Bear Adventure

by Anthony McGowan

  ‘Hey, I’ve got my own real-life teddy bear,’ he said. ‘I’m so lucky. Wait till I tell them at school. They’ll think I’m making it up, so you’ll have to tell them that it’s true. Can I have him to keep? What’s his name? Why is he whitey-yellowy? Is he a real bear? Where’s his mommy?’

  ‘She’s a girl and she’s called Goldilocks,’ said Frazer. ‘We’re just looking after her for a while. We’re going to take you both back where you’ll be safe.’

  Frazer and Amazon looked at each other, and then at the two newest members of this particular TRACKS expedition, who were now rolling around together on the floor of the platform. Amazon wondered if this feeling within her of protectiveness and pride might be what her parents felt – heck, what all parents feel – for their child.

  Frazer was just about to say that it was time to settle down to get some sleep, when another voice interrupted. A voice that sent a chill through them all, from the little bear on up.

  It was the long, slow howling of a wolf.

  The bear and the boy scooted round in between Frazer and Amazon on the platform, with the flames of the fire in between them and the wolf howl, as if the flames could burn away the terror of that spectral voice.

  But then that one wolf howl was joined by another, and then another, until the whole forest seemed to resound and echo with their voices, like a great organ in a cathedral.

  Frazer spoke to Amazon in a tense whisper.

  ‘You stay back here in the shelter,’ he said. ‘It’s not much, but it’ll give you some protection.’

  ‘What? Where the heck are you going?’

  ‘Keep your hair on. I’m just going to use some of the wood I collected earlier to set up perimeter fires. We want to keep them as far away as possible.’

  ‘But they wouldn’t really attack us, would they? The story your dad told us about his father … I mean, he said it was incredibly uncommon for wolves to attack people …?

  ‘It is uncommon. But now we’ve got both a young child with us and a baby bear. Bears and wolves don’t get on. Bears kill wolves when they can, and wolves will kill and eat bear cubs if they come across them undefended.’

  ‘Well,’ said Amazon, determination making her stick her jaw out, ‘this bear cub is definitely defended!’

  ‘I hear you, Zonnie. But we’ve also got Ben to look after. Wolves are afraid of adult humans, but kids … well, we’re definitely on the menu.’ Then he leaned forward and plucked a stick from the fire. ‘Luckily we’ve got humanity’s oldest friend right here, and it’s time to call in a favour.’

  ‘At least take your silly spear,’ said Amazon, her harsh words failing to conceal the concern in her voice. She held out the short spear. It was surprisingly weighty and solid. Even holding it made her feel a little more secure.

  But Frazer shook his head.

  ‘You keep it for now. The wolves are still miles off. And I’ve got work to do.’

  Amazon retreated right back into the lean-to shelter with Ben and Goldilocks while Frazer quickly built up a ring of smaller fires round their encampment. It didn’t take long, as he had already dragged in plenty of wood, and he could easily get the fires going using logs from the first fire, which was still burning brightly in front of the shelter.

  Frazer looked at his handiwork and nodded.

  ‘They’ll burn out before morning,’ he said, half to Amazon, half to himself, ‘but it may still be enough …’

  He went to crouch beside Amazon in the shelter. Ben and Goldilocks, both exhausted, had already fallen asleep.

  ‘You get some shut-eye too,’ said Frazer. ‘I’ll wake you in a couple of hours.’

  But it wasn’t Frazer who woke Amazon. It wasn’t Frazer because he was himself fast asleep, nestled next to her in the thick bed of pine branches. And nor, although the fire had died down to embers and she was shivering, was it the cold that interrupted her dreams.

  It was the low, urgent growling.

  She opened her eyes and saw what she had dreaded. A dark shape was edging towards them, barely visible in the light from the sickle moon and the scattered stars. But the fact that Amazon could only just make it out didn’t change the fact that there was only one thing that this could be. She tugged at Frazer’s sleeve.

  ‘Whaaa?’ said her cousin groggily.

  ‘They’re here,’ she hissed. ‘The wolves.’

