FIRST FISH

For a few seconds he stayed curled inside the sleeping bag, staring at the pale morning light pressing through the trees. His back hurt. His neck hurt. One hip had gone numb sometime during the night, and the ground beneath him had somehow found every sharp rock he had failed to notice when he set up camp.

Then his stomach growled.

That was the bigger problem.

He sat up and rubbed his face. He had almost nothing left to eat. One protein bar. A packet of oatmeal. Maybe three spoonfuls of peanut butter if he scraped the jar hard enough.

That was it.

He had already used up what was left of his money.

Two dollars and some change.

A week ago, figuring out what to eat had meant opening a refrigerator. Now he was sitting beside the Colorado River with less than three dollars to his name and no idea what he was going to eat tomorrow.

His eyes moved toward the cheap fishing pole lying beside his pack, still sealed in the plastic packaging from Walmart.

Today was the day.

He had bought it the afternoon before, along with a few hooks and a little plastic container of bait, but by the time he found a place to camp, the light had already started to fade. There had been no point trying to fish in the dark, especially when he had no idea what he was doing in daylight.

First, breakfast.

He climbed out of the tent and walked toward the tree where he had hung his food the night before.

Then he stopped.

The bag hung crooked from the branch. The rope had twisted around itself, and something had clawed at the bottom hard enough to leave several small tears in the fabric.

“Oh, come on.”

His stomach tightened.

He hurried over and pulled the bag down. For a moment he was sure whatever had gotten to it had eaten the last of his food.

Probably a raccoon.

He opened the bag.

Protein bar.

Oatmeal.

Peanut butter.

All there.

Cyrus let out a breath.

“Nice try.”

He ate half the protein bar and forced himself to wrap the rest back up. He wanted the whole thing. His stomach definitely wanted the whole thing. But if the fishing experiment went badly, that half bar might be dinner.

Before leaving camp, he decided the bear bag needed help.

He moved it to a higher branch, farther from the trunk, then tightened the rope until the bag hung well out of reach. Still not satisfied, he opened the new fishing gear and pulled out some of the clear line. He strung a few loose lengths between two small saplings beneath the bag, figuring anything trying to climb toward the food would bump into it and make enough noise to scare itself off.

He stepped back and looked at his work.

Not bad.

At least, he thought, not bad for someone who had never done any of this before.

Then he looked at the fishing pole.

Cyrus tore open the plastic packaging.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s figure this out.”

***

By the time Cyrus reached the river, the morning chill had begun to lift. He found a spot where the bank flattened near a slow bend in the water and pulled the new fishing pole from its plastic sleeve. The instructions folded around the handle were mostly diagrams, which he studied with more attention than he wanted to admit. After several minutes of fumbling with the line and hook, he finally managed something that looked close enough to the picture.

His first cast sailed high and caught in the branches behind him.

He stared at the line stretched over his shoulder, then slowly turned around.

“Good start.”

The next cast made it into the river, though barely. The one after that went farther, and for a while Cyrus allowed himself to believe he was getting the hang of it. He stood along the bank, watching the line drift with the current, waiting for the tug he assumed would eventually come.

It didn’t.

An hour passed, then another. He lost a hook on something beneath the water and spent ten minutes trying to free another from a bush. At one point he stepped onto a slick rock, lost his footing, and went down hard enough that icy water filled one boot and soaked his pants almost to the knee.

By late morning, the amusement had worn off.

His stomach had been growling for hours. He ate the other half of the protein bar he had saved from breakfast, licking the crumbs from the wrapper before stuffing it back into his pack. Almost immediately he regretted eating it. That was one less thing between him and an empty food bag.

He cast again.

Nothing.

What made it worse was that he could see them.

The water was clear enough in the shallows that every now and then a fish would slide past beneath the surface, its body flashing silver when it turned. One moved through a quiet pocket only a few yards from where Cyrus stood, so close he could make out the dark speckles along its back.

He cast toward it.

The lure landed several feet away.

The fish disappeared.

“Come on.”

He reeled in and tried again.

Another fish appeared farther downstream. Cyrus moved after it, nearly tripping over the tackle box in his hurry, then cast. Too far.

He tried again.

Too short.

