Big Bear - Introduction
- CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR...Book One
Big Bear was never meant to be in The Mythic.
Let that sink in for a moment. Big Bear. Was never meant to be in The Mythic.
The plot of first book changed a lot during the first draft, especially the middle section where Lucy travels to Aedea. However, the scenes in the Caverns of Ataêgina were always there and remained fairly much the same through every iteration. Lucy foolishly decides to use the Caverns as a shortcut, plunging the group into one death-trap after another. They survive and, through cheating, get a peek behind the curtain just like a certain Oz crew.
The One That Goat Away
In our mythology, Ataegina is an ancient Iberian Goddess of Spring, with goats as her sacred symbol. So to reference that I created a character name Hyrcus (a respelling of the Latin “hircus” meaning…goat). He is still in the novel—his image appears as our heroes arrive at the entrance to the Caverns to invite them to compete four trials so they can win…something. It’s a little vague, mainly because it’s a send-up of the ‘do the tests, win the prize’ trope.
Hyrcus was the caretaker of the Caverns and, in the original treatment, I had planned for him to officiously send the team back to complete the final task, which they would not do. Lucy would then accidentally flood the place with lava—as you do—from which they would all barely escape. Hyrcus would storm off, livid at having his beautiful caverns ruined, and we would never see him again.
I wrote right up till the moment Lucy meets Hyrcus just as I had planned. She wanders into the room and Hyrcus was there, peering from behind a wall of boxes, ordering her to finish the trials. I wrote the initial dialogue exchange. I began the sentence where Hyrcus finally reveals himself and from behind the boxes walked…Big Bear.
G.O.A.T.
I loved every one of my cats all dearly but Big Bear was…we shared a special bond. I was at the vet with Dove, only three months old who I’d adopted as the unwanted runt of a litter in late 2003, and there were some rescue cats there. One of them was a tiny ball of black and white. The moment I saw him, I recognised him, even though that was the first time we met. I knew that little ball of fur was meant to come home with me, or that I was meant to take him to his house because everything belongs to Big Bear.
Big Bear was headstrong, greedy, grumpy at times, a bit lazy, charismatic, demanding, utterly loyal, and…well, if you’ve read the novels then you know the rest. Big Bear the cat is Big Bear the character. Or the other way around. It gets a bit confusing sometimes.
But he was not meant to be in The Mythic and so you can imagine my surprise when he turned up on the page. I recall pausing for a beat, realising that of course he should be there because, as previously noted, everything is his. So I continued on. His presence radically altered that scene, a key story thread in Book One, and the series as a whole.
What Big Bear was doing hiding behind the boxes in the Caverns of Ataêgina, I do not know. I can only surmise that this black and white cat’s personality is so forceful that he muscled his way into The Mythic and into Lucy’s heart. Hopefully your heart also.
UPDATE: Big Bear passed away in April 2021. He is SO missed.
Bonus Round
Big Bear is the easiest of all the characters to write. In fact, I don’t write Big Bear so much as push words around at his behest. This is undoubtedly what also makes him my favourite character to write. Because it’s not just that cat who has a lazy streak…
