The Dancing Bear by Michael Morpurgo Page A

him, can’t I? Please?”
    If we hadn’t been there – and half the village was there by now – I think the old man mighthave grabbed the bear cub by the scruff of the neck and taken him right back where he came from.
    “Look at him,” he said. “He’s half starved. He’s going to die anyway. And besides, bears are for killing, not keeping. You know how many sheep we lose every year to bears? Dozens, I’m telling you, dozens.”
    Some people were beginning to agree with him. I looked at Roxanne and saw she was looking up at me. Her eyes were filled with tears.
    “Maybe” – I was still thinking hard as I spoke – “if you kept him, you know, just for a while. It wouldn’t cost much: some waste milk and an old shed somewhere. And just suppose” – I was talking directly to the old man now – “just suppose you made ‘bear’ labels for your honey jars – you could call it ‘Bruno’s Honey’. Everyone would hear about it. They’d come from miles around, have a little look at the bear and then buy your honey. You’d make a fortune, I’m sure of it.”
    I’d said the right thing. Roxanne’s grandfather had his beehives all over the mountainside, and everyone knew that he couldn’t sell even half the honey he collected. He nodded slowly as the sense of it dawned on him. “All right,” he said. “We’ll try it. Just for a while, mind.”
    Roxanne looked at me and beamed her thanks. She went off with Bruno, followed by an excited cavalcade of village children who took turns to carry him.
    That afternoon, they made him a bed of bracken at the back of one of the old man’s barns, and fed him a supper of warm ewe’s milk from a bottle. They dipped his paw in honey and made him suck it. After that he helped himself. Later when I passed by the barn on my evening walk, I heard Roxanne singing him to sleep. She sang quite beautifully.
    In no time at all, Bruno became one of the village children; nobody was afraid of him, as he was always gentle and biddable. He’d go splashing with them in the streams; he’d romp with them in the hay barns; he’d curl himself up in a ball and roll with them helter-skelter down the hillsides. He was more than a playmate, though. He was our mascot, the pride of the village.
    To begin with, he never strayed far from Roxanne. He would follow her everywhere,almost as if he were guarding her. Then one day – and by this time, Roxanne was maybe ten or eleven – he broke out of his barn and followed her to school.
    I was sitting at my desk sharpening pencils and the class was settled at its work, when Bruno’s great panting face appeared at the window, tongue lolling out and drooling. Roxanne managed to shut him in the woodshed where he stayed till lunch, happily sharpening his claws on the logs.
    Not much school-work was done that day.
    After that Bruno was forever escaping from his barn and turning over the dustbins in the village. He liked dustbins.
    But as the bear grew bigger and stronger, there were those in the village who began to worry – and I was one of them. He went walkabout again not long afterwards, and all the children were out looking for him. Tiny – the smallest boy in the school – came upon Bruno outside the village shop, his head in the dustbin. Tiny called, and Roxanne and the others came running. By the time they arrived, Bruno was up on his back legs and Tiny was tickling his tummy. Bruno swiped playfully at Tiny but it was enough to send him reeling backwards, hitting his head on a wall as he fell. The cut needed eight stitches. Roxanne swore it wasn’t Bruno’s fault, that it was just an accident. So did Tiny, so did they all.
    That evening there was a village meeting in the café. Everyone who spoke up was adamant. Tiny’s mother was furious: Bruno would have togo to a zoo. It was just too risky to keep him. Even Roxanne’s grandfather agreed, and no one had expected that. We all knew how well he was doing out of his “Bruno’s