Bearskin

Mila found the bearskin when she was supposed to be cleaning the attic.

She didn't think much of it at first, since the house was littered with trophies of her father's hunting -- skulls and taxidermied heads and bearskin rugs and elkskin hats could be found in every corner of the house. The bearskin was inside an old trunk made of splintering wood that fell open into Mila's eager hands. Inside was surprisingly free of dust, and the skin's fur itself was softer than she could have imagined. The air around it seemed to crackle with energy, as though the skin was somehow still alive.

Mila jerked back and let the skin fall into the trunk where it belonged, unsure what exactly had just happened. She closed the trunk with shaking hands and finished her dusting.

That night, Mila's mother vanished.

The same night, some kind of creature clawed her father's gunshed door to shreds.

It gnawed on the front door of their little cabin as well, and dug strange holes in the yard. It took half the salted meat from the icehouse, leaving chewed bones on the floor as its only trace. No one heard a thing.

A week later, when Mila was up dusting the attic again, she found that the trunk was open and the skin was gone.

There was a story Mila's father liked to tell her and her brother Ivan when they were younger. About a fisherman out west who fell in love with a seal that was also a woman, and he hid her skin so that she couldn't dive back into the sea instead of marrying him.

Could there be a woman who was also a bear?

Mila brought this up to Ivan, but he said, "She's just left him, Mila. She's probably dead in the forest by now. Or run off with another man." He was sixteen and she was thirteen, and besides that, he was a boy. His word was law. Mila didn't say anything else about bear wives to Ivan.

Years went by. Mila's father got sick. Ivan taught himself to hunt. Their father died. Ivan got married, and brought his wife Irina into the house. Mila began to feel a bit like a shadow, especially when Irina gave birth to two baby boys with warm brown eyes who suddenly took up everyone's time.

And then she found herself in the attic again.

This time it was because Ivan wanted more space downstairs for the babies. Mila wasn't sure whether she'd offered to move into the attic or he'd asked her to, but it was only right, considering that she really should have married by now anyway. She could be forgiven since she helped Irina ever so much, but there was an hourglass hanging in the air above her head, counting how much longer until she became an old spinster, and every day the sand seemed to fall faster.

How had she not noticed it before? In the very same trunk, wood full of splinters, lock that never closed right -- a second bearskin. It was half the size of the first and felt a bit like scratchy wool, but while the other one felt like it wanted to chase her away, her fingers sank into this one as though they were meant to rest inside of it.

Mila pulled the skin out of the trunk slowly. It seemed to creep over her shoulders without her even throwing it upon them. She sank into it, the scratchy fur smelling the way her mother's hugs always felt. Before she knew it, she had pulled the skin around herself like a quilt. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and when she opened them again, the world looked slightly different.

So maybe Mila's mother was sometimes a bear.

So maybe Mila could also sometimes be a bear if she wanted to.

So maybe she could run away into the forest and never come back.

So maybe she could look for her mother -- or maybe, while searching, she would come across a man instead.

Maybe she would show him her true self just so that he didn't shoot her and hang her head on his wall and make a coat from her skin and feed her meat to his dogs. And maybe he would become entranced with her right then and there, and maybe he would think about the old stories his grandmother told him until he remembered how to steal a bear-woman's skin. And maybe she would grow to like talking to him too, and maybe she'd follow him home one day, and maybe that night as she slept, all too human, he would take her skin and hide it under his closet floorboards, and she'd wake up without an escape.

She tried to explain that she needed it back, that she needed to run wild in the forest, that she needed to find her mother.

He grabbed her hands, combed his fingers through her wild hair, and explained that she needed to settle down. She couldn't run wild forever. Someday she'd have to get married, and he loved her, and didn't she love him?

She pulled her hands away and ran into the woods and cried.

