The Girl Who Speaks Bear

by Sophie Anderson

  Smey sinks to the ground, still. The outline of his slowly beating heart is clearly visible in his chest. My eyes pop open again at the sight of it.

  “Elena has a clear shot,” I whisper.

  Elena lifts her bow. Narrows her eyes. Aims …

  I hold my breath. She can’t miss.

  The bowstring twangs and the arrow shoots through the air … straight toward Smey’s heart …

  My jaw drops open. Hope fizzes on my tongue.

  Time slows. I blink, fast, and realize it’s the arrow that’s slowed, not time. The arrow comes to a complete stop, a few inches from Smey’s heart. The shaft burns away, leaving only the head, which just hovers in the flames, like it doesn’t have the power to go on.

  Smey’s flames brighten as he wakes from his trance. His one good eye glances down at the arrowhead embedded in his chest, not quite deep enough to have pierced his heart. He claws at it and roars in anger, but the arrowhead doesn’t shift. Writhing in frustration, Smey lifts all three of his heads and blasts fire up into the dark sky with the scream and boom of fireworks.

  The branches of the Lime Tree high above crack as they catch alight. A few of them fall to the ground amid a shower of sparks. Yuri stumbles backward and whines.

  “Retreat to the ship!” I shout as another branch smashes right in front of Yuri’s hooves, but Yuri is galloping away already, Elena holding tight to his neck. I step over the sizzling, smoking branch and try to spot Mousetrap. He’s poised on two legs, staring at the arrowhead embedded in Smey’s chest. “Mousetrap!” I shout—but he leaps straight toward the dazzling triangular rock.

  Mousetrap’s teeth sparkle, his lips curl back, and he looks more ferocious than a hissing wolverine. He extends his paws to land on the arrowhead, but Smey whips around, and all of a sudden there’s a fiery mouth loaded with long blue-green fangs yawning open right in front of Mousetrap.

  “No!” I sprint into the blistering heat and lunge for Mousetrap. But Smey’s mouth snaps shut over him and smiles, a flickering grin. Mousetrap disappears into flames.

  Anger explodes through me. I glare into Smey’s luminous body until I see the arrowhead glinting, blue white, like a faraway star. Then I surge toward it, through searing fire, until I feel its cold tremble against my head. I push, forcing the arrow deeper, closer to Smey’s heart. But the more I push, the more it resists. Flames curl around me and I smell my fur burning.

  Smey roars, so loud that my eardrums shatter. I close my eyes, open my mouth, and roar back. The world seems to still in shock. Except the arrowhead. It slips just a fraction deeper. I lean into it and shove once more. Every muscle of my body strains tight, and the flat end of the arrow digs painfully into my head. Until finally, the tip of the arrow touches Smey’s heart … and then there’s an explosion of white.

  I gasp as the air drops to below freezing in an instant. Icy winds gust around me, extinguishing my burning fur, and snow swirls, blinding white. I squint and make out Smey’s three heads, his pointed fangs and forked tongues, all turning to ice and snow. He stares at me, and his five dark eyes and single flaming bright one all fade into the twinkling white. Where he burned with anger, he’s now cool and calm as a midwinter night. He sways in the air, a cloud of snowflakes dancing, then breaks apart and drifts away, like chimney smoke into the night.

  Smey is gone, but I feel no joy. All I can think about is Mousetrap. I call for him, search the ground and sniff the air, desperate to catch his scent of dust and earthy musk.

  The Lime Tree crackles above. Some of its branches are still aflame, raining down hot, incandescent sparks. “Help!” a deep and ancient voice creaks overhead.

  But I have to find Mousetrap. Panic hurtles through me, because I can’t see or smell him anywhere. All around is snow and ash, ice and soot, a confusion of hot and cold and black and white.

  Then Ivan barks from somewhere behind me. “Yanka! Over here. It’s Mousetrap.”

  I run to where I heard Ivan’s voice and see Mousetrap’s tiny body curled up in a mound of snow. I race over and nudge him with my snout. He’s as cold as ice, and his fur is as white as the snow around him. Only the tip of his tail still shines copper. “Mousetrap.” I nudge him again, and relief washes over me when I feel him shiver. “Wake up. You’ve got your winter coat.”

