Elijana and the Bear

All day the battle had crackled and boomed across the city, raising smoke columns that swayed like genies in the hot air. Finding the endless grid of streets unbearable, Elijana stumbled toward a ridge, a serpentine line of trees that lay like a sleeping dragon in the middle of the city. Her right arm hung nerveless and dripping blood; in her left she gripped her revolver. She’d abandoned her rifle because she could no longer carry it, let alone fire it. At the edge of the scrubby trees, she paused to wipe the sweat from her face, and looked back at the ruined buildings, the cratered streets. Empty. Hunched, she climbed the ridge, stirring up blinding dust. Endorphins kept her injured arm numb, and adrenaline helped her stumble upward, but she needed water and shelter. She needed to rest.

Halfway up the ridge a rusty chain-link fence blocked her way. She could not climb over it, so she followed it as it led uphill to the right. Near the peak of the ridge the woods parted to reveal a weedy lawn, a cracked driveway, and brooding above it all a black, gothic mansion. A crooked sign read The Cypress Mansion, beneath which, when she squinted, added, Assisted Living Facility. She frowned. It did not look like a nursing home. It looked like an abode for a wealthy witch.

She walked along the fence, keeping an eye on the drone-haunted sky. After a little she found a hole where the wire mesh had been rucked up. Getting onto her stomach she wriggled through it, catching her brown fatigues and tearing them. Her shoulder hurt. She pressed her forehead to the dirt.

Just lie here, she thought. Take a breather. Maybe go to sleep.

She’d been hearing that voice in her head more and more lately. Stop. Rest. Drift away. You’re so tired.

With effort she got to her hands and knees, tucked the revolver into its holster, and crawled across the brown lawn, insects flying away before her like popcorn. She crossed the baking driveway, burning her left palm, and then collapsed against the concrete steps, blessedly shaded by an old tree. The glass door stood ever so slightly ajar. Summoning her strength, she stood, swaying, and slipped inside.

The stench, immediate and overpowering, hit her, and she put her left arm over her nose. In the dim interior her sun-dazzled eyes registered only pulsing blotches. She breathed through her mouth until she could see again. The mansion had once been a private home, but its old-world beauty had been marred with institutional additions—steel handrails, glossy beige paint, and tiled floors for easy mopping.

Cautiously she walked past the high wooden reception desk, through a recreation room with a huge, blank TV screen, and into a dining room littered with abandoned plates. Towards the back of the house, she found a patient’s room (last name, Malachi) and pushed the door open. A still figure lay on the bed, entirely covered in a discolored sheet. Flies rose in a buzzing cloud. Elijana doubled over in the hall, gagging.

She’d seen many types of death in her seven years of service, but something felt especially macabre about this place. She guessed that there would be more bodies on beds behind more doors—likely the staff had taken the healthy with them when they fled, and euthanized those patients who had to be left behind.

She shut the door and, breathing through her mouth in the stifling heat, went to find the nurses’ station. She broke the glass in the door of the supply room with the handle of her revolver. Yes, it had everything she needed—gauze, antiseptic wipes, a bottle of antibiotics, and another of painkillers. Slipping some sealed water bottles into her pockets, she staggered back to the front door, trying not look behind her.

It was just as hot outside as in, but there was a fresh breeze stirring. She would not go back inside—she’d take her chances out here. On the dirt beneath the protective arms of the nearby tree she sat down, placed the revolver on a rock, and drank a full bottle of water. She opened another and splashed some on her face and hands, smoothing back her tangled, dark hair. Next she had to get out of her jacket. The buttons were too much for her. She used her knife to cut the fabric away, revealing her t-shirt, drenched in blood. With trembling fingers she explored the injury to her shoulder. The bullet had passed through cleanly, leaving a clotted hole. Gritting her teeth she swabbed it with alcohol, then pressed gauze against the wound, binding it clumsily with her left hand. With slippery fingers, she took an antibiotic and two pain pills. She lay back and looked up through the branches at the hot white sunshine, the patches of blue sky. Somewhere in the distance she could hear a helicopter. Elijana shut her eyes.

The last of her team, she was separated from the remainder of her company, in what was—for now at least—no-man’s land. She and the rebel sniper had been playing hide and seek for days, moving south, taking shots at each other from balconies, behind overturned cars, and vacant apartment windows. When the final confrontation came, she squeezed the trigger, amazed to see his head jerk back with a crimson splash, just as the impact of his shot spun her round and knocked her to the ground.

