The mountains were drenched in the colors of the rainbow, mostly provided by foliage. There was no snow yet above the treeline, where gray-blues and smudged violets lay exposed. Bands of somber evergreens stood braced against the rocky heights, the forest’s living bulwark against inhospitable elevations. Down lower, in the deciduous riots of red, orange, and yellow, the day’s unseasonable heat amplified the complex scents of autumn until the air was awash with them.
Any number of creatures were relishing the unexpected warmth in the mountains as they industriously prepared for winter, but few went about on two legs. One of these few could, at the moment, be found partway up a low mountain, where deciduous and evergreen trees mixed freely. A small river bounced gaily down the slopes, tumbling over sharp drops, smashing into the boulders that choked its bed, then spinning luxuriously on with happy gurgles. Just past one of its larger cataracts, gradual, infinitesimal action had worn a wide basin into the rock; there, the water slowed, gathered itself, then poured over the stubborn lip and sped away. Trees crowded the bank, their branches leaving the water dappled by sun and shade. Below a mature pine tree, a pair of well-worn deerskin boots, a neatly folded coat, and an iron-tipped walking staff waited beside a tall, sturdy wicker basket.
A young woman crouched in the peaceful, secluded pool, staring fixedly into the vitriform water. She waited with all the motionless patience of the erratic boulders scattered about, body folded up in a strange pattern so that she could reach into the water as comfortably as possible. Even thus, it was obvious she was uncommonly tall- an inconvenience for her current task. She wore her thick brown hair tied out of the way with a rough cord, and had her clothing similarly arranged- sleeves rolled up to her shoulders, homespun skirt gathered far up her strong thighs and tucked into a belt.
She kept her arms submerged, and her fingers fluttered gently like the nearby waterweed and hornwort that were endlessly combed by the swirling water. Every so often, there was a stunningly fast twitch of movement in one of her sinewy arms, and her clenched fist emerged triumphantly from the rippling water. A flick of her supple wrist sent a shimmering, spasming fish arcing through the air to the basket, where it landed in a wet slap of fins and scales.
In the midst of her fishing, a motion on the shore attracted her attention, and her head snapped up. “Hey!”
The gigantic bear guiltily withdrew from the unattended wicker basket. “I saw that!” Erigone shouted in outrage. “Get in here and catch some yourself, you big greedy thing!”
After gulping down her ill-gotten mouthful, Callisto rumbled an apologetic sound, broad head hanging low. “Don’t you try that with me- Dad would not have let you take the fish. Great, big, naughty, gluttonous lard barrel!” Erigone slapped a thick sheet of water straight at Callisto’s head. “Shoo! Go steal acorns from the squirrels or something! No wonder I can’t get the basket full.”
The shamefaced bear swung away and lumbered off into the trees, shaking her fur dry and bitterly complaining about the unfairness of it all. With a groan, Erigone straightened up and unfurled her long limbs with relief, basking in the sun’s warmth on her arms after the water’s coolness. Although her physique was more lean than brawny, her browned skin revealed robust muscles which indicated frequent, vigorous, outdoor exertion.
After critically judging the sun’s angle and the ursine disturbance’s effect on the fish, Erigone heaved a sigh and began wading towards the riverbank. Halfway there, she stopped mid-stride, listening intently. Something was crashing through the forest, rapidly approaching, and periodically uttering howls fit to shock anyone’s nerves.
A blur of brown and white fur burst through the underbrush, not slowing until it collided with the wicker basket. The basket tumbled away, scattering fish in all directions, and a dog emerged from the destruction with a final howl. Erigone made a low, stunned exclamation, clapping one hand to either side of her head in disbelief. “Maira!!”
The dog dashed back and forth at the very edge of the river, whining piteously. Her paws churned up the bank, muddying the water and trampling fish, but a worry had crept into Erigone’s mind that overrode her anger about her ruined catch. “Weren’t you with Dad?” she asked, a note of alarm thrumming in her rich voice.
