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Full Circle

By Strega

In three days on the ice Anana had caught exactly four fish, the largest the size of her foot. Not exactly a good haul, but the patience learnt while weaving nets and curing hides did not go to waste.

Periodically she would smash the newly formed ice from her fishing hole, shake the melted and refrozen snow from the wolf hide on which she sat, and replenish the bait on her line. Her clothing, sealskin with the fur turned inward, kept her warm enough. A hood lined with wolverine fur, on which frost would not grow, and a layer of caribou-fat grease on her face protected her head from the chill. A southerner would still have complained, but the Inuit were made of sterner stuff.

In the evening she returned to the village to sleep, then at first light she was back on the ice, fishing pole in hand. She was not sure why her luck was so poor. Other fishermen (and women) returned from their day of labor with almost too many fish to carry, and she'd asked for their advice before setting out.

Like many another Inuit in a frustrating situation she shrugged phlegmatically and carried on, dropping the baited bone hook once more into the hole. Whether or not she caught anything worth eating, she was being well paid for her time.

Out of the corner of her eye she caught movement. A nanuq,one of the great white bears, was approaching with something in its mouth. It circled from her left until it was directly before her, and only after she lifted her head and stared did it come closer.

Anana looked it over as it approached. One could judge the age of a nanuq both by size - though the females were smaller, so that could be deceptive - and by the color of its fur. Young ones were snow-white, whereas the older they grew the more yellow their fur. It was from the seals they ate, the elders said. Yellow seal fat became yellow bear fur.

This nanuq was unusual in that it was both quite large, almost as tall at the shoulder as she was standing up, yet snow-white as a cub. One of its forepaws lacked the cruel black claws they used to hook seals from their breathing holes in the ice, not broken off but simply missing. The other claws, and black eyes and nose, stood out of the white pelt. Camouflaged even better than its yellower kin, this bear could have crept up on her without effort.

But it had not, and it had a dead seal in its jaws. It lay the seal on the snow and nosed it toward her, then stood up on its hindpaws. It was, of course, a male bear.

She looked him over curiously, even as the bear did the same with her. She considered what he saw: a well-rounded young woman, her curves blunted by thick clothing. Black hair, like all her people, ruddy face, almond-shaped eyes, blunt nose. Attractive enough by her tribe's standards, but nothing like a bear. For her part, other than the lack of claws on one paw she saw no signs of injury. He was a sturdy and powerful animal, perhaps ten feet tall standing up and a dozen times her weight.

It was unusual for such a large and healthy bear to come to the Inuit in this way. Typically it was the young or very old, those unable to fight for the she-bears due to inexperience or injury. Maybe it was the lack of a paw's worth of claws that brought this one to her. In any case she knew what he wanted. Young or old, the bears still had the same needs, and by a payment of seal or other meat they satisfied them with the help of cooperative women. So here he was, and there on the ice by the bear's foot was a stiff and frozen seal.

Anana reached into the snowy fur and found the sheath hidden there. It wasn't like a dog's, standing out on its own, but was rather sunk into the hide for protection against the chill. Down at the base were two equally hidden orbs, each large as her fist. The nanuq let out an approving growl as she began to rub.

She'd heard the stories the women around the cookfires told. A bear might nuzzle a woman on the shoulder, asking her to go down on all fours as a little mock-bear, or on her breast, happy to have her on her back beneath him when he lay down. Older, experienced women, loosened by childbirth, might lie beneath the bears or settled down impaled in their laps. She was not so loosened, and she was happy to see the bear merely stand there as her hand stroked his sheath.

What emerged was easily as long and thick as her forearm. Those Inuit who hunted bear said that with the pelt removed it was hard to tell a bear from a human, but there was no mistaking him for a man in this respect. The shape, length, and thickness were all wrong, but still the function was the same. She need only stoop a bit, mittens swaying on their hide ties as her hands and lips gripped her white-furred lover. The bear groaned and pawed at her shoulders gently as she began to suck.

