Nina, the Bear's Child Read online

  Nina tiptoed through the cottage, her heartbeat quickening and pounding in her ears, her breath hitching. Her parents’ bedroom door was slightly ajar, and Nina pushed it open enough to peer inside. Her mother knelt beside the bed with her chin resting against her chest. Tears rolled down her cheeks and dropped to the floor. So many had fallen that her mother sat in a pool of them, which spread out in every direction as though she was melting into salt water.

  And Nina knew the truth.

  Her father was dead, along with her mother’s hope.

  Days passed without her father. Then weeks. Nina’s mother cried enough to flood the house, and Nina slept outside most nights, shivering in the cold, just so she wouldn’t wash away. But sadness was a cunning beast; it followed Nina everywhere like a second shadow, and it took her nearly a season before she learned how to banish sorrow to the outermost edges of her heart.

  At first after her father’s death, many townsfolk came to the cottage, bringing their sympathy and homemade meals. They offered to help Nina’s mother with the burial arrangements and with watching after Nina. For an endless string of days Nina was kept at one stranger’s house and then passed to another’s and then on to another’s while her mother prepared for a life without her father. But Nina felt like an intruder in their homes, an extra mouth to feed, another child siphoning off their already depleting energy.

  So Nina made a plan. She started waking before sunrise, leaving a note for her mother, and then disappearing into the forest so no one would feel obligated to watch over her. They shouted her name into the woods, urging her to come with them, not daring to venture in to find her themselves. Nina knew they’d grow weary long before she did. Eventually the townspeople stopped coming. They stopped sharing meals and stopped calling out to Nina in the trees. People soon forgot about the suffering of Nina and her mother.

  For a while, Nina’s mother was able to sell what remained of her father’s furniture and wood carvings. She sold her own fanciful creations too. This allowed them to stock plenty of food in the cupboards. But after many months, after they’d sold every item her father had made, it became frighteningly obvious to Nina that they would not be able to keep enough food on the table to survive.

  One night as they sat at the table in silence, eating a meager meal of bean soup that was more water than beans, Nina watched a shadowy veil drop over her mother’s eyes, turning her bright-eyed gaze into a haunted stare. Her mother’s shoulders slumped forward, if only slightly, but it was enough for Nina to feel a stone drop into her own stomach. A wolf howled outside in response.

  Nina felt her mother’s transformation so acutely, felt it echoing through her bird-thin, little-girl bones, it was as though the shift was happening inside her own body. She trembled in the chair as a chill traveled across the floor like ice expanding across the winter bay. Nina concentrated and relaxed her mind. She gazed at her mother, focused all her thoughts on truly seeing her mother.

  But what she saw in those few moments made her, for the first time in her life, think her gift was a curse.

  Her mother’s body became like glass. What had been a clear vessel that had once held so much sunlight, had been filled to bursting with sparkling morning dew and alive with violet and fuchsia swirls of activity was no more. Now her mother’s body resembled a brittle dead snag, decaying inside with a graying, hardening outer shell. White tendrils of smoke, sooty at its edges, churned out from the area of her heart. Nina felt certain if she shouted her name, it would echo inside her mother’s body like an empty tomb.

  Nina squeezed her eyes closed and shuddered.

  The next morning Nina awoke to find herself alone in the cottage. Her mother’s note, pinned to the front door, said she’d gone to town and would return by lunch. Nina busied herself with cleaning the cottage. When that chore was complete, she began carving an animal out of a piece of birch wood. Nina and her father had enjoyed guessing what animal would arise out of the carvings. Only the spirits of the forest knew what the lump of tree would become, so Nina’s father taught her to be patient and carve with a pure heart.

  After an hour of carving, a skinny bear sat in Nina’s small hand. She wondered at the meaning for a moment before voices carried up the trail. Nina slipped the bear carving into her pocket and called a greeting to her mother.

  But her mother wasn’t alone.

