The Shadow of the Bear: A Fairy Tale Retold

  “What time is it?” Bear said at last.

  Rose held her watch up to the streetlight. “Two o’clock.”

  “Let’s go,” he said, setting off. “I hope your mother won’t be worried about us. We really should have given her a quick call.”

  “Why did you take us there?” Rose asked as they set off for home.

  “Well, it’s just my secret place,” he confessed, “You let me in your house. I thought I’d show you my place.”

  “Do you live there?” Rose wanted to know.

  “Oh, no. But I go there, now and then,” Bear said, kicking at a clump of snow with his foot. “What did you think?”

  “It was—breathtaking,” Rose admitted. She felt terribly drawn to asking him about the stains behind the altar.

  “Uh—you know, since it is my secret place, you wouldn’t tell any of your friends that I took you there, would you?” Bear suddenly seemed a bit flustered.

  “Oh, we don’t have any friends to tell,” Rose assured him. “Just Mom.”

  “Oh, I don’t care if your mom knows.”

  They lapsed into an unnatural silence on the walk home, which Rose found stifling and unbearable.

  So, as they came to their block, she scooped up a mitten full of snow, packed it, and tossed it at Bear’s face.

  “Hey!” he yelped in shock, and even Blanche had to laugh at his expression.

  “So that’s what you want!” he exclaimed, and thrust two big gloves into the snow. He let loose two snow balls at Rose while Blanche ducked to get out of the way of Rose’s return fire.

  She laughed at them and unexpectedly slipped a mitten full of slush down Bear’s neck when his back was turned.

  “This is betrayal!” he roared, and took off after her. She squeaked and ran, while Rose heroically pounded him from behind.

  He chased them both to their doorstep, and they stood on their stoop and rained snow missiles down on him, keeping him from gaining the porch quite effectively. He raged and protested and pleaded while Rose kept a stream of well-aimed snow balls coming at him and Blanche managed a few lucky pot shots of her own. At last he fell on his knees and begged to be let back into the house.

  “No mercy,” Rose grinned, and whomped a snowball squarely on his chest.

  With a grunt, he flopped over on his back, rolling his eyes and sticking out his tongue in feigned death. Blanche muffled a scream of laughter with her mittened hand, and Rose had to harden herself to stand firm. At last, finding them pitiless, he rolled over on his stomach, shielded his head and moaned, “Snow White, Rose Red, will you beat your lover dead?”

  “Oh, have some mercy, Rose,” Blanche protested.

  “Well—I suppose in charity we should relent,” sighed Rose. “You there! Sir Bear! We have decided thou shalt receive our pardon and our favor, if thou so desirest.”

  “A thousand blessings upon you,” panted Bear, crawling up the steps on his hands and knees.

  “Only—” Rose stopped him, “if thou will kiss our royal feet.”

  “Fair maiden, I will,” he returned, and actually kissed Rose’s proffered dirty boot. Blanche dissolved in giggles as he then pretended to bite it.

  Rose whipped her boot away indignantly. “I protest, foul wretch, thou must take no revenge, and must prove thyself a noble, valiant lord before we allow thee to re-enter our graces.”

  “I vow I will be ever most noble and ever most meek,” Bear beat his breast, “in thanksgiving for your many favors to such a peon as I. I promise you riches and many blessings if you will only allow me to serve you and will bestow upon me the joy of your company again.”

  “Well, since it is cold out here, we shall relent,” said Rose. “It’s too late tonight, most noble Sir Bear, but return tomorrow and we shall wine and dine thee upon hot chocolate and cookies.”

  “For such a promise, fair ones, I shall return. I’d best say farewell, my lovely ones, before the neighbors call the police!” And with a smile, Sir Bear leapt from the porch and bounded off into the night.

  Chapter 6

  THE NIGHTTIME sojourn to St. Lawrence had an interesting aftermath. It should have made the girls more curious than ever about who Bear was. It had the opposite effect. Perhaps they felt that he had earned their trust, and they decided to allow him to keep his secrets.

  Nothing much of note happened the rest of the winter, except that the friendship between Bear and their family deepened. Bear continued his regular visits, and the girls continued to enjoy his company and talk.

