Winnie's Great War

by Lindsay Mattick

  “I want to go farther.”

  “How do you know it will be safe?” Mama asked.

  There was a long, thoughtful silence, because Bear did not know.

  She just kept staring at the horizon until Mama leaned over and scratched her on the back of her neck. “Only a bear brave enough to talk to a snake could go that far.”

  Bear’s nose wriggled as if Mama had tickled it. Just that morning, Mama had found her deep in conversation with a snake! They had talked about which was better: legs or no legs.

  Anyway, Bear liked that Mama had said that. She licked Mama’s shoulder.

  Mama leaned down and licked her head in return. “No matter where you go, you will always be my Bear.”

  Every day through the height of that summer, the cub and her Mama swam and climbed and ate and roamed and wrestled. Here was Mama, introducing her to the robin’s raspberry bush, which had the sweetest berries in the entire Woods. Mama, hushing so Bear could hear what the snails had to say. Mama, snoring while Bear chased the crickets through the high yellow grass and then let the crickets chase her. Mama, looking up at the stars because Bear asked her to, and saying she had never noticed them before.

  And every day Bear would climb a tree to watch the white puffs round the lake.

  One day, when the berry bushes were almost picked clean and the green of the Woods had started to brown at its edges, Bear wandered off looking for a little something to eat. Mama had been napping by the lake, but when the cub returned, their rock was empty. She picked up Mama’s scent by the shore and followed it in the direction of their den.

  As your Bear crested a boulder, a piercing smell hit her: Mama but not Mama.

  Mama in fear.

  Bear crashed through the Woods. She tore through a thorny patch and between the roots of an upturned tree, the smell growing stronger and stronger.

  Through a screen of leaves, she glimpsed the black of Mama’s back in a clearing.

  Mama was looking right at her. One of her front legs was held fast by a trap fixed to the ground by a chain.

  The cub approached slowly and sniffed at Mama’s ankle. When Bear licked blood, with its mineral taste, Mama winced and pushed her away with a long, low moan.

  The wind shifted, and they both lifted their eyes. Something was crackling through the Woods toward them, cracking branches as it came.

  “Get up that tree!” Mama grunted. “Go!”

  Bear bolted up a thick trunk at the edge of the clearing. Once hidden in the leafy branches, she looked down on Mama, who was tugging hard at the trap.

  An animal came into view, its head hidden by a wide-brimmed hat.

  The trapper. Fear wrung Bear so tightly she could not breathe.

  But even then, she could not know what the trapper held in his hands.

  She thought it was a branch. A broken stick, that’s all.

  Mama looked to where your Bear had climbed, then back at the man. She pawed the ground. She swung her head around and thrashed, the stake at the end of the trap’s chain loosening from the dirt.

  As the trapper raised the branch to his shoulder, Mama lifted her muzzle high. “Be brave, my Bear!”

  “Mama!” Bear screamed.

  And a terrible thunder cracked the Woods twice.

  Even the insects hushed.

  The trapper set down the rifle and removed his hat with one pale hand; with the other, he tugged his long white beard. Someone else, smaller, stepped into the clearing. The cub could tell by scent that it was a boy.

  Shivering, your Bear tried to disappear, making herself small. She buried her face in the bark because she could not bear to see Mama’s twisted body lying there in a heap.

  When she felt the trapper and the boy staring up at her from the bottom of the tree, she tried desperately to stop crying, to keep quiet, to be brave—but she could not help herself. Not then.

  The murmur of their voices seemed to shake the leaves all around her as they set about hauling Mama away.

  The sun left pink streaks on the sky.

  Up in the tree, the fly buzzed around Bear’s head. It settled on the moist black tip of her nose, hoping to get swatted away. It poked into one nostril and then the other. But no matter how annoying it tried to make itself, Bear did not seem to notice or care.

  Fancy and Tall stood watch nearby. Having wrapped herself in her tail, Fancy dabbed one eye with it. “Poor thing. A babe alone in the Woods. How will she survive?”

  Tall’s own tail had curved into something like a question mark. He hopped down beside the cub and patted his chest twice with one paw. “Your Mama was a great bear.”