  She recognized the hunter from town, the man with the flattened face and grimy nails. He walked with an animal carcass slung over one shoulder, scattering blood behind him as though leaving a trail for dark things to follow. His other arm draped around Nina’s mother, pulling her close against his stained shirt. She carried a bag bulging with fresh food from the market. The hunter’s dark eyes bulged with arrogant triumph. He’d conquered two prey: an unfortunate buck and a desperate widow.

  Nina’s childish hope wished he might only be joining them for a friendly dinner, even though he was not their friend. He skinned and cooked the deer over a fire while her mother boiled potatoes, roasted vegetables, and baked bread. The hunter talked constantly. His voice sounded permanently angry and spoken like someone who’d been shouting at people across great distances for so long he’d forgotten how to talk indoors. He told stories where he was always the hero and only stories involving dead animals and blood. He complimented her mother’s beauty often and in a way that made Nina feel like spiders crawled over her arms.

  During one of his extravagant retellings of how he killed a bear and its cubs, his flailing arms knocked a delicate hummingbird carving off the fireplace mantle. It tumbled into the fire burning in the hearth. Nina’s father had carved the hummingbird as a gift for her last birthday. She lunged for the fallen bird, attempting to rescue it from the flames. But she could no more save her treasure than she could have saved her father. Both were gone now, leaving behind a dark, smoky sadness.

  After dinner, when the hunter returned to town, Nina felt a lift in her spirits. The air inside the cottage cleared and turned crisp in her lungs. Then she noticed he’d left his sullied boots by their front door, a sign his absence was temporary. Nina’s hope crumbled and fell through cracks in the floor.

  Day after day the hunter returned to them until he no longer went back to town. In his presence, cobwebs appeared in corners of the rooms, food spoiled faster, and thick, dripping mold grew beneath the chair he occupied most. Twice the amount of ashes piled in the hearth, and poison oak tangled around the shed where he kept his blades. When he stepped out of the cottage in the mornings, the birds stopped singing.

  Nina spent as much time outside and in the forest as she could and only came inside at her mother’s urgings. The hunter snarled and complained that Nina’s mother spoiled her, that she should be punished for wandering off into forbidden places. Couldn’t Nina be put to work, he demanded. But Nina’s mother loved her dearly, and Nina also had her father’s smile and his cheerful, loping gait, and that made her mother pause and remember the love that had created Nina.

  But her love for Nina made the hunter spiteful and jealous, and he began to fester like an infected wound. He began to plot a way to rid his life of Nina.

  One morning before sunrise Nina awoke to the hunter’s raised voice, louder than usual, followed by her mother’s pleas. Nina crept out of bed and knelt by her door to listen.

  Nina’s mother stood at the kitchen sick, her hands disappearing into soapy water, a feeling of dread turning her stomach sour. Over a second cup of strong coffee, the hunter complained it was time Nina stopped being useless and worked to provide for the family. Nina’s mother dried her hands on her apron. Nina was still a child, barely ten, her mother explained, and she did what all children did. She played and helped with housework and basic chores. Nina shared her childlike spirit and filled the cottage with her joy.

  The hunter sneered. When he was ten, he’d been expected to track prey, hunt, and supply the family with food for the winter. He would take Nina into the forest and teach her to hunt.

  Nin
a’s mother stilled. Color drained from the cottage, turning her vision gray and murky. The hunter stared at her. Nina was too young to hunt and not well-equipped in such ways, she said in her most gentle voice. The hunter’s laugh caused her to shudder because she knew his heart. She knew his intentions were tainted by jealousy and malevolence.

  He pushed away from the table and growled like a beast. He would force Nina to track forest animals, and he would make sure the life of a living thing ended, starting that day.

  Nina recoiled, digging her fingernails into her tiny palms. A dizzying buzz filled her ears. Going into the forest didn’t frighten her, but going into the forest alone with the hunter to kill animals tightened her stomach with nausea and alarm.

  Her mother argued, but the hunter stomped toward Nina’s room. Nina hurried away from the door and pressed her back against the farthest wall. Her mother wailed in the hallway, begging the hunter to change his mind. She told him she would teach Nina to sew lavish dresses, to weave fabrics that could be sold at expensive prices. The hunter spit at her mother’s ideas, calling them mindless, and he ridiculed Nina, saying she lacked the intelligence to learn such a craft. Nina was good for nothing but sweeping floors, he said, but he would teach her to hunt no matter the cost. He would not allow a parasite to live in his house. If she wanted to stay there, she must earn her keep.

