“Oh, mmh!” They had been picking wild blueberries for hours already, but, “Oh, this is the best bush yet!” Cyrene exclaimed. She plucked a few more of the plump, sweet berries and dropped them into the sack hanging around her neck. It was a token gesture; she only recalled the bag during the interval while she chewed and gulped. “So good,” she mumbled blissfully, with lips whose color betrayed exactly what proportion of blueberries were going into the bag, as opposed to her stomach. There was no reply, but the other side of the large bush rustled and shook as it was industriously ransacked for its superb fruit.
It was a splendid late summer day, the sky completely cloudless. As far into the mountains as they had ventured, gentle breezes and altitude mitigated the temperature, but the day was warm, nonetheless. Her berrying bag did not grow much heavier as she worked at the bush, but Cyrene felt very full, and quite sleepy. When she had cleared the lower branches and a half-hearted swipe of her stained fingers towards the higher berries came up short, she was quick to seek assistance. “Momma, there’s more over here, but I can’t reach them. Momma?”
Not receiving an immediate reply, Cyrene tramped around to the other side of the bush, where she made a distressing discovery. Rather than her mother, she found a massive bear, who stood towering on its hind legs as it gorged itself. It was holding an entire branch to a cavernous mouth full of teeth the size of some of Cyrene’s fingers, chomping the berries, with the odd leaf or twig, directly off the bush.
Cyrene gasped and recoiled a step, her eyes going wide and round. “Uh-oh,” she stated in a terrified whisper.
Staring at the girl who had interrupted its snack, the bear let the branch slap back into the bush and dropped heavily onto all fours with a grunt. That did it: “Momma!!” Cyrene shrieked, shrugged out of her berrying sack, and bolted, as fast as the underbrush allowed.
Her headlong dash came to an abrupt halt when she collided, full tilt, with [her brain scrambled to process the information backlogged by adrenaline and fear] a tree!- no, firm but not hard- warm- so, not a tree, but a leg- a leg! She took no time to consider the provenance of the leg, but simply clutched at it and put it between herself and the bear.
Berrying bag dangling from its terrifying jaws, the bear lumbered to a halt not ten feet away; Cyrene peeked at it around the protective thigh, which, now that she paused to think, was a distinctly unfamiliar thigh. For one thing, she had been taller than anyone’s thigh for a while, at that point in her life. For another, she was certain that none of her mother’s limbs rippled with a similar quantity of muscle.
Cyrene had taken refuge with a buckskin-clad thigh that belonged to a tall, buckskin-clad young man; he had stopped dead in his tracks, arms thrown up, and was regarding her with alarm. He glanced at the bear, raised his eyebrows, and pressed his lips into a thin line. “Callisto?” He managed to embed a reproof, pre-made, into his inquiry. The great bear shuffled sideways to release a sapling she had thoughtlessly pinned to the ground under one humongous paw. At the exasperated jerk of his head and hands, which clearly communicated the tree had not been what he meant, the bear dropped the sack, made a rude noise, and plopped down onto her haunches. Experimentally, he shifted his feet, but found his passenger so firmly attached that she came along, toes dragging in the bed of pine needles under them.
“Well, hello down there.”
He smiled and spoke a little uncertainly, but, nonetheless, his voice held a depth that was as ancient and profound as the roots of the forest’s eldest trees. His flashing eyes were the eternally enduring gray of the mountains’ granite bones; and, although his features were fine and noble, there was a fierce aspect of him that stirred to mind every frightening story Cyrene had ever heard of the North. Unlike her, he did not appear to be an interloper in the trackless wilds; he looked as much a part of it as the bear sitting in front of them. Worst of all, he was a complete stranger. Abruptly, Cyrene released her death grip on his thigh.
“Momma!!” she shrieked again and pelted off into the woods.
The young man gaped after her, thoroughly bewildered; Callisto made a series of ursine noises that were unmistakably guffaws. He threw the bear a pointed look, caught up the berrying bag, and followed the girl, making no effort to stop or catch her- he loped easily along, waiting for her to inevitably tire. He might have adopted a different strategy if he had realized how far she would lead him.