Maira flung herself into the water, determinedly bounding through it like deep snow; she seized the hem of Erigone’s skirt in her teeth. Her intention was clearly to tug the young woman along like an errant puppy, but, instead, they both went sprawling into the water. By then, Maira’s agitation had convinced Erigone that some emergency had befallen her father.
Ignoring the coughing fit that the unexpected dunking had triggered, Erigone surged to her feet in a cascade of water, wiping her eyes clear with the palms of her hands. She wrung her clothes perfunctorily while she splashed to the bank; rather than lose a single second unnecessarily, she paused only to grab her heavy staff, nothing else, before plunging into the dense forest after her hysterical dog.
Despite her swift pace, powerful legs sweeping through yards at a time even over the worst terrain (the mountains had much of it to offer), Erigone never overtook Maira. At best, she caught glimpses of her guide as the dog ran flat out, legs and belly in a parallel line to the earth at every stride’s extension. She was running silently now, sides heaving and jaw hanging open. Erigone was soon dripping with sweat instead of river water.
A surprised, pained cry rang out directly ahead. Maira uttered a breathless bark, and Erigone felt her chest constrict with an unfamiliar emotion, especially where her father was concerned: dread. “Dad!” she called, and poured on a panicked burst of speed.
She rounded a growth of young hemlocks, skidding to a halt beside Maira, just on the outside of a circle of destruction caused by a desperate struggle. “Dad?” she gasped.
The ground had been torn up, sometimes in deep furrows that had pierced the layers of leaves to sever the bewildering web of roots beneath. In the midst of this, a black bear- relatively small, especially compared to mighty Callisto- lay moaning softly on its side, securely tied down with a leather belt. Boötes Arctophylax was sitting astride the bear, holding it firmly in place.
At first glance, the Bear-keeper appeared in a worse state than the bear. His shirt had deliberately been ripped into strips suitable for bandages, now strewn haphazardly on the ground. A shocking row of wounds spanned from his shoulder past the center of his bare chest, the uppermost incision following the line of his clavicle, unmistakably scored by bear claws. Little clumps of dark earth tumbled down from them, and the parted skin revealed not blood and muscle, but black, muddy clay; where the claws had met his skeleton, not bone, but a stone-gray substance flashed in the sunlight, like the granite composing the ancient mountains. His arms and flanks showed evidence of other, less severe wounds- already closed- in the lines of dark earth criss-crossing his skin, a different color than the lighter brown smudges accumulated from wrestling in the dirt. Although he was tall and lean like his daughter, and as well tanned, he appeared slightly younger- their faces (deceptively) looked about the same age, but the muscles under her exposed skin corded with a definition his did not, giving an inaccurate impression of his youth.
“You got here fast,” he said in greeting, sounding a bit out of breath himself. “Good girl, Maira,” he praised the winded dog, who sat at a prudent distance.
Erigone threw aside her staff and dropped to her knees at the bear’s back; she extended a shaking hand but stopped short of touching the gaping slashes below her father’s neck. “Oh, Dad, did he do this to you? It looks bad.”
“This foolish young thing stepped into a trap,” Boötes nodded towards a majestic maple whose long life had reached an abrupt end. A bulky trap, its jaws gleaming with monstrous metal teeth, sat at the base of the tree; the trap was anchored to the trunk with a heavy chain. The bear, in its frantic struggles to escape, had only succeeded in doing itself injury and girdling the tree. “He let me get it off him, but the bone was broken, and he caught me a good one when I touched it. Been a while since anything hurt me like this- no, don’t worry,” he hastened to reassure his daughter.
“Are you sure?” she insisted but drew her hand back, unable to bring herself to touch the claw marks- as fascinated by them as she was fearful. Already, the rips in his skin were shorter, narrower than when she arrived, and they no longer revealed the similarity between his bones and the mountains’.
“I’ll be fine.” He rolled the affected shoulder experimentally, and the stripes of dark clay crackled, but stayed in place, their dry edges crumbling away from regenerated skin. “Poor fellow didn’t mean it, did you?” Boötes stroked the bear’s fur gently, and its frightened moans subsided. “But we’ll be having no more of that.” The Bear-keeper shifted his weight and readjusted his grip meaningfully.
