The Shadow of the Bear: A Fairy Tale Retold (30 page)

His wrists were openly bleeding but Fish struggled with renewed intensity. Rose wasn’t struggling, just sitting calmly, as though waiting for him. Or for death. Fish didn’t want to know which would come first.

At last, one elbow was free, and he jerked his arm up, almost dislocating his wrist.
Calm down get at the knots.
He tried getting his face down to his wrist, contorting his neck and back in the process.
Try again.
This time, he was able to grab the edge of the tape across his mouth. He yanked hard, and with a blistering rip, the tape came loose. Now he seized the knot on his wrist with his teeth and jerked, painfully wrenching his back. The knot loosened. Two more yanks with his teeth, and it came undone.

Desperately, Fish used his free hand to pull off the ropes, but still he was tied to the pillar by one arm. Feverishly he worked at the last knot. His fingers seemed to stumble now, as he saw her head drop down, saw her shoulders heave. She was beginning to struggle for breath.
Forever. Forever.
The knot would not yield. Sweat was running down his face freely. “Oh, come on!” he begged the knot. “Come on!”

Suddenly, as though yielding to Fish’s voice, the knot gave. He pulled the last rope loose and sprang across the room to Rose, stumbling as he went. In terror, now, seeing her face was blue, he seized the plastic bag and tried to rip it open. His nails were too dull—he couldn’t make a tear in it. He seized the corner of the bag with his teeth, and tore off a piece, biting a few strands of hair with it in his fury. He shoved his fingers inside and ripped the plastic bag in two, pulling it off her face.

Her hair and face were damp from her near-suffocation, and her chest heaved even after she was free, as she tried to fill her lungs with air. He ripped off the tape from her mouth, wrapped his arms around her, and pushed her chest in, forcing her lungs to work. She choked, gagging, and finally slumped forward, breathing normally at last.

Fish now had trouble untying the ropes on her wrists and ankles, but eventually the last bit of cord came loose and she collapsed onto the floor. He gathered her into his arms, watching her breathing and wiping her face with the back of his hand.

“Are you all right?” he asked her anxiously.

Her eyes focused on him, and she nodded slowly. His tightly drawn lips relaxed a little. They stung, and he realized some skin had come off with the tape.

She looked at him in bewilderment. “You escaped?”

“I’m not called Fish for nothing,” he said with his crooked smile.

With a sigh, she closed her eyes and let her head drop into his lap. Fish looked around the cellar, and said, almost to himself, “I hate to say it, but we’re as good as dead if he comes back here.”

The paten was in Blanche’s hands. The sun was half-sunk in darkening clouds. She walked. The world continued to stand still around her. The darkness had swallowed Bear. And Rose. Father was dead. Mother was not here. There was no one left but her.

Blanche walked straight ahead. There was only one thing she must do, and that was to leave the paten right inside the church doors. The paten that Father Raymond had died to protect. And maybe Bear, now, too. She was going to give it to the man whom they had tried to protect it from. She would do that. After that, nothing else mattered.

Oh God
, she called out softly inside.
God.

She continued to walk.

The men signed of the cross of Christ go gaily.

In the dark.

The shadows were getting longer, even though the sun was far from setting. The towers and spire of St. Lawrence came into view. They separated themselves from the other buildings around it, and rose above the square ugly block of St. Catherine’s. Her legs seemed to become very heavy and she came to a stop.

I’m just a china doll. I can’t do anything.

Her heart had frozen long ago and turned her flesh to stone.

I can’t move or I’ll break.

 It would be very simple. All she had to do was leave the paten and walk away. She never needed to go back.

It was too frighteningly easy.

Go gaily in the dark.

I can’t smile. How can you go forth gaily if you can’t smile?

She tried to make her legs cross the last street. Slowly, very slowly as though her legs were waking up from a deep sleep, Blanche pushed on.

She walked past St. Catherine’s. She reached the doors of the church and stopped. She looked up at the spires, black against a cloudy sky.

Oh God I can’t. Not even this. Please, send someone else.

There is no one else.

She continued to stand there, frozen, as all the fears she had ever experienced in her life came rushing down upon her. She swayed, stumbled, and steadied herself.

It would be easier to faint.

It was wrong, it was wrong. The universe was grossly unjust. Father Raymond had tried to do good, and he had been murdered. Bear and his brother had tried to protect his treasures, and they were lost. Rose—where was she? Was she still alive? Why were things this way? You tried to do the right thing and were slapped in the face.

