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The bear broke it when she stepped forward, lowering her head and swinging it once more. Fenli and I startled, and we both reached for each other, grasping for something to hold on to. I wrapped an arm around her back, hooking her waist and pulling her closer. She reached across my stomach, scrambling to grab hold of my side.

“Your knife?” she whispered, never taking her eyes off the bear.

I shook my head. “I left it,” I said quietly, “in the canoe.”

We were taking small steps backwards, and I watched as the bear watched us.

“Youleftit?” she hissed.

My grip tightened on her. Was she really going to scold me, here and now? “Because I was too busy running afteryou, remember?”

She huffed, which was a mistake. The bear, who’d relaxed slightly, flattened her ears again and slapped the ground with an enormous paw. We both flinched, and I pulled her more tightly to my side. My breaths came out ragged, and I hurried our backwards steps, but little good it did. The bear’s strides ate up any distance we’d made in moments, and she towered before us, impossibly wide, hulking shoulders, paws the size of baskets. She used those paws to strike the earth again, and I felt the force travel the length of my shaking legs. She was chuffing now, blowing air through her nose and shaking her head violently. Her neck rippled with the display, and I felt her breath across my face, hot and rank.

“So sorry,” Fenli said to the bear, her voice shaking but clear. “We’re sorry. We’re leaving. We mean your baby no harm, I promise. I promise.”

Backwards steps, backwards steps. We were desperate to get away.

She charged.

“Nonononono,” Fenli pleaded. She closed her eyes and clung to me. “Don’t you dare kill us, so help me, Toke.”

I closed my eyes too, turning into Fenli’s hair and wrapping my arms around her. Then the bear was upon us, and I felt a heft of air as she cut to the side and streaked off, her hairs brushing my godsdamnarm. I was gasping and shaking, I was so scared. When I looked over my shoulder, I saw her angling towards her babe.

“Shit,” I choked out. “We gotta get out of here.”

More back peddling. I wanted to turn and run—everything in me screamed to run away—but I had a feeling it would be over quickly if she decided to give chase.

She didn’t let up. Twice more, she caught up with us as we made our desperate trek back to the canoe. Each time Fenli talked to her, and each time the bear charged. She’d pound earth to get to us, then angle off, blowing by and throwing her head from side to side as she went. Fenli tripped and fell. I helped her up and my hand came back bloody, though I couldn’t say why. I had my face lashed by branches, and I limped, having twisted an old knee injury.

We were lucky. She could have ground us into the earth. She could have had her teeth in us in a heartbeat and had fresh meat for her meal. But she didn’t, and we made it to the canoe, and she watched from the tree line as we scrambled to get inside of it and push off down the channel.

She chuffed from her place among the trees.

With my oar in hand, I paddled furiously away from the shoreline, my heart in my throat and my everything shaking. We’d nearly died. She could have had us. We could have been dead on the forest floor, bear chow for a mama and her cub.

Fenli, who’d been on her hands and knees in the hull of the canoe, straightened and looked back at the beast on the shore.

“You,” she told the bear, lifting her voice so that she’d hear, “are a completeasshole.”

Chapter Nineteen

Fenli

We were both banged up and reeling. I had gashes on both my knees that bled all the way to my boots, and the fleshy part of my palm had been sliced open when I’d fallen. Something was wrong with my wrist, but I had no idea what. Roan had been lashed across his forehead and cheek by branches, and both bled down his neck. He’d also gone and messed up his knee, an old injury he could never heal from because he was always re-injuring it. He said as much as he sat in front of me, gripping his thigh to try and hide the tremor in his hands but failing. My hands were shaking too.

“It’s a miracle I didn’t soil myself,” he proclaimed. “I thought we were dead.”

He had abandoned his seat and laid out on his back with his legs kicked up and his arm over his eyes. I was on my side in the fetal position, staring about the canoe like I could hardly believe where I was.

“Found your knife,” I managed.

“Oh, right. The one I left behind to go chasing after you.”

“And to think, you survived that bear attack just to die in your sleep.”

“You know,” he said, clearly feeling bold after surviving the she-bear, “it’s too bad you don’t have a knife yourself. Maybe a sword? Could have come in handy today.”

“You’re dead, Faasval.”