Atalanta and the Arcadian Beast

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE TRAP

IT WAS ANOTHER FIVE days before Urso returned, and by then the meeting with Pan had become a half-remembered dream. Once Atalanta tried to tell the bear what she could recall of it—something about the lure of her own kind—but for some reason, her tongue refused to speak of it.

She simply put her arms around the bear’s shaggy neck. “You are my kin and my kind now,” she told him. He answered by licking her face with his tongue, his breath strong and familiar.

As the weeks with Urso went by, Atalanta learned how to fish like a bear, standing still in the water and then snatching a glistening silver body out with a quick scoop of her hands. She learned as well how to raid the honeybee’s hive and how to strip a berry bush bare. The palms of her hands became hardened and stained.

She taught Urso how to play hide-and-find, something she and her father had enjoyed. It quickly became the bear’s favorite game.

One day, as the two of them were playing, it was Urso’s turn to hide. Finding him was not difficult. Atalanta knew his tracks and scent too well for long concealment. And he always seemed to hide in the same places. Still, as if playing with a small child, Atalanta could stretch the game out for hours.

This time she found him near their den. She leaned forward to tap him on the nose—a signal that she’d won.

He rolled away from her and she leaped onto his back, trying to reach a hand to his muzzle.

Shaking her off, he made a low, pleasant grumbling sound, which she’d come to know as his teasing sound. Then he bounded off toward the trees.

“You don’t get away that easily, you big ball of fur!” she cried, getting up and racing after him. She leaped over rocks and roots and was just about to grab him by the tail when something astonishing happened.

He disappeared into the earth as though a giant maw had swallowed him.

Atalanta tumbled headlong after him, bounced off his backhand rolled to a stop against the side of an enormous hole, twice as high as her head and big enough for two bears.

Struggling groggily to her feet, Atalanta was relieved to find she’d broken no bones. However, her bow had snapped in two under the impact. Tossing the broken weapon aside, she knelt beside Urso and rubbed her face against his neck.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

A deep rumble vibrated in his throat. Slowly he rose onto three paws, holding his right forward paw up as if it hurt.

Atalanta felt the paw. “No bones broken. But if it hurts, it’s going to make it harder for you to get out of here.” She looked around the hole. It was clearly not a natural trough in the earth, for there were signs of digging along the steep, sheer sides. About them lay the broken remnants of a lattice of leaves and branches that had concealed the opening till Urso’s weight had crashed through.

“It’s a trap, Urso,” she said. Then remembering something her father had told her about such hunting pits, she added, “Lucky there were no sharpened stakes at the bottom.”

The bear growled his answer.

Atalanta thought that—given time—she might be able to use her arrowheads to gouge out a series of hand and footholds into the earth wall. But how long would that take?

“And when will the hunters come to check their trap?” she asked the bear.

He shook his massive head.

“Maybe…” she told him, staring up at the opening above them, “maybe there’s a faster way out.” She calculated the height. “Come here. Stand on your hind legs. Like this.”

It took a moment to coax him, a moment to explain. She pressed her belly against the earth wall, standing as tall as she could, arms stretched above her head. Urso at last understood and reared up beside her, bracing his left forepaw against the side of the pit.

She clambered up his shaggy back and placed her feet on his shoulders. Then she strained upward until her arms ached, but her fingers were barely brushing the lip of the pit.

“Sorry, Urso,” she called down to him. She placed one foot on his head. “This is the only way.”

She let herself stand there for a mere moment before she threw an elbow over the edge of the hole and dragged herself up the rest of the way, her toes getting but small purchase on the side of the pit. Finally, with a squeal of triumph, she rolled away from the pit’s edge and lay on her back, gasping.

When she’d caught her breath, she leaned back over the pit. “I’m going to find something to get you out of there, Urso. Don’t worry.” Though she herself was panicked.

She knew there was rope back at her father’s house, but that was an hour’s run at least. She doubted they had that much time. And anyway, the bear’s claws could not cling to a rope the way a pair of hands could. Especially if he’d injured one of them.

“Not a rope, then,” she told herself. “What else?” She rose and went into the trees, hoping for inspiration.

Then she saw it—a fallen tree trunk, the insides of which had been eaten out by insects.

“A ladder,” she whispered. If it would bear Urso’s weight.

She put her hands under the trunk and pushed. Even hollowed out it was still quite a weight. She had to rock it back and forth till it came loose from the earth that seemed to hold it. But at last she managed to roll it—slowly and with much effort—to the edge of the pit.

Now all she had to do was maneuver it carefully into position.

She leaned over. “Urso!” she called down.

The bear had already been alerted by the sounds of the tree trunk being rolled. He was up on his hind legs.

Atalanta motioned to him with her hand. “Move to one side. I’m going to slide this log down so you can climb up.”

He seemed to understand and crouched along the far side of the pit.

Then slowly, carefully, she tilted the log over the edge, holding on to it long enough to guide it as it slid into the hole. Luckily the end struck the bottom and seemed to fix there, leaving the rest to lean against the side of the pit. It did not reach all the way to the top but would take Urso more than halfway. And halfway was all he would need.

The bear walked along the side of the log and sniffed at it, as if calculating whether it would carry his weight.

“Come on, you slowpoke, hurry. There’s no knowing when that hunter will return.” Though she suspected it was more than one. One person could not have dug that hole—or expect to get a bear out of it.

Urso started to climb, limping whenever he had to put pressure on the injured paw.

“You can do it,” Atalanta called.

He growled and kept moving.

Suddenly they heard a distant sound. For a moment they both froze.

“Wrong way, Goryx!” a voice called. “The pit’s over here.”

“I don’t think so,” came the rough answer. “I recognize this rock.”

A third voice laughed. “That’s because it reminds you of your own thick head!”

Atalanta unfroze first. “Hurry, Urso!” she cried in a desperate whisper. “The hunters!”

Urso had managed only a few feet, for every three inches forward, he seemed to slip back two.

It was clear to Atalanta that he wouldn’t make it out. Not in the time they had left.

“I’ll get you more time,” she told him, and stood. “You just keep climbing. Then run away from here, as fast as you can.” Fingering the knife at her belt, she looked toward the path where the voices were coming from. She hadn’t been able to save her father, but she was certainly going to save her brother-bear.