The Bear, part 4 Autumn

 

Autumn

Never had Bear ever seen so much red clover. It was a sea of the stuff, waving gently in a growing breeze like green and purple waves. This sun-kissed meadow was new ground, a place just beyond the boundaries of his known domain. It was a plateau resting upon the shoulder of a ridge, jutting out from the spine of the main range. Like a bridge to nowhere, it terminated at a promontory of rock that stared into the dark chasm beyond. Across that space the forest resumed and spread away to fill the horizon. This was as far north as Bear had ever been, two solid days above the falls.

Very subtly, just beneath the whispering winds, a hum filled the meadow. It was something as much felt as heard; the feathery rush of tens of thousands of wings beating in unison. The bees floated like a gossamer veil above the waving stalks of clover, their wings glistening copper when captured in sunlight. Bear was much traveled about the Great Forest and it's endless spill of ridges. Within his lifespan he had ever widened his range and still, there were ever more spiny ridges to crawl to the distant horizon. Each new ground he stalked yielded it's own treasures. Where there could be this much clover and this many bees, there were surely many hives to mine. The nights had already grown cool. A great hoard of honey could not have come at a better time.

The Summer had been abundant, in ways never before imagined. The season had come early and lingered late. The days were long and hot, sometimes weeks passing with unabated sun and nary a drop of rain. Rain or no, every seed, every vine, every leafy thing under the sun is imbued with the Gnosis: grow when it is time to grow. And grow it did, thick and lush in forest and meadow alike. Bear had seen some bountiful seasons in his many years, but not like this. This season, for all of it's splendor, did what every season does. It passed.

By the third week after Summer Solstice the land had grown parched. Where weeks before there had been thick, green tangle underfoot, there became crispy, yellowed grasses, fast   turning brown. The berry thickets were full, but where they should have been dense with plump fruit, there were instead stunted berries, often dried and shriveled before even having the chance to ripen.  The water level in the pool below the falls slowly dropped, exposing parts of the cavern long unseen. By the very late Summer the waters spilling over the falls had become a mere trickle, the gravel beds beyond were exposed shore to shore, their rocks bleached dry from the sun.

The tribute rendered to Bear by the hairless creatures had continued. While the waters had remained fruitful, Bear had frequently enjoyed taking his share, but the sour smelling brutes had appeared more and more often. Each time they left their offering for Bear and each time he had taken it. This had, in a very short time, become the expectation. When the waters had slowed enough, there were no more fish for Bear to take and no more left skewered upon the riverbank. There were no more of those peculiar, long-toed tracks in the mud at water's edge. A couple of weeks before the Autumnal equinox, Bear abandoned the pool altogether, visiting it for the final time that year. 

There were clear signs that the land had begun to suffer the ill effect of the prolonged drought. Despite this, Nature continued to offer a bounty of nuts and small game. And honey, of course, had come into season. The late Summer and Autumn in Bear's life had always been a season of frenetic feeding, that last massive intake to put on before the inevitable retreat into his den. Absent the normal staples of fish and berries, Bear had continued to press his range further north, moving ever more up the river. Which had brought him here, to this remote meadow.

The Sun was brilliant, the skies a cloudless blue, the air dry and crisp. Clear, cold nights had already delivered their kiss of death to the highest leaves, showing their first tinge of color. Bear sniffed at the air from the edge of the meadow. Somewhere in this ring of woods, there was honey. The smell was strong. And there was something else on the air, a familiar scent yet one he'd not encountered in some time. A female. It had probably been four years since he had planted his seed. This place had become a true honey trap in an instant.

Bear followed his nose into the wood, slowly circling around the meadow. Along the way he looked for the hollowed trees or rotting logs upon the forest floor, always sniffing.  At about one-hundred yards in he was nearly one third of the way around the great circle. Within the wood the air had grown close. Nothing stirred on the ground, and it seemed that even the air had paused; the limbs high above were still, the leaves flat. Still, Bear could tell that he was headed the right way. The scent of honey was still strong, seeming to come from many directions at once.  Overpowering that sweet bouquet was that witches brew of female pheromones. She was closer now. 

Bear was driven on now purely by his most base instinct, that which dwells within every mortal being. There is the need to feed and a need to breed. In most circumstances the need for sustenance is overriding, while the urge to breed is secondary. When the opportunity for procreation is presented, this becomes acute and other appetites may be forgotten. Such has Nature ordained.

He plodded onward through the brush, no longer making any attempt at stealth. There was no need for that. He wanted her to know that he was there, that he was coming for her. Bear's glands grew inflamed, sending out his own potent stew of pheromones. He had traveled almost as far again into this circle when the moment struck. He could see her and she him. They were no more than twenty yards apart. The exchange of pheromones between them filled the space with a static, like a charged field before a bolt of lightning.

