She roared. The man loosed three more arrows in quick succession; one zinged by me so close, I felt it sting my ear.
The bear hurtled past, and still clutching the girl’s knife, I took off running too.
CHAPTER 31
Running
FOR A WHILE I could see the bear before me, running, with a lazy, rolling gait that nonetheless left me far behind. And then it was only her tracks that I could see—the flattened trail in the reeds and grasses, heading east. At first I thought I heard voices calling behind me, but before long, I heard only the swish and crunch of the grass beneath my feet, the cries of seabirds, the sound of my own breath coming fast.
I looked back and saw no one following, but I didn’t stop. It felt good to be running—running hard and far. Running from the arrows, from the men and the boys. Running from Hauk, from the captain. Running from my stepbrothers, my stepfather. Just running—moving across the meadow, smelling dirt and crushed reeds, watching clouds drift overhead in a still, blue summer sky.
In time, the ground went marshy underfoot. I slowed down, picking my way from hummock to stone to stump, trying not to sink into the mire. The soles of my feet, which had held up well in the grass, began to smart. A cloud of swarming insects buzzed about my head. My throat felt parched, but this water was thick with mud, impossible to drink.
I dragged to a halt. The running thrum had burned itself out. The bear had disappeared long before, as had her tracks, and now I stood ringed about with sedge and rushes. My legs felt shaky, and my stomach, hollow. A bird chirped, and a small wind rattled in the reeds. I was alone, completely.
What to do now?
Before the bear had appeared, the brown-haired lass had seemed friendly. If not for the bear, would her people have taken me in? Fed me? Given me houseroom for a while? Maybe if I went back there . . .
I touched a finger to my wounded ear. It came away wet. The cut didn’t seem serious—just a nick—but still. A hand’s length to the left, and I would have been dead.
They might not have intended me harm, but they were willing to kill me if I got in the way.
If only the fog hadn’t been so dense! The ship had run aground on something; maybe it hadn’t sunk entirely. Maybe the crew were there right now, salvaging what they might. And surely they’d come looking for me.
Or at least, they’d come looking for the bear.
The doctor . . .
If he’d survived . . .
I slapped at a stinging fly. The sky to the east was going dim, though the sun glowed softly gold in the west, whence I had come. There was no sign of people, nor even the smoke I had seen earlier. And my tracks had disappeared in the marsh.
A bubble of fear began to swell within me. What should I do?
To the east, beyond the swish of grasses, I could hear a purl of water. More faintly, to the north, the dim roar and hiss of the sea.
First, find fresh water to drink. Then decide: to look for the village . . . or make my way back to the coast and search for the ship and crew.
In a while the breeze parted the reeds, revealing a wide stream. I slaked my thirst, and afterward sat back on my heels. I was hungry. It had been hours since I’d had those berries, and they hadn’t been nearly enough.
A splash. I looked upstream, and there she was, the bear—the whole huge white mass of her. She stood on a rock in the water, looking so unlikely and out of place here that again I felt as if I had stepped out of the common, ordinary world and into a dream.
She regarded me, seeming unsurprised, and then gave me a soft, snuffling grunt of greeting.
Had she come looking for me? Had she known where I was all along?
I was surprised at how good it felt to see her, to find myself not entirely alone.
She turned back to the stream. The arrow, I saw, still bristled from her flank, but it didn’t seem to trouble her. In a moment she lunged headfirst into the water. She emerged, shaking herself off, and I half expected to see a fish between her jaws, but there was nothing.
I recalled something the hunters had said when they visited the steading—that ice bears are skilled at catching seals but not fish.
She must be hungry too.
So, then, was I safe with her? She had never offered me harm, but still . . . She had been well-fed on the boat but not now. And I knew from the hunters’ tales that there’s no animal on Earth more perilous than a hungry ice bear.
But this one had saved my life.
