I knelt at the east arch, which looked out over Our Mountain, and ran my finger along my leg to scoop up the blood and licked it as I contemplated how different things seemed from up here, like in that old movie where the schoolboys stand on a desk to see things from another perspective and are so inspired by the whole caper that they cry out ‘O Captain! My Captain!’ as they jump off, and I think the name has something to do with Dead Guys Who Were Poets.
But I didn’t want to shout ‘O Captain! My Captain!’, all triumphant and sentimental.
Suddenly I wanted to cry, because the forest was so dense, and the mountain so sharp and cold and bare-faced, and the whole place loomed harsh and unfriendly—hostile, even—and it suddenly seemed ludicrous that we could hope to survive alone for more than a heartbeat. Winter had been right all along—from the very beginning. We needed to go.
In that instant I realised I wasn’t angry at the bear anymore. I was angry at our father for leaving us here—no, for taking us here in the first place, away from everything we knew, when we’d already lost so much. And, yes, I get it, the world was getting crazier by the minute, and we might have been dead by now if it wasn’t for Bartleby. But I was starting to wonder quite seriously if it isn’t kinder just to kill a bug with a flyswat rather than letting it suffocate in a jar with no holes in the lid, if you get my drift.
I had these types of thoughts from time to time, and that was usually when I would read aloud to Winter from Little Women and try to get myself in a more Jo March-ish frame of mind, because the last thing dear old Winter needed was me getting all dark and weepy when I was the strong one who was going to pull us through all this while whistling. But where was Winter now? She had either evaporated into a perfect cloud, or she was with Edward in the forest. She wasn’t here to listen to me do all four March daughters’ voices differently, and to swoon over Teddy, and to long for a Marmee of our own, and without her, what was the point of Little Women, or any of it?
Thankfully I didn’t have to ponder that too long, because suddenly there was the bear, breaking out through the edge of the forest, and he was carrying Winter in his arms, and of course I immediately thought of Anne of Green Gables falling down the well, and assumed a broken ankle—at the very least twisted—and as I was running down the 362 steps, I was mentally bandaging it, elevating it, and wondering what on earth we could use as a substitute for ice, and then congratulating myself on thinking of the cold, dark, icy moat, and if you think this sounds like a mentally exhausting journey, try living it.
But when I got down to the bottom and raced outside, Winter was walking on her hands and Edward was holding her ankles, which were very much intact, and they were wheelbarrowing around the fruit trees. She so very much was NOT injured and my first-aid skills were so clearly not required that I couldn’t help but feel a bit put out.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ I shouted—loud as I could. ‘You didn’t even leave a NOTE.’
Edward was so shocked by my yelling that he let go of Winter’s feet, and she fell to the ground heavily, hitting her stomach in that way that knocks out your breath and leaves the top of your belly all tender, while he dropped down to all fours and hid his head between his front paws.
‘You scared him,’ she said crossly.
‘You frightened me,’ I said more crossly. ‘Where have you even been?’
Winter went over to that stupid old bear and climbed onto his back and leaned forwards so that her cheek was against the plush spot just behind his ear. ‘We went running in the forest,’ she said. She looked up at me and her face softened and she smiled that twinkly, Winter-y smile that gives me the same feeling as looking very closely at the skin of a perfect peach. ‘Summer, it was beautiful. Next time you have to come with us.’
‘There’s not going to be a next time,’ I said swiftly.
But there was.
Soon they were always off in that dank, creepy forest, and even when they were here, right in front of me, they were far away, being something I wasn’t, which was perfectly, viciously, so-sweetly in love. And if you think an animal can’t be in love, haven’t you ever had a dog and left it and come back and had it jump at you, as if the floor was sprung, and cover your face with epic amounts of lick-spit while its eyes were like, ‘You are all things in the universe and I would run under an air-conditioning repair truck for you’? Edward had those eyes, and sometimes he’d nuzzle Winter’s knees with his nose as they walked side by side, just saying, Hey, I’m here and I love you, and I can’t put my paw in the back of your jeans pocket, but in another life I would. She would lie for hours with her head in his cross-legged lap as he stroked her hair, and before you get all het up about bears being able to sit with their legs crossed, I’m not kidding when I say Winter taught that bear to do yoga, and his dragon pose was really something to see.
This is the moment where I could have felt happy for Winter, could have walked alongside her and smiled as she skipped. I should have felt safe, deep in the little chains of love that joined us up in our amniotic fluid and have never since broken or rusted away. This is the moment when I could have thought, I have always been strong, I have always kept her safe, and perhaps now I’ve done such a good job I can brush my palms together and go rub on some coconut oil and bake while sun patterns dance on my eyelids, because she doesn’t Need me (capital N), and that is a good thing.
But I couldn’t. I couldn’t stop watching the bear now, wondering about those claws: how long had it been since he had killed something large enough to quiet the parts of him that were Beast? Was there something in his eyes—something hungry? Was I wishing it there? I couldn’t sit still with wondering.
Maybe it had to do with an article I once read about an ambulance officer who, on his days off, would pace the streets, just willing cars to smash into each other and flip over, glass shopping-centre roofs to clatter down, so that he could rush in there, brave and bold, and pull suffocating people from the shards and open up their throats with a pen. That was me, pacing by the stained glass, brooding on the organist’s stool, swinging darkly on the vine ropes, guiding our kite out the hole in the roof, all the while hoping that Winter would run in, melting in tears, her heart broken so badly that only someone who knew every bit of it could ever superglue it back together. And maybe some part of me wanted to do both: the breaking and the sticking back together.
He’ll be gone, I told myself. Come winter, he’ll be gone, asleep and tucked in a cave somewhere. Because that’s what bears did, hibernate, and even Winter couldn’t mess with nature and the Way of Things, even though she was technically in love with a forest animal.
But here’s the thing about love, which I figured out on a night when the moon was cream and round as a compass.
I’d woken up at some crazy hour craving salty peanuts, and on the way to find them, I tiptoed past the alcove where the stained glass made heart-squeezing kaleidoscopes. There was something tucked in there that from a distance could have been a lumpy sofa but was actually Edward on the floor with his giant arms snug around Winter, like two big old hairy seatbelts crossed over her heart. She was sleeping under those colours and under his chin, and seeing her there, well, it was as if she was walking beside me in the rain and not offering me even a scrap of umbrella, which might not mean a lot to you, but if you knew Winter, you’d know that it was everything.