Elf and Bear Begins

 

As I recall, I was in my Junior English class in high school when I made this little drawing. This would have been 1980. I was highly pleased with it, somehow; it had more movement than my usually highly static pictures, and I saw potential character there. The bear should have been bigger or the elf smaller, of course; more of a Mowgli-to-Baloo proportion, I decided. It haunted me long afterwards. I made a clay model of the Bear once and somewhere along the line I decided the elf was named Thornbriar. But for almost twenty years, that's where things stood.

Finally in 1999 I decided that I would buckle down and write a novel, and I chose Elf and Bear to be my subject. I had been thinking about them for almost twenty years and I thought I had a handle on their characters. I didn't have any clear direction for the book: each chapter would be a separate adventure, a short story in itself. I would begin writing, at least a page a day, and see where it went. At the end of the year, I reasoned, I would have at least have a 365-page manuscript. I started to fill up a series of red-covered composition note books.

I was coming to the end of the story when Mom passed away. That knocked me into a depression that lasted quite a while. I put the finished first draft away, with the sense of 'Now what?' and 'So what?' overwhelming me. When I got my first computer, the on-again-off-again transcribing of 'Elf and Bear' was one of the many scattered projects I attempted. When I lost that file when my computer crashed I was too despondent to try again right away, but by 2005, with Mike's help, I finally had a complete edited version of the book. And then Mike passed away, and the world was again turned on its head. Another decade went by before I started my second book, "A Grave on Deacon's Peak" and had that published.

Looking at it now, I can definitely see that in needs more structural work (and certainly a better title than Elf&Bear"). Parts of it I think are pretty good and some of it I wince to read. I'm going to put the better parts up here, re-reading it a bit at a time myself as I do so, and try to come to some conclusion if it is worthy of the time and labor of a complete overhaul. Without further prologue, here is Part 1 of Chapter One.

 Chapter One:  Goblins 

     Oak trees rattled their bare branches in the sharp, November wind outside Thornbriar the Elf's underground home.  A hail of scattered leaves tapped and skittered against the door and windows.  Inside the house the fire was going merrily and the kettle was whistling.  Thornbriar looked into the pantry and frowned.

     "Bear," he said, his nose twitching with annoyance, "Do you know what happened to the apple pie I baked last night?  I made it especially for today's tea."

     There was a guilty silence from the overstuffed chair where the bear was resting his shaggy bulk in front of the fire.  He pretended (not too convincingly) to be absorbed in a book on the magic of fireflies, pressing his big, snuffly nose almost to the page.

     Thornbriar shut the pantry door with a snap that made the bear drop his book and look up startled at his friend.  At three feet tall the elf was less than half the height of Bear standing on his hind legs, but the enormous bruin began to shuffle his paws and look nervously away as Thornbriar turned and advanced on him.

The elf’s long forefinger pointed accusingly right between Bear’s black, nearsighted eyes.

“Well?” the elf demanded.

“Er…ah…well, to tell the truth, old fellow,” Bear stammered, closing his book.  “The truth of the matter is…uh…I ate it, last night, after you went to bed.  It smelled so good I had to have a slice.”  His smile was appeasing.

“A slice,” said Thornbriar.

“Well, one thing led to another, that is to say, one slice led to another, and by the time I realized what was happening, there was only a tiny bit left. It seemed embarrassing to leave just that for you, almost insulting.”  He gulped.  “So I ate it too.”

“This won’t do, Bear,” the elf said.  “If you go on like this we’ll be out of food before winter’s half gone.”

“I can’t help it,” Bear said.  “It’s the nature of bears to eat a lot at this time of year to get ready for the long winter’s sleep.”

Thornbriar snorted.  “Don’t give me that rubbish.”

He went over to the coat rack in the corner by the door.  “You never spend that much time sleeping anymore.  You don’t have to, with me feeding and housing you.  Out raiding smokehouses every other night is more like it.  Well, I’ve had just about enough of it.”

He whirled his dark blue coat off of the rack and onto his back, then jammed a tall, peaked blue hat on his head.

“Where are you going?” asked Bear anxiously.

“Out.”

“But what about the tea?”

“You can finish it off yourself,” said the elf, angrily winding a muffler around his neck.  He opened the door and paused dramatically to face the confounded bruin.

“As for me, I am going to get some fresh air, as far away from greedy bears as I can get.  Good day to you!”

With a flourish he slammed the door and was gone, leaving Bear to contemplate the half-set table with a long face.