In the perfect quiet, Mike caught a flicker of movement from the corner of his eye. He turned to look, but the best night vision is peripheral vision, and all he could see straight on was a darkness in the gap between the berry bushes.
And then the darkness shifted. He froze. He heard a heavy body rustling among the thorny blackberry runners, wet smacking noises, and a whuffling exhalation of breath.
People had told him about bears coming into town to gorge on blackberries. Naturally, he'd imagined meeting one. But somehow, his imagination had always supplied daylight.
Back slowly away, they'd said. But the moment he moved to ease his weight off the boulder, the berry-eating noises stopped. He distinctly heard the animal sniff twice, followed by a deep-throated huff! Then it came toward him.
Now it was just like the dream, a black mass growing steadily larger, looming between Mike and the lights of the house. And, as in the dream, he couldn't move.
The bear eased forward, slowly but without hesitation, until only the width of the boulder separated them. It rose up and leaned its forelegs against the stone; Mike heard the scrape of claws on granite. Then the animal stopped still, as if posing for a picture of two friends leaning toward each other over a small table.
Mike's skin moved of its own accord; his neck hairs prickled his collar. He was so completely filled by fear, it felt as if thunderless sheet lightning played across the muscles of his back and down into his thighs.
Then the lightning died and all he could sense was the unavoidable reality of the bear: the sight of its rough head silhouetted against the house lights; the oily-musty smell of its fur; the snuffle of its breathing; the wet warmth of its breath on his face.
It's so real, he thought. So completely real. But it feels just like a dream.
It was silly. He knew it was silly, but he also knew he had to speak to the bear. He whispered, "Do you want to . . . tell me something?"
The bear cocked its head sideways, and eased back a little, as if it were deciding how to answer this unusual question.
But Mike already had the answer. As if a tap had been opened, all of the fear suddenly drained out of him, and he was filled instead with a peculiar sensation of lightness—as if he might now just float away, up through the forest canopy, off between the stars, to someplace where he was somebody else altogether, somebody who was so much more.
It could have been only seconds, or it could have been forever, that he and the bear faced each other across the boulder. Then the back door opened and his mother's voice called, "Mike! They found him! He's all right!"
And then, like magic, the bear was gone. He heard it scuttling through the trees. Mike laughed, because the feeling of lightness did not disappear with the bear. The feeling stayed with him, even after his father came home, enfolded Mike and Mom in one giant hug, then ate a big stack of buttermilk pancakes, and slept for sixteen hours straight.
The bear never came back, not to the woods, not to Mike's dreams. And that summer, he and Jonah learned to fly a glider.
THE END
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The Gist Hunter
Table of Contents
HENGHIS HAPTHORN
Mastermindless
Relics of the Thim
Falberoth's Ruin
Finding Sajessarian
The Gist Hunter
Thwarting Jabbi Gloond
GUTH BANDAR
A Little Learning
Inner Huff
Help Wonted
OTHER TALES
Shadow Man
The Devil You Don't
Go Tell the Phoenicians
Bearing Up
The Gist Hunter Page 32