Fleeing with no goal but away, Cyrene failed to keep a lookout for danger ahead. One stride, her foot landed on a nice, solid boulder, trees at either side; the next, she was on the edge of a precipitous river bank, pitching forward into open air, rocky rapids below. Then, a wrench of her shoulder arrested her fall- her pursuer had seized her with one hand, and he half yanked, half lifted her to safety. Expression inscrutable, he stepped away and gazed down at her.
“Will you stop running now, little cub?”
Gasping for breath and trembling, she thrust her chin out. “My name is Cyrene.”
“I’m Boötes Arctophylax, Guardian of the North and Bear-keeper.” The Guardian crouched down and offered Cyrene her berrying bag, but she shied back from his extended arm; she had heard tales about the Bear-keeper who patrolled the mountains. “Why did you run from me and Callisto?”
“You both chased me!” she protested sulkily.
“You ran first!” Boötes threw his head back, gazed imploringly upward as if some wisdom were to be found in the tree canopy, and sighed before trying again. “You were alone, and Callisto thought you’d get lost when you ran, if you weren’t already. Are you lost?”
Cyrene snatched her bag back. “Maybe,” she muttered unwillingly. “These’re squished!” she accused as she opened it and inspected the blueberries within.
Boötes rocked back onto his heels, momentarily at a loss. “Well, bears haven’t got thumbs. Will you let me take you home? You don’t belong here.”
Clutching her sack, Cyrene eyed his opened arms suspiciously, hanging back out of reach as she studied him. “You won’t feed me to the big bear?”
A smile tugged at one corner of his mouth. “No. We’ll help you find your- oof!”
With a fairly remarkable amount of force, the girl launched herself at him, clinging like moss on a maple. “Thank you, Booties,” she mumbled into his shoulder.
The Guardian of the North stood slowly, strong arms carefully wrapped around his unusual burden, who seemed to be falling asleep on his chest, blueberries for a mushy pillow. “You are welcome, strange little human cub.”
———
“Hel-hello?”
At the back of the cave, Callisto whuffed and rolled over but refused to leave her bed of spruce boughs, forcing Boötes to crack open an eye to see who was disturbing them. The intruder was timidly peering between the boulders forming the narrow entrance, which was mostly buried by snow. At the sight of her, he threw off the stack of furs he had been dozing under. “Cyrene!” he called out, his voice gravelly from sleep, and rushed across the cave.
“B-boo-ooties!” She was shivering so forcefully that she pronounced his name correctly, around chattering teeth. He plunged his arms into the powdery snowdrift that came nearly up to her chin and hauled her into the den, along with a small avalanche.
The Guardian dusted the snowy child off, then scooped her up and retreated into the warmer parts of the cave. “What are you doing so high up the mountains, in the winter?” he asked sternly.
“I h-had to f-find you.”
“You have found me, and you’re nearly frozen to death,” he informed Cyrene, as he sat them both in his pile of warm furs. He was growing concerned by her condition; her shivering continued unabated, and her lips were blue- not from berries, this time. Thus, he did not object when she clambered over him, perching on his leg and burrowing beneath his arm, like a chick under a hen’s wing. Once installed, she attempted to work her fingers, gone numb from exposure, at her coat. “Where are the coverings for your paws?” he demanded fretfully.
“I had to take my mittens off to climb up to your cave. I couldn’t hold onto the rocks with them on. My hands hurt,” she whimpered, but she succeeded in getting the top of her coat undone, and two small, furry heads popped out, whining and licking her neck.
For a moment, Cyrene giggled and patted the puppies; then, she looked up seriously at the extremely nonplussed Boötes. A pair of tears welled up in her eyes, but they beaded up on the clumps of ice already snarled in her eyelashes. “Please help, Booties,” she pleaded miserably as she extracted the puppies, who slipped from her icy fingers and tumbled excitedly onto the Guardian. “I’ll give you my puppies, if you help us- my family.”
Boötes blinked down at the rapidly expanding number of shivering juvenile creatures in his lap. He shook his head fractionally, and made a resigned sound in the back of his throat. Bundling them up into an armful of pelts, he carried them to the back of the dim cave and settled the lot against the hibernating bear; she protested sleepily. “Callisto, don’t be difficult. I can’t light a fire with a pile of puppies in my lap- just keep them warm.”