That girl, the brown-haired lass . . . she had said boat in Latin. If the doctor and sailors had come seeking us, the shore boat might still be beached on the sand. Or maybe she had seen the Queen Margrete?
So, I would go back to the sea, and search.
It was all I could think to do.
CHAPTER 32
Piggy Eyes
I FOLLOWED THE stream north, toward the sea, halfway hoping the bear would go her own way. But each time I stopped, she appeared behind me. At last, as dusk thickened, I settled down in a patch of tall grass, out of sight, some distance from her.
If she were going to harm me, she would have done it well before now.
Wouldn’t she?
I looked about and saw a thin column of smoke, still to the west, but closer to where I was now than the last smoke I had seen. What could it be? Another village, or . . . ?
Nearby, I heard the bear trampling a place in the grass and grunting as she lay down. Soon, I heard another sound, a curious rumph, rumph, rumph.
What was she doing?
I stood, and cautiously made my way through the reeds toward her.
Sprawled out on the ground near the streambank, she had twisted her head back and was worrying at the base of the arrow shaft like a dog digging out fleas.
I tiptoed away from her and lay down in my sleeping place.
Rumph, rumph, rumph.
The doctor had said the pirates’ arrows would fester if they weren’t removed. But there was nothing I could do about it. Maybe . . . maybe she would pull out the arrow herself.
After a time the sound ended. I lay awake listening—to the chirrup of frogs and the call of some alien bird, to the rustle of small creatures in the bushes. A chill seeped up from the damp ground; shivering, I drew my cloak tightly about me. Away in the distance a wolf howled.
My feet throbbed with pain from cuts and bruises, and I longed for my boots. Worse, the berries did not sit well with me; my belly was grinding and growling. If I were home, I thought, Mama would make me a potion of chamomile. She would sit beside me until I went to sleep.
Mama . . .
I had had to leave her. Didn’t I?
I closed my eyes, and his face floated up before me, the dark-eyed man who had appeared to me when I was ill.
Father.
I imagined riding through a deep forest with him, with Prince David. The smells of leather and pine and damp moss. My father’s voice.
Son.
But the voice I heard in my mind . . . was the doctor’s.
What had become of him? Had he survived the wreck?
I should take to my heels, now, before the bear awakened, to find the doctor or others from the ship and tell them where to find the bear. They would be grateful that I had saved her, wouldn’t they? The king would be grateful. Maybe they would give me a reward. . . .
And then, Wales . . . The letter was gone, but people would remember my father. Surely someone could tell me where to find my kin and the land that was my birthright. Surely I could persuade them I was my father’s son.
I rose to my feet. I heard the stream gurgling past, and the musical ploink as a frog jumped into the water. I heard the buzz of some nighttime insect. The moon had hidden behind a patch of dark clouds; I couldn’t tell which way was west.
A snorting sound.
The crunch of trampled undergrowth.
The moon slid out from behind the clouds, and then I saw it: a pair of dark eyes gleaming in the grasses, not an arm’s length away.
The hump of a large, bristly back.
The bright sweep of a pair of tusks.
More snorting. More tusks. More small, piggy eyes.
Wild boars. Five of them, at least. Staring straight at me.
A small, frightened sound escaped my lips, and I went cold, all down the back of me. I knew it would be foolish to run, for the boars would come after me, and those tusks could tear a full-grown man to bits.
I breathed in their pungent smell and sensed the heat coming off the dense, knuckled mass of their bodies. Slowly, I reached for the knife, though little good it would do me.
The biggest boar snorted, moved closer.
And then, just behind me, a growl—rumbling, fathoms deep. I turned round to see the bear.
A crashing in the underbrush; the eyes vanished in a whisper of moving grasses.
The bear grunted, as if to say, There. And good riddance to them. She glanced in the direction the boars had gone, and then snuffled all up and down the front of me. She grunted again and then lay down in the grass at my feet, the arrow still sticking out from her flank.
