by Mia Wolf
The same scream comes out of me now, the same pain, the same disintegration of my insides. How is any of this fair? How is it fair that I have no family left to call my own?
The pain comes out with tears, and they don’t stop until I’ve run dry. I’m still crouching on the ground, knees bleeding, palms scratched, crying alone in the woods as I should be because I don’t have anyone left.
At the peak of my sadness, I remember Sebastian. Being with him was the first thing in a long time that made the pain go away, and that’s what scares me. I cannot get attached, I can't love again because when it gets taken away from you, you lose so much of yourself. To be subjected to life with pieces of you ripped away… there isn’t a worse prison in existence.
I wipe at the stream of tears until they stop running and pick the canary back up. I lift my hand again and grimace when the bruise stings. She flutters again, this time stronger than the last time. She takes flight, and just when I think she’s going to come falling down, she doesn’t. Soon comes her chirping as she flies higher and higher.
I watch her go then sink to the ground again because, unlike her, I don’t have the wings to fly away. My shoulders sag, and crippling loneliness overtakes me. I’m left questioning everything, but most of all, I wonder what the reason is for me to keep going? A fleeting memory of seeing Sebastian in the towel on that first day comes to my head, and I giggle despite myself. He looked like such a caricature that day. And just when I think that the canary has left me, she comes back and perches on my shoulder.
Chapter 15 - Sebastian
I immediately regret my decision to send that text to Ash, but there’s no taking it back. I know the report will go straight to Daniel. For some reason, they’re particularly secretive about this gig. I was told to text only in case of an emergency, and so I hadn’t, not until now. If someone from Code Blue shows up and finds out that Maya is the woman they’re looking for, it’ll all be my fault, and then I won’t have any counterargument for why I absolutely don’t deserve her.
I’m at home, scratching my head, wondering how to get out of this mess when the bell rings. I open the door to find Ash standing on the porch. He looks like he means business, and I can tell that he jumped into the car right after receiving that text.
“Ash,” I stutter while he forces his way into the house. “You didn’t need to come all the way.”
“I didn’t come here out of my own free will, Sebastian,” he speaks in his baritone of a voice, which makes him sound quite mad. “Daniel wants to know everything. What’s the lead?”
Straight to information. For a moment, I entertain the idea of telling him that I was joking or made an error, but knowing Code Blue, and knowing Daniel, that wouldn’t end well for Ash or me.
“Right, the lead,” I say, trying to buy myself some time. “So I was going around the village, looking for any information on the woman, but people around here have never heard about her. Nobody’s ever heard the target’s last name, which of course is because she probably changed it like you guys mentioned in the document. So I tried to go by her physical description.” I pause and swallow saliva. I’m making this up as I go, which is making my mouth run dry and my heart jump out of my chest.
Ash is looking at me like I’m crazy. He’s dressed in the standard Code Blue uniform: a black t-shirt with a black jacket and black jeans. The color code reflects the inner workings of the organization up to a T. I try my best not to make a scene about how angry it makes me, the whole pretense that Code Blue is run by better people than thugs in slick shoes. But what would saying all this to Ash do? Daniel is the one who runs the show, the puppet master who seems to enjoy this for more than just the money. There’s no helplessness about that guy, and yet both Ash and I are standing in the living room doing his bidding because he found us in times in which we were compromised. I feel bad for Ash in that way, he’s stuck, just like me.
He’s still looking at me, waiting for me to say more, give him something he can bet on because I know full well that so far I’ve given him nothing.
“You have more than that, right?”
“Of course,” I lie then swallow hard. “Give me some more time, alright?”
Ash is seeing through the whole farce; that expression on his face says that he’s hoping for his sake, and mine, that he didn’t drive six hours for what I’ve just told him.
“Are you doing this on purpose?” Ash sounds truly mad now. “Don’t tell me I just drove six hours for this bullshit. Now I have to go back and talk to Daniel like we fucking hit the jackpot while you sit here being useless.” He’s shouting now.
This doesn’t scare me, I’ve seen worse. I let him take his anger out, it’s good for him anyway. I’m prepared to placate him with some more made-up bullshit when Maya jumps in through the window.
She’s looking like she rolled off the mountain in the back; there are twigs stuck to her clothes, her knees are scraped and dirty and even though she just broke into my house again without permission and Ash is standing in front of me, I’m concerned about her. It takes me a mental flogging to snap out of it, and I end up staring at her, nostrils flaring because she just messed up what I’d been trying to do, which is to undo the damage I’d done.
“What are you doing here?” I yell at her like I rightfully should at an intruder in my house.
“I heard yelling,” she replies while looking at Ash with a calm that shouldn’t be in her voice. Why isn’t she afraid for her life like a normal person would be? Ash is a giant man at six foot three; he’s bulky and he has the look of a New York night club bouncer going on. He’s intimidating by all standards, and Maya is a tiny, slender-waisted woman, so easily dwarfed by him.
I see Ash looking at Maya; he has a puzzled expression on his face, and my heart is thumping in my chest, dreading the moment when he puts two and two together. I go up to Maya, standing between the two of them so Ash can’t continue to scrutinize her face.
