Atalanta and the Arcadian Beast Read online

  “Urso,” she declared at last, turning to look directly at the bear, for this matter of a name suddenly seemed important. “Urso. That sounds like a fine bear’s name to me. How does it sound to you?”

  The bear sat up on his hind legs and clapped his paws together with a strange clacketing sound as his nails hit against one another.

  “I thought you’d like it,” Atalanta said, and grinned.

  Urso grinned back, showing two rows of very large teeth.

  Atalanta appreciated those teeth. “Now,” she said, “let’s get on with the hunt.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ON THE TRACK

  AS SOON AS SHE reached the spring, Atalanta felt a tingle of alarm run down her back. Could the beast be here, lying in wait? She knew it was intelligent.

  Intelligent enough to set a trap? She held her breath and listened. All she could hear was Urso, snuffling and pawing at the ground beside her. Her stomach lurched sickeningly and a hot flush spread over her face. The urge to run away was almost overwhelming.

  Urso rubbed his muzzle consolingly against her back. “You’re right, Urso,” she agreed, looking over her shoulder at him. “I have to do this.”

  Gripping her javelin firmly in both hands, she stepped into the shadow of the greenery. Snapped branches and mashed ferns marked the beast’s passage, but there was nothing to show if the tracks were old or new.

  “We can backtrack him,” she told the bear. “Maybe find where he came from.”

  The bear went ahead, sniffing out the way. Where the trees thinned out on the other side, she found a jumble of footprints.

  Urso made a low, unhappy growl at the back of his throat. Like all bears, he had a muscular hump on his back just below the neck, and the hairs on it were standing straight up.

  “You smell something you don’t like,” Atalanta said.

  Urso stood up on his hind legs and whined.

  Reaching into her shirt, Atalanta drew out the tuft of orange hair, shoving it under his nose. “Here. Is this what you smell?”

  The bear grabbed up the tuft of hair in his mouth and shook his head back and forth with such ferocity, he looked as if he were going to shake himself in two. Then suddenly he dropped the orange tuft to the ground, turned around, and urinated on it.

  “Uck,” Atalanta cried. There was no way she would pick up the tuft now and shove it down the front of her shirt. But that didn’t matter. Urso was clearly furious that the creature had invaded their forest.

  “Come,” she said to the bear, and bending low, she followed the tracks for another hundred feet.

  Once again, the prints just stopped.

  Jamming her spear point into the ground, Atalanta paused to take a swallow from her water skin. “I don’t understand,” she said. “This creature seems to appear out of thin air and then disappear again, just as it pleases.”

  A sudden rustling in the branches behind put her immediately on alert. Urso bared his teeth.

  Carefully, Atalanta lowered the water skin and slid the bow from her shoulder. Then in one quick movement she fitted an arrow to her bowstring. Spinning about, she loosed off a shot. The arrow clipped the bushy tail of a squirrel, sending it chittering into cover.

  Atalanta gave herself a slap on the leg, partly for being so foolish but mostly for missing the target. What would Papa have said if he’d seen her waste an arrow like that? Probably, Think, Atalanta—a good hunter’s most useful weapon is the brain.

  She looked until she found the arrow, buried lightly in the trunk of an oak that was twisted with the silvered leaves of an ivy vine. Pulling the arrow out carefully, she checked to be certain that the arrowhead was still whole before smoothing its feathers and replacing it in her quiver.

  She shook her head. “That’s it, then, bear. We’re going to have to search the whole forest.”

  He grunted in return.

  They searched for the rest of the day without finding any more tracks. Not the beast’s trail—nor any deer’s or boar’s trail either. Atalanta knew she was a good stalker. Her father had boasted to the hunters they occasionally met that she was the most natural trail-finder he’d ever known.

  But there was nothing.

  Nothing!

  The longer they searched, the more Atalanta worried. The beast was huge and smart, and she feared he might be invisible as well. Even if they found the thing, she wondered if she was strong enough to kill it, with or without Urso’s help.