Erigone selected a strip of shirt and the thick, straight branch Boötes had apparently already selected for a splint- its ends showed signs of being cut to size. “I’ll help.”
“No. A trap that size… we can tolerate some for beavers and martens, but that’s far too big, and expensive. Someone’s deliberately come into the mountains for bear.”
“Bastards,” Erigone spat, instantly understanding his meaning. “More traps?”
Boötes nodded as he accepted the cloth and splint from her. “There’s tracks south, here and back out. I need you to take Maira and start springing them while I finish doctoring our foolish friend, here.”
The traces on the forest floor were faint, but once Erigone went to look for them, she spotted them quickly. “Here, girl,” she beckoned Maira with a tap on her thigh. The dog sighed, but sprang up obediently, tailing wagging.
It occurred to Erigone that she needed to take precautions against Maira tracking her way straight into one of the bear traps. “Dad, you don’t happen to have any rope, do you?” she asked without real hope.
He chuckled. “No, and-“ he paused to grapple with the flailing bear- “I need my belt right where it is on this fellow. Told you trousers would be more practical today.”
Erigone looped her own belt through Maira’s collar. “Not for wading a pond!” She made a frustrated noise, gathered her skirt as best she could, and finally succeeded in tying a knot in it that stayed. “Maira, seek!”
Maira gamely followed the scent, hardly even putting her nose down, and Erigone loped easily after her. The trail soon led them to one of the few roads that ran through the mountains, where Erigone found signs that a cart and horses had not only stopped, but also turned around, going back towards the human settlements. This simplified matters significantly, for it meant all the remaining traps lay in one direction.
Boötes had kept many generations of hunting dogs since Erigone’s mother brought him Asterion and Chara long ago, all of them excellent trackers, and Maira was a credit to her heritage. She went off the road everywhere the cart had stopped and the trees had been newly blazed, and unfailingly dragged Erigone to a bear trap each time. Erigone sprang them carefully with her staff, if they had not already been tripped by incautious small animals, and flung them into inaccessible crevices or over steep cliffs.
With every successive trap they found, Erigone’s fury grew. She remembered seeing imported bearskins selling for high prices, on her last trip to town, and she vaguely recalled that bear meat was considered a delicacy. As her father had observed, these traps were uncommonly large- so heavy, in fact, that the trappers had been obliged to haul them on a cart and set them near the road- and, therefore, expensive. The outfit behind the bear traps had invested heavily in their venture, and expected to turn a significant profit.
Just as Erigone sprang yet another trap, Maira perked her ears and barked a low warning. “You hear something, Maira?” The dog growled and aimed her nose towards a stretch of the road they had not yet covered.
Erigone took the direction Maira indicated, moving quietly and with some caution. They came out of the trees above an incline, all sheer rock and piles of boulders, which could not sustain anything larger than mosses, lichens, and a limited assortment of stunted vegetation. The road ran at the bottom of it, and a four-wheeled, open wagon was stopped there. Two horses waited in its traces, and a man was busy at the back of the wagon with what Erigone thought looked a great deal like chains and a bear trap.
“You there!” Startled by the sound of her voice, he halted and squinted up at her, reaching for the rifle beside him. “How dare you come here trapping bears. They’re under the protection of the Guardian of the North! The Bear-keeper!”
Having discovered he was being addressed by a solitary young woman, half wild from the look of her, the trapper laughed heartily. “Well, girl, send him my way if you find him!” he called, unconcerned. With that, he turned back to his task.
Erigone looped the improvised leash around her dog’s neck and commanded softly, “Maira, stay.” She did not betray any sign of violent emotion; she simply set off down the rock-strewn mountainside at a truly frightful pace. Expertly employing her long legs and remarkable balance, she was able to stride from boulder to boulder, rather than scrambling over them, and her bare feet gripped sharply cloven bedrock with astounding surety. Her descent was determined, unfaltering, rarely requiring her to employ her staff, and all but silent, like a hawk plunging after a wood mouse.
