Where is Motherbear?

by Linda Ryynänen

We are driving again.
“What are those?” Maija asked. She pressed her face against the car window, watching them walk into the land.
One-legged beasts rose from the ground as they crossed the horizon, each with three arms slowly whipping in motion. One followed the next, until a handful became several, and several became dozens. Sanna took a breath, her eyes glaring against the last of the midnight sun. She is an anxious driver. Well, a bad driver. Someone who is overwhelmed at the radio being turned on because it will make her forget to break. Someone who constantly stays in the wrong gear, for the wrong amount of time.
“Wind farms.”
Sun glinted off them in all directions. It was unbearable. One after another they staggered into the skyline until they spread across the horizon; a metal army in the north. Maija rolled down the car window and the smell of empty air filled them as they drove, no longer curving through the single-lane roads sided by birch trees and summer berries they found in Kolari.
Maija looked for the lone red homes that should dot the landscape. Even with their junkyard gardens, her memories of seeing them surrounded by alder forests were strong.
“I thought this was where Uncle Pasi lived?” Maija asked, as she realized she would not see her uncle’s home spring up in this new world, or his neighbor’s small farm and herd. She glanced around, letting her eyes wander for the hooved families and their ear tags.
Sanna shook her head as they drove past the last wind turbine. It must have been over a hundred meters tall, with blades drifting in a motion that took up nearly the same space. Maija looked back at the dozens of wind turbines disappearing behind them in the rearview mirror. Her stomach settled, making her feel very small, and very nauseous.
“Pasi moved,” Sanna finally answered.
“What?”
“We all did.”
“What?” Maija repeated herself. She knew her sister wrote to her, telling her she bought a new apartment in Rovaniemi, but she was busy these days and the details slipped through her cortex like water.
Sanna glanced briefly in the rearview mirror and as she refocused, a bend in the road redirected them to the right.
“Do you see that?” Sanna nodded to the disappearing wind farm that creeped over the right hand side of Maija’s car window. “What it has done to the land... how clear it is? How empty? They took away the grazing lands. Everyone went south.”
Maija watched as they pulled away from the wind farm for the last time, rounding lake Raanujärvi.

#

There is a bright place in the north.
We are driving again, but this time it is 1989 and Maija is in the living room and Sanna drives a dark red Lada. Sanna is an anxious driver and this is where it begins. Sanna turns the radio off and Maija turns it back on, on-off-on-off until the music fizzles in the living room and Sanna slams her hand against the steering wheel.
“Look at that!” Sanna pounds. She flips the dials back and forth, picking up a range of static.
Maija laughs. “Wouldn’t have happened if you embraced the beauty of Joey McIntyre.” She fiddles with the knobs over Sanna’s hands, moving static across the bright north until Sanna smacks her away. Maija slaps her hand back, softly at first, then harder. Back-forth-back-forth until they are arguing more than they are driving. Like sisters do, but not really because these are one-lane roads before the deforestation of wind farms and turbines remove the silver birch trees that rip through the ground like stakes.
The Lada is a reliable car amongst unreliable cars. Sanna likes this, and Maija finds this funny. When it breaks, and it will in three months, you fix it. The Lada is a recognizable car amongst all cars. Neither girl likes this.

#

When it is 1989, Sanna drives a dark red Lada, alone, and she has the radio on. She is a distracted driver, and Maija is home, out of the passenger seat. The Lada is a reliable car amongst unreliable cars. It comes in two settings: hot, and ultra-hot; perfect for the weather. It never seems to rust. Sanna fiddles with the radio, turning it off and on, on-off-on-off, switching back and forth to try and find a station that does not play New Kids on the Block. Maija loves them, Sanna does not. No, not Sanna.
But these are one-lane roads, and we know what happens when we are looking elsewhere.

#

When it is 1989, Maija is in the living room, alone, and she has the radio on and the windows open. Like many houses in Kolari, Sanna will be the one to open the windows in summer when the sun turns on for seventy-three days, but she is away so Maija has done it and afterwards she fiddles with the radio, turning it off and on, on-off-on-off, switching it back and forth to try and find a station that plays New Kids on the Block. Maija loves them, but she loves Joey McIntyre most of all, and takes every chance to bother Sanna about it.
But the radio breaks and so she pulls it off the table to try and fix it, and as she does, she does not notice the bear who has seen her through the open window.

