The Third Bear (3 page)

Over time, Grommin sent four or five of its strongest and most clever men and women to fight the Third Bear. Horley objected to this waste, but the villagers insisted that something must be done before winter, and those who went were unable to grasp the terrible velocity of the situation. For Horley, it seemed merely a form of taking one's own life, but his objections were overruled by the majority.

They never learned what happened to these people, but Horley saw them in his nightmares.

One, before the end, said to the Third Bear, "If you could see the children in the village, you would stop."

Another said, before fear clotted her windpipe, "We will give you all the food you need."

A third, even as he watched his intestines slide out of his body, said, "Surely there is something we can do to appease you?"

In Horley's dreams, the Third Bear said nothing in reply. Its conversation was through its work, and Seether said what it wanted to say very eloquently in that regard.

By now, fall had descended on Grommin. The wind had become unpredictable and the leaves of trees had begun to yellow. A far-off burning smell laced the air. The farmers had begun to prepare for winter, laying in hay and slaughtering and smoking hogs. Horley became more involved in these preparations than usual, driven by his vision of the coming winter. People noted the haste, the urgency, so unnatural in Horley, and to his dismay it sometimes made them panic rather than work harder.

With his wife's help, Horley convinced the farmers to contribute to a communal smokehouse in the village. Ham, sausage, dried vegetables, onions, potatoes - they stored it all in Grommin now. Most of the outlying farmers realized that their future depended on the survival of the village.

Sometimes, when they opened the gates to let in another farmer and his mule-drawn cart of supplies, Horley would walk out a ways and stare into the forest. It seemed more unknowable than ever, gaunt and dark, diminished by the change of seasons.

Somewhere out there the Third Bear waited for them.

One day, the crisp cold of coming winter becoming more than a promise, Horley and several of the men from Grommin went looking for a farmer who had not come to the village for a month. The farmer's name was John and he had a wife, five children, and seven men who worked for him. John's holdings were the largest outside the village, but he had been suffering because he could not bring his extra goods to market.

The farm was a half-hour's walk from Grommin. The whole way, Horley could feel a hurt in his chest, a kind of stab of premonition. Those with him held pitchforks and hammers and old spears, much of it as rust-colored as the leaves now strewn across the path.

They could smell the disaster before they saw it. It coated the air like oil.

On the outskirts of John's farm, they found three mule-pulled carts laden with food and supplies. Horley had never seen so much blood. It had pooled and thickened to cover a spreading area several feet in every direction. The mules had had their throats torn out and then they had been disemboweled. Their organs had been torn out and thrown onto the ground, as if Seether had been searching for something. Their eyes had been plucked from their sockets almost as an afterthought.

John - they thought it was John - sat in the front of the lead cart. The head was missing, as was much of the meat from the body cavity. The hands still held the reins. The same was true for the other two carts, their wheels greased with blood. Three dead men holding reins to dead mules. Two dead men in the back of the carts. All five missing their heads. All five eviscerated.

One of Horley's protectors vomited into the grass. Another began to weep. "Jesus save us," a third man said, and kept saying it for many hours.

Horley was curiously unmoved, his hand and heart steady. He noted the brutal humor that had moved the Third Bear to carefully replace the reins in the men's hands. He noted the wild, savage abandon that had preceded that action. He noted, grimly, that most of the supplies in the carts had been ruined by the wealth of blood that covered them. But, for the most part, the idea of winter had so captured him that whatever came to him moment-by-moment could not compare to the crystalline nightmare of that interior vision.

Horley wondered if his was a form of madness as well.

"This is not the worst," he said to his men. "Not by far."

At the farm, they found the rest of the men and what was left of John's wife and children, but that is not what Horley had meant.

At this point, Horley felt he should go himself to find the Third Bear. It wasn't bravery that made him put on the leather jerkin and the metal shin guards. It wasn't from any sense of hope that he picked up the spear and put Clem's helmet on his head.

His wife found him there, ready to walk out the door of their home.

"You wouldn't come back," she told him.

"Better," he said. "Still."

"You're more important to us alive. Stronger men than you have tried to kill it."

"I must do something," Horley said. "Winter will be here soon and things will get worse."

"Then do something," Rebecca said, taking the spear from his hand. "But do something else."

The villagers of Grommin met the next day. There was less talking this time. Horley tried to gauge their mood. Many were angry, but some now seemed resigned, almost as if the Third Bear were a plague or some other force that could not be controlled or stopped by the hand of Man. In the days that followed, there would be a frenzy of action: traps set, torches lit, poisoned meat left in the forest, but none of it came to anything.

One old woman kept muttering about fate and the will of God.

"John was a good man," Horley told them. "He did not deserve his death. But I was there - I saw his wounds. He died from an animal attack. It may be a clever animal. It may be very clever. But it is still an animal. We should not fear it the way we fear it."

"You should consult with the witch in the woods," Clem's son said.

Clem's son was a huge man of eighteen years, and his word held weight, given the bravery of his father. Several people began to nod in agreement.

"Yes," said one. "Go to the witch. She might know what to do."

The witch in the woods is just a poor, addled woman, Horley thought, but could not say it.

"Just two months ago," Horley reminded them, "you thought she might have made this happen."

"And if so, what of it? If she caused it, she can undo it. If not, perhaps we can pay her to help us."

This from one of the farmers displaced from outside the walls. Word of John's fate had spread quickly, and less than a handful of the bravest or most foolhardy had kept to their farms.

Rancor spread amongst the gathered villagers. Some wanted to take a party of men out to the witch, wherever she might live, and kill her. Others thought this folly - what if the Third Bear found them first?

Finally, Horley raised his hands to silence them.

"Enough! If you want me to go to the witch in the woods, I will go to her."

The relief on their faces, as he looked out at them - the relief that he would take the risk - it was like a balm that cleansed their worries, if only for the moment. Some fools were even smiling.

Later, Horley lay in bed with his wife. He held her tight, taking comfort in the warmth of her body.

"Rebecca? I'm scared." "I know. I know you are. Do you think I'm not scared too? But neither of us can show it or they will panic, and once they panic, Grommin is lost."

"What can I do?"

"Go see the witch woman, my love. If you go to her, it will make them calmer. And you can tell them whatever you like about what she says."

"If the Third Bear doesn't kill me before I can find her."

If she isn't already dead.

In the deep woods, in a silence so profound that the ringing in his ears had become the roar of a river, Horley looked for the witch woman. He knew that she had been exiled to the southern part of the forest, and so he had started there and worked his way toward the center. What he was looking for, he did not know. A cottage? A tent? What he would do when he found her, Horley didn't know either. His spear, his incomplete armor - these things would not protect him if she truly was a witch.