Beartrap

by Lesley Warren

I was born under a harvest moon. My mother spent a whole night hunkering down on the floor, my body tethered to hers like a fish on a line. It was a difficult birth. My grandmother had predicted as much. Three nights in a row she’d seen a shadow shifting like a veil in the sky. Three was a bad number. It was two playing together and one left out. It was a pair and a spare. It meant nothing good.

The old learnings are never wrong. I know that now. They are vines creeping through the foundations of civilizations, wisdoms too many of us have forgotten; they coil around your ankles and trip you when ignored. The moment there were three of us in the hut, the evil eye was upon us. As I grew big and strong, dandled on Grandmother’s knee, she was slipping away from us, a little more every day. My mother put her to bed and shut up the sleeping room before the year was out. That was fair, because I was new to the world and Grandmother was old. An eye for an eye, a life for a life.

“Balance is restored,” my mother said when we were two again. I would have liked a sibling to tussle with, but I had to make do with the other village children. We scuffled like fox cubs in the snow until our muscles were strong. If you howled into the valley, your voice bounced back to you ten times over, like a pack of invisible wolves. I’d never seen a real wolf but I felt like I had one inside me: restless, voracious. My mother got tired of me and my death tossing and turning beside her and hers all night long on the kitchen bench, so she unlocked the sleeping room and flung the window wide, slapping dust from the bedclothes. A glacial gust filled the house, sharp enough to whet a knife.

I did not cry when it was her turn to die. It had been a hazy thin summer and now we were heading into another lean winter. Wind whistled through the cracks between the boards. Everything I ate went towards my widening hips, my monthly bleeding. But it wasn’t enough. The growth drew from other sources, sapping the baby fat from my cheeks. Maybe it came from my mother, too, just as she had nourished me in the womb. She grew transparent like Grandmother, skin like buttercream. I had my father’s dark colouring and his upright bearing; I did not stand apologetically, cringing into myself, like her. It was a habit she and her death had learned—this way of turning yourself near invisible if you looked at them too hard. My father had been cruel to my mother. Maybe that was why she hated me. Hatred did not come easily to her, though. She held out scraps of love for me at arm’s length, only to snatch them away again. It would have been kinder to let me starve completely. My death and I fended for ourselves and found what we needed elsewhere. Our reflection had hungry eyes.

The day of her death, I had gone to the silver birch forest. It was a two-hour trek from the hut, but I needed the air. Sometimes stupid kids forgot their way back, and then the rumor would circulate for a while that they’d been killed by Spees—but it was the best place in the whole of the Territory to hide, or sing, or dream. It was the one place you didn’t go to scavenge or to hunt. It was sacred ground.

Ingen sat in the hollow of my favorite rock, the one shaped like a giant’s soup spoon. He nodded in my direction.

“Hail.”

He was whittling something tiny—a pipe, an ornament. His death sat crosslegged beside him, eyeing mine.

“Who’s it for?” I asked. Whatever it was, I wanted it.

“My mother,” he said, to mock me. Then he put the knife down and read my face. He had the kind of eyes that go deep. He knew I was ravenous for anything he could give me. Suddenly his hard hands were round my ankles and my death and I tumbled to the ground, shedding our furs as we fell.

We had been doing this whenever we could since last summer. The first time, I was picking bilberries and he tumbled me in the rushes. Sometimes he still made me bleed, but he didn’t like it when that happened. I did. It was a wound you were allowed to enjoy – being impaled with a victor’s snarl hot in your teeth. It was the only time Ingen was ever capable of cruelty. Finally we rolled over, our breath dissolving into the branches that crackled the sky like a glaze. I loved how my death looked after Ingen and I had mated. She was tranquil but elated, a goddess of her own domain.

I was late preparing the midday repast, but my mother said nothing. By this point, I could barely tell which shadowy figure was her and which was her death. We sat down to a thin soup. Her colourless eyes settled on the little bone bear I hadn’t let go of since I’d got home.

“I’m done,” I said at last. “Are you going to eat that?”

My mother looked at me as though the question was beyond her comprehension. I devoured her portion, herbs gritty in my throat.

Then her death spoke. It was the first time I had ever heard her, cold and authoritative.

“Let’s go.”

