he said finally in a stern voice. The opening scene of the program, when Jona was first clad in the uniform of a ranger standing up high on the verge of the Gwari forest, Jona was able to feel the change in the air. The wolves did not arrive, but he believed he heard the howling of the wolves somewhere off in the distance. He smiled, not torn anymore. He was not half of one thing and half of another, as he had not been good years in the world. He felt whole.