Eritopia

Berries and Bugs

They sat on the grass in the clearing and Bear removed two green packets from a pouch tied round his waist. Not-Bear took one in his mouth, laid it on the grass and opened it with his teeth. A large leaf unfolded to reveal a multicoloured array of dead insects and shiny berries.

'That's disgusting,' he said.

Bear was already munching away, scanning the ground and nearby trees. 'There's a fungus over there if you don't like that,' he said, pointing at a large slab of bracket fungus on a nearby tree.

That was another thing that confused Not-Bear—the food they ate. On the Inside they had fruit, roots, lichens and leaves most of the time. But when they went anywhere they took bugs, dried berries and hard seeds, which hurt his teeth. Bear said it was because you couldn't trust any of the stuff that grew outside King's Oak. Except for fungus it seemed.

'I don't like fungus either,' Not-Bear announced. He was hungry though, so he started to eat.

'There'll be more food later, at the Occasion,' Bear told him. 'Much better stuff. This is to keep us going.'

Not-Bear nodded, trying to work a wing case out from between his teeth with his tongue. That was one problem with bugs, among many others. Like burrowing in your fur and biting you. Or hanging on your eyelids when you were asleep. He did long for other types of food, but never mentioned it to anyone on the Inside, not even Bear. Because every now and then, when he saw a mouse, rat or even a squirrel, he felt a strange urge. Was there something wrong with him?

The home they had left earlier that morning was light, cosy and safe. A real contrast to the dense, dark and — hadn't Bear said it? — dangerous forest all around them. On the Inside, the Elders organised most things for the animals. They told them where to be and even what to do. This coming Occasion was an example of that. It happened at the same time every year, and every Insider was expected to be there. Everyone of age, that is, and for the past two years Not-Bear had been one of those left on the Inside, too young to face the arduous journey through the Forest. Yet unlike the other animals he wasn't happy being told what to do. In truth, though the Inside was his home, he had never felt settled there.

As he sat on his haunches in the clearing, the trees rose high above him. Their shadows stretched out across ground strewn with dead branches and fir cones. He saw Bear had been to retrieve the tree fungus, and was wandering back.

'Wanna beet?' he called as he walked, waving it in the air. Not-Bear shook his head.

'Please yourself.' Bear came and sat next to Not-Bear. He carried on nibbling at the fungus.

'Bear?' Not-Bear asked after a while.

'Yaaas?' Bear mumbled, mouth still full of his dessert.

'You know the squirrel that ran across our path this morning?

'Mmmm.'

'You said it existed before you named it, didn't you?'

'But I didn't name it, I only told you its name when you asked me what it was.'

'But did it exist as a squirrel before that?'

'Of course,' Bear said.

'Then why bother to name anything? It doesn't seem to make any make any difference to them.'

Bear put the fungus on the ground next to him and scratched his chin. 'Not-Bear, I've told you, we name things so we can identify them.'

'But why? They're still there, whether they have a name or not.'

'Think what I'm saying. I said "squirrel" to you so you didn't have to think, "funny looking red creature with bushy tail that climbs up trees". That's why we give things names. It's easier then describing them.' He picked up his fungus.