Bearmaster

By J. D. Weare

In Sika Longtooths line of work, the potential for risk is always present no matter how simple the job. And those risks are often downwind of himout of range for even his keen nostrils. As the young beaver ambles along the trails in the Great Forest, he has no idea that an evil force lurks in the shadows.

In a time when the world is different and the creatures in the forest are close to all the mysteries, Sika is suddenly whisked away from the only life he knows andto protect his forestis forced into battle with a fierce enemy. Used to living within the predictable and ordinary, Sika now must move from one dangerous situation to another while in the company of a slow-talking porcupine, an excitable skunk, and two spirited squirrels. If Sika is to survive and ultimately save the Great Forest, he must first endure perils that no beaver has before.

From one unexpected turn of events to the next, an unlikely hero emerges. Now he must determine who is friend and who is foe before the forest disappears forever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 25, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462015184

J. D. Weare

J. D. WEARE earned his BA, MA, and MTS at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and his BEd from the University of Western Ontario in London. He has been teaching languages and literature for over twenty years. J. D. Weare currently resides in Caledonia, Ontario, with his wife and their four children.

Book preview

Contents

1

Fox Attack

2

Snake-Tongue Hill

3

The Prisoner

4

Makawa

5

Fierce Flow

6

Cascades

7

I am Sika Longtooth

8

Blood of the Bear

9

Way-jaag

10

Sky Bear

11

Arrival at Esiban

12

A Change of Plans

13

A Busy Place

14

Scouts

15

The Duel

16

Claws in the Sky

17

Dark Dreams

18

Death

19

Five Days

20

Off to the Wolverine

21

Strange Squirrel

22

The Muskrat

23

What Is

24

Eechaa’lawai

25

Keep Moving!

26

Wisdom-Father’s Dream

27

Little Birch Falls

28

Treachery!

29

Song

30

Sika Learns and Wonders

31

Northwards

32

The Invisible Village

33

Mountain of Stones

34

Carcajou

35

Attack on Esiban

36

Strange Paths

37

Into the Bush

38

Strength and Confidence

39

Sika’s Song

40

Battle

41

To Fight a Bear

42

Sacred Ground

43

Shining Tree

1

Fox Attack

Had Sika been ambling down any other path in the dense spring forest, he might have felt a little apprehensive, well armed though he was. There were dangers about, many hiding places for enemies in the shadows. He frequently stopped to sniff the air more out of habit than anything. In Sika’s line of work, the potential for risk was always present no matter how simple the job seemed. And those risks were often downwind of him, out of range even for his keen nostrils.

If anyone had been in the thicket, perhaps on that hillside on the left, observing Sika’s walk along that narrow strip of ground amid the trees, they would have had the impression of a creature without a care in the world out for a midday stroll. The carefree attitude was due mainly to the fact that Sika had walked this trail many times before. He knew that, soon, he would be coming up to the big hill. Snake-Tongue Hill, he called it, for Sika enjoyed giving names to places. He called it that because the path forked at the hill’s peak.

Snake-Tongue Hill always ended up being farther away than he had remembered. Getting nearer, he expected to catch his first yearly view of it around the next bend in the trail. But no, there was the little pond on his right—Frog Splash—and that meant there were a few more turns in the dirt path before that fork and before veering toward the east and the final steps on his journey to Cascades village, named for its position above the largest cascade in the whole forest.

Sika would quickly discover that there were indeed eyes watching him that day. The brush was thick, in all its green spring glory, with plenty of cover. Three pairs of eyes, in fact, watched his every move, watched him pause to sniff the breeze, judged the rhythm of his gait. Stopping once more to catch a whiff of scent-free air, Sika exhaled, sighed and restarted his steps with eyelids shut only to startle, stop and open them wide at the sound of a small but threatening yelp.

He was surrounded by three small foxes. Their teeth bared, they glared at him, set their ears back, lowered their tails—all as if it had been rehearsed. They looked back and forth between Sika and each other, waiting for him to make a move, waiting for a signal from each other.

After the initial shock, Sika’s eyes narrowed, and he decided that the best option would be to move on without seriously acknowledging the threat that the three cubs intended. Really, what do they think they’re doing? he thought to himself with a bit of disdain.

However, resuming his former attitude and making a first step in his original direction, the foxes moved, each one to his own left, so that they maintained equal distance from each other, still facing Sika, but now one of them blocked the trail. Sika would either have to step off the trail to get around him or confront him—and his comrades—then and there. But somehow he knew that moving off of the path would not put an end to this confrontation.

