I have shared scraps of my long poem "The White Bear" on this blog, but I have never given you the entire piece. Like many fairy tales, it is long but not hard to read. Bits have already appeared in the Green Mountain Review, and the whole thing will be included in Same Old Story (CavanKerry Press, 2014).
Today, as I reconsidered the piece, I wasn't sure if I still liked it. But I may change my mind tomorrow.
And pardon the bad line breaks: this is a long-line poem, and blog formatting is unkind to such things.
The White Bear
Dawn Potter
i
Late autumn, day nearly gone, and weather so wild
that bare tree limbs tore rents in
the racing storm clouds,
and shreds of cloud trembled in the dank air like monstrous
phantasmagoric rags. Rain hammered
the shutters;
the roof groaned; the fire spattered and smoked.
The sullen kettle muttered but
refused to boil.
Father, mother, daughter, unspeaking, crowded into the
hearth’s
fitful, flickering shadow, parents
bent forward on their stools,
fingers stretched toward the guttering flame;
the girl kneeling on the uneven
bricks, poker in hand,
stirring the half-charred logs into braver action.
At each strike of metal, the red sparks leaped up
like a swarm of maddened flies,
gilding the swell of a cheek,
the bridge of a nose; casting copper over a dark sweep of
hair.
“Stop,” said the mother, not
snappish but tired, blank-eyed,
her complaint as rote as the kettle’s; and the girl,
crushing logs to sticks, sticks to
coals, coals to cinders, barely listened,
as she barely listened to the storm beyond the door. For a
moment,
the syllable spun in the draught.
Then it vanished, instantly forgotten,
like a dropped matchstick. Rain hammered the roof; the fire
spat;
a rogue twist of smoke sent the
father into a spasm of coughing,
the girl dabbing soot and tears with the frayed edge of a
sleeve.
Now the poker clattered onto the bricks, and the mother
said,
“Is it the shutter that’s banging?”
For something was beating,
beating against the cottage; or was it banging against the
door?
The windows quivered in their
frames, and something
was rapping the panes—first one and then another,
as if all the trees in the wood
were begging to be let inside.
The girl rocked back on her heels, palms pressed to her hot
cheeks.
The father, still coughing, rose
from his stool and the mother,
without thought, lay a hand on her daughter’s shoulder,
which trembled, not with fear but
with a tense anticipation,
as a pointer trembles at sight of her master’s gun.
Yet the knocking was only the white bear, come back again.
“May
I walk in?” he asked; and meanwhile, water
roiled from the roof-edge, plashing his dense fur, which
glimmered
like
pear blossoms before dawn, even amid the gale
and the rain and the darkening autumn night; meanwhile,
his
two broad paws, caked with muck, and his stout forelegs,
sullied to the elbow with leaf-mold and fir needles,
barred
the doorway, as if the bear were wary of his welcome—
or too sure of it. “Walk in,” murmured the father, uneasy
and shy,
while
the mother, rising from her stool, cried, “Oh, the mud!”
But already the daughter had run to fetch blankets, towels,
a brush,
and the white bear had padded forward into the crescent of
firelight.
How
can I explain his beauty? Even soiled with travel and storm
the bear shone in the half-dark room, glowing as a painting
glows in the dusty corner of a
church, as if once, long ago,
the canvas had swallowed all the light of the world.
Tall
as an elk, burly as an ox, he stood quietly, watchfully,
his enormous paws staining the shabby rug, his strange blue
eyes
dilating to black—though if he were
beautiful,
he was also terrible. When the girl knelt before him on the
rug,
lifting
a paw onto the towel in her lap, the mud-streaked claws,
falcon-sharp and heavy as cant hooks, flashed ominously.
In haste, the parents retreated to the fire, which on the
bear’s entrance,
had roared to life. Now it burned
briskly, diligent kettle
steaming on the hob, draughty room suddenly purring with
heat.