  “I had a weird dream last night,” Rose said to Bear a few weeks after the St. Lawrence visit. February was turning into March’s thaw, but spring refused to come quickly. She, Blanche and Bear were talking one Friday night after Mother had gone to bed. “Do you know how to interpret dreams?”

  “Do I look like I should?” Bear was lying on the floor, poring over a book of medieval art that Blanche had taken down for him to look at. She was also on the floor, with her back propped up against the couch.

  “Sort of. Those dreadlocks make you look like a shaman.” Rose, curled up on the couch, prodded him with a toe teasingly. “You know, I’ve never seen a white guy with dreadlocks. How did you get them?”

  “With great difficulty.” Bear yanked at one matted lock thoughtfully. “I had a Jamaican roommate in J.D. He thought I should try dreading my hair. I’ve just sort of kept it that way. It looks rather hideous, but a great disguise for a prince, don’t you think?”

  “Ah, yes indeed, Sir Bear. Well, anyhow, I thought you might be able to interpret dreams. But not because of your dreadlocks. Some people have that gift, like Daniel in the Bible. I don’t think he had dreadlocks.” Rose picked at her nails meditatively. “I always think my dreams mean something.”

  “Maybe they do, and maybe they don’t,” Bear ventured.

  “Well, see if you can interpret this one. It was actually kind of funny. I dreamed that those mean girls from school had kidnapped my sister. I didn’t see them, but I knew it was them. And I was running downstairs and through the rooms trying to find my mom. You know how you can never seem to do what you want to do in a dream? Well, at last I found her, and she was in the kitchen ironing, and I said, ‘Mom, they kidnapped Blanche. What can we do?’ and Mom just shrugged and said in a slow, careless way, ‘Well, those things happen.’ ‘But Mom,’ I said, ‘we’ve got to do something! Call the police! Don’t you care about your own daughter?’ And she said, ‘If you’re going to be so sassy, why don’t you do something about it?’ Now, my Mom isn’t like that at all, which is why it was so weird. And then the doorbell rang, and I ran to open the door, and it was the girls from school—the ones who kidnapped Blanche, and I said to them, ‘Where’s Blanche?’ and they said, ‘We have her.’ ‘What are you going to do with her?’ I asked, and they said, ‘We’re going to stick her head in a box of Styrofoam balls.’ ‘Is that painful?’ I asked, and they said, ‘Yes, very painful.’ And that’s all I remember. Isn’t that weird?”

  Bear, who had been trying to keep a straight face, burst out laughing.

  “A box of Styrofoam balls?” Blanche giggled.

  “Yes,” said Rose perplexed, “It seemed normal in the dream, and I guess I thought it was a sort of torture I’d heard about.”

  “Nothing that I’ve ever heard,” Bear said at last.

  “No more craft projects for you, Rose,” Blanche said, rubbing her eyes.

  “So do you think that had any meaning?” Rose pushed Bear with her foot to make him stop laughing.

  “Yes,” he said. “It means you’re seriously demented.”

  “Bear!” she cried, kicking him fiercely. “Stop it!” But he now was rolling on the floor, guffawing helplessly. She jumped up and began beating him on the head with a sofa cushion. He grabbed at her ankles, growling playfully, and she shrieked and tried unsuccessfully to leap back onto the couch.

  “Blanche, help!” she cried.

  Blanche merely grinned. “That’s what happens
if you corner a bear.”

  “Oh, nice—sit there and watch while he eats me!” Rose whapped Bear on the head again until he finally released her with a pretend whimper.

  Rose collapsed onto the couch and said, “Well, do you want to hear my recurring dream? I’ll tell it so long as you don’t hoot at it like you did at this one.”

  “Is this the one with the blood?” Blanche asked, pulling up her knees with a shiver.

  “Yeah.” Rose turned to Bear, who was now lying on his back beside Blanche, and explained, “I’ve been having it since I was oh, six years old. I don’t know why. It’s one of those riddles of my life.”

  “One of the many riddles,” Blanche murmured.

  “What happens in it?” asked Bear, trying to regain his composure.

