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When Abe awoke again, daylight was filtering, pale, through the canopy of the grove bower. He rubbed one of the tree roots with some affection, expressing thanks with touch. “Greenhouse. For warmth.” He was still groggy from a dreamless night. Rubbing his eyes, he blinked sleep away, trying to force his eyes to focus. Even being unable to see clearly, he noticed straightaway that his bear wounds were quite painful.

The first thing his blurred vision showed him was Blake sitting up on the tree-created hospital bed, peering at some activity nearby, uttering in a low voice some communications to those on the ground below him. Abe’s vision finally came to him, and he saw Jason and James Thurgerson making cuts on the bear’s carcass, or at least what remained of it. “Right, follow the muscle fibers, using your hand more than a knife,” Blake was saying. “We don’t want to get fancy. We can burn the outside of that bit, then use a little of Lars’s whiskey to flavor it up, then throw it in a pot to cook for a day or two to make a nice big pot roast. That way no one of us gets sick from the meat.”

“I need to change my dressing,” said Abe. Looking around the bower, he saw Sano’s separate privacy bower, and her booted feet sticking out as before. Lars was sleeping in his place beside him. Abe watched as his torso gently rose and fell.

“I think I can manage that,” said Blake. “I don’t think I’m up for walking around much, yet, but I can help you clean your wounds. We have hot water and sterile rags at hand here.”

“How?” Abe said. “How are you even sitting up? I thought you’d be dead by morning. We all did. Lars—well, he did yeoman’s work, but you’ve got to understand: Blake, your guts were hanging out.”

“So I’m led to believe,” Blake said. “In fact, I have a memory of it. In double fact, I don’t think I will ever forget the swipe of that bear. But here I am, not quite as right as rain, and a little worse for the wear, but I’m not dying.”

Abe shook his head in disbelief.

Blake shook his head with Abe. “I don’t know, either. Lars must really know what he’s doing. But look here, Sano stayed up until morning broke, preparing all these cloth strips for use. Let’s see what you’ve got going on.”

Abe took off his torso-clothing layers and stood, shivering, feeling a lot worse for the wear. Now would be a good time to throw up if you need to. No matter which direction you hurl, she can’t see it. Don’t forget to actually speak up for yourself, Stoic. Where does it hurt?

“Right there,” said Abe. “It nicked me on my right pectoral, right there, before he got me a little deeper on my bicep.”

“Helluva thing, isn’t it?” Blake said. “He did all that to you and still had enough power in that same swipe to practically disembowel me.”

Yes, here’s where you should throw up. Disembowel. That’s a pretty disgusting picture, and you should definitely throw up at the very thought. Oh, but you saw it, didn’t you? You gazed deeply at a man’s innards, and you didn’t even so much as flinch, did you? Yet you wept bitter tears at the death of a…what was it again? A little spruce tree?

“Helluva day,” Abe mumbled.

“What’s that?” Blake asked. “Stand closer to me so I don’t have to reach—I’m a little sore that way—and I can unwind your bandages.”

“I said it was a day, wasn’t it?” He could smell Blake’s breath. It was distinctly human, with the musk of male sweat in it, and anxiety and fear and confidence.

“A day?” Blake said. “A few of them in a row, I’d say. All the training in the world—plane crash, cold weather survival, getting shot at, magical intervention—really—and a grizzly bear charge in Idaho in February—no. That’s not quite my definition of a day.”

Abe winced.

“Sorry, that was my thumb,” Blake said. “Didn’t mean to poke you.” He was still unwinding. “The thing is, and I know you know this, Abe, because you’re thinking things through—the thing is, the situation is setting up to be a long, long, string of days before we get off this mountain.”

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“I was thinking about that in particular,” said Abe. “What happens when we get off the mountain?”

“Wow, that’s pretty nasty,” said Blake.

“Getting off the mountain?”

“Look at your arm,” Blake said. “We need to take the swelling out of that. How does it feel?”

“Pretty sore,” Abe said.

“Hm,” said Blake. “Edema. Your body is doing what it’s supposed to be doing. We need to stave off infection, though.” He looked away from Abe. “Jason,” he said, looking down at the two men. “Or Jim.”

Jason looked up from his place. “Yes?”

“I need you to fill up one of these bandage strips with snow.”

Jason looked a bit nonplussed.

“Is that hard?” Blake said, confused.

“No, no problem,” said Jason. He rose, took a bandage, and went outside the bower. A few seconds later, Umezawa came in, the bandage filled with snow.

Blake nodded slowly, taking in the personnel exchange without offering a word or requesting an explanation. “Here, Ume. Take another bandage and wrap it so that this icy one is on his arm where the wound is. In ten minutes, take it off. In the meantime, see if you and Jason can’t get a rock about the size of the palm of your hand, flat and smooth, not jagged. Got it?”

“Got it, Blake,” said Umezawa with a smile. “What’s the rock for? To knock Abe out of his misery?”

“No,” said Blake. “Of course not.”

“It was a little joke,” said Umezawa.

