Snow from her braid melts a slow, cold trickle down her spine. 

BY EMILY PASKEVICS

IMAGE BY MEAHA CAUDLE-CHOI

It’s not yet dawn, and I’ve woken up all wrong. There’s a pressure in my chest and I can’t breathe, thinking I heard her voice—just there, beyond reach, in the dark. Dad, please come take me home. Any father can tell you how it is when your kid’s in trouble and you’re right on the edge. The phone cries out again and I sit up, groping around on the nightstand. 

My voice is a croak. Louisa?

The bed sags under me. It’s not my daughter calling, after all—it’s the constable from Washago. Haven’t heard from him in weeks, and the first thing he tells me is that they still haven’t found her. But they’ve found something. 

* * *

As a kid, Louisa lived and breathed these woods. Climbing trees, running barefoot in the bush behind our trailer, following the river to the lake, catching pike and gutting them herself, sleeping under the stars, and dreaming of bears. She had a thing for bears. Perched in a tree, avoiding some kind of trouble she got herself into along the way—and little Louisa was always getting into trouble—she’d look down at me with her big blue eyes and say: Hey Daddy, did you know in the olden days people thought that if you drank bear’s milk, you’d turn into a bear? 

No, I didn’t know. I told her to come straight down, but she sassed back: You’ll never catch me!

Lou grew up and kept getting into trouble. Things got rough when her Ma died—it was hard on all of us, watching cancer dwindle a strong woman into dust. At eight, Louisa burned up her legs from playing with matches next to the jerrycans of gasoline in the shed. Then her big brother Larry was killed when his Harley collided with a quarry truck at the tricky bend before town I’d always warned him about. He was on his way to pick Lou up from school after she’d been suspended for smoking in the girls washroom, and she always partway blamed herself. After that it was just the two of us, and we made things work. Hunting and fishing, the woods kept us close. 

As she got older, Louisa came and went. But she always said these woods were where she felt the safest, the place she most thought of as home. Even when I wouldn’t hear from her for months at a time, I figured that meant something in the end. 

* * *

It’s the winter solstice, already dark, middle of the worst storm in over a decade. Louisa makes her way through the snowdrifts along Sadowa Road. She’s wearing a man’s oilskin coat, and it hangs below her knees. Her hair’s tucked under the collar, a long, dark rope reaching down to her waist. 

Sadowa Road means no streetlights all the way to town. It means deer-crossing signs half-battered with buckshot. It means a skinny gravel shoulder veering into the forest, which peels back just enough to reveal a handful of shacks. Louisa approaches the first place she comes across that isn’t abandoned—a mobile home with its porch light swinging around in the wind. The blue-painted door is all scratched up from when a bear tried to get in. 

She knocks and steps back, blowing on her hands. An old-timer answers, squinting into the storm, and Louisa asks for a ride to the edge of town. The wife says over his shoulder what, hun, in this weather? But the man says alright I guess and starts pulling on his coat. He tells her to wait inside until he gets the truck warmed up. Louisa thanks him, apologizing, but he says it’s no problem at all. He heads on out, and the wife takes a good, long look at her. Her eyes are kind. She asks, you in some sort of trouble? Louisa shakes her head, no. 

The wife doesn’t believe her, but heaves herself up from the couch and rummages around in a cupboard. She hands Lou a twenty-dollar bill and a sandwich bag full of cookies. Louisa protests but the wife insists, pushing the cookies and cash into Louisa’s pocket. The man sticks his head in the door, letting in a rush of arctic air, saying okeydokey, truck’s all ready. 

The snow swirls ever thicker as they inch across black ice towards Orillia. The radio’s tuned to an AM station—the old pickup doesn’t have FM at all, so it’s mostly just Elvis crooning through the static. The man smokes, saying it helps him concentrate, and offers Louisa a cigarette too. She pockets it. When they finally reach the edge of town, Louisa says you can drop me off here, sir—meaning the intersection just before Atherley Narrows. There’s a deserted gas station at one corner, a pub called Good Folks at another, a strip club adjacent, and nothing else at the last. 

The man says, C’mon I can’t just leave you here. 

Louisa tells him it’s fine, but he says he wouldn’t be able to sleep knowing he’d left her in the middle of nowhere. He drives on, pointing out a 24-hour diner over the bridge. I’d feel better if you went there, he says with some concern.

She shrugs, rubbing her red-raw hands together. They cross the bridge spanning the Narrows, and as Lou peers through the snow at Lake Couchiching on her side, the man looks at Lake Simcoe on his. 

The pickup stutters to a stop in front of the diner. Louisa swings the door wide to the bluster before the man can offer her a hand. You’ve helped so much already, she says. Before she closes the door, the man calls out: Hey kid, are you running away, or going someplace?

Louisa admits that she doesn’t know for sure. But sir, thanks again. Swinging the door shut before he can reply, he finds that she’s already dissolved into the storm. The old man shakes his head, hunching over the wheel and inching the pickup back over the bridge. He glances over at the passenger’s seat at the twenty-dollar bill she’s left behind. Poor girl, he says out loud, not knowing quite why.

