I’m not sure how long I doze. My coat digs into my shoulders and I wrestle it off. I’m hot and restless, all my clothes too tight. I lift the Bear Tsarina’s front paw and pull my sweater over my head. When I try to loosen the waistband of my skirt, it tears. It must have caught on something. But I’m more comfortable now, and I sink back into sleep.
My eyelids open, and I squint against the light. The sun is low in the sky, the shadows long. My fur is damp with dew. I yawn, and a shuddering growl reverberates through my chest and skull. My whole body feels … wrong. My head is heavy, so heavy, and my mouth sticky, my lips loose. There’s a cooler patch on my back where I was leaning against the Bear Tsarina, but she’s gone now. I turn to look for her, and my body moves strangely. It’s cumbersome, and too low to the ground. I try to push myself up but can’t do it.
I stare at my hands, each heartbeat a booming explosion in my chest. My hands are paws, like my feet. Huge and round, with long dark claws. My arms, my chest, my whole body is covered with fat and fur. The weight of my shoulders is a log on my back. I lift a paw to my face but can’t bring myself to touch the two together. I already know what I look like. I’m a bear.
A groan starts deep in my belly and rolls into my throat. I try to swallow it back, but it turns into a roar that blasts from my mouth. Confused and frightened by how much my body has changed, I lash out at the ground, and my claws scrape scars into the rock. I stare at them, feeling as lost and out of control as a swift in a snowstorm.
My grandmother appears at the cave entrance and ambles over. “What’s wrong?” she asks. Her voice is a calm, mellow rumble.
“Look at me. I’m a bear.” My breath huffs from my snout in short, hot bursts.
“What’s wrong with being a bear?” My grandmother sits next to me and licks the fur on one of her front paws with a long pink tongue. “This is what you wanted. Isn’t it?”
My brow furrows. Was this what I wanted? My head is full of a thick gray fog. I look up at my grandmother, in the desperate hope that she’ll make everything clear.
“You were the happiest little bear cub.” My grandmother rolls onto her side and stares at me with steady, chestnut eyes. Her expression is as familiar as sunshine. “Every moment you were bursting with curiosity and joy. You’d bound through the forest—chasing birds, splashing through streams, digging the earth. You’d climb onto my back when you were tired and curl up beside me to sleep.”
Memories swell in my mind, clear as meltwater. Racing after bullfinches, snapping river bubbles with my teeth, snuffling for roots, and the warmth of my grandmother’s fur. I lean into her, breathe in her earthy scent.
“It’s so good to have you home.” My grandmother looks out over the forest. “We used to do this every evening. Sit here together, watching the sun set.”
I nod, remembering sunsets of every color. But then my gaze is pulled south. I remember looking that way too. I peer into the distance and see the Great Frozen River, and something nestled on its banks, so tiny and far away … “The village!” I exclaim. “I can see the village from here.”
My grandmother rises to her feet and yawns. “Let’s go fishing.”
“Fishing?” I turn back to her, confused. “You want to go fishing?”
“I’m hungry.” She steps over the ledge. “Aren’t you?”
My belly suddenly feels cavernous and I remember I haven’t eaten all day. But there are so many questions I have for my grandmother. Important questions about my past, and what’s happening to me now, and what it means for my future … I open my mouth to ask her to wait, but she’s already gone.
I wobble to my feet and notice my clothes strewn on the ground around me. My coat is ripped apart, my map and Ivan’s claw and several dusty apricots spilling from the pockets. The skirt Mamochka embroidered is a torn and crumpled mess. I try to bundle them up, to move them somewhere safe, but my paws are too big and my movements too clumsy.
Growling with frustration, I give up and bound after my grandmother, worried I’ll lose her if she gets too far ahead. I stumble on the steep slope, fall over, and smack my head on a rock. I rise onto my back legs and try to walk upright instead. But that isn’t any easier. My balance is all wrong, and I buckle under my own weight. I lower myself down and try walking on all fours again.