My mother rose unsteadily.

“Come,” Death said, not without a certain gentleness. “It’s time.”

A low moan escaped my mother. Taking her arm, Death led her across the hut, folded in on herself. She moved like a dreamer, drifting into the sleeping room.

When the door closed behind them, I did not follow. You did not come between a person and their death.

When I could no longer hear Death’s impassive monotone, I moved towards the door. The hut rang with silence. I inched my weight forward until the door creaked open under my hand.

The room was empty. My mother and her death were gone.

Immediately I got to work, casting the window wide open, stripping the bed. The blankets were damp with a cold sweat. I snapped each twig of the wicker mattress and tossed it on the fire. I crushed dried herbs beneath my feet. All this had to be done before the sun rose on a new day, else my mother and her death would never reach the next world; they’d simply evaporate with the morning dew. Though it was probably just another old story, I worked swiftly, winding twine around the door to prevent the spirit from returning. The ritual was complete: the last bit of human decency I could give my mother.

It was strange to think that she’d been here this very morning, even scolded me for wearing through my boots so quickly, and now I was all alone in the world. Perhaps Grandmother had come back to get Mother. Perhaps it was because she’d unlocked the sleeping room...

The moon was a vast milky orb by now, huger than I had ever seen it. I curled up in front of the fire and fell asleep with Ingen’s bear clutched in my fist.

An unknowable stretch of time later, I started awake as though I had been struck. Everything was white. The sky was torn along its seams, shedding blizzard tears. Everything was strange. The flagstones felt wrong under my feet. The air my mother should have occupied vibrated with her absence.

I needed company, I needed human warmth. I made myself a meagre pack, tied my boots and fought my way downhill.

The cold seared my skin and lungs, but it felt good, cleansing. With every step I felt better. Fantasies of starting afresh rose up before my mind’s eye. Perhaps Ingen and I would go south until the naked trees sprouted green fronds and sumptuous fruits and the frozen expanses melted into sapphire seas. Perhaps.

Presently I approached the halo of birches that demarcated Ingen’s family’s land from the rest of the wilderness. They were well off; Ingen’s father had dealt in rare furs in the before times. Ingen’s little sister was crouching in the snow.

“Hail, Tarra,” I shouted.

Tarra gave a start, her eyes swollen. Golden hair stuck haphazardly out of her braided crown like tufts of straw. She wasn’t building snow animals—she was frantically scrabbling around as though trying to bury something, wailing all the while.

I grabbed her wrists to make her look at me; she squirmed. “What’s wrong, Tarra?”

But Tarra just kept burrowing frantically.

“Stop it! Say something!” All at once I was shaking her like a rag doll, my fear amplifying hers; she began to scream, clawing at my face with her filthy fingers. “What happened?”

“TARRA!”

At the sound of Mileyna’s voice, I let go. Ingen’s mother dragged Tarra up by her hood and pulled her sobbing to her breast, eyes blazing.

“Get inside,” she barked. “It’s not safe out here.”

“Mileyna, where’s Ingen?”

Mileyna shook her head. “Gone,” she said without emotion. “Poachers.”

Before she’d even finished speaking I’d run headlong into the forest. My knife was small, but it was sharp. Maybe that, coupled with my rage, would be enough.

But then something small came hurtling towards me—Ingen’s dog Emmy. She was whining and trembling; there was blood on her muzzle.

“Oh, sweeting,” I cooed, crouching down and feeding her a scrap of meat from my pack. She gulped it down, barely stopping to chew; her ribs made ridges under her skin, her grey coat dull, her big eyes scared and sad. All the while, my eyes darted between shadows, all senses on high alert. If what Mileyna said was true, we shouldn’t linger here.

“Where is he?” I whispered into her pricked ear. “Take me to Ingen.”

Emmy shook like a leaf, cowering against my legs.

“Come on,” I said, hugging her close. “Please, Emmy.” I held the rest of the meat out like an offering, just beyond her reach.

