Then began a dark time for the princess. There was no action possible. Nothing changed or happened for such a long time that she was unaware of the passage of time. But still, in the distance, water dripped. Soon she realized someone was whistling in time to the drops.
“Who is it?” called the princess, standing to attention in the blackness. She was so relieved to hear her voice, any voice, that she shouted it again and again.
“No need to shout,” said a cheerful voice in return. “Talk softly and I’ll walk to your voice.”
It was the
prince, her beloved prince. She was no longer alone.
“Oh, Brooks,” I choke out. He whines
and licks his wound. I play with his droopy ears and then slide
out. Blackflies are waiting on the screen. They swarm my face,
crawling into the creases by my eyes and behind my ears. I smear
their carcasses into my sweat. Brooks has to get better, because I
sure don’t know what to do.
In the darkness, touch is the loudest sense.
The prince
dropped to his knees before the princess and kissed her clammy hand until it prickled with
warmth.
Brooks is licking my hand, serious washing licks.
“Cut it out!”
The sun is already high. It’s another hot fall day in the forest. I light a fire, and when the twigs and branches have caught, I coax Brooks to join me. He lies by the fire on his belly. I boil water and drink hot juice from powder. I boil water again and add oats and butter and dried fruit. Brooks’s wound gapes open. I see the skin layer and underneath it—steak. How does something with a personality become meat? His ears are soft as Arctic cotton grass. When I stroke them, he slides closer to me so his head rests on my lap. He thinks I can make him better, I guess.
I eat slowly with my cottonwood spoon, forcing myself to swallow. Halfway through the pot, the porridge begins to taste good: hot and sweet. I finish it fast before my stomach rebels and then shove the pot to Brooks to lick.
He doesn’t even turn his head. Seems the last of his energy went into cleaning my hand.
It’s farther back to the road than if we go on to the cabin. At the cabin Brooks can snooze in comfort by the woodstove. So should I stay put or continue? It’s only growing colder.
At the cabin I can heat water in the washbasin and thoroughly clean his wound. There should be old dog food and, most important, there should be salt in the cache for soaking the cut. I have a couple of spoonfuls that will have to do until we get there. Mom always uses salt for keeping cuts from getting infected.
And, of course, if I go back now I’ll never know what happened to Dad.
But will Brooks make it?
Gray jays light on the spruce branches hanging far above the flames. Downriver, a raven caws and slowly flaps toward us. White dots slide over the mountain. When I focus the monocle, I see ewes and lambs napping in the afternoon heat on a rocky shelf, fresh snow patches directly above them.
I wash the pot in the creek and dip its bottom lip under the green water to fill. I hang a pole over the fire, weighing the end with stones so it hangs at the right angle. When the water’s hot, I pour some in my cup with a pinch of salt, find a clean (more or less) sock and pour the lukewarm water over Brooks’s cut. He yowls and snaps at my hand. Instantly sorry, he nuzzles into my leg.
“Don’t worry, pup,” I say, stroking his head.
While he sleeps, I toss my sleeping bag over some branches to air, and I open the tent windows to let breezes play through the screen.
Restlessness burns through my muscles. My thighs twitch.
I can see the cabin clearly in my mind. I see myself with Brooks, walking down the last miles of foot trail and then cutting across the clearing. I feel myself pulling back on the hammer so its head eases out the spikes that hold the window shutters in place.
What I don’t see is what the cabin looks like inside now I’m grown up. I’ve never been there alone without everyone else’s gear cluttering the space.
Brooks can sleep by the woodstove until he’s better. I can leave him safely inside while I look for clues to Dad’s disappearance. At night I’ll go to bed within four log walls that hold years of memories, the fire banked and smoldering in the stove. Red coals, flames yellow and blue.
What if the bear comes back? What if he won’t leave us alone?
That’s ridiculous to even imagine. The bear must have way better things to do with his time than follow us.
After a supper of cheese and crackers, I can no longer force myself to sit still. I break camp. I’ve made my decision. If I don’t get there this time, I’ll probably never try again.
I stuff the gear from Brooks’s torn pack into mine. I’ll sew it at the cabin. Now I’m in shape, I don’t notice the extra weight. I shrug the pack over my shoulders.
I douse the flames completely. The charred bones of branches collapse on the downy ashes. Brooks lies with his eyes closed, curled in a ball, his wound on the outside flank.
“Let’s go, boy.”
Brooks stares at me, astounded, and pushes his muzzle into my ankle.
I kneel down, my pack almost toppling me. I haul him up by his collar. “Sorry, Brooks. Staying put’s not an option. We need salt and food.”
Brooks takes a step using three legs, then sits, eyes locked with mine.
I snap the leash to his collar and tug. “Come on, pup.”
And that’s how we walk out of the forest and into the high country again. We rest every few minutes. I stand, leaning forward to take the weight off my shoulders. Brooks crashes on his rear and slurps at his cut.