His shaft smelled as strongly of bear as the rest of him, and it was greasy with some secretion of his sheath that gave it some insulation from the cold and kept her tongue from sticking fast. First with mittens and then bare hands she massaged its steaming length. Anana had eaten brown bear meat, and black, but she had never tasted a nanuq before. She knew the taste well now, coarse and powerful like the bear himself, and knew every vein of his ponderous ebony length.

It took many minutes, and only the warmth of the nanuq's shaft kept her hands from growing too numb to continue. The bear watched her out of eyes like black marbles and growled, and it was the sudden rumbling intensification of his growls that warned her it was finally about to happen. Even so she was caught almost unaware. The white fur on his haunches twitched and suddenly salty goo was spurting into her mouth. She lost control of the weighty shaft as he swayed, and more sprayed over her face, fur hood and sealskin parka. The white bear grunted and shuddered as a last great gout of it splattered her breasts, then slumped as his member lost some of its stiffness. Its inner bone kept it straight, though, even as it began to withdraw into the sheath once more.

Anana swallowed a mouthful of nanuq seed and laughed. She'd heard the bears were messy lovers, but the other women had understated the case or this was a very pent-up polar bear. Strings of steaming goo dangled from her lips and hands, and a glassy sheen developed as great volumes of nanuq semen froze on her parka. Her hair became a rigid mass as the seed froze into it. She wouldn't need to tell the other women, they would know what had happened the moment they saw her. Only where the goo coated her warm flesh, face and hands did it stay liquid, and still it dripped in stiffening blobs from her chin.

Anana was wiping the seed from her hands, not protected by fat like her face, when the bear lowered himself enough to wrap a mighty forepaw around her. Down came the muzzle, and a wash of mottled pink and black tongue slicked some of the salty mass from her face. She giggled and pushed the massive head away, lest its tongue encounter an ungreased patch of her skin and freeze tight to her. There was a reason the Inuit did not kiss as southerners did.

The bear seemed in no hurry to leave, and she reached down to unbutton the fly of her sealskin pants. A friendly tug or two and perhaps she could get that muzzle and long tongue where they could do some good, while her other end saw if the bear himself was interested in another go.

Her only warning before everything went black was a warm exhalation from above. Fangs scraped over her shoulders and steaming-hot flesh pushed back her hood. Suddenly her face was wrapped in hot wet gullet and she was up to her navel in the bear's jaws. With a simple yawn and push of his head the nanuq had engulfed her.

Anana stiffened in shock, but it was already far too late to save herself. The great paw that had gripped her in seeming tenderness hooked beneath her rump and pushed it into the nanuq's maw. Her friendly lover, taking advantage of her trust in the long-established custom of a male bear paying an Inuit woman for favors, was unceremoniously swallowing her whole. She kicked and squirmed, but no one Inuit could resist the predatory impulses of a nanuq. A group could, or even kill the bear, and it was to prevent casualties on either side that the treaty existed in the first place.

With a toss of his head the nanuq sucked in her thighs. Flesh pressed tightly in from all sides as she slipped deeper. Her arms were trapped against her sides by the muscular gullet, and outside that sheath of well-lubricated flesh was thick muscle, bone and hide. There was no way to even slow the big bear down. Fangs scraped over her knees as he tossed his head again. In a moment her mukluks would be in his mouth and a single gulp would send her sliding to her doom. She and all her clothing, even the bone buttons, would be grist for the bear's mill. Of everything that went in, only her hair and the various flavors of fur in her garb would survive a trip through the bear in recognizable form. He lifted his head to swallow her, and Anana finally began to worry.

