A Lion Among Men (6 page)

He rehearsed these visions to put himself to sleep at night, troubled upon a bed of foreign moss.

He’d gone six days or more, practicing conversational gambits aloud-“Hello, I’m very new in town”-“Hello, are you very in need of a new friend, one with prior experience?”-when he crossed through a thicket to the edge of a blueberry patch. The fruit hung heavy, cobalt and black and pink, and a small creature, perhaps the size of a human cub, was driving its snout through the offerings.

Brrr couldn’t help himself. “You must be very brave out here all alone in the woods,” he began. The cub froze and turned an eye like a blueberry upon the Lion. Brrr straightened his shoulders and tossed his head to aerate his mane into magnificence, whereupon the cub fell to the ground on its back, its small stained paws cupped below its furry chin.

“Sweet Lurlina,” said Brrr, “I’m slaying them right and left with my conversational wit.” He went up to look closely. The cub wasn’t dead, but shamming: Brrr could see it shaking like a butterfly in a draft. “What are you doing? I won’t hurt you.”

“Just my luck,” said the Bear cub, for that’s what he had turned out to be. “I break the rules and go off on my own, and the King of the Forest arrives to devour me.”

Brrr almost turned around to see the King approaching. “You don’t mean me? How very droll. Get up, I won’t hurt you. Rise. Why are you lying there as if you’ve had a very cardiac episode? It’s unsettling.”

The Bear cub sat up. “If you insist. You promise you won’t hurt me?”

“I’m very promising. Why did you collapse like that? Do I look like a hunter to you?” Brrr was more curious than offended.

“It’s what you do if you’re facing long odds,” said the Bear. “You play meek and helpless in front of a sterner foe, and that kick-starts a sense of noble mercy in them. That’s the theory anyway. I never had need to practice it before, but it seems to have worked. My name is Cubbins.”

His placid delivery sounded mature, though his voice strayed trebleward. Brrr replied hopefully, “Lost and alone and very abandoned by your clan?”

“Just taking a break from the endless hilarity of it all. They’re downslope a ways at the stream’s edge. You’re not here to scatter us to kingdom come?”

“Hardly. I need some directions.”

“The King of Beasts needs directions?”

“Will you stop with that?” said Brrr. “I’m not even a very local celebrity. Just passing through and minding my own very business.”

“Well, with that medal and all,” said Cubbins. “You look official. Is that why you say very so very often?”

Young as he was, he was ribbing the Lion. “Take me to your leader,” said Brrr, exerting very control. “Please.”

“Such as she is,” said Cubbins obligingly. “Actually, I’m the boy-sheriff of our group, but since you stumbled upon me and showed me mercy, I’ll oblige. Follow me.” The Bear cub led Brrr along a ridge and down a trail to the edge of a broad, shallow stream. “Look who found me when I was lost in the woods,” called out Cubbins.

“Liar, liar, pants on fire,” said the others. There were five or six of them, full grown: some burly companions at play and an aging old thing resting in kind of a shabby bath chair, half-in, half-out of a pool.

“Don’t mind them. They’ve spent the afternoon with a comb of fermented honey,” said Cubbins.

Brrr picked his passage on stones across the stream, taking care not to let the pads of his paws get damp.

“Oooh, a toady right from the git-go,” said one of the older Bears. “I oughta known it, a sissy missy, the way she goes mincing across those stones like she’s afraid of ruining her mother’s silk stockings.”

“Enough, Bruner O’Bruin,” said Cubbins. “This creature was kind to me.”

“What’s your name, Lord Lion?” asked Bruner O’Bruin.

“Brrr,” replied the Lion, shaking his mane, trying to make a theatrical shimmer out of word and name alike. “Who are you lot?”

“The last, best hope for Oz. Movers and shakers,” said Bruner O’Bruin mockingly. He got up and shimmied, his rump poking out. The others guffawed. Cubbins rolled his eyes and offered the Lion a sip of water from a battered iron ladle.

“We’re what remains of the court of Ursaless, the Queen of the North,” said Cubbins. “Fallen on hard times, but good at heart, I hope. That’s Ursaless over there.” He indicated the oldest one, who was getting up from her chair to stretch. She was immensely tall. Even at her apparent age, white whiskers and all, she towered over her companions. “Ursaless, say hello to our guest.”

The Queen had a ratty sort of coat, and no clothes to speak of but a tiara three sizes too small. A sash that read
QUALITY
LIQUORS
AT
INSANELY
LOW
PRICES
rode from one shoulder to the opposite hip. She grimaced. Perhaps she was troubled by arthritis.

