I Dreamt of a Wolf
I remember very well seeing Emma for the first time.
I have a house that is pretty much surrounded by deep woodland: I love the woods, there are so many creatures living there that come by either out of curiosity or just looking for food. If it’s a hard winter, I’ll put out food for them. It’s easy for me: I just have to drive a couple of miles to find a food store; for them, they had a hard job staying alive in winter. But now it was summertime, around late July, when there was plenty of food around without me helping them survive. I was sitting on a chair on the veranda; some of the time gazing out at the forest, at other times reading some pages from a book. Then I heard a noise: a twig snapping. I looked up and saw the most unusual, no incredible sight: it was a young woman, apparently in her early twenties. She was tall, around 5'10" or more, quite beautiful, with auburn hair falling around her shoulders in a great mane. What she wore was amazing: it was akin to something Raquel Welch had worn in the movie “1 million years BC”, it looked like a piece or several pieces of animal fur stitched together. It seemed as if at some point in the past she’d been perfectly healthy, athletic, strong and full-breasted; but now, she was thin, her bones prominent and her expression rather desperate and furtive.
What she was doing fascinated me: she had her hand on a tree trunk, feeling around and squinting uncertainly. Then she stepped away from the tree trunk and walked forward, looking at the ground as carefully as she could, but I knew what would happen as soon as she headed for a particular tree root that seemed to lurk in readiness, waiting to cause her difficulties. Sure enough, she tripped over it and fell with a cry. I went out to help her: she heard me come out and thus looked at me, her eyes squinting desperately in order to see what was coming. Plainly scared, she got up and ran away from me, straight into a tree. I came after her, saying softly, ‘don’t be scared, I want to help you.’ She made a noise like a frightened animal, got up again, then groped and stumbled her way back into the forest. I didn’t follow her.
I didn’t know what was going on here, but I had a few theories: she must have been abandoned and found her way to the woods where she’d flourished, at least until recently. What had happened? I could only guess, but it was obvious that she couldn’t see very well. Obviously, if she was as skilled at hunting and tracking as I guessed she had to be in order to survive here, then severe uncorrected myopia would wreck her chances of finding food, which would explain her gaunt appearance. I wanted to help her, so I started putting food out. During the summer most of the forest animals that I saw were generally well-fed enough not to bother coming by, unless they were feeling lazy, or else in serious trouble, as was the girl I’d seen. Sure enough, after putting food out for a few days, she was around again: finding it more by smell and luck rather than sight. She tended to feel for it, bringing things close to her eyes, then smelling and tasting them to be more certain that they wouldn’t harm her. Thus I fed her for around three weeks, but I knew this wasn’t a long term solution: she had learnt to find her way here, but come winter she’d be competing against animals equally hungry but with much better vision. Something had to be done.
It was at that point that I had to go away for a week to help with a relative’s funeral, so was obliged to put this girl out of my thoughts. I left some food out for her, but I knew it would only last a few days. I had to stay for another week after the funeral to make sure affairs there were as settled as they could be. On the way home I stopped at the supermarket to buy food and necessities, and when I arrived, I found a familiar figure sitting forlornly on the doorstep. It was the girl: she was waiting for me!
I got out of the car laden with groceries and walked up to her: she did not run. She looked scared, but also desperately hungry. I opened my front door and beckoned her inside, but she didn’t move. I unpacked the items I’d bought then offered her something. She squinted at me, so I brought it closer until she could see it properly. Upon that, she grabbed it and raced away from the door, stopped by a tree and started eating. She came back, plainly still hungry, so I gave her more. This time she didn’t run, instead she sat eating on my doorstep. After feeding her, she got up and looked inside: she couldn’t really tell what it was like inside, but she could see me after a fashion. I went up to her: this time she did not run. She made a sort of cooing noise, which I hoped might indicate that she wanted to be friends. I said to her, ‘friends?’ She cocked her head at me in puzzlement, then touched my face with her gentle, long fingers, then touched her own face. Something inside her seemed to realise that I was like her. I beckoned her inside. And she came!
