Free The Cage by Audrey Shulman Page A

would be all right. Then the bear twitched her shoulder. She jumped up, shaking her back violently. Her left shoulder was on fire. She bit at it. Her muzzle started to burn. The fire moved across her face, across her shoulder. She threw her head up in the air. The flames burned faster. The fire moved down her back. She ran away, breathing hoarsely, the wind speeding the flames. They could smell burnt hair and flesh.
    The bear ran over the ridge. David turned off his camera.
    Beryl had begun to get used to the bears’ bodies and sounds and smells: the waddle of their rears, the shorter fronts ready to charge, the wet snuffling breath. They had a meaty warm smell like an oversized cat. They ambled forward as though they had all the time in the world. The sounds of guns didn’t scare them, for they were used to the much louder crack of sea ice beneath them. They had no natural fear of humans. Even packs of sled dogs didn’t frighten them. The bears simply stepped forward, eyes moving, picking out their first victim.
    At the end of the next week the expedition would move out forty miles to the northeast where the bears gathered in greater numbers and Beryl would get into her cage for the first time. The three men and she would spend almost a month out there, sleeping and eating together in a single bus, returning to Churchill only for the weekends.
    Of the three others, Jean-Claude was the only one who still seemed an unknown. She knew little more about him than she’d learned that first day, except that she’d observed some of his habits. He sat very still during the long days in the van. Unlike most people, each of his movements had a reason: to turn up the heat, to shift the car into reverse, to adjust the rearview mirror for a better view of a bear. Otherwise he sat still, his hands on the wheel. He watched the others with a flat blue gaze. When he spoke his voice was quiet, almost a whisper, as though something might be startled if he talked any louder. He wore a loose gray turtleneck and jeans every day. She wondered if they were the same set, but she couldn’ttell. His cheekbones were wide, his hair long, the back of his hands ridged with white tendons. He liked a lot of butter on his toast.
    During breakfast one morning while they waited for David and Butler to join them, she tried to get him to talk. She asked him how cold it got during the winter.
    He did not look at her while he answered. Instead he kept partly turned away, giving her only a profile. He stared at the wall on the other side of the room and answered her question in as few words as possible. “Negative sixty,” he said.
    â€œWow,” she replied. “I can’t even imagine that. Once it got down to ten below in Boston, but I think that was counting the windchill factor.” She smiled at him, trying for eye contact. He looked over at her for one moment, then away. She wondered if he was very farsighted from staring out across such large spaces so much of his life. She wondered if he was shy around women. “What’s spring like?”
    He spoke after a moment. “Fast. Lots of water.”
    She noticed the seriousness with which he thought out his words, as though he were communicating through Morse code and each additional letter was an effort. She started to smile. “You know, something that’s always fascinated me are the muskox. Their hair is amazing, but I sometimes wonder with all those dreadlocks if there’s anything much underneath. Like sometimes when you give a fluffy cat a bath and wet it’s just a skinny little thing.” She picked up her toast, took a bite. “Anyone ever shave them?”
    She couldn’t tell if he knew she was joking. His mouth wasa little twisted on one side, but that could be a smile or just tension at having to speak this much. In answer he simply shook his head, turning back to look at the far wall.
    â€œHow big are they really?” she