TCTE Short Fiction Contest

 Milk Teeth 

by Viola Wang

   The wolf came across the lamb still covered in afterbirth, shivering in the morning dew. It could smell the smoke drifting over the mountains, where the humans were having their war. The scent stung its nose.

   “Hello,” said the wolf. 

   The lamb continued trembling, making no reply. It was pressed tightly against a dead heave of limbs and wool, stained brown from delivery and red from the pain.

   A tremendous effort, thought the wolf. A shame indeed.But a dead ewe was still a dead ewe, and nothing a wolf could do would change that. The wolf licked its muzzle, besieged by hunger.

   “You know,” said the wolf, “It is terrifically rude to not answer when greeted.”

   The lamb glanced up, eyes wide and yellow. 

   “Hello,” it said, young and pale.

   “I’m sorry,” the lamb said. It made no move to rise.

    The wolf could smell the remnants of the blood. The wolf stalked closer, nosing at the stiff body of the ewe.  It smelled of musk. It smelled of a meal.

   “It is of no matter to me,” decided the wolf. After a pause, it continued. “You don’t mind, do you?” said the wolf. 

   “Mind what?” said the lamb, white wool slicked in fluid. It flicked an ear, and shivered harder.

   The wolf held its gaze, and nudged against the body of the ewe. The musk invaded its nose. It was all the wolf could smell.

   The lamb looked away.

   The flesh rested heavy and filling in the wolf’s stomach. The fleece clung to the wolf’s ivory teeth as it gnawed on a bone, feeling it snap under the ministrations of its jaws.  It nosed amongst the remains and scraped its teeth against the bone again. The vibration of it made the wolf shiver.

   The smoke shifted and the wolf growled. What a stupid thing, that the humans were fighting for. But then again, what use has a wolf for a war?

   When the hunger abated to a thin veneer, the wolf paused, licking its lips, and lay down in the dew-drenched grass. 

    The lamb shivered not a breath from the wolf’s nose. It smelled of frailty.

   It began to try to stand, stick-thin legs wobbling underneath it. The shaking became violent.

   “What is the matter with you?” said the wolf. The morning sun was weak, the watery yellow of it burning sharp orange as it crested the horizon. 

   “I am hungry,” cried the lamb. “If I do not feed, I will starve. If I starve, I will not make it to nightfall. And then I will be just another dead lamb, and I shall have done nothing.”

   The wolf pondered this. If the lamb were to die, then the when was not a guarantee. Another hungrier wolf could happen upon it. The human army could come upon it, pen it and fatten it, then slaughter it to feed its soldiers. Or its life could just give out, for whatever reason lambs die.

   The wolf took a closer look at the lamb. 

   It looked perfect.

   The wolf had eaten many imperfect lambs. Lambs the ewes simply looked at and walked away from. The wolf remembered the taste of their splayed limbs, the flattening of their ribs; it had whet its appetite on the twists and bends in their spines.

   But this one… this one seemed well. Especially so. Even shivering, it stood without falling. Breathing quickly, the breath came without complaint. And when it stretched its neck out to peer at the sun, the fleece shone so blindingly white the wolf thought it was going to burn.

   “I am hungry,” cried the lamb, for want of anything else to do.

   “Then eat,” said the wolf, making up its mind. “There is plenty of food here. Look at all that I’ve left you.”

   The lamb followed the wolf’s gaze, to the body of the ewe.

   It took a trembling step, then halted. 

   “But this is yours,” said the lamb.  

   “My meal, yes,” said the wolf. “But not my kill. Yours, in fact. This is your kill.”

   The wolf could see the hunger in the lurid yellow eyes. For all that the lamb trembled and hemmed and hawed, eventually, it bent its head. Eventually, it ate.

   When it raised its head again, the white fleece around its mouth was stained. 

   It will never go back, thought the wolf. The wolf made up its mind.

   “Come with me,” said the wolf. “Come with me, and I will make you more than just another dead lamb.”

   “But what good does it do me?” asked the lamb, no longer trembling. “To stride the world alongside a wolf. For what good is that?”

