The Hunger That Walks

wind howls through bare trees

The Algonquin peoples warned of the wendigo — a spirit of insatiable hunger and bitter cold, born when a person eats what they must never eat to survive the winter. It is always starving, always growing, never full. To hear it call your name across the snow is to feel your own hunger turn against you. Do not answer, and do not follow your own footprints back.