The Prince Who Fell From the Sky

T
he Forest was green with summer when the bear lumbered up from the creek bed where she had been cooling off. As she crested the bank, she paused to sniff. The air was heavy with the scent of new life.

Moist smells. Earthy smells. Flowery smells.

And mixed with them was the sweet aroma of death.

The bear’s coppery-black body was massive, and it was nothing for her to push aside saplings and tangles of creeper as she followed her nose toward the carcass.

The odor grew ripe. She hurried, loping through a bed of the relics rusting among the laurels. She drew in a deep sniff and stopped.

She had found it. But she was not alone.

She edged out from the thicket of laurels. A trio of cubs tumbled on the ground. At the sight of Casseomae,
they squealed and ran clumsily toward their mother, who was eating from a day-old elk, her face buried in the cavity of the elk’s body. She lifted her face at the sound of her cubs. Blood was smeared on her snout and nose. An assembly of crows who were waiting for their turn in the branches of a hickory overhead began jeering with loud caws.

The sow rose and circled around from behind the carcass. “Get behind me, cubs,” she growled, and they retreated nervously behind their mother. “You know you are not welcome, Casseomae. I’ve warned you before.”

“I don’t mean harm,” Casseomae said, dipping her head. “Not to you, Dubhe, or to your cubs. I only thought we might share this—”

Dubhe bounced on stiff front legs and popped her jaws, as their kind would to show menace. “And let you curse my cubs! No, get away from here, witch, before you steal their breath away like you did your own—”

“That’s enough, Dubhe!”

Dubhe dipped her nose to the newcomer. “Alioth!”

Dubhe’s cubs dropped to their bellies at the sight of their chief. “Big One,” they whimpered in unison.

Alioth lumbered forward slowly, his fur looking almost red as he passed through a patch of sunlight. He was not the biggest of their clan, but he had been tough enough and strong enough to convince even the larger
males that he was their chief. He was the Big One and had been for several summers now.

“Dubhe,” Alioth grumbled as he came closer. “What have I said about that sort of talk? Let us all finish this lucky find together. And with haste before the Ogeema’s hunters smell it.”

Alioth shuffled over to the elk and bit in greedily, but neither Casseomae nor Dubhe moved. The chief pulled a stretchy piece of tissue and crunched, looking back at the sows.

“Come now,” he said. “Don’t let grudges dampen your appetites.”

Dubhe nudged her cubs to leave. Quickly Casseomae said, “No, let Dubhe share the viand with you, Big One. She has cubs to feed. I’ll forage. The Forest is rich. Isn’t that what we old sows always say?”

Casseomae trotted off through the trees. She hadn’t gotten far before Alioth called out behind her, “Casseomae.” When he caught up, the bear chief spoke in a low voice. “You’re still mourning. What can I do for you?”

“Nothing, Big One,” she replied.

“Don’t call me that, Casseomae. You of all my bears don’t have to call me that.”

She gave a huff. “I’m fine, Alioth. Don’t worry about me.”

“But I do,” the chief said. “I always have.”

She bowed her head and turned to go back to her meadow. Alioth called out, “The bear’s path is marked by heavy steps. You remember, don’t you? You taught me that lesson long ago.”

“I remember, Alioth,” she said, and lumbered away.

C
asseomae reached the meadow with the sun high overhead. The air was still and hot, buzzing with insects. Casseomae spent most of her time here. It was her meadow, as much as anything can belong to a bear. It abounded for much of the year with fruit and flowers and tasty shoots. She had hunted and foraged here her whole life. Just over on the far side, beyond the rows of vine-covered relics, was the little den of wood and stone where she had given birth to several litters of stillborn cubs.

Snapping a grasshopper from a milkweed stalk, she climbed onto the nearest of the relics. Its dilapidated frame creaked under her weight. Normally bears and bigger vora hunters found it unwise to climb on the relics of the Skinless Ones. Tangled in fox grape and
honeysuckle, the hulking metal shells could easily pass as shrubs, but the vines masked sharp edges of rusted metal and pits of jagged glass.

Casseomae had learned how to maneuver these dangers. She’d plopped down on the top to enjoy the sun when she heard the yaps of coyotes nearing. They’ll go around, she thought. Voras almost never entered her meadow. Even the Ogeema’s guard, whom she could never have denied access, always avoided her meadow. But the cries grew louder.

Casseomae sat up and shook out her mane. Coyotes posed no threat to a bear of her size. She could drive them away without a fight. But today, with Dubhe’s words still stinging, she wouldn’t have minded a fight.

The yapping grew until at last five coyotes, one after the other, burst through the brush into the bright sun of the clearing. Something small—some little viand, a rodent maybe—dashed through the tall grass and sumac in front of the pack. It had a strange scent about it—acrid and heavily laden with the odor of Skinless relics.

The coyotes circled one of the vine-covered dilapidations, digging at the edges of its frame. “It’s under here, routs!” one called to the others. “Watch that other side that it doesn’t escape!”

As the coyotes dug and barked and ran around, Casseomae saw the creature emerge through the vines at the top of the relic. It was a rat, just a little brown
blur of fur. The creature ran to the edge of the relic and leaped to the next, and then to the next. It was halfway to Casseomae before one of the coyotes caught its scent. “It’s getting away!”

“You can sniff it, you sons of curs!” the rat called back to them. “You won’t catch Dumpster. Ri-ee! Ri-ee! Go lick your unders, you cur lovers, you Old Devil slaves!”

Casseomae reared up in surprise. The rat was speaking in Vorago, the common tongue used by all the vora hunters. How could a rat speak Vorago? None of the viands spoke Vorago.

The coyotes tore around the relics in a rage to catch the little creature. For all his tough talk, the rat was nearing the last of the rusting relics before an open section of field with nowhere to hide. Casseomae was almost disappointed that such a brave viand would meet its end at the jaws of the most vile of all voras, the coyotes. But such was the way of the Forest—voras hunted viands.

The rat landed on top of the last relic and scampered in a circle, searching for an escape. The coyotes surrounded below. The biggest, a female named Rend whom Casseomae had encountered before, said, “Nowhere to go now, loudmouth! We’ve got you.”

The rat was big for his kind, nearly the size of a squirrel. Casseomae had eaten a few plump marsh rats
in her time, but this creature was muscular, with a long powerful tail. He wouldn’t taste very good, she decided. Especially if he talked.

“You’ve not got me yet, you dung-heads,” the rat said, twitching his whiskers as he peered down at the circling coyotes. “You know what you got? You mess with Dumpster and you’ve got spittin’ trouble. Nothing but spittin’ trouble!”

Rend leaped onto the flat front of the relic. “I don’t think so,” she snarled, exposing her shimmering teeth. She inched toward the honeysuckle-covered slope leading to the top.

“Come on up here, whelp,” the rat spat, backing to the far side of the relic’s top. “You put just one spittin’ paw on this car and I’ll send you scurrying back to your hound of a mother!”

“You won’t talk so brave from the bottom of my stomach,” Rend growled as she leaped for the creature.