But
not with comfort. The father turned toward the flame,
his eyes carefully avoiding the bear. Less resolute, his
wife
rattled and shifted on her stool, peeping
at her silent husband,
glancing at the girl kneeling on the rain-sodden rug,
toweling and brushing each huge
white leg; then rising to her feet
to rub the massive shoulders, the muscled back, and finally
the great head,
pale muzzle thick as a man’s arm,
the tender ears rimmed with down,
and below them that terrible, unblinking, blue-black gaze.
Only after the girl had dried and brushed him, had spread a
nest
of blankets beside the busy fire,
had swept away the leaves
and fir needles and hung the dripping rug to dry, did the
bear, reclining,
choose to speak. “Will you give me
your daughter?” he asked.
On her stool, the mother looked nervously from beast to man
“I’m sorry,” she stammered,
glancing at the black-haired girl,
once again crouched on the hearth, once again beating sparks
from the logs.
“Last time you came,” whispered the
woman, “she did say no.”
Shifting her stool closer to her husband’s, the wife touched
his arm,
but
still the man was silent, eyes fixed on the flames.
“And what does
she say this time?” asked the white bear. His teeth glittered.
Swarms of sparks—violet, gold, red as witch blood—whirled in
the draught.
Blue
shadows, copper shadows fingered the girl’s bowed head.
“I shall not ask again,” said the bear, stretching a forepaw
to the fire,
flexing his hooked and heavy claws.
“You will see me no more.”
And at this warning, the girl swiftly, quietly, lay the
poker on the bricks,
and
rose. Now she was taller than the reclining bear,
who lifted his white muzzle and waited, his strange eyes
watchful,
self-contained.
Dangerous eyes, thought the mother.
Again she turned toward her husband, now bent forward on his
stool,
elbows on his knees, rough hands
clasped. Waiting.
What will she say? thought the woman. But I know what she
will say.
The white bear gazed up at the girl. The girl gazed down on
the bear.
When
finally she spoke, her voice was hoarse, hurried,
almost brusque, her words pitched low. “I suppose I will
go,” she said.
The father groaned and closed his
eyes, and “Oh!” cried the mother,
hugging herself, suddenly cold in that overheated room.
The bear gazed up at the girl, and
his white teeth glittered.
“Fetch your things,” he told her, “for we travel at
moonrise.”
And
while the girl was bundling her comb and her locket,
two petticoats and her winter stockings, the white bear said
to her parents,
“When
your money runs low, dip the brass ladle into the well.”
But the father only groaned, and the mother only hugged
herself and wept.
ii
The bear must have swallowed the storm; for now, tangled in
the naked trees,
the risen moon rocked peaceably.
The rain had dwindled to a frail
feathery mist, and fragments of cloud drifted in the idle
air.
Water
dripped from every needle and stalk. The brook—roaring, boastful—
charged over sedge and stone like a newborn sea. Seated on
the white bear’s back,
swaying
among unseen trees, down an unseen forest track,
the girl pushed back the hood of her cloak. One by one,
giant raindrops, cold as fish,
fell from the boughs and trickled
slowly down her scalp.
Tightening her grip on the bear’s pulsing shoulder, she
stretched her free hand
into
the darkness and let her fingers brush the soft, sodden fir branches
sweeping the shadow margins of the path. All her life she
had lived in this wood,
hunted its berries, trodden its tracks—but never at night,
never so far, never
at mercy of the wild. Never so
alone. For since leaving the cottage,
the white bear had not spoken. First, he rested silently in
the clearing,
waiting for the girl to tuck up her
skirts, to straddle his broad back,
to wedge her scanty bundle of goods beneath her cloak.
Then he rose to his feet and padded
forward into the darkness.
Behind her, framed in the bright doorway, stood her parents,
frightened and grieving; but when
she turned to call farewell,
her twisted hood smothered her words. “Good-bye,” she cried,
too late.
The
white bear padded forward; the swollen brook drowned her cry.
Her father and mother might never hear their child’s voice
again.
Tears blotched the girl’s cheeks and snaked beneath her
collar.
