The Two Bear Kings

A quick note: this is a story from a fictional world I made up when I was younger that has since become far too complicated. I quite like this story as it feels almost like it could be ‘real’ folklore. Hope you like it.

My grandmother was very old. She had long grey hair and softly crumpled skin and soft brown eyes. I couldn’t imagine her having ever been young. In the summer she would live in her own little house with its herb garden. She tended that garden and strange things that, when put into teas or creams, could make coughs go away or make the burn on your arm stop hurting.

In the winter she would come in and share our house- Father would worry too much if she stayed in hers- and she would spin and tell us stories by the fire. No one could tell stories like Granny, no one. After supper we would all sit by the fire. Mother would be sewing; father mending harnesses and us children would crowd around Granny. She would take a handful of wool from the basket and begin to spin on her drop spindle. The turn of it was mesmerising, the rhythm that she seemed to move the thread with her fingers and the way that the wool became thread was almost magic. She told us the stories, then; old stories of the times when the Bear-Kings had been real and when you could still find dragons in the far northern mountains.

There was one story she told us more often than any other.

It was the tale that everyone was told in our country. It seemed as old as the land itself to us children; our parents knew it, their parents knew it and their parents knew it, all in a line stretching further back than our minds could comprehend.

It was the story of how the two Bear-Kings had fought and how our country had been born from two halves:

“One half, the inland where grey peaks reached to the skies and eagles swooped into the forests between them, was ruled by the Brown Bear King. The other half, the icy coast with its bergs that became mountains and frozen waves, was ruled by the White Bear King.

“The people lived in between, on the land where the forest ended before the ice began, and made a life there. But all too often they were afraid of the Bear Kings, for they were much larger than normal bears and could quite easily kill a whole hunting party if they so wished without even a scratch coming to them in return. They had been at war for many years and being between such powerful beasts who were so angry at each other made their lives very difficult.

“So it was that one day the elders of the people’s small village talked and decided to make an offering to the two Bear Kings, and that offering would be two of the most beautiful girls in the village to be their wives. The girl who was to be the Brown Bear King’s wife was dark haired and dark eyed; her family for generations had hunted and gathered in the forests so she knew well the land that she would be moving to. The girl who was to be the White Bear King’s wife was fair haired with pale grey eyes like the sea beyond the ice and came from a family who had fished and walked on the ice. Both women knew their new homes, both women would surely find some happiness there.

“After the weddings the people enjoyed great peace for a few years, their village prospered and grew, and the two Bear Kings were very happy and no longer fought. But as it always must there came a day when tragedy struck: the White Bear King’s wife became ill and died. The people wept with the King on the day she was placed on a pyre, and they watched him scatter her ashes on the space where the land and the ice first met. Many felt fear, as it did not seem meet to offer him a new wife so soon, and they feared that they would fight once again.

“Scarcely a cycle of the moon had passed before the White Bear King left the ice for the land. As he stepped upon the ground his wife’s mother knelt before him and cried: ‘Please keep the peace O White Bear King! Please do not pass from the ice to the land before it!’ The White Bear king paused to hear her lament, but did not do as she asked.

“He passed her and came to the village where the father of his late wife knelt before him and cried: ‘Please keep the peace O White Bear King! Please do not pass from the land before the ice to our village!’ Once again he paused to hear the lament, but did not heed its words.

“He passed through the village and came to its edge where the brother of his late wife knelt before him and cried: ‘Please keep the peace O White Bear King! Please do not pass from our village to the forest!’ A third time he paused to hear the lament but chose to ignore it and passed into the forest.

“The day wore on as the White Bear King made his way through the trees until he came to the mountain that the Brown Bear King called home and there it was that he met the wife who still lived who also knelt before him and pleaded. She pleaded for peace for the people and begged him to return to the ice. She told him that the people would surely find a new wife for him if he wished it and that she too had cried when his wife had died. A fourth time the White Bear King paused to hear a lament, but unlike the other times he chose to respond.

“‘I shall take no other wife. My path is chosen, now move aside’ When she refused to move he struck her down, caring not if she lived or died, and made his way to find the Brown Bear King.

“When they met the two Bear Kings fought harder than they ever had before, the Brown Bear King having accepted the challenge readily when he saw how his wife had been treated and how she had died. Their battle lasted the rest of the day and went on into the night.

“Eventually his grief forced the White Bear King to stumble. The Brown Bear King saw and in his own grief and rage dealt a great blow that pushed the White Bear King to the ground and left him bleeding. The Brown Bear King had won.

“The blood of the White Bear King became a river that ran down the mountainside and through the valley. Though is now water, the rocks of the riverbed are forever stained red as they remember how the river began.”

Here we would all look out of the window to the darkness of the forest. A few miles from our town was that great and ancient river. We had all seen the red rocks on the ground so none of us doubted the telling.