Had the doctor taken him to the shore boat?
A breaker crashed over the stern. The ship shuddered; shadows leaped and swayed across the cabin; I clutched the doorjamb to keep my balance. And then, amidst the rush and boom of seawater, I heard the bear: a great, long, sorrowful bellow that rose in an accusation of betrayal.
And who could blame her?
There might still be hope for me, but the bear . . .
The bear, who knew how to swim, who was born to swim in cold, open waters . . .
The bear would be dragged down under the sea to drown.
CHAPTER 26
Keys
WHERE WERE THE keys?
I had seen them in the doctor’s wooden chest when he was stitching up the bear. But where . . . ?
I scanned the room. The seabags, bedrolls, and sea chests had scattered all across the deck. I’d never find that chest! And the doctor might have taken it. . . .
A wave boomed against the stern; a sudden flare of light . . .
There. On the wall. A ring of keys hanging from a nail.
Another wave. Water poured into the storeroom; the ship shifted, tilted. Steeply to starboard, and astern.
Go!
I snatched up the keys and fled.
Outside, the moon slipped from behind the massed clouds, revealing gusting drifts of rain. I could hear shouts and thumps and creaking; I could hear water gurgling below. My feet skidded on the wet boards. Another wave hit astern. I slipped, fell, careened down, down, down into the cold water on the starboard deck and then fetched up against something hard—a bollard. I crawled back up toward the bear.
She turned to look at me. Let out a small, indignant grunt.
I found the padlock among the chains that held the door.
Another wave. I clung to a cage bar and fumbled with the keys. I stabbed one at the slot in the padlock. It wouldn’t go. Tried a second. A third.
Another wave.
Hold tight to the bar. Stay on your feet.
Two more keys I tried, and at last, a fit.
The grinding of the tumblers.
Click!
My fingers plucked at the chains; I unwound them loop by loop. The door swung open.
Another wave. The ship shuddered and screeched. And the bear was sliding toward me—scraping her claws against the cage floor. She hurtled across the threshold, knocking into the door. It swung, slammed against my elbow, sent pain jolting up and down my arm. My hand loosed the bar, and I was slipping down across the canted deck toward the water that had come to live there, slipping into it, up to my neck. My feet felt the deck at a steep slant far beneath me; my knees felt the hard curve of the starboard rail, but then it dropped away entirely, and there was nothing, nothing but water all around.
CHAPTER 27
Some Kind of Dream
WATER SLAPPED AT me, blinding me, filling my mouth and nose. I thrashed my arms and legs and rose to the surface, choking, gasping for air. Rain thundered on the surface of the sea. The waves foamed and hissed. I looked about me but could see nothing but water.
Shouting. I thought I heard my name. And then another wave hit me; I went under again. I kicked hard, broke to the surface.
“Help!” I called.
My voice sounded small in my ears. I kicked again, rode to the top of a wave. There. Behind me, a dark shape against the sky—the ship. I shouted again, louder, but sank into a trough between waves. The dark shape vanished.
Voices. Fainter now.
A cold tide of panic flooded me. Blindly, I struck out toward where I had last seen the ship. I called again . . . and a large, pale mass glided through the water beneath me.
A seal?
A squid?
A whale?
No.
It was the bear.
She rose to the surface just beside me. I reached out and grabbed the strip of harness on her back.
Would she shake me off? Turn round to bite me? Dive deep into the sea to dislodge me?
I didn’t know.
She stroked powerfully through the water, and I could feel the pulse of the running thrum in her, the restless force that had been pent up for so long. I could feel that she was doing exactly what she wanted and needed to do—to run, run, run through the water until the humming eased out of her blood.
At first I held on only with my hands; I didn’t want to straddle her, because she might find that disrespectful—and besides, no one rides a bear. But the sea pulled and tugged and slapped at me, trying to shove me away. So, I pressed my body into hers—arms about her neck, fingers clutching fur and harness, legs splayed, feet clinging to her sides.