  Urso seemed baffled, too. He made curious little snuffling sounds, and more than once simply sat down in the middle of the path, as if to say he wasn’t going a step farther.

  By early evening Atalanta was beginning to think about finding a campsite.

  “A cave,” she said to the bear. That would be more easily defended than an open clearing.

  Urso was walking ahead of her when all of a sudden he crouched low, his back hump bristling. He began to growl.

  She ran over and put her hand on his back, whispering, “What do you smell?” Her fingers tightened around the haft of the javelin. “Is it the beast?”

  Urso started forward through the bushes and Atalanta followed close behind. The bushes snapped back against her bare legs but she never noticed. She was intent on what was ahead.

  They entered a small clearing. It was filled with the stink of recent death, a day or two old at the most. Flies buzzed around a corpse. Or what was left of one. It was clearly a deer, a big stag by the antlers. But the rest had been stripped, flesh and innards devoured, bones scattered. Only a few tatters of brown skin were left, some dangling from branches of a tall tree. It was around those tatters that the flies were buzzing.

  Urso growled, long and low.

  “What is this creature?” Atalanta whispered. She had never seen such a kill before. The deer had simply been ripped to pieces. And there were no tracks leading to or away from the place.

  None.

  They found a nearby cave and once Urso had sniffed it out, declaring it safe, they sheltered there for the night. He slept by the entrance, filling the opening with his big furry presence.

  Atalanta put her head against his flank, using it as a kind of pillow. With each breath the bear took, his body rose and fell beneath her head. After the grief of the day, she was happy to be lulled to sleep that way.

  Her last dreaming thought was that tomorrow would bring the start of a new life. A life in the wild. Or maybe, she thought—remembering the bear that had mothered her—maybe it was a return to her old one. Either way, she promised herself she would be ready.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE WOODLAND GOD

  THE BEAST’S TRAIL WAS not to be found. For days the two of them hunted for it, casting larger and larger circles with the deer’s few pitiful remains as the center of their search.

  They returned each night to the cave that had become their home.

  For the first few days, the search was all that had mattered. But as it became clear the beast had really disappeared, the two of them began to enjoy sharing the wild together. They chased through the trees, splashed happily in the streams, found wild berries and sweet honey, and ate fish the bear caught in his big claws. He even learned to like the fish cooked over an oak fire, for Atalanta could not stand eating it raw.

  However, one morning when Atalanta woke, Urso was not in the cave.

  She got up slowly, stretched, poked her head out of the cave entrance, thinking he was off fishing on his own.

  “Urso,” she called.

  There was no low growling answer.

  “Are you hiding?”

  Still no response.

  Taking her javelin and knife and water skin, she went down to the river. She checked their berry bushes, their honey tree, even tracked halfway back to the deer clearing.

  There was no sign of him.

  So she did what she should have done at first, would have done at first if she’d not been in such a hurry: follow his trail from the cave.

  He’d made no at
tempt to disguise his tracks. They led north.

  “Now why are you going there?” she whispered. She was resolved to follow him. But something stopped her, something her father had once said about male bears. “They are solitary creatures.”

  Well, he hadn’t been solitary in the past week.

  She thought about that. Perhaps he had done that for her, to help her, his old littermate. But now he needed time to himself.

  Sitting on her haunches, Atalanta stared northward. “You’ll return, bear,” she whispered. “When you’re ready.” She was sure of it.

  But now, for the first time, she felt truly alone. She tried the word out loud. “Alone.” It was less frightening that way. “Alone!”

  Actually, she’d never had much to do with people. Never really wanted to. Her mother and father and the forest had been enough for her.

  Oh, once in a while her father brought home hunters he knew who were in their woods. Sometimes she’d accompanied him when he went on a trading journey to the villages of the Arcadian plain. There they’d bartered deerskins, rabbit pelts, tusks and antlers for corn, cheese, olives, wine. He seemed at ease with the villagers, bantering back and forth with them.

