Nevada Barr - Blood lure

Then she discovered that the bear had done for her what she could not do for herself.

A long gash had been opened through tent and fly. Resisting the impulse to fight her way clear of the entrapping ruin of fabric, she pulled the nylon open a finger's width and peeked out.

After the pitch dark of the tent, the clearing, lit by a half-moon and stars, appeared as bright as a staged night for actors. When she'd satisfied herself the bear was gone, she crawled out.

For a long moment she crouched just outside while the shakes took control of her body. She felt like laughing and wanted to cry. Breathing deeply to dispel the hysteria, she let it pass. Having pushed herself to the balls of her feet, knuckles down in a runner's starting position, she turned a slow circle, searching the black woods pressing close-surely closer than when they'd retired for the night-seeking any sign of movement or sound.

Finding none, she said, "All clear." It came out in a weak kitten's mewl. Clearing her throat, she said it again. Better.

"Help me," Joan's muffled call came from within the pile.

Anna held the tear open, and within a moment Joan wiggled free, caterpillar from cocoon.

"Rory!" they both called at once.

"Flashlight," Anna demanded and Joan grubbed in the tangle for her day pack.

"Rory!" Anna called again.

His tent was in worse shape than theirs. In the colorless light of the moon, it lay like a ripped and punctured balloon. Anna grabbed handfuls of nylon. "Rory," she called a third time.

Joan had found the flashlight but Anna didn't need it to know Rory was gone.

Luke!" Joan screamed the name of her younger son, the one who bore such a striking resemblance to the Van Slyke boy. Dropping the flashlight, she fell to her knees and began digging frantically through the collapsed tent, clutching at the lumps of his pack and boots as if they were severed parts from his torn body. The courage and control she'd exhibited when the danger was merely to herself were gone. She was reacting as a panicked mother might.

"Joan," Anna said, then more sharply: "Joan!" The researcher was beyond the reach of human voice. Anna waded into the mess of fabric and aluminum tubing, knelt and grabbed her around the shoulders, holding her tight, pinning her arms to her sides. For an instant she thought Joan was going to fight but the solid reality of the embrace brought her down from panic. She tried to get up. "Stay," Anna commanded.

"The bear must have dragged him out, taken him into the woods," Joan said. She sounded stunned, incredulous, but no longer out of control. Anna let go of her shoulders but kept a firm grip on her hands. Joan fell back and they sat face to face, knee to knee on Rory's tent.

"Maybe not," Anna said. She'd been hoping for calmness, rationality, but her voice shook, tremulous and childlike. "Do bears do that?" she had to ask, Night of the Grizzliesnotwithstanding.

"Not often," Joan said. "Rarely. Almost never." She was reassuring herself. Anna let her.

A quick glance at her watch told her it was at least three hours till dawn. The faint light of the clearing, seemingly so bright after the inside of the tent, would not penetrate the thick canopy of forest. Had the bear dragged Rory into the woods to feed on, there was a chance the boy was still alive.

An even better chance he wouldn't stay that way long.

Pursuing a grizzly into the forest in the dark, a grizzly already enraged by something and now, perhaps, with food in the form of Rory Van Slyke to defend, was the rankest madness. If the bear took the boy, they would most likely find his corpse half eaten and buried in a shallow grave raked out of the duff. If they found him at all.

Not going after Rory was going to be one of the hardest things Anna had ever done. Because, if he was still alive and they could find him, there was a chance-always a chance- that they could frighten the bear away before it killed him.

Crazy to try and save him.

"Stay here," Anna said, retrieving the flashlight from where Joan had dropped it. "It's too dark to find anything, but I can check the edges for-for anything obvious."

"I'm not staying."

Anna could delude herself sufficiently to put her own life at risk but not so completely she could endanger anybody else.

"You've got to," she said. "If Rory ran off, then comes back and we're both gone, he'll freak. You know he will."

"If Rory ran, the bear would have chased him," Joan said stubbornly. "That's what they do."

Anna couldn't remain still any longer. "You'll stay?"

"I'll stay."

"I'm not going far. Not out of earshot."

Cold and cutting, a new wave of fear met Anna at the edge of the clearing. Standing beside the tiny stream, moonlight silver on the grass, the music of water over stones in her ears, she stared into the ragged, unremitting night beneath the fir trees and she could not move.

Since she was a child Anna had felt a kinship with animals. She'd never been afraid of them. As she grew, she came to respect their ways and not tread on their taboos, putting them and herself in danger. The animal that had circled their tent, ravaged their camp, was different. Though it went against logic she felt, on a level too deep to argue with, that it had been toying with them. The circling and circling, the sudden rage, the fury of the violence, the abrupt cessation, as if a malevolent plan were behind it.

Walt Disney lied. It was the Brothers Grimm who had the right idea: witches baked little girls, stepmothers poisoned them, bears ate them.

"Get a grip," she whispered, dizzy with the nightmare she'd just dreamed. "A bear's a bear's a bear." It crossed her mind that by demonizing the animal, she might just be seeking an excuse not to step across the stream into the woods.

"Make noise." Joan's shout woke Anna to her responsibilities.

"Right," she called back. The objective was not to sneak up on the bear but to frighten it away should it still be in the vicinity.

"Rory," Anna called and, "Hey, bear," indiscriminately as she pushed under the draping branches of the first fir. Between cries she listened. There'd been no special reason she'd entered the woods at this point. In darkness, if the bear had left any mark of its passage over the meadow, she'd not seen it. She just had to start somewhere.

Anna had been working wilderness parks for many years but held no illusions about her own powers. Better outdoorsmen than herself, without compass or a view of the stars or horizon, would get lost in these woods at night. Keeping the clearing in sight on her left, she worked her way around the edge of the meadow. A complete circuit revealed nothing. It was too damn dark.

"Anna," Joan called.

"Here." She flashed her light toward the camp and stepped out of the trees. The search was as futile as she'd feared it would be. Joan's hail gave her the impetus to give it up.

"The bear didn't take him, at least not from his tent."

Joan was so cheered by her good news Anna hesitated but had to ask. "What makes you think that?"

"The zipper. Look."

Anna crossed the small clearing. Joan held up the tattered remnants of Rory's tent and rain fly. "Both unzipped. Bears don't do zippers. No thumbs. No patience." She laughed, the burden of the boy's life lifted from her. At least for the moment.

So bleak had been Anna's thoughts, she resisted the optimism as she might a trap. "Rory could have been sleeping with them open," she said.

Joan gave her a look that even in the ghost light of the moon glowed with mock scorn. "Yeah. Right."

"Right." Of course he wouldn't. Mosquitoes had disappeared around eleven when the temperature dropped below their comfort zone, but Rory would have been closed up tight, keeping the scary outside out. Thin, man-made cloth against four-inch god-made claws; an illusion, only, of safety.