* * *

I roll the window right down as I drive to the police station, preferring the brisk April wind to sucking on my own stale air. There’s a tremor in my hands and my left leg bounces around—coffee, lack of sleep, months of waiting and worrying about Lou. When a black bear looms ahead I act on my instinct to slam hard on the brake, lurching forward and nearly cracking my head open on my own knuckles. The truck grazes the guardrail and swerves just short of the ditch before I get control of the wheel again.

For a few seconds, the only sound is the buzzing in my ears. Then, with a gasp, my breathing starts up again like a rusty old machine. The turn signal’s clicking. I fiddle it off, and when I look up again the bear’s hardly two metres away from my rolled-down window. She hasn’t budged, just standing there and scrutinizing the truck. No—she’s peering directly at me, her pale gaze fixing on my own. I tap the horn, hoping to spook her off the road before someone else comes ripping round the bend. The bear takes a step and hesitates, then rises onto her hind legs, sniffling and huffing. With a grunt, she drops back onto all fours and ambles off the road into the bush. Yellow birch and white cedar rearrange themselves behind her. 

I drive on towards the police station, but I’m all shaken up. My fingers tap out an agitated refrain on the steering wheel. I turn the radio on, then switch it off again. Thing is, never in my life have I heard of a black bear with blue eyes.

* * *

As the old man and his truck fade into the snow-blown distance, Lou hitches her collar up to her ears and heads back over the Narrows. It takes half an hour for her to flounder down to the intersection, where the neon sign for Good Folks flashes through the storm. An ambulance struggles by, wailing and swerving down the icy ramp towards the marina. Squinting, she can just make out the upturned pickup on the ice below.

Louisa struggles against the wind till she reaches the parking lot next to the pub, where the county bus stops just before Orillia on its way up past Washago. The last bus left hours ago, and she’ll have to bide her time till morning. She pulls the oilskin close, bracing herself against the cold. The pub doors swing wide and two guys stumble out, dragging the last few bars of a Hendrix riff along with them. They slouch nearby, backs to the wind as they fumble in their pockets. 

 Louisa pulls the cigarette from her own coat pocket and asks: Got a light?

Sure do, the lean one replies as he pulls out a lighter. He peers at her closely. Sure do, honey, he adds with a wink. 

He gives her a familiar once-over as he cups the flame for her. Inhaling, Lou wonders if she knows him, maybe met him one of those nights at the casino she barely remembers. Exhaling, she doesn’t think so. She has a decade on him at least—he hardly looks twenty. She looks young for her age, which she always turns into an advantage. Why not? They huddle against the brick wall in the howling wind, not talking much. The skinny guy asks whereabouts she’s from, and where she’s headed.

Just north a bit, she says, answering both questions at once. Washago.              

That near the casino? he asks. 

He edges closer. She holds her breath, keeping the smoke in for a moment longer. They both reek like out-of-towners. 

Yeah sure, she shrugs. Basically.

The redhead pipes up: Hey, that’s where we’re going, eh, Danny?

We sure are, the skinny one says. Want a ride?

Louisa takes one last drag on the cigarette. It’s not too far now, home. If something happens it’s two-to-one, sure, but these guys have no real game. She figures that if she can get them to give her a ride partway to Washago, she can walk the rest of the way home.

Yeah, I’ll take a ride. Thanks.

Danny smiles wide. No worries, he says. Anything to help a nice girl out.

The wind whips their voices back down their throats. He opens the passenger’s side of the red sedan and Louisa climbs in, bunching up the heavy folds of her coat around her knees. 

Damn, he laughs, that your daddy’s coat or something? 

She doesn’t reply, and the door creaks as it shuts her in. It takes Danny three tries to get the car started. He blasts the heat, but it only splutters. Lou directs him north, off the main drag, saying she knows a shortcut to the casino. The road is narrow and full of sharp bends.

After a while, Danny’s eyes start flicking from the road to Louisa and back again. She stares straight ahead as he snakes a hand across the seat towards her. The redhead’s already passed out and snoring in the back.

God your hair’s long, Danny says, stroking her thigh. Real pretty.

She sits absolutely still. Snow from her braid melts a slow, cold trickle down her spine. 

Hey, he tries again. Buddy’s asleep back there. It’s just you and me, honey. Through the bulk of the oilskin, his grip tightens on her leg. C’mon, he hisses. Gimme something. 

He lunges, grabbing Lou by the hair and dragging her head into his lap. The car veers towards the guardrail, jerking them all forward before snapping them back. The redhead snorts in his sleep. They hit black ice and Danny jams down hard on the gas instead of the brake. The car hits the rail with full force—flips once, twice, and lands upended by the cedars that bend and moan under the weight of snow.