  But on those visits, when she’d stood in the marketplace, Atalanta had been aware of the stares she drew—from children and adults alike. Somehow they could sense her wildness and wanted no part of it. Many were the fights she’d gotten into, wiping the smirk from a mocking face with a slap from the butt end of her small spear. No matter how outnumbered she was, she always held her own—kicking and clawing like a crazed wildcat.

  “There’d be no trouble if they’d only leave me alone,” she’d told her father. “All I want is to be left alone.”

  “You’re too wild, daughter,” he told her.

  “I like being wild.”

  She thought about the villages now.

  “I can manage just fine out here,” she told herself. “They have nothing I need. Nothing.”

  But she missed the bear.

  Urso was away for almost a week before returning.

  The second time he left, Atalanta was anxious about it, but by the third time, she understood his pattern and was comfortable with it.

  Each time they came together again, it was a grand reunion. They would seek out rivers and pools where they plunged under the water with a huge splash to see who could come up with the biggest fish. They ran races through the twisting forest tracks, Atalanta forcing her legs to move faster and faster until she could just about keep pace with Urso as he bounded along.

  They no longer looked for the killer beast. It was gone as if it had never been.

  One day when Urso was off by himself, Atalanta spent the morning weaving a vine rope to hang over their favorite pool as a swing. She’d gotten about three body lengths done and was just casting about for some more vines. Suddenly, an odd whistling sounded across the river, like lark song, only longer, more elaborate.

  Atalanta rose and waded into the water, following the stream of notes as if enchanted. Climbing up the far embankment, she found herself in a strange glade. In the shade of a leafy oak stood a grotesque figure, part man, part animal.

  His face was brown and wrinkled, like an apple too long in the sun. He had thick, sensual lips, a sharp nose with wide nostrils. His arms and chest were matted with dark curling hair. As she got closer, she could see that a pair of small, sharp horns rose out of his thatch of thick brown curls. Most surprising of all were his legs. They were like those of a goat; instead of feet, he had hooves.

  The whistling came from a set of reed pipes the strange creature was playing with his eyes closed. As if he knew she was there, he stopped playing, opened his eyes, and smiled.

  “Ah, Atalanta, the little huntress,” he said, letting the pipes dangle from a cord around his neck. His voice was unexpectedly low and lilting. “I wondered when I’d run into you.”

  For one shocking moment, Atalanta wondered if he might be the very creature who killed her father. But as quickly, she realized he had no huge claws, no orange fur. Strange as he was, he was not the beast.

  “How…” she began before her voice cracked. She tried again. “How do you know me?”

  He broke into a laugh that was like water over stone. “I know all sorts of things.”

  She hated to be laughed at and said angrily, “Who are you? Why are you in my forest?”

  “Your forest?” He laughed again.

  “Mine and the bear’s,” she said stubbornly.

  His face softened. “Mine, too,” he said. “I’m the god of this woodland. Your people call me Pan.”

  “I don’t have any people,” she answered. “Not anymore. There’s just me.”

  “I am sorry for that,” he said, his voice low.

  It was the tone of it, with its hint of human comfort, that broke her. She could feel herself starting to cry. Once started, she thought, and I’ll never stop. Instead, she forced herself to say, “You’re a real god? I’ve never seen a god before.”

  He grinned at her.

  Putting her head to one side, she considered him. “You’re not very impressive.”

  “I could say the same about you,” Pan replied, “but I’m in the mood to be charming. When I’m charming, I’m irresistible.” He laughed again.

  The sound shivered down Atalanta’s spine, but deliciously.

  “See,” Pan said, “you are liking me already.”

  “I am not.”

  “Are, too.”

  Really, she thought, he is more like a child than a man. That’s the way I used to argue with Papa when I was younger.

  Thinking of her father brought a wave of sadness.

  As if sensing her pain, Pan asked immediately, “What’s wrong? Can I help?”

