Pursued by a Bear

 

Pursued by a Bear

by Sam Redlark

The shepherd found the bear on the foreshore, raised on its hind legs, roaring over the noise of the crashing waves. The beach was strewn with the washed-up wreckage of a ship and the drowned bodies of the crew. The shepherd saw blood on the rocks. Close by, a child was swaddled in a blanket. Next to the babe there was a bundle, within which he glimpsed the glitter of golden objects.

“A man was seen from the clifftop, carrying this child in his arms,” announced the shepherd.

The bear ceased its roaring duet with the ocean. It turned and gazed down upon the pitiful human figure.

“The man you speak of is Antigonus, a noble from Sicily,” it said. “I have made my mark upon him, tearing him open at the shoulder. He has already exited this place on foot. I will see the whole job done and have him exit this world by my paw.”

The bear dropped down on all fours and became a true bear, incapable of human thought or speech. It lolloped along the wet sand, following a set of hurried footprints that were seasoned with drops of blood.

~

Antigonus was a resourceful man. Though he was grievously wounded, he laid many false trails that delivered him from the jaws of his pursuer. Arriving in the kingdom of Illyria, he sought refuge with the countess, Olivia, and her husband, Sebastian. The doting, newly-wed couple welcomed him, but he soon fell from their refined graces and into the drunken company of the Olivia's uncle, Sir Toby, and his friends.

All might have ended well, were it not for a spurned manservant of the countess, who had departed from her service vowing revenge. The treacherous steward colluded with the bear, arranging to have the beast smuggled behind the palace walls inside a brandy barrel.

Late one night, following a customary indulgence of cakes and ale, Antigonus, at the behest of his raucous companions, donned a pair of yellow, cross-gartered stockings and paraded haughtily about the gardens for their amusement. On his second turn around the rose beds, he tripped on the stone foot of a sundial and fell into the grass that was already laden with dew. As he lay there, wet and winded, staring into the heavens, he caught sight of a stubby tail emerging from the back of Sir Toby's britches. His gaze travelled upward, meeting the unusually-furry countenance of his fuddled host.

“Sir Toby, the full moon finds you well-bearded this night,” he observed, drunkenly.

At this, the bear tore off its disguise. Its shredded raiments fluttered down over Antigonus like tumbling Autumn leaves. Hastily, he scrambled to his feet and made his escape, laddering his stockings as he scaled the wall.

He set sail, avoiding Sicily, where he surmised that his enemies lay awaiting his return. On the turbulent swell of the Mediterranean, his ship was beset by a supernatural storm and thrown upon the shoal of a mysterious island that did not appear upon any nautical chart.

The master of this sanctuary was a grey-haired sorcerer who called himself Prospero. Antigonus fancied that there was something familiar about the man, but he could not place where he might have encountered him before. The enchanter spoke fondly of a daughter who was married to a prince of Naples. He talked of a multitude of spirits that were once bound to his service, but who had since withdrawn. On another occasion, he broached the subject of his own departure from the island, which was conditional upon him renouncing magic.

“It is hard sometimes to let go of things,” he sighed.

One morning they stood together on the shoreline watching a humped silhouette, advancing with relentless purpose on the incoming tide.

When the shape finally resolved itself into the likeness of the bear, Antigonus proclaimed: “It is my eternal pursuer, come to end me!” his despair rising with the wind.

The creature emerged from the breaking surf on its hind legs, the saltwater pouring from its open jaws. As it began to lumber towards them, Prospero addressed the horizon, requesting that he be released from his exile. A sound akin to the applause of a hidden audience lifted the two men up into the clouds, where they were each dispatched in separate directions.

Antigonus was carried on a red wind of war, seasoned with the dried blood of soldiers who had fallen on the plains of Philippi. He alighted in the heart of England to find the nation wounded and weeping, the empire burned by the fires of revolution, and the ashes ruled over by a mad king. On the road to Leicester, he caught sight of the bear pressed into service as a gallows. A jester dangled like a tangled marionette from its outstretched paw, the bells on the man's cap jingling as he danced in mid-air.

Travelling onward, he found the northern kingdom of Fife in similar disarray, with an usurper installed as monarch. While lost in fog en-route to Cawdor, he encountered a maiden, a mother and a crone, gathered around a simmering cauldron. They addressed him as one, counselling him that “A circle drawn in blood must end in blood.”

That night, he concealed himself within the deepest part of Birnam Wood. He awoke the following morning to find the forest absent, the regimented trees shuffling uphill towards the ominous silhouette of Dunsinane castle, that loomed darkly on the horizon.

Again he set sail, with the bear paddling in his wake. Sometimes the beast was miles away, visible only from the crows-nest by telescope. Other times, it was close enough to paw at the rudder, leaving deep gouges in the wood.

In the city of Elsinore, under a clear night sky, he watched the mouldering, green phantasm of the murdered king, traverse the ramparts of the royal palace. A woman approached him from out of the shadows of the buttresses, with her head hooded and bowed. She thrust a newborn babe into his arms. A tethered bundle containing precious keepsakes dangled from the child's swaddling.

“It is the Prince of Denmark's son,” she whispered, her face draped in currents of shadow. “Carry him far from this Palace of sorrows. Hide him where his enemies will not think to look, and never speak to him of his lineage. Only through these actions will the circle of murder and revenge be broken.”

She fled back into the gloom.

Travelling incognito, Antigonus journeyed south, with the bear's breath hot on his heels. Presently he found himself standing upon a familiar desert shoreline that fringed the kingdom of Bohemia.

He turned and waited until the beast had risen-up on its hind legs and the spark of human intelligence had kindled behind its eyes, before he spoke:

“In a day that is long banished, upon this barren stretch, I concealed the child, Perdita, daughter of Leontes, king of Sicily. Now I stand here, bearing in my arms another who has been cruelly orphaned, in hope that he might also be claimed and cherished.”

Kneeling to unburden himself of the child, he saw dried blood covering the rocks.

“All life must succumb to one thing or another,” replied the bear, indifferently. “Your fate was gifted to me by the same power that has guided our passage through this world. As a cub I crawled from my mother's teat to a pool of clear water, close to the cave where I was born. It was there that I first saw your face, reflected in place of my own, and my purpose became known to me. Never before have I stalked a quarry through two lifetimes. I will not allow a third.”

“I too saw your face in nightmares, long before we met,” said Antigonus. “It was always the dreadful swipe of your paw that returned me to the waking world.”

“So will it now free you from this dream of life, speeding your exit from this world, and your entrance into the next,” replied the bear.

It raised its mighty arm and its claws shone like blurred crescent moons, against the star-torn curtain of the night sky.