A restless energy had started building in him. He found himself gripping the pole harder than he needed to, his fingers aching around the handle. He kept changing spots, convinced that the next bend in the river would be better, then getting angry when it wasn’t. Every time he saw another flash of silver beneath the water, his thoughts sped up.

There.

Cast.

Missed.

Another one.

Cast again.

Nothing.

For the next hour, it seemed as though the river had decided to entertain itself at his expense. Fish appeared everywhere except near his hook. One drifted lazily through the shallows almost at his feet before turning and vanishing into deeper water.

Cyrus watched it go.

“You have got to be kidding me.”

He reeled in too fast and nearly tangled the line again. His jaw hurt from clenching it. He could feel himself starting to sweat despite the cool air, and his thoughts kept circling back to the same thing.

There was almost nothing left at camp.

No money.

No backup plan.

Tomorrow morning could come, and he could wake up with nothing to eat.

He cast again.

The lure splashed down badly.

“Come on.”

He jerked the line back.

“Just take it.”

Nothing.

His hands were beginning to shake now, and that only made him angrier. He told himself to slow down, but instead he cast again almost immediately.

The hook snagged on a rock.

Cyrus pulled.

It didn’t move.

He pulled harder.

“Come on.”

The line stretched tight.

“Come on!”

It snapped.

Cyrus stumbled backward and stared at the loose line dangling from the end of the pole.

For several seconds he didn’t move.

Then he threw the pole onto the rocks.

“What the hell am I doing?”

The words came out louder than he meant them to.

He paced along the bank, dragging both hands through his hair. He had spent most of his adult life in hospitals and clinics, surrounded by people, equipment, schedules, food whenever he wanted it. He knew how to walk into an examination room, listen to a patient for ten minutes, and begin sorting through dozens of possibilities until the right answer started to take shape. He knew how to stay calm when someone was crashing in front of him.

And now he couldn’t even feed himself.

Another fish appeared in the shallows.

Cyrus stopped pacing.

It hovered against the current only a few yards away.

He stared at it.

The fish moved closer.

Something in him gave way.

He stepped into the river.

Even as he moved forward, some distant, reasonable part of his mind told him this was ridiculous. He ignored it. The fish was right there. He could see it. He could almost reach it.

He bent forward slowly, hands ready.

Then he lunged.

The fish shot away.

Cyrus’s foot slipped on a rock, and he went down with a splash, both hands plunging into the freezing water as his knee slammed into the riverbed. For a few frantic seconds he slapped at the water after something that was already gone, reaching blindly beneath the surface as if sheer desperation might somehow make a fish appear in his hands.

Finally, he stopped.

He stood in the current, soaked to the waist, breathing hard, water dripping from his sleeves.

The river moved around him as though nothing had happened.

Cyrus waded back to shore and dropped onto a rock.

For a while he just sat there.

His hands trembled from the cold, but he knew that wasn’t all of it. His thoughts had become a jumble, each one piling onto the next. No food. No money.

No idea where he was going.

No idea what he was doing.

He thought he was doing the right thing. He was protecting them. He had left everything he knew behind, convinced himself he could somehow make this work, and now he was standing in the middle of nowhere trying to catch fish with his bare hands.

He leaned forward and covered his face.

This wasn’t helping.

He stayed like that for several minutes, listening to the water.

Then a thought came through the noise.

You can’t protect them by falling apart like this.

Cyrus slowly lowered his hands.

That was why he was here.

Whatever else happened, whatever this new life turned into, he couldn’t protect them if he lost control every time something went wrong.

He took a long breath and let it out.

Then another.

When he finally looked up, the river was exactly the same as it had been before. Water moving around stones. Trees bending slightly in the breeze. Fish somewhere beneath the surface, completely indifferent to whether Cyrus Darian ate dinner.

He almost laughed.

“All right,” he muttered. “You win.”

He wrung out the bottoms of his pants as best he could, picked up the fishing pole, and tied on another hook. This time he didn’t chase the flashes beneath the surface or keep moving from one part of the bank to another. He cast into the deeper water and let the line drift.

For a long time, nothing happened.

Cyrus stopped watching the hook. He watched the river instead, letting his thoughts quiet while the current moved past him.

Then the pole twitched.

He looked down.

