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Pauric wished his day had started to deteriorate when the sheep went missing. At least that would have been like ripping off a bandaid.

It had been going so well too. As the village of Den’s main merchant, he arbitrated many deals that saw an influx of gold and goods into the local community. That morning had been particularly good for business. A travelling caravan had passed through, offloading some luxury goods and gold in exchange for supplies grown, hunted and foraged by the people of Den. It was all the sleepy village had to offer, but it was enough to earn them a decent bit of coin that would help them get through this year’s fast approaching winter.

Then Pauric had been tackled off his high mood by a distinct ringing bell, the sound that had been the bane of his existence for nearly a week.

More embarrassing was the voice that coupled with it.

“Wolf!” the familiar voice yelled. “Wolf! I saw a wolf in the fields!”

With a sigh, Pauric had packed in his day’s earnings and with an irritated grumble and made for the door. As he did, his wife barely lifted her eyes from the book she was reading, knowing full well where this was going.

“Don’t be upset,” Catherine said simply in that tone Pauric was sure could disarm a dragon’s fury. It did wonders for his anger anyway, and he felt the stress practically leap from his body. “You know he’s doing his best.”

“Ah, quit coddling the boy, woman,” Pauric said a little more tersely than he intended.

Wincing, the man paused by the door to realise Catherine had lifted her gaze. Glancing back, Pauric sighed.

“Fine. I know he’s doing his best.”

And then that cry again, shouting loud enough to crack his own voice: “Wolf! Wolf in the fields!”

Pauric’s eye twitched and even Catherine’s kind tone failed to defuse his ire. The village merchant shut the door behind him before his wife drained him of all his desire to dole out some good old-fashioned discipline and moved to the source of the ruckus.

Den was a small place, a dozen families give-or-take. Some large, some small, they worked as a tight knit community to overcome all obstacles. Everyone had a role, everyone pulled their weight. They had farmers, hunters, foragers and the customary business-savvy trader – yours truly.

And then there was the boy.

A small conflagration of locals who weren’t either out hunting or on the farms had gathered about the square in the centre of Den. And in their midst stood a boy, still yanking at the alarm bell reserved for only the most dire emergency, still crying out at the top of his lungs.

Pauric’s resemblance to the boy was uncanny, as was his irritation with Silvius.

When Silvius had been born eighteen harvests ago, Pauric had thought to himself: Aha! Finally! After two girls, I finally have a son!

Pauric had been so proud. He’d grown old and chubby with plans of how Silvius would grow up into a great man, ready to take over as the charismatic leader Den needed when Pauric was no longer around.

Then Silvius turned out to be a dimwit with a hyperactive imagination. Of course, the ‘dimwit’ part was a father’s harsh over-exaggeration in his disappointment in his son, but Silvius’s hyperactive imagination was beginning to get out of hand.

It had been cute when he was a little lad, toddling about in his onesie and swinging a wooden sword at imaginary monsters. But when he was doing the same at age twelve – sans onesie at least - Pauric had begun to get worried.

On top of that the boy seemed incapable of fitting in anywhere. As mentioned before, Den was a small place. It’s continued prosperity, and by extension surviving the winters that seemed to be growing steadily harsher with each passing year, relied entirely on everyone pulling their weight. So, when the other boys in Silvius’s generation started farming and hunting, taking the fancy of girls and readying themselves to raise a family of their own, Pauric wanted nothing more than for Silvius to prove himself useful.

Unfortunately…

Firstly it seemed hunting wasn’t in Silvius’s blood. He was a decent enough shot when Pauric taught him to shoot a crossbow, but he was clumsy. After his first day out he’d driven the other hunters to the point of insanity for the amount of deer that slipped their grasp.

That was fine, and Pauric had held onto his optimism. But then Silvius continued to fail.

Farming turned out not to be his calling either. For all his theories about crop rotation and his silly diagrams about optimised field shape and size, Silvius could barely drive a plough. He already didn’t have any friends, and he quickly became a laughing stock of the girls who helped their mothers pick the fields or forage in the forest when he couldn’t even do that right. His sisters didn’t help much in that respect, but then he should have at least been a man about it and stood up for himself.

That was probably what bothered Pauric the most. Some of the other men in the village were talking about their concerns that Silvius might be ‘special.’ And being ‘special’ in a small countryside place like Den was never a good thing. Pauric had seen his fair share of the world, much of it had made him uncomfortable enough to want to avoid civilisation as much as he could, hence settling down in Den.

