The Bear

by Andrew Krivak

That every thing has its end. And we have a part to play, right up to that end.

Why did you wait that long before you woke me? she asked. Because sleep is the only balm I know, said the bear.

The wood you burn to cook your food and keep you warm? The smoke that rises was once a memory. The ashes all that is left of the story it belonged to. Why else would you be carrying the ashes of your father?

You don’t know! said the girl in a loud and sudden voice. Every morning I wake, I expect to see him. Every time we round a bend. Every snap of stick in this forest is one that he is breaking just ahead of me. And in the evening I’ll see a shape out of the corner of my eye, but when I look, it’s just the flames or the moonlight. And I wish it wasn’t.

this is where he will appear again and again, as often as you will seek him. Not only in those places where he has always been but where he could not be then yet will be now. In the slant of light on a lakeshore. In the silence between footfalls along a path. In the scent of wood smoke from a fire around which you will sit alone.

she crouched down between the cover of both graves and laid on that stone and in that silence alone, a girl no longer, though forever their child.