Another tug.

Cyrus froze.

The line pulled hard enough to bend the tip of the pole.

“No way.”

He grabbed it with both hands and began reeling, immediately doing everything too fast. The line went taut, then slack, then taut again as something thrashed beneath the surface.

“Come on. Come on.”

A fish broke through the water.

Cyrus nearly screamed.

He stumbled backward, reeling as fast as he could, and somehow managed to drag it onto the rocky bank. The fish landed beside his boot and began flopping wildly.

For several seconds Cyrus simply stared at it.

Then something burst loose inside him.

“Yes!”

He threw both hands over his head, still clutching the pole.

“Yes!”

His voice echoed through the trees. He laughed, pointed down at the fish, then shouted again even though there was not another person around for miles.

“I caught a fish!”

He started bouncing from one foot to the other, half laughing, half yelling, feeling more ridiculous and happier than he had felt in days. If anyone came across him now, soaked to the thighs and dancing alone in the wilderness over a trout, they would probably skip the introduction and take him straight to a psychiatric hospital.

He didn’t care.

He had done it.

He had actually done it.

Eventually he stopped moving and stood there catching his breath, a grin still spread across his face.

The fish flopped beside his boot.

Cyrus looked down at it.

Then at the knife in his pack.

Then back at the fish.

The grin slowly faded.

Every fish he had ever cooked had come from a grocery store already cleaned, gutted, and cut into neat little pieces on a foam tray.

He picked the fish up carefully and held it away from himself.

“Okay,” he said. “I didn’t think this far ahead.”

Cyrus crouched beside the fish and studied it for a moment, as if some useful instruction might suddenly present itself. He knew how to fillet a fish in theory. At least, he thought he did. Somewhere in the back of his mind was a vague memory of watching someone do it years ago, a knife sliding neatly along the spine, the whole thing looking effortless.

The problem was that every fish he had ever cooked had already been cleaned by someone else.

He picked it up again and turned it over in his hands.

“You have organs,” he said. “I understand organs.”

That was something.

He tucked the fishing pole under one arm, grabbed his pack, and started back toward camp with the fish dangling awkwardly from his other hand. He figured once he got there he could lay everything out, take his time, and work through the anatomy. He had spent years opening abscesses, stitching wounds, draining joints, and doing minor procedures in cramped exam rooms. Surely he could figure out a trout.

He had almost reached camp when he heard something off to his left.

Cyrus stopped.

At first he thought it was a bird, a short, rough sound coming from somewhere beyond the trees. Then it came again.

Not a bird.

He stood quietly and listened.

Nothing.

He started walking again.

The sound came a third time, followed by a rustle in the brush.

Cyrus slowed.

He really did not want to investigate.

For once that day, things had worked out. He had caught a fish. He had food. He could go back to camp, figure out how to clean the thing, build a fire, and maybe even eat before dark.

Whatever was making that noise could belong to the woods.

He took another step toward camp.

The cry came again.

This time there was something different about it, a strained, frightened quality that made him stop completely.

Cyrus closed his eyes for a second.

“Of course.”

He set the fishing pole against a tree, kept the fish in his hand, and moved cautiously toward the sound.

The brush grew thicker as he went. He pushed aside a low branch and listened again, trying to figure out where it was coming from. Somewhere ahead, leaves shook violently, followed by another sharp cry.

Whatever it was, it was in trouble.

That thought changed everything.

Cyrus moved faster.

He followed the sound through a stand of young trees until he saw movement near the edge of the clearing where he had hung his food that morning.

Something dark thrashed against the ground.

At first his brain refused to make sense of what he was seeing.

Then the animal twisted around, and Cyrus stopped so abruptly he nearly dropped the fish.

A bear cub.

“Jesus.”

It was small, though not nearly as small as he would have preferred. The cub jerked backward again, digging its claws into the dirt as it tried to pull away from one of the saplings.

And then Cyrus saw the clear line stretched between them.

His fishing line.

The same line he had strung beneath the food bag that morning.

“Oh no.”

The fish slipped from his fingers and landed in the grass.

Cyrus took one careful step closer.

The cub pulled again and let out the same cry he had heard from the trail. One of its back legs was caught in several loops of monofilament. The more it struggled, the tighter the line drew around the limb.

