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.