  It normally took endless minutes of nagging and shoving to get Frazer out of bed, but now, like Amazon, he was wide awake in a second.

  ‘Where?’ he said. ‘How many?’

  Amazon pointed into the gloom. ‘There. I don’t know how many. I think I only saw one. But it’s hard to tell.’

  Frazer sprang up, and reached for the spear he had placed just inside their shelter. He knew that, like most predators, the wolves responded instinctively to animal behaviour: act like prey and they treated you like prey. Act like you yourself were a vicious predator and they’d think again.

  And yes, it looked to him as though there was only one of them. Wolves will hunt alone, but not usually against anything larger than a hare. They needed the whole pack to bring down bigger animals, and Frazer had decided that tonight he was going to be the bigger animal.

  So he dashed towards the dark shadow, yelling out a war cry and thrusting with his home-made spear. And, as he lunged forward, he also kicked at one of the logs protruding from the fire, sending up a shower of sparks. The wolf – a lean and hungry-looking male – snarled and snapped, but then cringed back from the onslaught, slinking into the night.

  ‘Help me get this fire going again,’ said Frazer over his shoulder to Amazon. ‘He’ll be back soon enough with the rest of the pack.’

  He was talking bravely – and had acted with courage – but Frazer was frightened. Their only hope was the fire. He quickly worked at building it up, pushing the four logs together, and piling more wood on top. He used pine cones to help get it going. They burned brightly, but not for long. He used his machete to trim two more pine branches, each as thick as a broom handle.

  He looked back and saw Amazon encircling Ben with one arm and the baby bear with the other.

  ‘I’m going to need you out here, when they come back,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to show the wolves that we’re not afraid.’

  ‘But these two …’ protested Amazon, signalling helplessly with her hands.

  ‘Ben,’ said Frazer, looking into the boy’s wide eyes, ‘I’m going to need you to do a very important job. You have to look after Goldilocks for us. She’s only a baby bear, and she’ll need someone to cuddle her while we scare these silly wolves off.’

  ‘I’m not afraid of wolves,’ said Ben, sticking out his chin. ‘I’ll bash them if they try to hurt my bear.’

  ‘I know you will!’ said Frazer, grinning despite the desperate situation.

  Amazon arrived at his side. She looked at her watch.

  ‘It’s four a.m. What time does it get light?’

  ‘About five. We’ve an hour. Take this.’ He gave her one of the pine branches. ‘Light it in the fire if … when they come back.’

  Amazon nodded, but said nothing. She didn’t have to. They both knew they were going to be fighting for their lives.

  They came twenty minutes later, just as Amazon and Frazer were beginning to think that they were safe, and that the wolves had decided on other prey. It was hard to say what alerted them to the fact that the wolves were back – there was no obvious sound or sight or even smell, but they both knew that they were there, in the trees, beyond the light of the fire.

  Without a word, Amazon and Frazer lit their pine branches in the fire. It seemed to Amazon that hers took an age to catch, but eventually the oily sap bubbled away, and the wood was alight.

  The wolves circled closer, and the Trackers saw the gleam of their eyes in the flickering light, and heard their hot, urgent breath.

  Frazer even convinced himself that he saw the original wolf – the sneaky scout slinking among them. He kne
w it was silly, but he took a personal dislike to that particular animal.

  Amazon edged closer to Frazer. She had more guts than any other teenager Frazer had ever met, but the truth was that he had simply been in this situation more often than she had. She hadn’t come face to face with as many killers as he had.

  Well, except for tigers, leopards, giant bears, killer squid and sharks …

  ‘Got your back,’ said Amazon, and Frazer knew why she had edged closer. He smiled.

  ‘Good thinking. We’ve got to stay tight. They’ll probably try to separate us, take us down one at a time.’

  And then it began.

  One wolf – a big pale creature, already in its thick winter coat – darted forward, baring its teeth in a savage snarl.

  Frazer fought the panic that welled up in him like boiling water from a geyser. He wanted to turn and run, but he made himself lunge forward with the burning branch, again crying out a furious ‘Yaaaaaahhhhh!’