I watched for waves and breathed in just before they broke over us, for the bear often tunneled deep beneath them. I held my breath when it seemed my lungs would burst. The world shrank down to a single slope of water rising before me, to the feel of fur and leather in my hands, to the taste of salt in my mouth, to the smell of wet bear, to the cold hard pelting of rain like pebbles on my back.
Soon my fingers went numb, but I willed them to stay clenched. Dimly, I became aware of a new sound—a low rumbling that seemed at first like the pulse of blood in my veins, but worked its way through the dullness of my mind until it became a roaring sound that I knew well:
Surf.
I raised my head and saw a slantwise, chalk-white line of foam before me, and beyond that, a deeper blackness in a smooth, wide swath.
Land.
And it seemed that I must have been living in some kind of dream, a dream where I was riding a great pale bear through the sea, a bear who was taking me to shore. Yes, it had to be a dream, but I was too weary to wake from it, so I held my breath through the tumult of the pounding waves, and when I found the sand beneath my feet, I slipped off the bear and stumbled up the beach—with my numb toes, with my numb feet, with my numb knees. I lay down in a patch of seagrass, and then, for a while, I knew no more.
PART III
THE LOW COUNTRIES
CHAPTER 28
Alone
THERE WAS THE sound of the sea—the dull, hollow roar of it—and the drag of sand and pebbles on the shore. There was the moon, dim and far. There was the rich, deep smell of something wild and feral, and the brush of fur against my arm. There was the thirst that never ended; and the waves of chills that coursed through my body; and the hot, hot burning of my skin.
I moved in and out of dreams. It seemed in one moment that my mother was there, crying, “Arthur! Where are you?”; and in the next that I was stumbling up a rocky shore toward the sound of running water. My stepbrothers came and taunted me for my clumsiness, and a great white bear lumbered up to me and said, “Eat.” Then I was in the sea, calling to the shrinking ship until it disappeared beneath the waves. Once, the doctor came to me and shouted instructions I couldn’t comprehend. Another time I saw a dark-eyed man with a deeply familiar face watching over me with a grave and kindly smile.
I came blearily awake to a sharp pain in my hip. I rolled off the thing that had been digging into me—a stone. I blinked and looked about. The waning moon hung above, behind the dark, thin fingers of stunted trees. I could hear a stream nearby, and the distant throb of the surf.
I felt pitifully weak and empty.
Against my back pressed something solid but not hard. I could feel it breathing, rocking me like a boat on a rolling sea. I smelled its familiar smell. . . .
The bear.
Was I dreaming still?
I closed my eyes, and a great peace moved through my body, lapping over me in cool blue waves, gentle as a rising tide.
When next I woke, I was shivering. I breathed in, and did not smell bear—only the salt tang of the sea, and the sweet green perfume of new growth. I listened, and did not hear breathing—only the hum of insects, and a gurgling of water, and the distant rumble of breaking waves. I leaned back and did not feel the bear’s solid bulk—only a cold emptiness where she had been.
I opened my eyes. Clambered stiffly
to my feet. My hair felt frigid and wet; I wiped droplets of moisture off my face.
It was daytime, but a close, dense mist hovered just above the ground, draining light and color from the world. I could see that I stood on a small, rocky knoll, surrounded by a few twisted, dead trees and a screen of scrubby alder brush and tall marsh grasses. That gurgle of water must mean that a stream ran nearby, but I couldn’t see it through the mist.
I tried to patch together a memory of how I had come to this place.
The shipwreck.
The keys.
The bear.
How long had I been here? One day? Two? A week?
My head felt strange, a little dizzy. The fever and chills seemed to have passed, but I felt stupid and slow, and all my strength had seeped out of me. My cloak and tunic and shirt felt damp. I had no boots, and my cap and knife had vanished.
I followed the murmur of water to the stream; I knelt and drank.
When I sat up, my head had cleared a little.