Finding a rhythm is impossible. My legs keep tangling, and my head is so close to the ground I can’t see obstacles until they’re right in front of me. My grandmother moves smoothly into the distance while with every step I take, I struggle not to slide or tumble.
By the time I reach the bottom of the mountain, I’m aching from the effort and sore from falling over, and I’ve lost my grandmother. I lift my snout into the air to search for her scent and breathe in a rainbow of smells. My mind tingles.
As a human, the forest was full of smells, but this is incredible. Otherworldly. Every tree has its own perfume: a mixture of bark and sap, and other scents left by creatures who have crept or scurried across them. Every inch of the forest holds a history of the animals who have visited, the plants that have grown, even what the weather has brought. I smell snow and dew, frost and rain, and the warmth of spring sunshine.
Wrapped in a world of new smells, I forget I’m looking for my grandmother. I weave between boughs, squashing shoots and cracking branches, sniffing everything I find, trying to work out what each scent is.
Then my ears turn to the sound of water gurgling and I tilt my head, confused and delighted by this new sensation. I smell the fresh, cold river and, mixed in with it, the earthy scent of my grandmother. I’ve found her again.
I race toward her, tripping over my feet with every step, and collapse onto the riverbank. My tongue lolls out as I catch my breath. Drool flows from it and I slop it back into my mouth, flustered with embarrassment.
My grandmother stands in the shallows, staring into the bright, clear water. She takes a few steps, slams one of her paws into the river, dips her head, and pulls out a fish. She carries it to me and drops it at my feet. “Eat.”
I look at the raw, dead fish with puncture marks in its side and frown. “I can’t eat this.”
“Why not?” my grandmother asks. “It’s good. It’s fresh.”
“Because …” I shake my head. I want to say something about how it should be cooked, or how I’m human—but before my thoughts can form into words, my grandmother splashes back into the river. She catches another fish, carries it over, and sits next to me, tearing at its head. I remember sitting here when I was a cub, watching my grandmother fish and eat. So many memories are bobbing up from the depths of my mind. They feel like missing parts of me, finding their way home.
I take a deep breath, and my lungs swell to the size of barrels. Suddenly, I’m aware of all the color in the canopy. While I slept the day away, the blanket of white over the forest shrank. Only dapples of snow remain on the conifers, and their needlelike leaves shine a thousand shades of green.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” My grandmother leans against me and a smile bursts across her face, revealing pink gums and long white teeth. “Aren’t you happy to be home?”
A smile lifts the corners of my mouth as I realize I am. But there are questions burrowing through me too. “Why did I leave?” I ask suddenly. “If I was so happy here, as a cub, why did I leave?”
“That doesn’t matter now. What matters is that you’ve come home.” My grandmother blinks lazily, then closes her eyes against the rays of the setting sun.
“Please.” I fidget beneath the weight of my grandmother. “I need to understand what happened.”
My grandmother sighs. “Sometimes your curiosity was insatiable. You were always wandering off, looking for new stories and adventures. One night you disappeared and returned with a wolf claw. I’ve no idea how you got it.” Her body rumbles with laughter, but then she sighs again and her face falls. “You were curious about humans too. You’d follow hunters and woodcutters and herb gatherers. You’d stare toward the village at nig
ht. When there were festivals, you’d creep far too close. I tried to stop you, tried to warn you, but you wouldn’t listen.” Her eyes well with tears. “Eventually you were more human than bear, and I had to let you go.”
Feelings flow back, making sense of my memories. I chased birds because I wanted to talk to them. I wanted friends. I’d gaze at the distant village because I longed to go there. I loved the sounds of music and laughter. I loved the excitement fizzing in the air.
I remember seeing Mamochka, before she was my mamochka, collecting berries in the forest. I followed her because I wanted to be like her.
“I left because I wanted to be human!” I wriggle free of my grandmother and rise to my feet. My body seems lighter, my head clearer.
