The Bear of Winter

The fire bubbled and cracked, little yellow fingers dancing and waving to themselves in the reflection of my eyes. Only a few feet away from the flames, a pair of teeth chattered and it took my ears a full minute to realize the teeth were mine. They were the only lasting sign of my reaction to the weather as the frigid air seeping through every crack in the cabin walls had already frozen my shivering limbs and stiffened the muscles in my slumped shoulders. My chest could only heave with shallow breaths under the crushing cold.

The teeth – ah, my teeth – clacked again and jarred me out of a thoughtless daze. Around me, the air was suffocatingly still, the fire still dancing, the cold still seeping, but my mind was buzzing. Tensed muscles in my arms served as a slightly delayed reaction to a new noise. The sound crunched through the thick layer of snow outside on the forest floor, through the trees and in a possessive circle around my solitary little cabin in the clearing. It pushed through the space under the door, echoed down the chimney, and bounced about in my skull. Had I the energy to turn, the window behind me would have revealed the source of the sound, but after months of staring out of the foggy glass, I knew exactly what the source was.

And I could picture him clearly in my mind.

Winter blended well with the snow on the ground, so at a glance he was nothing but a pair of black eyes. Under that a black nose. Under that, a snout with a chronic lip-curl to reveal his yellow teeth. At a glance, that’s all I would have seen, but as the glance would grow into a long look, a stare even, his shaggy fur would begin to pop out against the snow, the giant prints that were cut deep leading up to large paws and a mass of fur attached to the beady eyes and snarling teeth. I would watch him pad through the snow, guarding his winter wasteland with a flurry of little flakes following his every heavy step. But I didn't bother to watch him.

I didn't bother to turn even in the slightest until I heard it. If a sound could be warm, if anything in this dead cold could be warm, the sound that caught my ears was. It tickled at the edges of my consciousness, sparking a tingle in my finger tips and jerking my head to the side. It replaced the buzzing in my ears, and it was quickly joined by the noises of the cabin coming to life. The piano in the parlor sang as if a thousand invisible fingers were running octaves up and down the keys, and I spotted the long forgotten kite on the bed spring back into full color. Out the window I could see him, not the hulking bear of Winter, but a little man. Spring bounded swiftly through the snow, clinging to the little felt hat on his head that barely cleared the drifts of snow. I smiled.

It took only seconds for Spring to come into view, Winter’s snow shrinking away from him like darkness from a lit match. Blades of green grass shot out of the dirt, quaking only a little when a roar ripped through the clearing. Winter spotted spring, his snout shriveling and jaw snapping as he plowed through the snow towards Spring. His eyes glinted, a stubborn glare almost palpable from my position at the fire.

That was the last I saw for a while, suddenly only the spit of slush showing where the battle raged. Cold and warm clashed before my window, Winter roaring and Spring bouncing and laughing in the trees and through the grass. I blinked and tried to focus, catching glimpses of claws and that little felt hat riding the gusts of warm wind.

I blinked for a moment and everything changed. Suddenly I was warm, the creaks of the house filled the room as it settled, and outside the now clear window Spring emerged. The little man had his hat on his head and a glowing grin on his face, warm and eye catching from his perch on the haunches of Winter. The bear growled, watching desperately as his snow melted away to feed the flowers springing up around my front door and as Spring urged him on. I stood, racing to the door with a new found energy and waving off the two. The final tip of the little felt hat finished off the cold, sending a fuzzy feeling deep into me as the sun rose up over the horizon and shone down on the new day. The new, Spring day.