   The wolf pondered this for a moment. It was true. It was one thing to die, unwanted. It was another to live, and question it.

   “Come with me,” said the wolf, “and I will grow fond of you. I will drive the other wolves away and let you join in on my kills. I will show you more than a day, and you will learn how vast the world is. What more could you want?”

   “Will you love me, like the ewe did?” asked the lamb. The wolf bowed its head. It licked its lips, searching for more of that sanguine taste. Its hunger had abated, that was true. But a wolf is always hungry.

   “I will not love you like the ewe did,” decided the wolf. “Not weak and full of pity, like the ewe did. Not frail and dead, like the ewe was. But come with me. And I will grow fond of you. And I will show you the full extent of my love.” 

   “Oh,” said the lamb. “Then I suppose that’s alright.”

   And so the wolf and the lamb walked away, and the lamb made it to the next sunrise. 

    After a handful of more sunrises, the wolf was beginning to thaw. It watched the lamb frolic merrily amidst some weeds, watched its pelt gleam white and blinding in the sun. Its legs kicked up high and wildly, splayed in its mirth, and unaware of how young it looked. It bleated in joy, like a scream; the sound was grating to the wolf’s ears, and yet, it found that it did not flinch. The wolf had heard plenty of human screams. With the war, they abounded aplenty. It always made him salivate, because the sound preceded death.

   There was a stirring in the wolf's gut. It felt an awful lot like hunger. 

   The lamb stopped its frolicking, as if summoned by the wolf’s gaze. It sprinted up to the wolf, and its eyes were trusting. It was also serious.

   “Do you love me?” said the lamb. Then it bleated, the sound too much to contain. 

   “Of course,” said the wolf. “Don’t you see how much I love you?”

   The lamb bleated again. “I don’t! If this is your love, it is strange and silent. I do not see it at all.”

   This was true, thought the wolf. But the hunger in its gut was sharp and severe. It was also different. It had to be love, thought the wolf. It encompasses all.

   “I see,” said the wolf. “Then come with me.”

   And so the wolf and the lamb walked until they came upon a house with a thatched roof and one, lone window from which strange, glowing light spilled. The wolf peered inside. 

   “Look inside,” said the wolf. “And see how much I love you.”

   And the lamb did so.

   Inside, a girl, a mere slip of a human thing, frantically scrubbed at the walls covered in paint. Her face was red, cheeks gleaming as water spilled from her lids. Her mother stood nearby, folding a white piece of dough into itself, over and over and over.

   “I do not understand,” whispered the lamb. “How is this love?”

   The wolf tilted its head up, breathing in the salt twined with misery in the air. 

   “The girl wanted to be an artist. There’s no use for an artist during these human times of war. The mother loved her enough to set her straight, put a future in her hand instead of a brush. The mother will make her into a fine wife, and she shall wed a soldier. She will birth his children. What greater happiness than that, for a human?” 

   The wolf paused, watched the girl scrape her hands on the hewed edges of the wall. Her mother only continued folding the dough, over and over and over.

   Split iron and wet red pain joined the salt.

   The lamb frowned, but said, “Then this must be a tremendous sort of love. To set her on the right path.”

   “So don’t you see?” said the wolf. “I love you as the lesson loves the wrong. Do you see how much I love you?”

   “Oh,” said the lamb. And said nothing more.

   The wolf turned away from the house, and the lamb was there, right by its flank. 

   It happened again, when the lamb was wading in a shallow river, shallow enough to be nothing more than a trickle of water, barely reaching its shin. There was a human man, clothed in hard metal and lying face down a few paces away in the river. 

   The wolf had given him a cursory glance, but he had been too bloated by the water to eat. The human’s hair had been pooled in the water, like wet moss clinging to river stones, being swept this way and that by the current.

   The lamb made it to the other side, the wolf content to watch it. The hunger had grown. The wolf looked at the lamb, and it was like a gnawing pit had cracked into being in his stomach. The wolf wanted to have. To hold between ivory teeth. If this was love, then how much it was.

   The lamb shook the water from its pelt in bouncing jubilance, the white muddied by the water. Then it turned back, and looked at the wolf.

