The Shadow of the Bear: A Fairy Tale Retold by Regina Doman Read Free Book Online

imagination. When she felt she had the current going sufficiently, she moved her right hand into the melody, let the notes drop haphazardly from her fingertips, like rain on the surface of a pond with a deep undercurrent. She let the melody slide away until she felt like playing it again, barely glancing at the music. This definitely wasn’t the conventional way to play the “Moonlight Sonata,” but it was very relaxing.
    Eventually she began the rising melody of the piece, the uncertain question that drove her eyes back to the notes and made her left hand unsteady. Striving to keep the continual motion of the lower notes, she pounded out the hard, short, anxious notes of the climax, then let her right hand fall. Beethoven never answered the question in this piece. The left hand just kept doing what it had been doing all along, until it eventually sank to the lower end of the keyboard, and then into silence.
    Blanche was still, contemplating the vibration of that last low note when the doorbell sounded. The delicate tranquility she had experienced was shattered.
    “I’ll get it,” Rose sang out, drying her hands on a dishtowel as she went to the door. Blanche remained on the piano bench, wary.
    “Oh, it’s Bear again,” Rose sounded surprised. Blanche heard the house door open, and Rose say, “Come on in, Sir Bear!”
     Unsure of what this portended for their family, Blanche stared at the black and white bars in front of her.
     “I just wanted to drop off a thank-you gift and bring back the boots and stuff,” Bear was saying.
    “Well, come on in!” Rose replied merrily.
    Mother came from the kitchen looking like a Swedish housewife in an old denim dress with her long hair braided and pinned up. She stood smiling at Bear. “Welcome again, Bear,” she said.
    Bear came into the living room uncertainly, a small package in one hand and a lumpy grocery bag in the other. “I just thought I’d get you a little gift to thank you for saving my toes last night,” he said, a bit sheepishly.
    “That’s very kind of you, Bear,” Mother said. “Please take off your coat and stay a while. We were just finishing in the kitchen.”
    “I was going to make hot chocolate—would you like some?” Rose took Bear’s coat, hung it on the old-fashioned coat stand, and skipped to the kitchen to get out the mugs.
    “Uh, sure,” he said bit awkwardly. With his coat off, he looked a little smaller in a khaki flannel shirt and old jeans. He sat down carefully on the sofa and crooked his fingers through his matted dreadlocks. His eyes met Blanche’s as she sat guardedly in her corner. She saw that he realized she knew about him.
    “You play piano?” he asked.
    “Not in front of other people,” she said quickly, getting up from the bench and sitting down on the chair.  She lingered tensely to see what he would do next.
    “You know, I’ve seen you before,” he said finally, when Mother moved into the kitchen to help Rose.
    Blanche said nothing, waiting.
    “At St. Catherine’s,” he said. “On the school grounds.”
    “I’ve seen you there, too,” she said flatly.
    A faint red came into his cheeks. “I keep pretty lousy company, don’t I?” he observed, quietly.
    “It’s your choice,” she said offhandedly.
    Rose came into the room with mugs of hot chocolate.
    “I feel like talking poetry,” she said cheerfully. “Blanche, where’s that poem you got today?”
    Blanche felt aggravated at being forced to share something that she found moving with this outsider. But what could she say without being rude? So she went to fetch the paper.
    Mother opened Bear’s package. “Italian cookies!” she exclaimed. “Bear, how did you know to get our favorite kind?”
    “I didn’t know, but I’ve always liked them, too,” Bear admitted, clearly pleased.
    “The perfect thing with hot chocolate!” Rose said approvingly, and went to fetch a plate. She arranged them artistically in a spiral on the plate and set them