Cyrus stared at it, his earlier satisfaction about his clever raccoon deterrent disappearing all at once.

He had done this.

For a moment all he could think about was how stupid the idea had been. He had known nothing about bears, nothing about raccoons, nothing about setting up a campsite beyond what he had picked up over the last few days, and somehow that had not stopped him from deciding he could improve on things.

The cub jerked again.

Cyrus forced himself to stop thinking about whose fault it was and looked at the leg.

The paw below the fishing line was swollen. Even from several feet away he could see where the monofilament had disappeared into the fur and pulled tight against the skin.

He knew this.

Not bears, obviously. But the injury.

“A hair tourniquet,” he murmured.

He had seen them in babies. A strand of hair, often from a mother shedding after pregnancy, could wrap itself around a newborn’s toe or finger. As the tissue began to swell, the hair tightened further, cutting deeper and eventually choking off the blood supply. Parents sometimes came in frantic because the baby would not stop crying, never realizing that something as small as a single strand of hair was causing the problem.

This was the same thing.

Except the strand was fishing line, the toe belonged to a bear, and his patient had teeth.

The cub pulled again, and the line dug tighter.

“Stop doing that.”

The cub answered with a low, frightened growl.

“I know. Not helpful.”

Cyrus glanced around the clearing.

That was when another thought occurred to him.

Where was the mother?

He slowly scanned the trees, suddenly aware of every sound around him. Wind moving through pine needles. Water somewhere beyond the brush. A bird calling from farther up the slope.

No bear.

That did not make him feel better.

He turned back to the cub. Leaving it like this was not an option. If the line stayed tight long enough, the swelling would get worse, which would make the constriction worse, and eventually the tissue beyond it could be permanently damaged.

He needed to cut the line.

Getting close enough to do that with his hands seemed like an excellent way to lose one.

Cyrus backed away and returned to his pack.

He dumped the contents onto the ground and stared at what he had. A roll of athletic tape from the small first-aid kit. Paracord. His multitool. A couple of metal tent stakes. The cheap fishing pole. None of it looked especially promising.

Then he looked toward the trees.

A long fallen branch rested near the edge of the clearing.

Cyrus picked it up and turned it over in his hands. It was straight enough and maybe six feet long. He set it beside the fishing pole and began thinking through the problem the same way he would have approached a procedure.

He could not cut the line safely while it was pressed against the cub’s skin. First he needed to lift it away from the leg. Then he needed enough tension to make the cut.

Exposure. Tension. Cut away from the tissue.

That part, at least, felt familiar.

He took one of the tent stakes and used the multitool to bend the end outward until it formed a crude hook. Then he lashed it to the end of the branch with paracord and wrapped athletic tape around the joint until it stopped wobbling.

He held it out in front of him and tested it.

Ugly, but functional.

Now he needed something to cut with.

The multitool had a small blade. Cyrus opened it, positioned it several inches behind the hook, then taped the handle tightly to the branch so the edge angled slightly inward. If he could catch the fishing line with the hook and pull it away from the leg, he might be able to bring the blade against it without ever getting close enough for the cub to reach him.

He studied his creation.

A week ago he had access to sterile instruments, procedure trays, nurses who handed him exactly what he asked for.

Now he had built a surgical instrument out of a stick and a tent stake.

“Okay,” he said, mostly to himself. “Let’s see if this is as stupid as it looks.”

He approached slowly.

The cub immediately pulled backward.

Cyrus stopped.

“Easy.”

The cub growled.

“I’m aware you don’t know me.”

He lowered the end of the branch until the hook was near the trapped leg. The cub snapped at it and swatted, sending the whole contraption bouncing sideways.

Cyrus jumped back.

“Okay. Fair.”

He waited until the cub settled, then tried again, moving more slowly this time. He managed to slide the hook beneath one strand of monofilament and gently lifted.

For the first time he could see the line clearly where it crossed the leg.

There.

He rotated the branch, trying to bring the blade toward it.

The cub jerked.

The hook slipped free.

Cyrus exhaled and reset his grip.

“Come on. Just give me thirty seconds.”

The cub stared back at him, clearly unimpressed with the request.

