Free Juggling Fire by Joanne Bell Page A

The bear, I’m sure, is nowhere around.
    “What do you love doing?” asked Mom, whittling a chunk of poplar bark into the shape of a wolf. She dug the knife in hard and blew away splinters of wood from a leg.
    I leaned against a tree trunk in the sunshine and opened my eyes, content to be with her.
    “Lots of things,” I said.
    Mom held her carving up to show me. “What are you doing when you’re the happiest?"
    I love mountains and forests and fairy tales and juggling and being alone, I think. And I love you too, Mom.
    Pain rattles like stones in my stomach. Mouth dry, I listen to Brooks’s ragged breath. Moonlight is so strange in the mountains. Every detail is transformed, washed in soft underwater light. I watch through the screen door. I think of my father’s face in my dream, before it changed, before he snarled and his warm hands grew to claws. Shrugging off the dream, I roll over but my fingers graze Brooks’s side. I draw them back into my sleeping bag, sticky with blood.
    Later, I crouch over Brooks, who doesn’t want to move from the morning fire. “Come on, boy,” I coax. “You have to eat.”
    I shove the porridge pot under his nose. “Sit,” I say, firmly. What I mean is “stand” but he doesn’t know the command for that.
    His head stays flat on the ground. Only his tail thumps feebly on the moss.
    I dip my finger into the porridge and shove it in his mouth. Brooks swallows and lumbers to three of his feet. The fourth is tucked up under the wounded flank. He takes forever to lick the pot clean. By the time I’ve loaded my pack and washed his wound, the sun is splashing the mountains with shafts of shadow and light.
    We walk maybe a mile that day, through high country, above the tree line. Brooks hops on three legs the entire way. I make camp at the top of the second pass, with only a few willow twigs for fuel. Soon it won’t matter that I need to force myself to eat. At this rate, we’ll be almost out of food by the time we reach the cabin. We’ve eaten the last of the dry meat and bananas and cheese. There are still plenty of dried vegetables for broth, but that won’t give us much energy.
    Before stopping for a cold supper the next day, I see bear tracks on the sandy bank of a creek crossing. All bear tracks look like they were made by a huge barefoot human.
    Grizzly claws, however, are longer than blacks’, and the curve of the toes is flatter. A little farther along I see scat, stuffed with berries and purplish leaves. I growl at the mess and boot it apart with a branch. I sniff hard. Nothing.
    Just the faraway smell of winter coming, of snow dusting the peaks. It can’t be the same bear. Male grizzlies have an enormous range, but why would he still be heading in our direction? It must be another bear just passing through.
    I snatch gloves from my pack pocket and pull them on. We’ve walked almost across the pass now. But where the mountains draw back a bit, a narrow creek tumbles into the valley, flowing into what’s now a river. Clumps of cottonwood and alder grow along it. I walk through the trunks in the late afternoon with sunshine slanting along the ground. A few spruce grow among them.
    I see the blaze at twilight. It’s definitely not the scratch lines of a bear or the gnawing of a porcupine. I run my fingers over the marks of the ax on the trunk. How many years has it been there? I walk by instinct, following the faint opening through the trees. If I concentrate too hard, I’ll lose the way. Eventually I stumble on another blaze, and another, both on young black spruce trees.
    Then a stump, cut by a swede saw. The wood has yellowed over its scar. There are several stumps, and I can just make out an unbroken horizontal line. Little in nature is so straight. Logs are stacked on each other for walls. From the sod roof, grass and a few fingers of willow reach tentatively for the darkening sky.
    Thank god, I think. A safe place to spend the night: a cottage in the