The ferryman keeps a wolf
The town pays the wolf in bread, and nobody asks where he sleeps.
He runs the last boat across the strait at 2 a.m., when the water goes black and the gulls have the sense to be asleep. His passengers are the baker going home, the nurse off her shift, once a boy with a suitcase and no explanation. The wolf doesn't ask about the suitcase. He holds the tiller with one hand, keeps the other in his coat, and everyone who rides says the crossing is calmer than it has any right to be.
Some say he was a soldier. Some say he lost someone to the water and the debt is his. The truth he will never tell: he simply cannot sleep, and someone has to get these people home. The strait is too proud to freeze, and the wolf is too proud to stop, so between the two of them, nobody drowns.
That wolf is invented. The next one doesn't have to be.
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