And for a long moment, we stared at each other in the darkness, and I was glad that he was not a big, burly summer bear.

Not a wounded bear, since I knew that a bear hurt was a bear mean.

Not a mother bear, her cubs bleating with fear at a girl in the woods.

Just a thin spring bear who was surely as scared of me as I was of him. My father had said so, and I had believed him.

But then I made the mistake of reading, in his eyes, a wildness I admired. Of feeling, in him, a love of things I loved: like lying in a meadow with the grass rising high all around, hiding me from everything but the sky and the bee-heavy blossoms nodding down toward me, springing up again as the bees flew. Or a pink end-of-day sky. Or the clear whistle-ring of a wood thrush.

And I leaned—just a little—toward the bear as he stood there, stiff-legged, his head up, his eyes on me . . .

. . . and he decided to prove my father wrong.

When he started toward me, growling, I dropped the dead lantern and ran.

I knew better.

I knew that a bear would chase someone who ran.

I knew that he could run faster than me.

I knew that he could manage the trail far better with his night-eyes than I could with my day-eyes.

I knew that I would be smarter to play dead.

But I ran anyway.

And he would have been on me in no time if I hadn’t fallen and suddenly found the good sense to tuck my hands up under my chin and lie still.

I had already done a few hard things in my life, but one of the hardest, then or since, was lying with my face in the dirt, without moving at all, not at all, while the bear snuffed me and kicked my legs, still angry but puzzled and winded from the uphill run, more interested, it seemed, in new grass and grubs than in girl.

But when he plucked the cap off my head, I learned a new kind of fear.

And when he finally turned and left me, I said a new kind of thanks.

For my life.

For my unscarred skin.

And especially for the fact that Esther had stayed with Cate.

I tried to imagine her meeting up with the bear. Then I tried not to imagine that.

I lay there, unmoving, for some time.

And then I got up slowly, in chapters, and quietly brushed myself off, retrieved my cap and my lantern, and went carefully down the path, stopping often, listening as hard as I could, hoping we wouldn’t meet again. Only a small part of me wishing that we would.

—