The bear hurtled forward, a wall of whitecapped muscle and steaming breath.

With both hands I gripped the spade, holding it in front of my chest as though it might impale my impending attacker when I was really just a bloodstained butterfly before an ivory train.

A shadow flew across the ground, intercepting the bear's course with a snarl. The bear skidded to a halt. Confused more than intimidated, it rose onto huge hind legs and bellowed.

Bullets whistled off rocks. Covering my ears, I ducked.

The bear stepped forward, reconsidered the shadow, and galloped past me to the sea.

Corkscrew tail aloft, the dark canine saw the bear off with a bark, then circled back to sniff my chest and paw at my sleeves. I threw my arms around my rescuer's plush agouti coat. It ducked and dipped into a play bow, winking one blue eye. The other was a dark chocolate. Textbook heterochromia, a common trait of Siberian Huskies.

"Thank God," I murmured, as its gold name tag caught sunlight. A pebble popped out from beneath my foot.

The dog tilted its head. I tilted mine.

Rocks trembled underneath my legs. My thighs, arms, everything, shook harder than when I'd collapsed utterly spent after my first 10k. Standing was too hard so I stayed seated and hugged my knees and breathed.

The dog yipped and sprang around my shivering body, chasing pebbles.

"Danala." Braced by a walking stick, a man in his late sixties shuffled down the slope in the great skidded tracks of the bear. The husky fell back to his side.

"English?" I called. 

The man nodded. "I know English," he said. His pet, Danala, sniffed along after the stones. The bear watching in the distance, head lifted, dark eyes beautifully curious as if it hadn't just been about to eat me. She perked her ears forward, made eye contact with the larger animal, then squatted and peed on its tracks. The man sighed. "Ah, she has no manners."

"Thank you for saving me."

"It was nothing." He lifted the tip of a wool cap.

I slid my jittery hands into the parka pockets. According to the guidebook, Spitsbergen was quite safe. Until a rifle butt to the head I'd believed that. This elderly gentleman bore the crow's feet of an understanding man and his dog had just saved my life, but the discharged rifle in his hand and my uncertainty about why Kasper attacked made me hesitant.

"Two days ago I hit my head and became lost," I told him. Temporarily high on stress, pain was no longer an issue, but from the way he eyeballed the damage I wondered how terrible I must look. Amy's drinking puddles hadn't provided much insight into my condition, but 'disgusting' was the appropriate adjective.

Using the stick for support, he shuffled through blanched stones and crouched beside me. "Forgive me, but you are not a smart hiker. Where is your rifle?" He tapped his barrel. "Never leave home without my baby." The husky whined and forced her head beneath his arm. He scratched her chin and smiled. "And of course you, Danala."

The rifle both terrified me and threatened to release fat tears of relief, but I pushed aside the fear to keep a stiff upper lip. "I lost mine in the fall. Another bear made its recovery too risky. I'm a casual hiker, not a professional. The person I was with left me for dead. Now I'm trying to find my way back to Longyearbyen."

The man cracked a smile. Gnarled fingers squeezed my shoulder. The rifle barrel tipped my way. The world spun with memories of Kasper, but one strong exhale stabilized the scenery. Beyond the rifle, the bear ambled through wind-driven breakers. Danala yipped over the roar of the surf. This man had his back to a man-eater without displaying a flicker of concern. Perhaps to the properly equipped local, bears were nine-hundred pound subway rats.

"What're you doing out here?" I asked. There were a thousand better questions, but I couldn't voice a single one.

He raised a gray eyebrow. "Enjoying my first afternoon walk as a retired man. My wife and I live six kilometers north of town." He pointed the stick at the restarted smoke. Vaporous puffs dissipated in the sea breeze. That my goal wasn't actually a smokestack didn't matter. He could have lived in the Troll Springs for all I cared. Safety was a warm house and a kind heart.

"Congratulations on your retirement," I said. Strength, if but a pitiful amount, returned to my legs. With my hands on my knees, I recovered my sense of balance before straightening. "What's the quickest way back?"

He followed my gaze down the rocky shoreline. Concern, not humor, tinted his eyes when I repeated my question. "Why don't we go home to my wife? You said you were gone two days?"

"I need to go to Longyearbyen. I need to check in with police so they know I'm safe." Good lies always carried a bit of truth.

"We have a telephone," the man continued in a tone uncompromising. Danala, now that the bear had distanced itself, clawed and scraped at the ground near the slope's peak. The man stomped his foot at the sound. "Danala! Heel, heel!"

The husky turned to her owner; ears cocked, and refused.

Grumbling, he trudged after her.

