Chapter 7: Lesson Zero

The next day, however, Art discovered that his bedtime musings had been naive. When he and Vera made their morning pilgrimage to the river, Misu was waiting for them by the shallows. As they approached, the young bear cub planted himself squarely in Vera's path.

"Where are my ants, Vera?" he panted, grinning so widely that his tongue dangled past his jawline.

"They're in the ground," Vera huffed at him. Then she sidestepped him and waded into the river, where she began to splash herself down.

"Why aren't they in my den yet?" he persisted.

"'Cause the sun just came up. I'm not harvesting ants at the crack of dawn!"

"But that's when I want them," said Misu. And then he loped all around Vera, splashing her in the face with river water.

"Stop it, Misu," chided Art. "You can't talk to her like that. Vera's going to be the next medicine bear. She's Ma Anhah's personal student now."

Misu was so surprised that he stopped his romping. "You?" he blurted, taking a great sniff at Vera. "But you're a bungler! You can't even fish! How can you be the medicine bear?"

Beneath her fur, Vera's face had turned very red. "Go away, Misu!" she snapped, pushing his snout away. "You'll get your ants, but you're gonna have to wait 'til sundown. Now leave me alone!" Then Vera turned her back on him and dove into the middle of the river, where she knew Misu would not follow her.

"Sheesh," said Misu, grinning. "That Vera's got a temper!" And after giving Art a playful shove, he disappeared into the trees.

A moment later, Vera resurfaced from where she had submerged herself. "Is he gone?" she asked Art.

"Yes."

Panting, Vera paddled back to the shore and shook the chilly moisture out of her fur. When this was finished, she sighed and settled herself heavily onto the grass. She did not look at Art. Instead, she let her palm fall into the stream and gazed at its eddying currents.

"Ver?" Art ventured.

"Hm?" she answered. Her shoulders were decidedly slack.

"I don't think you're a bungler."

"Thanks."

Art eyed her unhappily. "Aw, c'mon," he protested. "Don't tell me you think you are one, just because he said so."

"It's not because of Misu."

"Then what is it? Is it because you can't fish yet?"

"Yes."

"But you didn't think you were a bungler five days ago, did you?"

"I didn't know it then."

"But Vera, if you were truly a bungler, then why would Ma Anhah want you as an apprentice?"

A small spark flickered in Vera's eyes at this logic - but it was almost immediately quashed. "What if it's 'cause she feels sorry for me?"

"It's not!" Art said, with the firm, childish assurance with which he always spoke when he drew insight using his Gift. "I didn't feel anything like that from her last night."

"Really?" Vera asked. "Not even a little bit?"

"No," Art affirmed. "She was very happy about teaching you. It seemed like she'd waited a very long time to ask you, and then she was excited because she finally got what she wanted."

"You really think so?" Vera asked. The spark had rekindled in her honey eyes, and Art smiled within himself.

"Yes," he said, as if it were the most obvious statement in the world. Which, to him, it was. Ma Anhah had regarded Vera with nothing but loving anticipation the previous evening, and this had been so palpable to Art that he now marveled that Vera had not noticed.

Spirits restored, the happy pair raced each other through the horsetails and sword ferns that formed the understory of this part of the forest until they reached the ring of Douglas firs that enclosed Ma Anhah's home. For today was the day that the mage bear would administer her first lesson, and both overdubs were loathe to spoil it with tardiness. Breathless and bright eyed, they waded through the patches of tall, waxy-leafed shrubs nestled within this circle, and the small, bell-like buds that hung off the stems of these plants quivered as they passed. They would soon give way to the very same berries that had led to Vera's first scolding from Ma Anhah: the sweet and reliable salal.

Ma emerged from the recesses of her hollow, and the cubs halted in their tracks. Then Vera drew forward, and Art fell into step behind her, as he always did for any lesson they shared. He bowed his head as he had done the night before, and when he had been nuzzled, he straightened up and made to follow Vera inside.

"Wait," said Ma. She pressed a pile of hawthorn leaves between his paws. "Take these to your mother," she instructed. "Vera will prepare them when she returns."

