Journey of the Pale Bear

by Susan Fletcher

  A flurry of lighter footfalls.

  Silence.

  Slowly, the doctor lowered the hatch.

  “What happened?” I whispered.

  The doctor sighed. “They’re safe, on the sterncastle.”

  “And the bear?”

  “Still loose.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Free Forever

  THE DOCTOR CALLED out to the men below. He traded places with me on the ladder, leaving me at the top. After a moment, he handed me a heavy pail of fish. He spoke to me—something about moving slowly, something about climbing the mast if I had to, something about humming—but a powerful bloodwind was sweeping through my mind, and it was hard to hear him over the roar of it.

  He had pledged his word to keep me safe. That was part of the pact we had made. And it was true that he had tried to protect me, but now . . .

  I lifted the hatch and peered out. The sun had edged over the horizon, and in the pale morning light I could see the bear pacing slowly back and forth not far from the sterncastle and the bulk of the crew. Arrows still bristled from her snout, shoulder, and leg. Much of the blood on her head and shoulders had turned a crusty brown, but patches of fresh red blood streaked her nose and one ear. As I watched, she plowed into an empty cooking pot; it clattered across the deck. She halted and shook her head, seeming confused, then began pacing again.

  The deck was smeared with bloody footprints and littered with abandoned seabags, blankets, pots and pans and pails. Fishing nets lay in heaps beneath the yardarm, upon which stood three or four seamen. Had they tried, and failed, to net the bear? Near the bear’s cage, I now saw the pirate who had demanded I show him the king’s treasure—his body still and broken-looking, lying in a pool of blood. Not far from him lay two other bodies; I saw bloody claw marks where one man’s tunic had been torn.

  “Arthur,” the doctor said softly.

  The sea lapped against the sides of the ship, making a hollow sound. I heard a repeated wooden clunk and realized it was the pail in my hand, knocking against the ladder.

  “Arthur,” the doctor said again.

  “You gave your word,” I said. “You said I would be safe.”

  I saw him flinch, but he did not reply.

  So that was how it was. He would protect me so long as it suited him, and then . . .

  I climbed up onto the deck.

  The bear didn’t seem to mark my coming, but in the crowded sterncastle, all eyes were on me. I made out the captain, standing at the fore. I waited for him to shout at me—some command or disparagement—but he said nothing, nor did anyone else. A gull cried overhead. A pail rolled across the deck and hit with a clank against the gunwale. The bear’s feet thumped against the deck as she chuffed low in her throat and paced from port to starboard and back.

  Back and forth.

  Back and forth.

  Back and forth.

  If I was going to lead her into the cage, I would first have to get her attention. I forced myself to creep toward her, ready to run away at a moment’s notice.

  When I was the length of three men from the bear, she halted. She turned to face me, nose twitching.

  I picked up a fish from the bucket. Held it up. I remembered how, when I had thrown the rabbit haunch at her before, the bear had seemed offended. So now I set the fish down on the deck beside my feet.

  Slowly, she began to shuffle toward me.

  I backed away, not taking my eyes off her.

  One step.

  Two steps.

  Three.

  Now the bear had reached the fish. She held it down with one paw and ripped off a piece to eat.

  I set down another fish. I backed away.

  One step.

  Two steps.

  Three.

  The bear shook her head, seeming fuddled. She swiped at the arrow in her snout and shook her head harder. She took a small, staggering step to one side.

  I began to hum.

  She turned to look at me, and her eyes cleared. She moved toward the fish. Held it down with a paw and devoured it. Raised her head, sniffed the air, and began to follow me.

  I moved back again.

  One step.

  Two steps.

  My foot hit a slippery patch; I skidded and thrust out my arms for balance, spilling fish across the deck. My other foot knocked against something solid, and then both feet slithered out from beneath me. I pitched forward onto a lumpy, knobby something. . . .

  A body. I recognized him now. The man named Ketil, the copper-haired man who had stood up for me against Hauk. He lifted his head, blinked, and then his eyes rolled back, and his skull hit the deck with a thunk.

  Was he dead?