* * * 

Two days later, The Orillia Times ran a special two-page spread highlighting the deadly aftermath of the storm. Headlines like “Two Teens Killed in Rama Rollover” and “Man in Critical Condition After Pickup Plunges Off Bridge” were accompanied by photos of overturned, half-buried vehicles. Sitting alone at the kitchen table, I cut out a small write-up from the back page of the same paper: “Local Woman Missing.” A search party was sent out to scour the woods around Washago for the allotted twenty-four hours, but by then the storm had obliterated any trace of Louisa. In the end, it was mostly just me driving around the dirt roads or snowshoeing through the bush, day after day, looking for a sign. 

People had their theories. Some said someone must have done her in and it was tragic, while others said she had it coming all along. Still others said she got lost: poor girl, what bad luck. They all wondered what the hell she was doing out there, anyway—a grown woman should know better than to wander off during a storm. I wondered that myself. But my Louisa knows these woods better than just about anyone else. 

* * * 

Still unsettled from encountering the bear on the road, I lean against the desk at the station as a young cop shows me what they’ve found. Seems like there’s always a different officer on the case, and good luck trying to get any kind of a straight answer. This one’s clean-shaven and his uniform looks crispy—as though his mother ironed and starched it for him. Probably packed his lunch, too. 

He holds out a garbage bag. I look at it, and he looks at me. Then he sets the bag down on the desk, fumbling with the twist-tie, and pulls something out. At first I think it’s some sort of grubby little animal, but then I realize that it’s my old oilskin coat. The officer coughs and explains that the coat was found draped over a branch in front of a shallow cave, some 50 kilometres northeast of Atherley Narrows, deep in the bush. 

The cave, he says, was full of bones. He gestures to a shoebox on the desk.

Then he notices the look on my face, realizes what he said and backtracks, stumbling around his words and apologizing all over himself.

Bear bones, he says. I’m sorry, Mr. Raimondo, I mean it was just bear bones. 

He opens the box. Inside, there’s a long-jawed skull the size of a football alongside a few ribs, a femur, a pelvis, and claws. Already yellowed, at least a few seasons old.

Unrelated, the officer is saying, but I dunno, I guess I thought you should know.

I put him out of his discomfort by thanking him for his time. I drape the coat over my arm, look at the bones, and ask if I can take them, too.

* * *

In the moments following the crash, the only sound is the buzzing in Louisa’s ears. She clears her throat, wincing as pain sears up her neck and pounds in her forehead. Her voice catches in the back of her throat when she tries to call out. There’s a clicking noise, and a vague hissing coming from somewhere under the hood. She can’t see the men, but the only breathing she can hear is her own. Louisa closes her eyes, and the storm howls on. 

When she comes around again, the cold’s already settling into her bones. She struggles with her seatbelt, then crawls out through the busted window on the passenger’s side. Standing, she braces herself against the wind. There’s blood on her forehead and she moves unsteadily, with a limp. She straightens her collar, then pauses with her eyes narrowed at the sky, mouth open, tasting for the right way. She struggles forward, but the wind’s so fierce and the snow so deep that at first she’s not moving in any particular direction.

Gradually, she lands a heavy, stomping rhythm that leads her away from the wreck and straight into the spruce woods. Snow encrusts her features and pinches at her eyes. Arms outstretched, feeling her way through the trees, she lurches on until the forest separates her from the rest of the world. 

When she has no strength left, Louisa falls to her knees before a hollowed-out tree. With a final heave, she drags her way into a crevice among the roots, and finds herself in a shallow cave. There’s a dog-like smell, but muskier, almost rank. She hunkers down, blowing on her hands before pressing a palm to the wound on her forehead. The blood’s long since congealed into ice. She rearranges her aching limbs under the coat, and just as she settles back, Louisa senses living warmth nearby. Her eyes adjust, and she can just make out the shape of a dormant black bear through the dark. 

Louisa makes a sudden, ragged sound in the back of her throat, but she isn’t afraid. Delirious with cold, she crawls deeper into the cave and curls up against the slumbering form. She takes in the bear’s feral scent, wrapping its glossy black fur around her own body. The bear snuffles in its torpor, but doesn’t stir. Lulled by the steady rumble of its breathing, Louisa’s breath slows. Pressed together in the dark, she feels drowsy and warm. Soon, she slips into the slow, rhythmic lull of bear time. Days and nights pass, slipping into months, and she wakens only to drink the bear’s milk—rich, sweet, and thick. One by one, she eats the cookies the old woman gave her. 

It will be the spring equinox before Louisa lumbers out of the den like a creature the land herself dreamed up, ravenous and itchy, with a dense fur coat of her own. All she remembers of the preceding winter is that she was lost, and found her way home.

Emily Paskevics is a writer, poet, & literary translator based near Toronto. She is currently enrolled in Humber’s Creative Writing Certificate program. Read more of her work at www.emilypaskevics.com, and follow along on Twitter @epaskev.

Image: Meaha Caudle-Choi, Love of Misery, acrylic paint, thread, beads, and image transfer on satin (2019).

Edited for publication by Isabella Fink, as part of the Professional Writing and Communications Program.

The HLR Spotlight is a collaboration between the Faculty of Media & Creative Arts and the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences and Innovative Learning at Humber College in Toronto, Ontario. This project is funded by Applied Research & Innovation.