Eritopia

A Walk in the Forest

    This was the day of an Occasion, however, and one did what one needed to get through it.

Not-Bear, in contrast, didn't mind the damp or the darkness, and was feeling quite good about things. The strange scents and zig-zag trails intrigued him, while the breeze had delivered piles of slippery wet leaves for him to run through.

He dodged in and out of the bushes and trees at the side of the path, turning over leaves and twigs with his snout. As he did so, Bear was aware of a strange noise.

'What's that?' he asked.

'What?'

'That noise.' He paused. 'Is that you?'

'Might be,' Not-Bear replied. 'Why?'

'No reason,' Bear said, although he felt he had plenty. 'Sounds strange, that's all.'

Not-Bear carried on rooting about, and the sound got a bit louder. To Bear it was a bit like wheezing, but with a few squeaks added in. Finally, after they turned into another, wider path, he said, 'Can't you do something else?'

Not-Bear looked up at him. 'Like what?'

'Like something that doesn't involve making a noise.' He remembered what the crow had said earlier. 'And stop moving around so much, you might disturb something that doesn't like to be disturbed.

'Like what?'

'Anything.'

Not-Bear did as Bear asked and they walked side by side for a while. But he drifted to the edge of the path again and started making the same sounds. Bear called him. Not-Bear loped back.

'What are you doing?' Bear said.

'I'm whistling.'

'Humph,' said Bear. 'Doesn't sound like it. I thought you had something stuck in your throat.'

'Well I haven't. I was whistling. A tune.'

'A tune? But you don't know any tunes.'

'I do, I'm whistling one, aren't I?'

'Humph,' Bear said.

The path began to widen. Where the sun was able to reach its edge, low bushes of hazel and hawthorn spread. Thick, wiry grass grew between them and around the trunks of the taller trees.

'Where did you learn it then?' Bear asked.

'What?'

'That tune.'

'Oh. I heard it somewhere I suppose.'

'Really,' said Bear, 'and where was that? Because I don't recognise it, and I've been with you all the time.'

'It sometimes seems like forever,' Not-Bear muttered.

'What's that?'

'Nothing,' said Not-Bear, 'but you're right, I didn't hear it anywhere, I actually made it up.'

'Rubbish,' said Bear, 'no-one makes up tunes.' But his friend's words started a tingling in his stomach, reminiscent of the times when he looked into the dark spaces between the trees. A cool wind always seemed to be coming out, mixing the scent of pine with the hint of something else, something mysterious.

He shivered, knowing the nearer they came to the Occasion the nearer they came to the Outside. He had been told stories when he was young, warning him of the dangers beyond the Forest. Where it was said creatures lived who ate each other, or anything else they could find. The music associated with those stories had been handed down on the Inside, passed from generation to generation. The tunes were sometimes hummed, or sung as the animals went about their business. What troubled Bear most was, he didn't recognise the one Not-Bear was attempting.