Lisbeth knew better. She’d been warned a thousand times.

 “Never, ” Mama had said. “Don’t you ever,” Papa said, and their never-evers echoed endlessly inside her head as she sprinted toward the forbidden forest.

“Belle! Come back!” Lisbeth cried. Her precious beagle, Belle, had bounded after a bunny, then blurred away, disappearing somewhere past the double tree door. That’s what Lisbeth called it, that spot so far in the distance. The place she didn’t dare go, but was now running towards, where two giant trees stood like sentinels. 

Lisbeth only intended to follow Belle, to bring her home. Surely her parents would understand.  

“Never go into the woods alone,” her parents had drilled into her for as long as she could remember, “even if the sunshine is sparkling through the trees, even if the forest seems to be calling for you.” But Lisbeth was almost nine now, which was almost ten, a full decade old. She wasn’t some little girl afraid of the forest, at least not in broad daylight. At least not much. Besides, her folks would be gone most of the day, off to get groceries and run errands. Surely they’d understand. If it bothered them so much, they’d have let her go to town with them, but they never did. Not even once. 

Lisbeth caught a glimpse of Belle’s brown and white tail. She ran faster, dropping down to all fours to make up speed. 

“Everything you could ever need is right here,” her parents always said, and to be fair, it was. She had a roomful of toys, a piano, and Belle. She lived in a large, gingerbread-looking house that could have been modeled after those in her storybooks. Still, Lisbeth had begun to sense her fairy tale life wasn’t quite what it seemed to be. Her parents were always whispering to each other, sneaking around, or so it seemed. After their last excursion to town, supposedly to that little general store with the penny candy, in their noisy old clunker of a car, she’d seen them loading big barrel-like containers of nuts and boxes of snacks into the storm cellar. Later, she’d found a receipt for a place called Costco. 

Their words and their weird behavior played on a loop as Lisbeth ran and ran. The trees seemed to close in around her, not in a scary way but in a way that seemed almost welcoming.

And then, a familiar bark.

“Belle,” she cried out. “I was so worried.”

“Oh, sweet Fuzzy. You’ve found us.” It was a stranger’s voice, but not. Familiar, but not.

“Who are you?” Lisbeth asked.

Standing before her, just a breath away from where she’d lived for almost a decade, was a family of bears. They looked to be about halfway through a box of granola bars and mixed nuts. Lisbeth recognized the brand name. It was the same as the snacks her folks had squirreled away in the cellar. 

“Your humans leave us a steady supply,” one of the bears said.  

“To keep us from coming for our beloved baby, Fuzzy,” another said. “It’s not our way, though, to go on their land. We had to wait for you to come on your own.”

“I don’t understand. My name is Lisbeth.”

“No, your true name is Fuzzy. You’re our daughter. We knew you’d find us one day,” the biggest bear said and offered a paw full of nuts to Lisbeth.

In their faces, and in her own, Lisbeth realized a truth. “Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear,” she whispered slowly to herself. It was a children’s rhyme she’d heard so many times. She looked down at her hands, and for the first time saw paws. “I’m Fuzzy. I’m a bear, ” Lisbeth said.  She wondered how she could have lived her whole life, and never even known she was a bear. For goodness sake, she was covered in fur.

“I”m sorry,” Fuzzy said, “I never realized.”

“We know,” Mama Bear said. “It was Belle’s idea to bring you. She thought once you saw us, you’d stay, but it’s up to you.”

Belle barked a happy woof, then nuzzled up to the bunny that had served as the decoy. They were old friends, happy to play a part in reuniting the furry family.  

Sometimes, late at night, Fuzzy can hear the human couple calling out a name that sounds familiar, but isn’t, from deep on the other side of the forest. Sometimes she even misses that family that taught her to walk upright, but she and Belle have chosen to stay deep in the woods. There they are home.