Her feet, dangling along the bear’s
flanks, ached with cold.
She was wet and afraid and lost in a lonely wood, yet
somehow
she could not regret her resolve.
Under her loose cloak
and crumpled skirts, the white bear’s fur—rabbit-soft,
blood-warm—
rippled and flowed against her
stockings . . .
but no, it was the sliver of bare thigh above her stockings
that
the fur seemed to kiss, to cradle.
Clinging to his pacing shoulder, she trailed a blind hand
through
the dripping boughs that lined the path,
licked the salt rain from her lips. She tightened her grip
on the bear.
iii
Time passed. The moon, freckled and calm, had floated away
from the clutching trees, and now
her pale torch
shone down on the faint, beaten track beneath the bear’s
silent feet
while
the bear himself seemed to reflect the moon’s light like a mirror
and cast his own watery beam into the vague and branchy
wilderness.
Presently
he spoke. “Are you well?”
“I am,” replied
the girl on his back. But some change had come over the beast—
a
new, nervous excitement rippled from his stride;
and the terrain had shifted as well, become steeper and
stonier,
the
underbrush dwindling to what might have been
clumps of lichen or moss, even heaps of pebbles.
Raindrops no longer pattered from the trees; but a dry, mild
wind
had
sprung up, lifting the hem of the girl’s cloak,
toying with a strand of hair. “Where are we?” she wondered
aloud,
and
the white bear answered, “Nearly home.”
Yet what could home
mean? Not a cottage in the forest. Surely not a cave.
And
whose home would it be? This, the girl realized, with a clarity
that shocked her, was the question that mattered. For she
had never,
not
even in anger or fantasy, been homeless. Now here she was—
foreign, adrift; and though she would not allow herself to
believe
that
the bear meant to kill her, still, she had no key to any door,
and no escape, if the bear chose to bar his gates behind
her.
When he reached the palace door, the white bear sank to his
haunches,
and
the girl, clutching cloak and bundle, slid awkwardly to the ground,
her feet so numb that she circled and staggered like a sick
horse.
Eyes bright, breath quick, the bear
rested on the silver flagstones
till she found her footing. His silence was nothing but
kind;
yet the girl, flushed with
embarrassment, felt, for the first time,
a heartsick wave rise in her throat. “Oh,” she cried,
“I
am so thirsty!” And indeed her throat
was dry, her tongue parched,
her lips sore and split, though she had not noticed them
before—
and
though she wished, instantly, that she had not complained
so babyishly, or stumbled so clumsily, or worn such thick
boots.
For even as she entered the hall, this cottage girl knew
she was at odds with the bear’s
palace. She might learn
to love it or fear it, but she would never roam its
galleries, its lavish
forgotten bedrooms, its roaring
kitchens, its secret courtyards,
with a native’s homely, ignorant abandon. Always
she and the house would be divided.
At first, she might rattle
among its stairs and winding corridors like a lentil in a
sieve,
perch on brocade with a thief’s
false valor.
After a dozen years, she might gain greed, custom, or
disguise.
But the language of the house—its
echoes, creaks, and sighs:
that was a tongue she would never learn to speak.
Here she stood, however:
inside a palace that was more than
half mountain,
with great vaulted ceilings of granite; with winding
stairways
coiling
down into the earth and up into the misty peak;
glowing with the glare of an enormous roaring fire.
The
white bear threw himself, with pleasure and abandonment,
onto a crimson carpet, stretching his paws to the flames;
and
after a few moments, the girl allowed herself to rest
on the edge of a satin ottoman. She folded her trembling hands
over the bundle in her lap. The
grandness of the room
oppressed her, and, not for the first time, she was afraid
of the bear.
He seemed, at once, too glad in his surroundings
and too indifferent to them. But
what she feared,
the girl was quick to admit, for she strove to be honest
with herself,
was that the bear did not care
about her fear.
She had believed, during their long journey, and especially
at each secret, delicious touch of
fur and skin,
that now and for always the white bear would understand her
heart.