Art was quick to disguise his disappointment. He had planned to stay and watch Vera's lesson, for he was curious to witness the subtle training it would take to transform his carefree sister into the medicine bear. But now he bent low again and accepted another nuzzle, and he picked his way through the salal bushes once more until he had cleared the ring of Douglas firs.

"Bye, Ver," he said. But he knew that Vera was too engrossed in the austere rumble of Ma's voice to hear him.

By the time Vera returned home, Art and Mother had already eaten their fill at the midday meal and had tucked Vera's share neatly in the corner of the den they reserved for provisions. Art leapt up the moment he sensed her coming, and when she settled down beside Mother, he capered about her and peered eagerly into her honey colored eyes.

"How was it?" he pressed.

Vera shrugged. "I'm not sure. We didn't really do anything."

"Come and eat something, dear," said Mother, who was beaming down at her daughter cub as if she had instead revealed that she had discovered the cure for old age. "You can't go to Brother Toot-Hoot without something inside of you."

"I already ate," Vera informed them, her nose wrinkled. "Ma made me dig up skunk cabbage roots."

"Oh," said Art. Though the roots were highly nutritious, cubs were usually asked to harvest them as a punishment, as the leaves of this plant exuded a stink that rendered its namesake more than apt.

"I didn't do anything," said Vera, before Mother could scold her. "Ma said that she made me do it...because I didn't want to."

"Huh?" said Art.

"And then she asked me to sit inside her den and be quiet and watch her. But all she did was throw some leaves into a pool of water. Then she closed her eyes and sat quietly too."

"Were they hawthorn leaves?" asked Art.

"Yes," said Vera. "How did you know?"

"Because Ma wanted you to prepare them when you came back," he answered. He retrieved the handful of leaves from where he had stashed it, near one corner of his pine needle bed. "She said that it was supposed to be for Mother."

"It looks like you are preparing my medicine," said Mother. "Perhaps you learned more today than you thought."

Vera cocked her head to one side. "You have to take medicine?" she asked.

Mother smiled. "Yes. We all do eventually."

"What's it for?"

"You'll have to ask Ma tomorrow," said Mother. "She knows it better than I do."

It seemed, however, that Toot-Hoot knew a great deal more about hawthorn leaves than Mother did.

"But your mother is ill," he informed them in shock, after ten minutes of grilling Vera with question after question about her first lesson with the old mage bear. "She must have heart failure."

"Ill?" said Vera.

"What's heart failure?" Art asked.

"Heart failure is the condition in which an animal's heart is no longer working." Toot-Hoot surveyed them grimly from his perch within the recess of his cottonwood tree. "How long has this been a problem?"

Art stole a quizzical glance at Vera, but her jaw was set, and she was too busy scowling at Toot-Hoot to catch Art's eye. "Mother's doing just fine," she said.

"Deny it all you like, but Sister Tatiya is getting on in years. You evercubs are going to have to grow up and look after her sooner than later."

"We are growing up," said Vera.

"What were you going to teach us?" Art put in hastily.

He tried his best to ignore the pitying gaze that Toot-Hoot leveled them from under his handsome, feathery brow. It was a look that many of the forest dwellers gave him and Vera when they talked of marriage or birth or other rites of passage, only to belatedly realize that the evercubs were listening. For if neither of these poor cubs could grow up, the creatures thought, then how could they marry or have cubs of their own?

To Art's relief, Toot-Hoot's orb-like eyes did not longer upon them for too long. A moment later, the wood owl was guiding them through a thin and very floppy book from the mathematics section of the human library. He had lifted it from a shelf devoted to books that were meant to be written in, ad had even managed to swipe a pair of the writing implements that the humans had used to inscribe their thoughts into these sorts of texts. So the two evercubs gave wielding these narrow wooden batons their best shot as they pushed letters and numbers on either side of the double bar that denoted the human symbol for equality.

