Chapter 12
One by one the creatures from the den skulked into her room. They sniffed respectfully almost drawing back when they noticed the huge bear in the doorway. Slinking low, again they crept closer. Toby pushed the water bowl forward with her muzzle. Sheckle crouched on his hind legs to lick her face while Izzie curled up at her feet. Sheckle’s warm nuzzling at her neck brought a slight smile. They didn’t need a soul to understand kindness.
With sudden force the bear sprang from his post and slammed his paw sideways, skittling them down the passage to their den like bowling pins. Elanora sat upright.
“Those foul beasts. No more!” the guard bear rumbled. It was the first time he had faced her. She hadn’t known he could even talk. She shifted on her bed overwhelmed by the sight of so much fur.
“They weren’t trying to hurt me,” she said.
The guard bear searched her eyes. No animal had tried so intently to reach into her thoughts as he did. Too tired for defenses she left herself open.
The bear blinked and shook his massive head. “I am old and I am tired and a prisoner as much as you. I tell you this now because in you have a strong heart full of faith and love and you are the One.”
Elanora’s eyebrows furrowed. What is this bear talking about? This great lump that had ignored her, hit her and scared off the only creatures showing her any kindness? Curiosity was the perfect antidote to languishing and Elanora propped herself upright.
The bear checked the entrance to her cell and when he returned, lay down to talk face to face. His voice dropped so low that any passerby would mistake it for a grumbling snore, but when Elanora leant in she could make out every fascinating word.
“I saw what you did for that cross breed and how they tricked you into it. You gave a soul to a creature that possessed none. You truly are the One I had waited for.” The fur stood to attention around his face as if his skin had shivered. “I remember my own Soulmaker. Her name was Grace,” he said. “She found me in a cage with a ring in my nose, chained to the ground. She freed me from slavery to a circus master who dragged me from centre ring to cage before screaming crowds and brutal carnival workers. I owe her my life,” he broke off. The past was a distant memory but it came with a sting that made his nose twitch.
“Grace cared for me, restored my health and granted me a soul. It was an awakening I will never forget. I saw the world anew. I…contemplated life for the first time. Beyond instinct and reactiveness.” He cast his gaze down, his eyes troubled.
“Go on, Bear,” she coaxed.
“One night there was a knock at the door but before she opened it she locked me in my room as a precaution, you understand. I was gentle with her but I owed no other human any kindness. Grace opened the door to my old master. I could hear his shouts clearly. She had taken away his livelihood; she had stolen what was his. I heard furniture falling and smelt the flow of blood. Breaking down the door took longer than I expected and I was too late to save her.” Anger hardened his voice. “I should have chased him there and then, I should have crushed him in my jaws, but Grace was breathing her last and I needed to be with her.”
“I’m so very sorry,” whispered Elanora. She reached out her hand to touch the bear who had swiped it away only a day ago. This time he let her stroke his coat.
“My heart broke that night and all I could wish for was revenge. But I had lost my chance. By the time I was able to go on he was miles away. For days I wandered until I was drawn into the Timefold. It was a place of rest. There I met other animals who had also been granted soul life. Some, like me, had been broken. They turned to me to lead them. Together we stalked the humans who had hurt us and did what we had to do to stop them hurting others.” He lifted his nose to the ceiling to keep a sudden spring of tears from leaking down his face.
“So you were their leader? What happened?”
The bear sniffed and lowered his head. “The panther came. Unlike most of us, his soul had been granted before his eyes had opened on this earth and he knew of no other existence, so he told us. He never talked about his Soulmaker. He liked to think he didn’t have one. It made him feel superior. In any case, he came to us from outside full of stories about replica animals, stuffed misfits, toys that were being granted life by unsuspecting humans. There had never been toys of this kind before. Soft bodied copies of animals made in one small part of the world that, as Panther predicted, would soon cover the globe. To me they were of little concern. I saw smaller versions of myself increasing in number every year but I didn’t pay it any mind. Until he told me the rest.” The bear looked stricken.
“He told me I should be the one most full of hate for the replicas after what the humans did to my birth mother. He had heard this account from inmates in the zoo where he lived and the retelling of it unearthed a memory I had buried deep.
“My mother was tethered to the ground, he said, so a powerful man could shoot her for sport. But the man couldn’t bring himself to shoot such a defenseless target so her throat was slit instead, as if that was nobler. It was true, what Panther said. I remembered it all. That powerful man held me in his arms right there in front of my dying mother as if he was my rescuer. My valiant father. And I did nothing. Cameras flashed and I did nothing. I should have ripped out his throat. But I stayed in his arms like a coward.”
