The bears didn’t seem to be in any hurry. The initial, reflexive question she’d always been taught to ask—animals or grundwirgen?—was immediately answered by the fact that the two huge ones sat in chairs in the girl’s cottage. Rosa’s jaw clenched. Had they devoured her parents already, taken their places to terrify her?
The girl was backed up against the chimney. The smaller bear waddled on its hind legs, toward her and away, its mouth moving in what had to be human speech, but Rosa was too far away to hear it.
The blond girl screwed up her face and screamed again.
Abuelita. Had she screamed, in her cottage? Rosa had not come. No one had.
But three grundwirgen, and one cartridge! If she shot one, maybe the other two would run? Or would they take the girl hostage? Be so enraged they’d rip her to shreds?
The small bear—well, smaller than the other two—was waving its paws at the girl, its claws curved and sharp. Taunting her. It waddled back toward its friends, then back toward her.
Rosa didn’t have much time. Unless they were full from the girl’s parents, the bears might stop taunting and start eating anytime.
The small bear went back and forth again—talking to the other two, turning back to the girl.
Wait.
Rosa moved before she had thought it all the way through. If she scrambled to the other side of the tree—branch cracking, bark scraping, her boots slipped and she almost fell, no, catch on the trunk, pull over—yes! The two seated bears lined up in her sights perfectly, the outlines of their snouted heads overlapping.
Now all she needed to do was wait for the third bear to wander back.
Would one cartridge be powerful enough? It would fly through the first animal, surely. But three?
She’d have to aim for their heads, not the huge furred slabs of bone and muscle that were their bodies. Three heads, one shot.
She wanted to cry. It was too unlikely. But she forced the thought away, forced herself to slow her breathing. Rested her elbow on her knee, the rifle on her palm, the stock snugged into her shoulder where it braced against the tree.
Just as her grandmother had taught her.
Breathe in, out.
In, out.
The pad of her finger teased the trigger, ever so slightly.
She would rescue this girl. If she did nothing else in her life, she would save this girl.
In, out. In … out …
The small bear roared at the girl again, its teeth stabbing at her, and she shrank back, but Rosa narrowed her focus, front sight, steady …
The small bear waddled back toward its fellows—
In, out, and as her targets crossed each other …
… squeeze.
The roar of the rifle ripped the night in half. The recoil slammed Rosa’s bony shoulder against the tree, and the rifle suddenly felt heavy, so heavy she almost let it tumble from her fingers before tightening them. She gulped in a ragged breath of frigid air and forced her exhausted eyes to raise back to the window.
The bears were down, their bulk collapsed in furred mountains. The small one still moved.
The blond girl stared at them, paralyzed. She wasn’t running. Why wouldn’t she run? She had to run!
Rosa half slid, half fell down the tree. Whatever frisson of necessity had kept her going, it was bleeding out of her, and she stumbled and wove toward the cottage. Get the girl out. Then she could fall.
Her boots tripped over themselves as she burst in the door. The two large bears were dead, their faces gone. Lumps of fur and claw with blood for faces, no teeth left—no teeth left—the thought made Rosa want to giggle, suddenly and inexplicably and inappropriately.
The small bear was on the ground, but it twitched, still alive. Blood marked the floorboards beneath it. Rosa’s eyes raked its fur but couldn’t find the wound. It had been the last one in line—her bullet must have been tumbling so slowly by then.
The bear turned its furred face toward her, its lips peeling back from jagged incisors. For half a moment Rosa thought the grimace was a threat until the animal bleated, “Why?” and she realized it was only trying to speak.
“When you try to eat people,” Rosa said—and her voice was shaking, why was it shaking?—she was shaking. “There are consequences.”
“We weren’t…” mumbled the bear. Its voice was higher than she would have expected.
“I’m vengeance,” Rosa said. “I’m justice.” The world was waving in front of her eyes, dripping in squiggles. She tried to find the other girl with her eyes, and couldn’t.
The bear whined, a disturbingly human sound. “You don’t under—she was—”
It stopped. Something thumped. The small bear’s mouth yawned slack, its beady black eyes now turned to the wall.
Rosa tried to look up, to focus. The blond girl stood over the bear with what looked like a slightly misshapen adz head, hewn of rough stone. It was bloody.
“Thank you,” she said, and her lip trembled. “They attacked me. They were about to do—unspeakable things. Thank you so much.”
Something felt wrong, but Rosa couldn’t …
“You saved my life,” the girl said, her eyes lowered and timid.
Where had the rifle gone? Oh, Rosa was still holding it.
“Are you okay?” The meek gratitude had straightened out of the girl’s face to be replaced with frank curiosity. A moment later it was back, like a mask. “Are you all right? They broke in, they—you saved me.”
Rosa felt like sitting down. The floor came up to meet her, much too close. Once she was sitting, it didn’t seem reasonable not to lie down, not when she was so near to the floor like this.
She lay and stared at the ceiling. The light was eclipsed by a small pale face. Lighting the girl from behind the way it did, the illumination in the cottage turned the tumble of blond curls into a glowing halo.
“Angel,” Rosa muttered.
“What? No. Not that.” The girl laughed. The frightened weakness was gone again. “Call me Goldie. And you’re my avenging angel today.” She looked over her shoulder. “Look, uh—there are beds here, and there’s some pretty good porridge. And I’m sure there’s probably some other food—you look like a skeleton.” She poked Rosa’s shoulder and wrinkled her nose. “Whatever’s wrong, we’ll get you better.”
It drifted across Rosa’s mind that the girl’s words didn’t fit together quite right for someone talking about her own cottage, but the thought was gone before she could grasp at it, a wisp in the wind. She stared up at nothing, and at the edges of her eyes loomed the two great chairs where the bigger bears had been seated, sitting like humans before she killed them.
The chairs were really quite large and sturdy for human ones. Goldie’s parents must have been very heavy.
Maybe that was why the bears had wanted to eat them.
* * *
“I wasn’t stupid,” Rosa said. “I knew—of course I knew it wasn’t her cottage. I figured later that she’d probably been stealing from them, and they surprised her, and she screamed. But I justified it to myself. Told myself they were probably going to eat her anyway, and nobody deserved that. After all, they were bears.”
The sky had grayed to night again, this one gauzed with clouds but warm. By mutual silent consent they had lit no fire this time, bedding down on their cloaks. Feng Meng might assume they followed him, but why make it easy for him?