Only when she was almost at the road did Erigone encounter an obstacle that gave her any difficulty, and she surmounted it readily. There was a low ridge of rock, and she climbed up it by means of slotting her iron-tipped staff into its cracks. She vaulted over the top and leaped straight down the other side, landing crouched in a pile of scree whose upper layers went rattling loudly away.
The noise, of course, got the trapper’s attention. In town, he would have taunted and leered at a woman who left her limbs bare, especially one as finely proportioned as Erigone; but as she fluidly rose and came at him threateningly, powerful muscles sliding under her exposed skin and a stony look on her face, instinctive fear seized him. He caught up his rifle.
However, Erigone had anticipated the move, and she flung her staff at him. The throw knocked the gun from his hands, and she followed it up by hurtling at him, meaning to press what she knew would be an advantage in brute physical strength while he was unarmed. Panic-stricken, he snatched up the only weapons within reach on the wagon: a heavy chain, and the bear trap he had just set.
He struck with the chain first, since it had the longer range; Erigone raised a shoulder to catch the strike and protect herself, and otherwise ignored the heavy, painful impact. She intended to do much the same when he swung the trap, simply fending it off from her face- a certain level of indestructibility ran in her family, after all- but she had not considered that the trap was set. She swung her arm up to deflect it, and it bit mercilessly down on her forearm.
Erigone bellowed, more from outraged shock than pain, wrenching the cruel mechanism from the trapper. Then, she bounded forwards and, backhanded, smashed him upside the head with it. The blow was so powerful that it knocked him senseless and threw him backwards. He landed heavily in the wagon even as the chain, having slipped from his nerveless fingers, clanked to the ground.
Before Erigone could decide whether to climb into the wagon after him or see to the forty pounds of bear trap clamped on her left arm, she espied the field-dressed bear loaded in the wagon, partially visible now that the trapper’s landing had pulled down the tarp. She froze, eyes wide. Two urgent barks from Maira, still on lookout above, roused her, and she realized someone was rushing up through the trees on the other side of the road. After a split second’s consideration, Erigone scrambled to retrieve the rifle she had knocked out of the trapper’s hands, since he had not managed to get the shot off. There was no difficulty in picking it up and slamming the stock against her shoulder, but she had an awkward time negotiating a proper hold for her other hand around the trap wrapped about her arm. She sorted it out just as a second trapper emerged from the woods, not as cautiously as he might have done. They locked eyes for a heartbeat; then they leveled their rifles at each other and fired.
At first, Erigone thought the bullet had hit her- pain blossomed in her arm, and she reeled back from the force of the impact. The man’s aim had been true, in fact, but after a quick inspection, Erigone discovered that the bullet had fortuitously ricocheted off the bear trap, rather than burrowing between her ribs. Erigone, even under the best of circumstances, would not have been as good of a shot as her opponent, but her steady nerves and the close quarters worked in her favor. Once she recovered enough to spare him a glance, she observed she had wounded him in the shoulder, and he was on his knees, seemingly unable to reload, never mind fire, his gun.
Meanwhile, the gunshots had not been to the horses’ liking, and they had bolted, wagon in tow. Erigone thought nothing of them, until a horrible scream rent the air. She spun around, in time to see one horse collapse under the massive bear on its back. The second had broken free and was racing for its life, harness trailing behind it as it disappeared around a bend in the road.
Mighty Callisto, jaws wet with the unlucky horse’s blood, lurched onto the wagon, which listed to one side, having sustained a broken wheel in the proceedings. Callisto wailed softly when she saw the dead bear, and dispatched the unconscious trapper perfunctorily. Her broad head swung up, eyes focusing past Erigone on the second trapper, and the wagon groaned as she lumbered down, roaring, gaining speed on the road with terrifying ease despite her bulk. Erigone pragmatically stepped to the shoulder, and the man behind her rather hopelessly drew the hunting knife at his hip with his good hand.
“Callisto, STOP!”