Pauric had tried to defend Silvius. He tried to nurture the academic that seemed to be brewing in the boy. But then there had been the incident in the shop. Pauric had returned to his store after leaving Silvius in charge for a few hours to find a travelling merchant had passed by. And in a fit of excitement Silvius had made a number of very poor investments, a mixture of adventuring gear, dungeoneering equipment and half a library of books following the epic tales of old heroes. Not exactly the type of things that were particularly useful in a small farming community.

In the end Silvius had been handed the simpleton task of herding the sheep. But after just a few weeks it seemed he was proving inadequate at even just a menial task. Case-and-point, he was ringing the emergency bell for the fifth time this week shouting about a wolf. In fact, this was the second incident today!

Pushing his way to the front of the small crowd, it was easy for Pauric and his sizeable bulk, the father closed a hand over the brass bell to halt that infernal ringing.

“Alright, Sil. What is it now?” Pauric managed in his most patient tone. In his own mind he was imagining Catherine was looking over his shoulder. The woman’s supernatural ability to keep people calm preceded even her physical presence.

Silvius looked up at his father, then pointed off in the direction where he’d left the sheep to graze. “I saw it again. A wolf!”

Pauric sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Sil, wolves are not native to these parts. You know that better than anybody.”

“It’s not a normal wolf though!” Silvius cried, raising his voice just a little again. “I got a better look at it this time. It was walking on two legs like a person. I think there’s a werewolf in the woods!”

That seemed to be the magic word. In a moment, as soon as Silvius said ‘werewolf’ all talking stopped. The less than covert utterances between the townsfolk ended abruptly and the silence that followed was thicker than the clingy drizzle.

Glancing about and noticing the looks crossing several faces, Pauric cuffed his son upside the head. Not hard enough to hurt, but enough to snap Silvius’s head forward and get his attention.

“Don’t be stupid, Sil. You should know, especially after burying your face in all those books of yours, that werewolves haven’t been seen since the Age of Heroes. They’re extinct!” He started counting off on his fingers. “Just like dragons, vampires, gorgons, blights, goblins and many more.”

“But I saw it!” Silvius insisted. And before Pauric could say anything more, the boy was leading the way towards the edge of town, waving people to follow. “I’ll show you! It was loitering even as I ran here! It’s probably still there! C’mon!”

It was a fairly chill, miserable day permeated with a sticky drizzle of rain. Nobody really wanted to follow Silvius out to the fields, but then if they didn’t they weren’t going to nip this behaviour out at the bud. With some hesitation some of the folks began to follow. Then more. And then before Pauric knew it at least a group of twenty men and women, some carrying pitchforks (just in case) were following his son out past the edge of town.

Groaning tiredly, Pauric rolled his head into his neck, punched at the air in frustration, then quickly set off after them. As mentioned before he wasn’t the young man he used to be and any time he could avoid a long hike into the hills he took it. Unfortunately there didn’t seem to be getting around this one.

So in his attire better suited for tending to the store, Pauric hobbled after uncomfortably, his slick flats slipping on the wet grass and his leather apron the only thing offering anything in the way of protection against the rain.

The herd of sheep were being kept in the foothills near the forest’s edge about five minutes out of town. The route there took them over a rocky path that wound between and over the hills, oceans of gorse stretching on for as far as the eye could see. And then the dark, twisted deadwood trees came into view. The forest was the subject of much superstition, so thick it was almost supernatural in nature. Only the town’s hunters dared go in there, and even then only when game was scarce and when they had to, never too deep.

It was no wonder Silvius thought he saw a wolf stalking among those trees, hyperactive imagination such as his.

The sheep, twenty of them, pudgy with stark white wool, were idly chomping on the young grass shoots that grew in the clearing between the rocks and gorse on one side, and the treeline on the other. At least, initial count showed there to be twenty.

As Silvius was trying to convince people of where the wolf had been stalking, Pauric did a second, then a third count of the sheep. He kept getting stuck at nineteen, then couldn’t find the last sheep.

Finally, he realised that was because it wasn’t there.

“Silvius, where is sheep number twenty?” Pauric asked.

Sighing in the middle of his explanation over how the ‘wolf’ had been stalking him and the sheep, Silvius paused, the finger he was pointing at the treeline sagging slightly. “It’s ‘Sil,’ dad.”