He stalked deliberately toward her with a low, rumbling growl. She backed away coyly at first. He rose up on his hind legs to display his dominance, towering over her with his engorged member throbbing. She cowered in submission, turned to offer herself to him. There was no persuasion required. It became immediately understood that this was going to happen. In a crash Bear was upon her, mounting her with ease, though not gently. She offered no resistance, grinding her haunches against him, matching his hunger with each thrust. It was fast and furious. And then it was over. To the casual observer it might be seen as a savage attack. It was savage. It was savage and it was beautiful.

It was not long after the consummation of this pairing, that Bear was to discover what she had been doing at this particular spot. A short distance away, deeper into the brush, there lay a rotting log amid the ferns and vines. There were bees buzzing in and out of it. She had uncovered a hive. Maybe the hive. Without even a further thought of her he lumbered toward the log. She trailed after him eagerly, still entranced by his scent. She was young and fertile, still hungering for more of his seed. 

Bear arrived at the log, could see her claw marks where she had ripped at it's rotting shell. He immediately dug in deeper until extracting a large segment of the honeycomb. It was quite a cache. She came to nuzzle at his side and thrust her snout into the expanded cavity. Bear was not generally disposed to sharing his meals, but he tolerated her intrusion. She had sated his lust yet still stirred the desire in his loins. Bears are not generally disposed to monogamy either. In fact, most bears do not breed every year. Still, there remained that irresistible attraction between these two. They remained there at the log for some time, gorging themselves on all the honey they could scrape out of it.

The two met as random strangers left this scene as mates. Not forever, but for a time. Such as Nature ordains. She led him away to a steep path down the far side of the promontory rock. The exposed cliff face stared down at them as they descended into the treetops below, into the shadows beneath the setting sun far beyond. They would travel on westward for some hours, moving off far from the river. It was all unfamiliar to Bear, but the young sow appeared confident of her way. Even after total darkness they forged on, until she brought him to a bed of mossy stones, where they would rest until dawn. 

She was taking him to her home ground, a very different world from the one Bear had ever known. Bears have a highly efficient communication system when it comes to really important matters, like "I'm ready to breed", or "Hey! Those are my berries, bitch!". Beyond this there is no nuance, no abstraction to a bear's speech. She had no way to express to Bear that she had grown up, and still lived, in a place shared with humans. Well, actually dominated by humans, those smelly, two-legged mongrels. She could not describe to him the splendor of the great silver lake that glistened in the light and never ran dry. Or the city that humans had built around it. A city so great that it encircled her forest. But none of that would have mattered to Bear anyway. She had a set of female glands screaming for him to breed her. He would have followed her into fire.

Neither of them understood Nature's grand purpose. These are not things for a bear to know. She was the strongest, fertile female of her population. It was a population of bear in perilous circumstance, facing extinction, or worse, imprisonment. If this colony of bear were to survive, they needed an infusion of new blood. Strong stock with a talent for adaptability. Bear was a boar that fit this need. He was aging and needed to spread his remaining seed. She was meant to bear that seed to the bear that would deliver all of Bearkind.

They traveled on, another day to the west, then coming upon a place where the forest thinned and the land fell gradually away into a broad plain. Bear was stunned at the sight. He had never seen a horizon so long. In the center of this vista there was the great shining lake, water as he had never seen, stretching away for miles. He began to salivate thinking of all those fish! They bedded down at the edge of the tree line as the sun sank into the lake, casting pink, violet and crimson shadows across sky and water alike. That night Bear dreamt of sunny skies and waters teeming with fish, the entire lake to himself and his sow.

An hour before dawn they were awakened by a cold, persistent rain. The air had grown cold enough for steam to form from their breath. Bear knew this rain. This was a November rain. They did not have much longer to prepare for Winter. In the grey, wet darkness of pre-dawn they scaled down the length of a long slope. In that early hour they passed unnoticed, arriving at a small stream at the bottom. The rain had increased, causing the stream to swell rapidly. Bear instinctively knew to look for a way across, up to the bare embankment of earth on the opposite side, but the sow had another plan. She padded along the narrow bank, heading further downstream.

Bear paused there at that spot, astride the growing current. He sniffed at the air and found that, even in the rain, it was fouled with the stench of those two-legged abominations. He glanced at the sow as she serenely picked her way. Then he glanced back up the long slope they had traveled. In the slowly rising light of day, through the screen of the rain, he saw the fading splendor of gold, crimson, orange melting away. It was all falling down to become shades of brown and grey with the soil. This was the final edge of the Great Forest, the very end of it all. Somehow, he knew that he was never going back. With a loud grunt, he turned and began to follow her downstream.