  Mousetrap groans, opens one eye, and looks up at me. “What did you think of my war dance?”

  “It was the best I’ve ever seen.” I smile.

  Ivan collapses next to Mousetrap. His fur is charred, his muscles trembling, but there’s a wide grin on his face. “We defeated Smey.” He lifts his chin and howls at the moon, long and loud and triumphant.

  I look through the subsiding swirls of debris in the air, to the dark and empty cavern, and slowly our victory sinks in. A laugh rumbles in my throat, then bellows out of me. “We defeated Smey together.”

  “Help!” the voice calls again. It seems to be coming from the Lime Tree.

  “It’s the tree.” I stare at it in wonder. “It’s talking.”

  Mousetrap groans again as he tries to stand. “I think I’ve pulled a few muscles.”

  “I’ll take Mousetrap back to the house with chicken legs.” Ivan dips his head so Mousetrap can drag himself up onto Ivan’s ear. “Unless you want us to stay with you while you talk to the tree?”

  I shake my head. “Please, take Mousetrap back so Elena can check that you’re both all right.” I look up into the boughs of the Lime Tree, and my feet twitch with nervous excitement. I wonder what will be different when I see Ivan and Mousetrap again. Will all my worries about Sasha be gone? Will I be human again? Will I finally be able to go home?

  I take a deep breath to calm my thoughts and then I turn and clamber up and over the cavern.

  As I approach the tree, I hear its voice again, deep and resonant. “Help,” it groans. A smoldering branch creaks and crackles, then snaps, and the tree cries out in pain.

  I step over roots that sprawl across the ground and finally reach the Lime Tree’s trunk. The size of it is astonishing. It’s made of hundreds of smaller trunks, woven and tangled together. They spread wider than my and Mamochka’s house, and when I look up, the tree seems to go on forever.

  “Hello?” I whisper.

  “Help,” the tree groans again. I can’t see where the words are coming from. The trunks creak, the roots whisper, and the leaves, high above, rustle and hum. But the words form in my mind.

  “How can I help?” I ask.

  “Move me,” the tree rumbles. “Move me away from this place, into the forest.”

  “But …” I stare at the tree, feeling tiny as a wren. “I can’t. You’re too big.”

  The roots at my feet slither. I look down and watch, as if in a dream, as they turn to water and flow away down the side of the volcano. A burst of noise and movement shakes the air and I look up to see a bellowing of bullfinches take flight, pink chests blushing in the moonlight. “Yanka!” they call as they flap away. “Home in the forest!”

  As they disappear into the night, I realize many of the tree’s branches are no longer there. The whole tree is shrinking.

  “What’s going on?” I gasp as streams of water rise and rush around my ankles.

  “My roots will flow back to me, and my branches will fly back to me. But you must carry the core of my trunk to the forest, where I can be near other trees again, and watch animals play, and hear birds chatter.”

  The tree has now shrunk to a fraction of its size, but it is still twice as tall as me and at least as wide.

  “I’ll try.” I tense my muscles and step next to the trunk. But when I try to lift it, it doesn’t budge. “It feels like some of your roots are still holding you down.”

  The tree shakes what’s left of its leaves. “All my roots have flowed away. I’m as small as I can be. You must try harder.”

  I furrow my brow and try to lift the tree again. I remind myself I’m a bear and I try again, and again. But it’s far too heavy. I can’t ev
en push it over to roll it down the mountain. I lean against the trunk to catch my breath.

  “Move me,” the tree urges.

  “I’ve been trying to,” I wheeze. “Give me a moment to rest, then I’ll try again.”

  I stare down the volcano, to the ship in the distance. It bobs up and down on silver waves, a spray of stars above it. The house with chicken legs sits on its deck, and I can just make out the silhouettes of my friends on its porch. The sight of them fills me with strength.

  “Let’s try again.” I rise back onto my paws, then stop as something—someone—catches my eye.

  It’s another bear, stepping out from a cluster of pines near the base of the volcano. A huge male bear. He moves slowly toward me, and my heart pounds louder with every step he takes. Something about the way he moves is achingly familiar. But I don’t know him. I couldn’t know him. Could I?