  She looked at him and thought that if he was really a god of the woodland, perhaps he knew something about the beast. She asked, “Tell me what creature slew my father. Where is it? How can I find it?”

  Pan gave a dismissive wave with his hand and kicked the grass with one hoof. “I am no oracle. And I certainly will not help you seek out a beast for vengeance.”

  “You asked me what help you could be and I told you,” Atalanta said.

  “That’s not why I am here.” Pan looked at her with mischievous eyes.

  “Then why are you here?”

  He smiled and spread his arms wide apart. “To discover why you are in my realm.”

  “I live here,” she said.

  “The birds and the rabbits, the fish and the otters are all part of my domain,” he said. “The deer and the boar and the bear.” His hooves drummed on the ground. “And of course the goats!”

  She waited, hands on her hips.

  “But you are not one of my creatures,” Pan said. “You belong with your own kind.”

  “My kind threw me out when I was an infant. I was nursed by a bear. The only humans who loved me were my adopted papa and mama, and they are both dead.”

  Pan nodded but said nothing.

  “The bear Urso is my friend and companion. He cares for me. So who do you think are my kind?” Atalanta could feel her cheeks flaming.

  “Humans can be friends with wild folk. Indeed, I encourage it. Nevertheless, that does not make them kin. Atalanta, you are a human and not a beast,” Pan said.

  Atalanta shrugged. “I can’t help that.”

  Pan’s eyes gleamed. “But I can.” He made a gesture with his left hand and suddenly a pomegranate appeared in his palm. He stretched out his arm, offering the fruit to Atalanta. “One bite and you’ll turn into any kind of animal you choose.”

  She put her hand out to take the fruit, then pulled back. “That’s not possible.”

  “Everything is possible for the gods,” Pan said. He leaned toward her, the pomegranate tantalizingly close. “You could be a doe, a sow, even a she-bear. Isn’t that what you want?”

  Atalanta looked down at herself, at her clever, hands, her quick feet. She hugged herself, feeling h
er humanity. “I’m not…not sure,” she said.

  “Not sure you want to be an animal?” he asked, stepping closer to her. “Or not sure you want to be a human?” A thick odor of musk wafted from his shaggy body.

  For a moment Atalanta wanted to scream and run from him. She fought down the panic and stared back. “Not sure,” she said stubbornly.

  He grinned. “What have you got to lose? Nothing but troublesome thoughts and pointless questions. Things the forest creatures never worry about.”

  She leaned away from him. Really, the smell was overpowering. Not like Urso at all, but rank and enticing at the same time. “What do you mean—troublesome thoughts and pointless questions?”

  He withdrew the pomegranate, holding it close to his chest. “Oh, you know—thoughts like Where do I come from? What’s going to become of me? All that nonsense.”

  Atalanta’s hand drifted to the ring about her neck. She thought: Where do I come from? What is going to become of me? And then she wondered: Would I really prefer not to have those kinds of thoughts?

  “And then,” Pan continued, as if guessing what she was thinking, “there are the bad memories. Your mother’s long sickness. Your father’s awful death.”

  “How do you know…” she began.

  He took a bite of the pomegranate himself, letting the juice run down his chin. “All that pain will be forgotten with a single bite.” He thrust the fruit under her nose, grinning broadly and revealing two rows of crooked teeth.

  “Forget Mama? Forget Papa?” Atalanta said, the breath whooshing out of her. “Never!”

  “Never?”

  “I’ll live with Urso in the wild just as I am.”

  “Really?” Pan said. He threw the pomegranate into the air and caught it between his thumb and forefinger. “It’s not all that easy, child. The lure of one’s own kind is hard to resist.”

  “I thought…” Atalanta said, this time leaning toward him, “I thought you said you weren’t an oracle.”

  Pan shrugged his hairy shoulders. Then he threw the pomegranate into the air again. This time it did not come down. “You don’t understand,” he said. “But then mortals never do. That’s what makes them such delightful fools.”