“Boy, do I look to be in a mood?” he pointed at the sheep again. “I count nineteen. How many do you count?”

Silvius was quiet for a moment as he, and the others, counted for themselves. Slowly but surely, Silvius’s expression began to drop. He finally mumbled something.

“Speak up!”

“Nineteen,” Silvius snapped a little sharper than he intended. Pauric could tell, regret wincing across his face even as he said the number. The regret was almost immediately replaced with realisation. “The wolf! The wolf must have attacked while I was getting help!”

Pauric cuffed the boy one. Again, not hard enough to harm, but enough to make him hold his tongue. “Don’t be stupid. If a wolf attacked why would the other sheep just stick around? And do you see tracks? Where is the blood?”

Silvius seemed to have an answer for that too. “Like I said, it was a werewolf. And they can be wily creatures. When the great hero Aldric of Vuursridder took on a pack of them he had to-…”

“I’m talking at you seriously, boy!” Pauric shouted, losing his temper now. “Now is not the time for flights of fancy! Those sheep were being reared for blankets to spare us the cold this winter, and meat if we get desperate enough. This is important! Where is the last sheep?”

Silvius didn’t have an answer. It was one of the older townspeople who answered, sighing terribly and leaning on his pitchfork as he did.

“Gods, it must have wandered off while Silvius went to ring the bell. Pauric, we’re still reeling from Silvius’s poor investments with the town’s gold. We’ll be stretched to afford a new sheep this close to winter. And even then most other towns have already sheared. A sheep isn’t going to grow a full coat for us to shear then grow another to protect itself over winter in the time we have left.”

“Calm down, Daryl. It’s just one sheep. It won’t be the death of us,” Pauric told him. And yet, something snapped in the man.

Every parental instinct in him went blank. Finally, he was done with patience. Finally, he just gave up trying to defend Silvius.

“Daryl, is your boy busy?” When the older man shook his head, Pauric said, “Have him take over as shepherd.” He added to one of the women, “Go fetch the trackers, maybe they can figure out where the sheep headed. It can’t have wandered off far.”

“It’ll be dark soon,” the woman said.

“All the more reason to move quickly.” Pauric was already forming a posse to search ahead of the hunters in case the sheep was still nearby. They had to move quickly, but also carefully so not to accidentally trample any tracks that might prove valuable in finding the missing animal. In that moment he noted Silvius was still standing beside him waiting for instructions.

As he had the attention of his peers, he paused then threw Silvius a glare. The boy had done enough for one day.

“Go home to your mother, Sil,” Pauric said, some of the fatherly patience returned to his voice at the mention of Catherine.

“But I can help. If the hunters find the werewolf then-…”

“Damn it all, Silvius, there is no damned werewolf!” Gone again was his patience, and the disappointment in his voice was palpable.

“But, dad-…”

“Did I stutter, boy!?” he growled sharply

Silvius stared for a tense moment and forced through gritted teeth, “No, sir.”

Then turning on his heel, Silvius started the lonely trudge of shame back to Den. With a mope, he spared a single look back at the treeline… and saw nothing.

* * *

Sil’s room was more akin to that of an inner-city teenager than a country boy. His walls were adorned with paintings and paraphernalia from the age of heroes. His bookshelf was filled with tomes chronicling epic quests, journals about monsters and how to slay them, and even hand-painted resin miniatures of heroes, villains and all kinds of fantastical beasts doing battle in-between.

His favourite books were laid out over his desk, which was where Sil moped. He slouched over the table, face resting in one hand as he gazed out the windows into the dreary evening. A boy his age was briskly wandering from house to house, lighting the oil lamps dotted about Den. And he was doing it without messing up in some way like Sil might be expected to at this point. The only reason Sil didn’t get that chore to try out was the townsfolks’ collective worry that he’d set Den on fire.

Sil let his gaze creep back to the pile of books on is desk, some journals of his favourite hero who had fought all sorts of monsters not even thirty years ago. In the twilight years of heroism and adventure, Aldric Vuursridder had performed his greatest feats. The top journal was his latest, where he chronicled his last stand between the very last known pack of werewolves, a convoy of innocent commoners looking for land to settle on, with naught but his trusty swords.

After that, Aldric had disappeared. Some said the werewolves had bested him, but then how was it the creatures were extinct? Sil believed he merely retired into a world where the need for heroes and adventurers ran scarce. Likely he had changed his name, settled down, perhaps even started a family.