“Can you mind your own business, Maya?” I whisper to her.
“I was just checking—”
“It’s none of your business,” I shut her down. There’s hurt clearly written on her face, but I ignore it because we’d get in a whole lot more trouble if she stays any longer.
“What’s that?” she asks, not looking at me. Her attention is to my right at the painting. The painting I made on that first night our eyes met. This cannot get any worse.
“Did you do this?” Maya squeaks, which makes Ash look at the painting too. I hear a scoff then a chuckle from him while Maya is furious.
There goes any respect I ever had back at Code Blue, down in the toilet.
“I can explain,” I say to Maya, but she doesn’t want to listen.
“Are you some kind of creep?” She frowns at the painting, stepping closer to where it stands, leaning against the wall in a dim corner. I knew I should’ve hidden it somewhere as I had planned to do.
Are you some kind of creep? The question is rhetorical, so I don’t answer. Maya seems to be simultaneously examining the painting and demonstrating her disapproval of it. She looks at me in between, then briefly at Ash, finally bringing her attention back to the painting.
I grab her by the shoulder to pull her away. “I’ll mail you the painting if you wish, Maya. You need to leave right now,” I whisper to her. She resists for a second, then finally complies.
Ash, on the other hand, is now just as intrigued by the painting as Maya is.
“You too,” I yell at him. “Get out. I’ll notify you if I find anything else.”
I usher Maya out of the house, this time through the front door. I make sure to give her some time before Ash leaves after her.
“You better get more serious about this, Sebastian,” Ash warns me. “If I have to clean up your mess again, it won’t turn out very good for you.” He gives me a stern look then leaves. I shut the door after them, but two minutes later, there’s a knock. I open it, thinking that it’ll be Ash again, and I’m surprised t
o find that it’s Maya.
“What?” I ask her, not opening the door completely.
“Explain that painting to me right now,” she says and barges in, slipping into the house from under my arm. She really knows how to use that tiny frame of hers to her advantage.
She picks up the painting from its desolate corner and brings it into the living room light, so we both get a clear look at the artwork. I’m cringing inwardly at the sight, not of the painting, but of Maya staring at it. So now she knows I paint.
I have spent six years at Code Blue now, and no one until today knew that I have ever touched a paintbrush. I’m screwed if Ash spreads the word for just the laughs back at the organization, and I don’t know what will happen if Daniel finds out. He will not give up any chance to use this against me somehow. But the terrors of the future pale in comparison to what Maya might be thinking right now. I’m extremely uncomfortable with the situation, and I have no excuse.
“Start speaking, Sebastian.” Maya turns to me with her arms still crossed. She’s so tiny, looking up at me with those tender eyes that seem to have laser vision; she looks at me like she's looking at my soul. Then there are those red lips, full and supple. The red tunic, her armor. The painting pales in comparison to the real deal.
“I made it on that first night when I picked up the canary,” I divulge like a schoolboy spilling his pranking secret, admitting to his evil plan in front of the teacher. “I was going to put it away,” I say in hopes of making things better, but it doesn’t work.
“Are there any others?” Maya asks. I’m shocked by her question at first, then delighted, still feeling a little embarrassed because I don’t want to be the guy who paints. Where I come from, it’s nothing but a sign of weakness, which is funny because I feel the most empowered with a brush in my hand, even more than with a bottle of whiskey, and that’s saying something. The whole universe is at my mercy when I have a brush in my hand because I can give life to anything. I don’t say this to Maya though.
“No, I only painted you once,” I say. It sounds so exploitative.
“I don’t mean me,” Maya replies, looking flustered for some reason. “Are there any other paintings?”
Her anger seems to have dissipated. I don’t understand why she’s asking for more, but I’m glad that she’s no longer looking at the painting. Quietly, I direct her into one of the bedrooms where a lot of stuff from the previous owners is still kept in boxes catching dust. It occurs to me as we step inside the room that no one has ever seen the paintings I make. And today, two people saw them at the same time.
It makes me feel extremely uncomfortable to show her the rest of my paintings because truthfully, she’s getting a peek into my soul. I have half a mind to turn back, but we’re already in the room, and the painted canvases are sitting all around it, on top of the furniture and sitting slanted against the walls. Most of them are either paintings of the sunset or the sunrise hidden behind clouds. Some of them are with the woods in the back. Thankfully, I controlled my impulse to draw more portraits of Maya, so there’s only one embarrassing painting in the house.
“These are breathtaking, Sebastian,” Maya says as she steps closer to one of them. It’s an oil painting of the sunset we both witnessed together, the night we watched the stars climb up the sky. It was a fine evening.
Maya walks around to examine the paintings with a quizzical look on her face. “Are you a professional painter or something?”
I scoff and laugh. “Hell, no.”
“Well, why not?” she asks with the innocence of a child. How do I explain my dark past and the truth of my dark present to her?
“I don’t want to.”
My words silence her in a sad way like she’s watching immense potential being squandered in front of her eyes, and while there may be some truth to that, I have nothing to tell her that’ll soothe her worries.
Something shifts in her expression as if she’s back to feeling utter distaste for me. It makes me feel good. It makes me say something stupid, something I clearly shouldn’t have.
