Ursula

Naturally, my first thought is that the bear has eaten my child. My second is to blame myself. I put my daughter to bed early, went to read my book. I should have been hovering in the dark beside her, listening to her breathe like breaking news I can’t afford to miss.

Or maybe I just loved her too much. Isn’t that asking for trouble?

There’s no sign of her now. The bear is curled in her cot, nose on paws, breathing softly. The blanket my mother knitted tangles around its back legs. Ursula always kicks it off. Or kicked? The intrusion of past tense is when I collapse on the floor, shaking. My heart judders. I feel sick. Cold. I didn’t know horror could be so physical.

But.

It’s only a small bear. A bear cub, really. My daughter’s cot is not that big. And there’s no sign—no other sign—that anything’s wrong. The cot isn’t damaged; the window is shut. The room reeks of the wild, of mountains and ice, river water and crushed pine needles. No blood. Surely, I’d have heard something; surely a bear this small could not have swallowed my daughter in one fairy-tale gulp? Surely—I can hardly stand to think it—surely there’d be traces?

My new-old instincts kick in, my bone-and-muscle memories. They recognise the bear, even if I don’t. The bear is sleeping soundly, they say. The room is the right temperature. Automatically, I lay my palm on the bear’s flank, feel it rise and fall. It should not comfort me, but it comforts me. I tiptoe from the room, closing the door gently lest the click of the latch wake the bear.

I sit at the dining table and let logic wash over me. Hallucination, logic mutters. Overtired. I fell asleep, that’s all, and dreamed there was a bear.

My partner’s key scrapes in the lock. “Hello!” he cries cheerily, then: “Shit, sorry,” as my daughter’s familiar wailing starts.

He emerges from the nursery with Ursula in his arms. There she is: alive and cross, rubbing her eyes, hair standing up in a tangle. “The nursery smells like pine,” he says. “Did you get an air freshener or something?” He sees my face. “Hard day?”

I put a hand to my cheek, feel the tears.

* * *

Ursula is a year old, the age when she reveals her secrets. Her first words. The fixed colour of her eyes. Her first shambling steps. Every day, she surprises me. The changes are as constant as sea-foam horses, charging up the beach, one after the other after the other. This is the age of learning who she is, if she is bear as well as girl.

Part of me thinks she is already so unutterably miraculous, why shouldn’t she become a bear as well? Aspects of her seem adorably bear-like, although my partner insists that this is fanciful thinking. He says she is an ordinary little girl who simply becomes a bear at night, just like I scoff when he says look how coordinated she is, she’s going to be an athlete. And if we were to discover that other babies turned into animals—if our niece Samia was a tiger or Tod from playgroup was a wolf—we’d both agree that a bear is better.

Part of me doesn’t believe it, still. Even though it’s the truest thing about her.

* * *

There’s nothing online at first. This surprises me: parents on the internet know everything. It’s only when I broaden my search terms beyond bear that I find outdated blogposts and websites, reassuring except for their garish, conspiracy-theory fonts; and medical research so dry it hardly seems to apply to living children. Shapeshifters, one website calls them, and I stroke my daughter’s curls and feel oddly proud. I read about babies who become butterflies, rabbits, salamanders. There’s nothing about older children: do they learn to control it; does it fade away, like the ability to swallow and breath at the same time, or the vivid dreaming of the early weeks? Can they change in their waking hours as well? Is it a vulnerability, like the fontanelles?

My partner does no research. He says it creates unnecessary angst. But one thing is clear, and worries both of us: as she grows, the situation will become more difficult.

So I read everything I can find, and I learn about the operation.

* * *

“The thing is,” my father says, when I finally get up the courage to tell my parents. “Your daughter is not actually a bear.”

I don’t want to listen. He is the sort of man who, in another time and place, would have pelts on the walls or cured as rugs.

“You want what’s best for her, don’t you?” he asks, and doesn’t wait for my response because he can’t contemplate me disagreeing.

* * *

“The risks are very low,” the doctor says. “A minor intervention. Just like flicking an off-switch. A surgical incision here.” He touches the back of his neck, the base of his skull, moves Ursula’s curls aside to show us the place. “And she’ll stop changing.”

“But it’s not necessary?”

The doctor frowns. “Not strictly. But many parents choose to get it over with early. She won’t even remember.”

We don’t even need to look at each other. “Thanks,” my partner says politely. “We’ll be in touch.” I hold Ursula so tightly she squeaks in fury. I’m crying again when I walk her outside and strap her into her pram, when my partner puts her sunhat on and gives her the special yellow duck. Floods and surprising floods of tears. But I cry so easily these days. All throughout pregnancy, even worse since the birth. Hormones. It doesn’t mean anything.

Later that night when Ursula is asleep, the bear’s quiet rumble filling the nursery, I put a hand to the back of my neck, the base of my skull, and touch the scar that’s always been there.

* * *

Ⓒ E.M. Linden