Art had meant to ask Toot-Hoot permission to borrow the writing tools, which he learned were called pencils, for he had a mind to test them out on the patches of earth he normally reserved for drawing. But the foal was so preoccupied with dark imaginings of Mother panting in pain and gulping down hawthorn tea that the thought escaped him. Could Toot-Hoot be right? Art wondered, as he pressed his pencil's nub of graphite into the flimsy white leaves between the book's covers. Could their mother truly be dying of heart failure?

"No," said Vera dismissively, when Art posed his question as they trotted their way through the dogwoods.

"How do you know?" Art asked.

"'Cause Mother doesn't look sick at all."

"What if she's just good at hiding it?"

"She isn't that good," Vera scoffed. "Didn't you tell me that only this morning, Mother out-climbed you while you were both looking for beehives? She can't have heart failure and do that."

Her logic was so sound that Art immediately felt better.

The two friends trekked until the trees thinned out and all the pines and cedars were replaced with cottonwoods. The steady breath of the Prem was now audible over the chattering voices of the chipmunks and sparrows that filled these trees, and Art darted eagerly towards the noise.

"One game of water tag?" he proposed.

"I'd better not," sighed Vera. "I should probably get that ant larvae harvest over with. Else Misu will just keep yapping at me. You wanna come?"

"I'd rather not," came Art's soft reply.

"Oh," said Vera, and Art flicked his ears meekly as her disappointment washed over them both. "Well, okay, then. See you in an hour?"

Art nodded. And with a wave, the evercubs parted ways.

This left Art free to wander his favorite parts of the Forest, and to snack on tender buds and leaves donated to him by friendly shrubs along the way. He drank in the contented sighs of the mammoth trees that towered over him, and he traced in the intricate pattern of grooves in their bark as he quietly bid them a good afternoon. He let the irregular lay of the land guide his footfalls, as if caught up in an invisible current. When he finally stopped, he found himself at the eastern border of the woods, though a good ways south of the U-bend in the River Prem. Nestling himself against the trunk of a red alder that sat at this border, he peered at the wide, flat expanse of soggy landscape that signaled the start of the Everspring Marshes.

"I suppose I have to go back soon," Art said aloud.

To his delight, the alder answered him with a nearly imperceptible sway of its slender branches. From the narrow width of its trunk, and the excitable vigor of its spirit, Art could tell that the tree was no more than thirty years old, a young adult among its kind.

"You get to watch this all the time, don't you?" Art asked. And then he gazed out again at the marshes, for he thought he had detected a flicker of motion from the corner of his silvery eye. Sure enough, he spied the twitching ears of a herd of black-tailed deer nibbling the sedges that poked through the standing water that had collected there during the rains of last month.

He learned from the alder that this particular herd of deer liked to tear the lichen off of his lower bark. And that last year's fawns, now approaching a year in age, were particularly rough about it. Art had never considered that a tree would begrudge giving an animal any part of itself before.

"But they need your lichen to live," Art pointed out. "What are they supposed to do without your help?"

They should have asked permission first, the alder informed him. Or else gone off to bite another tree who didn't care so much. At this rejoinder, Art replied with courteous agreement and then bid his companion a good day. As he plodded his way home, he made a mental note to tell Vera that when collecting herbs for her next brew, she should be as polite to her leafy donors as possible.

When Art finally found his way back to his den, Vera sat waiting for him with her arms crossed. Behind her, Mother chuckled.

"What took you so long?" Vera chided. Though her lips were set in a pout, her honey brown eyes danced with mischief.

"I made a new friend," Art informed her. "There's a red alder tree that lives next to the marshes. He let me sit in his branches and look at the deer."

Now Vera's pout was real. "Yeah? Well, I was digging up ant larvae for Misu," she grumbled. But then her eyes sparkled, and the mirth beneath her guise of reproach returned. "Then I had to wait for you forever before you came back from having fun, all by yourself."

"Oh, boo hoo," said Art.

"Boo hoo, indeed," agreed Mother, who butter her head gently against Vera's backside. "Since when did 'forever' mean five minutes?"

"Five minutes can be a really long time," insisted Vera. "Just ask an ant. Or a mayfly."