  But Bear just lay there, blinking.

  “Be brave, my Bear,” her Mama had called.

  Bear lifted her head and shook the fly gently away. Her friends the snails slid up the trunk toward her, and the crickets from the high grasses chirped kindly, and the red-breasted robin from the raspberry bush landed on the branch at her side and laid down a worm, who wiggled its respects as the loons sang out on the lake.

  Your Bear was still in the tree when the boy came back shortly after sunrise the next morning. “Hello, Bear?” he called.

  Bear put her paw in her mouth.

  “Come down,” called the boy. “I won’t hurt you.”

  Your Bear wanted to growl, “Go away!” but she dared not make a sound.

  “Please?” said the boy. He kicked the roots of the tree, and kneaded his cap in his hands, and paced back and forth.

  He took a sack from his back and slung it to the ground. His hands rustled around inside until he held up something wrapped in brown paper.

  “Hungry?” the boy called, unwrapping it. The breeze carried a new scent up to Bear.

  Her tummy grumbled. “Shhh!” she told it.

  “It’s chee-eese,” the boy sang.

  Bear squeezed her nose shut.

  “I’ll just leave it here,” said the boy, carefully placing the food at the bottom of the tree. He searched the branches one more time before clomping off into the Woods.

  Every day the boy came and left something to eat at the foot of the tree. The cub would watch him from a hiding place beneath a bush just outside the clearing. She would wait until after she was sure he was gone before tiptoeing over and scarfing down whatever he’d left.

  A strip of chewy reddish bark that made Bear’s tongue itch: That was beef jerky. A bumpy brown thing with white insides: That was a potato. She took a tiny bite of a clammy white thing that was so awful Bear had to spend the rest of the day eating dirt: Oh, how your Bear hated onions!

  Carrots. Moldy bread. A tin of beans she got her snout stuck in.

  And then one morning something just dropped from the sky right at the base of the tree: a rotting fish skeleton. The boy’s peppery smell was in the air, so she knew he was nearby, but he was nowhere to be seen.

  “I want that!” her tummy rumbled. “Go get it!”

  “No!” Bear told it. “It’s not safe!”

  “It’s a dead fish!” her tummy grumbled. “What are you scared of? I thought you were brave!”

  Bear’s nose dragged her along the ground and up to the base of the tree. When she was just about to reach the skeleton, it gave a short hop out of reach.

  Bear leapt back. The fish’s missing eye stared at her innocently.

  She waited. It did not move.

  She prepared to pounce, and it leapt again! Now it slithered across the ground like a snake. Bear trotted after it until—

  There was the boy on all fours. Around his finger was wound some fishing line, which he’d tied to the fish’s tail. When she caught his eye, he looked down in a way that said, “I won’t hurt you.”

  Bear sniffed again at the fish, and this time it didn’t try to get away. When she licked it, the boy whispered, “I caught it myself.”

  Once she was done picking the skeleton clean, Bear sat and studied the boy. He had reddish speckles on his cheeks—freckles. Bear had a surprising urge to sti
ck her face in the dark brown curly fur on the top of his head.

  The boy sat back on his heels and reached behind him for a small jug. He pulled out the cork with his teeth and pushed the open jug across the bumpy earth toward Bear.

  “Maple syrup,” he said, and she could smell it. “From Uncle Owen’s sugar bush.”

  The cub sniffed at the jug’s opening. When she nudged it with her nose, it nearly tipped. When she did it again, it toppled. Bear rushed her paws out of the way as the golden liquid oozed across the ground. She touched the puddle with her nose, then cleaned her snout with a swipe of her tongue and—

  YUM.

  Bear’s tongue went wild, stretching this way and that to get every drop. Soon she was a sticky ball of fur gathering pine needles from the floor of the Woods.

  She sat up in a daze.

  The boy started to laugh… and he laughed… and he laughed… and he laughed. “You look like a porcupine!” the boy said, laughing.

  Suddenly she had a whole lot of energy! Crazily Bear raced back and forth and back and forth across the clearing. The boy whooped, cheering her on.