  He shoved open Nina’s bedroom door and commanded she come with him. Nina’s mother rushed into the room, pressing her hands to the hunter’s heaving, sweaty chest and imploring him to allow her to properly dress Nina for a forest outing. He grunted but left the two alone.

  With trembling hands, Nina’s mother grabbed her daughter’s warmest clothes from the wardrobe, insisting she dress in layers. She tugged wool socks and heavy boots onto Nina’s feet. She braided her daughter’s long hair and pulled a knitted cap down over her ears. She helped Nina put on her heaviest winter coat, zipped it up, and pulled the hood over Nina’s head.

  She turned Nina around to look her in the eyes. She made Nina promise that she would be careful and be aware of exactly where the hunter was at all times. Nina slung her bow and quiver of arrows over her back. She’d used them for only fanciful play, never to kill a living creature.

  Her mother wept as Nina followed the hunter into the Acadia forest.

  The farther Nina and the hunter walked, the darker the forest became. The tree trunks fattened in size and tripled in height. They were more gnarled, more ancient. The sounds around them shifted into unfamiliar bird calls and strange animal noises. The wind carried whispers that brushed across Nina’s cheeks, and she pulled her hood tighter around her face. She looked up just in time to see a symbol carved into the enormous trunk of a hemlock tree. The symbol marked the boundary line, the line that meant no human should go any farther. To cross the boundary meant to cross into the heart of the forest, a place of magic and mischief.

  Nina stopped walking. The hunter stepped straight over the invisible boundary line and covered twenty paces before he realized he was alone. He turned, narrowed his eyes, and called to her. Nina told him she would not cross the boundary. She had promised her parents she would always be respectful of the forest’s rules.

  But the hunter didn’t care about the rules, and when Nina spoke of her father, the hunter’s gaze darkened, his back stiffened, and he hacked his blade into the nearest tree. Nina thought she heard the tree cry out in alarm. He demanded she come to him, and Nina refused. Nothing would make her break her promise, she said. Then he threatened to harm her mother, and blackness swirled within him like a poisonous fog. It oozed from his pores, and the green leaves around him withered and dropped to the forest floor like dying birds.

  She knew he meant it, knew he would hurt her mother, and Nina could not allow that. She closed her eyes and stepped over the boundary line. She held her breath. Would entering into the forbidden part of the forest feel dangerous like a lightning storm? Would the forest punish her? Or did it understand she was being forced, that she hadn’t wanted to disrespect the boundaries?

  Other than a tingling in her stomach, Nina felt nothing else. Satisfied with her submission, the hunter marched on. The thick canopy above blocked out most of the sunlight, so Nina walked through a world of soft green light. The forest floor was thick with moss and fungi and fallen leaves, and Nina’s steps were silent and bouncy. Animals moved high up in the trees, but they were unidentifiable, only darker shadows in the dark green light. They could have been birds just as easily as monkeys. Fairies or goblins. And on they walked.

  After Nina exhaled a thousand breaths, the hunter stopped. She peered around his hulk at a large hole marring the side of a rockface. The cavity was just large enough for a grown man to walk inside with his arms extended from his sides. The light penetrated a few steps inside, and then the blackness became so complete that Nina felt she was staring into a terrifying void of nothingness.

  Markings etched with rock shards framed the opening. Many of the words had faded back into rock, but Nina read enough of the fragmented words to understand where they stood.

  The Cave of Madness.

  The hunter pointed at the cave opening. He ordered her to go inside and look for rabbit tracks. Because she had no useful skills, she would learn to hunt small prey, he said, and he would not allow her to return to the cottage until she’d caught and killed one. Nina hung back. It was too dark, she explained, and no one could see tracks in such a place.