With a doleful little howl, Emmy turned, head drooping, and wound through the trees. I followed her. Our breath billowed out in front of us. As we crept closer to the heart of the forest, the thatch of bare branches above us thickened, casting strange shadows on the tight-packed soil. I began to see signs of human life—footprints in the marshier spots, large and deep; ashes from a burned-out bonfire, crowned by a cluster of animal bones picked clean; and worst of all, the smell. I don’t know what it was about the Spee, but they left behind a kind of metallic stink—very different from the scent of pine needles and leather I associated with my own folk. It was like they were marking our territory to make it theirs. My mouth turned sour. Curse you who raped our women and murdered our children and scattered the rest of us to the four winds. Curse you who took my father away.

Just then, a rustle in the undergrowth made me jump. I lunged for my knife, tense as a strung bow.

But it wasn’t a filthy Spee. It was Ingen himself, his death leading him by the hand. All the breath left my body. I cringed into the sturdy ash behind me, wishing I could melt into its bark and hide myself forever. Emmy was frozen at my feet. We weren’t supposed to see this. But oh, Ingen was beautiful. He was a spectral young god, striding tall and proud and upright, his skin translucent. The river ran through him; the trees were his bones. The mouth that had feasted on me in secret afternoons beneath the willows now gave me a vague smile, as though I might have been someone it had once tasted. He and his death disappeared into the mist. As though in a trance, I sought the scene of his passing.

Emmy let out a fresh volley of barks and howls when the beartrap materialised before us, a gaping maw of iron, sullied with Ingen’s blood.

Kneeling before my enemy, I tore off my hide gloves and scooped up the bloody snow, drinking from the bowl of my cupped hands. It tasted like the tears I’d forgotten how to cry.

It was a slow and solitary walk back out of the woods. The nightmare replayed itself over and over in my head, embellished more gruesomely every time—Ingen felled like a tree, flesh tearing, bones snapping.

My death stood impassive. Far away, an owl gave a soft, sad cry.

“Can’t we follow him?” I asked her.

“It isn’t our time.”

“Then when is our time?”

“I don’t know.”

“Tell me.”

“I am telling you. I won’t know until the time comes.”

I wanted to make her hurt like I was hurting. Could you kill your own death? I had no idea.

I kissed the little bone bear and made to tuck it into my tunic, next to my heart, but the biting wind was too cruel to remove any of my layers and my own fingers felt like ice. I put it in my pocket instead.

Distracted, I hadn’t registered the day slipping away from me. The light was fading fast. Panic seized me. My mad flight had brought me further than I had ever ventured before. Shivering in the sudden cold, I cursed my stupidity. All I could do now was stay in place—and alive—until morning.

Whilst a little light remained, I cleared a patch in the undergrowth to start a fire. It took several minutes of concentrated effort to get a spark to catch, then a tongue of flame flared along the length of the wood. My fingers stung as they thawed. There was such pleasure in the sensation that I didn’t realize, at first, that I was not alone.

A juvenile bear snuffled around in the undergrowth, bones sharp beneath his black-brown fur. Hunger had made him incautious.

Feeling my eyes upon him, he raised his great shaggy head and regarded me for a long, sad moment. A watchfulness settled deep in my core.

At last, the bear turned from me, deciding I was neither a threat nor a meal. He began to amble clumsily away through the trees.

A great fullness swelled in my ribcage.

He is there for you, I tried to tell myself. Ingen has sent you a gift.

Running up behind him on the balls of my feet, I held my breath and plunged my knife deep into his great thigh.

The bear bellowed in outrage, but I had the advantage of speed. I had to finish what I’d started. I flung myself onto his back.

The roar shook both our bodies, making my ears ring. The bear’s head jerked, teeth gleaming in a rank snarl, but he couldn’t reach me, clinging to his matted fur like a tick. He reared, backing up against a tree to crush me. I fell hard to the ground, and he loomed over me the way Ingen used to do when we rutted like mad things in secret places. He was beautiful and terrifying, even weakened as he was. Pity and hunger warred in my heart.

“I’m sorry,” I panted, driving my blade into his exposed belly.

The blade tore him upwards as he screamed and reared, voiding a foul torrent of hot guts before collapsing onto me.

It took me a good ten minutes to work myself free from his dead weight. The entrails steamed in the snow. Sweat chilled me all over. I had to get warm, inside and out. In the wilderness, people froze to death on warmer nights than these.