  He draws closer and I stare at his huge round face. My heart swells. He has ice in his fur and moonlit eyes. He smells faintly of tea with lemon, fresh snow, woodsmoke, and old furs.

  “Anatoly,” I whisper. “You’re a bear.” I laugh at the absurdity of it … but then gasp as my heart rips in two, because I realize what else he is. “You’re my father.” I glare at him with burning eyes, the heat of a fire dragon rising inside me. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I’m sorry.” Despite his enormous size, Anatoly looks small and defeated and full of sorrow. “There’s so much I should have told you, but each time I visited, stories were the only things that would flow from my lips.”

  “All these years!” I roar. “All these years you never told me. You let me believe my father was dead.” I scowl at him. “But you were alive. You abandoned me. You let me be raised by my grandmother, then by Mamochka—by anyone else but you.”

  Anger tears through me. Being abandoned as a baby because your parents are dead is one thing. But being abandoned because your father can’t be bothered to raise you himself, for twelve whole years, is something else. I stamp a paw into the ground and roar into the night sky until my lungs are sore.

  When I run out of breath, I collapse against the tree and look up at Anatoly, willing him to say something—anything—that will help me forgive him.

  But he sits down and is silent for so long that I begin to hear the tiny noises around us. The rustle of the Lime Tree’s leaves, the hiss of steam on the hot rocks, and even Anatoly’s heartbeat, deep and booming in his chest.

  Then, finally, he opens his mouth and begins, as he always does, with “Once upon a time …”

  Once upon a time, a widower blamed himself for his wife’s death. Crushed by guilt and feeling unworthy of love, he could not face his baby daughter.

  He followed the cold winds north in a daze and found himself standing on the shores of the Green Bay, unable to cry because anger and shame writhed inside him, hotter than dragon fire.

  Out on the frozen sea, the widower saw a sailing ship trapped in ice. Thinking it might cool his burning pain, he walked across the ice to the frozen ship, and there he found Father Frost, sitting on the bow.

  Father Frost turned and saw the suffering in the widower’s eyes. “Tell me,” he said, “what has caused you so much pain?”

  “My wife has died, and it’s all my fault. She came to rescue me, and in doing so, she lost her life.” The widower fell to his knees and clutched at his heart. “This pain is too great to endure.”

  “I can take away your pain. If that’s what you want.” Father Frost lifted his hand over the widower’s chest, and his fingers glowed a dazzling white. “A frozen heart feels no pain.”

  The widower looked into Father Frost’s ice-blue eyes and nodded. At that moment, he’d have done anything to escape the agony that was tearing him apart.

  So, Father Frost pressed his hand onto the widower’s chest, and the widower gasped as his heart froze over. With each stiff heartbeat, ice filled his veins and a numbness fell over him. The widower looked up into the gray sky, and his face became hard and cold as an iceberg. His pain wasn’t gone, but it was muffled and distant, as if buried beneath a great snowdrift.

  The widower wandered back to the forest and found his baby daughter laughing as she rolled and played in sunbeams. And at the sight of his daughter, so full of love and joy, his heart began to melt.

  A sharp pain tore through the widower’s chest. His grief and guilt flooded back, and he could not bear the pain. So he left his daughter playing happily under the watchful gaze of her grandmother, the Bear Tsarina, and ran deep into the forest.

  There the widower lived alone, avoiding anything that might melt his heart and bring back the pain. He foraged alone, hunted alone, and fished alone. He watched the sky and the seasons change, alone. But he didn’t forget his daughter and soon found himself watching her once more.

  His heart ached and burned and ruptured, but he endured the pain for as long as he could. And the next day he endured it a little longer.

  Every day, the widower watched his daughter from the shadows. And his heart melted, drip by drop, as he built up the courage to talk to her.

  “But your heart wasn’t really frozen by Father Frost, was it?” I frown at Anatoly, annoyed by the vagueness of his story.

  “There’s truth in all my stories,” Anatoly says softly.

  “But they aren’t the truth. You twist the truth and dress it up. You embellish it,” I snap, remembering Valentyna’s words. “Like how you told me my birth mother was a princess.”