Something made a noise nearby, a hushed whisper. She sat up, reached for her gun. A black drone hung a few paces away, looking like a malevolent wasp.

Elijana raised the revolver and took aim. Her left hand, unused to the grip, trembled. She squeezed her eyes shut, opened them, and blinked. The drone was gone. A large blackbird descended a few paces away. It snapped its beak at her.

“I’m not dead yet,” she said.

“Wrah!” said the bird, clearly skeptical.

“Go away!” said Elijana. She threw a pebble at it.

The bird took off from its perch with a flapping of wings. She rested the gun on her stomach and watched the bird wing its way west, up into the turquoise sky.

Oh that I had wings like a bird that I could fly away, she thought. She could not remember where the quote had come from. A poem? Something from childhood.

anyone lived in a pretty how town, with up so floating many bells down

How do you like to go up in a swing?

Mother may I go in to swim?

She was little, five or six. She had climbed to the top of a tall maple with her older sister, Saska. She liked climbing, the tug on her muscles, the cold branches that left a grey residue on her hands, the repetition of selecting a sturdy foothold and pulling herself higher. Here at the top the branches were thin and swayed under their weight, but she was not afraid. She trusted her hands, her balance, trusted the tree itself. She could see over the neighborhood rooftops, trees fuzzy with spring leaves against the fading pink sky. In the far distance she could see the low, soft mountain that dominated their valley, its purple sides welling up gold and green.

“It looks like a giant cat sleeping,” observed Saska.

Elijana agreed, because she always agreed with her sister, that was an unspoken rule, but she did not see the cat in the mountain. Saska always saw things where there weren’t things—faces in woodgrain, ships in clouds. Elijana felt sad that she could not see the same things, but it didn’t mean the things weren’t beautiful to her. A mountain could just be a mountain and still be wonderful. The bell rang six o’clock for dinner.

“Shoo!” said a growly voice.

Elijana sat straight up again, finger curled on the trigger, heart pounding. A flock of blackbirds, which had surrounded her as she slept, rose up, protesting, and flapped into the sky.

“Filthy opportunists,” said the voice.

The figure loomed a few paces away, at the edge of the drive, bulky and strange. She shaded her eyes and saw that it was a white bear, standing erect. It wore a green sweater and carried a wicker basket with one paw. For one crazed moment she believed she was trespassing—that this bear owned the house, and had come home from shopping at the grocery store to find her bleeding all over the front lawn.

“I’m sorry,” she said. She tried to stand up.

“No, no,” said the bear again. “Please don’t. You mustn’t exert yourself.”

Drugs, thought Elijana, falling back. Blood loss. And then, more rationally, No—I’m sleeping. This is a dream.

“So, I wondered,” continued the bear. “Do you see those mountains?” It indicated the clouds to the west, across the valley. She realized the faint silver line on the horizon was the ocean. Clouds massed above the sea, white, with lavender shadows and golden heights.

“No, the mountains are in the other direction.” She indicated east with her head, then felt obscurely that she was being rude. “I think.”

“Ah,” said the bear. “That’s what I was afraid of. Do you mind if I sit down? There’s no need to be frightened. I’m here to assist.” The bear took a step.

“Stop! Hey!” said Elijana, brandishing the gun. She wondered if the bear had escaped from the zoo, then rebuked herself for that silly thought. Clearly this was a dream at best and a hallucination at worst.

“I am unarmed,” the bear assured her, apparently insensible to the possibilities of claws and teeth, a thousand pounds of flesh and fur.

“That may be. But…” Why am I talking to the imaginary bear? thought Elijana. She closed her eyes, opened them, closed them. Opened them again. Nothing had changed. The bear looked at her helpfully.

“What’s in the basket?” she asked.

“Mostly food. I thought we could have a picnic.”

Elijana gave up for the moment. All right then. She was going to have a picnic with a talking bear. She closed her eyes and heard it settle heavily beside her. “I’m sorry to have frightened you,” it said. “I know I’m probably not what you expected.”

Elijana licked her dry lips and hazarded a glance in its direction.