By the time the moon had reached its zenith, I was sitting before the fire, wrapped in bearskin and holding a skewer of meat to the flames. Water collected in my mouth as the savory smell filled the air and the meat began to spit. It was lean and gamey. I ate until my belly ached, licking my fingers, and thought of my ancestors’ paradise, the one I’d heard about from the old storybooks. Did any of them ever make it there?

A sudden sound behind me broke my reverie. My body tensed, senses on high alert. That was no animal sound—it was too rhythmic, too deliberate. My heart dropped into my stomach. Yes, it was unmistakable now: the voices of men coming closer.

There was no time to extinguish the fire. Thinking fast, I ran low to the ground and flung myself flat in the bushes, hiding under the bear’s pelt.

Heavy footsteps approached and stopped an inch from my head.

Please go, I begged silently—but a swift hand flung the fur aside.

The poacher grinned through rotten teeth.

“What are you doing here, little cub?”

He snatched the fur from me with a suddenness that made me jump.

“That’s one cub I wouldn’t mind stroking,” another man said.

Cruel laughs sounded in the darkness. I cast about, making out a group of six Spees with glittering eyes. They wore the traditional ornaments of the North: animal teeth, claws on cords. Alongside the sharp curved knives at their belts, they clutched crude giant’s weapons: hefty clubs, jagged axes.

They began to explore my campsite, digging through my pack, picking more meat from the bear carcass. One of them, rather shorter than the others, remained where he was, eyes roving over my body. I glared at him; had my mouth not been so dry, I would have spat. In response, he smoothed his hands down the length of his torso, gesturing roundly over his chest—and then jerking his fingers in and out of his other hand with such gusto that the quiver of arrows strapped to his back rattled. Raucous laughter ricocheted around the clearing. I trembled with cold and fear and fury. If they chose to lay their hands on me, to hurt me, to kill me, I would be no match for them. I would end up like my father.

My fingers crept along my hip towards the handle of my knife. Twin animal instincts—to make myself smaller, to make myself bigger—electrified every nerve. An inner war. A single choice.

I stood up.

It was my last mistake.

A hard shock hit me in the back with such force that I stumbled, arms out to break my fall. Sharp little gasps escaped me. I was pierced through by my enemy’s arrow, the shaft sticking out of my back like a broken wing.

My killer was younger than I’d thought—smooth-faced, wide-eyed, suddenly unsure of himself. Wrongfooted, he shook his head—in apology?—walking slowly backwards. I scrabbled at the arrowhead protruding from my chest, hot blood spurting through my fingers. The rest of the Spees quarrelled like squabbling birds, and then they scattered. I half-closed my eyes. My mind seemed very far away, somehow. On the ground, it was almost peaceful.

I gradually became aware of a lone figure kneeling beside me in the mist. For one confused moment I thought it was my mother, but it was Death, my death, the death I had known all my life, the death that bore my face: finally corporeal. Taking my knife, she sliced the shaft of the arrow from my back in one swift stroke.

A jolt of electric pain seared my core. My vision turned black; faint pressure pulsed dully in my ears.

Cool hands rolled me onto my back; the snow burned and cooled, hard as stone and soft as eiderdown...I knew nothing for sure. Pain and pleasure had embraced and become one, just like I’d always known they were.

Sitting at my head, Death smoothed my hair from my brow and wove it into intricate braids, looping and crossing like the hair of a princess. At this futile tenderness, I nearly wept.

Then Death placed her hands either side of my wound. The blood had long ceased to flow, frozen and congealed in the furs. She pulled the arrowhead free and looked at me with tranquil eyes.

The wind blew through me.

“Ready?” she said.

“Ready.”

Raising me to my feet, Death divested me of my broken body, opening the cage of my ribs to release my spirit. I’d never truly owned it: it was time to rescind it to Nature.

“Thank you,” I told the shell of myself, embedding the bone bear in the bruised pulp of its heart. At my touch, my corpse dissolved into smoke, coiling up into the moveless sky.

I turned away from my life and took Death by the hand. Together we walked out, away, far and forever beyond the night.

Lesley Warren lives for language. Born to Welsh and Filipino parents, and now a resident in Germany for her job as a translator, her work encompasses themes of identity, alienation, and "otherness". Her poetry and prose have appeared in a number of print and digital publications, as well as a podcast.