But
though all women make the same mistake about their lovers,
the truth is ever a shock, ever a terror.
We convince ourselves that love
will banish our loneliness.
So why, asked the girl, do I feel so alone?
iv
It is fortunate, for all the world, that dinner assuages
a multitude of griefs. Just as the
girl felt
with a full heart that she would never be joyful again,
a
table appeared before her—one laden with scarlet linen
and white china; with spoons rubbed bright as new pennies;
with
crystal glasses and flasks; and on the plates curled
little fish fried in crumbs, alongside slivers of orange,
and new-made butter, and potatoes
split and steaming
in their jackets, and beside them a bowl of wild greens and
a hot rye loaf.
Now
the white bear rose from his bed on the hearth,
and, suddenly famished, the girl also stood, dropping her
bundle,
ruefully rubbing her dusty hands on her muddy skirt,
except
that, when she looked down,
the skirt was a silken gown, clean and blue as a spring sky
and
on her finger was a ring with a blue stone.
She smiled at the white bear, and the bear said,
“Perhaps
you would lift my plate to the floor.”
So the girl set a plate of fish and potatoes before the
bear,
and
then she sat herself down and ate.
And once the wonderful dinner was finished, a silver cake
appeared.
So
the girl cut a slice for the bear and one for herself
and then, holding her slice in her hand, knelt beside him on
the hearth.
Almost, now, she felt at home. The white bear licked first
one paw,
then the other. The girl brushed
the crumbs from her blue dress
and said shyly, “I forgot I was hungry.”
The bear paused in his licking and
turned to look at her.
As her eyes met that strange, unblinking gaze, the girl
shivered;
but this time she knew she was
neither cold nor afraid.
Or perhaps she was afraid, but with a species of fear
she did not recognize as fear. For
his gaze was a stream of light,
devouring and stern, yet also (and this was the marvel) a
plea.
“And
are you tired?” asked the bear softly.
The girl looked down at her hands, then into his eyes. “I
am,” she said.
v
She has forgotten the room, forgotten the firelight,
forgotten
the
cool ironed sham beneath her cheek,
forgotten the shadows under the bed, forgotten the wind at
the window,
the
stars burning, an owl snatching a wayward rabbit,
the rabbit’s shriek; she has forgotten her mother, her
father,
her
cottage under moonlight; forgotten the rain,
forgotten the brook that wept like a river.
Only now only now only now.
For dreaming and the act of love are mirrors;
and
tonight the girl knows also; but where is her breath,
where is the tender shivering flesh below the ridge of her
shoulder?
Where? For she has lost herself, she has lost the white
bear,
who
is not a bear, but what has he become?
What has she become? Both have cast off their skins, both
grown
larger than giants, and each new and solitary cell
undergoes its ruthless joy. Who is the bear, who the woman;
who the air, who the fire; who the
knife,
who the wound? How terrible they are;
how near to hate and dreaming is
love,
its fury of nail and claw; and how time
narrows and slows, till now there
is only
yes and no and yes.
vi
But such interludes are finite.
Though
at night the beast cast off the form of a bear,
he reappeared as a beast in the morning,
day
after day, week after week,
and meanwhile winter came to the mountain palace.
The
fires roared high and the snow fell,
and when the girl breathed on the frosted mullions
and
rubbed away her breath, she saw only white stones
against white sky. Inside the palace she possessed all
that
an intelligent young woman is prone to desire—
galleries and libraries, hothouses and kitchens,
and a fierce and tireless lover. Yet the palace oppressed
her,
as it had oppressed her from the
first.
Perhaps, she thought, as she idled in the window seat,
scratching small patterns on the
frost panes,
I am tired of having everything chosen for me.
Or perhaps I am merely a
discontented woman.
And she thought of the tales she had read,
of
greedy sisters and unhappy queens
and meek, obedient goose-girls; and she sighed
and
leaned her cheek against the cold glass,
and let the heavy book on her lap slip to the floor.
