Page 3 of Rose's Untamed Bear
“No, don’t go to the door,” Mother stepped forward. “Don’t open it.”
I ignored them both and strode to the door. The blizzard-like wind tried to yank it from my hands as I wrenched it open, sneaking in a swirl of biting flakes, but none of that mattered once I saw the creature sprawled across our battered threshold.
The bear was enormous, even compared to the ones I’d seen now and then in the woods. Its fur was shaggy and ice-matted, the color of burnt earth. It slumped, motionless; only the slow rise and fall of its chest was proof that it still clung to life. I’d expected terror to crawl over my skin—a beast this size could have ripped me in half—but what I felt instead was… no, not pity. It was more. Already, an unexplainable urge to nurse this creature back to health was forming inside my heart. The fur on its foreleg was splashed red with blood, the paw curled inwards at an angle that made my own bones ache just to look at it. Worse than the wound was the sound it made. Not the rumblingroar of a wild bear, but a thin, wounded whining that belonged to a dying dog or a sick child. I dropped my bow to my side.
Snow hovered behind me, trembling so bad her teeth clicked together. “Rose, shut the door. If it gets in?—”
“Look at it.” I pressed a palm to her chest to keep her back. “It’s not here to get us. It’s dying.”
Mother didn’t try to drag us away. I heard the soft scrape of her feet as she crept behind, her body close enough to shield us both if the bear lunged. But it didn’t move. It just watched us, its huge head pillowed on icy paws. I bent to one knee, putting us at eye level. The bear's left eye was caked with blood, possibly from the same wound that split its brow, but the right—the right was shockingly alive, deep, and brown as river soil. I have no idea what made me do it, but I reached out, slow and stupid, like I was greeting a friend. "Hey there. Looks like you've been in one hell of a fight. I hate to think what the other guy looks like." My fingers brushed against its fur. "If you promise not to bite us, I'll get you inside and get you all better."
Snow squeaked. “You’re mad. You’re mad. You’re going to get yourself killed.”
“It’s hurt.” My voice came out flat and strange, even to me. “I think it’s… asking for help.”
Mother’s hand clamped onto my wrist, keeping me from touching it again. “The woods send us things for a reason,” she hissed. “What did I tell you about the signs? There is no such thing as a friendly beast here.” But there was a warning in her tone, not a command, a fear she didn’t want to say out loud.
The bear let out a gusty, wet sigh. Its paw scrabbled, feebly, trying to pull itself closer. The sight made something in my chesttwist up hard: it wasn’t just hurt; it was trying to come inside. To the warmth. To us. To me.
The blizzard shrieked louder; snow was already drifting against its flanks, half-burying it. The beast was going to either freeze to death or bleed out on our step.
“Let it in,” I said. “We can close the kitchen door. If it gets up, we can trap it.”
“Trap it with what, Rose? Our mop and a bread knife?” Snow’s voice quavered, but she didn’t try to stop me as I rested a hand on the bear’s cold fur. The bear twitched when my fingers brushed gently over the weeping wound on its paw, but only a little. If anything, it seemed grateful. I shuffled forward on my knees and pressed gently at the joint. The bear whimpered, but didn’t strike or recoil.
“It’s broken,” I said, “and bleeding bad.” I glanced up at Mother. “If we leave it, it’ll die.”
“It’s a wild thing,” Mother said. But she didn’t sound certain.
“So am I,” I snapped. “You tell me every day I was born from the wild.”
Something passed over her face then. Grief, maybe, or some memory deeper and darker than anything she usually let me see. She pursed her lips and nodded. “Fine. Drag it in.”
Snow gasped. “Mother!”
“If your sister wants to risk her neck, then we will do it my way,” she said, and her voice was iron. “Rose, you get it settled on the hearth rug. Snow, fetch the salve and bandages from the box.” She paused, then added, “and my old knife, the sharp one.”
I looped one arm underneath the bear’s jaw, the other around its massive shoulder, and leaned back with all my strength. The beast was heavy, but it huffed and squirmed, helping me as best it could. Once we got it into the room, I guided its massive head to lie near the fire. It shuddered all over as the warmth hit, its—no, his… I didn't know how, but with absolute clarity, I knew it was a he—eyes fluttered shut for a moment while he groaned low in his chest.
The three of us huddled around him, and for a moment, everything was silent but for the storm chewing at the walls and the bear’s slow, rasping breaths.
“I’ve never seen a bear like it,” Snow whispered, clutching her own arms. “It’s—I don’t know, it feels wrong.”
“Nothing wrong about him,” I said, tracing the rough symmetry of his face. “He's beautiful. He's just lost.”
Mother handed me a rag and the jar of amber-smelling salve. “If it tries to bite, I take no blame.”
But he didn’t bite. He just watched me, one sad brown eye tracing every move I made as I cleaned the blood, rolled strips of linen tight around the wound, and pressed the cool balm in. His fur gave off a faint, wild aroma—moss, woodsmoke, and something sharp and distant like iron.
"You poor thing, what happened to you?" I asked, not expecting an answer, but a soft grunt escaped his lips like he was trying. Where I rubbed the cold off his fur, it began to look shinier, and I couldn't resist putting one hand in, fully under the fur. I marveled at how soft and warm it was. So different from any dog I had ever petted. I felt hard muscle underneath my palm, and a shiver moved through me. Not fear. Something else. Somethingthat made my cheeks burn. When I talked soothing nonsense, he seemed to listen.
More daring now, my hands kept moving through his thick fur, and at some point, he let out a low sound, sort of a half-sigh, half-groan, and the vibration of it traveled through the ground, through my knees, and straight into my chest. It felt as though the rumble had been born inside me. I saw the massive teeth, thicker than my fingers, and still, I could not stop touching him.
Snow scuttled back to her mending, shooting us nervous looks, but after a while, she softened. “He’s kind of like our old dog. The big one with the ruined ear,” she said.
I smiled. “Yeah. Same eyes.” Even as I said those words, I knew they weren't true. No eyes I had ever seen had seemed to look down into the bottom of my soul and made my stomach flutter in the strangest way possible, not like his did.
Mother braided her hands in her lap and watched us over the top of her mug. Something flickered in her gaze. “You know what they say about beasts in these woods,” she said, “Sometimes the worst monsters are men, and sometimes the best men are?—”