“Queen of the North?” asked Brrr.

“Queen of the Northern Bears,” Cubbins amended. “Not that there are many of us left in the wild. Our kin and cousins are easily seduced by the lure of human comforts-beds, running hot water, whist championships, you name it. Still, some of us hold on to the old folkways, and Ursaless is our leader.”

The Queen lumbered over on all fours. “The Lion comes to pay his respects,” she observed, looking him over through mild eyes. “It’s been some years since I’ve seen Lions in these parts.”

“You’ve seen a Lion around here before?” Brrr found a new reason for conversation: the examination of history. “How very marvelous! I’ve never met another Lion. Who was it? Where did they go? Did they happen to misplace a Lion cub, do you know? Did they look like me?”

“Don’t be tedious; I have no head for details,” said Ursaless. She examined her nails and frowned.

“Oh, but if you could remember a scrap!” he insisted. “A very scrap!”

She turned her head so only one eye rested on him. It looked cold. “Your Highness,” he added.

This relaxed her. “Sometimes I recall oddments without even trying. We’ll see what happens. Meanwhile, what brings you to our encampment?”

“I’m headed for Tenniken,” he replied. “The human settlement, where I understand soldiers are stationed. Soldiers loyal to the Wizard of Oz.”

“Tenniken,” she repeated, hummingly. “Do we know Tenniken?”

“Tenniken’s not to be worth knowing,” said Bruner O’Bruin, “if we’re not there making it worth the while to know.” His voice was confident but he turned his head away as he spoke, as if not wanting to meet the Queen’s glance.

The Queen continued. “Caraway Coyle? Bungler MiGrory? Shaveen Brioyne? Anyone remember Tenniken?”

“There’s so much past,” said the one called Shaveen, a female who sat picking nits from her armpits. “I don’t think Tenniken was worth remembering, if we ever knew of it. Otherwise we’d remember it.”

“She’s right as usual, our Shaveen,” said the males. The concert of their agreement seemed to satisfy the Queen.

Ursaless turned back to the Lion. “We can’t help you in this, either, I’m afraid. Tenniken means nothing to us.”

“Didn’t we go on a scavengey romp there?” asked Cubbins. “I was only a mite of a thing last spring, but isn’t Tenniken where the train engine scared us, racing by?”

“Don’t listen to yourself,” said Ursaless fondly. “You’re too young to have learned to forget what isn’t needed. If we can’t corroborate your assertions, there can be no useful truth to them.” She cocked an eyebrow at Brrr. “Would you care for some honey?”

The Lion shook his head. Their lopsided version of conversation was unnerving, and he was losing the confidence he’d been struggling to maintain. “I’ll just help myself to another sip of water and be on my way, then.”

“What way is that?” asked Ursaless.

“I’m going to Tenniken.”

“Never heard of the place,” she stated firmly. “Any of you bruisers heard of Tenniken?”

“Not I,” said Caraway Coyle. Bungler MiGrory put his head in his paws and began to snore. Shaveen Brioyne said, “I think we talked about this once before, but maybe I’m thinking of someplace else. Or that we talked about something else.” She absentmindedly ate a nit. “I like to talk,” she said, almost to herself.

Ursaless turned back to the Lion and asked, “What’s your name?”

“I thought I’d mentioned it,” said the Lion. “It is Brrr.”

“That’s a nice name,” said Ursaless. “Brrr sounds like a Bear. Do you have Bears in your background?”

“I very much doubt it,” said Brrr. “I may be mocked by some for the way that I walk, but I believe I am very much Lion.”

“Why did your parents give you a name so like a Bear, then?”

“I had no parents,” he replied. “Unless you’ve remembered seeing any around here? A pride of Lions on a march of some sort?”

“Someone gave you a name, or did you name yourself?”

This question hadn’t occurred to him before. He hadn’t named himself-so where had his name come from? “I don’t remember that I had parents,” he replied.

“All Bears have parents,” said Ursaless. “Caraway, you have a father and a mother, don’t you?”

“You’re my mother. No?” Caraway sounded dubious. It was Ursaless’s turn to cough and change the subject; she couldn’t answer authoritatively.

“Were I you, I would find my parents and ask them why they named me something like a Bear.” Ursaless hurried on. “Then you can come back and tell us.”

“Though chances are we won’t recognize you,” said Shaveen.