I drew in a deep breath, then another. My bloodbeat began to calm. A breeze rattled in the reeds; I shivered. I lay down, near enough to smell the bear, near enough to feel the welcome warmth that surrounded her body. She didn’t make a sound, didn’t turn to look at me. But one of her hind feet reached out behind her and pressed its furry pads flat against my side. I felt myself relax against her feet, and a wave of comfort went rolling through me. I began to hum to her, as I had done before.
This place was safe for me only because of the bear. There were wolves out there, as well as boars. And maybe other wild animals too.
There would be no going back toward the shore alone tonight. For now, I needed the bear more than she needed me.
CHAPTER 33
A Great, Wide Bay
I WOKE TO a splashing sound and jumped to my feet to see the bear in midstream, shaking off water. And between her jaws . . . a fish! She set it down on the rocks and, holding it down with one paw, ripped off pieces and devoured them. Then she clambered onto a boulder and peered into the stream. In a moment she flopped in headfirst, sending cascades of water in all directions and, after much thrashing about, reappeared with another fish.
She looked so clumsy, I almost wanted to laugh. On the other hand I’d never heard tell of an ice bear catching fish in a stream.
The next few tries, she missed. But then she caught one again, dropped it on the streambank. She turned to look at me, grunted, and lumbered in again.
The fish was flopping about, alive. But . . . had she caught it for me?
I hesitated. If I tried to take it, and she wanted it . . .
But she climbed back onto the rock again, and soon had another fish.
So the one on the bank . . . was for me.
I snatched it before she could change her mind, and ran off a little way to a small, reedy knoll, where I slammed the fish against a rock and killed it. The girl’s curved knife was a clumsy tool for my purpose, but I managed to pare away scales and bones, and hack off fins and head. The fish was large, and what remained, though cold and greasy and unpleasant on my tongue, filled the empty hollow in my belly.
When I finished I lay back in the grass, feeling stronger than I had since the shipwreck. A light breeze ruffled the reeds, and a rill of liquid birdsong caught my ear. The smoke from the night before had vanished. Likely not another village, then. Likely a traveler, one who had moved on. I breathed in the sweet air, full of the smell of clean water and mud and grasses in new, spring leaf. Those boars hadn’t sought me out; they had only met with me by chance in their nighttime foraging. If I kept my wits about me, I could stay out of their way. And the bear . . . She was no longer hungry, and she seemed to see me as her own.
So I would go north, to the coast, and then back west along the shore, searching for the Queen Margrete or the shore boat or some other sign of the crew. If the bear continued to follow me, I would stay clear of the village. But I was bound to find some trace of my crewmates, wasn’t I? And then . . . I would help them recapture the bear for the king.
I trudged along beside the stream until it got lost in a reed-clogged pond, then I made my own path in a northerly direction through the sedges. The soles of my feet felt swollen and raw, but they didn’t pain me so much as the day before, and walking drove the chill from my bones. I flushed a duck from her nest and dined on a few of her eggs; I foraged for berries. This country was studded with swampy patches, ponds, and streams—neither entirely land nor wholly marsh—and often enough I found myself bogged to the knees.
At first I thought the bear might have gone her own way. But in a little while she appeared off to one side of me, shuffling through the willow brush, dining on eggs and berries, like me. She was no longer white, but covered with mud. Her great head swung from side to side as she walked, and while the arrow still bristled from her flank, it didn’t seem to trouble her. From time to time she halted to look about, raising her nose to the wind. Sometimes she broke out in a burst of speed for no reason, romping through the shallow water. Once, she rose up onto her hind legs and surveyed the land before us, looking for all the world like a human person—maybe the captain of a sailing ship scanning the horizon for the sight of land.
Before long I heard the rumble of waves in the distance, and soon smelled the salt of sea air. The thrum of the running energy took hold of me; I jogged across the field, to the shore. The tide had ebbed; sand stretched out smooth and gleaming for what seemed like leagues, reaching nearly to a chain of islands at the horizon.
Islands!