His name was Nikola, and he wasn't too bad as far as husbands go. But he was still keeping Mila trapped. She tore the house apart at first, searching for her skin, and then she begged him to give it back, swearing she'd kill him first thing when she did find it, and then she said that if only he just let her keep it she'd marry him as long as her skin was her own, and then she cried for a straight week, and then she realized it was pointless. He wasn never going to give it back, and she would not find it that easily.

If only she'd found her mother instead! Mila's mother would have told her to stay away from men in the woods, to never ever let them know what you really were, and she would have told Mila how to find your skin if it's stolen from you. She would have told Mila how to escape.

Mila stood in the woods outside her house, breathing in the crisp night-after-a-snowstorm air. It was as close as she could get to her year as a bear nowadays, though her heavy wool coat never kept her quite as warm as her fur had. She sometimes wondered if she could curl up and hibernate the winter away -- she'd just spent one winter like that, curled in a cave made of snow and leaves, and it was possibly the most peaceful time of her entire life. But she had meals to cook and children to watch, she reminded herself. She could run away, but not without telling her daughters what they could be. If she found her skin, she would take Anya and Maria with her.

If she could take Piotr, she would, but he'd never had that gleam in his eyes, never scrambled for the trees as soon as he could walk. Besides, he had the brain of a scholar, and she'd much rather see him excel at a university than run wild in the woods with her and her daughters. One to thrive the way their father wished, and two for their mother.

It was only fair.

Her breath was visible against the dark trees, the air silent around her. No animals were awake now, deep in midwinter. Except -- the yellow shine of two eyes approaching her. Mila backed towards the cottage slowly, wishing for the first time ever that she lived closer to town. She'd never been afraid of the forest at night when she had her skin, she thought bitterly. If she were a bear right now --

and then the eyes emerged into her clearing, illuminated by firelight from the windows behind her and the full moon. They belonged to a great brown bear, just like Mila would have been if Nikola had never taken her skin. They stared at each other, Mila's gray eyes catching the bear's shining ones, and something inside the bear shifted until an old woman was standing in front of her, wrapped in a bear skin.

Her mother.

Mila stared, at a loss for words. Her mother seemed to struggle too, from the way that Bear-mind stole the language from your thoughts when you'd spent so long without it.

"Did they catch you?" she asked hoarsely. "Or did you never get the chance to escape?"

"They caught me," whispered Mila.

Her mother came forward and wrapped Mila in a tight hug, a hug she hadn't felt in years and years.

"I was looking for you," said Mila, "but there was a hunter, and he was going to shoot me for my pelt, and --"

"It is not your fault. It never will be your fault," said her mother. "But listen. He'll have hidden your skin somewhere he thinks you will not find it. It was the attic for me, but I trust you'll have looked there already --" Mila nodded. "-- perhaps his closet, or his shed, or the back of the cellar. When you find it, when you find your claws and your teeth and let them settle into your skin for what feels like the first time all over again, you will want to tear him to shreds. I won't fault you if you do, but -- just run. He will not be able to catch you again."

"My daughters," said Mila. "He took their skins too, when they were born little cubs. I need to bring them with me. You should have brought me with you. You should have told me."

"There was no time!" cried her mother. "There won't be time for you, either! It's all at once, all or nothing -- as soon as you have found the skin, you need to run. Or he will take it back and this time he will burn it. He knows the stories. Otherwise he would not have caught you. Please do not risk it, Mila. Please."

Footsteps behind them. The rattle of the door handle. Faster than a gust of wind, Mila's mother swirled her bearskin around herself and vanished into the woods. Not a second too soon, Anya appeared behind her. "Papa doesn't know any good bedtime stories," she said. Mila let out a long, shaky breath, thanking the forest that it wasn't her husband.

"It's far too late for you to be awake," she said, taking Anya in her arms. "Should I tell you about the bear-women again?"

