“The Last Time Gladys Howled At the Moon” © 2025 by Duds Saldanha

Gladys was approaching her first heat when she shed her fur and lost her tail. The transformation was unintentional, and unwanted. When she awoke in her new form, smelling of skin and sweat, she wailed for her pack in a voice that scraped her throat raw. None of them answered. They’d abandoned her in the night, leaving her to find her way out of the forest and into the world of humans. In that moment, as rocks and branches bit into her tender feet, she wished that they’d eaten her instead.

It took some time for Gladys to learn how to make her way through the world with her dull teeth and nails, balancing on two shod feet instead of letting four supple pads caress the soil. As a wolf, she’d scented prey from miles away, and her ears twitched with the slightest rustle of the underbrush. Now, her ears settled on the sides of her head rather than perched on top, and they and her nose became sleepy and stupid rather than quick and alert. Without her thick fur, she needed clothing to ward off the winter chill; even when the sun baked the land, she learned the hard way that clothes were still necessary to cover the areas humans considered “private.”

But, though she did not choose this life, she did her best to live it well. She washed herself with a bar of soap every night, scrubbed her absurd square teeth with paste, and pulled her combed hair neatly back from her face. At night, she closed the windows to shut out the night air; if her pack still howled for her by the light of the moon, she did not hear it. And if she sometimes sniffed the air and smelled snow, if she on occasion walked outside barefoot and dreamed of running into the woods like a shadow, she told no one but herself.

When she reached an age when such things were seemly, Gladys took a husband, a schoolteacher named Harold. He was a fine man, and together they reared three children that Gladys loved as fiercely as she ever loved her wolfish kin. But oh! How she worried over them, with their tender, rosy skin, so easily bruised, and the blood so quick beneath the surface. Her human teeth and claws were worthless—ornamental, really—so she developed other ways and wiles to protect her children.

Gladys did not forget what it felt like to be a wolf. To tumble with littermates through snow and grass and water. To lick oneself in public, and to bare teeth when provoked. To sleep with one’s pack in a warm, furry, breathing heap beneath the watchful eye of the moon. But she reminded herself that she had a new pack, this small family, and no one could say she wanted for anything.

Years flew by like a wolf over forgiving ground. One by one, Gladys’s children left home to walk their own paths. The house was quiet without their running feet and laughing mouths; Gladys and Harold ate their meals in companionable silence. And then, one night, Harold sat back in his overstuffed chair, sighed, said, “I’m ready now, darling,” and let out his final exhalation. Gladys mourned him as humans mourn, with black clothing and salty tears and a burial in a wooden casket, after which neighbors brought far too many casseroles and stayed far too long in her small living room.

Her children came home for the funeral. Two of them—the daughters—had children of their own, sullen teenagers whom Gladys adored but didn’t truly understand. Her eldest, who’d grayed at the temples and looked so much like Harold that it made Gladys ache, lived with a trio of partners in an arrangement that reminded Gladys, with a pang, of a wolf pack. They stayed for several days, long enough for Gladys’s grief to crest; long enough for her to be grateful when they departed, leaving her to clean and air out the house, and return to some semblance of a routine.

Truly alone for the first time in decades, Gladys pondered her life. She knew her children loved her, but they didn’t need her, not really, not anymore. She thought of her husband, who’d smiled at the end; who’d been ready for what came next.

What comes next for me? Gladys thought.

“Call if you need anything,” the neighbors said, patting her hand and smiling sadly. Gladys had become, in their eyes, a fragile thing. And they were right: Humans were fragile. As a human, she’d learned to startle at noises and flinch away from pain. She avoided dark places and locked her windows and doors against predators. But when she was a wolf, she had been the predator. Now that she was alone in the world, she could no longer ignore the wolf-self that still scratched at the walls inside her, whimpering to be let out.

She did not regret her life. But she had not chosen it.

“I did not choose this,” Gladys said to herself. And so, she decided to change back.

Gladys threw away her razor and tweezers and let all her hair grow: legs and armpits, yes, and even her upper lip and chin, which sprouted in an unruly mixture of wiry white and smooth brown. She ate all the casseroles her neighbors stuffed into her icebox, fattening herself up for winter. She kicked off her thick-soled, supportive shoes and paced the length of her house, restless, aching for wide-open spaces.

But a month later, her skin still shone pinkly through the sparse hair on her face and limbs. Her fingernails remained wide and round; her teeth—the ones that hadn’t yet escaped her gums altogether—stayed stubbornly square; and her ears and nose had, if anything, become duller than they ever were before. Even her eyes had clouded, rendering the moon an amorphous blot like spilled milk in the sky. She stared at it through the window, remembering its sharp edges. Remembering its voice.

“Have I not done enough?” she screamed, not caring if the neighbors heard.

Gladys knew that life wasn’t fair; hadn’t she told her children such a thousand times? But it seemed, still, the height of unfairness to be trapped in a form that had been thrust upon her, a form she’d never wanted, but had been forced to accept. Even during those long, content evenings with a child at her breast and two more at her feet; even when she’d loved Harold sweetly and tenderly without barks or nips; even then, she was still a wolf.

And now she was neither: not a wolf, but not entirely human anymore, either. Unkempt, unshaven, unshod; the neighbors averted their eyes, now, when she passed. She kept her doors unlocked, daring intruders to enter. At night, she opened her windows so that she might smell the night air, sensing snow.

One night, when the moon was full, Gladys disrobed in front of the mirror, letting her stained housedress puddle to the floor. To her surprise, she wasn’t entirely displeased by her flesh. True, she had no glossy coat, but her belly was striped with the reminders of her pregnancies. Her scars told the story of her long years, the risks she’d taken, the fierceness with which she’d fought for herself and her family. Her wrinkles told her of all the times she’d cried, and grimaced, and laughed with her mouth wide open.

She laughed, now, and saw the glint of her canines: a bit of wolf that had never left.

Naked, Gladys stepped outside into the night. She picked her way across the painful asphalt until she reached the trees on the other side. Moss cradled her feet. An owl hooted above. She sniffed deeply and scented water somewhere close.

In the distance, a single howl. Then another, and another: a pack, baying at the moon. It wasn’t Gladys’s pack; she knew this. A wolf’s life is both fierce and fast, and even the youngest members of her old pack would have died many moons ago. The thought made her sad, but not as sad as she might have expected. It was the way of things. And Gladys was still alive after all. She had lived to see this moon. To give her worn but persistent body to this rain-damp night.

The urge to run sparked within her, and although she was no longer built for running, she propelled herself forward for a few painful paces before dropping to all fours, panting. For just a moment, she’d felt it. Pads tasting rain-damp earth. Tongue lolling back. The moon, ancient and powerful and full, welcoming her back home.

Editor: Aigner Loren Wilson

First Reader: Ruan Etsebeth

Copy Editors: Copy Editing Department

Accessibility: Accessibility Editors