She returns in a few moments, shaking snow off her fur. Her muzzle is smeared with blood. She looks at me and grunts.
“You have food,” she says.
Though I’ve heard her voice before, impossible as it seems, hearing it again startles me. With trembling hands I pull the meat from my shirt and stare at it a moment. My mind is a whirlwind. How can the bear be talking to me? But then again, an Icarite hunter warned me of danger. An Icarite who might never have been there at all.
“Never mind,” she says. “I have plenty to eat now.”
She shuffles outside again. When I hear the sounds of ripping, the snapping of bones and tearing of flesh, I try not to picture it in my mind. But I know the less that remains of the bodies, the safer I’ll be. Eventually I’ll have to go out and bury whatever she doesn’t eat.
While the bear is gone, I eat a little of the cooked meat and feel some energy return. But I’m so tired my eyes won’t stay open. I curl up near the cub’s remains and fall into a restless sleep.
When I wake, the bear hasn’t returned. Cold has seeped into the cave and I can’t stop shivering. I crawl down the tunnel and discover the mouth nearly covered in snow. That means several inches also cover what’s left of the hunters. I’m safe for now, until the unpredictable weather decides to sweep away its white blanket and reveal what the bear has done. Then I’ll have to bury the Icarites’ remains.
I hear her snuffling, and scramble back inside. She follows, shaking the snow from her fur and settling into her spot. It rains on me and makes me even colder.
“A full stomach is a wonderful thing,” she says.
I nod, shuddering at the images her words evoke. Then I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment, searching for clarity. She didn’t say that. Bears don’t speak, I remind myself, not really. Do they?
“You don’t have to worry about them,” she tells me. “The snow has hidden them.”
“I know. But not for long.”
The bear blows out a weary breath. “You must be cold.”
“Yes.”
“Lie close to me. I’ll keep you warm.”
I hesitate, worried that this is a trap set by my traitorous mind. Is it deceiving me? Speaking for the bear? If I make one unexpected move, she might kill me as she did the hunters. Maybe getting me to approach the bear is my brain’s way of ending my own suffering.
Maybe I’m okay with that.
I inch closer. She doesn’t huff or growl. She seems to be waiting for me. I advance slowly on hands and knees. In the deepening darkness, I barely make out her eyes, like polished obsidian, watching me. She sighs, deep and rumbling, rolls on her side, and with one paw draws me up against her until I’m snug in her motherly embrace. Her warmth percolates into my body. I close my eyes and sleep again.
When I wake, I can’t breathe. My head pounds and the air in the cave is thick and suffocating. The bear lies still, wheezing. Blackness spots my vision. Gasping, I untangle myself from the bear’s grip and crawl on my belly down to the tunnel’s entrance. It’s completely blocked by snow.
I claw at the wall of ice where the snow met the warmer air of the tunnel. It doesn’t budge. I ram my elbow into it, and with a crunch, it gives way to the softer snow on the other side. I dig and dig, my hands aching and numb from the cold, my head hammering, pulsing in my ears.
Finally, I break through. Struggling against the soft, biting ice, I shove my whole body out into the dazzling white, sucking freezing air into my lungs. I climb on top of the drifts, roll onto my back, and let the cold embrace me until my breathing slows and my pulse drops to its normal rhythm.
I hear a frustrated growl and snow from the hole showers me. The bear shoves past me, panting and grunting. She wobbles, as if the slightest breeze might knock her off her feet.
“Are you okay?” I ask, still hesitant, still wondering if our conversations are real.
Her head sways in my direction. Her eyes are glazed. “Yes. And you?”
“I’m fine now.” I sit up and take in the world now blanketed in white. The forest to the west looks clean now, the snow covering the ugly black smear of the fire.
“You need food,” the bear says. “You’ll feel better if you eat.” She takes a few steps forward, sinks to her belly and stops, as if considering whether the effort is worth it.
I wonder, not for the first time, why she cares so much about me. Like letting me sleep beside her. Defending me against the hunters.
Maybe she needs me as much as I need her.
It’s strange, this feeling of need. I think of my clan, now dead. How have I come to this? How have I lived with a family and never felt this connection? How is it that now, after all this time, I want to feel it, to know it? Inside I see the truth: it’s taken a loss of connection to find it. Perhaps the bear’s loss has forged a similar path for her. Perhaps, in this way, we are also alike.
“There’s still meat,” I remind her. “Enough for both of us.”
She blows a noisy breath through her nose. “You eat. I need to wander.”
Now fear seizes me—that the bear might not come back, that she’s leaving for good, to let her sickness claim her alone. The hole that opened inside me when I saw my father’s blackened remains, aches in my gut like an ulcer.
She casts me a glance. “I won’t go far.” She says it with assurance, as if she knows my thoughts. I’m starting to think she does.
I watch as she plows a lumbering path through the deep snow. When she disappears past the rocks, I go back inside.
Our den is still stuffy, but cold, fresh air has wafted in. I curl up on the floor where the bear has slept. I still feel the lingering warmth of her body. I don’t feel hungry, only tired; a deep, aching fatigue I know will never relent.
I toss and turn, listening for the sound of the bear’s return. Worry chases sleep away—worry that the bear might die out there, leaving me all alone. After a while, I sit up and eat. Maybe a little food will soothe the knot in my gut.
There’s still a hindquarter left when I’m done. I hope the bear will eat it when she returns.
I wait until the light begins to wane. The fear that earlier pricked at the edges of my thoughts now becomes a frenzied animal inside me, and I can’t sit still any longer. Just as I move to search for her, she returns, crawling through the entrance. I sidle out of the way, and she flops onto her spot with a long, rumbling sigh.
She doesn’t shake the snow from her fur. I know right away something isn’t right.
She regards me briefly with those dark, appraising eyes. “Why are you there, and not here?” she asks.
I move next to her, nestling into her soaked fur. It makes me colder, but I don’t want to be apart from her. Not now. “Are you worse?” I ask, my throat tight.
“Yes,” she says, the word carried in a long breath.
I listen to her lungs rattle with each struggle for air. If she hadn’t attacked those hunters, thrown all her energy into one last effort to protect me, maybe…
She did it for me. And now there’s nothing I can do for her. Her weakness seems to seep into me, like the cold and wet of her fur. I feel myself sink into it along with her, as if we’re both being pulled under by it. Drowning.
“Tell me about your mother,” the bear rasps.
I want to ask her why but ignore the urge. “She died when I was young. So I don’t remember a lot about her. She was beautiful. She’d lost her hair, but kept her head covered in a scarf the color of the grass and the leaves.” I touch the scarf wrapped around my head. “This scarf. It’s the only thing I have left of her.”