“You were only a cub!”
“I lost my chance,” he growled, shaking his head.
“What Panther told me next changed everything. He said it was the mercy the man showed by not shooting my mother and saving me that turned the new toy bears into a sensation that everyone in the world wanted to own. No one was told how my mother was taken to with a knife. Only the photograph of me in his arms circulated and perpetuated the myth of his humanity. The toy bears were even named after him. Teddy. Such a disgrace!”
“No wonder you were angry. That’s a terrible story,” said Elanora taking his paw in her hand and scanning back through her memory on teddy bear history. Some of what he said rang true.
“My two mothers were murdered and I was a young bear full of vengeance. I led all the animals, Panther included, on a strike against the replicas.”
“But why against the soulings and not the humans?”
“Soulings? Yes, I should use their name,” he said, his muzzle lifted as if tracking a familiar smell.
“A Souling is a creature made in our image, so we believed we had the right to judge them. To destroy them. And we would do anything to stop them enjoying the happiness after life that we heard the humans talking about, while our own kind died without hope.” He stopped and closed his eyes, his nostrils quivering. “No, Elanora. In fact, it was because they were easy to kill.”
Elanora’s eyebrows knitted tight but she didn’t withdraw her hand.
“Then a strange creature came to our tunnels from another level who told of a powerful soulmaking child who existed in the Outer World. One who could make countless souls, not just one in a lifetime. If we could find that child then we could stop it creating soulings and make it create souls in our own offspring. What other way did we have of sharing eternity with our children?”
Elanora’s eyes narrowed.
“I promised my followers this child, but I was betrayed by a boy who vowed to deliver the special one only to send me one as useless as himself. The panther used my failure to challenge for leadership. He stole my cubs and threatened to kill them if I didn’t submit to him. I tried to fight, but he had amassed an army to do his bidding and I was taken prisoner. My punishment is to stay locked inside this festering part of the Timefold forever, no doubt. He wants his army to see me under his control. ‘See how the Great Bear performs for his master’. He may as well have put a ring through my nose!” The bear snorted loudly.
“Where are your cubs now?”
“They are alive,” the bear’s face brightened. “As I said, I hated the soulings but mostly I hated the teddies. Until I met one…I was alone in my cell when an old teddy cam
e in, scared but so brave. He had a message for me. He had found my cubs, Joey and Benbo, and led them to safety in the Outer World. He said he had to take the chance. He said he felt like family and couldn’t stand by to see them treated so badly.” A large tear slid down the bear’s muzzle. “Like family,” he sniffed.
Elanora smiled and squeezed his paw, losing her fingers between his pads. “Then why be so awful to me?”
“If you were the One I was looking for then I resented your presence. If you had only been brought to me when you were supposed to be, my own cubs could have received a soul and none of this madness would have begun. But over time, after watching you, my attitude has changed. I wanted to use you as much as the panther does. But you are kind. Your heart is gentle. You have challenged me as my teddy friend once challenged me. I have been wrong again. And now that I have seen how the panther manipulated you to bring his spawn to soul life, I fear it will happen again. I cannot allow any more of those mutants to be born anew. I have already seen the first one’s initiation.”
“What do you mean?” she asked anxiously.
“Your mutant beast was led straight from its den into the arena yesterday. In front of all the others it was blooded on its first souling.”
Elanora looked at the floor. I did that. A wave of nausea hit her and she edged back to bed.
The bear continued in a voice as hushed as mist on a moor, “The panther’s heart is a deeply hateful place, Elanora, as was mine. He is haunted by his past but instead of making it right, he digs himself deeper into his evil pit and incites others to join him. He comes up with reasons to excuse the killings. He has begun to tell his followers that by killing a replica, its human maker is now free to grant another life, maybe one for a cub of their own. Now he even thinks he works for the good of the one behind the Great Destination.”
“Who’s that?” she asked.
“Have you not heard of him? I thought that you might have. We know very little about your Soulmaker.”
The back of her neck tingled at the thought that she too had been loved into life. But how much more did she know about that than the bear did?
There was a long silence in which the lamp flickered and the shadows danced.
“Bear?”
“Yes, child.”
“What name did Grace give you?”
The bear made a choking noise and buried his face into his paws. Suddenly two wet noses poked in from the den, nostrils aquiver.
Smelling their rank presence, the bear rose to full height, lunging forcefully. Their noses withdrew in haste.
The bear softened and stared into Elanora’s blue eyes. “You must be saved from this place. This time I won’t miss my chance.”