<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
How it Is<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Well I whistled as the wolf went down down in the water, and also I laughed. Right out loud.<\/p>\n Like I used to\u00a0 laugh, when I played games with my dad in the forest. I haven\u2019t laughed like that for a long time. He would carry me on his back through the trees, swaying to and fro like a monster out hunting. Those were my favourite times. Afterwards, we would go home and watch Monty Python on the sofa.<\/p>\n When I saw the wolf sink, I felt the same wild feeling in my guts, so I laughed. I\u00a0 clasped my hand over my mouth quickly, to stop the sound from coming out. But it escaped anyhow.<\/p>\n I saw him walk heavy to the water, the wolf. His grey fur striped with tree shadows as he staggered confused\u00a0 to the lake.\u00a0 I knew. And I think the birds did too, because they went quiet and hid high up in the trees. On the top-most branches. The Greenfinches, the\u00a0 Linnets,\u00a0 the Tree Creepers, the Wood Peckers and the Jays. They too watched.\u00a0 From the top of everything.<\/p>\n I knew what would happen, because I put the rocks inside of him, of course.\u00a0 One by one.<\/p>\n Go and find rocks, was what the man said after he slit the wolf\u2019s belly open and saved me.\u00a0 The best ones. The heaviest.<\/p>\n And I went, I flew. Through the trees, deep deep to the dark patches of the forest. I pretended I was Katniss Everdeen, in the Hunger Games. Fierce like a warrior princess,\u00a0 you know, that kind of thing.\u00a0 It was fun.<\/p>\n I brought them back, so heavy.\u00a0 And I put them in one\u00a0 after the other. A whole pile.\u00a0 In the space where I was.<\/p>\n Go on \u2013 the man said. We are tricking him. This how it is. Revenge is putting more stones in. So I did. Right full to bursting. I knew I would laugh when he fell right in.<\/p>\n Before, when the wolf offered me his paw, and then his big eyes and then his sharp teeth, I was gone.<\/p>\n Now I whistle as he drowns.<\/p>\n I look at the man.\u00a0 He is watching me and his eyes are dark and narrow.<\/p>\n I smile at him.\u00a0 I wonder if he is angry at me for whistling on such a serious occasion. I try not to make any more noise and not to fidget, even though, I am a little bored by now.<\/p>\n We watch solemnly together as the water goes blank and steady.<\/p>\n This is how it is to be saved.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Catherine Taylor<\/strong> is currently working for an international development charity in the foothills of the Himalayas in Nepal, living in a house which is made of mud and watched by snow capped mountains. Previously she has worked in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Kenya.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How it Is Well I whistled as the wolf went down down in the water, and also I laughed. Right out loud. Like I used to\u00a0 laugh, when I played games with my dad in the forest. I haven\u2019t laughed like that for a long time. He would carry me on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6781"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6804,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6781\/revisions\/6804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}