The Shadow of the Bear: A Fairy Tale Retold (9 page)

As the three of them moved down the snowy streets, Rose became aware of the three pointed towers of a Gothic church challenging the skyscrapers looming beyond it. A black rose window spread its wings across its facade, a whorled eye staring, entranced, beyond the world. She realized that Bear was heading for the church. And all at once, she recognized it. It was St. Lawrence, the abandoned church beside St. Catherine’s.

“We’re right by our school!” she blurted in excitement.

“Yeah, I thought you’d figure it out. We just came from a different direction, that’s all,” Bear said.

Blanche cast glances towards the school fearfully. Rose knew she was remembering the times she had seen Bear hanging out in the schoolyard with the druggies.

“Are we going to the school building?” Rose asked.

“No. We’re going to the church,” Bear said.

“Really? But I thought it’s been locked up.” Rose gave a skip of anticipation.

“I happen to have a set of the old keys. I used to be an altar boy there.” Bear said the last sentence offhandedly.

Rose laughed at him. “I can’t imagine you as an altar boy.”

Bear gave her a ghostly smile. “Believe it.”

They crossed the snowy street slowly, as though wading through a river of slow water, with the traffic light heedlessly changing colors above them. Bear leapt up the steps to the church in three bounds. The girls scrambled after him, breathing hard. He pulled out a key from beneath his coat, looked around once, then said, “Follow me,” and pushed it into the lock. The door opened and he slid inside, cracking it for the two girls to follow.

Rose squeezed her sister’s hand tightly and plunged into the pitch-black cavern. Blanche followed, and Bear shut the door with a click behind them.

The chilly smell of must and grime assailed Rose’s nostrils. She heard Bear and Blanche breathing hard, but she could not see anything, although she felt they were standing close by.

“This is so neat!” Rose exclaimed, and at once felt hollow, shallow. This place was sacred.

Blanche wrapped her arms around herself tightly, gazing around cautiously.  She still looked wary.

“My violin teacher told me what a beautiful church this is—or was,” Rose said. “Blanche, they used to have school masses here, instead of the assembly hall, before it was abandoned. The floor is unstable.”

“Oh, just wonderful,” Blanche said in a restrained voice.

“It’s only unstable in certain places,” Bear hastened to assure her. “Don’t worry—I know where the weak spots are.”

Rose chided herself for babbling and making her sister even tenser. Her eyes were adjusting to the dark, and she could make out that they were standing in a narrow vestibule. In front of them were doors with dark glass windows. Through them, faint light showed.

There was the sound of scuffling as Bear’s shape turned to one side and hunched over a low table. “I keep some vigil candles over here with matches. Hold on, and I’ll get a light.”

Then there was a scratch, and a faint glow. Rose temporarily lost perspective as the flame of the candle made the shadows briefly impenetrable once more. Her eyes adjusted again, and she saw Bear’s face with its mane of hair floating above the wax taper. He had become a cave man, his face gaunt with dark eyes alert and cunning like some strange beast. The light grew, illuminating his shape, and casting light on their faces. Rose felt as though she were being put under a spell—eye color: deep green and fey.

Bear put a hand on the door behind him, illuminating a panel of dark colored glass and dropping a pool of light onto a tiled floor. The door opened, and he led them into the church, holding up the candle like a torch.

They found themselves in a large, spacious place full of indistinct forms. Bear led them down the main aisle, boards creaking beneath his boots. Rose could make out pillars and an occasional jeweled glimmer of a stained-glass window catching the glow of a streetlight outside. Their footsteps echoed weirdly in the emptiness that was full of something.

“Can you see anything?” Bear asked them in a whisper.

“Pews,” Rose whispered back.

They reached the end of the aisle and stood before the sanctuary. Bear pointed with the light to the roof. “The roof leaks, and it’s been rotting the floorboards in the sanctuary. That’s where the floor problems are. I wish the parish had fixed the leaks when they first started. The problem will only get worse as time goes on.” He set the vigil light down on the marble altar rail with a deep sigh. “But the diocese seems determined to let this place run down. It’s a crying shame. You can’t see much of it now, but it was a magnificent church.”

“You really seem to care about this place,” Rose commented.

Bear looked at both of them, a fleeting look of mischief on his face. “Well, as an enchanted prince, this is the closest thing to a palace that I’ve got.”

“Oh yes!” Rose said. “I had forgotten.”

He turned to the sanctuary. “I’ll light the candles so you can see more.” He stepped inside the sanctuary carefully. “This is the part of the floor that’s weak. Wait here.”

Bear resembled a dark, hulking stagehand moving about the scenery, thought Blanche.  He passed the stripped altar and went out through a small door into what must be the sacristy, and returned with a brass candle lighter. He leaned over and lit it from the small candle he had been carrying. Then he began to light the candles of various heights that stood in dusty branched candelabra on the back wall. Slowly, the facade was illuminated with halos of gold, as though it were the stage for a play. Blanche could see now that there was a high altar on the back wall, layered like a palace, with niches where men and women with wings and robes stood frozen in adoration. Lastly, Bear lit the candles on either side of the carved tabernacle that was fixed to the wall behind the altar. The gold tabernacle box was closed, but the red glass holder where the sanctuary lamp would have stood was empty.