I’d thought the Queen Margrete had fetched up on a reef. But what if it had been an island?
I scanned the islands for signs of a wreck, but they stretched far in both directions, impossible to see clearly.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of something moving. The bear. She loped across the sand toward the sea. Beyond her, to the east—a patch of silver-bright water reaching far inland. A great, wide bay. Across the waters . . . Something . . . A town?
I set out at a trot toward the bay, hoping to see more clearly. Yes, a small town or fishing village. I could see the small dark humps of boats snuggled up in the harbor. And, in the middle of the bay . . . a single, larger vessel. Familiar. Longer and sleeker than a cog, with faded, red-on-gold stripes on the sail. And it was listing to starboard . . .
At once, I knew. I was looking at the Queen Margrete.
CHAPTER 34
Honorary Bear
I JUMPED STRAIGHT up and whooped. The Queen Margrete! What a glorious stroke of luck! I stared at the ship, making sure I had seen aright. The shape of the hull, the sail . . . If this wasn’t the Queen Margrete, it was her double. And listing to starboard . . .
She must have gone aground—not sunk. And somehow, over these past few days, they must have repaired her well enough so that she could limp into port.
I scanned the bay, trying to gauge how long it would take to walk around it and come to the village. The land stretched out flat and reedy as far as the eye could see—except for a few scattered, tree-topped knolls. Who knew how much was bog or stream or pond that must be skirted? It would be a full day, at least. Maybe more.
They would likely take longer than that to repair her, but . . .
The Queen Margrete!
I had to reach her—and soon—before she set sail again.
I set off south, along the edge of the bay. I did not wait for the bear, because I knew she would find me if she wanted to. I tried not to think of nighttime visits by boars but only of the Queen Margrete.
The sun warmed me as I walked, and a fragrant breeze cooled my face. The marsh was alive with birds and frogs and dragonflies and clouds of stinging insects. I kept a sharp eye out for snakes.
Shadows lengthened. Still no bear.
A loon called, eerie and sad, reaching down to a cavern of loneliness deep at the center of me.
> Had the bear left me? Did she decide to go off on her own?
But late that afternoon I heard a crashing in the reeds—and there she was—her flanks and underbelly mud-caked, and her muzzle and neck rusty with blood. So it wasn’t just fish she had been eating. She gave a grunt of greeting and came romping toward me, huge and wild and fast. A geyser of panic spurted up within me—but I nailed my feet to the ground and told myself to trust her.
Sure enough, she skidded to a halt before me. She snuffled at my chest, my face, my hair, smearing me with mud and blood. She pushed the top of her head against me, like old Loki when he wanted me to scratch his ears.
I hesitated, then lightly stroked her, then dug my fingers deep into her fur, scraping my nails against her black skin. She turned her head so that I was scratching behind her wounded ear. She let out a contented little snort. I breathed in deep.
Truth to tell, I was glad to see her, too.
Evening came, and we still hadn’t reached the southernmost end of the bay. The bear dug a small pit in the sand, lay down in it, and began to worry at the arrow. Rumph, rumph, rumph. I feared it might be festering, but told myself that soon, if all went well, the bear would be with the doctor, and he would pull it out.
I lay down some distance away from her but, remembering the boars, crept nearer. My feet felt numb with cold, save for a sharp pain on my left sole. I prized out a thorn there and eased the sting with a poultice of wet sand.
After a while the bear stretched out on one side, and her great paws began to twitch. I watched until she settled down, until her back rose and fell in the slow rhythms of sleep breathing.
I closed my eyes and imagined walking into the village with the king’s great ice bear following at my heels, and the whole crew cheering because I had saved our expedition from failure. Well, I knew it wouldn’t come to pass just so. The bear might not follow me into a village. She might well be slain if she did. I’d have to slip away from her, somehow, and alert the doctor. But still . . . I pictured the doctor welcoming us back. Surely he’d be glad to see us.
Journey of the Pale Bear Page 9