The Guardian of the North quickly built a good fire beneath a small cleft that allowed the smoke to escape the cave. He placed the girl and her puppies in front of it, plying them with warm water, and a brew of hemlock needles and teaberries for Cyrene. Her eyes lit up delightedly when she took a sip.
“It’s good!” she exclaimed.
“It’s my favorite,” he said with a small smile, pleased. “We’ll see what you three think of my stew, next.”
By the time they finished eating, Boötes- through an exhausting question and answer session- had pieced together the emergency that had prompted Cyrene to seek him out under such perilous conditions. Her family was starving. Tempted by the offer of an unusually high price, her father had sold much of their flock in the autumn. The unscrupulous merchant had taken the sheep but never paid up- a hard blow, but not disastrous. Then, more misfortune had befallen the family: disease had decimated the remaining sheep, and wolves had since preyed upon nearly all the rest, as well as the puppies’ dam. They were neither hunters nor productive vegetable farmers, but depended almost entirely on their shepherding; their stores would give out long before the winter ended, and they had been cheated of the coin owed them.
“So, how did you find me?”
“I didn’t. They did,” Cyrene pointed to the puppies, engaged in a vigorous game of tug-of-war against one of the furs; they appeared to be losing. “There’re an awful lot of bear dens between here and home. That’s Chara,” she indicated the nearly solid brown puppy, “and this is Asterion.” She petted Asterion’s spotted fur with hands that had finally limbered up and regained their feeling. “I don’t have anything else to trade you for your help.”
“Hello, Asterion, Chara,” Boötes said affectionately, reaching out to stroke the nearer puppy, who instantly dropped the pelt and licked his wrist in return, tail wagging so hard her entire body wagged along, too. He shook himself and withdrew his hand. “I don’t have any use for dogs.”
“If you don’t take them, we can’t feed them. Momma says- that means we’d have to-…. You’ve got to take them!” Tears welled up in Cyrene’s eyes; desperation made her voice quaver. “Please? Please, Booties?”
“I-.” Boötes hesitated. From her bed at the back of the cave, Callisto grunted disapprovingly and clucked her tongue. He frowned, tilting his head. “What exactly is it you want me to do, little human cub?”
———
A few days and many miles later, Boötes strode across the jagged, windswept peak of the easternmost mountain in his domain. He never faltered on the ice and snow that coated the bare rocks- he could no more have slipped than he could have flown; neither did he crush any of the delicate alpine vegetation stubbornly clinging to life despite the inhospitable environment. He planted his feet on the weathered, exposed granite at the very edge of a cliff face, entirely unconcerned by the sheer drop or bitter wind, and he gazed thoughtfully at the town below, the ocean not far beyond. Under the fur thrown haphazardly over his shoulders, the bundle slung across his chest squirmed and whined. He slipped a hand in to reassure the two puppies, whom he had not quite trusted enough to leave behind with Callisto, proverbially cranky if roused from her winter slumber. “Hush. We’re nearly there,” he murmured soothingly.
The Guardian of the North had not visited the town for decades, but it was not changed substantially from what he remembered. There was good reason why he so seldom strayed near humans in general, and this place in particular. It smelled, everything was dirty, and the humans were obnoxious.
His first stop was a dingy establishment where he ordered bread and a thin excuse for stew. The proprietor somewhat guiltily took the ancient coin he handed her, but made no move to make change. He fixed his stony gray eyes on her, snorted “Hmph!” derisively, and left her quailing in his wake, choosing to slouch in a dark corner with Asterion and Chara in his lap, deliberately apart from the other patrons. After sampling the meager stew, he turned it over to the puppies’ less discerning palates, but bread was extremely rare in his diet, and he ate that with relish.
“Hey! Hey, you! Hey there!”
Boötes kept eating impassively, but the shouting from across the room continued. “Hey, we met on the south road into town, didn’t we?”
Finally, he glanced up. “It’s possible,” he said noncommittally, but his low, deep voice had the proprietor automatically reaching into her pocket to make fair change, before her greed recovered control of her fingers.
