Excerpt from The Bear by Andrew Krivak, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

He handed her a box made of birch skin, around which a long piece of dried grass was tied in a bow. She untied the bow and opened the box. Inside was a silver comb polished brightly and looking like nothing she had ever seen before.

She stared at the comb for a long time, until the man broke the silence.

This was your mother's, he said. I have been waiting to give it to you. When I watched you fighting with your hair down on the lakeshore, I thought, This is the year.

She reached into the box, took out the comb, and held it as she would a thing delicate and to be revered.

I love it, she said quietly, closed her hand around the comb, then climbed into her father's arms and hugged him.

*

The girl had heard the voice of the man in her ear for as long as she could remember, so she never wondered if there was someone else who might have once spoken to her as well. But when she was old enough to walk beyond the house and into the woods or down to the lake, she began to notice something about the animals. There were two foxes darting in and out of the downed-log den with their skulk of pups. Two loons escorted the baby loon across the deep middle of the lake every summer. And when she saw does grazing in spring in a small meadow at the base of the mountain, there were the fawns right by their sides. So after the girl had practiced running the comb through her hair and the man tucked her into bed and kissed her good night, she looked up at him and asked, Why are you alone?

The man knelt down at her bedside.

I'm not alone, he said. I have you.

I know, said the girl. I mean where did my mother go? Everywhere around me there are things you tell me were once hers. But she's not here.

She's here, he said. In what we remember of her.

But I don't remember her, she said. What happened to her?

The man bowed his head and lifted it again, and he told his daughter that when he and the woman buried their parents and came to the mountain and built their house, she was all the world he knew, and he believed for a time that the two of them would live alone in this world for the rest of their days. Until she discovered she was going to have a child.

Me, said the girl.

You, said the man. But when the time came, she had to struggle a great deal to bring you into the world. And after that struggle the only thing she could do was nurse you and rest. She was strong. Strong enough to live through the summer and into the fall to give you what milk and nourishment she had to give. But, in time, I knew she would leave us for that place where the struggle to bear a child had taken her, and neither you nor I could follow. And one evening before the hunter's moon she went to sleep and didn't wake.

The man turned away to look into the dark for a moment, then turned back to his daughter. She sat up and reached out from underneath the blanket and took his hand in hers.

It's all right, she said. I understand.

He smiled and said, You're a wise girl. But there's still much you can't understand. So much you shouldn't have to. Not yet.

Like what? she asked.

Well, like how even after all these years, years in which I've had you to think about every minute of every day, I still think of her. I still miss her and wish she were here.

The girl lay back down on the pillow. Will I miss you one day? she asked. One day, the man said.

The girl was quiet then and the man thought she might have fallen asleep, but she asked again into the dark, Are you sad that you have me instead?

Oh no, not for a moment! the man answered in a voice too loud for the room, and held the girl's hand tighter. Not for one moment. You see, you are the joy I have beyond any sadness or wish that remains for what once was. Without you ...

His voice trailed off and he stared down at the floor, then back at his daughter.

Excerpted from The Bear Copyright © 2020 by Andrew Krivak. Published by Bellevue Literary Press: www.blpress.org. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.