Suddenly the bear lurched to the side as a terrific impact made his ribcage resound like a drum. A second blow from the opposite site slammed into his skull, snapping his jaws shut around her feet. She had been seconds from that last fatal slide, but a series of heavy impacts battered the nanuq. He had other things to worry about than finishing his meal now and Anana felt him turn and confront an attacker. At once he was hit from the other side with such force that only the massive shell of muscle and fat around Anana protected her from similar injury. She smiled grimly in his throat, enjoying every second of his struggle, and hooked her toes out of the corners of his mouth and up against his cheeks so he didn't reflexively swallow her when struck. He couldn't breathe well enough to make a real fight of it with his gullet full of her, but he tried.

In less than a minute her untrustworthy lover was battered into submission. From within the felt the last impact and he collapsed onto the ice, his great heart pounding and breath wheezing around his nearly swallowed morsel. For a moment he lay there, Anana stretched out still helpless in his gullet, then something pushed into the bear's maw and against her feet. Ever so carefully fangs clamped around her ankles, gave an experimental tug, and then a single long pull extracted her from the clinging, fleshy confines of the white bear's insides.

A second nanaq, much yellower than her lover, released her feet and bobbed its head respectfully. It was smiling in a bearish was despite the fresh blood smearing its shoulder. A third nanuq, largest of the three and bloodier than the one who pulled her out, nosed her shoulder. Anana looked at the whitest bear, who had paid her and yet tried to eat her. He lay helpless on the ice, clubbed into unconsciousness by huge paws. Two on one had been too much, especially with a throat full of inuit slowing his movements.

Saliva dripped from her in long strings and the mucus that had lubricated her for swallowing stiffened as it crystallized. At least her trip down the bear's throat had washed away his seed. She rubbed the ice crystals out of her hair as they formed. She stank of bear, more so now even than when she was dripping with his seed, but it could have been much worse.

"We misjudged how fast he would eat and were almost too late to save you," the smallest bear growled. A southerner would not have understood, for even a nanuq who tries hard growls out Inuit words poorly, but while she had never been approached for sex by a bear she had talked to them often enough when they came to the tribe for other reasons.

"We could have ripped you out had he swallowed you, but then the Mother would be unhappy with us." rumbled the other nanuq. By which it meant that if the white bear had swallowed her, his stomach was where she would have stayed until nature took its course.

Anana brushed the last bits of frozen saliva from her hair and stood up. "It's all right. If he had a last meal of me, at least it would be his last." The bear nodded gratefully.

A head popped from from a snow-block blind a few hundred yards away and Anana waved to her brother. Soon more Inuit appeared, dragging a large and makeshift sledge. The two bloodied bears made room around their conquest as the men wrapped the pure white nanuq in a virtual cocoon of strong caribou hide straps. The smaller bear helped by turning the white one over or moving bulky limbs as needed. Once the white nanuq stirred and began to struggle, but the largest bear stepped close and slammed his head to the ice once more. The blow would have decapitated a human, but for a bear it was just enough to stun.

Eventually the predatory nanuq was bound too tightly for even a mighty bear to escape. It took both of the friendly bears to roll him onto the sledge, then the largest put his head through the loop of the harness, ready to drag.

"We thank you for your help," said the smallest bear - a female, Anana realized belatedly. "Our fellows are hunting the seals for the payment, and you can expect them within the week. For our part, we take the criminal to face justice. By the terms of the treaty, one of you must come to witness."

There was just room on the sledge for a single Inuit. "I will go," Anana said, and her brother smiled and handed her a bundle of food he must have prepared for the occasion. She smiled back: of course she would want to go, and who could argue with her right? She was the one who almost ended up in a nanuq's stomach. He had even included a a clay pot of seal grease to replace that washed off by the evil bear's gullet.

Anana climbed onto the sledge, taking a spot between the driftwood corner post and the wall of white fur. A shiny black eye peered back at her as the largest bear made sure she was settled, then they lurched into motion. The smaller bear too looked at her, eying the space she occupied in case the white bear woke up and began to struggle. Soon enough he did, but so tightly bound were its limbs that he could only wriggle like a caterpillar. Anana laughed and slapped his white-furred balls ungently, provoking a despairing groan.

