Free Beyond the Bear by Dan Bigley, Debra McKinney

it out but he heard me moan. The bear heard me, too. It returned, and the roaring and thrashing and shrieking started all over again. Suddenly, I felt the ground rushing by beneath me, my head bouncing over jagged roots and rocks, one clocking me so hard I lost consciousness. The bear dragged me twenty-five feet off the trail and into tall, thick grass below the bluff. When I came to, it was standing over me, panting. I could feel the massive volume of its hot, rank breath heavy upon my face.
    Oh shit! My face!
    Somewhere between the bashing of my head and regaining consciousness, the bear had managed to flip me over. It stood over me now, straddling my body, claws sunk deep into my shoulders, pinning me to the ground with bone-crushing weight. My arms useless, I could do nothing to stop it as it cocked its head sideways and clamped its jaws across the middle of my face.
    Crunch. Like a mouth full of eggshells. Crunch, crunch. Something inside my head went POP.
    A flash, then an awakening in someplace new, suspended in luminous blue. I was floating, detached, as if gravity had given me up. No fear, no pain. So pleasant. So strange. I looked all around me. I was alone in a blue zephyr. I knew then that I was dying. How tempting it was not to resist. How tempting it was to continue drifting right out of this world.
    An image of my mother formed in my head, like an old home movie from a time she was young and healthy. She was standing in a blue oscillating forest, smiling and waving, looking happier than I’d seen her in years. She was glowing. I was glowing, too. Pure mother-son connection—just me and the woman who brought me into this world. A surge of euphoria wrapped around me like silk. I felt the presence of family and friends holding onto me, infusing me with love. I felt my strength returning, and with it, my will to live.
    I knew what I had to do. I had to fight to stay alive, no matter what it took. I remember this as a conscious decision. I remember promising myself that if I fought and lived, I would never look back and regret it. I didn’t know the mauling had left me blind.
    Once I’d made my decision, my mother vanished but I was not alone. A figure materialized off in the distance, showing itself as a silhouette backlit by a starburst of blue light. My long-dead grandfather. I recognized his lanky legs and the outline of his favorite ball cap. Grandfather nodded. I took that as his approval of my decision not to give up.
    Then I found myself lying on a table, with those who loved me clustered around, not in human form, but in essence as shimmering waves of light. They held hands in a circle, infusing me with love and energy. My Prescott friends, Blair Carter and Martha McCord, were overseeing the session, speaking in an ancient language I couldn’t understand and didn’t feel the need to. The others spoke in garbled whispers, their lips not moving. Telepathically, they let me know they were pleased with my decision but worried, knowing I’d chosen the much more arduous of the two roads. They wanted me to rest a while before returning to my body at the river. To be still. To breathe. Just a little while longer. Rest. Just rest.
    Then it was time. Blair gave the nod that I was ready to go. The circle of friends dropped hands, raised them, palms open, and let me go as though freeing a bird. I was no longer floating on my back then, but looking down into the bottom of a well at an undulating image reflected in the water—my own body, curled up in the fetal position on the forest floor. Slowly I descended into it. Darkness replaced blue light. I could hear leaves fluttering around me in a gentle breeze and the river ambling by on its way to rendezvous with the sea. The bear was gone. All was calm. I was alive.
    Pain started crawling back into my body, slowly at first, then in a huge hurry, throbbing and digging deep into muscle and bone. I tasted blood. It was trickling down my throat. I gagged.
    Where’s