Dancing with Bears Read Online Free PDF Page A

not love a cowardly little sneak,” Koschei said. “Sin boldly, or not at all.” Then he spun about, robes swirling, and thumped away, lashing angrily at the earth with the great staff he so obviously did not need for support.
    Arkady stared after him until the apparition disappeared in the crowd. Then he turned away and found himself face to face with his father, newly descended from the wagon and surrounded by men who were pounding his back and shaking his hand. A great surge of emotion washed through Arkady. He threw himself into his father’s arms.
    “Ah me!” he cried. “Thou art not—no, thou canst not be my sire. Heaven such illusion only can impose, by the false joy to aggravate my woes. Who but a god can change the general doom, and give to wither’d age a youthful bloom! Late, worn with years, in weeds obscene you trod; now, clothed in majesty, you move a god!”
    “You’re drunk,” his father said in disgust.
    “And you were dead,” Arkady explained. He punched his father in the chest. “You should have taken me with you! I could have protected you. I would have thrown myself in the wolf ’s slavering jaws and choked him with my own dying flesh.”
    “Take this fool away from me,” his father said, “before I do him a violence.”
    In a kindly manner, one of his father’s new friends took Arkady by the arm. “If I may,” he said.
    One shrewd glance told Arkady that the fellow’s face was covered with fur and that his ears, snout, and other features were distinctly and undeniably canine. “Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,” he declaimed. “Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!”
    “Young sir, there is no need for this hostility.”
    Arkady flung his arms wide.“You! hypocrite lecteur! mon semblable,— mon frère!”
    “Come now, that’s much better,” the dog-man said. “Only, you must call me Surplus.”
    Arkady smiled broadly and extended his hand. “And you in turn must call me Ishmael.”
    The procession, merry as a holiday carnival, wound its way up twisting streets lined with sturdy log houses, all beautifully decorated with millwork in the Preutopian style. Which was, Arkady acknowledged, backward-thinking and anachronistic. Yet they were vastly more handsome than the modern one-room shanties inhabited by the poor, which were grown from the ground like so many fairytale gourds. So this was probably the best aspect of his hometown to show these strangers. The throng flowed upward, concluding at the very center and highest point in the town, atop what would not be deemed a hill in any place less flat than this. There stood his father’s stone mansion, the grandest house of all, a full three stories high and topped with peaked roofs and multiple chimneys, its walls blackened with time and soot and yet its interior gleaming bright and warm through the windows. It was surrounded by oaks at least a century old and had a courtyard sufficiently large to hold all three wagons and enough outbuildings to house the Neanderthals as well. So at least his father’s hospitality would not bring disgrace upon them both.
    Three beast-men went into the house and disappeared there for a time. When they reappeared the first of them growled, “Safe.” Then he and his comrades intimidated all bystanders away from the first caravan, donned their silk gloves, and politely knocked on the door. They stood aside as it opened from within.
    Arkady watched with intense interest.
    One by one, human figures emerged. Though they were clad head-totoe in chador, their slim forms were undeniably female. A breeze rippled through the courtyard, pressing cloth to bodies, and every man present sighed. One of the townswomen spat angrily on the ground.
    A grin split Gulagsky’s beard, and he nudged Darger with his elbow. “Oho! So those are your precious Pearls! They are your treasure!”
    Darger pinched the bridge of his nose, wincing. “Alas, sir, it is only too true.”
    “All this