Cyrus moved the hook toward the leg again.

Behind him, somewhere in the trees, a branch snapped.

Cyrus stopped moving.

The cub heard it too. Its head swung toward the sound and it gave a sharp cry, louder than any of the others.

Another branch cracked.

This one was closer.

Cyrus slowly turned.

For a moment he saw nothing but trees and shadows. Then something large and black moved between two trunks.

“Oh, shit.”

The bear stepped into the clearing.

She was much bigger than the cub, bigger than Cyrus had imagined when the possibility of a mother first occurred to him. She stood maybe thirty yards away, staring directly at him.

Cyrus lowered the branch in his hands.

Of all the ways this could look to her, he had somehow managed to choose the worst one. Her cub was tied to a tree, crying, and Cyrus was standing over it holding a six-foot pole with a knife taped to the end.

“Okay,” he said quietly. “This looks bad.”

The mother took several slow steps forward.

Cyrus backed away from the cub.

Everything he had ever heard about bears suddenly crowded into his mind at once. Don’t run. Make yourself big. Don’t get between a mother and her cub. Back away slowly. Make noise. Don’t make noise. Look at the bear. Don’t stare at the bear.

Apparently he had absorbed just enough wilderness advice over the years to be completely useless.

The cub pulled at the line again.

Cyrus looked at its swollen leg.

Then back at the mother.

He could leave. In fact, every sensible part of him was telling him to do exactly that. But the fishing line was still wrapped tightly around the cub’s leg, and now that he had seen how swollen the paw had become, he knew what could happen if he walked away.

The mother moved closer.

Cyrus glanced around at the gear scattered near his pack.

“Thirty seconds,” he muttered. “I just need thirty seconds.”

His eyes landed on the emergency blanket.

He had bought it almost as an afterthought, one of those thin silver Mylar sheets folded into a package barely larger than his palm. He grabbed it and tore open the wrapper.

The material unfolded with a loud metallic crackle.

The mother stopped.

Cyrus looked from the blanket to the two poles lying on the ground and an idea began to form.

It was not a particularly good idea.

But at the moment, good ideas seemed unavailable.

He tied one corner of the blanket to the end of his fishing pole and another to the long branch he had been using on the cub. The whole thing sagged awkwardly between them, more collapsed tent than useful device.

The bear started forward again.

For the first time, Cyrus felt the full force of what was happening. His pulse hammered in his ears. Sweat broke across his back despite the cool air, and every instinct in him screamed the same thing: run. Get away. Put as much distance as possible between himself and several hundred pounds of muscle, claws, and teeth.

He knew better.

Running could turn him into something to chase.

“No, no. Hold on.”

Cyrus spread his arms.

The blanket snapped open.

Sunlight exploded off the silver surface, and the sudden crackling sheet stretched several feet across between the poles. Cyrus raised both arms as high as he could, making the shape larger.

The bear stopped again.

For several seconds they stared at each other.

Cyrus had no idea what she saw.

A giant silver creature.

A very confused man.

Lunch wrapped in foil.

Whatever it was, she hesitated.

That was enough.

Cyrus let one side of the blanket fall, grabbed the improvised cutter, and moved back toward the cub.

“Okay, buddy. One more time.”

He slid the hooked tent stake toward the trapped leg. The cub jerked away, but Cyrus followed the movement, keeping the hook low.

Behind him he heard the Mylar blanket rustling where he had left it hanging from the other pole.

The mother huffed.

Cyrus did not turn around.

“Not helping.”

He caught one strand of fishing line.

Slowly, he lifted.

The thin filament rose away from the cub’s skin.

There.

Cyrus rotated the branch, trying to bring the blade against it.

The line slipped.

“Damn it.”

The cub pulled away again.

A low sound came from behind him.

Cyrus glanced over his shoulder.

The mother had taken several more steps into the clearing.

He grabbed the pole with the Mylar blanket still attached and lifted it again, shaking it hard enough to send another burst of silver flashes through the clearing.

The bear stopped.

Cyrus immediately dropped it and went back to the cub.

“Last try.”

He slipped the hook underneath the line.

Lifted.

Held it steady.

The blade touched the monofilament.

He pushed.

The line stretched.

Then snapped.