"I didn't know you wanted to become a bug when you grew up," quipped Art.

Vera eyed him with pursed lips and held a pose of the utmost severity. Then the corners of her mouth twitched, and before the evercubs knew it, they were sniggering into their paws.

Don't you impatient cubs have homework from Ma Anhah?" Mother reminded them.

"Oh, huckleberries - I forgot all about that!" Vera snatched up her wad of hawthorn leaves in one paw and a berry basket in the other.

"Well, go on, then," Mother told Vera, nosing her out of the den and into the trees. "Be back by sundown."

Because Vera needed fresh water to prepare Mother's hawthorn tea, she and Art galloped together all the way back to the cottonwoods that lined the River Prem. Vera lingered behind a tree trunk for a moment to ensure that the coast was clear, lest Misu be there to taunt her yet again. Finding no sign of him, she sat cross-legged on the riverbank.

"First you collect the water," she told Art as she dipped her berry basket into the stream, and then retracted it. "And then - oh!"

The river water had seeped through the bottom of the basket, drenching her lap.

"Oh, dear," said Vera. "I forgot about the lining."

Art giggled. "Good think Ma Anhah isn't here to see you now."

Grinning, Vera cupped her paw and splashed Art in the face. "Water tag!" she shrieked.

"No!" brayed Art, though he was grinning too. "The medicine comes first."

"Yes, Ma Art," Vera teased.

Several minutes later, Vera had harvested the waxy leaves she needed to line her berry basket. She had rolled her eyes at first when Art had instructed her to bow to the plant and politely ask permission for her materials. However, she was pleasantly surprised when her donors rewarded her with their shiniest leaves, and when a sympathetic neighboring tree had leant her a few drops of sap to seal them in place. When she next plunged the cedar basket into the river, no water passed through the gaps between the tender bark strips.

Satisfied with her handiwork, Vera turned her attention to the hawthorn leaves. She stacked them into a neat pile and then tore them into halves, and then fourths, and finally eighths. Next, she tossed the leaf fragments into the basket and covered the opening with the broadest sprig of fir she could find on the ground. Finally, she surprised Art by drenching his blue and aqua mane in a lawful of water, which signaled that it was time to play. And when he protested, she assured him that all the work of preparing Mother's medicine was happening inside the basket, where the hawthorn leaves would steep in the river water overnight.

The next morning, as Art waded behind Vera through the salal plants that skirted the rootlets of Mother Moonbark, his friend's anticipation was strong enough to make him skip every few steps. Vera had sneaked a sip of the hawthorn brew that dawn before her pilgrimage to the Prem, and the taste was bitter and pungent enough to convince her of its potency.

"Never drink directly from the brewing basket, as this contaminates the tea you brewed for someone else," Ma told her by way of greeting, after they had entered her hollow and she had blessed them. There was no edge to Ma's voice, which was low and calm and even, like the waters of an undisturbed lake. "Now, please show me what you have prepared.

As Vera set the basket at the mage bear's feet, Art reminded himself not to gawk. How Ma Anhah had discovered Vera's surreptitious sampling of the hawthorn tea escaped him.

"The rapport you established with your donors gives integrity to your basket," Ma continued approvingly, as she pawed at it.

Vera lowered her eyes and smiled down at her toes, and in spite of his mounting awe with Ma Anhah's powers of deduction, Art indulged in a sideways grin. It seemed that his conversation with the alder tree had come to good use.

Next, Ma Anhah bit at one end of the fir sprig that covered the brew and eased it off of the basket. Then she took a slow, deep sniff and decanted a portion into a smaller sealed basket, from which she lapped up a sip. As she smacked her lips and considered the flavor in silence, Art eyed Vera, who appeared to be holding her breath. His heart fluttered in rhythm with Vera's, and he wondered what Ma would think of her new apprentice's first attempt at tea making.

"You brewed this hastily and absentmindedly," Ma finally informed the overdubs. "Hence it has little power."

"Oh, no, really?" asked a disappointed Vera.

Ma Anhah motioned for Vera and Art to sit. In the same slow, deep voice, she launched into her discourse.

