The Last Bear by Hannah Gold

Author:Hannah Gold
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2020-12-23T00:00:00+00:00

16

Lessons in Roar

THE REST OF THE DAY they spent exploring. First, he took her to the farthest corners in the east, where they stood at the very edge of the island, on top of some jagged cliffs that fell down into the violent gray waves. And even though they stood right near the edge and were buffeted this way and that by angry sea-rush winds, April never felt unsafe—not with Bear guarding and protecting her. She could never be unsafe with him.

“I want to learn to roar like you do!” she shouted over the waves.

Luckily she didn’t have too long to wait to watch and learn. Bear reared up on his hind legs and bellowed out the kind of thunderous roar that skimmed over the waves like rocks and eventually melted into the faraway distance.

She tried to do the same, but her own roar belly-flopped into the sea with a big fat splat. Bear showed her how to puff out her chest, stand as tall as she possibly could—and then taller—and let the roar travel up all the way from her core so it came from the deepest, wildest part of her.

Her second roar was a little better but still not nearly as deafening as Bear’s. She practiced and practiced until April looked at her watch and realized it was past eleven. But she didn’t feel at all tired. That was the thing with all this sunshine. Without darkness, there was nothing to make you sleepy.

“I ought to go home all the same,” she said. “But we can come back tomorrow, can’t we? And I can try again?”

She took Bear’s ear twitch as agreement. And so they came back almost every day after that to practice her roar. And with each roar, she became a little bit more bear and a little bit less human. It didn’t matter how small she was. It only mattered how much she wanted to be heard.

It wasn’t just all roaring. As he continued to grow in strength, he took her all the way to the most westerly point in the island, where the land shelved into the sea in gigantic, weather-beaten boulders and rough, pointy shards of rocks jutted out of the water like knives.

“I didn’t know this was here, Bear,” she breathed out in wonder. “This is so beautiful! But . . . you’re not going to jump onto the boulders, are you? Oh! You are!”

By now, riding Bear was becoming easier—especially if she dug her knees into his muscular flanks and held in her belly for balance. She clung on tight as he soared from boulder to boulder, as if they were mere stepping stones, and he jumped farther and farther out into the sea while all the time, the freezing water snapped at her heels. Dad’s warning not to go too close to the sea’s edge popped into her head, but she dismissed it. After all, he had said he didn’t want her going too close to the sea’s edge alone.

But

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