“Ah,” said Blake. The two men looked at each other, neither understanding the other. “A joke, eh? Well, be that as it may, but we need to put that rock in the fire so that we can put heat on his wound as soon as we take the ice off.”

“Be right back, then,” said Umezawa.

“And, Ume?” Blake said as Umezawa was about to exit.

“Yes, Blake?”

“Where is Jason? And what were you doing out there?”

“Well, I was scraping down the bear hide. I think Jason is watching it for me so that no predators come along and snatch it away.”

Blake nodded slowly again. Umezawa departed. A few minutes later, Jason re-entered, bearing a rock exactly to specification.

“Ume found this,” Jason said. He returned to his task of assisting James Thurgerson in butchering the bear carcass.

Abe watched Jason watching James Thurgerson intently. He said to Blake, “We have quite an operation going on in here, don’t we?”

“The makings of a little settlement, the seven of us, if we can avoid bears and bad guys for a while.”

Abe thought about that while the makeshift icepack did its work, followed by the same thing for heat, a hot stone packed in a bandage. Blake had very gently dabbed out the wounds with a strip of boiled cloth.

A settlement, Stoic! A settlement. Right here below the peak of a mountain, six men and a woman, breathing the same air, taking turns breathing, in fact, sleeping, tending, fetching, and increasing. No room, out here in the wide American wilderness, no room for the aloof. No standing aloof to suffer in silence. To feign suffering in silence. If you stoically expire, then where will the rest of them be? A little more food for distribution, but the loss of so much more. Complain away, Stoic.

Jason rose from his place bearing a few bear muscles, now separated from their group, and he went outside.

“What’s he doing?” Abe asked.

“Arranging the meat in the shadows of the grove, so that it will freeze. It will have to be covered, of course, but all in due course. An advantage of this persistent cold. A thaw, however, won’t be the end of the world, especially in the shadows.”

Abe tried to return to his mental ruminating, but his stomach growled. “I’m hungry,” he complained. “I haven’t eaten in…I can’t remember. Since breakfast yesterday? Do we truly have no more airline food?”

“Not a single peanut,” said Blake. “But they stopped with those ages ago, I suppose. Not even a morsel of a sawdust pretzel, then.” The humorless man had a glint in his eye.

“A soda, then?”

“Not a bubble remains.”

Abe found that his brain was trying to tell him something, but all efforts at mental exertion were hampered by dull throbbing pain and existential angst.

“Abe,” said Blake.

“What?” said Abe.

“We grilled one of the loins. Can’t you smell it?”

“No.”

“Huh.”

“Huh.”

Blake cocked his head. “Are you okay?” he asked.

Abe sighed. He shook his head. “Are you?”

“Anyway,” said Blake. “There’s as much meat as you want over there. No more vegan food.”

Abe moved his eyes to a larger rock near the fire. Upon it was a humongous tenderloin, black from heat, and sliced. He took a piece in his hand.

“Probably want to heat it up. It’s a little skanky,” Blake said.

“Skanky?”

“We don’t have any salt, and there wasn’t much fat on the bear. Not exactly a fat old, blueberry-stuffed black bear in late August.”

Abe shrugged. “I’m hungry.” He saw a forked stick nearby, obviously used by the others for roasting bear over the fire. Holding a slice over the fire until he heard it sizzle, he brought it out of the fire and to his mouth, blowing on it to cool it. When he bit down on it, he was at once disgusted and relieved.

Yes, you can throw up now. She’s still asleep. But no, don’t throw up, you need the food to heal. Also to not starve to death. That tastes like…it tastes a little like what a soiled diaper smells like, to put it politely.

“This tastes like…”

“It tastes like bat guano, doesn’t it?” said Blake.

“Exactly,” said Abe. “It tastes exactly like bat guano.” He bit another piece, vigorously masticating bear flesh. “So good.” That’s my stoic! Good man! Abe thought he saw the faint glimmer of the beginnings of a smile on Blake’s stony countenance.

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Suddenly, Blake said, “Boy, I feel like stretching, like a good yawn and a stretch would do me some good, more good than harm.” He stood from the bed, steadying himself, not entirely sure he could even stand without aid. When he found that he was perfectly steady on his own two feet, he threw his shoulders back, arched his back, and then reached for the vault of the bower.

In so doing, the blood-soaked bandages were exposed to the air, and they themselves stretched loose because of Blake’s contortions. Abe gasped. Tender flesh marked the places where horrible gashes were.

“My own eyes,” said Abe. “I saw your insides with my own eyes. Intestines, Blake! Look! Now it’s baby’s skin where a bear tore you open.”

Blake looked at his tummy, eyes open with wonder. He jerked his eyes to Abe’s bicep, then back to his own bare torso. “What in the hell?” After another moment of examination, both of them in puzzled silence, with James Thurgerson at their feet still working out the butchering of a bear, Blake said, “Okay, then.”

Just then, the entire party sprang to full wakedness: gunshots! Gunshots at the entryway!

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