I got a chair for her, and pointed at it. She had no idea what it was, even if she could have seen it properly, so I demonstrated. She sat in it with a slow, graceful movement. I then sat on the corner of the table nearby and asked, ‘so, what’s your story then?’ She looked at me, expressionless but beautiful, and made that cooing noise again. She looked so beautiful, so appealing in her helplessness. But she was still thin, and it was obvious that she would need a steady food supply for months.
I sat wondering what to say. Then I asked, ‘what’s your name?’ She made a curious sound: I don’t how to repeat it here, but anyway I shrugged when I heard it, then got up; seeing me do this indicated that her visit was over. She got up in a fluid motion and headed for the door. I said, ‘bye. See you again?’ There was no response. Obviously she had no idea what speech was, let alone English.
After she’d left, I started to make plans, with the reasonable expectation that she’d be back. Up in the attic I had an old optician’s set I’d bought at an auction: some of the plus lenses were missing, but I was of the opinion that if her vision could be corrected, it would be with minus lenses of some sort. The set also included an eyechart and a sort of handbook. I wouldn’t call it up-to-date, it seemed to have been written in a time before contact lenses existed. It was like an ABC of eyetesting; there was even a section about testing illiterates, as this girl undoubtedly was. Its advice was to use some sort of pattern rather than letters, although it wasn’t particularly clear about what sort of pattern to use, but did say something about chequer boards and grey panels. Now that I’d thought about it, I remembered seeing something on TV about testing babies’ eyesight at a very basic level, ie “can they see into the distance or not?” by showing them first a grey card, then a card with a sort of chessboard pattern on it. Basically if they looked at the chessboard more than the grey, that meant they could distinguish the two. Not much to go on, but it would be a start.
Alas I had no such cards, but I had a computer with a perfectly good printer, so I used this to cobble together something which I hoped might resemble what the book was talking about. The next time she came, she sat in the chair I left by the table, happily if noisily consuming all I gave her. Then I stood around ten feet away from her, and showed her the grey sheet: she looked at it. Then I showed her the chessboard: she looked at that too, but this time with a puzzled look. I brought it closer, and she suddenly seemed to realise it was different. To be more certain, I showed her both of them together: she pointed at the chessboard. It must have been no more than 4-5 feet from her. “Wow,” I thought: myopic, yes, but how much? A lot, seemed to be the short answer to that question. After that she went out the door, and I was left holding two sheets of paper, glad I’d found something out, but wondering how I was going to find out more.
It took me a couple of days to work it out: after my forest friend had eaten and left, I sat watching TV flicking through the channels, and came upon a childrens’ educational programme for a few seconds. It was on about shapes, and suddenly it hit me: she couldn’t read, but perhaps she could identify simple shapes, like triangles, squares and suchlike. I thought I would try printing a rudimentary eyechart with those on. OK, it was time to get serious about this: I needed to make the shapes the right size for each corresponding line on the chart. As my printer seemed to get the gremlins when I wanted to print something too wide for the page, I therefore had to limit both the number of shapes on each line and the number of lines. However, after much frustration, I had two bits of paper stuck together that seemed as if they might tell me more about this girl’s vision. My eyechart had only the top six lines of shapes emulating the regular one, with a generally random selection of circles, squares and triangles. I carefully measured out the requisite distance from the chair to the wall, and stuck the chart on it.
After a while, she again came to be fed. After feeding time, I pointed at the chart on the wall. I guessed that there was no point trying to check each eye individually at this stage: she might not have taken kindly to my covering one of her eyes at a time and all that. She looked at it, but didn’t really seem to understand quite what I was trying to do, or else perhaps she couldn’t make anything out: it was hard to tell with someone who knew nothing of speech. I shrugged, then beckoned her to get up, then moved the chair closer. She sat down again, looking at the chart then me in blank, mute incomprehension. I had to move her again, and this time when she sat and looked at the chart, she pointed at it. Excitedly I asked, ‘you see something? What can you see?’ She had no way to tell me. I was so close to finding something out, only to be frustrated again! I cast about, then found an old discarded version of the eyechart: it had only the top two lines, but it did have one each of square, triangle and circle on. I walked up to her and showed it to her. Holding it about 6 inches from her face, I pointed at each of the shapes in turn, and then at the chart. She squinted up at the chart, and then looked at the sheet that I was showing her at close range, and pointed at the square. I cried out ‘YES!!!!!’ My outburst surprised and scared her, but I was so excited! It was working! Actually she’d got it wrong, but I thought that could be fixed. She’d at least got the idea of what I wanted her to do, which was a good start. I got her up again, then pushed the chair closer still and let her try again. This time she got the top line right. It was a circle!