Rose was wrong. If life was really a fairy tale, it was a sick one. Where the ogre gobbled up everyone in the end. She clenched the paten in her hands and felt nauseous.

I have nothing. I have nothing.

She trembled there, feeling her utter insignificance against the dark evil inside the abandoned church. It was wrong of God to let her be the only one left. Why not Rose? Rose would have gone into the church singing in the dark.

She took a step, and realized she had decided.

But I am going into the church, too.

She was going in, but not to surrender.

Rose regained consciousness with a jolt and lifted her head. Fish instantly supported her shoulders. “Are you feeling better?” he asked.

Rose leaned on him and climbed to her feet unsteadily. “We’ve got to get out of here. Bear—”

“Yeah, I know.” Fish scrambled up and helped her stand. “Can you walk okay?”

“I think so—” Rose took a step and leaned against the pillar for support. “So you’re Bear’s younger brother?”

“Yes,” he acknowledged.  “And, you’re one of my brother’s young lady friends.”

Rose wondered what he meant by that, but there were more pressing things to think about at the moment. She looked around their confines.

“He’s got locks on the cellar door,” Fish said. “It’s probably hopeless.”

“Doesn’t he have any tools down here?” Rose cast a glance around at the chalices and treasure.

“I doubt it. He wouldn’t be so silly as to leave us a screwdriver or a lever.”

“Then there’s nothing we can do?” Rose blinked back tears suddenly and felt as though she were going to collapse back onto the floor. For a moment, she actually gave up.

“Hold on, don’t faint or anything. Just sit down again.” Fish dragged forward the chair she had been tied to and made her sit down. “So how’d you find me here anyhow?”

She knew he was trying to distract her, and she let herself be distracted. “I followed Mr. Freet, like I said before—” Her voice was shaking and she rubbed away tears from her eyes and tried to calm down. “I listened at the basement windows and I heard him beating someone—”

Something changed in Fish’s expression. “There are windows in this basement?”

“Yes.” Rose looked around at rows of shelves, suddenly doubtful. “At least on the outside—”

“He’s probably just blocked them off, but if you could hear through them, they must be here somewhere.” Fish leapt to his feet and began feeling along the walls.

Blanche’s hands looked very small, grasping the wrought iron handles. The doors looked as though they were locked. But when she pulled, they opened.

She stepped inside the vestibule, and crossed herself out of habit. After all, it was a church. The heavy door swung shut slowly, and the bar of dim light from outside grew thinner and thinner until it vanished into the grey.

She took another step into the dark and found the doors to the main body of the church. She pulled them open.

According to the murky walls, the sun was as good as down. Inside was a forest of shaded pillars, ghostly outlines of marble statues. The somber light above sent down faint beams through the far-off windows. But most of the church was overborne in black reverberations and emptiness.

Blanche walked forward, the huge canopy of the hollow building stretching over her. Row after row of empty pews passed her by. She continued on, unsure of what to do, moving in and out of the shadows cast by the columns in front of the stained glass windows, with white light shining here and there through missing pieces like broken teeth. The echoes distorted each sound she made.

She reached the sanctuary and stood in front of the marble altar rail. There in the obscure interior of the holy place was something ebon and hulking. At first, her heart stopped in fear, then she recognized it.

“Bear?” she whispered, her voice shaking with panic.

There was a rumble, and a movement. Something clinked against the marble, and the ragged shape raised its head.

“Who’s there?” his voice was low, strained. She saw his face, grey and fuzzy in the semi-darkness, with an inky stripe of blood on one cheek.

She went and knelt in front of him. “What happened to you?” He was lying on the floor of the sanctuary with his hands handcuffed around the marble post of the altar rail. His shoulders were sunken, and his eyes were glazed, almost subhuman. She scarcely recognized him.

He stared at her woozily, like a drugged animal. “You shouldn’t be here. Go away.” The words were only sounds, with no meaning.

“Who did this to you?”

“Black dwarves,” he said thickly and buried his shaggy head in his arms. “Go away. I told you to go away.”

“Bear—”

There was a subdued snicker from behind. Blanche turned and saw the phantom outline of a man coming towards her. His hand held a gun that gleamed in a patch of light.

“He’s suffering from a slight concussion, as you can see,” a harsh voice said. “But he won’t be suffering much longer.”