It takes me a moment to realize the pocket is actually a small tunnel that leads upward. I hesitate to crawl further in. An animal lives here—I can smell it. There’s the scent of old rot, and a pungent, musky odor.
The wind and sleet pummel the outside of the cave. Lightning cracks the air. I flinch, fighting back panic. My mind races through the possibilities of what animal might live here. I’ve faced predators in the forest and on the grassland—wolves, big cats, even bears.
Confronting any of these predators in a den terrifies me, but I have nowhere else to go. If I go back outside, the raging storm will kill me. If I stay in the tunnel, the cold and wet will pull the last bit of heat from my body and I’ll die of exposure. I’ve survived worse storms, but not when I’m exhausted, underfed, and weak.
I crawl a few more inches in. The air feels warmer. I’ll take my chances.
It’s pitch black inside. Lightning flashes don’t show me enough of the cave to ease my fears. But I feel my way along and find a dry floor covered with dirt and leaves. I huddle against the cave wall and close my eyes so my ears will open wider.
There are clicking and popping noises, followed by a series of huffs. Something grumbles low in its throat.
Bear.
My pulse races, and I weigh my fear of this creature against my fear of the storm. Maybe if I sit still enough, if I don’t act threatening in any way, it’ll leave me alone until the storm moves on and I can get out.
I don’t mean to trespass, I think to the darkness. I’m just afraid.
I curl up tight and press into the wall, shivering. I can’t see the bear, but I know it sees me. I hear it breathing. So close I can almost feel its breath across the hairs of my arm. Or maybe that’s my fear brushing against me.
Every time I shift the slightest bit, the bear huffs. But it doesn’t attack. Maybe it’s just as afraid of me. Or maybe it understands I’m only looking for shelter.
I try to focus on the warmth in the cave; it’s a welcome relief. Gradually I relax, and my shivering stops. I fight to stay awake, as if that will somehow protect me if the bear chooses to attack. But soon I surrender to exhaustion, and the wailing storm invades my dreams.
When I open my eyes, I forget for a moment where I am. I don’t even remember falling asleep. I’m still curled up, my muscles stiff with an ache that reaches into my bones. My head feels thick and cloudy, and sparks of light fill my vision. The kaleidoscope of colors again, the beautiful disease.
I blink and clear my eyes. The storm has spent itself. Daylight has eased into the small space. Then I remember the bear and my pulse quickens.
From the opposite wall, I see it now, watching me with dark, round eyes. It’s close enough to reach out and touch. Its breath smells of death. I’m afraid to move.
The bear huffs once and wags its head as if to say, you’re a sad sight.
“Sit up, child,” it says.
I blink and stare. The bear didn’t speak. The disease is making me hear things that aren’t real. I slowly right myself into a sitting position, wincing at the pain shooting through my body.
“The demon has worn itself out,” it says.
I shake my head, as if the effort will somehow resettle my infected brain properly. I look around and see a small mound, now decayed, only fur wrapped around protruding bones. A dead cub. A steel arrow juts out of its side. I recognize that arrow; it’s not one of ours. Her cub was killed by an Icarite hunter.
She leans toward me, thrusting her nose in my face and over my body, exploring me by smell. Her warm breath blows across my skin and raises the hairs on my neck; it was her breath before, after all. I pull my knees up to my chest and close my eyes. Pressing myself into the wall, I wait for claws to rake me, or teeth to sink into my flesh. If Gunther finds my body, I wonder, will he mourn or rejoice?
Instead, a warm tongue washes my face. I open my eyes and meet the bear’s dark, appraising gaze.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “It’s the best I can do. I’m sick, you see.”
“So am I,” I whisper. I can’t hold the words back. They seem pulled out of me.
Her dark eyes gleam. “I know. I can smell your disease.”
I glance over at the dead cub. “You’ve lost your child. To an Icarite hunter?”
“Yes,” she says, blowing out a breath long with suffering. “But now you’re here.”
I don’t know what that means. If I’m imagining this conversation, am I trying to tell myself something?
“I have to go,” I tell her.
The bear shifts in her corner, grunting. “I’m hungry,” she says.
I’m hungry too. What I feel, she feels, I think, though I can’t explain where the knowledge comes from. My sickness is her sickness. Is this real? Or is my mind doing this?
I slip out of the tunnel into a bright day. Clouds still linger in the sky, but a chilly wind pushes them past the sun. To the west, a black scorch stains the forest. Wisps of smoke still rise and catch the wind, even after the storm’s deluge. I’m afraid to go there, but I’m drawn to it, as if I have no choice but to bear witness to the devastation.
I make my way down the mountainside, stopping once to look back. The bear emerges from the den and watches me. In the full light I see that she’s a grizzly, and so bony I don’t know how she’s still alive. She looks after me a moment, as if I might not return, then ambles off.
I continue my descent. The ground is puddled and slippery. I lose my footing so often that by the time I make it halfway down the mountainside, I’m covered in mud, scrapes, and scratches.
In a patch of ruined trees I come across the Icarite hunter who pursued me. His body is twisted around a broken sapling, half covered by a slide of rocks. His head is crushed, and a branch protrudes from his gut. The storm has taken its sacrifice and spared me. Looking at his mangled body, I feel little but relief.
When I finally approach the charred aftermath of the flamers’ attack, the acrid odor of burnt, wet wood hits my nose first. Then I see my camp, burned and ruined before me. The scene hurls me into my memories and I’m a ten-year-old girl again, feeling the horror of it.
I’m not prepared for this. The loss of my clan hits me hard. These blackened, misshapen bodies are people I knew. I never felt a strong connection to them, but now that they’re gone, I feel it—the bond severed, conspicuous in its absence. It’s a hollow ache inside my gut, worse than the hunger that always seems to be there. Much worse.
Without realizing it at first, I start counting the bodies. Ten, twelve, twenty…. When I reach thirty-six and find no others, I know some have escaped. There were forty-three in our clan, including me, so six are unaccounted for. A rush of hope fills me, hope that my brother and father are among those who escaped. But I know Bode, lying on his travois and unable to move quickly, would never have been so lucky. I keep looking, and soon I find him—number thirty-seven—burnt and twisted, bone and flesh and leather and wood, all one charred mass.
Emotions I never expected to feel take up arms and clash inside me. Grief and rage and emptiness. Most of all, guilt. If I’d been there… maybe…. But I know I would likely have died alongside Bode and the others. All at once, I miss my father. The knowledge that I will never speak to him again, never hope for acceptance from him again—it all overwhelms me. I miss a man I never felt love for, never thought was important to me.