  No. I could feel him breathing beneath me, praise be to God.

  A grunt. I twisted round and saw with a start that the bear had come to stand just over me, sniffing, sniffing. . . .

  My lungs sucked in air and would not let go of it; every part of me went still . . . except for my right hand, which reached into the bucket and fumbled for a fish. It found one and held it aloft before the bear’s great black inquiring nose. She leaned in and took the fish gently in her mouth.

  All the air whooshed out of me. I rolled off the man and clambered to my feet. I snatched at the handle of the pail, sliding a little in the pool of blood, and moved backward.

  One step.

  Two steps.

  Three.

  I turned, and saw the cage just behind me. I pulled the door open and stood on the threshold, looking in.

  The sun lay low in the eastern sky, hemmed in by a wall of iron bars.

  I stepped away from the cage. The bear was shaking her head again. She pawed at the arrow and let out a small grunt of bewilderment and pain. Behind her the sky reached down to the sea, stretching out in every direction. A flock of birds skimmed low over the water. The horizon burned gold, lighting up a fleet of scudding clouds, like ships that could sail free forever.

  All at once my chest felt too small to contain the vastness of my heart, and I didn’t want to go in that cage.

  But I did.

  The bars crowded in upon me. The cage roof darkened the sky. Still humming, I dumped out the last of the fish near the ones the doctor had set there. I backed toward the far end of the cage.

  The bear lifted her nose and seemed to search the air, as if seeking something she had lost or forgotten. She shook her head again. Then she lumbered within and tore into another fish.

  I slipped out between the bars and held the door shut. Across the deck, I saw the doctor pop up from the hatch. He sprinted to the cage and handed me a lock and a stout chain. I secured the door with the chain and snapped the lock shut.

  A cheer went up. Men poured onto the deck from the hatch and the mast and the sterncastle. Some of them called out to me; a few clapped me on the shoulder as they passed.

  But a dark hazy line on the horizon had caught my eye. Land. How far away? I wondered. If the bear were to escape again . . .

  They say that ice bears can swim for leagues and leagues.

  CHAPTER 20

  Sailing or Bailing

  AFTER THAT, ALL the noise of the world surged up and broke over me: the captain shouting, the thunder of running footfalls on the deck, the hiss of lines, the crack of the great sail in the wind. The ship seemed to lift a little; a breeze began to whuff in my ears and tug at my hair.

  The bear wasn’t eating anymore. She sprawled on her belly, legs spread out to the four directions, the arrows jutting out of her. I looked about for the doctor, for the bear was his charge too—it was his job to deliver her, whole and hale, to the English king—and he had risked my life to do it. I saw that some, in the swarm on deck, were placing the fallen men on pallets and bearing them aft, but I couldn’t find the doctor among them. The captain was strutting about in high feather, as if he had vanquished the pirates single-handedly. But it was the bear who had done it—the bear who had saved us all.

  Thorvald clapped me on the should
er. “This way, Arthur,” he said. “If you’re not sailing, you’re bailing.”

  “But the doctor—”

  “He’s got doctoring work to do.”

  “But the bear—”

  “Sailing or bailing! We’re breached, boy, and the hole’s growing.”

  He led me across the blood-slick deck, past the men in the bucket brigade line, to the hatch. Some of the sailors nodded at me as I passed; others smiled and said Arthur. And I was surprised at what a comfort it was to hear my true name on their lips.

  I turned back to look at the bear, but Thorvald said, “Bail!” And since his tone brooked no argument, I joined the crewmen on the ladder. Someone handed me a pail of bilgewater from below; I passed it up to a man on deck, who gave me an empty pail; I handed it down.

  Light from the hanging lanterns in the hold shimmered across the dark surface of the water, showing that it had risen from calf-deep to thigh-deep. A few of the smaller casks floated, knocking against one another, and amidst them I saw dark, furry lumps that could only be rats. Seamen sloshed about, and I could hear the repair crew hammering. The ship’s timbers creaked, and there was a rushing sound I had not marked earlier.

  More ominously, the hold did not reek, as it had done before. It smelled fresh, of seawater.

