The Brown Bear and the White Bear

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The brown bear and the white bear

An Inuit fable that might have been.

By Strega, 17 January 2002.

In the summer the brown bear went looking for a sow. There were berries and fat salmon to eat, but it was the time of year that bears did the thing that made more bears.

But he was a young and small bear, and there were many bigger boar bears. Whenever he found a sow, there was always someone bigger with her. So he went farther than he had ever gone before, looking for a sow.

He came to a place with few brown bears. He looked for days, but there were no other sows or boars. He found tracks, but they were old and their smell was almost gone. He wanted very much to help make cubs, though, so he kept going. Only one bear smell seemed fresh, and it was everywhere he smelled the other bears.

It did not smell like a brown bear sow, but it was a bear sow smell, and it made him want even more to help a sow make cubs. So he followed it.

One morning he saw a white bear. It was big and fat, but even so it was not so thick in the body and neck as a brown. He watched it for a while, then got its scent from the wind. It was the sow, and she was ready to make cubs.

Even though she was big and strange, he came up to her and said, "I would like to make cubs with you."

The white bear looked at him and said, "But you are brown, and smaller. You would not be a good mate no matter how hard you tried."

The brown bear was proud, and said, "I will try harder than any white bear, and I will make you fat with cubs."

Thre white wear shrugged and said, "Try."

So he did the thing that boar bears do to make cubs in sows, and when he was done he was a little tired. But she said,

"You did not do it hard enough. I will not get fat with cubs. Do it again and harder."

So the brown bear got up and did it again, and harder, and when he was done he was more tired. But the white bear said,

"That was still not enough. I will not get fat with cubs. Do it again, if you can."

The brown bear was tired, but he was angry that she thought him too weak. He did the thing again, and harder than he ever had before.

When he was done he was very tired, and lay down next to the white bear.

She turned and put her paws around him and said, "That was still not enough. You will not make me fat with cubs. But you will make me fat." And her mouth opened like a crevasse in white ice, and she put it over his head.

The brown bear was afraid, but he was very tired from making cubs, and she had her paws around his own. She was bigger and stronger, too, and no matter how much he struggled his head went farther into the soft places inside her.

The white bear sow ate, and there was more and more of her, and less and less of the brown bear. His thick round body was almost too much to eat all at once, but she pushed with her paws and swallowed like a kingfisher does when it has a fish almost too big to swallow.

Then there was no more brown bear, just the fat white bear sow, so round now that she could not walk. She said to him, inside her,

"You did not make me round with cubs, but you made me round. And the brown bear I met before you, he tried to make me round with cubs and failed. And he made me round just as you did. And the ones before him. And the brown bear sows I met, they wanted to talk and came close, and they made me round as well."

The brown bear struggled inside her, but it was like the dark under an avalanche, and he could not get out. "But why?", he said.

"Because I am hungry," said the white bear, "And I do not want to hunt fish, or seal, or walrus. Now there are less brown bear here, and soon there will be none, and then a white bear boar will find me and we will make cubs. And our cubs will live where the brown bears did, and grow fat on salmon and moose and caribou and berries."

The brown bear didn't know what to do, and soon he smothered in the dark. The white bear sow made the sound a person makes when they are very full and happy, and slept.

When she was hungry again, then there were still a few more brown bears, and any of them would make her round if she talked to them right.

The end.