Eritopia

A Walk in the Forest

'Have you been sneaking off at night, into the Forest, against all the Rules?' he asked. 'Well, have you?' He stopped and started to wag his paw again.

Not-Bear looked up. 'No, I haven't,' he said. 'I told you, I made it up.'

'Humph,' said Bear. 'Don't forget, Rules are there for you to follow, not ignore.'

'Don't believe me then, if you don't want to,' Not-Bear said.

They carried on walking again. 'Sometimes, Bear, you can be very...' Not-Bear ran up the path. Then, as Bear walked up he said it, '...Pompous.'

'Really!'

Yet Bear was too busy thinking about things to get angry. Had Not-Bear been visiting the fringes of the Forest? There chipmunks, badgers and moles lived. Underground animals that had their own way of looking at life.

As Bear went past Not-Bear turned his head to look at him. Then he ran down the path to catch up.

'You were right, Bear,' he said.

'I knew it,' Bear sniffed. 'Made up indeed.'

'An otter taught it to me, I didn't sneak off at night, honest.'

'An otter? And where did she hear it?'

'She said the river sang it to her.'

'The river,' Bear said slowly. 'What nonsense.'

'Well, maybe the wind made it, blowing over the water. I don't know the details, I only wanted to learn it.'

'And what did she call it?' Bear asked.

'Call it? I don't understand. A song.'

'No, no,' Bear said, but then he remembered Not-Bear still hadn't learned about Naming. That was one of the oldest Secrets, and he hadn't got round to teaching him that yet. So he just said, 'I'm glad you told me the truth, in the end. That's always the best option. As I've told you before, lies always lead to more lies, until you get tangled up in a web of them.'

They set off again, this time without talking. But something troubled Bear, and after a while he asked, 'Are you sure the otter didn't call her song something?'

Not-Bear sighed. Since he really had made the tune up, there was no question of the otter calling it anything. But Bear was only acting on false information, what he wanted to hear, as opposed to the truth, which he was deaf to. So he carried on.

'Positive,' he said.

'What would you have called it?' was Bear's next question.

Distracted, Not-Bear almost trod on a creature which burst out of the trees to his left and scrambled across the path. Watching it disappear into the bushes, he said, 'Why do we need to call a tune anything? What difference does it make?'

'All the difference in the world,' Bear said. 'Everything must have a name.'

'Why?'

'So we can identify them. Names are the way we know what a thing is. Whether it's a tree or a fungus, it needs a name.'

'Or a song.'

'Exactly.'

Not-Bear stopped in the shaded corridor of trees, the tall trunks towering above him. Bear carried on before he realised he was on his own. He turned round and with slow deliberate steps walked back.

'We can't stop here,' he said.

'Why not?'

'Because it's dark and damp.'

'So? Not-Bear countered.

'And dangerous,' Bear said.

They started walking again. Not-Bear continued, 'If I had made up that tune, the one the otter taught me, could I have given it a name?'

Bear hurried to keep up. 'Well, there's no reason why you can't name a tune. But animals and things need proper names.

'Why?'

'I told you, so we can identify them.'

'But they're still there, aren't they, before they have their names?'

'Of course.'

'And afterwards, they haven't changed because of them?'

'Well, not exactly.'

'What do you mean, not exactly?'

Bear was nervous and kept looking into the trees, as they turned right onto another path and continued on. Their pace slowed.

'The way we think of them has changed,' he said.

'What does that mean?'

'Well, to understand things, we have to know what they are. We give things names so that when others look at the same thing, they know what it is.'

'All right, so what was that creature that ran across the path earlier. That I almost trod on?'

'You know what it was,' Bear said. 'A squirrel.'

'So I do know about names!'

'I never said you didn't know about names. I'm trying to explain why we need them.'

'Well who named the squirrel then?'

'I don't know. The Elders probably.'

'When?'

'A long time ago.'

'Mm.' Not-Bear paused. 'So who named the Elders?'

'What? That's not important.'

'It is,' Not-Bear continued, 'because there must have been something that named everything else in the first place.'

'I'm not sure about that.' Bear was getting flustered. 'That's one of the Secrets,' he muttered. 'Part of The Great Story. Really, you shouldn't question these things, sometimes it's important just to listen.'

They came to a clearing off the main avenue, and Bear said it was time to stop for a break. In truth, he was glad of the distraction.

'Oh good,' Not-Bear said. 'I'm starving. What's there to eat?'

'Berries and bugs,' Bear replied.

'Ugh,' said Not Bear. He hated them.