She obviously hadn’t a clue why I was doing this, but after carefully measuring the distance of the chair from the chart, and doing some calculations I could gauge her myopia with quite a bit of accuracy: it was, as far I could work it out, somewhere in a range between minus twenty and twenty-five. Not a very exact estimate, but then not bad under the circumstances. I spent that evening reading the rather vague-sounding advice about fitting spectacles to children: it seemed a bit contradictory. It did warn about over-correction, and “in cases of high myopia, slight undercorrection is better than overcorrection.” It did not say what “slight” meant in practical terms. And, of course, my friend wasn’t a child and also needed sharp vision in order to hunt. But I knew some of my relatives had myopia, around minus 3 or 4 each eye: they had no trouble getting along with that sort of vision for basic needs if not too far away, so I hoped my friend would forgive me if I erred a little on the side of caution. Thus I decided to order her a pair of glasses with simple correction of minus twenty-two in each lens, and hope for the best! If my estimate of her myopia was accurate, then she would have no more than minus 3 uncorrected. Surely near enough to help with most of her visual problems, I fervently hoped.
The glasses arrived by mail a couple of weeks later. They were round metal frames with simple single vision lenses, pretty darn thick ones too; looking through them made my eyes sting. I’d ordered a strap to go around behind her head, so they wouldn’t fly off when she moved. Now, how to get her to wear them? I imagined that as soon as I could get them onto her head, she’d be fine, accepting them. So I hoped - but getting them onto her head, well I was stumped by that problem. She wasn’t so scared of me now, although she still flinched from my touch. So I had to work out a cunning plan…
After one feeding time, I followed her into the forest: she could hear me, I think, being as she stopped from time to time and looked squintingly back into the forest in my general direction, but I made sure I would be difficult to spot with her vision: put it like this, I didn’t wear bright pink! I followed her for at least an hour, until we came to rocky piece of ground. It became rockier and lumpier as far as I could see between the trees, then after a while longer we came to a cliff face. She started climbing up this; above us I could see a cave mouth about 6 metres up. Was this home for my forest friend? It seemed so, being as she climbed in. I waited till dusk, then followed her up. There she was, lying on some animal furs, fast asleep. Inside were some animal bones, carefully and completely stripped clean of flesh, and in a corner, a bow and some arrows, dumped as if they were of no use whatever: the reason for this being obvious, although I hoped that with visual correction she could once again use them. I crept up to her, quietly took out her new glasses, then slipped them carefully onto her face and fastened the strap around the back of her head. Then I crept away from her, out of sight. I had one heck of a sleepless night stuck on a cliff, but when dawn came, my patience was well rewarded.
She opened her dark blue eyes behind her new lenses, and I can well remember the look of shock and pleasure on her lovely face. She propped herself up on one elbow and looked around, taking in the world around her, then she bent her head, looked down, and with her fingers started exploring these strange things on her face. Her fingers felt right across the plano fronts, the thick sides jutting forward from the frames and more so behind, the ear pieces and the strap around her head. Then she crouched down, looked around and saw me. She pointed at me, and then at the glasses. I nodded. She was beginning to learn gestures like this now, so I think she realised the connection between the glasses and me. She got to her feet and started feeling her glasses again, then walked to the mouth of the cave and looked around. I watched her carefully, wonderingly. How much could she see? Her eyes no longer squinted at things a few feet away, such as the sides of the cave. But looking at the trees further away, she was still squinting. But, I could tell it was a vast improvement. She went back into the cave and picked up her bow and arrows: she no longer groped for things within arms reach, I noted with satisfaction. She came out again, so I followed her. She seemed much more at ease, more confident and in control. She ran into the forest, faster than I’d seen anyone run: I tried to follow her, but soon lost her. I went back to my house, hoping that all would be well.