  “It’s pretty simple, usually. Sometimes it’s just this dream, and sometimes a dream I’m dreaming turns into this one. I keep wondering if I’m making it up.” Rose tucked her feet more comfortably under her. “Sometimes in the beginning I’m scared, running away from something, like a tiger. Then, other times, I’m just at home in Warwick, eating supper with our family. And it’s early evening. Then I say, ‘Oh, I’ve got to pick the roses,’—or sometimes my mom asks me to go outside and pick the roses, and I go outside and start picking them, tearing them off with my hands, and because I’m in such a hurry and too stupid to go back inside and bring out scissors to cut off the thorns, my hands are getting all torn up. So, I’m there picking the roses—I think I’m supposed to pick them in order to make a wreath for the table or something—that’s it, because we’re having company come over, and my mom asks me to pick roses for the table.

  “Then I look at the road and it’s all full of red water, like blood. And the sun is really weird, too. And I think, the sun’s going down, and the water is just reflecting it. And the road, this is the weird thing, the road leads back to the country, and all of a sudden I’m wading in this red river and I’m singing. And then all of my family comes out and yells at me—‘Come back here! Get out of the water!’—but I just wave and keep walking down the river. And it’s like blood. That’s the freaky part. But for me in the dream, it’s normal and I’m happy as I’m walking away, and I know all of a sudden that I’m never going to see them again. But I don’t care. It’s a very weird feeling, but I like it.”

  She ended and looked at the two faces looking at her silently from the carpet. “You see why I asked you if you can interpret dreams?”

  “I see,” Bear said slowly. “Perhaps you’re going to be a martyr.”

  “I’ve thought of that,” Rose said. “That’s what I think, but I don’t know.” She looked at him. “What about you? Do you have any weird dreams?”

  “Always,” he said lightly. “Horrible ones. So bad, I go to great lengths to forget them. You’re lucky you don’t have to try to forget your dreams.”

  “Oh, I do, sometimes, but even my scary ones are like stories, and I sometimes lie awake, wondering what would have happened next if I hadn’t woken up,” mused Rose.

  “What about you, Snow White?” Bear leaned back to look at Blanche, who colored at the name he’d started using for her recently.

  “Why do you keep calling me that?” she asked, a bit annoyed.

  “I’m just saying your name in English. Blanche is French for ‘white.’ Right?” He gazed at her, a faint smile on his face.

  “Then why don’t you just call me ‘Whitey?’” she asked, resentfully. Snow White was a stupid name.

  Bear snorted. “Now that sounds stupid. Snow White fits the color of your skin...and your charming personality.”

  “Thanks,” she muttered, fiddling with a hole in her sock. If he only knew. She rested her chin on her knees, letting her hair fall all around her, obscuring her face.

  “So tell us about your dreams,” Bear said.

  “I don’t have dreams.”

  “Oh, come on. Everyone has dreams.”

  “I don’t,” Blanche insisted. “Or at least, I never remember mine. I either sleep too deeply to dream, or I don’t dream at all.”

  “Well, everyone dreams. But you never remember yours?” Bear murmured. “That’s very strange.”

  “I suppose,” Blanche fixed her eyes on the colored titles on the bookshelf as she spoke, “that there are so many fears I have during the day that God feels sorry for me, and never gives me nightmares.”

  “What about just plain dreams?”

  “Things seem very real for me,” Blanche spread her hands helplessly. “Sometimes it seems to me that every word that we speak—even the words on advertisements—has meaning, that even the most stupid little detail is terribly, terribly important—like the universe is written on stone and nothing is ever left to chance. And then some days, nothing seems to mean anything, and I feel as though the whole cosmos is shaking and collapsing. Sometimes I think I’m hallucinating. Maybe I do. But I never remember my dreams, if I ever have any. There’s too much that goes on during the day.”

  There was a pause, and Blanche again blushed, this time feeling she had said too much.

  Bear was silent. “There is one dream I could tell you about,” he said at last.

  “Tell us.” Rose looked at him, curious.