The bear groaned again and tried to throw his hip against her, but they had tied him to the corner posts and unless the entire sledge disintegrated he was stuck. The smallest bear watched it all and grinned, but said not a word.

They bumped over ice chunks and crusted snow drifts for hours, the two bears taking turns pulling the sledge. Whichever was not doing so forged ahead to find the best path, and so only rarely did they need to scale an icy ridge or maneuver between hoarfrost-enshrouded boulders.

That night they slept curled around her, one before and one behind. It was the warmest winter night she had spent without a fire; though their fur was cold to the touch it kept out the wind and insulated her from the chill. She came to suspect the two were mates, from their affectionate nuzzles and the way they kicked each others' wounds, but they did not couple while she was with them. The white bear they left on the sledge, where it could only growl its complaints. It must be terribly uncomfortable by now,but neither she nor the other two bears showed it the least consideration.

Caribou jerky from her pouch, along with sundried summer berries sustained her for two further days of travel. None of the bears ate in that time. There was no prey save a white fox that paralleled them for an hour, hoping the nanuqs would make a kill. It was too wise to approach, and the bears ignored it.

Late on the third day they encountered another nanuq, which nodded at the sight of them and pointed its nose toward a distant icy mound. Soon after another, and then another bear appeared, and Anana realized they were guards. Three snow-white nanuq cubs watched them with wide-eyed wonder from atop a pile of ice.

Finally they emerged into a bowl-shaped depression, partly natural and part roughly excavated by bear paws. Dozens of den entrances studded the snowy walls, each sized for the bear or bears that had dug it. It was an encampment for a gathering of the white bears, an almost unheard-of thing even so far north. There for the first time Anana met the Great Mother.

Once she had been like other bears, the story went. Just another Nanuq sow, with a few cubs to her name and a territory marked out surprisingly far south for a white bear. Anana's grandmother had met her then, eighty years and more ago, and talked, and the bear who would become the Great Mother had laid out what seemed a fantasy. A plan, ambitious and farcial: she would eat the black and brown bears, and make more room for the white.

She set out to do exactly that. Bear after bear had she lured in with the promise of her sex. Each time she would couple with the smaller male, be he brown or black, and when he was exhausted from his labors her powerful paws would reach out and her jaws would creak wide. Later, when they were properly digested, she would rise from her torpid post-meal rest and search for the tracks of another bear. Sometimes she followed the steps of a female bear. Those too she gulped down, though they put up more of a fight. Not even the cubs were spared.

It had not worked, of course. Try though she might to devour every brown and black bear, enough females evaded her and enough males avoided her company that she barely dented their numbers. If anything she actually improved their breeds, for the males smart enough to escape her hunger went on to sire increasingly clever cubs. So The Great Land was still populated by all three types of bears.

But one thing had come of it. (Well, besides the hybrid cubs she bore two years running, if the rumors were to be believed. It was said to be unwise to even mention the subject in her presence.) After three years of eating other bears she gave up on her project, but by that time a steady diet of bulky brown and black relatives had changed her. Later she would go on to still larger prey, mostly walruses, but the process had already started. By the time she ate the last of her lesser kin she was larger than any bear ever known in the Great Land, and she was still growing.

Anana's eyes went wide as she looked at the bear. The Great Mother's paws were enormous, great slabs of muscle, bone and cruel black claws each as long as her hand. Her head alone was far more massive than Anana's entire body, and bigger than some of the smaller bears in the snowy bowl. But those discrete parts of her body did not begin to describe the whole. Between those paws and head bulked an impossibly massive body that made her paws and snout seem tiny by comparison. Even the largest male bears were little more than cubs compared to the Mother. Tremendous rolls of fat and yellow-white fur dense as a field of spring grass insulated the monstrous bear from the chill. Suddenly the story she'd heard about the Mother devouring an entire orca, snout to tail in one long gulp, did not seem so incredible.

