Salty Sunlight
Digital
Salty Sunshine was my first original story, written as a sequal to picturebook A Story for Bear by Dennis Haseley and Jim LaMarche.
Salty Sunlight
The morning when the first ray of sunlight crept into his winter cave, the bear awoke from his long sleep among the hard covers of the books that she had left for him. Warm air carried a fresh scent of budding trees. He put his nose to the book with brown cover, from which the woman read him many stories of the sailor’s adventure, and let out an excited cry. Even though he couldn’t understand a word she said, his heart fluttered at the thought of her sweet-sounding voice and graceful gestures.
Gently putting his teeth around that book, the bear set off to the woman’s yard. From behind a thick tree, quite a stretch away from the cabin, he saw that she was not in her chair reading. The browning leaves that piled up under the tree showed no signs of disturbance. The laundry line was empty.
That spring, whenever he heard the crystal tones of the blue jays that reminded him of her laugh, the bear would carry the book with brown cover in his mouth and walk to her yard. When daffodils bloomed along the brook, he saw that her yard had changed. There was a new scent, crisp and clean like fresh laundry. Next to her chair was another chair, yellow like daffodils. A man was sweeping leaves under the tree.
When the bear next returned, he watched from behind a tree, a book in his mouth. He saw her in her chair with the man sitting next to her. She put her left hand on the arm of her chair, fingers interlaced with the man. As she was speaking to the man in the soft voice that she used to read the bear the sailor’s love stories, she put her right hand on her belly. The man gazed tenderly at her as she told him a story, without having to read from a book in her hands. He held up her hand and touched it with his lips. When the sun turned into an orange glow, he watched them go into the cabin. Soon, a delightful smell of roast chicken and a happy song came out of the windows. As the sunlight disappeared, he slowly stumbled to her chair, put the brown book on the spot where she sat on, rubbed his big head on the arm of her chair, and let out a low growl.
That night, the bear trekked from his winter cave to her yard, and back again, through the bushes where the blue jays called and across the shallow brook where the stream babbled. He carried her books with their hard covers of green and red and black in his mouth, one at a time, under the tree where she usually sat. He tried to shovel the books into a pile, but with his big claws, he brought up the dirt from the ground and they sprinkled in between the pages. When the sun came up, he lay down in his empty cave, and held the piece of paper where she wrote “For my Bear” close to his face.
The bear didn’t return to the cabin for many days. Not even when the daffodils by the brook withered or when the blue jays called. Peach blossoms fell and covered the path to her yard with a rosy carpet, but he still felt waves of heaviness, right in his chest. He missed hearing the fearful quivers in her voice, when she read of a sailor dangling with one hand from the mast, in a storm, coming to the rescue of his love. He missed seeing the dimples on her face when she laughs at a funny trick that the sailor had pulled off. He missed how she put down the book and looked at him, every time after she finished reading, and send him off with a smile. Then he remembered the way she called him “bear”, and he knew that that was her word for him. His empty cave felt full again.
The afternoon when the bear finally returned to the woman’s yard, apples were turning red in slanting sun. From a far distance, he could see that the man was not in her yard. He was cooking for her in the cabin, cluttering sounds and delicious smells came out of his kitchen.
When the bear came closer, he noticed that her yard had again changed. Between her chair and the man’s yellow chair was a small cradle. She was reading aloud, her melodic voice pulled the bear in. Quietly placing one big claw in front of another, he walked up behind her. When she finally heard the sound of his steps on the grass, she dropped the book that she was reading from. Her head swung around.
“Bear?” she said, pleasantly surprised, “Bear, is it you?”
For a moment, their eyes locked. He let out a soft growl.
“Come here. Come here, bear,” she smiled.
After a while, he slowly took a few steps towards her, with his big head swaying from side to side. She waited as he grew near to her and rested by her side. She picked up the book on her lap, carefully closed it, and softly she began to tell a story to him. A story that didn’t need row after row of tiny marks.
“There once was a girl,” she went, “who had to spend some time in the woods to recover her health. She lived in a little cabin in the clearing of the forest, where she stayed with her parents in days of berry picking and golden light shining through tall trees…”
She closed her eyes for a moment, then continued to read on from her heart.
“One afternoon, she was reading her books as usual. When she returned from a tea break in the cabin, she saw a grizzly bear by her chair, in the same color of her hair. She walked closer and saw that, for some reason, the bear was interested in her book. He was trying to pick her book up… The second day, the girl began to read the bear stories…”
When she told him in a melancholy voice about saying goodbye to the bear last fall, he felt sad with her. When she smiled in recalling how she met the man, and soon fell for him as if he were the sun, the bear felt strangely happy. When she spoke of her fear that she will never see the bear again, on the morning she found the book with brown cover on her chair and all of the other books on the ground, he silently looked up at her. In her trembling lips, he sensed the same heaviness that he had been feeling since he last saw her.
When she finished telling her story and smiled at him, the bear didn’t leave. He began to tell her a story, his story of her. For a moment he stood there, hummed and made wheezing sounds. Then, lifting one paw at a time, he slowly walked towards her until his nose prodded on the book in her lap. As he closed his eyes and cooed, his furry snout brushed on her leg. After a while, He paced around a little, attentively sniffling the tree which her chair is under, her hair and her chair, the cradle, and the chair yellow like daffodils. When he finally started to settle down by her chair, he wobbled a few steps, grunted heavily and whimpered. Tears fell out of her eyes into his thick, plushy fur. He leaned into her chair, and she put her hand on his back.
They sat there silently, hearing the sounds of their breaths, his rapid and heavy, hers quiet and mellow. Then, tenderly, as tenderly as he could, he licked the tears on her cheek. It tasted like salty sunlight.