  Bear leaned back and frowned at the ceiling. “It still gives me the creeps,” he said, although he looked more serious than scared. “When I was younger, my kid brother and I used to go rollerblading in Central Park. We must have spent all our free hours at the Park, whizzing around the paths. We used to think we were real hotshots. Actually, one time, there was a gang of boys who decided to try and beat us up for our skates. But we just got on the path and started skating, and we outdistanced them in no time.”

  He grinned at the ceiling in memory. “Man, I remember the look on their faces. We were just flying. Anyhow, we thought we were big stuff after that. Boy, we didn’t know anything.” He sank into silence for a minute. “My dad gave us the roller blades. It was his going-away present to us. He gave them to us and then told us that he was leaving my mom. That was before she died.”

  “Do you know where he is?” Blanche asked, feeling a sudden gap in her chest.

  Bear laughed sarcastically. “Actually, yes. Do I care where he is? Frankly, no.” The bitterness in his voice stung them both into silence.

  After a pause, he said, “Anyway, in the dream, my brother and I were rollerblading and this gang was chasing us. But this time, we weren’t skating fast enough. You know how it is in dreams? It was looking pretty bad for us. The gang caught us, and they were hitting us with iron pipes and sticks. Then, all of a sudden, they vanished, and there was this guy standing in front of us. A big guy, with a cross around his neck. He was the one who scared them away. He helped us to our feet and we went someplace with him. There was a lot of other stuff that happened next that I can’t remember. Most of it probably didn’t make sense. But we were with this guy, and I was starting to feel better. We were walking someplace, and all of a sudden, we fell into this pit. I couldn’t move, and I started screaming because I thought I was paralyzed. And then everything went black.”

  He hesitated. “Now, you’re going to think this is funny, but in the dream, it was really, really scary. I saw these little shapes moving around my body. They looked like little men. They were little dwarves, all black as night, and they were cutting pieces out of my clothes and hair and taking them away. I realized that they had already eaten the guy with the cross, and my brother, and they were going to start eating me next, little by little. And then I woke up.”

  “Ugh!” Rose and Blanche both shivered.

  “I had it a long time ago, but I can’t forget it. I always seem to start thinking about it when I’m in a small, dark place,” Bear confessed. He rolled over onto his side and stared at a color plate of the Bayeaux tapestry.

  “Did you know the guy with the cross?” Blanche asked.

  “Yes, actually,” Bear said. “He was a good friend of mine. Like a father, really.??
?

  “What happened to him?” Rose wanted to know.

  “He was killed in a robbery—the thief shot him,” Bear said briefly. “I’d rather not talk about it.”

  “You know, you’re always saying that …” Rose tried to make a joke, but her words trailed off into nothingness.

  There was a silence, and Blanche felt the darkness of the night crawling inside the house.

  “Thanks for telling us about your dream, Bear,” Rose said, after reflecting. Blanche was glad that her sister could find something to say.

  “Yeah. Now you too will start seeing little cannibalistic dwarves in the shadows every time you go into your room after dark,” Bear said with a ghastly smile.

  “No, I’m serious. I think it takes guts for a man to admit that he’s scared of—of a dream.”

  “Pff! I’m scared of lots of things. Not just dreams, either.” Bear stood up and stretched himself from head to feet. “I should go.”

  He scratched under his dreadlocks and stared thoughtfully at the door. “You know, I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to keep visiting you so regularly. I’m just getting to be too busy, and I’ll be having to…work more in the evenings.”

  “Oh no!” both girls exclaimed in dismay.

  “Oh, I’ll be back again,” Bear said hastily. “Don’t worry about that. I just can’t come as often.”

  “Well, come by whenever you can!” Rose urged. “You’re practically our only friend!”

  “We’d miss you a lot,” Blanche said in a small voice, strangely disconsolate.

  Bear laughed. “I’ll be back at least a few times this month,” he promised. “Thank you.” His eyes had returned to their usual teasing warmth. He picked up his coat from the stand and said good-bye, leaving the girls to gloomily imagine life without their odd friend.

  “Dull, dreary, dark, and depressing,” was Rose’s verdict as they went upstairs to bed.

  “Dead,” was Blanche’s sole comment. She wouldn’t say any more.