  He shoved Nina toward the gaping hole. Voices carried out of the darkness. Unintelligible sounds, more moaning than language. He ordered her to stay in the cave until either she caught a rabbit or he called her to come out.

  Nina hesitated, then thought about her mother, her loving, heartbroken, desperate mother. Nina couldn’t allow her mother to suffer at her expense. She straightened her shoulders and stepped into the cave.

  One step.

  Two steps.

  Three steps.

  Darkness.

  A darkness so deep and black that the world could have turned upside down and Nina could have been walking through a starless sky. Only the round opening of the cave offered pale green light, and as she walked farther inside, the circle of light shrunk more and more. After twenty-seven paces in, the sound of a rock fall rumbled through the cave. The ground shook beneath her. Nina faced the cave opening just in time to see large rocks falling over the opening.

  Nina screamed and ran for the disappearing slivers of light. A feral sound filled the cave, a gut-wrenching howl echoing off the damp walls. Nina realized it was her own cry. She beat her small fists against the rock wall now blocking the only way out of the cave. She called for the hunter, screamed his name, begged for his help.

  Silence.

  Outside the blocked cave opening, the hunter jumped down from the rock ledge with a pole in hand. He’d hidden the pole there the week before, knowing he would use it to cause the rock slide and trap Nina. There was no other opening to the Cave of Madness, so within a week, possibly sooner, Nina would starve to death. The hunter walked away listening to Nina’s cries for mercy.

  He would tell Nina’s mother that Nina had been disobedient. She had refused to listen to his guidance, and she’d run off. He would say he’d searched for her for hours, calling out her name, but the girl had gotten lost. To ensure his lie was believable, the hunter couldn’t return to the cottage yet. He needed to waste time to make it seem as though he’d been searching for the wretched child.

  He walked to the bay. Amethyst stones sometimes washed up on the shore, brought in by far-off ocean storms. He knew Nina’s mother loved the purple stones, and he would collect a few and give them to her as a way to console her. She might suspect he had something to do with Nina’s disappearance, but the stones would distract her from her sorrow. No one would ever be able to prove anything, he said out loud, because no one knew what happened. And he laughed as he walked along the shore.

  But there was someone who knew. High up on the cliffs surro
unding the bay stood a woman dressed in a flowing dress cinched at the waist with a belt made of falcon feathers and beaded with blue tourmaline. She held a powerful staff in one hand, and the wind whipped her long hair behind her like silver ribbons shining in the sunlight.

  The white witch was aware of what the hunter had done, and his treachery angered her. She walked to the edge of the cliff and struck her staff against the ground where she stood. Pieces of earth and stone tumbled down from the cliff wall, dropping with great speed toward the shore exactly where the hunter bent over collecting amethyst stones. The boulders crushed him instantly.

  Then the white witch called upon one of the forest creatures, Porcupine, and she asked him to help little Nina. Porcupine bounced on his tiny feet as his quills quivered with eagerness because he knew about Nina. All the forest creatures did.

  In the Cave of Madness, after some time had passed, Nina’s throat swelled. Her cries became rasps, and her tears dried. She sat on the cold dirt floor, pressing her back against the rockslide, and closed her eyes.

  Her mother had taught her to find a peaceful place in her mind to retreat to when the world seemed too scary or dark, so this was what Nina did. She imagined the long summer days when her father was still alive and the three of them sat outside, her mother sewing a celebration dress of daisies and coneflower petals in a beam of sunlight and her father carving a whale from oak. In her mind, Nina prepared to send her kite into the blue sky on the next gust of wind. But when she bent over her kite to retie its ribbon, a mouth appeared on the fabric. The mouth opened like a popped seam and said, “Nina, over here! Come this way!”

  Nina’s lips turned downward. She’d never imagined a talking kite before, and the voice sounded so close, so real. Nina opened her eyes and saw two tiny glowing orbs farther inside the cave. A cloud of bright dots floated around the two circles of light. She pressed herself against the rocks and reached for her bow and arrow. Her spirit crackled inside of her like a spark igniting. Nina didn’t like violence, but after being left to die by her stepfather, she was prepared to defend herself from whatever lurked ahead.