It was a beautiful bear, with pristine white fur, shining claws. Its eyes, instead of being black and small, were large and glimmered like green sea water. The sweater it wore, however, was ragged, especially at the hem, and it had the bear equivalent of a beer gut.

Her wound had begun to trickle blood again. She shifted her body on the lumpy ground.

“You’re uncomfortable. Allow me,” said the bear, picking up her jacket and folding it. It slid the makeshift pillow under her head.

“Thanks,” said Elijana stupidly.

“No problem. You’ve led me a merry chase,” it went on. “You’re pretty fast for someone who’s been shot.”

“You’ve been tracking me?”

“Following you, yes.”

“What…what for?”

“I told you, I’m here to help,” said the bear. It opened the basket. “Now let me see,” it continued fussily. Elijana half expected it to put on spectacles.

It withdrew a blue-and-white checked tablecloth, shook it out and set it on the ground. Then came a smaller basket filled with strawberries. Paper wrapped sandwiches followed, and two ornate enameled tumblers. Lastly, a black bottle with a waxed cork. The bear sliced the wax with one claw, pulled the cork out, and poured drinks.

“Cheers,” said the bear, giving her one.

“What is it?” The liquid was nearly black.

“Black Balsam,” said the bear. “A liqueur. Fortifying, good for the blood.”

Alcohol was actually a blood thinner, Elijana thought. But the opiate wasn’t working very well and she was really tired of pain. She drank. The liquid was bitter and herbal, and burned her throat, but left a lingering sweetness in her mouth.

The bear took a little sip. “Ah,” it sighed.

How could it be so deft, with those enormous paws? How could it fold jackets and hand round drinks?

“Strawberry?” it asked, extending the little basket.

Elijana took the fruit, admiring its glossy scarlet surface, studded with tiny bright seeds. She hadn’t had any fresh food in a long time. When her MREs ran out she resorted to hacking open canned goods from abandoned grocery stores. Her last meal had consisted of spaghetti hoops and canned potatoes. She had never known there was anything as disgusting as canned potatoes.

“It’s strawberry season?” she asked. She thought it was still winter—but it was hard to tell in this place.

“No. Not down here, anyway.”

She ate several strawberries—they were tiny, but very sweet—then lay back and looked at her companion. It sat with its legs straight in front of it, forepaws resting on its knees. Two tufts of fur stood up from its rounded ears.

“Where did you come from?” she demanded, determined to get to the root of her sudden psychosis.

“Latvia.”

“Oh, Latvia. So what are you doing here?”

“Business.”

“Are you red or blue?” she asked.

“Am I red or blue?” The bear looked amused. “I am, as you can see, white. No. This is not my war,” it added.

The liquor was already softening the edges of her pain. She wanted another drink but was too shy to ask. They gazed together across the valley to the west.

“Do you see that?” asked the bear.

“What?” said Elijana.

“Oh, I thought you saw them.”

“What do you mean?”

“Never you mind,” said the bear.

“The mountains again? I’m sorry, I really don’t. They’re in the other direction. East. Can you stop asking? Can I have another drink?”

“Certainly.”

The bittersweet liquor coated her tongue and mingled with the taste of strawberries. How could something as primitive as liquor help, when finely formulated drugs did so little? She focused her eyes on the bear’s sweater. It looked like a snowflake sweater, one of those you saw in skiing magazines. Instead of snowflakes it bore a repeating pattern of fruit: purple plum, green pear, yellow apple, all on a background of grass green.

“Nice sweater.”

“Do you like it? I made it myself.”

Elijana snorted. “You knit?”

“You don’t think I’m real,” observed the bear.

“Why should I?”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s absurd. No offense.”

“Isn’t this war absurd? Isn’t life absurd? I mean, given certain presuppositions…”

Elijana felt tired. “Stop it. That’s not the same thing at all.”

“Sorry,” said the bear. “I get philosophical when I drink. You really don’t see the mountains?” it asked again.

“No,” said Elijana, hand wandering to her injured shoulder. It was much wetter than she would have liked.

“Oh, we’d better take care of that,” said the bear. Muttering to itself, it prodded the soaked bandages. “Dear me. You’d better have another pill, I think.”

Elijana obediently took another pill with water. She was done arguing. The liquor—and the blood loss—had taken much of the fight out of her. The bear searched around the ground, and then produced a stick.

