Gravehide Black Bear

Aunt Mercy rang the burial bell. That was why we had time.

The bear had come out of the family cemetery wearing plates of red-black earth. Pale roots stitched them to its shoulders. Black fur showed in strips, and something like old bone showed deeper whenever it breathed. It hit the gate without slowing. Posts tore free. A chain caught its foreleg and it dragged the whole fence downhill.

Shots knocked dirt off the plates. More lay beneath, dense with roots and scar tissue. But at the bell it turned an ear. Aunt Mercy recited the names. While it listened, we cut the roots behind its foreleg.

This is a living bear. Its armor grows heavier with the resting places it claims. It charges the loudest intruder and carries obstacles through the attack, using a caught fence or cart as a club. When hurt, it goes back to cemetery soil. There the plates thicken and shallow wounds close.

Names belonging to that ground make it hesitate, an inherited response to the caretakers who drove ordinary bears away. Fire dries the earth armor but enrages the animal. A mother may retreat toward a root-choked hollow with her cubs, then turn into a downhill charge.