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Remu’s father sits in the carved chair in the centre of the round house. He looms above the Elders whose silver heads nod as he speaks. Father’s wolf guardian, Loba, sits beside the chair. Her yellow eyes scan the room. A footstep outside the hut and she prowls over to the open door, sniffs the ground. Satisfied, she stalks back to Father’s side.

The olive branches crackle as they burn beside Father and smoke spirals up – Remu must remember to collect more rushes for the roof. A shaft of daylight sends a dagger into his eye from a jagged tear above him, straw hanging down like shredded skin.

Every normal task must wait. His twin brother, Romu, quivers beside him, the muscle above his twin’s knee twitching, desperate to be off on the chase. Remu avoids his father’s eyes, but, as usual, Romu shifts so that he is in their father’s line of sight.  

            “Stand,”  Father signals and Romu leaps up. Remu sighs as he stands a little behind his father and brother. The Elders line up before the twins. “Let your blessings lend my sons speed and strength for if they succeed we will have our new guardian.” 

            The priest’s hand is warm on Remu’s head. “May Danu bless you. May you summon the wolf inside.”

            Some hands are cool as the mountain breeze on Remu’s head, some dry like old leaves, the bronze worker’s calloused and scarred.

            Rot-gut threatens to spew out over the floor, over his father’s feet. Loba’s coarse coat brushes against his calves, as if the she-wolf is reminding him of the priest’s words, summon the wolf inside.  

            His father’s hand is last and heaviest on his head. Father’s other hand on Romu’s head and that voice raised to fill the room. “Bring honour to your ancestors. You know the trail. Tether Her to our protection?”

            Romu’s words burst out. “Yes, Father. It’s printed in here.” He clasps his hand to his heart.

            “And you, Remu? Must you always be the shadow to your brother’s sun?”

            Outside the heat builds. Romu speeds by the conical huts that straggle along the mountain’s crest, dust puffing up behind him. Remu’s legs are heavy as he struggles after his brother through the wild olive and cork oaks, down the slope of Monte Cabaneros and up Monte Lupe.

            His lungs are stretched like the blown up sheep stomach they kick around on the rare hours of leisure Father grants. Romu is gone. Remu feels his heart contract into a tight walnut.

            Monte Lupe’s cliff face looms high above the treeline and the cork oaks hiss in the breeze. A branch snaps above and a weight crushes him to the ground. Dust in his mouth, he inhales the red earth, Romu weighs him down.

            “Brother,” Romu’s words spill out. “Stop dreaming. We must prove ourselves …”

            “Romu,” His mouth full of dust, “Just get off.”

            The weight disappears and Romu holds out his hand to help him up.

“Come on Dreamer. Father’s right. Slow-foot.” His face zooms in close to Remu’s nose. “Wake up.”

            They pound up the trail, the river becoming an unfurling ribbon below them. Sweat sticks Remu’s hair to his face as, at last, they stand before the den’s dark mouth.

Romu’s arm is wiry under his hand. “Wait. Romu. Slow down, easy does it.” Romu tries and fails to shrug him off, his laugh harsh, “All right, Brother. I give in to your greater fear.”    

            Remu traces the paw prints in the mud at their feet. “Twelve, I think.”

            His brother stares ahead at the den. “No, Fool. Six at most,” he says. “It’s clear they were circling. Never twelve.”

            Before he can stop him, Romu lurches forward, Remu’s hand is empty. His brother is swallowed by the den’s dark mouth. Growls shatter the air. Romu crashes backwards into his arms. The limestone platform slams into him as they stumble backwards out of the den and crash down to the rock, waves of pain shuddering through Remu’s back.

The mountain explodes in howls. There’s twelve all right. Twelve wolves prowling, a boiling mass of silver coats, gleaming whites of eyes, fangs.   

            A young male, bigger than the rest, stalks closer, his growl echoing round the mountains.

            Romu’s arm is trembling under Remu’s grip. “Stay down, Romu, lower than them.”

            The wolves circle closer and closer. Sweat coats Remu’s palms. His twin’s face is drained of blood as whimpers come from his brother. The whimpers from his earliest memories.

           Remu wills his hand to stop shaking as he holds it out to the big male, palm up.

            Tremors run from Romu into his own body.