“But you’ve returned now.” My grandmother smiles. “I’m so pleased. I never understood the desire to be human. You and your father both had it—”
“My father?” My ears turn toward her.
“Your father.” My grandmother nods. “My son. Like you, he kept getting distracted by humans as he grew older. And like you, he turned into one and left.”
“Can you tell me about him?” I ask.
“Those memories are gone. Long-forgotten dreams. It’s better to forget and just enjoy being a bear. Being a bear is a gift.”
“Please?” I try again. “I don’t know anything about my father. If you could tell me something about him, even a little, it would mean the world to me.”
My grandmother stares at the river for so long I don’t think she’s going to say anything else. But then she opens her mouth and begins a story, as Anatoly would, with “Once upon a time …”
Once upon a time, there was a young bear who was sometimes a boy. He didn’t know why. He asked his parents, the Bear Tsar and the Bear Tsarina, but they couldn’t answer him. They thought it might have something to do with a wish, or something to do with a curse, but their memories were faded, and they only ever remembered being bears.
They told him to look at the sunlight in the canopy and the moonlight on the streams, to catch fish and forage for berries, to roll in pine needles and talk to birds, and to enjoy being a bear. They said if he did this and wished hard enough to be a bear, he’d stop turning into a boy.
But it didn’t work. The young bear was a storm of confusion—one day a bear, the next day a boy. His confusion grew into torment. He couldn’t sleep or eat. He was weighed down with unhappiness and ached to know why he was different.
He wandered through the forest, asking every soul he found, “Why am I sometimes a bear and sometimes a boy?”
The birds in the trees didn’t know. The animals in the burrows didn’t know. And the fish in the streams didn’t know. Finally, he came to a house with chicken legs, deep in the darkest part of the forest, and he asked the Yaga who lived there, “Why am I sometimes a bear and sometimes a boy?”
“I’m something of an expert on souls,” the Yaga said. “And I see your soul is both bear and human. You need to choose to be one or the other.”
“But how do I choose?” asked the boy.
“Well …” The Yaga stared at him thoughtfully. “You know how to be strong and independent and live in the forest as a bear. So now you must learn how to live with humans. Then you’ll be able to choose.”
The young bear thanked the Yaga and wandered north. There he saw a sailing ship, gathering fish from the Green Bay. He swam to the ship and climbed aboard.
At first the fishermen were scared and backed away from him. But when they saw the bear haul up fishing nets and basket traps, they realized he could be useful, and they soon became accustomed to his presence.
The ship sailed the Northern Sea, from the Calm East to the Stormy West, collecting fish and kelp and crabs. And slowly the bear-boy became part of the crew. He learned how to help and be helped, how to depend on others and have others depend on him, and how to be strong on his own but even stronger as part of a group.
Seasons passed, and the bear-boy grew into a human man. He forgot all about his time as a bear, although sometimes he dreamed of talking to birds in a sparkling canopy or rolling in pine needles till his fur smelled of sap. But the sea air blew his dreams away, and if there ever had been a curse, it was also forgotten, buried by his wish to stay at sea as part of a crew.
My grandmother finishes the story with tears in her eyes. “He should never have left the forest,” she whispers.
“But it sounds like he was happy as a fisherman.”
“Maybe for a while. But then …” My grandmother frowns. “It’s too painful to remember. His desire to be human ended in tragedy. He should have stayed a bear. Fighting it only brings heartache and sorrow. But you understand that now, don’t you?”
I shake my head, not understanding what she means at all.
“Were you happy as a human in the village?” she asks.
I open my mouth, but no words come out. Frustration ruffles through me. It’s such a simple question; I should be able to answer it. “Sometimes I was happy. But …”
“You didn’t feel like you belonged?” My grandmother looks at me with such understanding that I feel a weight lift from my shoulders.
“I didn’t always seem to fit. But there are people I love in the village. My mamoch—” I stop still. My blood runs to ice, because I can’t remember how to say her name. And as I try to picture her, she disappears into mist. I can’t remember my friend’s name either. The one with the gray eyes. Or were they blue? I stumble from foot to foot, not knowing where to go or what to do. “I can’t remember!” I roar. “I can’t remember their names.”
