The Bear by Andrew Krivák

Author:Andrew Krivák [Krivák, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Science Fiction, Nature, Apocalyptic & Post-Apocalyptic, Fantasy
ISBN: 1942658702
Publisher: Bellevue Literary Press
Published: 2020-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

THE MOUNTAIN RANGE TOWERED SNOWCAPPED and dusk-lit to the north when they emerged from the forest and stopped at the river. They could hear the rumble of the course for some time as they came through the woods, and now the roar of the current before them was so loud that they retreated back to the edge of the trees to make their camp.

The bear fished in an eddy from the riverbank and the girl raised a cookfire. Around the fire, after they had finished eating, the girl told the bear she and her father had walked along this same stretch when they came out of the high mountains, where they had to go in order to cross the river from west to east. Even in the middle of summer, her father had tied her to him, so strong was the current, and still she thought she would be swept away. The bear said it was a swift river and that he had seen a cub drown wading into it not far from where they now sat. They, too, would climb into the mountains ahead of them, he told her, but the high peaks were far off yet, too far to reach before winter at their pace. Tomorrow they would go due north and, if it didn’t snow, in a few days they would reach a cave where they could both shelter.

So I won’t get home, the girl said, not a question but the same flat, indifferent tone she had been using with the bear.

Not on this side of the solstice, he said to her. Not with this river in front of us and this much cold in the air.

We can follow the river until we come to the snows and I can cross on my own, the girl said.

Cross now where you could not cross before? the bear asked, and he pointed with his snout at the distant range, the sunset reflected in its alpenglow.

Already it’s begun, he said. We’ll climb until we come to the tree line. And then we both have to prepare.

THE EVENING WAS COLDER THAN THE ONE BEFORE and the girl built up the fire with the abundance of deadfall that lay all around, and with the river a short distance from the stand of beech in which they sat, its rushing current sounded to her like a chorus of more voices than she had ever heard, and she asked the bear again how it was he could speak.

The bear shifted and sighed and was quiet for a time. When he spoke finally, he said that long ago all the animals knew how to make the sounds the girl and her father used between them. But it was the others like her who stopped listening, and so the skill was lost. As for the bear, he learned it from his mother, who learned it from her mother. Not all animals had the range of voice that could be heard, he said, but all living things spoke, and perhaps the real question was how she could understand him.

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