The Wolves’ Spring

The Wolves’ Spring lay an hour’s walk from the village, beyond the waterfall, where the forest grew denser and darker. The water that bubbled up was so clear you could count the stones on the bottom, and so cold it stung your fingers. But nobody drank from it — for around the spring, in the soft mud, there were always paw prints. Large paw prints, deeper than a dog’s, in circles around the water.

At night, the woodcutters who sometimes returned too late would say, you could hear them. The howling always began at the spring and spread across the valley like a choir gaining voices. First one wolf, then two, then dozens. And then, abruptly, silence — as though someone had slammed a door shut.

There was a young shepherd named Hubert who did not believe it. He had never seen a wolf, though he sometimes heard them in the distance. One October evening, when the mist hung low above the Amblève, he crept to the spring to see what truly happened.

He hid behind a fallen oak, twenty paces from the water. The moon was full and its light fell through the canopy like silver on snow. At first nothing happened. Then, one by one, they emerged from the forest. Grey shapes, larger than the wolves he knew from stories, with eyes that reflected the moonlight like gleaming coins. They walked to the spring, lowered their heads and drank. They made no sound at all.

Hubert counted them. There were thirteen. When the last one lifted its head, the animal turned and looked straight in the direction where Hubert was hiding. The shepherd felt his heart stop. The wolf gazed, long and piercing, then turned back to the water. As if to say: I know you are there. But tonight we let you go.

Hubert ran back to the village and told what he had seen. The people believed him — why would they not? Everyone knew the spring, everyone knew the sounds. But the priest, a sober man from the Liège country, resolved to put an end to the superstition. On a Sunday after mass he led a procession to the spring, bearing a crucifix and holy water.

When they arrived the spring was dry. The water had vanished, the mud had hardened and no paw prints could be seen. The priest poured the holy water over the dry stones, blessed the spot and declared the work done.

But at night, the woodcutters who lived closest to the forest said, you could sometimes still hear the howling — not at the spring, but deeper in the woods, further from the people, as though the wolves had withdrawn but not departed. And the spring? It stayed dry. For seventy years, until one rainy autumn day someone passed and saw that water stood there again — clear and cold, with prints of large paws in the mud all around.