  I passed a full pail up to the deck. An empty one down. Another full one up. And so it went, until my legs had gone numb and a blister the size of a bilberry had popped up on my palm. I told myself that the bear would be fine, that the arrows had not pierced deep enough to be deadly, that the doctor was likely seeing to her right now. I wondered what had befallen the man I’d bumped into—Ketil. He had taken my part against Hauk. I hoped—

  “Arthur!”

  I looked up, to find the doctor himself standing above the hatch. “Arthur, come here!”

  I felt a surge of gladness rise in me upon seeing him, and yet . . . He had put me in danger. Had gone against his word.

  I scrambled up into the morning light.

  The doctor picked up a small wooden sea chest near his feet. He tucked it under one arm and took off in the direction of the bear’s cage. I followed, cutting through the upper end of the bucket brigade and weaving among men swabbing the deck, wrangling lines, and bustling about with boards and ropes and buckets of nails. Above the muted sounds of hammering in the hold, I heard the captain bellowing out orders.

  “Can you sew?” the doctor called back to me.

  “Sew?” I blinked.

  “Yes, sew! With a needle and thread.”

  I had often watched my mother sew, but she had never taught me. That was women’s work.

  “No,” I said.

  “Well, it’s never too late to learn.”

  CHAPTER 21

  The Arrow

  THE BEAR LAY on her side, her forelegs bound together with rope, her rear legs likewise fettered. A third rope led from her harness to a bar at the rear of her cage, to which it was fastened with a good, tight knot. Her eyes were closed and, by the slow way her great, pale sides rose with her breath, I could tell that she was alive.

  “How did you—?”

  “I put sleeping herbs in the fish we gave her.” The doctor set down his wooden chest, opened it, fetched out a ring of keys, and opened the lock to the chain that secured the cage door.

  “You said you tried to stupefy her with herbs before, but to no effect.”

  “I used more this time. I feared making her sick, but I had no choice.”

  The doctor unwound the chain, picked up his chest, and followed me into the cage. “Keep your wits about you, Arthur. She might wake at any moment.”

  While the doctor rummaged in his chest, I drew near to the bear. A healing plaster encrusted her snout, where the arrow used to be. Another plaster covered one ear. The arrow in the bear’s leg seemed to have vanished without a trace, but a broken-off wooden shaft still jutted from her left shoulder. The doctor had shorn off the fur at the base of the shaft, revealing a patch of black skin.

  The bear’s fur looked completely gold now, not white, as if she had absorbed the light of the morning sun. And she seemed so harmless, lying there. Like a big old sheepdog, settled down for an early nap.

  “There’s the trouble,” the doctor said, pointing to the shaft. “The others weren’t firmly lodged, but that one thrust deep. It’ll fester if we don’t remove it.” He handed me a skein of thread and a long needle. “Thread this for me, would you?” he said. “Give me a length as long as your forearm and double it. Cut it with one of the knives in there”—he nodded at the chest—“and tie a knot at the end, son, while you’re at it.”

  Son. The word hit me in a soft place; it burrowed in and lodged there. My stepfather had never once called me son.

  But I told myself it was only a word. The doctor had ordered me to go on deck alone with the bear. I could have been killed. A man wouldn’t do that to his son.

  The hole in the needle was small, and the end of the thread kept coming unraveled. Thrice, after I had licked and twisted the thread and aimed it into the hole, the ship rocked, and the thread lurched off in the wrong direction. Still, it wasn’t long before I coaxed the twisted tip through the opening. I stuck the needle into a fold in my cloak and fumbled with the ends of the thread, trying to make a knot.

  “Here,” the doctor said. He took the needle from me and slid his fingers down the thread to the ends. He made a quick, deft movement—not even looking at the thread—and a knot appeared. “Do you see how it’s done?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, another time. Hold it for now,” he said, handing the needle back to me. He took the knife from his sea chest. “Stand back, Arthur.” The doctor set the blade on the black skin near the arrow and pressed. The bear twitched; the doctor braced himself, as if to bolt; blood oozed out of a new cut. The bear groaned but did not open her eyes.