Bear stood there a moment, silent, gazing at the floor. He seemed to have forgotten about them altogether, absorbed in some thought or memory. As he stood in the flickering glow of the candles, his long matted hair hallowed in amber, he had changed yet again. Blanche couldn’t tell how, but she sensed, dimly, a quiet, enormous sorrow overwhelming him. She couldn’t see his face, and there was no change in his silhouette, but a feeling emanated from him—and from the very walls of the church—of a deep and potent loss.

Her eyes traveled upward to the empty tabernacle, to the pallid faces of saints and angels, to the darkness of the weakened roof, and she felt that sorrow beginning to slip in at the edges of her consciousness. And beyond that sorrow was a blackness, a terror, mixed in with the larger terror of the void and chaos of the City. Something had happened here—something terrible. She felt a coldness grip at her rib cage and she clutched the altar rail in sudden fear. There was something trying to get at them—no, trying to get at Bear. It was almost as though he was not resisting, but was allowing it to overwhelm him.

Rose stood behind Blanche, erect and composed. The heat of the candles radiated against the frosty air of the nave, and the candle in front of them warmed her face. Again, her heart was beating the hard cadence of a march— questions falling and rising in her mind. Who was Bear? Why had Bear taken them here? What was his connection to this place? She sensed, dimly, a quiet sorrow and fear filling Bear, but she wasn’t troubled by it. The sense of danger made her lift up her head higher. There were battles coming. But life was meant to be a battle, wasn’t it? There was nothing to fear.

They could have dropped into the stillness of eternity for an hour or more. None of them moved or spoke for several minutes. Only the candles continued their ceaseless dance on the forsaken church walls.

At last, Bear roused himself and set the candle lighter to one side. He turned to face the girls, and his features were enigmatic in the candlelight.

“I’m glad you came,” he said simply.

“It’s—lovely,” Rose said at last. “I’ve never seen such an altar.”

“If we could come here in the daytime, you’d see much more of the church’s character,” Bear said. “But you can feel it, even in the dark. Can’t you?”

“Yes, I can,” Rose affirmed. Blanche said nothing.

He walked towards them in a roundabout fashion. “Careful of the floor. Come around behind the altar. You can see the statue of Christ best from behind it.”

Rose hadn’t even noticed the marble statue of the Savior towering above the tabernacle, and felt somewhat guilty. But when they reached the spot Bear indicated they should stand, her mind was arrested by something else, completely different—there were stains on the carpet behind the altar.

Even in the shadows, she could make them out—faint, irregular marks on the light plush of the carpet. Suddenly, Rob’s story about bloodstains behind the altar flooded her mind, and she felt nauseous. But that was silly. Rob had been teasing her, hadn’t he? She drove it from her mind ruthlessly, a profane distraction in this holy place. But the thought still mocked her.

Rose saw Bear gazing at the statue of Jesus and realized his expression had changed again.  Now he seemed to be struggling to contain a silent fury inside him. Suddenly, he noticed her and all at once, averted his eyes, as though he hadn’t meant to drop his guard.

“You ready to go?” he asked, and his voice sounded tired.

Blanche nodded, but Rose was too distracted to answer. As Bear went back and forth, extinguishing the candles, the sisters watched as the barren church slowly succumbed once more to its habitual gloom.

Outside, they all stood on the steps of the church in the snow. The spell had dissipated, but the girls still felt the remnants of its strangeness.

“What time is it?” Bear said at last.

Rose held her watch up to the streetlight. “Two o’clock.”

“Let’s go,” he said, setting off. “I hope your mother won’t be worried about us. We really should have given her a quick call.”

“Why did you take us there?” Rose asked as they set off for home.

“Well, it’s just my secret place,” he confessed, “You let me in your house. I thought I’d show you my place.”

“Do you live there?” Rose wanted to know.

“Oh, no. But I go there, now and then,” Bear said, kicking at a clump of snow with his foot. “What did you think?”

“It was—breathtaking,” Rose admitted. She felt terribly drawn to asking him about the stains behind the altar.

“Uh—you know, since it is my secret place, you wouldn’t tell any of your friends that I took you there, would you?” Bear suddenly seemed a bit flustered.

“Oh, we don’t have any friends to tell,” Rose assured him. “Just Mom.”

“Oh, I don’t care if your mom knows.”

They lapsed into an unnatural silence on the walk home, which Rose found stifling and unbearable.

So, as they came to their block, she scooped up a mitten full of snow, packed it, and tossed it at Bear’s face.

“Hey!” he yelped in shock, and even Blanche had to laugh at his expression.

“So that’s what you want!” he exclaimed, and thrust two big gloves into the snow. He let loose two snow balls at Rose while Blanche ducked to get out of the way of Rose’s return fire.

She laughed at them and unexpectedly slipped a mitten full of slush down Bear’s neck when his back was turned.

“This is betrayal!” he roared, and took off after her. She squeaked and ran, while Rose heroically pounded him from behind.

He chased them both to their doorstep, and they stood on their stoop and rained snow missiles down on him, keeping him from gaining the porch quite effectively. He raged and protested and pleaded while Rose kept a stream of well-aimed snow balls coming at him and Blanche managed a few lucky pot shots of her own. At last he fell on his knees and begged to be let back into the house.

“No mercy,” Rose grinned, and whomped a snowball squarely on his chest.

With a grunt, he flopped over on his back, rolling his eyes and sticking out his tongue in feigned death. Blanche muffled a scream of laughter with her mittened hand, and Rose had to harden herself to stand firm. At last, finding them pitiless, he rolled over on his stomach, shielded his head and moaned, “Snow White, Rose Red, will you beat your lover dead?”