The man paused, his instincts catching some implicit warning, but his companions- and everyone else in the room, by then- were watching. Besides, a traveler from the countryside, doting on two young puppies, could hardly be anything but an easy mark. “Yeah, yeah we did. I’m Nicias, remember?” In fact, Boötes did remember- he had graciously stepped off the narrow road to allow Nicias’ mule train to pass. The disagreeable man had stopped and tried to engage the Guardian in conversation, which he had politely, and silently, endured until Nicias was yanked along by the mules, who had better manners.
Wolfing down the last hunk of bread, Boötes set the puppies on the floor and began walking to the door. As he passed, Nicias leaned out and clapped a hand to his arm. “Heya, pup, look here-“
Jaw twisted into an irritated scowl, Boötes seized the offending hand and flung it away, with enough force that the mule driver stumbled backward. His unwise response was to step up and swing a fist at Boötes’ face; it connected with a crunch. Nicias reeled back, clutching his hand and staring in disbelief at the young man who simply stood there glowering, the fur he wore a bit askew. Giving no indication his face had just cracked bones, Boötes shrugged his fur back up his shoulders and spun on his heel. He clicked his tongue to the puppies, who bounded out from under a nearby table and trailed him to the exit, scampering gamely to keep pace.
In a thoroughly sour mood, Boötes marched across town to where the animal traders conducted business, brimming with all the glacial cheer of the mountains he regretted leaving. He stalked the streets, thunderous expression softening only when he periodically checked on his four-legged shadows and gently ruffled their ears. Some exploration and inquiries saw him directed to the side of a stone barn, where a cluster of men gathered around a fire. It was the off season for business, and the rows of pens, both inside and out in the yard, were nearly empty.
“Sit,” Boötes ordered quietly over his shoulder, and the tired puppies readily obeyed- but he noticed Chara chewing on something that could not possibly be good for her. “Give me that!” The Guardian stooped down and tugged the sock dangling from her mouth. Unwilling to relinquish her prize, she gave a tiny growl and scrabbled against him, but quickly wilted under his glare and disengaged. Wondering exactly where she had got hold of a sock, he tossed it away. “Don’t,” he warned, pointing a finger at her and Asterion when they made to dash after it. They dropped back into a sit, tails wagging apologetically.
The puppies seen to, Boötes straightened up and strode over to the pens that bordered the street. “Which one of you bought a flock from Hypseus and Chlidanope last fall?” he called to the men around the fire.
“Who’s asking?” sneered the fattest and best dressed of them, lounging against the barn wall.
“Who’s answering? I’m here to collect,” the Guardian replied levelly, already satisfied that this was Acouphis, the dishonest man he sought.
Fingers twisting the hem of his thick woolen coat, Acouphis heaved himself upright, and squinted as he assessed Boötes. The skins he wore marked him as a hunter from outside the town- that was potentially dangerous. Yet, he bore no weapons- not so much as a staff. His face was set, but also young, inviting the inference that his long, lean limbs would possess little strength- certainly nothing a handful of men, most of them calloused laborers who would fearlessly wrangle a kicking horse, needed to respect… and, there had been that ridiculous display with the puppies.
“Listen, friend, even if you was Hypseus- which you ain’t- I already ‘paid’ him, and he’s lucky he can still walk. Scram, or we’ll pay you the same.”
The Guardian stood immobile. “Believe me, I don’t enjoy being here. Give up what you owe the shepherd, and I’ll gladly leave.”
With a malicious chuckle and an exaggerated nod, Acouphis sent the two burliest laborers to deliver the payment he had threatened. They picked up sturdy staffs and sauntered out, circling to either side of their intended victim. They attacked without preamble. One aimed for the back of Boötes’ thigh, where a well-placed blow would collapse his leg. The staff splintered on impact; Boötes did not so much as sway. The other brought his staff crashing down in a powerful overhand blow, and it snapped in half across the Guardian’s back.
