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understand,” he said. “But then mortals never do. That’s what makes them such delightful fools.”
    He turned and, playing his pipes once again, disappeared as if the air had swallowed him.
    Atalanta was left, gaping.
    And alone once more.

CHAPTER SEVEN
THE TRAP
    I T WAS ANOTHER FIVE days before Urso returned, and by then the meeting with Pan had become a half-remembered dream. Once Atalanta tried to tell the bear what she could recall of it—something about the lure of her own kind—but for some reason, her tongue refused to speak of it.
    She simply put her arms around the bear’s shaggy neck. “You are my kin and my kind now,” she told him. He answered by licking her face with his tongue, his breath strong and familiar.
    As the weeks with Urso went by, Atalanta learned how to fish like a bear, standing still in the water and then snatching a glistening silver body out with a quick scoop of her hands. She learned as well how to raid the honeybee’s hive and how to strip a berry bush bare. The palms of her hands became hardened and stained.
    She taught Urso how to play hide-and-find, something she and her father had enjoyed. It quickly became the bear’s favorite game.
    One day, as the two of them were playing, it was Urso’s turn to hide. Finding him was not difficult. Atalanta knew his tracks and scent too well for long concealment. And he always seemed to hide in the same places. Still, as if playing with a small child, Atalanta could stretch the game out for hours.
    This time she found him near their den. She leaned forward to tap him on the nose—a signal that she’d won.
    He rolled away from her and she leaped onto his back, trying to reach a hand to his muzzle.
    Shaking her off, he made a low, pleasant grumbling sound, which she’d come to know as his teasing sound. Then he bounded off toward the trees.
    “You don’t get away that easily, you big ball of fur!” she cried, getting up and racing after him. She leaped over rocks and roots and was just about to grab him by the tail when something astonishing happened.
    He disappeared into the earth as though a giant maw had swallowed him.
    Atalanta tumbled headlong after him, bounced off his backhand rolled to a stop against the side of an enormous hole, twice as high as her head and big enough for two bears.
    Struggling groggily to her feet, Atalanta was relieved to find she’d broken no bones. However, her bow had snapped in two under the impact. Tossing the broken weapon aside, she knelt beside Urso and rubbed her face against his neck.
    “Are you all right?” she asked.
    A deep rumble vibrated in his throat. Slowly he rose onto three paws, holding his right forward paw up as if it hurt.
    Atalanta felt the paw. “No bones broken. But if it hurts, it’s going to make it harder for you to get out of here.” She looked around the hole. It was clearly not a natural trough in the earth, for there were signs of digging along the steep, sheer sides. About them lay the broken remnants of a lattice of leaves and branches that had concealed the opening till Urso’s weight had crashed through.
    “It’s a trap, Urso,” she said. Then remembering something her father had told her about such hunting pits, she added, “Lucky there were no sharpened stakes at the bottom.”
    The bear growled his answer.
    Atalanta thought that—given time—she might be able to use her arrowheads to gouge out a series of hand and footholds into the earth wall. But how long would that take?
    “And when will the hunters come to check their trap?” she asked the bear.
    He shook his massive head.
    “Maybe…” she told him, staring up at the opening above them, “maybe there’s a faster way out.” She calculated the height. “Come here. Stand on your hind legs. Like this.”
    It took a moment to coax him, a moment to explain. She pressed her belly against the earth wall, standing as tall as she could, arms stretched above her head. Urso at last understood and reared