  All at once, Bear collapsed on the ground, spent and happy.

  The sun was high in the sky when the boy quietly rose and gathered his things. He slung his sack onto his shoulder, walked a few paces into the Woods, and turned, waiting.

  “Come along,” said the boy.

  Bear blinked. She looked back to the tree, and back at the boy, and back to the tree once more. Feelings swirled inside her like leaves.

  He beckoned with his hand. “Come.”

  And your Bear bounded after the boy.

  As the boy marched through the Woods with the cub at his heels, he sang a marching song.

  Some talk of Alexander,

  and some of Hercules,

  Of Hector and Lysander,

  and such great names as these.

  But of all the world’s great heroes,

  there’s none that can compare

  With a tow, row, row, row, row, row,

  to the British Grenadiers!

  The boy said, “Watch this!” and swung from a rope that hung from a bough over a dry streambed. The cub jumped after him, tumbling down.

  Whenever Bear wandered off after some smell, the boy would say, “Come on, this way,” and Bear would look up, her mouth full of leaves, and romp after him.

  They were walking through a stand of pines when Fancy and Tall darted down one of the trunks. “What do you think you’re doing?!” Tall screeched.

  Your Bear pointed her nose after her new friend. “I’m going with him.”

  Fancy gagged, while Tall shot up tall. “You can’t do that!”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s not like you!” gulped Fancy.

  Bear folded down one ear and pointed the other. “Neither are you.”

  “Baby bear,” chickered Fancy, clutching her tail to her breast. “You will stop following that beast this instant!”

  The cub pretended to dig in the dirt while the boy walked on ahead and the squirrels wrung their tiny paws.

  “I heard you. You said it yourself.” Bear licked the ground at Fancy’s feet. “It’s no good for a cub to be alone in the Woods.”

  “But he’ll hurt you!” Tall pleaded.

  “I don’t think he will.”

  “How do you know?” Fancy tittered, twisting her tail. “You don’t!”

  Bear opened her mouth so they could smell her breath and then turned around to show them her back. “Try this.” Her fur was still sticky with syrup her tongue couldn’t reach.

  Fancy stuck up her nose, but Tall touched Bear’s fur lightly with one paw and sniffed it. He nodded with wide eyes at Fancy.

  Hungrily the squirrels licked the last of the maple syrup off the cub.

  “Tastes promising,” Tall admitted. He lowered his tail. “We’ll worry about you, you know.”

  Fancy looked at the cub with sudden tenderness. “We have never known a bear like you,” she said. She stroked Bear’s face with the puff of her tail. “You’ll always be our Bear.”

  The pair scattered into the bushes as the boy came back.

  “Silly bear,” he said. “I thought I’d lost you. Were those your friends?”

  The forest opened to an old cabin made half of wood and half of stone. A box of colorful-smelling flowers hung beneath one window. Gray smoke leaked from a stone chimney at one end of the roof, which was fuzzy with moss.

  A barking black-and-white dog charged from behind the cabin. “Attack! Attack! Attack!” he barked. “Attack! Attack! Attack!”

  “Sit, Leo!” said the boy.

  The dog sat. “Do I have to?” he whined.

  “Boy, is that you?” a gravelly voice called. “Come help! Maggie’s ready!”

  The boy threw down his sack and ran around back, leaving the cub face-to-face with Leo.

  “Just remember,” Leo growled, “who the top dog is around here.”

  “I will,” promised Bear. She wriggled her nose. “Who is it again?”

  Leo sneezed. “Me!”

  “Right!” agreed Bear.

  Begrudgingly, Leo wagged his tongue. “Good.”

  Bear waved her tongue back. “Good.”

  The dog carried on after the boy, with Bear rushing to keep up.

  In a stall behind the cabin, a creamy white mare lay on her side. With every labored breath, her huge nostrils grew and shrank, grew and shrank. The cub sniffed at her mane, which was splayed across the hay-covered ground. “Are you sick?”

  The mare lifted her head briefly, surprised at the presence of a bear cub. “No, little one,” she answered, resting her head once more. “I’m well.”

