The bear came on, his powerful legs moving over the broken ground with liquid grace. Roaring was done. He was intent only on Anna. She could hear the labored whuff of breath. He was enormous. Rising from the low swell of ground her rock lookout topped, he towered over her.

"Not running, not running, not running," chanted through her mind as she raised the can of bear spray, a fly swatter against an avalanche.

A scream cut through to her. Not her own. A sharp cry that made the bear flinch.

"Drop the pepper spray. God. Please."

Anna had heard the voice before. Faith, not trust, opened Anna's fingers and the pepper spray fell away. Curling down after it, she rolled up like a pill bug, her arms covering her ears, hands clasped over the back of her neck, knees pulled up to protect her more vulnerable parts. The fetal position. This was how she'd first been introduced to the world. Was this how she was going to leave it?

A blow that nearly uncurled her pounded into her shoulder and she felt herself knocked down the backside of the rock like a hockey puck off broken ice. Her kneecap struck stone. Anna felt nothing but the impact. Pain would come later.

Pressure. The bear was on her. She could feel the weight of his chest against her side. Fur, amazingly soft, pressed down on her bare legs. She felt the squash of the great arms as the bear tried to crush her or roll her over. Her face was buried in its pelt. Heat and smell and fur surrounded, suffocated. The bear was absorbing her, smashing her into its very being. Heavy hot breath smelling of huckleberries and things less pleasant washed over her face. Like a child, Anna squeezed her eyes shut whispering, "Go away, please go away."

Crack.

The weight lifted. The animal growled, low and questioning, then roared and another blow fell. This one did unwrap Anna from around herself. She felt her legs fly out, her head snap back and she was rolling down the stony hillside. Her skull smacked against rock and she cried out. Her eyes flew open. She saw the bear and the darkness descending on her together.

Anna had not expected to wake up; or if she did, to wake in the tradition of Jonah, in the innards of Monstro. First came thought, a sense of mind creeping forth from a place far more distant than sleep. She knew she was thirsty and she knew she was cold. Opening her eyes, she knew she was blind or had gone to a place where sight did not matter. It was as black outside of her skull as it had been within.

It wasn't that Anna did not care, it was that she could not think, so fear didn't follow. As she lay in the black she noted she was breathing. With that fragment of earthy information she began to assume she had not left the world she'd grown accustomed to. Surely in heaven, hell, purgatory, Valhalla or wherever, the incessant labor of lungs would no longer be mandatory.

Form came next, form in the darkness, shades of night. She lay on her side in a patch of stone exposed by an old avalanche twenty feet or more from the rock where she, Rory and Joan had sat watch. Night had come. If the moon had risen it was weak and distant. Only the faint light of stars separated the earth from the sky.

Confusion engendered by a bash on the head and waking in the dark was as brief as it was intense. Time, place and circumstances reinstated themselves. The bear had left her for dead. Possibly the fact she'd banged her head on a rock and gone unconscious had saved her life. A black bear, a bear who attacked not to intimidate and frighten off, but to procure dinner, would have taken a few pounds of flesh. Satisfied she was no longer athreat the grizzly had left her in one piece.

One battered piece. Without moving much, lest the bear had not gone away, Anna assessed the damage as best she could. No claw or bite marks. None. That was a surprise. Cuffed about as she had been, she thought surely she'd been cut. The only blood she found was below her left ear where she'd collided with a rock. Her head ached fiercely but the truly significant pain was in her knee. When she rolled to all fours and tried to push herself up she nearly cried out loud. Standing was actually an improvement, and though it hurt to do so, she was relieved to find she could put her weight on it. The joint was not damaged but the kneecap itself was either cracked or badly bruised.

Why hadn't the bear clawed or bitten her? It was in the nature of beasts to use claws and teeth, to worry and strike and bite. The last she remembered before the bear had bowled her down the hill like a hedgehog had been the furry overpowering sensation that the creature was trying to embrace her.

Hedgehog… what had the report written in lavender ink said? Bear activity: juggling a hedgehog. Observer activity: standing amazed.

Anna had been juggled, bowled and left, but for a chance accident, entirely unscathed.

Alive and well and standing amazed, Anna thought and hobbled to a stone where she could sit down, the damaged knee unbent. The clearing was empty, no sign of the eaters of huckleberries. No sign of Rory and Joan. Anna looked at her watch. She'd been unconscious a long time, maybe twenty minutes or more. Another ten had been used up while she metaphorically put herself back together again. Where the hell was Joan? Why hadn't she come back to see if Anna lived or died?

Because her head hurt and she'd been left in the dirt by a giant bear, Anna attempted to entertain the idea that Joan had abandoned her, run all the way back to West Flattop Trail intent on saving her own skin.

The story wouldn't wash. Not only would it be out of character for Joan as a good woman to leave another to die, it would be out of character for Joan as a good researcher to leave a fantastically out-of-place golden Alaskan grizzly without photos, scat samples and much in the way of scientific contemplation.

Joan was around. If she hadn't come back it was because she couldn't come back. Anna felt the sickening boil of fear as she wondered if Joan had come back too soon. If the bear had left Anna to pursue more lively Prey. She opened her mouth to call out, thought better of it and closed it again. No time to go off half-cocked. A few minutes limping and fumbling located her day pack. She took inventory. A little food. Plenty of water. Pliers, hammer, staples, small hard-sided case with the last skunk love-scent canister inside and a well-used topographical map. Since she'd fully intended to be back in camp before sundown, she'd not brought a flashlight. Joan had the radio and, search as she might, the can of bear spray she'd dropped was not to be found.

Feeling unarmed and fragile, she sat again on her rock. The cold was deepening. She didn't have a jacket with her for the same reason she was without a flashlight. The Boy Scout motto came to mind. A lesson to be learned. Again. The hard way.

Without light she couldn't search for Joan. Without a radio, she couldn't call for help. The one thing she could do was move from this exposed place. Pushing to her feet, she limped slowly toward the thickening screen of alder that heralded the pine forest proper. Chances of encountering a bear or thebear were greater in the coverts, but like any hurt and frightened animal, Anna felt the need to hide.

Moving slowly, favoring her bad knee, she picked her way over the rock-embedded land past the miniature lake. Till the moon rose, her eyes were of questionable use and she stopped every few steps to listen. Partly she listened for Joan and Rory; mostly she listened for any sign that the bear was still in the neighborhood. The only sounds she heard were those of her own making.

Beneath the alders darkness was absolute. Anna lost all sense of direction and, knowing what she did was illogical and dangerous, she pushed on. Nowhere seemed safe. Nowhere seemed a good place to stop. The small clearing was too exposed, too near the water source where bears would come to drink. The thicket was too closed in, too dark. Her knee was swelling, her head had left its dull ache to throb, but still she could not bring herself to stop.