I had a plan.
I wanted a hunter, one of those always just in time to drill a musket shot through a wolf’s lights. And if he was fine of leg and loin, I wouldn’t mind parting the bracken a bit with such a man, not being quite so young as I had been, and looking for the right sort to share my winter nights. Although this was not the point-entire. I wanted to teach the bears why they shouldn’t weave rugs and write plays, and give them a lesson they’d never forget.
I wanted to teach them to keep their bear-talk to themselves. And if the cottage-dwelling men were too weak-kneed to educate the bears, I’d find myself a red-jacketed crack shot and make him mine.
And so I did. He was a square-jawed elk-hunter from the vale to the east. His red jacket was sappy-brown along the sleeves, and he smelled of brandy, but he showed me how he double-powdered both barrels and blew twin holes in my mum’s quilt hanging out to dry — and he paid gold florins for a new one.
He was perfect.
I recall that early morning well, how I tickled him awake. I tugged him from the bed, red-cheeked, unshaven. I remember the dawn as if it were a week ago, although these days I’m the only one alive who can sing the words to a single bear madrigal. I led my hunter to the woods, mist in the tulips, wood smoke in the thatch. I filled him with my scheme, and before I let him yea-or-nay, I kissed him wide-awake and said, “Follow me.”
Bears are fond of walking — or they were, our wise bears used to be. They walked, they slept. Peripatetic brethren, as the priest would say, they were always cooking their oats, howling when the porridge scalded, and using the excuse for another ramble, up one trail and down the next. My hunter and I spied a family, dad, mam, and wee one. They ambled off, blinking in the sunlight, happy as cows to be out in the grass, the little one hopping, rabbit-like. “Stay here,” I whispered to my gunner.
I hid behind a berry bush. I waited, and when the family vanished up the trail, I scurried into the cottage. I violated their breakfast bowls, hot and cold, and made sure they would see the mess when they returned to table. Spoon and finger, I tasted, scooped, and splattered. (It was delicious — just the right amount of honey.) I did what I could with the furniture, the chairs and settles too stout for the likes of me to break. All I could manage was a high chair in the corner, one the bear-lad must have just outgrown.
I broke that into kindling, and left it sowed around the nook. I took myself upstairs. I flung wide the shutters so Redcoat would hear me shriek when the time came, and I settled myself in the largest of the three beds. This mattress was packed with straw so coarse it was like sprawling in a thicket. So I tried the middle bed, just my size, but it was so cratered by the weight of Mistress Griz that I climbed up and down the bedding, clinging to the edges.
Finally I escaped the bed and found the laddie’s bunk, and slept. Why did you fall asleep, moon-calf? I would demand of myself in years to come. And I have no retort. No clever answer to myself. I lay, I slept. Not one to stoop to excuses, but mayhap the hunter’s nip, that brandy wine he said was courage, overdid my wakefulness. “Just a taste,” he had said, tasting some himself.
I never heard them on their way. When the three rambled back into the cottage, I had no inkling they were home, peering at their porridge, aghast at the broken high chair, nosing the air. Or perhaps I had a hint of what was happening, in one part of my mind.
Step by step, they ascended to the bedroom. The oak door creaked. Their heavy steps were slow, the floorboards groaning. Only then did I hear them, words as clear as any tinker’s. “What’s this — my pillow all mussed,” said the father.
“And here, my mattress half in, half out,” said mum-bear, nearsighted, nose to her bed. “And me, and me!” cried the pup-bruin. “My bed too!” he cried.
I am now the only one in the land who knows, how like to our own speech it was, this language, this Bear tongue. “Mine too,” he stammered, “and she is still — still here!”
I didn’t have to feign my horror, yelling from the window, tangled in a sheet, screaming, bellowing. I called out, “What are you waiting for?” But my huntsman was lying in plain sight, sound asleep, sunlight in the green grass gleaming off his gun.
“She’s here, she’s here!” cried the cub. Both parents trying to make me out, blinking in the bright morning light through the open window.
I ran home.
In my haste I soaked my skirts in the ford, dragged them in the thistles, muddied them and tore them, all the way to hearth and safety. I was scolded by my mum, and I sobbed into the shot-rent quilt, swearing virtue, good deeds, and chastity to God.
I kept my visit secret. And a perfect secret it was too.
Except that the silence fell.
No ursine gardeners peddled roots from door to door. No kindly bear held the pasture gate to let a goodwife pass. No bear song drifted from the meadow. Nine days later a pigeon-hunter accidentally uncovered the powder horn, one weather-glazed hunter’s boot, and one sap-stained quarter of a jacket.
“A mishap,” said the magistrate, eyeing the tooth marks in the shoulder of the scrap. “A lamentable misadventure,” he said with sadness. “A mystery.” Anyone could see the nature of the hunter’s sudden end, but the sheriff said it was beyond us all, what might have taken place. Because the bears were loved, and loved in return, in their bluff, like-human way.
But all the bears had vanished. Their cottages stood dark. No one knew what caused this blight, or where the speaking grizzlies repaired to, why they left our woods.
No one except myself.
The last time I saw a bear beside a creek, not a fortnight past, she stood on her two hind paws and listened while I bid her a good evening. “And good health to you,” I said. She turned away and left me alone, the stream beside me running like a song.
Only I know, and I keep it to myself. But I see too clearly what happened. I know exactly how the huntsman leaped to his feet, face red with sleep and drink. I see too well in the eye of my mind how the redcoat brandished his double-shotted gun.
I see him drawing aim upon the cub, and in my waking dream I see what a bear can eat for breakfast, when she has to on a sunny morn.
While not originally a part of the folk tale canon, “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” (an English story from the nineteenth century) has entered the oral tradition to become a treasured piece of our cultural lore. With its depiction of domestic bears, with favorite chairs and porridge for breakfast, and the daring and dangerously innocent Goldilocks, the story continues to intrigue generations of children and adults. Cadnum says that he loves to take a traditional story and turn it upside down, or inside out, to see the tale with new eyes.
Goldilocks Tells All
SCOTT BRADFIELD
Scott Bradfield was born in California but now lives in the United Kingdom. He has published both mainstream and genre fiction, including the novels The History of Luminous Motion, What’s Wrong with America, and Animal Planet. His stories have been collected in Dream of the Wolf and Greetings From Earth. He is currently writing screenplays in Hollywood and reviews in London.
“I definitely didn’t know what I was getting into,” Goldy told the crowd of demographically diverse audience-participants. “I certainly never thought it would go so far. Imagine yourself in my place, just a kid really, lost in the Enchanted Forest for weeks now, and no familiar paths in sight. All of a sudden — winds howl, owls hoot, the woody noose tightens. Which is when you smell porridge bubbling in a big iron pot, and after heeding your nose for a mile or so, find it. What looks like salvation. But what turns out to be something completely different.”