She led him to a place where there were more trees, but it was not the Great Forest. There were young redbuds and poplar here, smaller trees that could only survive on the margins. Their low limbs drooped heavy with the pelting rain, their golden and burnished leaves shedding in a pool below. She nosed her way under this canopy, turning back at one shoulder to grunt at him. He followed and found nestled within the strangest cave opening he had ever seen. It was perfectly round, the stream flowing into it. He could see light from somewhere at the other end and... somewhere there beyond, the sound of falls splashing down. He could not help but feel a little wary but followed all the same. Such a strange cave this was! The walls smooth and curved, a perfect round for it's entire length.

Bear followed the full length, then joined her at the exit. It was just enough space for the two of them to fit there together at the end. The water fell away from the mouth of the tunnel, only dropping about ten feet into a broader stream the rushed off into a thick stand of woods to the right. In that space ahead there were things Bear had never seen. They were perched above the fenced in yard at the rear of a heavy construction company. There were all manner of machines stored here; giant shovels and earthmovers; boring rigs; graders and steamrollers; pallets of pipe and stone. Bear had no idea what these things were or what this place was, but he could tell that it all bore the scent of that mongrel race. Before this he had considered them a minor nuisance. It had never, in the limited imagination that a bear can conjure, occurred to him that bears might live among them. Or that there had grown to be so many of them, only a few days travel from lands he had roamed for all of his years.

Despite the unease caused by this alien place, Bear could see that the sow knew her way and seemed unbothered by it all. She was taking him to something; some place that she knew. He continued to trust her lead. To the left of the tunnel end there was a small shoulder of earth that would lead down into the yard. It was a tight maneuver, complicated further by the slick, muddy surface. She went first, to show him the way. It was less than graceful, at first climbing about the ledge, then sliding through the mud to the bottom. He tried to mimic her steps, but being quite larger than she, the ledge gave way beneath his tread, and he rolled over sideways into the slope. He made one and a half turns through the mud and then quickly gathered his feet back under himself at the bottom.

Bear snorted loudly, blowing a plume of steam into the chill air. He shook himself all over in a giant shudder, throwing off the worst of the mud. Morning light grew from the east and mists rose from the earth as the steady rain hissed all around them. He looked about, for the first time at ground level with the rows of machinery. This appeared to him as a scene from some deep winter dream; some frozen nightmare of giant, misshapen monsters in a cave of ice. The sow seemed to somehow sense that he was disoriented, allowing him a moment to absorb the surroundings before gently prodding him on. There was still more to show.

She led him through the columns of machines, work trailers and materials, back deeper into the yard. All the way across, to the far fence where only materials were stored. She was aware that humans used all of these things. She was also aware that there were very long periods when humans would not even set foot back here. This sprawling construction yard was on the edges of the great city. It was uniquely situated, in a manner that provided one of the few secretive paths from the outer edges of the city, into the remaining woodland to survive within it's borders. That woodland was her home ground. Though much younger, she too knew that Winter approached. She meant to show him her lair.

The far fence of the yard was bordered by a thick stand of trees on the other side. In one darkened corner, sheltered by overhanging boughs, there sat a pile of large, pre-cast concrete forms. They were about a ten-foot diameter, the sort as might be used in building a storm culvert. They were stacked two high, so that most of the second level rose to a height above the fence. Bear looked at them, ten in total. He saw that same perfect round opening, like the tunnel they had passed through to arrive here. All stacked together as they were, they reminded him of the comb he had pulled out of that hive. He did not understand what he was seeing, wondering if perhaps this was another cave to pass through? He could only stand there in the rain, awaiting her next cue.

 Now expecting that he would still follow her lead, she deftly scaled one end of the stack and slipped into the opening of the first pipe on the second level. Once in she turned about to poke her head out, calling him to climb up. Again, Bear had a flash of the beehive. He did not understand why. There was no scent of honey. It alarmed something in him, but he was unable to process it. He climbed up into the pipes to join her anyway.

After Bear had joined her inside the concrete she nuzzled against him affectionately. She was proud of herself, having brought him all the way here, to her lair. Within moments of joining her, Bear could not be mistaken that this was her space. Well over and above the strong pheromones she was throwing off, this space was heavily marked with her scent. He nosed about, continually sniffing, finding other strange scents present. Overall, he found this to be a quite suitable lair, a great advantage in having two entrances. He went to the opposite end and saw out into the thick wood. Yes. This was a good den. Perhaps part of him could sense that his cubs would be birthed here. That is, if a boar ever thought of such things. It is generally agreed that they don't.

It was good to be in from the rain, good to have the shared body heat in this enclosed and dry space. Bear was convinced that he could certainly winter here. Just one season, then he would return to the Great Forest, with or without the sow. Of course, that could change. Spring was months away. By evening the rain ended, and the skies grew clear, the night turned cold and crisp.

