They hid themselves in the trees when he came shambling out of the mountains, from some faraway cave where the scent of the mother bear had carried on the fresh spring breeze.
They made themselves scarce before he appeared, the huge male in search of a mate. She sniffed the air, her eyes drawn to the sloping hills, her attention drifting from us, caught by something else. At first, their mother stayed close, intent upon them, but as their confidence swelled, she started to wander further away. I would sit cross-legged on the grassy bank, watching the water for the shining dart of fish scales like they did, laughing at their clumsy swipes, the splashes that left them bedraggled. Seasons passed and, weaned from their mother’s milk, they learned to hunt for themselves, tentative at first, perched pre- cariously on slippery rocks in the fast-flowing river that rushed through our forest. By night, we curled up together, a tangle of limbs ursine and human, the soft pads of their paws resting on my sun-browned flesh in our warm nest of leaves and earth, the damp rasp of their tongues against my face. Rather, I twisted my fingers into their fur, pulled them to the ground, buried my own teeth in their flanks and bit as hard as I could. I never cried when their claws or teeth scraped my skin or when they growled and pounced. I learned to wrestle with my bear siblings, the rough and tumble of our play with no quarter given. She must have been too solicitous to leave me, unable to stand the sound of a hungry infant, and so she scooped me up and took me back with her. That I didn’t flinch away from her hot breath or the rough caress of her paw. I’d like to think that I looked up at her, the mother bear, and held her gaze. The mother bear, her cubs still blind and damp-furred, attracted by the plaintive sound of a desolate newborn, her maternal anxiety still at its peak. Or I could have lain, whimpering and fearful, watching as she came closer. Left on the bare earth, I suppose I might have howled for as long as my little lungs could bear it. The king had given his decree – if it’s a girl, expose her on the mountain – and so some unfortunate soul was dispatched from the palace with this unwanted scrap of humanity: a baby girl instead of the glorious heir the king desired. When I was born, they left me on a hillside.
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