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“Guess luck is my middle name.” But it was too dreadful. “Will you know how to get back to your clan?”
“My clan?” said Cubbins.
“Don’t forget that part! Ursaless and the others. Bruner O’Bruin, Caraway Coyle. You know.”
At the sound of the Queen’s name, Cubbins grinned. “Oh yes! Of course! My mind had wandered for a moment. Well, I’ll take these books off you if you like, and be getting back to my kind. We admire books, you know, we Bears. We read them over and over.”
“Good.”
“We never get tired of them,” said Cubbins in a voice gone soft, as if the fact of his dimness was trying to dawn on him. “Because we forget them as soon as we finish them. We can start reading them over right away.”
“If you don’t mind,” said Brrr gently, “I will take the medal, though. I need to bring it to someone.”
“Suit yourself,” said Cubbins. “In fact, I’ll loop it around your neck on this leather belt. I can carry the books in my arm. There, how’s that?” His small brown arms reached up. In the effort to put the strap over Brrr’s head, he gave the Lion a bear hug around the cranium. The coarse Bear fur was slicked into tapering points and it rubbed agreeably against the Lion’s mane. “What is the medal for, anyway?”
The Lion couldn’t answer, Courage. He couldn’t speak for a while; he just turned and walked away. He glanced back only once. Cubbins was staring at a page of the book, and shaking his head, and wiping his eye with the back of his paw. Growing up, growing dead.
As he padded south, Brrr considered the all-but-fatal interview with the Ozmists. Maybe Bears who had genuine news they could barter were released unharmed. Maybe these were the Bears competent enough to take their chances in human society. If so, Cubbins had sacrificed his own ambitions in order to help Brrr summon the phantoms.
Still—on further reflection—had any of it actually happened? And why should Brrr presume that Ozmists, being ghosts, were telling the truth about anything? If they could be legalistic and harsh to a Bear cub as guileless as Cubbins, perhaps they could also lie—about whether or not Ozma was still alive, even about whether or not Brrr’s pride was among their particulated number.
The alluring stars in an apparently endless sky had, after all, been a disguise for the cloud of spirits. Ghosts perhaps could lie in death as well as creatures could lie in life.
Under a green bay tree he stretched out, thinking: If even the ghost of the past can harbor a motivation to dissemble, where can any ignorant Lion sensibly place his trust?
Perhaps nowhere. Perhaps lying down and playing dead, as Cubbins should have done with the Ozmists, was the only legitimate response to the villainy of life, the aggrandizement of very matter.
In any event, the Ozmists hadn’t spoken in the voice of Jemmsy, a new arrival in their midst. Neither to hector Brrr for his mistakes nor to hurry him toward his goals. So the Lion would continue to Tenniken to deliver to Jemmsy’s father this precious medal, and to deserve his own. On his own, unpartnered, but by the ghost of a chance, maybe, wiser than a day ago.
• 5 •
S OME WEEKS later, when the Lion emerged for the first time from the Great Gillikin Forest into the world of human affairs, he paused to wash his mouth out with well water and straighten his mane as best he could. It wasn’t vanity so much as nerves. He’d never seen an entire hive of humans before.
The first people he saw gave him a bit of a berth, to be sure, but at least they didn’t run shrieking behind slammed doors. They kept their little toy noses in the air. Their little toy ankles, tucked in those little booties, kicked ahead in the best, most dismissive manner. He couldn’t fault the town citizens for self-possession.
He finally managed to startle an old woman who was nearsighted enough not to
see him coming. He’d been practicing his inaugural remark for weeks and was pleased with his delivery.
“Beg pardon, madame. I’m enquiring after the garrison of soldiers I’m told is stationed at Tenniken,” he said.
The woman’s crabapple chin bobbed up and she fished for a pincenez in her reticule. “Goodness, a Lion,” she observed, when she could. “Why ever would you imagine you could find soldiers stationed at Tenniken here, of all unlikely places?”
By which he learned he had emerged too far to the east. Not in Tenniken at all, but on the high street of the Gillikinese settlement called Traum.
“You charming idiot, get out of my way,” she concluded. “I’ve a daughter-in-law to annoy, and I must be to it. If you can’t tell the difference between a military garrison and a market town, you’ve got a screw loose, I fear.”
How was he to know? He blushed, though he was not sure if a blush would show in a Lion of his naturally high coloring.
Still, a handsome place, this Traum. The town was prosperous, old enough to boast some architectural character and even charm. Half-timbered almshouses and taverns. Stone guild halls clawed over with ivy and roofed with mossy slates laid in patterns of chevron. Escutcheons of painted wood advertising the trades.
“Do you know the way to Tenniken?” said the old woman. “Someone will tell you, but not I. I must get going. It doesn’t do to be stopped in the street today, not with those ruffians and ragamunchkins about.” She snapped her spectacles into their case and pushed away.
Brrr continued on, curious, feeling braver every moment. Traum must have seen Lions before, to judge by the way its denizens affected a worldly disregard to the visitor in their midst. At least this was how he read it at first. In truth, like the first old woman he interviewed, the citizens of Traum had other matters on their minds.
The Lion paced the merchant arcade, stopping to sniff at a rope of garlic hanging from a peg, or to watch through an archway as a glassblower plied her gassy art. He would ask for directions to Tenniken in a moment, as soon as he could catch someone’s eye again. But Traumanians were deeply skilled at averting their gazes.
In any case, the need to ask for directions seemed less urgent the more he saw of Traum. This was an old establishment, and he was a very young Lion, after all. So much to command his attention! A steam engine on a rail track. Gutters that ran with clear water. A unionist minister in dark leggings and an accusatory beard, pointing its hairy finger at every passing sinner.