But though she seemed massive as a hill, the great bear was still nimble. Great columnar legs hefted her bulk around, and deep-set eyes like black marbles watched the sledge approach. They stopped at a respectful distance and both of the bears ducked their heads to the Great Mother. Anana, though not compelled by custom to do the same, climbed stiffly out of the sledge and followed their example.

Then there was the voice. It rumbled up out of the Great Mother like a subterranean eruption, a great burbling force that could not be restrained. Every bear in the bowl froze, and there were many there to hear her. They had come to witness the Great Mother's justice.

"I thought it would be you, Three-Paw." The great snout dipped, and a brief look of sadness crossed the Mother's inhuman face. "When they told me one of my children was breaking the treaty, I thought it would be you."

A massive paw rolled the bound bear from the sledge. It had taken two strong bears to put him in. One swipe of that paw took him back out and pulled him close. Glassy black eyes looked up at the Mother, but she did not look at the hide-bound bear beneath her paw.

"Eighty years the treaty has held. Oh, occasionally one of us breaks it and eats the Inuit. Or, a few of them hunt us. But by and large it has held. For eighty years my word, the treaty I forged has kept the peace. Thus we are almost friends. Thus sometimes my sons or my kin visit the human women, to tend to their needs. It is a good treaty. It benefits us all."

The great paw cuffed Three-Paw like a mother disciplining a child. And so it was. "But then one of us grows greedy. Look at your fur, my son. So white, like new snow. What have you been eating, that your fur has not yellowed with age?"

The bound bear could not answer. The Mother went on all the same.

"When bears disappear, the other bears wonder where they went. It is the same with the Inuit. Now, the southern humans, the ones with that hard to digest clothing, those we do not care about. We can make sport of them, and they us: They do not live here. But the Inuit do, and when they tell us that they think a Nanuq is eating their friends, their women, it casts a pall on all of us. How could our lonely youngsters, our old and injured, find comfort in the mating times if no Inuit will trust a bear?"

Another cuff, and the bound bear groaned. "So we try to find out what has happened. We send out our kin to sniff at tracks. And to talk to the Inuit. And bit by bit we hear of a snow white Nanuq, seen in glimpses. Never one to come to a village, yet often near villages. And his tracks show that one foot lacks claws. I remember my son, but that changes nothing: the treaty must be enforced. Eventually, with the help of the Inuit, a trap is baited with the thing the rogue so dearly likes to eat. If all he does is seek relief from his lust, well and good. But he wanted more than that."

Two massive paws clasped Three-Paw and lifted him up before the Great Mother's eyes. "And so my son comes back to me. Flesh of my flesh, my own cub."

Three-Paw began to squirm, but even were he not bound there was no moving paws heavy as boulders. He could only watch as her jaws gaped wide.

There was no sound from the watching bears as it happened, but Anana let out a little groan. Not in sympathy, but because she remembered what it had been like. What was happening to the snow-white bear had happened to her, three days back. The scrape of fangs over flesh, the slide of web gullet over nose and face.

Three-Paw squirmed. It did not save him as the paws stuffed him into the Great Mother's jaws, any more than it saved Anana when he took her as his meal. With a duck of her muzzle and a push of her paws he was already half gone. Fur and fat stretched as he slid into her throat, and black skin showed through the yellow-white pelt. Tightly bound hindpaws kicked desperately from her muzzle as she lifted her head, and all the while the bulge that was Three-Paw moved downward through her neck.

Anana realized her initial impression was wrong. The Great Mother did not bulk quite as large as she thought. Still she was ten times as massive as the largest of the other bears, and she took her son as a meal with little effort.

There was a last glimpse of hindpaws as the Mother stretched out her nose. Then just white-furred toes, then only wickedly curved claws. Even that was gone with a last toss of her muzzle. Great swallowing muscles worked beneath her fur, and the bulge that was Three-Paw diminished as he slid down her throat. Anana shivered as the shape of his hindpaws showed for a moment through her black skin, then her neck was shrunk close enough to its normal thickness that her fur once again obscured the details. The Great Mother gulped a last time, wetly, and her son was gone. So would it have been with her, if the two bears had been just seconds slower.