That evening, as she knelt before the fire,
tilting the dregs of dark wine back
and forth,
back and forth in her glass, she said to the white bear
who
lay stretched beside her,
“I wonder what my mother and father are doing now.”
The
white bear rolled over and lifted his head.
“What do you want?” he asked.
The
girl tilted her wineglass back and forth,
and the dregs flashed and darkened,
flashed
and darkened.
“Oh,” she said, and paused. And then:
“My hours in this palace trickle away so slowly.
Perhaps
I am dull; perhaps winter
is lonely. But at home, they needed me—
to carry firewood, to cook
breakfast, to wash clothes.”
Quietly the bear replied, “This is your home, and I need you.”
Though his words were gentle, his
pale eyes
sharpened. The girl dropped her gaze.
He was wrong: his home was not her
home.
She knew she would always be a stranger in his vast, stony
palace.
Nonetheless, she loved him, she
loved him terribly;
and she needed him to love her.
This the bear understood. And after their months together,
the white bear was learning (or
beginning to learn)
that he, too, must bend. “Dear one,” he said,
and
his voice was calm,
“I will send you to visit your parents,
but
you must make me a promise,
and you must keep your word.”
The
girl turned toward him and laid a hand
on his broad shoulder. Now she wrapped both arms
around
him and pressed her nose into his warm neck.
The bear repeated, more softly yet, “You must keep your word.”
The girl said quickly, her tumbled words muffled
against the bear’s heavy fur, “I
will keep my word, of course.”
Only then did she remember that she did not know
what
she was promising.
She raised her head. “But why?” she said. “What must I do?”
“It
is what you must not do that matters,” replied the bear.
“You must not allow your mother to lead you away from your
father
and talk to you alone. You must
not,
or both you and I will suffer.” Cupping her two hands
around
the white bear’s muzzle, the girl bent
to kiss its bridge. “That will not happen,” she said.
vii
And in less than a moment
she
stood before her parents’ forest cottage
at winter’s bare end. All around her
heaved
boot-riven mud. The snow, half-melted,
was soiled with blackened leaves and gnawed pinecones;
chips
and sawdust littered the dooryard. And yet
smoke threaded so joyously from the chimney; a chickadee
whistled his high-low spring song;
sunlight
fingered the barren trees; and a small, soft wind tugged at
her cloak.
The very window-glass seem to blink
at her with pleasure.
The girl was so swiftly, so deeply happy that she hesitated
to knock.
But she took a breath and, tears prickling her eyes, tapped
at the door.
Inside,
a thump and a flurry: her mother
dropping the rolling pin and now scraping flour paste
from her hands, and now the thud of
her clogs
as she bustled to the door, and now
such
crying and kissing and embracing;
and “oh, how beautiful she is, my lost child;
how
brightly her dress gleams under the velvet cloak;
how the little blue ring sparkles on her finger!”
Now
the father stamps his boots at the back door;
his daughter flies into his arms, spilling his bucket of
twigs,
nearly cracking his head on the doorframe: more cries and
kissing,
and
then, at long last, three heads round the kitchen table,
cups in hand, kettle steaming on the hob; and the mother
saying,
“Tell
us everything, my love.”
So the girl set down her teacup and retold the tale of her
travels—
her
long ride on the white bear’s back, her arrival at the palace
in the mountain, the kindness of the bear, the wonderful
dinners
and
kitchens and libraries of her new home.
Her father listened in wide-eyed wonder, and when he brought
himself
to
question his daughter, he spoke like the craftsman he was.
So she detailed the marble floors, the oaken shelves, the
smooth slate counters.
But her mother had other curiosities. “My love,” she said,
clasping
her daughter’s hand between her own,
“tell us about your husband. Is he kind to you?”
At
mention of the white bear, the girl found herself
longing to speak of him. But she remembered his warning
and
turned the conversation into other routes—
speaking of the fine thick carpet on the cottage floor
and
the silver tankards twinkling on the shelf;
for the bear had been as good as his word. Whenever
the
parents were in need, they dipped the brass ladle
into the well and brought forth a dipper full of coins.