“Except Cubbins,” said Ursaless fondly. “You will, won’t you, fondness?”

Cubbins turned his head so she couldn’t see him rolling his eyes at her.

“I can’t find my parents, I don’t even know who they are,” said Brrr. “For all I know, they’re dead. Besides, I am on my way to Tenniken. A human town to the south.”

“Oh. Humans. Hmmm. I’ve never been convinced they exist, humans.”

“Of course they do,” inserted Bruner O’Bruin. “That’s where all our cousins go when they can’t stand their cousins anymore.”

“They go to be humans?”

“No. They go to human places.”

“Like Tenniken,” said the Lion, pushing it now, but unable to resist. “You know, Tenniken. The human settlement, where I understand soldiers are stationed. Soldiers loyal to the Wizard of Oz.”

“Oh,” offered Ursaless, attentive, “the great
WOO
.”

Cubbins intercepted that one for Brrr. “
WOO
. That’s what we call the Wizard of Oz. The Great and Wonderful
WOO
.”

“And if there is such a creature,” said Ursuless, “may he stay where he is and we stay where we are. Anyway, we’re not subjects of any Wizard. He doesn’t rule the Great Gillikin Forest.”

“Far from it,” said Caraway Coyle, belching.

“He’s never even been here,” said Shaveen.

“We’d tear him limb from limb, if he existed,” said Caraway Coyle. “Watch me do a three-quarter snarl. It’s so cool.” He obliged, looking suddenly like a hydro-encephalitic dog with a mosquito in its nose.

“I thought he was the Wizard of all Oz,” said Brrr, trying to bring them back to it.

“Anyone can name himself whatever he wants,” said Cubbins. “Wizard of Oz or
WOO
or the King of Beasts.”

“I know this much,” said Brrr. “He sends human soldiers into our forest.”

“A good reason to stay out of his way,” replied Cubbins. “Deep down, we wild Bears are unrepentant followers of Ozma, though she has been long disappeared from the public eye and is presumed dead. Still, we carry a torch for her. In her time, she was less hostile to beasts in the wild than the current administration is. May she come again. They say she will return to rescue Oz in its time of tribulation.”

“Who says?” asked Brrr.

“General prophecy. Common sense. I don’t know.”

“People who say it, say it,” barked Ursaless.

Cubbins continued. “Well, all I want to know is, what’s keeping her? It’s tribulating enough these days. Threat and panic everywhere you turn. We have to wait until it gets worse?”

“Listen to smartypants there. We never believed in Ozma,” said Ursaless. “I never did, so you never did either. I’m the Queen.”

“I don’t believe in you, so there,” said Shaveen, though when the Queen glared at her she pointed at Brrr.

“You have your hands full, governing this crew,” murmured Brrr.

“Well,” said Ursaless, “some say the brighter among us left for the human world. More possibilities for advancement, et cetera. Maybe they had more get-up-and-go. Personally, I think it takes character to stay here and hold down a court. Maintain a presence in the ancestral wild. The forest bucolic.” She made it sound like a paradise, the pestering flies, the drunken circularities repeated by an inbred family. “Anyway, when we bother to believe in her, we wait for the return of Ozma. No good comes of commerce with humans. Mark my words, you Lion.”

“But do they come back? Your cousins in the human world?”

“Cubbins, can you help our guest? I’m growing weary of giving an audience.” She let loose a flagrantly stagy yawn, and returned to the dollop of honey dripping off a wedge of comb the size of a small boulder.

Cubbins nodded to the others and jerked his head to the Lion: this way, friend. The Lion followed him, trying hard not to waggle his rump. As he passed, though, the Bears made remarks under their breath.

“Captivating family you have here,” said Brrr, when they were far enough away to avoid being overheard.

“Go easy on them,” said Cubbins. “They can’t really help it. It’s what happens to us Bears.”

“You go loopy on honey?”

“I don’t think the honey has much to do with it,” said Cubbins, “though I can’t really be sure. I don’t care for fortified honey yet, so I don’t partake. Still, I’ve observed that a taste for the stuff develops as Bears mature. In any case, I suspect it’s just that we don’t have much of a race memory, that’s all. Bears are creatures in the present. Any Bear who finds that the present just isn’t enough, well, that Bear strikes out for the human world-the Tenniken of which you speak, or other parts. Maybe they want to see if they can acclimate themselves to a weight of memory under which humans live and are pinned. I have no idea if they manage, for they never come back. Maybe the
WOO
gets them. Who knows?”