Bear went over like a felled oak. One moment he was upright, the next he was on his knees. He got up and picked off some leaves that were sticking to his fur. Then he looked to see what had tripped him.
It was the entrance to a small burrow, now partly destroyed.
'Oh dear,' he said and peered into what was left of it. He called down the hole, 'Is anyone there?'
No reply.
He rubbed his knee as he straightened and brushed himself down.
'You should be more careful,' said a voice behind him.
Startled, Bear turned round to see a crow staring down from a tree at the side of the path. 'Something lives in there,' it said.
Bear looked from the crow to the burrow and back again. 'Sorry, it's my fault, I wasn't looking where I was going. Do you know who they are?'
'No idea,' the crow said.
'Oh. Well, if you see them please apologise. It's just that I was looking for my friend, he's been running off all morning, chasing scents and trails that shouldn't concern him.'
The crow pulled a feather out of its wing and watched it drift to the floor. 'What does he look like?'
Bear held a paw about two feet from the ground. 'He's young, about this high, goes on all fours, with a straight tail, and...'
'Yes?'
'Good teeth.' He didn't like to describe them as sharp.
'Haven't seen anything like that, but something did move a while ago, down there.' The crow pointed a wing down the path.
'Thank you,' said Bear. In his experience crows talked too much, and he didn't want to encourage this one. He set off down the path. The crow flew off its branch and started strutting along beside him.
'Can I ask what you are doing out in the Forest?'
'We're on our way to the Occasion.'
The crow nodded. 'Thought so. Don't see many of your sort out here. You should tell your friend not to wander off from the path, this isn't the Inside you know.'
'I have told him, he takes no notice. It's his first time.'
'Well it could be his last, if he isn't more careful. There are lots of things around here that don't like being disturbed.'
Bear didn't need reminding of the dangers that lurked among the shadows. He called down the path, and a faint echo came back from the depths of the trees.
'I wouldn't do that either,' said the crow.
Bear stopped and listened for movement, but could only hear the wind whispering in the leaves. Some pigeons were cooing in a distant treetop. He sniffed for a scent, but the smell of wet leaves and damp vegetation smothered everything.
Suddenly the crow flew up and wheeled back along the path, squawking as it went. Bear turned again to see Not-Bear, nose to the ground, sniffing next to a bush behind him.
'There you are!' Bear huffed. 'I wish you would do as I tell you. If you go running off every five minutes we'll never get to the Occasion.'
Not-Bear watched the crow disappear into the sky. 'What did he want?' He asked. Then he noticed Bear was scowling and wagging a paw at him.
'Sorry, Bear,' he said.
It was autumn, and the trees were starting to lose their leaves. The rich reds, russets and tans of their decline all made the landscape glow. Bear didn't notice. All he could see were dark spaces between the trees that stretched away on either side of them. He peered into those shady depths and shivered. He didn't like the autumn, and he particularly didn't like being out in the Forest. He much preferred warm summer days lazing on the Inside, doing nothing in particular.
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.
'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.