“Weren’t we supposed to mind our own business?”
The biting cold reappears in Maya’s eyes, and she walks out of the room with heavy steps then out of the house, leaving silence in her wake; silence and loneliness.
Why am I so good at pushing people away?
Chapter 16 - Maya
The training has left me feeling drained, exhausted, and craving for food and a good night’s sleep. It’s that satisfying feeling of being utterly bone-tired, having wrung the last ounce of performance out of myself, that testimony to hard work that you can’t deny and then the sweet release of interrupted sleep. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in so long that it feels like I’ve been awake for a lifetime. It’s because of the nightmares, but what can really be done about that? There is no escape in the dream world.
I’m climbing down the mountain as I hear a ruffle behind me and turn around to see what it is. My hands are in fighting position. It’s dark now, and there’s no evening breeze today; everything is dead silent sans the faraway chirping of crickets. I’m waiting for the sound to come again, but it doesn’t; moments go by, and I’m starting to think it was in my head, but I can’t quite convince myself of that because my intuition says there’s someone or something still out there.
I walk backward and put some distance between whatever it is and me. No sound comes, and I’m almost out of the woods now. I’m about to turn my back on the forest and make my way home when I see a shadow moving in the dark. I fall backward, landing on my bum. There are beads of sweat appearing on my forehead. The shadow didn’t seem to belong to an animal, animals don’t have the patience or the stealth to ambush their prey like this. Besides, there aren’t any animals in these woods who would hunt a bear. No, it wasn’t an animal. It was a human or a bear shifter in his human form.
My thoughts are racing. Who could it be? Has someone from my old village found out that I live here? Has Lee finally ratted me out? It would be a shame to move again now that I’m starting to like living here.
I sit there for a while until I’m sure that whatever or whoever it was is gone. I stand up, brush my tunic off, and walk back home.
I hear voices as I approach the house; they’re coming from my front porch. It sounds like they belong to two men, one of whom I immediately recognize to be Sebastian’s because his voice has a distinct rasp to it that I find hard to ignore.
As I walk to the front of the house, I see Joshua and Sebastian talking to each other. I catch my name; they seem to be discussing something to do with me.
“There she is,” Sebastian says as I emerge from behind Joshua. His announcement sends shockwaves through my body, just stupid anxiety acting up again. I take deep breaths to steady myself as I approach them.
“What about me?” I look at Joshua, who is glancing at Sebastian with an incredulous look. I follow his gaze, but I find the same contempt hard to muster. Sebastian looks too appealing to me; his face looks like he just woke up from a nap, his hair is messy, and he has puffy eyes. That overgrowth of facial hair, because he clearly hasn’t shaved, makes him look like a college-goer. I try to snap out of ogling Sebastian lest he sees me staring, but it’s too late, and he has already noticed. He smirks at me, which comes out flirtatious. I feel the heat rise up to my face, and I forcibly tear my gaze away from him to hear what Joshua has to say.
“I’ve been talking to the elders about improving the resources at the school in the village, but we’re pretty low on budget since we expanded the capacity from fifty students to a hundred last year. It has helped people from other bear villages; not all of them have schools. There has been a steady influx of students since then, and they’ve mostly been very positive about the school. But we really want to improve the level of education offered to provide the students with the best the village has to offer so I’ve been asking people to put in some volunteer work if they can, and a lot of people have already signed up. But,�
� he pauses and sighs, “the seniors are worried about my habit of letting visitors stay in the village for free, and they want me to make sure that you’re giving back to the community in some way. So, I’m here to ask both of you to put in some volunteer work at the school. Are there any skills you have that you can teach the kids?” Joshua asks then gestures at Sebastian. “Sebastian was telling me how you know a lot about martial arts. That could be a very valuable skill to teach the student, and I’m sure there are a lot of kids who would want to get into athletics and sports, but we just don’t have the resources. We do have a gym,” he adds kind of lamely as if he’s not sure whether that helps.
It does help, though; if the gym is empty, I could train there sometimes. I don’t always prefer training out in the woods like a primal animal, getting dirt all over my body. Back in my village, we had state-of-the-art gym equipment and proper training facilities. I realize that I’ve missed that.
“Yeah, no,” I say flatly. “I can’t teach.”
I start to walk into the house, but Joshua stops me. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to move out then,” he says begrudgingly.
I scoff at his inner conflict then glare at Sebastian; way to spill the beans on me.
“Fine. I’ll teach on one condition,” I say, and a playful smile appears on my face as I turn around to face the two men again. “I’ll teach kids martial arts if Sebastian teaches them painting.”
I see the blood drain from his face and the anger in his eyes; the look that he’s giving me sends a shiver down my spine. A bit rich coming from him. Why did he shove his nose in my business if he didn’t expect me to bite back?
I ignore him and watch as Joshua’s face lights up.
“Teaching the kids creative arts would be extremely beneficial. We have Rose teaching them fashion design, but other than that we have no teachers for other creative fields.” Joshua pauses then shifts his focus away from his own agenda. “It can be rewarding to teach young minds how to unlock the power of their imagination.”