When Nikola went off hunting every couple days, and when he went to town to bring skins to the tanner and extra meat to the butcher, Mila began to systematically search the house. With a pot of bones boiling down to broth on the stove, she pulled up floorboards and pushed behind furniture. She spent one particularly inspired day carefully picking at thatch on the roof in the hopes that her skin was buried inside of it. And in this manner, in just a couple weeks, she finally discovered it hidden underneath the floorboards of the coat closet.

She pressed it to her face and breathed in the musty scent of it, a little bear and a lot of dust. It was better than when she'd first found it in her brother's attic, it was better than running through the woods, it was better than seeing her mother again. It was coming home.

It hurt to push it aside and see if her daughters' skins were under the floorboards as well. It felt like she was tearing her heart in two when they were, and when she had to shove her skin back in and slam the floorboards back into place and slide the wardrobe over them as if she didn't know. She wanted to wrap herself in the skin and run into the woods and never look back. She wanted to open her eyes and see the reds in the world fade to nearly nothing, to let her claws shred everything that mattered to Nikola until he understood what he'd taken from her.

But first she'd have to make sure Anya and Maria were safe. That they knew who they were.

That evening, Mila sat in bed with her children curled around her. Anya, the youngest, clinging on her arm, and Maria, the middle, leaning her head against Mila's shoulder, and Piotr reading his own book beside them all. They were on their third bedtime story -- the last one of the night, and Mila couldn't decide whether she should talk about bears or not. The musty smell of her bearskin invaded her thoughts, making up her mind.

"Maria, do you remember the story I told you about the bear-women?" she asked.

Maria nodded diligently.

"What I never told you -- any of you -- is that my mother is one of them." Mila took a deep breath. There was no going back now. "She was born in the forest, and ran wild and free until she fell in love with a hunter, my father. It wasn't long before they married, in a little outdoor chapel on a bright spring day, and on their wedding night, my father stole my mother's bearskin and locked it in the attic to make sure she could never leave him.

"I found it thirteen years later, and I was terrified of it. But my mother smelled it on me, and that night while the rest of us slept, she wrapped her bearskin around her shoulders and ran into the woods, finally taking her life back from the one who stole it from her.

"But she forgot to bring me.

"More years slipped by, and I found myself in the attic again -- I opened the trunk that had so long ago held my mother's bearskin and discovered what I'd once missed. A second skin, one that clung to my shoulders like I had been born with it. I ran into the woods with it, since there wasn't much left that I cared for at home -- but then I met your father. You can guess what happened, can you? He stole my skin and hid it. No need to hate him for it. It's the way of men.

"But I found it again today," she whispered. "Don't tell him! I found it, finally, after years and years, and Anya and Maria -- I found yours as well."

Piotr looked up at this. So he had been listening after all. "Not mine?" he asked.

Mila's words died in her throat. "I never have heard of a bear-man," she said softly. "There were three skins in the box, and one was mine. But Piotr, the forest does not run in your veins like it does in mine! You're meant to go to university, to study classics under the watchful eyes of the saints, to become better than me. Better than your father."

"But if he could do something like that to you -- I don't want to be left with him!" cried Piotr, and suddenly Mila had to reckon with the fact that he was only ten years old -- and he was her oldest -- and she'd just told her children that their father had trapped her here and she wanted to run away and she wanted to run away with two of them and leave the other one behind. Did that make her terrible?

As if to make matters worse, Nikola stepped into the bedroom just then, eyes only for Mila. Had he been listening all along? She leapt out of bed, unsure what the best course of action was. He couldn't re-hide her skin while she was watching. He stared at her. The children stared at them both.

"What fanciful stories did you tell them now?" he asked with a smile.

Mila's heart wrenched. It seemed as though every day was a battle between falling in love with him again -- with his lighthearted approach to life, the jokes and laughs that carried him through the day, not to mention his cooking on the days he spent at home -- and remembering that she hated him at the same time -- for stealing her freedom, for hiding her skin, for binding her into marriage the same way her father had done to her mother. How long had it gone on before her? Had her grandmother been caught too? Her great-grandmother? How long would it go on after? Would Anya or Maria get trapped, ten, twenty years from now?

