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HE WAS THE LARGEST creature in the forest which had once been known as the Great West Woods, and he was the oldest Many of the huge old elms which Roland had noticed in the valley below had been little round when the bear came out of the di

Once, the Old People had lived in the West Woods (it was their leavings which Roland had found froone in fear of the colossal, undying bear They had tried to kill him when they first discovered they were not alone in the new territory to which they had coed hie And he was not confused about the source of his torment, as were the other beasts of the forest - even the predatory bushcats which denned and littered in the sandhills to the west No; he knehere the arrows came from, this bear Knew And for every arrohich found its y pelt, he took three, four, perhaps as et them; women if he could not Their warriors he disdained, and this was the final humiliation

Eventually, as his real nature became clear to them, their efforts to kill him ceased He was, of course, a deod They called him Mir, which to these people h, and after eighteen or more centuries of undisputed rule in the West Woods, he was dying Perhaps the instruanise; more likely a combination of both The cause didn&039;tcolony of parasites foraging within his fabu-lous brain - did After years of calculating, brutal sanity, Mir had run ain; he ruled the forest and although it was vast, nothing of i He had draay from the new-comers, not because he was afraid but because he had no business with theun their work, and as his ain, that the trap-setters and forest-burners had returned and would soon set about their old, stupid mischief once more Only as he lay in his final den some thirty miles from the place of the newco than he had been at sunset the night before, had he come to believe that the Old People had finally found some mischief which worked: poison

He cae for some petty wound but to sta its ith hiht ceased What was left was red rage, the rusty buzz of the thing on top of his head - the turning thing between his ears which had once done its work in smooth silence - and an eerily enhanced sense of sly toward the carims

The bear, whose real na else entirely, gy toith reddish-brown eyes Those eyes gloith fever and arland of broken brunches and fir-needles, swung ceaselessly from side to side Every now and then he would sneeze in a muffled explosion of sound - Ali-CHOW! - and clouds of squir nos-trils His paws, arth, tore at the trees He walked upright, sinking deep tracks in the soft black soil under the trees He reeked of fresh balsa on top of his head whirred and squealed, squealed and whirred

The course of the bear reht line which would lead him to the camp of those who had dared return to his forest, who had dared fill his head with dark green agony Old People or New People, they would die When he ca enough to push it down The dry, explo-sive roar of its fall pleased hith on the forest floor or coainst one of its ht turnedmotes of sawdust

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TWO DAYS BEFORE, EDDIE Dean had begun carving again - the first tie of twelve He re it, and he believed he ood at it, as well He couldn&039;t remember that part, not for sure, but there was at least one clear indication that it was so: Henry, his older brother, had hated to see hi it

Oh lookit the sissy, Henry would say Whatcha makin today, sissy? A dollhouse? A pisspot for your itty-bitty teeny peenie? Ohhh ain&039;t that CUTE?

Henry would never co; would never just walk up to hi that, bro? See, it&039;s pretty good, and when you do soood, it makes me nervous Because, you see, I&039;ood at stuff around here Me Henry Dean So what I think I&039;ll do, brother o&039; s I won&039;t coht out and say, "Don&039;t do that, it&039;s ht make me sound, you know, a little fucked up in the head But I can rag on you, because that&039;s part of what big brothers do, right? All part of the i on you and tease you andQUIT IT! Okay?

Well, it wasn&039;t okay, not really, but in the Dean household, things usually went the way Henry wanted theht - not okay but right There was a s it There were two reasons why it seeht One was an on-top reason; the other was an underneath reason

The on-top reason was because Henry had to Watch Out for Eddie when Mrs Dean was at work He had to Watch Out all the time, because once there had been a Dean sister, if you could but dig it She would have been four years older than Eddie and four years younger than Henry if she had lived, but that was the thing, you see, because she hadn&039;t lived She had been run over by a drunk driver when Eddie o She had been watching a game of hopscotch on the sidehen it happened

As a lad, Eddie had so to Mel Alien doing the play-by-play on The Yankee Baseball Network Someone would really pound one and Mel would bellow, "Holy cow, he got all of that one! SEEYA LATER!" Well, the drunk had gotten all of Gloria Dean, holy cow, seeya later Gloria was now in that great upper deck in the sky, and it had not happened because she was unlucky or because the State of New York had decided not to jerk the jerk&039;s license after his third OUI or even because God had bent down to pick up a peanut; it had happened (as Mrs Dean frequently told her sons) because there had been no one around to Watch Out for Gloria

Henry&039;s job was tolike that ever happened to Eddie That was his job and he did it, but it wasn&039;t easy Henry and Mrs Dean agreed on that, if nothing else Both of them frequently reminded Eddie of just how much Henry had sacrificed to keep Eddie safe froers and junkies and possibly even eneral vicinity of the upper deck, aliens who ht decide to come down from their UFOs on nuclear-powered jet-skis at any time in order to kidnap little kids like Eddie Dean So it rong to make Henry more nervous than this terrible responsibility had alreadythat didi Henry back for all the tiht about it that way, you saw that doing things better than Henry could do them was very unfair

Then there was the underneath reason That reason (the world beneath the world, one ht say) was more powerful, because it could never be stated: Eddie could not allow hi, because Henry was, for theOut for Eddie, of course