Now, Sika was a beautifully designed creature. We might not, however, immediately see him as a fighter, even if the enemy consists of only three fox cubs, newly born that spring. His paws were made for swimming, though they came fitted with claws that could do some serious damage if you got too close. His body was not sleek in the way of a hare, so he did not move quickly on land; why, he often looked uncomfortable out of the water. But his coat was magnificent! It shone in the sunlight, deep brown and black, thick and luxurious, made to repel water. His wide tail, powered by taut muscles at the base of his spine—while it was designed for everyday work—could be used as a threat. His eyes were as dark as night, round and candid, with nothing to hide. But his teeth—they were really something to behold! Sika’s incisors swept down in a graceful curve past his lower teeth, beyond his lower jaw, and came to two straight and sharpened edges that truly gleamed. These were working teeth, not made for sparring or flashing around in front of the females, but well honed tools that a beaver would not want to have to use as a weapon. This was Sika Longtooth.

Get along, you cubs! You’ve no business on this path with no parents in sight. Sika thought that words would suffice. But we know that the young must often learn their lessons through pain.

The fox in front of Sika crouched deeper and snarled. The other two followed his lead and inched closer to the beaver. Sika’s eyes narrowed again and he let out a short but meaningful Rragh! Surprised, the cubs’ eyes opened wide. But they resumed their menacing glare when Sika took two sudden steps toward the leader who, looking at his siblings, knew that he had to attack. Suddenly, a streak of red fur, preceded by a flash of small, sharp canine teeth flew toward Sika’s head. Standing his ground, the beaver turned his head slightly to the left, then quickly back as the young fox reached him. Sika’s incisors struck the cub just above his right eye. He fell to the side of the path, his accomplices not knowing what to do next.

The foxes were all dazed, but none more than the one whose head was now bleeding. The blood was not the worst of it, though, as Sika’s powerful front teeth had given him an instant and terrible headache. Sika turned to look at the two uninjured foxes who looked at each other and high-tailed it back over the hill. The bleeding cub staggered upwards after them and the trio disappeared into the bush.

Sika was a bit disturbed by this incident for a number of reasons. Firstly, although the whole incident lasted but minutes, he felt he had lost valuable time. Secondly, a beaver never likes to have to resort to violence. And thirdly, although he had no great love for foxes, Sika knew that the cubs were just trying to have a little fun and that they had gotten carried away; he felt bad for the wounded one and worried what the little one’s mother was going to say when he got back to the den.

All these thoughts moved to the back of Sika’s mind when he began to refocus on the journey at hand and the important work at the end of it. As he moved along the path, he thought of friends he knew in Cascades that he hadn’t seen in nearly a year. He considered the job awaiting him, as there had been some major damage caused to their principal mala by the extremely sudden thaw that spring. No-one had more experience with mala-repairing techniques than the Longtooth clan.

Now, a mala is what a beaver calls its home. But it’s more than just a place to eat and sleep. The mala, that construct of branches and twigs, mouth-hewn by beavers and formed into complex quarters in which to raise beaver young, is also a base camp for hunting for food. Most importantly, the mala is the center of beaver culture.

We must understand that Sika’s life story takes place at a time when the world was different. The mysteries of life and its challenges are always essentially the same, but, in Sika’s world, the creatures were close to those mysteries. The challenges were more obvious and simple. And, somehow, the willingness to admit to the fact that there are mysteries and that we can enjoy their mysteriousness made the challenges of life simpler. There was no need to understand everything; and so, everything was more enjoyable, even the difficulties that Sika’s friends faced. The beavers especially loved thinking up new ways to meet the challenges that Nature threw at them!

This was a world in which even the forest was different. As far as Sika knew, the trees went on forever. Yes, there were places where the rivers ran wilder and the hills were higher. Tales of such places had passed into the beavers’ lore, too. And there were many, many more of Sika’s kind. This was yet before the coming of the Spirit Runners who made the ground shake from afar, before the arrival of the strange birds who knew not the ways of the raven and his kin.

And in the mala the beaver made his story. He set down—not on paper, but rather in the heart—his songs. They were songs of trees and insects and delicious meals of water plants, songs of storms and floods and young ones lost to enemies who had crept into the mala, past the defenses. Some songs excited the kits—songs of fearsome creatures such as rattlesnakes and wolverines that only the better travelled had seen.

And, now that Sika had taken up his journey again, you might have, had you been close enough to the edge of the path through the forest, heard him softly whistling one of those songs between his teeth. A song of the Longtooths, or of the Cattails, or a simple melody composed and resung over the centuries about the Great White Birch Mala that every beaver still dreams about every night.

2

Snake-Tongue Hill

Snake-Tongue Hill, finally. It was within view from the clearing. Sika was now far beyond those silly scampering foxes about which he was still thinking: What were they thinking of, anyway? Eating me? Hah!

As the sun slid down the sky, Sika remembered that it was always this time