The Bear With No Name by Zoe Chant

Author:Zoe Chant [Chant, Zoe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-09-25T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter 11

David was tracking the bear by scent. As soon as the odor had come to him on the breeze, he knew two things: one, there was a bear in the woods, and two, that he could not tell Lauren about it.

It gave him a strange, queasy feeling in his stomach to think about it. It was nothing like remembering the emergency room. That just felt like a door opening into another room, safe and well-lit. But when he imagined telling Lauren that he could smell a bear, he got a feeling of danger and wrongness.

To keep her safe, he would have to handle this on his own.

He stalked through the woods on the outskirts of town, trying to keep himself between the bear and the ridge where Lauren and Hannah were headed. He hadn’t traveled far from the Valentis’ sprawling mansion before the scent grew stronger, the direction more precise.

He could hear a rustle now, quieter than his own footsteps but still distinct. Pushing through a thicket, he saw her, just ten or fifteen yards away on the deer track: a small female black bear.

And just as he hadn’t hesitated with Mr. Mitchell’s heart attack, he knew exactly what to do now. He growled. As the low, savage rumble registered, the female bear flinched, but didn’t run away. She was scenting the air, too, turning her head about and searching.

Suddenly David remembered the bear cub from the river bank. Could she be its mother? There was something about her scent that tugged at him, but as usual, no memories surfaced no matter what he tried. If she was the cub’s mother, was there anything he could do to reunite them? He had been asleep by the time they had stopped at Fran’s house; he didn’t even know where it was.

The safest thing he could do for both humans and the bear would be to keep her well away from the town during daylight hours. He growled louder, standing tall and holding out his arms in a threatening pose. As he leaned toward the bear, she turned tail and fled. He tracked her further through the woods, till he was sure she was headed away from town and away from Lauren.

As he hiked back downhill toward town, he tried hard not to think about a suspicion that was forming in his mind: that not every person could have made that savage, animal sound, or fearlessly stared down a bear.

He emerged onto town streets again. Though he hadn’t passed this way before, he had a general idea of how to find the creek. There were still fallen branches littering the streets and sidewalks, and he tried to calm himself by being useful, dragging debris out of the way as he passed.

On one street, he found a large limb dangling from a tall oak, suspended almost in the middle of the street. He tugged at it experimentally. When it seemed to shift a bit, he put more weight into it and pulled.

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