Hibernation
The bear sniffed the air, taking in its sharpness. Autumn had come to the forest, and she had a lot of work to do before the winter. Her claws pried at the earth, nose nudging a series of roots from their hiding place. A good way to start the morning. She began eating.
Her cubs squalled behind her. Snarling, the bear shoved them away from each other, giving them withering looks. Winter didn’t wait for cubs to play their games. If they were to survive in the deepest cold, they must eat as much as they can. She pulled a root from the ground and presented it to the smallest cub, who hadn’t recovered from the cough they got some time ago. She snapped it down, and the other cub joined them with a squeal, not wanting to be left out.
She led them through her territory, taking special care to mark it. This wasn’t the time for other bears to go trampling about her ground. Most of the bushes groaned under the weight of berries, which she made sure her cubs ate. They weren’t happy about the pickings. One shoved their snout into a pile of grubs and gulped them down, turning up their nose at the nuts she rolled over to him. She could tell the cubs were missing meat. She hadn’t hunted for a few days now, but perhaps it was time? They needed all the food they could get.
When she began scanning for any leads, the problem that had been dogging her since the start of autumn presented itself again; there just wasn’t much prey this year. Not the squirrels that were little more than nibbles, yet tasted all the sweeter for it. Not a young moose separated from its mother and bleating. Not even a single boar snuffling around for the mushrooms, and getting testy when she got too close. The other bears were quiet, too. When she pointed her nose in direction of one that lived close to her, his territory not starting more than a few bounds from where she stood, it occurred to her that his scent was stale. While her cubs started another game, she ventured onto his land, through his berry thickets until something sour struck her nose like a bee’s sting. Rotting, dead, diseased bear. She turned back towards her cubs; she didn’t want them near that foul smell.
-
It was her small cub that sickened first. She woke up in the early hours with a whimper and wouldn’t sit still, and when it got bright, the bear noticed she had thin-haired spots on her belly and livid red skin. She licked her and forced her to eat, despite the cub trying to turn down the mushrooms growing beside their den. But once she got her going, her cub played and kept up as normal.
The next day, she herself woke up with an ache in her head and sore, scabby paws. She left the den early to groom, soothing her aching paws with her tongue before going on her next walk with the cubs. This time she sensed something promising to begin the day. A moose. Harder to kill when there was no snow, but she would manage, even with two cubs in tow.
She heard the moose stagger from far, far away. Never before had it been so easy to track prey. It didn’t take long to get right behind it while it nibbled some bushes. For a moment, the bear hesitated. The moose’s sickly smell reminded her of the dead bear now that she was so close, and it had scabby haunches. It had a good amount of fat, though, and she launched herself at it, knowing so much meat would be good for the hibernation to come.
It crumpled under her like dried-out leaves. Her cubs came right at her heels for the meat, tearing into it and squabbling despite her growls for patience. She had got them to settle and was eating the somewhat sour meat by their side when she heard the yipping.
The wolves smelled wrong, she knew it in her bones, despite them rarely showing up in her patch of the woods. Their skin dangled loosely, wobbling with their every movement. A glaze had set into their eyes, like a dead thing. Their smell, too, was of death, but they appeared perfectly alive. She froze, considering what to do.
Her biggest chose for her by swatting in the direction of the biggest wolf, showing off his half-grown body. It shuddered, a rippling wound appearing along its spine. What happened next was something she’d only seen happen to a butterfly emerging from its cocoon. Another creature of pulsing sinew and too many teeth sailed from the empty skin of the wolf, ripping into her biggest cub.
She roared and landed a blow on the beast hard enough to send part of it flying, and ran. The cubs followed; the wolves stayed with their kill and their injured companion as the sun broke out from beneath the clouds.
They sprinted all the way to their den, and when they got there, her biggest flopped down with a groan. She nudged him onto his back to see the damage. The wound started at his forehead and went all the way down to his belly. Not too deep, and the blood was gumming over already. She licked it until he stopped whimpering alongside the smallest, and soon her cubs were fast asleep. She circled their den for the wolves. Wolves were not supposed to emerge their former bodies like moths, she didn’t think. It would’ve been good to have had all that moose, too, because she could feel the weather sharpen and the urge to hibernate thrum in her bones.
-
When he woke up, the biggest had come down with the itchy skin illness and his wound was red and sore. None of the bears went far that day, even when the bear smelled a boar. The scent was all wrong and rotting, and she had a feeling it wasn’t carrion. This autumn, they would just have to go without meat. The smallest barely ate her portion of roots, throat vivid red. When they dozed in the middle of the day, she vomited. That night brought a heavy frost.
-
She couldn’t put it off any longer. The bear staggered towards the den she’d cobbled together for them, skin tight on her bones; the wolves had come to their den, and she’d been forced to make another. She nuzzled around the mosses, nibbling some dead leaves. The last roots she found had gone to her cubs.
She licked the bare hide of her smallest, who shivered and whimpered in pain. She curled up in the den and fell asleep in a few heartbeats. The walk through the bright light had taken a lot out of her. Next was her biggest. He collapsed, hide pockmarked in disease, skin dangling from where infection had rotted it away. She could see his diseased ribs, see how they blackened and crumbled into nothing. He sniffed the air to reassure himself the others were still there; his eyes had turned to pus-filled pits and then to nothing. Thankfully, the pit where his nose had been could still take in smells.
The bear sighed and huffed at them to scuffle away from the edge of the den. It was shallow and she could feel the bite of icy wind at the back, but it was the best she had been able to do with her paws a bloody mass of sores. She huddled between her cubs and the opening to shield them from the cold. Perhaps when spring came, things would be better.