That was what romanticised the heroes of old for Sil so much. They weren’t characters in a piece of fiction (though some of their unofficial biographies made them out as such). Sil knew that at their core, heroes like Annike the Sharp, Frodd Hammerfeld, Bane Chillwind and even his idol Aldric Vuursridder were regular people. Normal men and women, humans with wants and dreams and desires. Individuals with the courage to set aside their own selfish motivations and fears to stand up for those who couldn’t when the plague of monsters had been at its worst.

The door creaked as it opened, drawing Sil’s attention away from the books. His mother walked in. The spitting image of the women his older sisters were growing up into, the resemblance between them was still noticeable. If his father was to be believed, Sil got his lean build from Pauric, and his rounded features and fair hair from his mother.

Whereas Catherine’s hair was left long with elegant curls rolling past her shoulders, Sil’s hair was clipped short. His mother was also a tall, leggy woman indicating she’d been very agile in her youth, and she had a scar running along her delicate jawline that she never talked about.

“Your father told me what happened,” she said gently, walking over to where Sil moped. She set a hand on his shoulder, but it only made the boy mope even harder. “You know he was right to be hard on you.”

Sil didn’t say anything, sticking to his opinion. The alternative to losing a sheep could have been the wolf making off with more than one sheep, or worse: starting a killing spree right in the midst of Den.

At least now the hunters were out looking for that missing sheep. With luck they’d happen upon the wolf and kill it. But Sil wasn’t holding out much hope.

Catherine knelt down beside her son and sighed, looking at the journals he’d collected over the years, sometimes blowing months of his allowance on commissioning traders to track the books down. Honestly they were historical things that belonged in a national archive, but Sil had insisted they were safer in his hands.

“Sil, you’re so distracted all the time.” She reached out and laid her hand on the pile, her slender fingers following Aldric’s name embossed in the leather with a sense of familiarity. “Your father really wants you to look forward to the future. Not bury yourself in bygone flights of fancy.”

“These things happened,” Sil protested pointing at the journals. “Monsters existed, and heroes fought them. It’s history.”

“That’s right. It is history.”

“And you always taught me to remember history, so we can learn from it!”

Catherine nodded calmly, her demeanour calming Sil by extension. “That is true. I told you to remember history. Not live in it.”

Sil went back to pouting. Sighing again, this time with a grin, Catherine ruffled the boy’s hair and placed a delicate kiss on his temple.

“Your father is in the tavern. I’ll be out helping knit blankets for winter. Don’t go to bed too late, okay?”

Sil nodded, then listened for his mother’s footsteps. His ears followed them all the way to the front door, then when he heard the lock turn he stood up. His fists were clenched, knuckles set on the wooden surface of the desk as he went over the silent epiphany his mother had given him.

History had plenty to teach. How to be better than your past self. How to avoid making the same mistakes again and again.

And in the case of facing a monster that ought to be extinct?

Sil flicked open Aldric Vuursridder’s journal to the page where he’d sketched out the anatomy of a werewolf and clearly marked the points to attack to best kill the beast.

In the case of facing a monster from the past, history could teach how to best kill monsters.

There was little time to waste. Sil went about his room like a whirlwind, whisking up his knapsack and what few adventuring supplies he’d cobbled together over the years. He packed a tarp, bedroll, survival knife, flint and steel and anything else he could find. Then he ran down to the pantry and collected some supplies he was going to need for an extended camping trip.

One last stop before he left the house, Sil went into his parents’ room and took his father’s crossbow and quiver of bolts down from on top of the wardrobe. Pauric had taken Sil out shooting a few times, and had been surprised at how good a shot he’d been.

Lashing the quiver to the side of his loaded pack and hanging the crossbow from the sling over his shoulder, Sil slipped out into the night. Crossing Den in the dark turned out to be easy. Many of the men were in the tavern, music and raucous laughter spilling out into the rainy night. A few lights were lit in the houses, but the streets were empty.

Sil only paused once as the hunters came in out of the rain from their fruitless search for the missing sheep. And their complete number along with a distinct lack of werewolf slung between them indicated they hadn’t faced any excitement either.

Good. More for him.

Pausing at a corner he waited in the shadows for the hunters to disappear before he made a dash to the familiar goat’s path leading towards the forest. Towards there the sheep had gone missing, and towards the wolf.

He was going to prove to everyone what he had seen, even if he had to drag a werewolf’s carcass back to the village himself.