At last, Boötes moved: he jerked the broken staff ends from the startled men, and retaliated in kind. Blurring with speed beyond the eye’s capacity to track, he struck to the left, then the right, the wood landing each time with a distinctive crack. They both collapsed, like marionettes whose strings had been cut. Boötes dropped the remnants of their staffs atop their unconscious bodies, and swung his head up, fixing his murderous glare on the men by the barn. He stepped forward, crashing through the outermost pen. The Guardian waded through the other pens in the yard the way a normal man might have traversed a cornfield, every now and then wrenching a post from the ground and hurling it aside, as if he needed something more worthy of his fury than fence rails.
One member of the group caught up a bow and strung it with impressive alacrity. He shot off an arrow just before Boötes crossed the final pen between them, so close it was impossible to miss- although not, apparently, to aim badly. The arrow pierced Boötes’ flank, the head emerging from his back. He halted, glancing down curiously. His torso appeared to spasm- the visual evidence of powerful muscles flexing, accompanied by the muffled sound of the shaft snapping. Smirking directly at the archer, Boötes plucked both pieces of the arrow out and tossed them aside, and then descended on his stupefied audience, bringing down the primeval destructive power of the wild North on the unfortunate men, heedless of their ineffective attempts to defend themselves. Moments later, they were all sprawled out on the ground, save one.
The villain Acouphis had shrunk behind the others; deprived of this protection, he panicked and seized the hatchet laying on the woodpile by the fire. Desperation fueled his attack, a powerful one that ought to have neatly chopped any opponent’s arm in half. Instead, the hatchet juddered against something solid that made the metal screech as if it had struck a rock. The hatchet tumbled from his nerveless fingers and clattered to the ground. Boötes shook his arm, scattering the dark earth that had trickled out of the gash, and only unblemished skin remained under the gaping hole in his buckskin sleeve. Acouphis’ face went white as Boötes swept down to the ground, bending only at the knees, and retrieved the hatchet, whose finely honed bit was now marred by an obvious notch. Instead of swinging it, the Guardian grasped Acouphis with his free hand and lifted him off his feet. “Was it you? Was it you who robbed that family?” he roared, his voice holding all the fury of a winter storm in the highest mountains.
Dangling helplessly by the neck, limbs twitching in fear, Acouphis sobbed out a nearly indecipherable denial. The Guardian gave him a shake, much as Chara had done with her sock, and the trader screamed. “Consider carefully,” Boötes said softly, suddenly gone horribly calm, “that if you’re not useful to me, I’ll be completely indifferent as to whether you live or die.”
“All right, all right, it was me! It was me!” Boötes opened his fingers, and Acouphis crumpled to the ground pathetically. Boötes impatiently prodded him through his blubbering and pleading, observing stonily as he emptied his own purse and then his companions’ (who had begun to stir, but showed no interest in a rematch), counting coins to the Guardian’s exacting satisfaction. At last, he handed over a brimming purse and cowered back against the barn, a sullen look on his unpleasant features as he watched the Guardian tuck the money away.
Granite eyes flashing with an intention profound and cold, Boötes hefted the hatchet, then caressed the notch in its bit. “This has been extremely inconvenient for me.” He nodded to Acouphis’ short, stubby fingers. “Those rings, too- on or off your arms; I don’t care.”
The man wordlessly surrendered his heavy gold rings. Pocketing them, Boötes raised the hatchet and gave a mighty swing; Acouphis stood frozen and only managed a whimper when he saw it hurtling in his direction. The stone immediately behind him in the barn wall exploded into a shower of chips and sparks, and the ruined hatchet head flew singing away.
“If any misfortune befalls that family again, I’ll come back and aim at your head.” Boötes cast the remainder of the splintered haft at the man’s feet and turned away, crossing the yard back to the street. The puppies were waiting for him expectantly- perhaps not precisely where he had left them, but near enough.
“Chara, Asterion, come.”
Boötes led them out of town at a rapid pace, eager to spend another few decades away from it, but the puppies struggled to keep up. Before they had gone half a mile, Chara flung herself hopelessly down to the ground, and Asterion halted beside his sister, giving three high barks. Boötes stopped to look back at the exhausted puppies, and they stared up at him with large, expressive eyes. He rolled his own eyes, went over, and picked up a puppy in each hand, stowing them carefully despite his annoyance. “You two had better have longer legs when you grow up.”