“Perhaps in another year, when the Constellations have removed their veils of black and gray…” Gunde wanted only to comfort me, but I could hear the lie in his tender growls—the Stars never stop grieving. They had denied me my bride once and for all. Never would they be moved in their judgment. As we were taught long ago, the Stars cannot retrace their orbits.
“I care nothing for the death of the serpent-god.” The Versammlung gasped at my blasphemy. No one but I in my rage would have dared to show a callused paw to their names. “If you will not grant me my mate, I will take her and we will travel to another sea, where the snakes and stars do not command.”
A soft step sounded behind me, and I could smell her icy fur before I could see her, those clear black eyes looking down at me with pity.
“No,” she whispered, and her voice was like the slide of a cub’s belly on the ice. “Did you think I spent all my days looking down at the ice? I see the sky like any bear, and better than most. I saw that the sign of the Fox-That-Is-Hard-to-Catch dipped below the horizon out of season, and that the Moon darkened like whale’s blood on the glacier. Then, when the Hunter’s Knife rose in the South, I knew that the clouds were full of grief. It is not meant to be, Eyvind. And more—the Molted-Antler is in the Third House—you will have no mate, not now, and not ever. Not I nor any other. What is written you cannot un-write. Smile as best you can and hunt with me, fish with me, but do not ask me to your den. You can curse the Stars, but I will not.”
“Beautiful beast, choice of my heart!” I wept openly in the sight of all my warriors, unable to believe that I would be denied something so obviously fated. “No,” I suddenly cried, “I will not smile. I will travel to the forest of the South and avenge the death of the Star-sister, the serpent-god. I will right the wrong done to her sacred flesh and I will win the favor of the Harpoon-Star, He-Who-Pierces-the-Underfur-with-His-Light. He will give me my bride. I have fought a thousand battles against fierce tribes of wolves. So, too, will I win this battle and call her my victory.”
My love just shook her great white head and padded heavily away across the snow.
I left the rest shuffling on the ice. I went immediately. I took nothing. I did not once look up at the Stars for guidance. I heard none of my brothers’ protests, nor my bright-tailed bear’s tears falling like first snow on the frozen earth. I thought then that I knew the right path, that it stretched out before me so sure, so sure and straight that I could not help but follow it. My paws would find it easily, since this must all have been written long before. Why else would the snake-god have died, except to be avenged by me?
As you can see, I was a very stupid bear.
I journeyed south from the glaciers no one of my kind had ever left. I ate salmon from the stream, I bandaged my paws when they bled from the incessant walking, I spoke to nothing, since there was nothing to speak to. In the deep nights I watched the Mother’s-Milk glow white against the sky, winding through the Stars like an unspooled thread.
The world is wider than any one bear can fathom. It gobbles distance like a hungry cub. I could not, after a full cycle of the moon, understand why the land had not yet become the burning jungles of the Southern Kingdoms, why the sun did not glower red, why the Stars had not shifted into Constellations of which I had only heard legends: the Scorpion, the Lion, the Serpent. I still moved through a landscape of cold wind and mountains like broken teeth. At this rate my love would be a grandmother, gray in fur and tooth, before I could have her.
When the moon had become full for the third time since I set out, and rode the sky like a great whale, full-finned and gleaming, the earth did, abruptly, change. It became wet and full of green things; water ran freely here, in sluggish streams there, grass-colored and strung through with amber. I did not match the world anymore. My white fur stood out like a tear in the green hills. Tall reeds sprang up everywhere, thin and golden, and eels snapped their long bodies in the water. I could see great copses of tamarind trees with their red roots gnarling, cypresses bruising the sky with their branches, briars and brambles like a human woman’s long hair. Waterbirds dipped their beaks into the glistening creeks, their feathers shining like untrammeled snow.
All I had known was the pure and unbroken white of my home, the pale horizon going on and on forever. The Dismal Marshes were beyond my heart’s experience. I could smell the thickness of the air, the dank smell of growing things twisting in the earth, the softness of rain and fruit on the trees. My fur rippled, both afraid and awakened.
As I stood with my paws gathering mud, one of the massive waterbirds broke off from the flock and leapt towards me, half walking on his thready legs, half flying. He was bright green, the color of the grasses around him; some of his feathers were such a rich shade of it they were nearly black. His eyes were flashes of sudden rainstorms. His beak curved earthward like a scimitar, and quite as sharp. He was so bright I had to squint, my eyes already weary of so much color. He was clothed in the colors of the sky after the Sun has fled, rimmed in light.
The bird stopped up short very near to me, flaring his great wings and stamping his feet. I could smell his flesh, like salt fish and rich soils.
“Well, I say,” he began in a svelte voice, “this is an oddity. I shall have to call upon Beast at once! One does not keep such a thing to oneself; it is quite rude. Come then, don’t stand there gawking like a hatchling! You may come to luncheon and discuss what, exactly, we are going to do with you.”
Spluttering, I moved to catch up with him, splashing in silt and green water up to my knees, as he was already sprinting far ahead in his peculiar half-flight across the marshes.
“Wait!” I called, and my voice boomed out over the swamp, scattering cicadas and kingfishers in its wake.
“Waiting, waiting, lady-in, gentlemen-out, wait for water and meet the drought!” the great heron sang out over his emerald shoulder, and ran even faster. He was a blur of green and blue, and I could not keep up.
But as I stopped, panting, fur soaked in sweat, I saw a massive, gnarled hall of tamarinds which arched up to make a thatched roof of leaves, and the bird leaning against the doorpost.
“How do you hunt even the smallest mouse, Eyvind? Really!” And he ducked inside, leaving me to be stunned at the sound of my own name from this bizarre creature’s mouth.
A little lunch service carved from cattails and willow roots sat on a small table in a room any gentleman would be proud to call his. The tamarinds had coiled around each other to make three chairs and an array of cabinets, tables, and twisting staircases that vanished into a filmy mist, which hung over the room like a well-apportioned ceiling. I could not believe that I would fit in the little hall, but it seemed to suit me exactly, and as I watched, the red-tinged branches shifted and sighed to make a long ridge on which I could rest.
“They are so considerate, my tammies,” the Heron said fondly, as he dipped his beak into a small cup and slurped with relish. I sank onto the fragrant bed with a heavy sigh, my muscles burning like lamp oil. Only then did I notice that we were not alone.
A huge creature the color of dried blood stood calmly in a corner, drinking from a large bowl of oak leaves. The rear of the hall had swelled tall and wide to accommodate him. His red antlers tangled rather horribly around themselves, and as he slurped at his tea, I could see that his teeth were not teeth at all, but a bright ridge of solid bone.
“Beast! This is the one of whom our Brother spoke! Is it not thrilling that he has come directly to my Marsh?”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” the scarlet beast replied in a musical voice. His eyes twinkled with laughter like the fall of leaves on the water. “We do so rarely get such… august guests.”
“Majesty?” I asked, unsure of what impossible kingdom the Heron could rule.
“Of course. I am the Marsh King. This is Beast, who is a kind of courtier of mine, you might say. It is a sad state for a King to have but one courtier, but he is quite a good one.”
“How kind of
you, Eminence,” the beast intoned, with the slightest flavor of gentle mockery in his voice.
“Think nothing of it, my good friend! Now, we must to business, for there is not much time.”