The cub yanked its leg free and scrambled away so quickly Cyrus fell backward onto the dirt.

For one terrible second the animal seemed unsure where to go.

Then it saw its mother.

The cub ran.

Cyrus stayed exactly where he was.

It limped badly for the first few steps, and Cyrus found himself watching the injured leg automatically. Then the cub put weight on the paw. Not normally, but enough.

“Good,” he whispered.

The mother moved forward to meet it.

Cyrus got slowly to his feet.

Neither bear paid much attention to him now, and he intended to keep it that way.

He backed toward the edge of the clearing, one slow step at a time. His improvised cutter lay where he had dropped it. The emergency blanket fluttered from the fishing pole.

He left both.

A few more steps.

The mother looked up.

Cyrus stopped.

“Your kid’s fine,” he said softly. “We’re good.”

The bear stared at him.

Cyrus waited.

Then she lowered her head toward the cub again.

He kept backing away.

Only when the trees finally blocked the bears from view did Cyrus turn and walk faster. Not running. Definitely not running. Just walking with considerably more enthusiasm than before.

By the time he reached the other side of camp, his hands were shaking so badly he had trouble opening his water bottle.

He drank half of it before lowering himself onto a fallen log.

For a while he said nothing.

Then he started laughing.

It came out quietly at first, more disbelief than humor. He looked back toward the clearing and shook his head.

A week ago he had been a doctor.

Today he had performed a procedure on a bear with a stick, a tent stake, athletic tape, and a knife while its mother watched.

Juliette would have killed him.

The thought came so naturally that for a second it almost felt like she was sitting beside him.

Cyrus stopped laughing.

He stared at the ground.

Then he remembered the fish.

“Oh, come on.”

He stood and walked back toward where he had dropped it earlier. He found it lying in the grass exactly where he had left it, thankfully untouched.

He picked it up by the tail.

At least one problem had survived the bear encounter.

Back at camp, Cyrus laid the fish on a flat rock and stared at it again.

Catching the thing had seemed like such an accomplishment an hour earlier. Now, after the cub and the mother bear and the ridiculous silver blanket, cleaning a trout felt almost manageable.

Almost.

He took out his knife.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s talk anatomy.”

The process was not elegant.

He cut in the wrong place first, nicked something he probably should not have nicked, and spent several minutes staring at the inside of the fish trying to decide which parts were supposed to stay and which parts were definitely supposed to leave.

Still, little by little, he figured it out.

By the time the sun began dropping behind the trees, Cyrus had two rough pieces of fish cooking in a small pan over his stove.

They were uneven.

One had fallen apart.

The other was starting to burn around the edges.

Cyrus did not care.

He ate both.

The fish was dry and badly seasoned and probably the worst trout ever prepared beside the Colorado River.

It was also the best meal he could remember eating.

Later, when the fire had burned down and darkness settled over the campsite, Cyrus sat with his back against a tree and pulled the folded photograph from his pack.

He had been trying not to look at it too often.

Tonight he did.

Juliette stood beside him in the picture, her dark hair loose around her shoulders, one arm around Freddie. Samira was small enough that Cyrus had been holding her against his hip when the picture was taken.

Freddie would have loved the bear story.

He could almost hear him.

You really saved a bear?

Samira probably would not understand most of it. She would point at the cub and ask if they could keep it.

A smile found its way onto Cyrus’s face.

Then his eyes moved to Juliette.

She would not be impressed.

She would stare at him with that look she used when he had done something particularly stupid and ask why any person with a functioning brain would get between a mother bear and her cub.

Cyrus could almost hear that too.

The smile faded.

He ran his thumb along the edge of the photograph.

He missed them so much that sometimes it felt impossible to think about anything else. That was when he had to remind himself why he had left.

They were safer without him there.

That was what mattered.

He had to believe that.

Cyrus folded the photograph and slipped it back into the protected pocket of his pack.

Beyond the fire, the mountains disappeared into darkness.

Somewhere out there were the two bears. Somewhere much farther east were Juliette, Freddie, and Samira.

And Cyrus was in between, with no home, almost no money, and no real idea where he was going.

But he had fed himself today.

He had helped something that needed him.

For now, that was enough.

Tomorrow he would keep heading west.