            The big male leaps towards him, his mouth open, teeth sharp as arrowheads. A sudden howl comes from the back of the pack. The wolves part under Her snapping teeth. There she is, the she-wolf’s eyes are the gold that shoots through his dreams at night. Her mouth smiles.

Her paws so light on the dust they hardly mark it. Her rough coat brushes against his side, her meat-laden breath the smell of his nursery days. Nuzzling Remu, her tongue is coarse against his face. Romu stops shaking when she licks the sweat from his cheek.

            She hunkers down between them and barks her warning. The wolves back away, hunker down too, still poised for attack, but back further towards the den.

As the moon rises, the wolves whine. But her hot body between them warms the twins as once it used to. The sudden knowledge slices through to Remu’s heart.

            “She will come if we demand it. But we have no right…” Remu’s words hang in the night air.  

            Romu’s face is phantom pale. “But if we fail, Father…the Elders…”

            “Yes,” Remu says.

Romu buries his face in the she-wolf’s neck. “We cannot return without the Guardian. Loba hasn’t long now.”

The words slip out before Remu can stop them. “Remember what the merchant said about the world being wide outside these mountains.”

Remu leans his forehead against the she-wolf’s heart, it beats with the rhythm of his nursery days, of his first five winters.

His legs weak, his brother a lead weight against him as they stagger to their feet. The wolf pack creeps forward, their pelts rising into hackles. The she-wolf’s gold eyes look at the twins, then back to the pack, over and over again.

            “Farewell,” Remu says.

Her snout a flesh kiss against his palm.

A tear stings his cheek. Another glitters on Romu’s face as they back into the forest. The pack huddle close to her as her howls echo from the cliff face and follow them down the mountain trail.

The moon lights the way down the mountainside and out of the valley below.

How it came about:

This piece came to me as we travelled in the Cabaneros Mountains in Spain. Wild and unspoilt, we trekked up to a mountain topped with the ruins of a bronze age village. Just as we arrived at the top, eagles and vultures took to the sky right by our feet. The majestic birds circled until we backed away when they returned to their eyrie.

The immense beating of wings ran through my mind all night as I’ve never had such an experience close up in the natural world. The campsite, El Mirador de Cabaneros, also had fantastic murals of wild animals on its walls. Oddly, it was the wolf staring out at me that caught my attention more than the eagle.

A few days later, we visited Mérida and came across the bronze statue which tops columns in many Roman towns: a she-wolf nursing Romulus and Remus. This was a moment of synchronicity as I’d just been mulling over my story about twin boys and their wolf nurse. It is, perhaps, an example of how our sub-conscious stores myth and legend, place and objects and how much they become part of our imagination.

I’ve always been fascinated by those stories of children raised by wolves, such as Victor of Aveyron, the well-documented story of a French feral child who lived from 1788-1828. So these things came together in my mind with my teaching experiences where I witnessed, close-up, the choices young adults make as they start out on their individual paths, as Remu and Romu are forced to do in the story.

There can so many expectations placed on young people by older generations that it can be hard to choose the right path. I’m guilty of it as a parent myself, pushing education as the answer to everything onto my children.

The story is the result of the influence of a wild animal encounter. I found the thought-processes and social context difficult to create as I’ve never written a story from a Bronze Age civilization before so there were challenges, such as the football having to be described as an inflated sheep stomach. I suppose subliminally I was also influenced by William Golding’s ‘The Inheritors’, the narrative focusing on a Neanderthal tribe’s meeting with Homo Sapiens, despite the era being earlier than the one I chose. But the caves, the trees, the wildness in the setting I chose was an echo of Golding’s, though I certainly feel I do not have his skill at recreating early man’s emerging dialect – which was ground-breaking and ambitious.

If you want to have a go:

• Choose an animal that fascinates you.
• Perhaps it could be an animal that appears in a myth, or many myths.
• If it’s not an animal you come into contact with generally, research it, watch films about it.
• If it’s possible to visit a farm (there are some very good city farms too) do, or visit the zoo.
• Choose an era and place to set your story. In terms of place, it’s a good idea if you have travelled within it. There’s nothing to say that it can’t be your local area. But you have to be able to recreate it using your five senses.
• Let these things percolate and see what story reveals itself from them.