—

There is a story that begins like this: One day in the midnight sun, there is a bear who finds herself to be a mother. She loves her cub, and her cub loves her. They swim in the sun, jumping over lakes and laying in trees. This is where a cub eats the river salmon and grows five times bigger. This is where a cub curls into his mother’s fur as the midnight sun cries into the midnight moon.

#

Wooden duckboards creaked beneath the two women as they moved slowly across the bog, deeper into the zoo. Though it was a not-busy day of a busy season, fewer families than expected passed them as they roamed the trails. The June sun struck through the pine trees rising above them, but Maija wrapped her arms around her chest, holding herself as a chill snuck under her sweater.
“You should know by now. Winter leaves when she wants.” Sanna smiled at Maija, pulling out the map she picked up at the ticket stand and gently striking her younger sister on the arm. Surprising to the unsuspecting tourist, a summer breeze in the north could bring snow even when the night disappeared for months on end.
The walkway was designed for one-way access. Everyone arrived in one direction, and everyone left in the same manner. You were pushed forward into the bog, rising above it by a few inches and surrounded by a dense grove of pine in all directions. At times, it was questionable if the exhibits you stumbled upon were enclosed, or if you were the one surrounded by fencing. Maija never knew where the zoo ended or where it began.
They continued walking.
As she heard the noises of a soft crowd ahead of her, a thick grey cat caught her attention. It laid belly-up on a sun-warmed rock, with an expressive face and eyes so humanoid it became an ugly little thing. It blinked as it watched her in its upside-down world, circular pupils constricting and dilating in sequence. She looked around for its informational card, finally finding it attached to the wooden railing closer to Sanna.
“Maija! I can see the polar bears!” Sanna reached for Maija’s hand, pointing in the direction of the noise she heard before she was stopped by the sight of fur.
“What a weird cat,” Maija said, letting Sanna pull her along. As she walked behind her sister, she watched the Pallas’s cat flip right-side up onto its belly like an egg cooked just-right on a burning stove. As it blinked, two streaks of winter fur rained from its eyes to the ends of its cheeks, leaving her with the impression of a sobbing child.
As they walked the rising slats and reached a platform in the sky, Maija and Sanna joined a small crowd that lined the edge of the walkway. Several feet below the bridge, two white bears wrestled in a makeshift pool of water. They tossed around, swimming back and forth in the summer.
“Vauva!” A small boy lifted his arm to point through the same wood railing others leaned against. Maija watched as his mother pulled him onto her shoulders, helping him look deeper into the pit below. As he continued holding his pointer finger, tracking the soft changes in the movements of the bear that caught his interest, Maija let her gaze follow the line he created until she saw the cub he was happy to show his mother.
“Sanna, can you take a picture?” Maija grabbed her sister’s sleeve, nudging her gently to look in the direction of the baby bear. Alone on a rock island in the pool, it played with one of the many enrichment toys found scattered around the enclosure.
“They’re no good for pictures.” Sanna glanced at the cub, but returned to watch the larger bears wrestle in the water shortly after.
“Don’t be silly, they’ll be great! Look at how cute he is.” Maija pointed at the small mass of fur as it rolled around its red ball, isolated, on this concrete rock. She wanted to be sure her sister was watching the same cub she was. The ones playing in the water would probably turn out too blurry, she thought. Too blurry to be any good for photos.
“No, see,” Sanna pointed out, “they fix the fur only in spring and in winter. You see the holes?”
Maija looked closer, leaning against the wooden railing and squinting against a sun that drowned out all other light. In between the damp mats of polar fur resting against its body, small, bright marks cut through the skin. They glinted like water in the light. She sighed.
“I don’t understand,” Maija said, resting on the heels of her feet.
“Understand what?” Sanna looked at her, confused.
“What is so bad about them?”
Sanna pursed her lips, rolling her eyes to the side of her head as she thought about the answer. “You see in movies, the fake dinosaurs? Robot dinosaurs?” she asked.
“Um, I guess?” Maija furrowed her eyebrows. Dinosaurs are dead, Sanna. They’re all dead.
“They are fake.” Sanna nodded her head towards the larger bears as they fought in the water, and the cub who abandoned his ball. “Like robots. That’s all we have now.”
Maija looked again at the young child sitting atop his mother’s shoulders, clapping as the young cub jumped in the cold pool and swam in the direction of its den. His mother smiled, bouncing him up and down. She wondered what it felt like, growing up knowing the almost and the not-quite. Where the not-animals are good enough replacements that we no longer need the real ones.