And since they were not extravagant, they lived snugly
enough,
lamenting
their daughter but day by day regaining
a certain sweet content in themselves, as parents must do.
Indeed,
as the weeks of her visit passed,
the girl began to see herself as an imposition to their
comfort—
not
that her parents promoted this view;
but three stools crowded the hearth,
the
coat pegs no longer held space for her cloak,
and the apple tart divided awkwardly for three.
Once
three had been the most natural of numbers.
Could she blame them for making the best of two,
especially now that she had become half of two herself?
For
oh, how she missed the white bear!
Each night, as she lay wrapped in her blanket by the fire,
her
thoughts returned to the palace fireside,
to the bear’s great paws curling on the flagstones,
to the heat of his breath on her
breast;
and she turned and tossed, trapped in the peculiar despair
of unsubstantiated desire, angry at
her ingratitude—
to her lover, whom she had willingly deserted;
to her parents, who fussed and
fidgeted from morning till night.
If only she could speak of the bear to someone, anyone!
The girl took to wandering away of an afternoon, far down
the forest track,
merely for the chance to lie among
the broken remnants
of last year’s bracken ferns and whisper the bear’s name.
Her parents,
puzzled and sad, watched her
disappear into the woods;
yet they were not more puzzled than their daughter, nor more
sad.
She did not think to ponder, “So
what, after all, does home mean?”
as she lay in her damp cot and watched the finches, garbed
in their winter drab,
flicker from bough to bough; but
the question nonetheless
dangled before her in the listless air; and when finally she
sat up, stiff with cold,
and gathered strength for her
mother’s too-cheerful greeting,
her father’s anxious frown, she had advanced not a step
toward contentment.
viii
And it was in this low state that she made her error.
The
day had opened in wet fog, and as the morning passed,
rain began to fall steadily. With no hope of escape into the
forest,
the
girl sat moodily at the table sorting sprouted onions for the pig—
a simple-enough task in itself yet wretchedly tedious
if one is the lovesick queen of an
enchanted palace.
Her mother sat on a stool by the fire, mending a shirt; but
her father,
braving the rain, had walked into
the village, his pocket
stuffed with coins from the well, the vision of a little
mare filling his thoughts.
Surely
a little mare would cheer his daughter, give her a new care.
Somehow he never allowed himself to consider that she might
leave again.
Nor, it seems, had his wife. Early that morning, still abed,
he had broached the idea, and she,
all smiles, had eagerly agreed.
“The blacksmith has a horse he would sell—a beautiful mare,
spotted, with a long black tail.
Walk down to the forge, my dear;
offer him a good price; and meanwhile, I will speak to our
daughter alone.
Perhaps I may discover what the
bear has done to create such misery.”
The plan was kind, and the woman meant well indeed.
But it may be that every loving
parent has made a similar mistake.
For we have been so long trained to defend our children’s
joy
that we are too liable to hate the
pains of that joy
and distrust the thieving lover who has coaxed them forth.
So as the daughter sorted onions, the mother spoke to her
gently
but
with a mother’s expectation of obedience.
“You must tell me, now, about the white bear. You are so
unhappy,
yet
how can I help you if I know nothing?”
Though a mother’s aid was no use in this matter, this was a
fact
that neither mother nor daughter
recognized.
And after all, the girl was so very tired of silence.
She
would say a few words, no more than a few,
just to satisfy her mother’s curiosity. There could be no
harm.
Surely
the bear knew how much she loved him; surely
he had never meant her to relinquish all mention of his
name.
The girl sighed, straightened her shoulders, shook the
papery fragments
of onionskin from her skirts. Then
she turned toward her mother
and, folding her dusty hands in her lap, opened her mouth to
speak.
