seventeentimes

As it happened, there was something in Marama’s cave that was much too distracting for Millicent to have any room left over in her brain for worrying about being eaten. That is to say, there were two things - the first of which was an overpowering smell of all-things-bear.

They walked for some time without speaking, the only sound being the crunching of ice beneath their feet. Gradually the trees began to thin out and the forest floor became uneven, rising and falling in a series of jagged little hills and valleys, until finally they came to the base of a steep hill that seemed to climb endlessly above them. The right hand side of the hill was completely sheer as if it had been sliced in two and one half removed, and in the space left behind a great basin of frozen water lay in eerie stillness. Marama grunted and pointed to a dark opening in the rock face. It was almost hidden from view by a thick column of ice that rose from the surface of the pool at the foot of the cliff to the crest high above them. “The ice storm has silenced my friend,” observed Marama as she led the way along a wide but slippery ledge that jutted out of the rock several feet above the level of the basin, “It’s lonely without her this morning.” Millicent was going to respond but just then they passed behind the frozen waterfall and reached the entrance to the cave and she was hit full force by an incredible odor. A cacophony of scents like a blast of trumpets blared in her nostrils. It was as if she could smell in a single inhale the residue of every drop of blood Marama had spilled in the cave, every hot sweaty afternoon, every fart, every salty tear. As she followed the bear inside the smell only intensified, and it was all Millicent could do not to pass out on the spot.

Marama gestured to a large armchair and Millicent gratefully sunk down amongst the billowy velvet cushions, breathing as shallowly as she could. The bear went over to a large wooden table in one corner of the cave and busied herself with making tea. With a small hatchet she hacked several chunks from a block of ice inside a wooden chest at the very back of the cave and dropped them into a heavy metal pot with long handles. This she transferred to a hook that stuck out of a low alcove in the rock next to the table. Beneath the pot she piled up a pawful of sticks and set them aflame with an effortless flick of her wrist that sent sparks flying as the iron-hard claw of her thumb hit the rock. Then she disappeared for a time into what Millicent supposed was a pantry before returning to the table with a tray piled high with jars stuffed full of dried leaves, twigs, flowers and a few unidentifiable things that Millicent decided not to examine more closely. For the next few minutes Marama bent over the table, sniffing, measuring, grinding and combining the contents of the jars, and Millicent grew bored and let her eyes drift over the rest of the cave. It was becoming easier to breath now as she became accustomed to the smell, and as she looked around she risked some deeper breaths that made her feel less faint, thinking again of one of Oba’s rhymes, “Ne’er a trouble that can’t be eased, by she who knows the way to breathe”. There were a number of bookshelves crammed to bursting with intimidating looking books; several other armchairs that didn’t look as if they had been sat in for years; a music stand; another large table on the other side of the cave, this one cluttered with delicate-looking metal contraptions and large pieces of paper held down at the corners with big, glass paperweights; and the biggest bed Millicent had ever seen, piled with layer upon layer of blankets.

Just then the water in the pot began to boil, making the top jump up and down with a comforting sort of clattering sound, and Millicent shifted her gaze. That was when she saw the second distracting thing. That was when she saw the painting.

In the wrong direction lay not only a complete lack of Muckleberry-Down-The-Lane, but also a large and hungry Black Bear. Millicent knew right away that the bear was hungry because of the way the bear was looking at her. The bear was looking at Millicent the way she usually looked at a steaming hot bowl of sugar pudding. She was frantically trying to remember Oba’s instructions for how to handle bears, but couldn’t get the rhyme straight in her head. “Red bear around, stand your ground, Black bear near thee, better flee… Or is it climb a tree?” she muttered under her breath. Just then the bear made a sudden movement, and Millicent felt fear rush all the way along her arms and legs to the very tips of her fingers and toes. This happened in the length of time it takes a dragonfly to beat it’s wings seven times (which is not very long at all) but even so, Millicent managed to notice something very important that stopped her from turning and running away as fast as she could - the bear was holding a violin.

With another sudden movement, which Millicent now realised was actually a grandiose flourish, the bear revealed a bow, placed it with utmost care across the strings, and began to play. The sound that came from the bear’s violin was like nothing Millicent had ever heard. She had an uncle who played the violin, and she knew he must be very good because whenever he played at a wedding or festival or even funeral wake not one person in the whole village could keep from dancing. Even Old Man Charles, who was as old as and dry as stone, uncurled his spine and stiffly hobbled his way through a tune or two. The bear’s music didn’t make Millicent feel like dancing at all. It was slow and strange and gave her a funny feeling in her chest. The light seemed to fade around her as she listened, deeper and deeper into the song, until she was almost completely surrounded by darkness, with the steady sound of water dripping somewhere nearby, echoing around her… the cold hard rock beneath her… slow, heavy breaths… alone, for endless months… hunger, a steady burning flame inside her… And suddenly she was back in the forest, it’s icy surfaces bright in the wintery morning light. The bear had stopped playing and was looking at her now with sadness and curiosity.