“If I’m going to do this properly it’s going to hurt,” it said. “Here. Bite down.” It stuck the branch between her teeth. Before she closed her eyes, Elijana noted that a blackbird had returned, and was sitting on a tree branch, watching the proceedings with interest.

“Ready?” With its curiously deft paws, the bear packed the wound with gauze, pushing it deep inside, like a dowel into a bore hole. It did hurt, horribly. She bit down hard and again felt herself falling into warm darkness.

Rustling, dense trees. Fireflies rising from the grass. The hush and murmur of damp leaves. She was twelve and they were playing with the neighbor kids, maybe Capture the Flag—something that required running endlessly back and forth in the twilight. Ground lost, ground won, alliances formed and broken, prisoners taken and freed. She was fast, faster than the biggest boys, and felt she could run forever. She could be quick in the shadows, and crafty, outwitting the enemy, laying a ruse and then taking advantage of it. She loved deciding when to stand her ground or duck out of the way, anticipating each move correctly and to her advantage. War was like chess and dancing, and on those evenings, decades before her enlistment, she knew she wanted to be a soldier.

“Please wake up,” said the bear.

Elijana squinted through heavy eyelids.

“Thought I lost you for a minute,” the bear said.

“No, I’m just resting,” she told him. “I’m going to get up soon.”

“Very good,” said the bear. It withdrew a pocketknife from its person. She watched as it took up a long, curved claw, similar to its own, and began whittling at it.

“What’s that?” she asked.

The bear indicated a whole pile of claws beside it on the picnic cloth. “Bear claws. I won them in a fight,” it said, looking modest.

“Another bear?”

“Yes. A nasty fellow. Arcturus Ursus Horribilus.” It pronounced each word precisely.

“A polar bear?” said Elijana.

“I can see how you might think that, but the Latin is deceptive. He was a grizzly, actually.”

“But you are a polar bear.”

“No,” said the bear primly.

Elijana felt self-conscious, as if she had mistaken its gender, which was by no means obvious either. Perhaps an albino brown bear, she thought. But then wouldn’t its eyes be pink?

“Well what kind of bear are you?”

“I don’t go in much for taxonomy,” said the bear. “And anyway, if I’m a figment of your imagination, why should it matter?”

“Just making conversation,” said Elijana, feeling cross.

“Sandwich?” her companion asked, setting aside the claws and unwrapping the greasy packet.

Her stomach gave a lurch. “No.”

It munched at the thick bread and bacon. Elijana took up a strawberry instead. She held it in the tips of her fingers. Tiny and gemlike, it tasted of summer—eastern summer—heightened and condensed and simmered down to the bewitching, blood essence of the season. She lay back, put her hand to her shoulder, which squelched unpleasantly. She had soaked through the bandages already.

“Do you see that?” the bear asked, pointing with its paw.

Elijana squinted. The clouds in the west had assumed weird shapes, yes, almost like mountains, but inverted. They were snowy white on the bottom and warm blue at the top. The sun had sunk lower, so that its rays now radiated from beneath them.

“Mirage?” she said, watching light flicker back and forth on the white slopes.

The bear made a tutting sound.

“You know I read this book when I was little,” said Elijana. “Back when the Huns were invading Eastern Europe, they saw a town hanging upside down over a poppy field. Like the houses were hanging upside down because they were full of gold and really heavy. That was what they thought. The sun was hot and it really was just the opium fumes that made them high. They all fell asleep and the Magyar slaughtered them and it became a holiday.”

The bear, who had put down its knife to listen, said, “Intriguing. No one ever told me that story before.”

Elijana looked up into its kind, green eyes.

“Are you real?” she whispered.

“Very,” the bear assured her.

It picked up her right hand and fitted the end of one of the grizzly claws over her fingertip.

“Too tight,” it remarked, going back to whittling. It looked like it was hollowing out the ends.

“Whater those for?” she slurred. Was she drunk?

“Climbing. Kind of like ice picks.” It mimed clawing its way up a slick slope.

“K,” said Elijana. She fumbled for the black bottle and drank straight from it, filling her body with more gracious heat.

“Whoa there,” said the bear mildly, but did not attempt to take the bottle from her. A blackbird hopped from around the tree trunk and cocked its head.

“I said shoo!” growled the bear, menacing it. It squawked and darted away.

“What do they want?” asked Elijana, fingering her revolver.