But
as soon as the word bear fell from her
lips,
the whole tale of their love burst forth. Weeping, she told
her mother
that
every night the bear came to her bed and that perhaps,
in truth, he was not a bear—she wasn’t sure, she couldn’t
explain,
he
might have been a man, yet she never saw him in the darkness;
oh, but he was kind, very kind, and she loved him dearly;
nothing
was wrong, only she was lonely and out of sorts;
the bear had never hurt her, never really hurt her. He was
very kind.
The mother listened to this tale of woe with a kind of
open-eyed horror
melding
embarrassment with fear. But it was also
(though this she only vaguely admitted to herself) tinged
with envy.
A
faithful husband is a lifetime’s comfort, but who among us
grows immune to dreams of a mysterious ardent lover?
And
yet her child, her child, in the grip of such confusion!
“My darling,” cried the mother, rising so violently from her
seat
that
her basket of sewing toppled, and thimble and spools
clattered onto the floor and rolled away, forgotten, into
the corners.
“What
if your husband is a troll?”
“Oh, mother,” wept the girl, “you’re wrong. It can’t be
true.”
Yet once the words had been spoken, she could not forget
them,
especially
after her father returned from the village
leading the spotted mare. Stroking the mare’s soft nose,
the girl discovered, tied to the
bridle, a long red ribbon;
and on it, printed in gold, these instructions:
“Ride
into the forest, and I will meet you.”
“What shall I do?” she cried; but already, as her stricken
parents
begged
her to stay, she had snatched up her cloak,
flung it over her shoulders, and mounted the dancing mare,
who
galloped headlong into the fog and vanished
before the father could gather strength or wits to hold her.
ix
There was no sign of the white bear. Nonetheless,
the
little mare trotted briskly along the path,
her pace so confident and surefooted that the girl
soon dropped the reins and let them
lie untended in her lap.
At first she had peered ahead anxiously into the fog,
quick
to spy any glimmer of white among the trees;
but as the hours passed and no bear appeared,
she
found her attention wavering, her eyes beginning to close;
felt herself falling forward, cheek pillowed against the
mare’s
sweet-scented mane, as the horse,
unchecked, trotted on
and the scent, rising and falling like breath, became a
dream.
And this is what she dreamed—
a
door opening into a dark room,
one she had never seen before, a room cavernous with shadows
yet
here was the little bed she had slept in last night
before her parents’ fire. Why was it here, in this strange
room,
and
who was sleeping in it? A guttering stub of candle
appeared in her hand; she lifted it high over the bed;
and
there lay a man, fair as snow,
fast asleep beneath a white bearskin. She leaned over him,
thinking
she must faint if she did not
brush her lips against his bare shoulder;
but as she bent over him, three drops of wax fell,
searing
three scars like tears into his pale skin.
Starting up suddenly from sleep, he cried out,
“What have you done? What have you
done?”
“Oh, oh,” sobbed the girl, for she knew, now, who he was.
“You have spoken to your mother,”
he replied, and the three scars
pulsed like starlight in the black room. “Let our misery
begin.”
At
these words, the girl wailed and wept; she threw herself into his arms,
she kissed his wrists, his hands, begging for mercy . . .
But
at this moment she awoke and found herself clutching
the mare’s black mane and the mare galloping full tilt into
the darkness.
“Stop!” shrieked the girl.
Instantly
the mare halted, with such force that girl
tumbled forward into the ferns. There she sat, dizzy and
breathless,
as
the mare idly nibbled a dry leaf.
“Where are you running to, little mare?” stammered the girl,
her
voice choking in her throat;
for she knew now that the horse was no common village hack.
Perhaps, like her own white bear,
the mare could speak;
perhaps she was the
bear, in new form;
and at this thought, the girl
leaped to her feet
and put her two arms round the horse’s slender neck.
“Dear mare,” she asked, “who are you?”
The mare only snorted and flicked
her ears.
As she did so, an acorn fell into the girl’s lap,
then
split cleanly at the cap, as acorns will;
and inside the cap was printed the word East in fine gold script,
but
around the nut marched the word West in
silver capitals.
“What does it mean?” wailed the girl, flinging cap and nut
into
the bracken. “I don’t believe it means anything at all.”