The bear rumbled to a halt, glaring over her meaty shoulder at Boötes, whose deep voice reverberated with inarguable authority as he rounded the bend in the road, leading the other horse. Boötes Arctophylax was still naked from the waist up, still smeared with dirt, although his wounds had disappeared, but there was a regal, eternal quality to him that was nearly palpable. It was as if the mountains themselves, permanent and fearsome, had seized the runaway horse and stalked down the road, dragging it unwilling, to deliver judgement. The trapper sagged down and dropped his knife, not so much in relief as from a wave of utter despair and resignation.
Erigone saw her father’s gaze sweeping over the scene, and suddenly grew very conscious of the bear trap attached to her forearm, both painful and embarrassing. She turned her attention to escaping it, but, to her chagrin, found there was a reason the trapper had been working to set it while he was still at the wagon with his tools. She struggled with it unsuccessfully, cursing under her breath, until Boötes halted beside her, and she had to admit defeat.
“Are you all right?” he asked softly.
Erigone rolled her eyes and huffed. “I’ll have you know I brained him with it after he caught me in it,” she stated.
“And you say I get into trouble when you leave me unsupervised.” Boötes’ twitching lips gave the distinct impression he was valiantly suppressing a smile.
“Dad,” she groaned, but meekly offered her arm. He immediately gripped the two springs and depressed them without obvious effort, releasing her and tossing the trap aside. Erigone would have kicked it, if she had been wearing shoes.
“Now, as for you,” Boötes turned to the waiting trapper, suddenly very serious, the affection in his voice replaced by frosty menace. Callisto had a distinct opinion about what to do with the man, but the Bear-keeper bit his lips, unconvinced. He ran a hand soothingly under the frightened horse’s mane- it was terrified of Callisto, and would have bolted again if he let it. “Maybe it’s been too long since anyone limped back to town half dead- told them a tale of what a man can run afoul of in these mountains.”
Boötes walked the horse up to their captive and gazed down at him, considering. He simply cowered on his knees, trembling and bleeding, but not profusely. The bullet had gone cleanly through him, and apparently without damaging any major blood vessels.
“You’ll live,” Boötes decided, his tone that of an order. “Get on the horse.” Without waiting for the man to comply, Boötes lifted him onto the animal’s back; but the action served to demonstrate frightening strength, not kindness. Before he released the horse, he tilted his head and gazed up at the dazed trapper. “You’re never coming back here,” he instructed flatly, a grim, uninviting promise heavy in his words.
“No, no, sir,” the trapper agreed hastily. “Never go in the woods again.”
“And do you know who exactly is the reason for that?”
“Guardian of the North,” he stammered. “Bear-keeper!”
With a graceful dip to the ground, Boötes retrieved the man’s knife and dropped it in its sheath with a smirk. “That’s right. Now go.”
After watching the horse and rider gallop frantically away for a few moments, Boötes glanced at Callisto, who made a rude noise and set off after them, too slow to catch them, but fast enough to provide a motivating escort. Then, he went back to Erigone, who had sat down and torn up part of her skirt to bandage her arm. Maira, who had made her way down the mountain, was anxiously and unhelpfully licking at the oozing blood. The trap had not broken any bones, but it had torn through her skin in places. Erigone’s one-handed efforts were clumsy, though, and when her father sat beside her, he took over. As he finished, he remarked, with a touch of pride, “You certainly gave him a great deal to think about.”
“I did my best, but I’m no Guardian of the North,” she said ruefully.
Boötes frowned and shook his head slightly, his flashing gray eyes searching her face; she had the impression that the whole trackless northern wild was searching her soul. “Why would you say that?”
Erigone sighed and held up her bandaged forearm. “He got me in a bear trap.”
“And then you broke his face with it- there’s nothing more quintessentially like a Guardian of the North than that. I should know,” Boötes said and laughed fondly. “If you took after your mother instead, you’d be much more inclined to wrestle mountain lions with your bare hands.”
“But there is only one Guardian of the North,” Erigone protested stubbornly.
“Don’t be silly,” he replied, and pulled her into a tight embrace. “There’ve been two for a very long time now.”
Liked “Canis Minor”? Read about the ancient myths that inspired it, in this blog post.