  “Grab hold of the foal’s leg,” the gravelly voice said, and Bear took a startled step back. There was the trapper, crouched at the rear of the mare.

  She almost ran away, but she could tell he wasn’t trying to hurt the horse. So she just flattened herself behind Maggie’s head and peeked over the mare’s ears to watch.

  Standing beside the man, the boy took hold of a bony leg sticking out of the mare’s other end, dug his feet into the ground, leaned back, and pulled. Maggie’s nostrils quivered. Leo lowered his belly to the ground, panting encouragement.

  Patiently, the boy pulled a foal from Maggie. It came out wrapped in a milky blanket, which the man stretched aside.

  “It’s a girl!” said the boy. Maggie’s eyes went soft and her nostrils released a gust of breath as a great happiness bounded across your Bear’s heart.

  The old trapper stood up with a groan and wiped his hands on a rag.

  When he noticed your Bear, his white eyebrows drooped. “Is that the orphan cub we left in the tree?”

  “Yes, sir,” said the boy. “You said yourself that it was a shame to leave her like that.”

  “You know it’s our job to trap these animals,” the trapper said. “Not save them.”

  “I’ll take care of her!” the boy said quickly. “I’ll groom her and feed her and clean up after her.”

  “She’s a bear, not a dog,” said the trapper, tossing the rag into a bucket in the corner. Leo barked in agreement before looking at Bear in an apologetic way.

  “Please, Granpa?” said the boy. “Just until she’s big enough to take care of herself?”

  The trapper tugged his beard. As he stalked out of the stall, he said, “Ask your Granma.”

  In no time at all, the boy was banging together a small wooden pen next to the chicken coop. He scattered hay on the ground and lifted Bear inside with him; he’d made it just big enough for the two of them. The boy, tickled by her claws as Bear climbed back and forth across his lap, giggled. Every time he pushed her off and rolled her onto her back, she rolled over and scampered back up for more. He went and got the old rag from the bucket so they could play tug-of-war.

  Bear pulled and tugged and waggled her head with all her might.

  “You won!” the boy cried as he let the rag go and
she tumbled back end over end.

  The boy ran to the cabin and came back with a saucer of milk. Bear hummed softly as she lapped it up while the boy brushed her back.

  A high, shrill voice called, “Boy, where are you?! That bear better not be taking you away from your chores!” The boy nuzzled her and said, “See you soon,” before climbing out of the pen.

  A warm, sweet smell woke Bear from her nap the next day. She stood on her hind legs and peeked her nose out of her pen.

  Leo, who was lounging nearby, sat up, wagging his tail. “What is it?”

  The cub scratched at the wood that surrounded her. On her second try, she got halfway up the split-log wall. On her third, she made it all the way and tumbled over the top.

  Leo’s tail stiffened when she hit the ground. “Stay!” he barked.

  Bear leaned her nose into the wind, trying to breathe in more of the scent. The clucking of the chickens quickened. “Oh dear!” they clucked. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!”

  The cub followed her nose around to the front of the cabin.

  Leo ran after her. “Stop!” he barked. “Stop right there!”

  If she seemed to be ignoring him, it was because she had other things on her mind, like her tummy.

  “Stop! Stop! Stop!” Leo barked. “Stop! Right! Now!”

  “Do you think it’s blueberries?” wondered Bear.

  Your Bear could see the open window, and smell something just inside the window, but she couldn’t quite reach the window. So your Bear reached for the edge of the flower box and hoisted herself up.

  CRAA-AACK.

  The box crashed to the ground, scattering flowers in a heap of soil. Bear paused to eat them.

  “Bad bear!” Leo barked desperately. “Bad bear! Very bad bear!”

  Bear barely looked up. “These are good flowers.”

  After she’d eaten all the flowers, she dug her claws into the side of the cabin and climbed past where the box had hung. There, right before her eyes, was something round cooling on the sill. Deep purple filling peeped through dewdrop-shaped holes cut into a golden crust. The cub’s lips quivered. “Oh my!”