“To eat you,” said the bear. “Don’t worry, I’m looking out.”

Elijana thought of something. “So if you’re from Latvia,” she said. “If you’re from Latvia. If… How come you don’t speak…Latvian?”

“Who says I don’t?”

“But your English is so perfect. You don’t even have an accent.”

“Maybe I’m bilingual.”

“You speak Latin too though,” said Elijana.

The bear inclined its head. “Maybe I’m trilingual.”

“Well I still think your English is awfully good for a foreigner,” muttered Elijana, then felt guilty. Was that racist? No. It was something else—but what?

“I do try,” said the bear, holding up a grizzly claw to examine it with one eye.

A loud explosion rocked the air. Elijana craned her neck to see a church steeple in the valley below topple sideways.

“There go the Lutherans,” observed the bear.

Elijana giggled, even though it hurt, even though she felt the blood welling up in her wound again. She kept giggling until she passed out again.

She held her daughters, one on each knee, bounced them to make them laugh. She brushed their wet hair—one fair, one chestnut—fresh from their baths. Her husband had made a pot of herbal tea to warm them up, and it smelled of peaches and chamomile. She turned her girls so that she could see their little faces, their wide blue eyes like hers, their cool cheeks. They were the best things she had ever accomplished. When she tucked them into bed she sang “Down in the valley, valley so low/Hang your head over, hear the wind blow.”

It was the night before she departed for the front.

“Don’t go,” said her husband in the kitchen, tears standing in his eyes. “Don’t go, El.”

“I have to,” she said. “They need me.”

“Please don’t go.”

“Don’t go,” said the bear. “Not yet.”

Elijana turned her face to it. “I have to get up and leave soon,” she said. “I feel much better. I need to get home.”

The bear reached over and smoothed back her hair, combing it gently with wicked claws.

“The sun is setting,” it observed.

Elijana looked at the western horizon, at the mountain clouds. They had achieved more definition. This time she saw ice, and—yes, those were boulders! And above them, grass, and cliffs, and long silky waterfalls.

“Look higher,” the bear said softly.

Light gilded the steep white clouds. In the tricky, unfathomable distance, it seemed that slender towers soared on the heights, brave with golden banners. There were orchards too, and peaked roofs, and fountains splashing down, down, down.

“It is a town!” said Elijana, her tongue thick. “Like in the story.” She was tired.

“A city, really,” The bear continued combing back her hair. It was hypnotically calming. Her shoulder didn’t hurt anymore.

“I see it. It’s pretty. Is that…where you’re from?”

“Yes. I’m headed there tonight. Would you like to go together?”

Elijana thought for a moment. She was supposed to go home and see her girls. But how? There was no other way out of this battle-scape. Ocean to the west, desert to the south, rebel armies to the north and east.

Up, she thought. I could go up! Why didn’t I think of that before? Up is a direction too.

“Ok,” she said. “What about those blackbirds?”

“No bird can fly that high.”

“Can I talk to my husband when I get there?”

“Soon enough.”

“And my girls?”

“Everything,” said the bear. “Everything is already there.”

The bear lifted her hand and fitted a claw over her fingertip. With its penknife, it had hollowed out the claws at the thick ends so that they easily capped her fingers. She flexed the claws, admiring how they moved with her fingers.

“Rawr,” she said.

The bear took her right, useless hand and did the same, until she had a full set.

“That ice is slick,” said the bear, nodding at the mountains. “You’ll need these to help you climb.”

Elijana looked at the clouds. The lowest slopes were still white and glassy. But above them…a breeze blew, scented with sweet slopes of long grass and a profusion of blue flowers. The city waited on the very tops of the floating, delectable mountains.

“You’ll come with me?” she asked, suddenly doubting her own ability to climb. She could not feel her right arm at all.

“Of course. I won’t let you fall.”

Faint and far rang a bell.

The bear took Elijana’s hands in its paws. Black claws intertwined.

Elijana closed her eyes, whimpered, ground her teeth. After awhile, she became very still. The bear sat with her as the light dwindled. Then the city in the sky and the city in the valley melted into the perfect twilight, and the twilight into night.

Like welcome lights, the stars winked on one by one.

***

Shelley K. Davenport lives and writes in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is the author of many flash fiction and short stories, and is also at work on an alternate history fantasy novel. She can be found at https://www.shelleykdavenport.com/.