The surf-sprayed bear hung a paw over a fractured antler, dark gaze aware of mine. Desperate to station the rifle between us, I followed the man. Climbing was harder than the man's chipper demeanor suggested; I put my hands out for balance, constantly looking toward the bear, and half-crawled, half-scuttled up like some human-crab hybrid.

With a gaping mouth the man beckoned me to the nearest crevice, hand raised to slow my approach, not that I was moving faster than a walrus scaling the slope. A quick tug on Danala's collar made room for me. "These days my eyes are prone to deception. What is that there?"

I stared into the quiet darkness.

Blue eyes peeked around a boulder. Danala sprang at once, bursting from the man's grip. I shouldered the dog aside to crouch protectively over a whimpering Amy. Dust coated her fur, but she was otherwise no worse for wear. She whined, scratching apart the parka to climb inside.

Danala jumped against my thigh and I turned the other way mumbling, "Sit. Sit. Sit. No-no-no!" Like any dog with selective hearing, she set dirty paws against my back and stretched.

"May I see?" the man asked. He laid his hand over his dog's collar. The husky flattened her ears and reclined in a heavy pant, her mismatched eyes trained on Amy. "I'll be careful. I wouldn't dream of hurting Spitsbergen's own Kermode."

I hugged the cub tighter. "She's not anyone's." Except possibly mine, I realized.

He laughed and stepped backward, giving us appreciable breathing room. "Kermode, a spirit bear. Alaskan natives honor albino black bears. That little creature you're holding looks just like one."

"She's not a black bear. Alaska's half a world away." Amy's pink nose brushed my cheek. "Albino, I agree."

The old man fiddled with his cap. "My wife is a member of the Graham Island Haida tribe. Forty years ago she came here as a Global Seed Vault researcher. She met me and became a miner's wife, but we have traveled to Alaska from time to time. You may ask her what this bear is."

"Can your wife help her? She's in bad shape."

He chewed his bottom lip. "That, I am not sure. I do know you are better off with her than with Mother Nature." He thumbed toward the distant bear, then extended the hand with the walking stick, palm open. "Take this. It isn't often an old man outpaces a young lady."

Hefting Amy into a one-armed hold, I accepted the stick and felt instant relief with weight put upon the carved pole. "Which way?"

"Home is an hour's walk from here. There is an easy shortcut that I'll show you." He smiled at Amy. "You and your cub must be hungry."

"She's not mine," I stammered, looking from cub to man and back again. Except I was acting like she was. "She's wild." 

With a soft chuff the wild animal snuggled against my chest.

He gave me an omniscient look from beneath his hat. "I've been married thirty five years, raised eight boys, have four grandchildren and another on the way-I know a mother when I see one."

"If anything, I'm her accidental caretaker," I scoffed. Back on the mainland, after we sought help here, I'd drop her furry butt off in a wildlife sanctuary and go my unmerry way. "She won't leave me alone."

He wiggled a finger at her peachy snout until she swatted. "What's her name?"

"Amy."

With a smug smile he raised his hands. "I rest my case." He shouldered the rifle and held out his arms. "May I?"

I handed her over, resting my tired weight on the hiking stick. "Be careful."

He cradled her with a grunted, "Heavy, isn't she?"

"Underweight," I corrected, leery of Danala's sustained interest.

Amy was friendlier than I'd hoped, snuffling and pawing his frayed coat. Mumbling to himself, he examined her ears and pressed his fingers along her chest. He tucked her under an arm with a hearty chuckle.

"I know just what you are," he murmured.

"What?" I said.

"My dear, this is a creature of the Vikings: a Eurasian brown bear." He wiped tears from his eyes. "And you called her Amy! You young folk pay such little homage to ancestry! I have seen on the YouTube so many proud, noble animals called names like Buttons and Cashew." I thought about Stir-Fry and grimaced. "If a dog has not the spirit of a button, you have no business calling him that."

"A name is a name," I said, embarrassed. "She's named after a poet back from my home state in the US. Heck, my first name came straight from a baby book and I turned out alright. How well does yours fit?" I rested every ounce of weight I had on the stick. My feet and back thanked me. Although I loathed the idea, Amy was safer with him.

"Anders Haaland. Perfectly Norwegian." He walked deeper into the stones, one hand raised to beckon me on ahead. "What is the name of my American friend?" Danala trotted past. The polar bear's dark gaze lingered on me, the weakest link. I swallowed hard and limped after Anders.

"Rebecca, but Becky's fine," I called. Using her name was safer than mine, at least until I knew what Kasper was after or if he'd acted alone.

From the nonchalant way he smiled and waited for me to catch up, I had trouble believing Anders could possibly work for a man like that.