"To prepare any brew, the medicine bear must cultivate two traits: patience and concentration."

"The hawthorn should have been completely dried in the sun before being brewed. Then each leaf should have been torn not into eighths, but into tooth-sized pieces. This takes patience.

"The maker of this brew should have also sat touching the side of the basket until sundown, contemplating the many limbs of the Great Cedar Tree of the Peaceful Valley while the leaves steeped. For without the Tree's blessing, channeled through the single-pointed thought of its maker, the brew loses potency. This takes concentration.

"Taste my good brew," finished Ma, who was now nudging another sealed basket into place before Vera. "Savor the patience and concentration that give this tea its vitality. Can you taste the difference?"

Vera poured a mouthful for herself, took a sip, and peered up at the great bear meekly. "No, I can't," she admitted.

Art wanted to sample Ma Anhah's tea too, for he was keen to know whether he could taste patience and concentration any better than Vera could. But before he could give voice to his thoughts, Ma Anhah was pressing another wad of hawthorn leaves into his paws and nudging the basket of good brew towards him. Art was to deliver both back to his dogwood-laced den, for Vera's and Mother's use, respectively. Concealing his disappointment with difficulty, the purple foal bowed his way out and left Vera alone with the mage bear.

When Vera finally returned to the den, the sun was blazing directly overhead, and though the crowns of the trees shielded them from its direct glare, its head had begun to harbor an extra edge that signaled the advent of summer.

"Mother doesn't have heart failure," Vera announced.

"Huh?" said Art, who had completely forgotten about Toot-Hoot's warning on Mother's failing health from the day before.

"Toot-Hoot was wrong," Vera said, and from the smug delight that flooded his insight at her pronouncement, Art thought it a wonder that his sister was not crowing in triumph. "Hawthorn tea isn't a medicine for dying bears. It's just a supplement, to keep your heart healthy and strong."

"Did Toot-Hoot tell you that I was dying?" Mother asked.

"Um..." began Art, whose ears were angled outward in a pose of the utmost sheepishness.

"He may as well have," Vera said. "Toot-Hoot tried to convince us that you needed the medicine because your heart had stopped beating. But I knew that he had to be wrong, and I was right! You'll be around for a long time yet, won't you, Mother?"

Mother smiled down at her daughter cub. "Don't be too hard on Brother Toot-Hoot," she instructed. "If he hadn't cared about you cubs so much, he would have kept quiet."

"But he was wrong," Art insisted. "Right?"

"My heart certainly hasn't stopped," Mother conceded with a chuckle. "But Toot-Hoot was right about one thing. Nothing lasts forever."

That was an odd way to answer what should have been a straightforward question, Art mused. He opened his mouth to say so, but Mother was already invoking the blessings of the Great Tree for the afternoon meal.

When the prayer was finished, Vera launched into an account of her second day as the medicine bear-in-training. She had crossed the Prem to gather more hawthorn leaves, and she had then sat with one finger on the edge of a berry basket filled with plain river water. "To infuse it with patience and concentration," Vera explained, when Mother asked her the purpose of this exercise. At the end of her labor, Vera had been asked to sample the water she had spent the morning preparing in this strange way. And when she again failed to detect patience and concentration in the tasteless brew, she had been instructed to harvest more skunk cabbage roots.

"Do you think she's punishing me because I couldn't taste what she wanted me to?" Vera asked plaintively.

Art wanted to listen, but he could not help that his eyes kept lingering upon the underside of Mother's muzzle. It was lined with far more gray hairs than he had noticed before.

I already knew that Mother was old, Art reasoned.

But he could not stop himself from brooding. Before now, all Mother's old age had meant to him was that she tired more easily, and that she relied on Art and Vera to harvest her meals for her. But was there more to it?

Mother was hiding something, Art decided. For before they had all paused to say grace - and just now, as she turned her attention to keeping the ground before her two charges piled with enough horsetail to sate their hunger - Art had detected an anxious flutter behind the warmth in Mother's honey brown eyes.