“I do apologise”, said the bear, “I didn’t realise humans could understand bear songs.”

Millicent almost staggered backwards in shock. “I… W…we can’t!” she stammered, “Bears and humans can’t under…” but she stopped, because clearly they could.

The bear stared at her some more and said, “Perhaps you’d like to come and have some tea and a bite to eat - I was feeling rather peckish just now…”

Millicent gulped audibly, remembering how the bear had first looked at her, and the bear paused for a moment before continuing, “You know, it is considered the height of bad manners to eat a guest… and my manners are impeccable”. Millicent didn’t know what ‘impeccable’ meant, and she gulped again, even more loudly than the first time.

The bear made a snorting kind of a sound and said, “My name is Marama and I have invited you for lunch. It would be very rude of you not to accept”, and she turned and began to walk away, saying, “Come along now. I promise not to eat you…” but as she headed through the trees swinging the violin loosely in her giant paw, Millicent thought she heard the bear say, “…not for lunch”.

As it happened, there was something in Marama’s cave that was much too distracting for Millicent to have any room left over in her brain for worrying about being eaten.

The first significant adventure Millicent had took place on a cold winter morning when she woke to find the whole world hard and sparkling in the midst of an ice storm. In a whirl of excitement Millicent wrapped herself up tightly in six layers of thick, warm, woolen underwear, threw an even thicker, warmer, woolen jerkin over the top of them all, and flew out into the crisp silent air. She made straight for the forest and was soon crunching along between the trees, her fingers dancing across the surfaces of twigs and leaves and bark. So transformed was the forest that she fancied herself a princess in a castle rendered entirely in diamonds, hung from every glistening column and arch with chandeliers and twinkling garlands. She stalked hither and thither, pronouncing decrees and ordering royal feasts and balls. She curtsied and smiled, counted her gold, pardoned squirrels and knighted blackbirds, and carried on with all manner of princess-like activities until finally she could think of no more.

Only then did she become aware of the muffled grumbling sound that was coming from her belly. The thought of breakfast quickly pushed all other thoughts aside, and the tremendous beauty of the icy world around her vanished as if in a sudden thaw as it dawned on her she had no idea how to get back to Muckleberry-Down-The-Lane. It is quite possible that she might never have made it home again. The forest was so large and she had walked so far that she might easily have gone on walking deeper and deeper into it’s wooden heart, only to finally curl up in exhaustion beneath some giant oak and never again open her eyes. However, that is not what happened. Millicent looked around her, licked her finger and tested the wind, and set off in completely the wrong direction - which is what saved her life. But not until much later.

In the wrong direction lay not only a complete lack of Muckleberry-Down-The-Lane, but also a large and hungry Black Bear.

There was once a young girl who was the attendant to a rich and powerful queen. Her name was Millicent Mint of Muckleberry-Down-The-Lane, because the village she came from was just a short walk down a pretty country lane from the slightly larger village of Muckleberry. Her name was Millicent Mint of Muckleberry-Down-The-Lane because her mother, her mother’s mother, her mother’s mother’s mother and her mother’s mother’s mother’s mother had been called Millicent. Her name was Millicent Mint of Muckleberry-Down-The-Lane because left to their own devices her feet smelled strongly of cheese and every morning she packed her shoes with fresh mint leaves in an attempt to subdue the pungent aroma. Her name was Millicent Mint of Muckleberry-Down-The-Lane but everyone called her Milly Maybe.

The reason for this was quite simple and even less interesting than anything to do with grandmothers and villages and foot fungus. Millicent was known as Milly Maybe quite simply because she said ‘maybe’ a lot. Of much greater interest is why Millicant said ‘maybe’ so much in the first place, and that is a more complicated issue.

When Millicent was a very young girl - young enough that a single puddle could entertain her for half an afternoon - she struck nobody at all as being out of the ordinary. And since ‘the ordinary’ was limited to the lives of the handful of families that lived together on the barren, muddy land that curved along one edge of the Great Blackwoods Forest, it didn’t take much to stand out. She had two sisters and three brothers, all older than her, who had survived their own treacherous childhoods and now accompanied her mother and father every day in the fields. Millicent was left with her grandmother, who was one of the Millicent’s that she had been named after. Her grandmother had by then outlived her name and was known to all as Oba, the name by which all old women in the village went after a certain age. She was an easygoing woman and generally let Millicent do whatever she felt like. Luckily for Millicent this easygoing nature stretched to the drying, cleaning, sewing-up, soothing and mending required after Millicent was forced to stop doing what she felt like by a wide variety of spills, rips, falls, scares, scrapes, collisions and scoldings. Consequently Millicent learned quickly about the small world around her, gained common sense by the bucket load, and by the time she was tall and strong enough to climb the giant silver birch that marked the boundary between her families’ land and that of their neighbours, she was having all sorts of wonderful adventures.

The first significant adventure Millicent had took place on a cold winter morning when she woke to find the whole world hard and sparkling in the midst of an ice storm.