The next morning everything outside was coated in a hoarfrost, the crystalline forms captured in a bright morning sun. The day would be warmer and dry, though still with a crisp in the air. A perfect day to forage. There were several such days to follow and forage they did. Bear learned the path into the wood from their pipe, expecting to find food like that to which he'd grown accustomed. While there was a bit of it, he found that there was hardly enough here to sustain them. He was to learn that her idea of foraging was quite different.

Working the perimeter of the limited woodland, she led him to the rear of grocers and restaurants. Sometimes private homes. He learned that there were all manner of vessels at these places. Some were huge metal boxes painted in bright colors, as foreign to him as the machines back at the construction yard. Some were smaller boxes in a dull brown; still others were only plastic cans on wheels. Sometimes in the early morning hours, sometimes at night, but every day there were new things loaded into these containers. There for the taking. A lot of it was inedible, but there was always something to pick out. The sow seemed to know which things were best, which places had the most and when to look.

He would share in the hunt, share in each take, learning her strange ways. These foods smelled good, they tasted good, but they were like nothing he had known before. He could not tell what they were or what they came from. But it was all there and there in abundance. It was not like the dead of Winter, wandering for hours for no more than a hare for the trouble. He could not help but be tempted by the ease of it. But there was something that kept bothering him, like the odd sensation experienced when he had that flash of the beehive. Some itch that he couldn't scratch, a persistent nagging without any known source.

He was munching on something sweet. Like honey but not honey. It was chewy yet soft...sticky, with some crinkly, red wrapping of some kind (which was not so tasty). He found it filling, not unpleasant to the palate, yet somehow unsatisfying. He chewed and chewed, spitting out the red wrapping when he could. Some of it he just swallowed. It didn't seem to matter. The sow was still rooting about inside of one of those big boxes. He just kept eating. Whatever it was.

Bear's memories drifted through his consciousness. The events of the past year proceeded, in order. The end of the bitter winter. The first encounter with the mongrels, chasing them off into the snows. And then springtime. More of them. Taking his fish. Then leaving him their tribute. A fresh fish, eaten right from the water was best. A freshly killed fish was ok. It was still good. Even if it had the mongrel taint about it. Then there were ever more of them. They seemed to have grown in around him. He found more of their tracks, more signs all around that their numbers were growing, yet he could not see that they had slowly surrounded his world. Now he found himself living in their midst, eating their...garbage.

He had found that itch, that thing that was troubling him. He finally saw that this little woodland, this mock world of his young mate, was just that. This was not a real forest. This was not a home for a bear. Everything that she had here, though it was more than adequate, was dependent on one thing: the mongrels. They were in control. Of everything. That is not a home for a bear. He had changed his mind. Freshly dead fish were no longer okay. Garbage was not okay. He wanted only fish, fish snared in his own fangs, straight from the icy cold water.

Bear wandered off. The sow did not even take notice. By the time she emerged from that bright green dumpster, he was already long gone. He was following his nose. To the lake, that great, shiny, silvery lake! He tread across gravel service lanes and grassy lots. He followed another fenceline at one point, wandering through a suburban neighborhood. Some of the mongrels were out, rushing to sweep up their young from the "mad bear". They jeered and shouted, pointing after him, but Bear paid them no mind. He was taking the shortest path to the lake. That was the only thing that mattered.

In his single-minded quest Bear was oblivious to the fact that he had indeed caused quite a stir. He plodded onward, blind to all else. The final obstacle before reaching the shores of the lake lay in front of him now. A busy, four-lane avenue that ran the length of the shoreline. Bear saw that there were many shiny boxes, like the garbage containers, but moving very rapidly across his path. They moved as fast as a hawk can fly, in both directions. He thought that he could try to dart across.

In the first lane that Bear stepped into there was enough room for the driver to stop. The brake lights and the sudden stop caused a chain reaction of screeching brakes and horns to erupt from behind. Bear narrowly escaped being struck in the second lane before landing at the grassy center strip. This caused enough commotion for traffic to slow to a stop in both directions. Bear had grown disoriented from the blaring car horns. He paced up and down the grassy strip, horrified to see the mongrels crawling out of those little boxes on both sides of the road. He glimpsed a path across between cars and bolted. At the other side he did not stop. He could smell the lake. He could see the water. If he could have just one more fish.

He was almost there when he felt the rounds enter his neck, like fire being shot through his flesh, breaking bone like a boulder. They hit at almost the same time, knocking the wind out of him and nearly taking him off his feet. He groaned in pain and roared against the booming report from the rifles. He never saw them. Bear stopped there, swaying slightly as he felt the blood pouring across his fur. It was only a few more yards to the water's edge. He struggled through those few last steps and collapsed at the shore, his muzzle resting on the water. He felt his heart slow, the blood leaving him. He was growing cold. Bear knew instinctively that he was dying. With his final breath it became clear to him where he had gone wrong. He never should have taken that trout.