I did not see her for a couple of weeks, by which time the weather was heading towards autumn. There was a knock at the door, so I went to answer it: there she stood. I had evidently gained her trust and gratitude enough for her to offer me something in return: she was holding a dead rabbit, which I assumed to be the result of a hunting trip. She proffered this to me, so I took it from her and told her, ’thank you.' She didn’t understand me, so I beckoned her in and let her sit in her usual chair. She wasn’t back to what I presumed was her usual full health, but there was more meat on her bones than I remembered. She was quite obviously doing much better. Her eyes seemed to follow me, meeting my gaze and at times, mimicking my smiles and other expressions. I wanted so much to refine her vision, to try working out her exact RX, but with my clumsy methods I wasn’t sure that was possible. I had in the intervening days sorted out a chart with shapes representing the bottom four lines on the normal eyechart. But how to check each eye individually? And then there was the question of astigmatism: she didn’t appear to have any, but that was not much more than a guess.
Between her visits, I wondered long and hard about how my forest friend was getting along. How could I tell her that those things on her face that corrected her vision were fragile? Alas, she found out the hard way: one morning I heard a hammering at the door, so I went to see what was going on. It was my friend again: she stood staring at me through her glasses, but instantly I realised that the right lens was missing. I hadn’t a clue what had caused this, but somehow the lens must have been knocked out and presumably lost or broken. Thankfully, I’d taken the precaution of ordering my friend a spare pair of glasses. I beckoned her in, allowed her to sit on her usual chair, then I gently slipped her old pair from her face: she whimpered feebly. I quickly found the spare pair, put them onto her face and tied them around the back of her head. She looked at me with something like gratitude on her face, and said something that could only be “thank you.” With that, she scampered off into the forest. I was not to see her again for many weeks.
Autumn eventually turned into winter, and when it came, it came hard. Snow was on the ground, which itself was frozen. A few days beyond Christmas the nights were bitterly cold, the temperature easily below zero. I sat in my warm sitting room, in my warm house, oblivious to the cold, the howling wind and blizzard conditions outside. And then, about an hour after night had fallen, there was a banging on the door. I got up to see who it was; opening the door let in the wind and snow, but it also revealed who was banging - it was my forest friend. She was sitting huddled against the doorjamb, shivering. She looked up at me through her thick glasses and mewed feebly. I helped her up and inside, then let her sit on her usual chair. She was in a bad way: I supposed that giving most of her vision back had prevented her starving to death during the summer, but in a way I hadn’t helped her as much I’d hoped, I’d just prolonged her agony. She was thinner than I’d seen her for a long time, almost as bad as when I’d first seen her.
The problem was that I’d restored her vision too late for her to hunt and store enough food for the winter. She’d done her best, but this winter was too cold and hard for her. She had pretty good vision, but there was now nothing to hunt for food. She’d rationed the meagre store that she’d accumulated, but once this was exhausted she’d gone hungry. In desperation she’d returned to me and my warm house. I beckoned her into my sitting room, and settled her onto a sofa. The novelty of this was instantly lost on her as she sat defrosting before a raging fire. The way the flames played across her plano-fronted lenses was unforgettable.
I gave her a blanket, which she felt with her fingers, in her way marvelling at how it felt, then at how it helped to warm her. It took a while to melt the ice in her bones, but my fire did it. She readily accepted food, with her clumsily rendered “thank you” a recompense for me. I managed to get her to lie down and sleep: she seemed utterly exhausted, but the next morning she was awake before me. But what amazed me most was that she hadn’t simply left, despite that the weather was considerably improved. She’d worked out where I had got the food from, and started going through the kitchen cupboards with more curiosity than insight.
She lived with me from then on: she learned so much, from how to open tins of food to how the TV remote worked, and I eventually got her vision honed to perfection by means of a combination of individual lens patching and patience. I had to lend her clothes, then after that buy her some: something a little more normal than a short woolly dress! I even gave her a name: Emma. It was my mother’s name and I don’t suppose she’d have minded me borrowing it. Once I’d taught her some English, both spoken and written, life was much easier, thus I was able to get some idea of what had happened to her: she’d been abandoned as a small child, learnt to fend for herself, but about a year ago something had happened to her eyesight which meant that she couldn’t hunt anymore, but then she’d found me.