  The doctor let out a breath. He wiggled the shaft a little. The arrow didn’t budge. He wiped his brow, then set the knife edge on the bear’s skin on the other side of the shaft. The blade hesitated on the surface, making a small hollow in the black skin. The doctor pushed hard, plunging it in. Blood bubbled out of the gash, seeping across the black shaved patch of skin and into the long, pale fur.

  I wanted to run but couldn’t look away.

  “Get me a cloth from the chest.”

  I did. The doctor blotted the blood, then jiggled the shaft again. Something seemed to have loosened under the skin; now the shaft moved more freely. Gently, the doctor pulled, and at last the arrowhead emerged—one corner, another corner, the tip. The doctor set it down. With both hands, he pinched the edges of the bloody slit together.

  “Needle,” he said, and when I hesitated, “Give me the needle! Quick!”

  He took it from my fingers and thrust it down through the bear’s skin on one edge of the wound, then pulled it up through another flap of skin on the other side. But the knot didn’t hold.

  The doctor swore.

  “Make another knot in the thread on top of the first one.”

  I grasped the needle and fumbled to tie a second knot—painstakingly, strand by strand. I handed it back.

  This time, it held.

  “Blot this for me, would you?”

  I sopped up blood with the cloth as the doctor went on stitching. In a moment, though, he stopped, closing his eyes. He muttered something under his breath.

  “What did you say?”

  “I said, take the needle.”

  But that wasn’t what he had said. I was almost certain I’d heard it. He’d said, “I can’t see.”

  The doctor wasn’t blind—I knew that. He could tend to wounds. He could make his way down narrow alleys and through the chaos on a ship.

  But he had wanted me to thread the needle. And I remembered hearing of the botched surgery on King Haakon’s favorite niece.

  Could the doctor not see well up close?

  Maybe not.

  And now he wanted me to do this?
/>
  “I can’t sew,” I said. “I told you—”

  The bear groaned; her back paws twitched.

  “She’s rousing,” the doctor said. He held out the needle. “No time to spare. Take it!”

  I did.

  He told me to cut the thread and pull out the last stitch, which had created a lopsided pucker in the bear’s skin. He took the needle from me, knotted the thread twice, and handed it back. He told me to push the needle in on one side and poke it up through the flesh on the other, and then pull the thread so that the sides of the slit came together.

  My head and eyes knew what to do—but my fingers did not. They were clumsy, clumsy. The doctor wiped away blood so I could see what I was doing, but even so, the work was maddeningly slow.

  Still, the sides of the gash had begun to come together. My stitches were not even, but they looked straighter than the doctor’s, and the wound was smooth, not puckered.

  The bear twitched again, let out an explosive whuff. “Hurry!” the doctor said.

  I reached the end of the slit and pulled out the needle. The doctor cut the thread; I tied it. The bear shifted, kicked at her fetters. A low growl rumbled through her. Her eyes blinked open.

  Blinked shut.

  “Cut the ropes!” the doctor said. He handed me a knife; I sawed through the rope that bound the bear’s rear legs while the doctor did the same for her forelegs. I slipped between the bars and hacked through the rope attached to the bear’s harness while the doctor gathered up his wooden chest and ran for the cage door. It clanged shut just as the bear staggered to her feet.

  She blinked. Shook her head. Her nose reached out—twitching, twitching—seeming to search the air for clues to what had befallen her. One paw swiped at her snout, and then her other legs slid out from under her; she landed on her belly with an oof. She let out a halfhearted roar, then scrambled to her feet again and began, unsteadily, to pace.

  CHAPTER 22

  Sleep

  I COULDN’T SLEEP that night.

  The events of the day crowded into my mind, unsettling me. The jolting crash when the other ship rammed us. The body lifting into the air. The captain strutting across the deck, as if he had vanquished the pirates. The bear shaking her head in pain and confusion; the fine spray of blood coming off her as she stumbled across the deck toward her cage. The men nodding, smiling, calling me by name. The doctor squinting down at his mangled stitches. The dead-meat feel of the needle piercing flesh. Son.