A feather of breeze brushed my face; the mist swirled, parting briefly to show a broad expanse of sand beyond the thicket; the tide must be out. And then the shroud drew close about me again.
I was alone. Completely.
I called out—some pitiful sound, not even a word. I rose to my feet and called again. For the doctor. For the captain. For the bear. I stumbled through the trees and down to the beach, fog clotting thick about me. I scanned up and down the shore, but all I could see was blank sand upon which no footsteps were writ in either direction.
“Halloo!” I cried. “Is anyone here? Help!”
A seabird, invisible in the sky above me, let out a hoarse and lonely cry.
All at once, the running hum quickened within me—drumming in my blood, jangling in my bones. I took off at a trot along the shore, my feet clumsy and leaden in the sand. I searched again for footprints, for the looming shape of the wrecked Queen Margrete, for marks where the shore boat might have been dragged across the sand, for lean-tos, fire pits, bear prints or scat—for any sign that I wasn’t the only living soul left on God’s Earth. I ran until my knees buckled, until my breath came ragged and short, until a sharp pain stabbed at my side.
I collapsed onto the beach, panting. My limbs shook, and my head felt light. When at last I caught my breath, I twisted round and looked back from whence I had come.
A trail of footprints etched a solitary line in the sand and disappeared into the fog.
Mine.
The thunder and boom of the waves rumbled in my ears. It was the same body of water I had known for most of my life—the North Sea—but the land itself was foreign. I rose to my feet, brushing wet sand off my hands.
Something shuddered, deep within me.
For so long, I had merely played at running away, but now, at last I had truly done so. I was alone, entirely. With no one to mock me or command me. With no one to pummel me with fist and foot, or keep me from the work I coveted. With no one to care for me or protect me.
Even the bear had deserted me.
I took a deep breath.
Think. Think what to do.
I must have fetched up in the Low Countries, south of the North Sea. If the shore boat had reached land, it might not be far from here. Maybe the men were still nearby. Maybe the doctor would be looking for me.
If he had survived . . .
I brushed the thought away.
I didn’t feel hungry, but I knew I needed food. In any case, there was fresh water in the stream, and my throat felt parched.
And the bear . . .
Had the bear truly taken me to shore, or had I dreamed it? I remembered the warm feel of her pressed against my back on the knoll, and the oddly comforting sound of her breathing.
A sudden pang struck my heart at the thought that the bear had abandoned me.
Don’t be a fool, I told myself. She was a bear and had gone off to save herself.
What else would you expect a bear to do?
CHAPTER 29
Brown-Haired Lass
THE FOG HAD begun to dissipate when I returned to the place where the stream met the sea. I recognized the shape of the knoll, and the scrubby alder thicket. But now I saw what I had missed before: a line of tracks leading down from the knoll and into the wide, wet sands.
Bear tracks.
They vanished into the fog farther out, where water had seeped up and filled them. But . . .
Maybe she hadn’t left me. Maybe she had just gone looking for food.
I squinted out toward the sea, but the fog, though thinner now, still blurred the world beyond the tracks, and I could find neither shipwreck nor bear.
Well, the bear might find prey in the sea, but if I were to scavenge myself a meal, it would have to be on land.
It was the birds that showed me where to find it. I followed the sound of their calls, tramping inland across a flat marshy plain of meadow flowers and grasses. The fog dwindled to a scrim of feathery patches and then vanished altogether. The land grew drier beneath my feet, and before long, I found the birds converged upon a high, broad hummock of brambles flecked with deep purple berries. I clapped my hands to startle them away, for they were thick upon the berries, but these birds did not scare easily. I ran at them, flailing about with my arms; the ones closest to me chattered indignantly, then hopped a little way off and kept on feeding. I picked a berry and tasted it. Some kind of blackberry, probably, though we never saw them in Norway this early in June. It was perfectly ripe—yielding to the tooth but not mushy. The sweet juice puddled on my tongue. At the taste of it, hunger wakened like a beast within me. The word poison fluttered into my mind, but I told myself that birds wouldn’t eat poisonous berries. I plowed through the bushes and, ignoring scratching thorns and scattering birds, picked one handful of berries after another and stuffed them into my mouth.