She couldn't meet his eyes.

"We were talking about her mother," said Piotr. "The bear."

It was as though every piece inside of her crashed to the floor. Her heart, her stomach, even every bone had settled at her feet and it was all she could do to keep standing upright. And she felt awful about it, in every fiber of her crumpled being, about picking favorites and leaving Piotr behind, because wasn't it her fault that she'd told him anyway? She shouldn't have said a word, she should have torn the door to shreds in the middle of the night and brought her children -- all three of them -- with her, and never ever said a word to Nikola, and let her bearskin rot in a closet for another ten years. But this time it would be her closet, this time it would be her control.

"She said we could be bears," said Anya. Mila squeaked and spun around, scooping Anya into her arms and shushing her.

"It was just a story," said Mila, trying to smile. "That my mother used to tell me --" But why did she ever think it would work? Did she think Nikola had forgotten the circumstances of their meeting? That he had forgotten who she was at her core?

"You found it," he said, his voice flat. "There's no point pretending."

"I found it."

"And Anya's, and Maria's -- ?"

"Those too."

"And I suppose there's no way to keep you from running away, is there?"

"If you steal it again, I will find it and I will tear you to shreds."

He paused. "At least leave me the children." Did she imagine the hint of tears in his eyes?

Mila looked down at Anya's face, wide gray eyes staring wordlessly into Mila's own. And Piotr, face buried in his book, pretending not to listen. Maria, sitting on the bed -- or, wait, Maria struggling to push the wardrobe out of the way, the wardrobe rocking dangerously, and she wasn't going to get out of the way in time.

Nikola and Mila both swooped for her in the same moment, but Nikola got her first. The wardrobe toppled to the ground a second later.

"Please stay," he said. "I will never hide your skin again. But I cannot do this by myself."

She lasted one more year.

There wasn't another big confrontation. There wasn't a slow building of slights against her, passive-aggressive stares from Nikola, a sudden lack of affection from her children. Just the opposite, in fact -- they all threw themselves over her as if they knew what was coming and they wanted to stop it, as if they knew what was coming and wanted all the time with her they could find before she vanished.

It was stifling, knowing that her skin hung in her closet and she could leave whenever she wanted. Logically, she knew that she could put it on at night, spend the evening in the woods, and return as her human self, but her heart, her claws, her hackles knew that she'd never return. She put it off for as long as she could, held her children's hands when they walked to town, told them every fairy story she knew at night, and reminded Piotr that she loved him just as much as the girls whenever she got the chance.

But whenever she stepped into the woods at night --

Whenever storms rattled the windows of their house --

Whenever she heard the roars of creatures in the forest --

It hurt, was all. And one day it was simply too much.

Mila had sworn long ago that she wouldn't leave her children like her mother had left her. But maybe her mother had no choice, she thought now. In shaking hands that had never been very good at writing, she wrote a goodbye, she even wished Nikola well, she told Piotr that the future had brilliant things in store for him, and she told her girls where their skins were hidden should they ever need them. And where to find her. She promised she'd try to come back, once a year at least, but please don't be offended if she forgets, the rules are different when you're a bear. And she doesn't want to leave them, but she can't stand it any longer.

It was just the same as that day so many years ago in the attic. She pulled her skin from its hook and marvelled at the wiry fur, at the sharp claws she had missed so dearly. She slipped it over her shoulders, barely able to make it out the front door before she let herself sink into its age-old comfort. She thought, for a brief second in her bear-mind, about tearing the house apart the way her mother had done, and maybe she should have, because why did Nikola deserve her forgiveness after stealing her life? She decided against it, that she didn't need to forgive all that was wrong with him, but she should still honor all that he'd done right.

She turned her back on the cottage and trundled into the woods, the moon above her head, pine needles beneath her paws. It was everything that she had missed for thirteen years, everything she needed.