  “She was a princess to me.”

  I growl in frustration. “Does Mamochka know?” I ask. “About you being my father?”

  “No.” Anatoly shakes his head. “I wanted to tell her. I wanted to tell you both. But—” He stares down at his paws. His eyes are huge, silvery pools.

  “Explain it to me,” I demand. “Explain everything to me. Without making it a story. So I can be sure what’s true.”

  Anatoly nods and opens his mouth. Words don’t come straight away, and when they do they’re stilted and unsure. Nothing like his flowing tales. But I like them better, because I know these words will be the truth I’ve been waiting for my whole life.

  “When I was young, I lived in the forest with my parents. I only ever remember them being bears, and the other creatures of the forest called them the Bear Tsar and the Bear Tsarina.

  “I was a bear too, most days. But sometimes I’d wake as a boy. It might last a day or a week or a month, then I’d wake as a bear again. My parents told me it was a curse, and that I’d grow out of it.”

  “But you didn’t.” I look into Anatoly’s eyes and he shakes his head.

  “As I grew older, I spent more time as a human and less as a bear. Eventually, I left the forest to become a fisherman. Years went by and I stopped turning into a bear altogether.” Anatoly smiles sadly. “I almost convinced myself that it had all been a strange childhood fantasy. But then I met your mother, Nastasya, and we had you, and …”

  “I was a bear?”

  “Not at first. You were born a baby girl. We named you Elitsa, because you were strong and beautiful as a fir tree.”

  My mouth drops open as I realize I had a different name once. Mamochka had no way of knowing, so she called me Yanka, because she thought I was strong and beautiful as a river. I think Yanka suits me better, because a river changes too.

  “Five days after you were born, you turned into a bear cub. You should have seen the look on your mother’s face.” Anatoly’s shoulders wobble with silent laughter. “Of course your mother would have loved you no matter what form you took, but I felt I had to do something. All my childhood memories came flooding back. I remembered how difficult it had been to be neither bear nor human, but stuck shifting between the two … I wanted to protect you, from this …” Anatoly looks at his huge, furry body and frowns. “So, I went to my mother, the Bear Tsarina, and tried to get her to remember her past. It took days, but finally I pieced together the story of the Lime Tree and the curse from what wa
s left of her human memories.”

  “Then you came here? To find the tree?”

  “I thought I could fix everything by myself.” Anatoly sighs. “I thought I could fight my way past Smey and convince the tree to lift the curse …” Anatoly’s eyes well with tears. “But I angered Smey, and then your mother came after me, and …” He shudders, as if he’s suppressing a sob, or a roar. “Her death was my fault.”

  Part of me wants to wrap my arms around Anatoly, but I sit still, the freezing air prickling between us, and wait for him to continue.

  “I lay, broken and burned beneath the fire dragon’s cavern. I’d have died, if it weren’t for Valentyna.”

  I nod with the realization that the house’s story—the one about the fisherman’s soul—was about Valentyna saving Anatoly.

  “Even after Valentyna put me back together and treated my injuries, there were days I thought I’d die of a broken heart. I couldn’t face you. Not after what I’d done. But I watched you, every day, my heart slowly mending and my courage building. I hoped one day I’d grow strong enough to be a worthy father for you.” Anatoly glances up at me, memories dancing in his eyes. “Some days you were a cub, some days a girl, but you were always happy. Your grandmother doted on you, and you played with your whole body smiling. You didn’t need me, or my sadness.”

  I open my mouth, wanting to argue with him—wanting to yell at him that of course I needed a father, sad or not, and he should have taken me back and raised me himself. But Anatoly’s eyes are so full of grief and regret that my anger cools and drifts away, like Smey in the snowstorm.

  “I know I was wrong,” Anatoly says sadly. “But by the time I realized it, it was too late. You were with your mamochka and there never seemed to be a good time to tell you.”

  “How did I end up with Mamochka?”

  “One day, I came to visit you, but you were gone.” A tear rolls into the fur of Anatoly’s cheek and freezes there, reflecting the starlight. “Your grandmother told me she had given you to a human lady who was full of love.”