The sun beat down, warming me. My belly began to feel full. After a while, I heard voices, faint and far away. High, fluting voices. Children’s voices.
I looked about me and saw a twist of woodsmoke in the distance, to the west. No, there were two, three, four of them, clustered all together.
A village?
My heart lifted. I had a sudden vision of friendly villagers welcoming me to their hearths, urging me to sit at their table.
But . . . they might not be friendly. What manner of people lived here, I did not know. They might be heathens, or . . .
Just then, I heard a sudden rustling in the bushes, surprisingly near. And a girl’s voice, in some foreign tongue. I froze, torn between fleeing and standing my ground, and then she appeared out of the tangle of berries—a brown-haired lass in a moss-green gown—and a much younger boy toddling sturdily behind. The girl made a startled sound and stared at me. Then the boy pointed at me and began to babble, his words rising in pitch, like a question. The girl seemed to rouse herself from her startlement. She spoke to me as well, but her words cut sharp—a challenge. She thrust an arm in my direction, and I saw she was holding a long, curved knife, the kind used for cutting forage.
I smiled and held up my hands, to show I meant no ill. I pointed toward the sea and made a gesture that I hoped conveyed the notion of a ship. The girl watched me intently. I guessed they might know Latin, but my own Latin was thin. I said the Latin word for sea. I said the Latin word for boat.
A look of understanding spread across the girl’s face. She nodded, pointing with the knife back toward the sea, only in a more easterly direction from where I had fetched up. She repeated the word for boat emphatically.
Might she have seen the shore boat?
The girl was repeating boat again, when she seemed to catch sight of something over my shoulder. Her eyes widened; the knife dropped from her hand. She turned and, yanking on the little imp’s arm, made for a gap in the berry bushes and disappeared.
I whipped round to see what had alarmed her and saw a great white shape loping across the field toward us.
The bear.
CHAPTER
30
Galumphing Grace
SHE RAN WITH an easy, galumphing grace, and I halfway wanted to follow the children into the berry bushes, and I halfway wanted to go to the bear and greet her, because she was the closest thing I had to a friend in this place. She had left me unharmed in her cage. She had borne me through the sea. She had slept beside me and warmed me. Still, a clamoring of inner voices said, She’s a bear! Run! Run!
But my stepfather had told me never to run from a bear, because you will look like prey. And an ice bear can outrun you every time. So I forced myself to be still, to root my feet to the ground.
She slowed as she approached me. She made a little grunting sound, a sound like a welcome. She stretched out her head toward me and shook it in a way that seemed almost playful. She grunted again and then brushed past me, filling my nose with the scent of her. She began sniffing along the edge of the brambles.
All the air whooshed out of me. I hadn’t truly thought she would harm me, but still . . .
Something glinted down low in the mass of bushes where the girl and the boy had disappeared. On the ground: the girl’s curved knife. I picked it up, ran a finger along the blade. It was a good knife, sharp and clean. And my knife probably lay on the bottom of the sea.
The bear was rummaging deep into the bramble patch, holding the branches with her paws and sweeping up ripe berries with her tongue.
All at once, her head whipped up. She sniffed at the air, seeming puzzled.
Voices. Deeper ones this time.
Four or five men and boys appeared at a distance, beyond the brambles. Some of them began to shout and wave their arms like henwives driving their birds.
The bear turned to me, as if to ask what I made of this strange behavior.
A stocky man with a bushy, russet-colored beard reached for something behind his back—and nocked an arrow in his bow.
The bear wheeled round and crashed through the bushes, toward me. An arrow arced high in the air and, with a sickening thunk, embedded itself into her flank.
Journey of the Pale Bear Page 8