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“Good guess. But no. Ozmists are—well, for lack of a better term, I guess you’d call them ghosts. Or particles of ghosts.”
“Migratory ghosts.” Brrr tried to keep his voice level. “Ghosts ancient or modern?”
“I don’t know. We Bears avoid Cloud Swamp most of the time. Perhaps we give up our pasts, as you have seen, whether we like it or not. But ghosts—wow. Ghosts are nothing but pasts. Look, if your parents are dead, you might find one or both of their Ozmists in Cloud Swamp, and at least learn why they called you Brrr. And maybe why they went and died on you, and so forth.”
“I never said my parents were dead.”
“No, you didn’t, but where are they, then? Living the high life among other talking Animals and humans in the wonderful welter of Oz?”
“If they are ghosts—well—can ghosts hurt?”
“You mean, can they hurt you? I doubt it,” replied Cubbins. “They’re just notions, aren’t they? Dissolving shrouds of an individual? Still, to be fair, don’t take my word on it: For all I know, it’s ghosts who have spooked us Bears into being so forgetful. We can never remember if we ever accidentally ventured into Cloud Swamp. I only know we haven’t been there since I’ve been in charge. That’s all I’m sure of.”
Brrr wasn’t sure he relished the idea of meeting the nub of an idea without its mortal husk, though he couldn’t think how to say this.
Cubbins shrugged. “Just a thought. Maybe you don’t want to know if your parents are dead or not. If it doesn’t appeal to you, head on past. You’ll find your Tenniken. To the south, more or less. But I don’t know where it is exactly. Someone else will have to tell you.”
“Too bad,” said the Lion. “If you’d had better information, I might have paid you with one of these books.”
Cubbins looked disappointed, but he spoke with characteristic brio. “It’s okay. Anything I might read I would only forget sooner or later.”
“It must be hard to be the only Bear with a brain,” said Brrr.
“I’d love to come with you. But someone has to keep this passel of friends on the straight and narrow. If I didn’t remind them, they’d forget the answer to the tired rhetorical gibe, Does a Bear shit in the woods?”
Brrr didn’t want to share with Cubbins any final glory he might achieve in Tenniken, but on the other hand, if Brrr were accidentally to meet up with the Ozmists he intended to avoid, company in the form of a little Bear sheriff would be welcome. “If you walked away from here, your family would forget you in a minute,” said the Lion. “What kind of a loss is that? Don’t sacrifice yourself to them. They won’t even notice.”
“I get something out of this,” said Cubbins. “It doesn’t hurt to have a family, you know, even a troubled one. At least I know where I am. What are you looking for in Tenniken, anyway? You think your parents went there?”
Brrr snapped his mane. “It’s my own business,” he said.
“You really should start at Cloud Swamp and find out what you can, you know. It might help you narrow your search. Why spend time hunting for forebears if they’re dead?”
“Thanks,” said Brrr, “but no thanks.” Then he gave up his airy attitude. “Truth to tell, without a companion, I don’t dare venture into anyplace called Cloud Swamp.”
“Cloud Swamp? What’s that?” asked Cubbins, but when the Lion shot him a look, the cub’s eyes were twinkling in mischief. “You better get along now. My family party here is agreeable, but they can be disagreeable, too, and the mood can shift in an instant. Better make your way before they get suspicious that you’re going to kidnap me or something. One thing they do know is that they’d be lost without their baby cub to give their lives what little meaning and history it still has.”
“And you went out hunting for blueberries on your own.”
“One misdemeanor a day is enough, I suppose.”
“It’s been a mighty pleasure,” said the Lion, and he meant it. He was sorry to leave Cubbins. “Good luck to you. If I ever make it into the human world, I will hope to run into you there someday, too. You deserve better than this.”
“Life is unpredictable,” said Cubbins. “I don’t imagine we’ll meet again, but who knows. I’ll look for a Lion with a sway in his swagger. Just kidding.”
“If I wanted to avoid Cloud Swamp, now,” said the Lion, “which way would I go?”
“From this point on the streambed, you may choose left or right. If you can just keep to the uplands, you’ll skirt it entirely,” said Cubbins. “Good luck to you, very Brrr.”
• 4 •
U RSALESS, THE Queen of the Bears, had said it straight: Sometimes I recall oddments without even trying. Who knows when memory, unbidden, will burst out and take hostages? Clearly the question of Yackle’s had snapped some ancient chains Brrr had used against all this.
And this wash of recollections had become a slick along which Brrr careered, like it or not. Brrr’s recall of what had happened before seemed limited to apparent causes of what had happened next. The future reshapes the memory of the past in the way it recalibrates significance: some episodes are advanced, others lose purchase.
But his intention, starting out, had been to avoid Cloud Swamp. Hadn’t it? His curiosity about possibly meeting his spirit-ancestors was more than mitigated by the fear of coming across the ghost of Jemmsy. Wasn’t ready for that. Not until he had delivered the medal to Jemmsy’s father. Not until Brrr deserved his own personal medal for courage that a grateful pride of grieving soldiers might press upon him. Not till he could show his missing clan that he had survived on his own. Survived and triumphed. Cloud Swamp could wait until then.
Though wherever Tenniken might turn out to be, Brrr couldn’t seem to get there without tending downslope. Every path that he found leading upland reversed its grade, perversely, around the next stand of houndstooth hedge or outcropping of granite. Leaving the path also proved futile: he’d met an interlocked network of chalky cliffs, too sheer to climb. The chasms that he came across proved too wide to leap. And again with the houndstooth hedge.