   “How much do you love me?” asked the lamb, flicking water from its ears.

   “Very much,” said the wolf. “I will show you.” It said, “Come with me.”

   And the wolf bounded over the river with one leap and they went, both of them, to a hill overlooking a street where humans lived.

   “Look down there,” said the wolf. “And see how much I love you.”

   And so the lamb peered down. 

   Down in the streets, there was a young man tied between two posts. He was bare from the waist up, on his knees being given lashes from a thin, black whip. The man who held it was older and greyer, yet the snap of the whip was sharp enough that the wolf's ears flicked whenever one sounded. The younger man was trembling, his back a mess of black and red. Whenever the whip struck flesh, a scream tore loose from his throat. 

   Saliva pooled in the wolf’s mouth, the sourness of it empty.

   “Ah!” exclaimed the lamb, yellow eyes flitting to and from the scene, “This is pain…how can it be love? See how red his back is.”

   “Love is not always bloodless,” said the wolf. “The boy on his knees would have rather been a poet. What use is a poet in a war? The arm with the whip would set better thoughts into his head. See how red his back is, you said? One day, that shall heal into scars, thick and senseless, numb to the touch of a lover and thick against the ground.  He would have known pain and humility, but he shall make a fine soldier. He will be stronger for it.”

   And so the lamb looked, and eventually did not flinch. 

   “How difficult, this love,” the lamb said. “The sort that makes one stronger.”

   “So don’t you see?” the wolf said, baring his teeth. Saliva slid over the ivory of sharp incisors. “I love you as the whip loves the skin. Do you see how much I love you?”

   “Oh,” said the lamb. And said nothing more.

   When the wolf turned away from the hill, stomach empty, the lamb clung close to its side.

   The days grew shorter. The hunger grew greater. Prey became scarce, and then it became gone. 

   Some days, the wolf would stare at the lamb. How the wolf loved the lamb. The love burned cold inside the stomach and collected in the throat. The space between its teeth held love; it held it bitter and growing, and growing.

   One day, with flecks of white and grey melting on the black of its nose, the wolf shivered. It stared at the lamb, where the flecks disappeared on the white of the fleece. 

   It had grown, though not by much. 

   “How much do you love me?” The lamb asked, breath visible, another white cloud.

   “This again?” said the wolf, lovingly, pantingly, the itch coming to fruit in its teeth. 

   “How much do you love me?” the lambed repeated, stomping its hooves on the white-blanketed ground.

   “Come,” said the wolf. “Let me show you.”

   And so the wolf and the lamb walked, a line and a question in the white, until they came upon a flat, wide plain littered with human bodies clad in hard armour, unmoving and stiff. Other humans danced on top of them, striking at each other and adding to the number on the ground. Together, the living and the dead, they screamed. 

   The plain stretched on. So did the soldiers. So did the bodies.

   “See?” Said the wolf, nosing at the fleece on the lamb's neck. “Look ahead, and see how much I love you.”

   And the lamb saw. 

   “This is death,” said the lamb, the teeth of the wolf nudging into its tender throat. “This is the love that kills.”

   “This,” whispered the wolf, tongue heavy with blood, the itch fulfilled, “is the love that devours.”      The lamb sank to its knees, breath coming slow. Red stained the white, the thousandth of blood and the first of a lamb.

   The wolf let go of the neck for a moment, to lick its lips and say, “Don’t you see? I love you as the war loves the warmth of the bodies. It feeds it. Do you see how much I love you?”

   “Oh…” whispered the lamb.

   “Oh,” whispered the lamb when the wolf retook its neck, teeth snapping its spine and biting down, downwards, until teeth met teeth and the heavy richness filled and…

   The wolf was surprised to find his jaw aching from the stretch of the growing neck, the coarse fur that tickled his tongue instead of wool, and the blood drying up to drought in the wolf's mouth. Familiarity filled the nose, and death filled the other senses.

   The other wolf shook itself free of the ivory grip, fur coming away in tufts. 

   “Oh,” said the other wolf, staring down at the first. “I see,” it said.

   Bared its teeth.

   And lunged.