“…eggs. Should I look for birds eggs?”
“Did nothing I said mean anything to you? You must practice, girl, practice!”
“But Mama, you said yourself, I’m sick...”
“Are you really going to go find eggs?”
“Of course.”
“Not just go play in the woods?”
“Mama.” Gwenika looked the model of wounded innocence. “Fa! Go, then. Find eggs. Take them to your Gramma. I’m sure she’ll be glad to prepare them for you. By mercy, she coddles you. Meanwhile, your sister will stay and practice. At least one of you will not fail her family honor. Go!”
Gwenika scrambled away.
No sooner had Gwenika departed, however, than a niggling suspicion began to plague Brena.
“Stay here,” she told her oldest daughter Gwena. “Keep going over the Deer Leaps until I return.”
“Yes, Mama.”
It did not take Brena long to find her younger daughter. Gwenika was climbing a low leaning sycamore tree with fist-sized nest built on a horizontal limb thirty-five feet above the ground.
Brena was surprised. Maybe she really is after eggs. She recognized the nest as that of a sycamore warbler. The interior of the nest would be lined with last year’s sycamore balls.
When the girls had been younger, Brena had walked with them in the woods, holding up a feather or a leaf, challenging them to guess the name of the bird or tree it belonged to. Brena’s own mother had used the same technique of those guessing games to pass on the shape of every bird, tree and herb in the woods.
Gwenika apparently hadn’t noticed her. The girl reached the nest. She reached into it—but not to remove something, to deposit something.
Eeeep. Brena heard the tiny cry.
“There you are, little lost one,” Gwenika cooed. “Safe back at home.”
The eggs in that nest had already hatched, and one of the baby birds must have fallen out. Gwenika had helped one of the chicks back into the nest.
Brena shook her head. She’ll learn soon enough that good deeds are repaid with cruelty, sure as offering food to a wolf only leads to lost fingers. Nonetheless, she turned to leave without saying anything to her daughter. Brena didn’t have the heart to yell at her for saving the baby bird instead of practicing.
Suddenly, Gwenika screamed. Brena ran back to the tree.
An immense, shaggy blond bear, wounded by an arrow and nursing its bad paw, had crashed through the underbrush and now stood between Brena and her daughter.
 |
| "Pooh bear" by tefee |
Brena stared at the bear, torn between fear and awe. Her tribe used bear hides for rugs and hangings, for door curtains and room dividers, so she knew that bears were large, but she had never encountered one in person. Those lifeless skins hadn’t prepared her for the immensity of a live bear. As large as an aurochs bull, but with sharp teeth, the bear had thick honey colored fur that darkened to cinnamon around its haunches. Black ooze dripped from the…
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