Jacob and The Wolf (A short fairy tale)

There was once a young boy called Jacob who lived with his uncle in a cottage in the woods and everyday Jacob would have to walk to the school in a nearby village but, one Autumn day when he came back from school, he found his uncle gone. Only his uncle’s clothes were in the cottage and they looked as if they were stained with blood and then, going outside again, Jacob came face to face with a large black wolf that also had red dripping from its lips.

 

“Oh no”, thought the boy, “My poor uncle. That wolf must have eaten him, surely”.

 

Part of Jacob was very afraid of the wolf but another part of him wanted to avenge his uncle and so Jacob ran inside and got hold of the axe that his uncle used for chopping wood thinking that he would chop the wolves head off with it.

 

But when he returned from the cottage carrying the axe, and as he was about to bring it down upon the wolf’s head, Jacob noticed some very peculiar things about it for, over its eyes, Jacob noticed that it was wearing his uncles eyeglasses.

 

“How strange”, thought Jacob, “A wolf that wears eyeglasses”.

 

And not only that, for when he looked again at its red stained jaws he noticed that it was holding his uncles lit wooden pipe in them as if to smoke it.

 

“How strange”, he thought, “A wolf that smokes a pipe”.

 

And then, strangest of all, he noticed that round one of the wolf’s legs was his uncles ticking wrist watch.

 

“How strange”, he thought, “ A wolf that needs to tell the time”.

 

But, in spite of all these peculiar things, Jacob decided, the wolf had eaten his uncle and so it must be killed.

 

However, just as Jacob was about to kill the wolf and the wolf, in a rather unwolfish like manner, was not growling and snarling or running away but cowering and covering up its eyes with its large furry paws, a piece of paper that was blowing about got stuck on the sharp , pointed end of the axe and, removing it, Jacob saw that it had words written upon it.

 

“The wolf is your uncle”, it said.

 

Jacob dropped the axe.

 

“Uncle Jonas?”, he asked the Wolf, bewildered.

 

Uncovering its eyes, the wolf nodded but then, suddenly, there was a bright flash of light and a puff of smoke and, when the smoke cleared, instead of a wolf cowering at his feet, Jacob saw his uncle.

 

“What kind of magic is this?”, asked Jacob.

 

But then Jacob’s uncle explained to him how he had become a wolf.

 

“I was in the forest, gathering firewood when I smelled the most delicious smell of baking”, he said, “And following the smell it lead me to a house that was painted all sorts of bright colours and going inside I saw that it was empty but that lying on a table was a freshly baked cherry pie on a golden dish and, beside it, a silver knife. Oh, Jacob, I don’t know what possessed me but suddenly I got so hungry that I just had to eat some of that pie and once I had had one slice I just couldn’t stop eating and, before I knew it, I had eaten the whole pie but then, just as I had polished off the last crumb of it, the owner of the house returned; an old woman who must have been a witch because when she saw that I had eaten her pie she put a curse on me. “You shall pay for your gluttony”, she said, “Before this hour is through, you shall become a wolf and will not be human again until someone calls you by your name”. 

 

Terrified, I ran out of her house and back to our cottage and, thinking quickly, I wrote upon a piece of paper “The Wolf is your uncle”, intending to leave the note for you but the wind was so strong that it blew the paper away out of the door and, looking at my hands that were already covered in wolves hair, I realized I was running out of time and so quickly, I put on my eye glasses and my wrist watch and lit my wooden tobacco pipe, clamping my jaws tightly round it; hoping that even if you did not find the note you would see these things upon me and realize I was human”.

 

“Oh uncle”, said Jacob, laughing when he heard his uncle’s story,“I thought you had been eaten by a wolf because of the red stain on your clothes and round the wolves mouth that looked like blood”.

 

Now his uncle laughed, “Oh they must be stains from eating the Witch’s delicious cherry pie”, he said.

 

“Well thank goodness you’re alright”, said Jacob.

 

But then his uncle remembered something else and, entering his cottage, he got down some things from a shelf that glittered in the light.

 

“When the witch put the curse upon me, I thought I had better steal the golden dish and silver knife from her table because I did not want to leave you penniless and unable to survive on your own”, he said, “They must be worth quite a lot of money”.

 

And his uncle was not wrong, for the next day he sold the golden dish and silver knife and made enough money to buy a little house in the village so that now Jacob didn’t have to walk so far to school and there the old man and the boy lived very happily for a long, long time.