  The big wolf squatted back on its haunches, growled and then fled. Its place was taken by two more. Frazer was relieved to find that Amazon had joined him again, matching his movements.

  They waved their burning torches at the two newcomers, but did not dash forward. They both knew that they had to stay close to the shelter, with the young boy and younger bear. The two wolves kept their distance, lacking the courage to rush the flames, but nor did they flee.

  ‘Look left,’ said Amazon, but she didn’t need to. Frazer had already sensed that a third wolf was there, trying to work its way in between them and the shelter.

  ‘And there,’ he replied, gesturing with the burning torch away to the right, where another – it was the slinker they had first encountered – was also prowling.

  Together they edged back closer to the shelter. And then the grey wolf to the left made a dash, trying to get at the two little ones cowering under the pine boughs. It moved with slippery speed, and almost made it to the shelter and the easy pickings waiting there. But Amazon was on her toes and she just managed to thrust her burning branch into the wolf’s flank. It yickered in pain, and then skittered away into the undergrowth, leaving behind it the stench of burnt hair.

  The clash snuffed out Amazon’s torch, but the other wolves seemed startled and spooked by what had happened to their brother, and backed away, letting Amazon and Frazer reach the shelter. Amazon looked quickly inside. There she saw Ben and Goldilocks clinging to each other, their eyes wide with terror.

  Frazer relit Amazon’s torch from his own. Each branch had burned down more than halfway. And they both knew that the flames were all that were keeping them alive.

  ‘How long till dawn?’ asked Amazon.

  Frazer mumbled something back. It might have been, ‘Too long.’

  Rage.

  Hunger.

  Rage.

  The feelings burned like sulphur in the beast’s huge heart.

  He had thundered through the forest, driven on by the sounds of the pack.

  And so he had come.

  There were seven in the pack. Four had attacked the place where the little white one lay. The others were spread around in the trees guarding the site. The other animals were there also, the ones who seemed to be helpers. Or at least who seemed not to be harmers. But if they tried to stop him … well, they could not stop him. He would take the little one.

  But first, the wolves.

  The first one knew nothing. It was watching the fight in the clearing by the water. Perhaps it heard at the last second, or smelled the strong, strange odour. But it had time only to twitch an ear, and then one swipe of a massive paw sent it sailing into the waiting branches of a tree, where it hung, limp and broken.

  The white giant thundered on. The other guard wolves were aware of him now, and rushed to intercept. Two were before him. But now that they saw what he was, they quailed. The third joined them, which gave them courage. Their pack had dealt with bears almost as big as this in the past, driving them off kills, even if they had not had this strange ghostly appearance like a cloud with teeth and claws.

  They darted in, and one managed a quick, sharp bite at the pale giant’s leg. The bear swatted, but missed. Another bite, and another. It seemed that the wolves were just too fast, too well coordinated.

  But then the bear heard a sound that was half whine, half growl coming from the clearing ahead. It was the little one. It needed him. Perhaps the helpers were not true helpers. Perhaps they were one with the wolves. He bounded forward, ignoring the bites of the attackers.

  But one was too bold, and made a lunge at his throat. It paid dearly. The bear met bite with bite, and closed his great jaws round the smaller gape of the wolf. He bit, crunched and flicked the limp body away.

  And now he was almost at the clearing. He could see the eerie orange glow from the dying fire. All was chaos. The four wolves that were there now spun away from the humans and the baby bear, and ran into the trees to meet the challenge from their rear.

  Among them was their leader, the alpha male of the pack. He was not the biggest or the strongest – that had been the pale grey beast, singed by Amazon. The leader was the small dark slinker.

  It was not brute might that had made him the leader. It was his cunning. And he instantly understood the situation. Another wolf would have been astonished by the new arrival, so huge, so white in the pre-dawn. But this wolf saw that the bear was both a threat and an opportunity. It wanted to steal their meal, and that could not be allowed. But also the black wolf saw that it carried some secret hurt, a hurt perhaps of the soul more than the body, and so it was vulnerable. And a bear that big would feed the pack for many days.