The white bear, hidden in the bracken and watching her,
may
have thought twice about his choice of wife—
this angry, tear-stained, red-faced girl, her cloak
checkered with leaf-mold,
shouting fruitlessly at the spotted mare,
though,
in truth, the mare seemed indifferent to the clamor,
merely lifting a hind hoof to scratch the back of a front
knee.
The
girl hid her face in her hands, tried to breathe deeply,
tried to think. East, west; east, west . . . with such
instructions,
she might just as well dig her own
barrow,
here, under these twigs, this bracken; leave the mare to
find her way home,
or
wherever it was she might be heading.
And at this thought, the girl lifted her face from her
hands.
“Where
were you going? Who were you running to?” she asked.
In response, the mare whinnied and pranced and flung her
head,
from which actions the girl took a bit of comfort—
not happiness, to be sure, nor even
confidence;
more as if the cloud on her heart had shifted its shape.
At least the horse claimed to know
which road to travel.
Wearily, she clambered to her feet; wearily, she remounted.
“Go
where you are going,” she said,
and instantly the mare darted forward into the forest,
the
girl bobbing listlessly on her back.
Tears welled from her swollen eyes and spilled down her blotchy
cheeks.
She
wiped her nose on the edge of her cloak.
What have I become? wondered the girl, but only briefly.
For she had entered that strange realm of selfishness
that
arises only in moments of great misery,
when despair becomes a kind of spell,
and
sorrow creates its own walled castle.
Everything outside the girl seemed vaporous and indistinct.
No
longer did she scan the forest for sight of the white bear.
He would not come. No one would come.
Clinging
to the back of this jogging beast,
she would ride through the night, and then through another
night.
One
by one, the stars would flare and fade and flicker out,
and the moon would turn her face to the wall.
x
Here is where my tale becomes difficult to write,
where
it swells and dissipates and trails away to mist.
For not only do my characters refuse to behave admirably;
they
also—and this is the crux—
they refuse to behave with resolve.
The
bear, of course, was angry with his wife;
and for a time his anger overtopped his loneliness.
He
lay hidden in the brush as she tumbled into the ferns.
He watched her fling the acorn message into the dark,
and
he felt a certain satisfaction at sight of her harridan misery.
But don’t think that the white bear was, at heart, a cruel
husband.
Words came hard to him. He was, after all, more beast than
man;
and
though he loved his wife, and longed for her return,
her angers and fears were nothing to his own.
In
his eyes, they were petty, staged for display,
overrun with tears and fine speeches, while his own—
ah,
his animal flame ran wordless and deep, like molten stone.
Or so he believed. The bear’s wife, who loved him fiercely,
might
have chosen “chill” instead of “flame,”
“claw” instead of “stone,” “prideful” instead of “deep.”
Who,
if not a wife, sees a man more clearly than he sees himself?
Or so she believes.
The little mare, insouciant, trotted away into the dark.
The
bear, hidden and silent among the bracken,
lay glowering at the girl on the horse’s back.
The
girl rubbed a knuckle into her swollen eyes
and, with her other hand, tightened her grip on the horse.
She felt obliged, suddenly, to make
a decision,
any decision, one would be as good as the next,
she
was exhausted by love, by anger,
she hated love, she would go home to her parents
and
tell them nothing, she would lie, day and night,
tearless on her bed. The white bear had betrayed her,
or she had betrayed him, and there was no use
in
trying to recover what they had lost.
“East, west,” she said the horse.
And
then suddenly she said, “Go north.”
At those words, the mare turned suddenly
and
plunged into the thicket.
The tree branches leaned forward, scratching and plucking at
the girl,
who
screamed, covering her head with her arms
as the mare swerved among the terrible trees.
And
the white bear, who lay hidden among the bracken
and brush to the south of the path, silently got to his
feet.
For a moment he stood motionless,
shimmering like the moon on this
moonless night.
Then he turned his back to the trail, and he padded away.