Sometimes I shout to warn the bear we are coming. Sometimes I keep very still. I will be so happy if Brooks recovers. Funny, though, because yesterday he was healthy, and I wasn’t happy then.
I don’t know how best to avoid this bear. He needs lots of notice before we show up again to bug him. In the end, I yodel maybe once every five minutes. In between yodels I try to imagine my way back into the story of the princess’s quest, but I can’t concentrate.
When the last light is blazing from the mountain faces about me, I pitch my tent on a small knoll where I can see the valley spread below. The brush grows in patches lower than my waist. Far away, the river gleams silver. Under my tent is a bed of soft deep moss. I hold Brooks curled into my side all night and fall into a restless sleep. There’s something about moss I should remember.
Asleep, my dreams are confusing and not about the quest at all. I dream that my father is in a hut at the edge of a forest, ax in hand. He stares down the path at the thud of approaching hooves. A nightingale sings in a cottonwood by the bank.
I dig in my heels and gallop toward him. “Dad!”
My father’s face is yearning, his arms outstretched.
Then he covers his face with his hands.
When he removes them, fur is growing on his cheeks.
He snarls, showing yellow teeth, and holds his hands in front of his face, staring at them. Claws curl crooked at their ends, shining like knives.
I jerk back on the reins.
The tent and knoll are bathed in
moonlight. Wind surges from the passes like a faraway tide. It was
just a nightmare. The bear, I’m sure, is nowhere around.
“What do you love doing?” asked Mom, whittling a chunk of poplar bark into the shape of a wolf. She dug the knife in hard and blew away splinters of wood from a leg.
I leaned against a tree trunk in the sunshine and opened my eyes, content to be with her.
“Lots of things,” I said.
Mom held her carving up to show me. “What are you doing when you’re the happiest?"
I love mountains
and forests and fairy tales and juggling and being alone, I think. And I love you too,
Mom.
Pain rattles like stones in my stomach. Mouth dry, I listen to Brooks’s ragged breath. Moonlight is so strange in the mountains. Every detail is transformed, washed in soft underwater light. I watch through the screen door. I think of my father’s face in my dream, before it changed, before he snarled and his warm hands grew to claws. Shrugging off the dream, I roll over but my fingers graze Brooks’s side. I draw them back into my sleeping bag, sticky with blood.
Later, I crouch over Brooks, who doesn’t want to move from the morning fire. “Come on, boy,” I coax. “You have to eat.”
I shove the porridge pot under his nose. “Sit,” I say, firmly. What I mean is “stand” but he doesn’t know the command for that.
His head stays flat on the ground. Only his tail thumps feebly on the moss.
I dip my finger into the porridge and shove it in his mouth. Brooks swallows and lumbers to three of his feet. The fourth is tucked up under the wounded flank. He takes forever to lick the pot clean. By the time I’ve loaded my pack and washed his wound, the sun is splashing the mountains with shafts of shadow and light.
We walk maybe a mile that day, through high country, above the tree line. Brooks hops on three legs the entire way. I make camp at the top of the second pass, with only a few willow twigs for fuel. Soon it won’t matter that I need to force myself to eat. At this rate, we’ll be almost out of food by the time we reach the cabin. We’ve eaten the last of the dry meat and bananas and cheese. There are still plenty of dried vegetables for broth, but that won’t give us much energy.
Before stopping for a cold supper the next day, I see bear tracks on the sandy bank of a creek crossing. All bear tracks look like they were made by a huge barefoot human.
Grizzly claws, however, are longer than blacks’, and the curve of the toes is flatter. A little farther along I see scat, stuffed with berries and purplish leaves. I growl at the mess and boot it apart with a branch. I sniff hard. Nothing.
Just the faraway smell of winter coming, of snow dusting the peaks. It can’t be the same bear. Male grizzlies have an enormous range, but why would he still be heading in our direction? It must be another bear just passing through.
I snatch gloves from my pack pocket and pull them on. We’ve walked almost across the pass now. But where the mountains draw back a bit, a narrow creek tumbles into the valley, flowing into what’s now a river. Clumps of cottonwood and alder grow along it. I walk through the trunks in the late afternoon with sunshine slanting along the ground. A few spruce grow among them.
I see the blaze at twilight. It’s definitely not the scratch lines of a bear or the gnawing of a porcupine. I run my fingers over the marks of the ax on the trunk. How many years has it been there? I walk by instinct, following the faint opening through the trees. If I concentrate too hard, I’ll lose the way. Eventually I stumble on another blaze, and another, both on young black spruce trees.
Then a stump, cut by a swede saw. The wood has yellowed over its scar. There are several stumps, and I can just make out an unbroken horizontal line. Little in nature is so straight. Logs are stacked on each other for walls. From the sod roof, grass and a few fingers of willow reach tentatively for the darkening sky.
Thank god, I think. A safe place to spend the night: a cottage in the forest.