  And, once they had killed the newcomer, they could return for the smaller prey …

  He barked and snarled his orders, injecting his courage and cunning into his pack mates.

  They surrounded the bear. Five against one. They nipped and snapped. Each bite on its own seemed insignificant, and yet together they took their toll. The white giant’s swats now lacked speed, and the harrying wolves were able to sway out of reach. Each time the bear tried to lunge towards its goal, the wolves attacked its flanks, drawing blood now and further weakening the big beast.

  The fight rolled and surged through the forest. At the lip of a hill the bear finally fastened its jaws round one wolf, but lost its footing, and the whole snarling mass of fur and teeth rolled together down the slope.

  All the time they were moving further away from the camp.

  Amazon and Frazer could not see any of this clearly, but they certainly heard it.

  ‘What the …!’ exclaimed Frazer, peering into the trees at the first explosion of yelps, snarls and bellows.

  They watched amazed as the wolves encircling them turned and ran towards the sound of battle.

  ‘Is it the wolves fighting among themselves?’ asked Amazon.

  ‘No, I don’t think so. It sounds like a bear, I guess. Or maybe a wolverine – we all know how feisty they can be …’ Then Frazer’s tone became urgent. ‘But it might just have given us a chance. It’s getting lighter now. If we hit the trail around the lake, we may be able to get clear by dawn. The wolves won’t chase us in the day – it’s just not their style.’

  ‘But how can we cycle with Ben and the bear?’

  ‘You take Goldilocks in her pack, and I’ll give Ben a ride on the back of my bike. But we need to do this now!’

  As the ferocious noise of the battle ebbed and flowed, the Trackers hurled their gear into one pack, and bundled Goldilocks into the other.

  ‘What’s happening?’ said a startled Ben, rubbing his eyes.

  ‘We’re going on a fun bike ride,’ said Frazer.

  ‘But I haven’t got my bike!’

  ‘You get to sit on the back of mine while I do all the work,’ Frazer laughed. ‘You’ve done this before, haven’t you?’

  ‘What, a backy? Yeah, lots of times. My brother Josh does it for me. He’s nice.’

  ‘OK, up you climb. And loo
k, you get to carry my spear. Hold on tight!’

  He turned to Amazon, who was ready to go, the bear on her back.

  ‘You better take the lead, Zonnie. I’ll keep up as best I can. And guess what?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If you’re up front, you get to use the helmet.’

  He threw his helmet to Amazon. She caught it easily, thought about throwing it back, then put it on.

  ‘I can hardly see the trail,’ she said, peering at the ground.

  ‘Just feel it, cuz, just feel it.’

  Amazon rolled her eyes and hit the pedals. And prayed.

  There was, in fact, just enough light to see by. They cycled round the beaver pond, and then into the trees. It was darker again when they were in the forest, and if there had been any roots or other obstacles across the trail then Amazon would have been in serious trouble, despite the helmet. But they lived a charmed life.

  On one of the faster sections she heard Ben say ‘Wheeeeeeeeee!’ and she wanted to crane round to see what they were up to. But this was not the sort of ride where you could take your eyes off the road.

  Beyond the beaver pond the trail found the line of the stream again, generally working downwards, which made the cycling a lot easier. One of the good things about the ride was that Amazon had to concentrate everything on the task at hand, so her mind couldn’t stray to what might be following them.

  Behind her Frazer was a competent enough mountain biker to permit a little mind-wandering – even with a six-year-old kid sitting on his saddle. That part wasn’t actually too tricky for Frazer. When you go down a mountain on a bike, you don’t do much sitting anyway, so Frazer’s leg muscles were easily up to the job.

  But he didn’t think he’d be able to outrun a pack of wolves if they finished whatever it was that they’d been doing back at the lake and came after them. And so he was all ears for the sounds of pursuit.

  There was something else on his mind as well. Through the trees he’d thought that he’d glimpsed what it was that the wolves were attacking. It was huge and it was white. No, not white – that was an illusion caused by its relative paleness against the black of the forest. It was a pale gold, like honey. For a split second he had thought it might have been Goldilocks’s mother, but that was impossible. She was dead.