The great bear settled down, her meal complete. Under layers of fat half as thick as Anana was tall Three-Paw did not bulge her out much at all. Fifteen hundred pounds of male nanuq, who not too long ago had been one gulp from sending Anana to his stomach, provided his mother only with a modest meal. Beneath that weight of muscle, bone and fat there was not even a visible struggle, just the occasional ripple. Three-Paw must want very badly to survive, but even were he not bound up like a caterpillar in its cocoon (and, she only realized now, bound at the two nanuq's direction with materials the mother could digest as easily as she would her son) there was no escape for him now.

There had been silence in the snowy bowl since the last gulp. The silence was broken as a heavy belch bubbled up out of the Mother, and then the bears were grinning and nodding. They growled to each other as nanuqs do, but the nearer ones were polite enough to speak in the pidgin nanuq-Inuit tongue so Anana was able to understand. "So he returns," growled one of the closest. "Back to his mother's breast."

"To her belly you mean," said another with a bearish grin.

"It was as much as he deserved," rumbled a third. None of the bears showed the least sympathy for their relative, now on his way through a greater bear's guts. A few of the bears, attention now no longer held by the fate of their kin, looked Anana over curiously. She was glad, suddenly, that the treaty was in place. There had been a time not too many generations ago when an Inuit in her position could look forward only to being shared among many bears. The Great Mother had changed that.

Another belch bubbled up out of the great bear, now surrounded by chattering lesser bears. How many were her sons, daughters, or kin? A bear sow could only birth so many cubs in even eighty years, but then those cubs could grow and become fecund themselves. Uncanny long-lived as the great bear was, who knew how long her children would live? How many generations of her children clustered around her now?

Even now, huge and fat as she was, Anana could tell from the way the male bears crowded around her that the Great Mother did not lack for lovers. How exactly a male could mount her, given the difference in size and rolls of fat Anana did not know, but she was sure the males would he pleased to try.

A wave of a massive paw and the murmuring bears fell silent. Anana realized the gesture was directed at her, and stepped forward as the bears drew back to either side.

"I apologize for this," the Great Mother rumbled, and a paw gestured at the subtle bulge that marked her son. A last twitch in her fat and he was still. "I try to teach them, but we are still bears. Sometimes the old instincts come through. Luckily, not usually in so ugly a fashion."

Anana nodded. Though the predatory nanuq had kept on the move, he had eaten enough Inuit - almost all women, likely tricked with the offer of payment for sex and eaten just as he had tried to eat her - that word had made its way through the villages. They might not know if one bear or many had done it, but they were sure that nanuq were responsible. At least twenty were missing, gone to make the flesh and bone of a bear who now was himself serving as food.

"So is the treaty served," the Mother rumbled to the smaller bears. "And lest you think to move in the shadow of Three Paw, hiding your crimes, know that I still have my children sniffing after these happenings. If others among you have done these things, then best you be gone from my lands before I find out. There will always be room in me for those who break my treaty. For this sort I will always be hungry, as it benefits us all to not war with the Inuit."

A smile broke across the Mother's grim visage. "Especially it benefits my sons, but a few of my daughters have similar tastes. Make love, not war, my children."

Anana smiled, too. Evil though Three-Paw had been up until the moment he tried to eat her she had enjoyed their meeting. For the payment of a seal, she would happily visit with another nanuq. Perhaps even for less payment than that.

She turned to find a familiar bear, the large male who helped save her and had dragged the sledge, eyeing her curiously. She smiled, and he smiled back. He had, after all, saved her life. That was worth as much as a seal, she thought.

He tilted his head at her quizzically, then blinked as he recognized her interest. He glanced at one of the den openings, then shambled toward it with his loose-limbed bearish gait. Just as casually Anana followed. She didn't need to return to her village just yet, after all, and what she did with her free time was her own business.