#

There is a story that ends like this: one day in the polar night, there is a bear who finds herself to be a mother bear. She loves her cub, and her cub loves her, but they are chased by Orion. She loves the stars and imagines herself as one of them, but she grows tired from running and falls from the sky. When she wakes, she is surrounded by a new hunter and misses her cub. She runs and runs until she grows tired and collapses in the snow. This is the story of the first woman as she looks to the sky to see her missing cub still running from Orion.

#

Neither blinked as a soft sun peeked over the horizon, drowning them in a red, orange and yellow sea of ruska. The pine walls surrounding them slowly leaked sap.
Maija lifted the newborn cub to her left breast. Nudging him towards her to latch, he grew five sizes. His paws erupted outwards and he stretched his legs, kicking until he was no longer the size of her hand as he spilled outside the safe basket of her arms. She stroked the ragged fur of his cheek.
“Are you happy?” Sanna whispered, carrying over a pan of warm water from the stove. She did not smile, instead wringing water from a cloth before holding it up to Maija to see.
“Thanks,” Maija nodded, and Sanna gently rubbed the clean cloth across her sister’s shoulders, wiping away sap that stuck to her as she sat against the pine walls.
“He’s so small,” She muttered, wrapping his paws around her fingers.
“Yes. That’s how they are.”
Sanna grabbed the pan of warm water as she stood up, dumping it across the wooden floor of the sauna before crossing the small room to the door. Steam rose to kiss the ceiling, far above the heads of Maija and the baby bear.
“I’m going to get fresh water.”
A rush of cold air filled the room. The explosion of color drowning the horizon disappeared as Sanna opened the door. The reds, oranges, and yellows of ruska were replaced by an overwhelming sea of white, and an impenetrable darkness filled the space outside their small room. Maija watched her sister take one barefoot step after another, crunching into fresh snow as she closed the door to the sauna behind her.

#

There is a story that ends like this: one day in the midnight moon, there is a bear who finds herself to be a mother bear. She loves her cub, and her cub loves her. But the winter freezes over the lake and her cub sleeps in a pit under the trees. When the mother bear finds her cub has disappeared, she searches all night and night through the darkness. But the mother bear is lost, and when the cub awakes, he finds himself alone, all alone, with no fur to curl into as the midnight moon cries into the midnight sun.

#

There is a bright place in the north. It is where the sun rises in circles above your head and does not sleep for months, weeks if you are lucky. It is a time of fires and smoked salmon and drinking.
Sanna is the one drinking and she is on a one-lane road and the Lada is a reliable car among unreliable cars, but it is not reliable enough to drive for her as she lifts off the steering wheel into the silver birch trees that grow into wind turbines and starve disappearing herds and their grazing grounds.
In an unknown forest in the North, a body is eaten by sheet metal.

#

There is a bright place in the north. It is where the sun rises in circles above your head and does not sleep for months, weeks if you are lucky. The forest believes this, too. When Maija understands the forest believes this, she believes this. This is when the mother bear visits.
Maija does not drink and is scared the silver birch trees will grow into wind turbines and starve disappearing herds and their grazing grounds, and the mother bear is happy.
When she comes to the window, she gives Maija a choice.

#

Maija carried the young cub in her arms. Hidden against the midnight cold in a linen blanket, it slept with its legs wrapped tight against its own body. She held the cub’s head to her chest as she stood over the Torne River.
You wonder if you can see the river move below the thickening ice. It does, even though you cannot. You want to add that this does not matter. There are no more fish in the water. It was overfished years ago. What is left in the river are the polar bears from the zoo. What is left in the river are shards of metal. Children touch and play with them, and never touch a real fish again. This is how we learn.
In an unknown river in the North, a body and its baby are eaten by ice.

Linda Ryynänen currently lives in Maryland.