The narrator describes a cold northern country in which the people live in suspicion and fear. A child goes to see her grandmother; along the way, she encounters a wolf. The child is prepared with her father’s knife, and she cuts off the wolf’s hand. The wolf runs away, and the child puts the paw in her basket. When she arrives, she finds her grandmother ill. She pulls a cloth from her basket and discovers that the paw has become her grandmother’s hand. When she pulls the blanket back, she sees that her grandmother is missing her hand. She screams for the neighbors, who come in and drive the old woman away and kill her.

A fearsome wolf roams the forest. The narrator remarks that wolves often come into people’s homes. Once, a hunter trapped a wolf and killed it to reveal that the wolf was really a man. On another occasion, a newlywed man disappeared on the night of his wedding. His wife remarried. Then one day the man came back; he took the form of a wolf and attacked the woman’s new son, and her new husband retaliated by killing him.

One day, a young girl goes through the woods to see her grandmother.