Grey Brother
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- For members of the homonymous Franciscan congregation see Albertines
Grey Brother, also spelled Gray Brother in some editions, is a fictional wolf character in Rudyard Kipling's Mowgli stories, collected in The Jungle Book (1894) and The Second Jungle Book (1895). The oldest of Father Wolf and Raksha's four cubs and their de facto leader, he and his brothers grow up with the adopted "man-cub" Mowgli and often hunt and fight alongside him.
It is Grey Brother who, with the aid of Akela, stampedes the buffalo to trample Shere Khan in "Tiger! Tiger!", and in the fight with the dhole in "Red Dog" he is in the forefront of battle defending Mowgli.
He can sometimes be impulsive - in "Letting In the Jungle" he suggests that he and his brothers should kill the evil hunter Buldeo as an offering to Mowgli, which causes the man-cub to react furiously - but his love and loyalty to Mowgli are never in question.
In "The Spring Running", in which Mowgli must leave the jungle and return to human society, it is Grey Brother who has the last word:
“The stars are thin,” said Grey Brother, snuffing at the dawn wind. “Where shall we lair today? For, from now, we follow new trails.”