“It’s all right.” My grandmother nudges the fish she caught me. “Eat. Rest. Give yourself time to adjust. The change has happened fast, but you’re going to be fine. The forest has everything you need.”
I sit and stare at the fish in front of me. It stares back with blank eyes. “But I don’t remember,” I whisper. “I don’t even remember what I was trying to remember.”
“It’s part of becoming a bear. Don’t worry.”
I close my eyes, desperately trying to remember whatever I was trying to remember. It was something I loved … someone I loved … All of a sudden, my human memories surge back to me, full of color and warmth and a swell of affection that takes my breath away.
“My family.” I gasp. The word takes me by surprise, because I’m not thinking about my birth parents who I never knew, or my grandmother sitting beside me now. I’m thinking about Mamochka who took me in and has always been there for me, Anatoly who makes me smile with his magical stories, Sasha who walks by my side and accepts me as I am, and Mousetrap who fits so perfectly around my neck and calls me “his” human.
I can’t believe I’ve never used the word family to describe them before. Regrets crowd in around me as I realize I’ve been searching for something I already had: a family, a home, a place to belong.
I stare down at my paws. “I can’t go back like this.” The words feel huge—cold, dark, and empty.
“It’s natural to have doubts as memories of your human life come and go. But when they fade away, you’ll be happy here in the forest.”
“What do you mean, fade away?”
“The longer you stay as a bear, the more you’ll forget of your human life,” my grandmother murmurs sleepily.
“But I don’t want to forget my human life.” The thought makes me feel as fragile and formless as a cloud. “My human life hasn’t been perfect, and I’ve often struggled to fit in, but there have been good times too.” I’m surprised by how many happy memories jump into my mind: digging in the garden with Mamochka, climbing trees with Sasha and racing him home, helping prepare for the festivals—holding up beams and hauling sleds full of ice. I’ve been so focused on where I don’t fit into the village that I’ve lost sight of where I do. I have a mother, Mamochka, who loves me. A best friend in Sasha, and other fledgling friendships too. I think of all the hands that reached for me before I fell from the ice fort. Little V
anya, who wanted me on his team. Polina’s friendly smile. There is a place for me in the village. My eyes widen with the realization.
“You’ll have more good times here.” My grandmother looks at me with her steady gaze. “You’ll be as happy as you were as a cub.”
“I was happy as a cub, but I wanted to be human.” I look south again, toward the village. Knowing about my past explains why I struggled to fit in, but all the things that drew me to the village to begin with are still there, pulling me back. And the family and friends I found there are pulling me even harder. I have to return. I can’t stay in the forest and forget them. Life in the village can be a struggle sometimes, but it’s full of joys too. “I want to go home,” I whisper. And in that moment, I finally know where I belong: with Mamochka, in our house at the edge of the forest. “Can you help me?” I ask my grandmother. “Can you tell me how to become human again?”
My grandmother rolls back onto her paws and shakes her head. “I can’t help you with that. I only know how to be a bear.” The last pale sunbeams sink into the earth and a shadow falls between me and my grandmother. “I’m sorry,” she whispers sadly, and so quietly I barely hear.
A cold breeze ruffles my fur.
“Come on.” My grandmother starts to amble back toward the mountain. “Let’s go to the warmth of the cave.”
I shake my head, not wanting to go to the cave. I’m scared of forgetting who I was and who I am and who I want to be. I’m scared of losing everything I had forever.
My feet itch and twitch and before I know what I’m doing. I’m running south. Toward the village. Toward home. Toward Mamochka, who will wrap me in her arms and tell me this is all nonsense and bring me a mug of sbiten and a pot of ointment that will rub the bear off me. Inside this body I’m human, and maybe I just need a little bit of Mamochka’s magic to put me back the way I was.
The Girl Who Speaks Bear Page 11