by Loki Renard
Most of the bear’s blood has dissolved into the water now. I am being cleansed of the kill, but I will never be able to remove the stain from my soul. Something has changed. Ice knows it. I can feel it, but I’m not sure I want it.
“I should go back to the city,” I mumble under my breath.
“You could not go back to the city if you wanted to,” he says. “You have drawn the blood of the forest. You are part of it now. Your breath. Your bones. They must stay here. You would die if you were to return to that land of ghosts.”
“What?”
“The city is a land of the dead. No life comes from there.”
“I came from there,” I point out.
“True, but you were a shadow. A shade. The bear sought you out and gave you her blood. Made you real. Gave you life. Before this you were a ghost to this place. Now you are of it.”
Ice is shamanic in his speech, and what he says would be utter nonsense if I heard it in the city. Out here, it not only makes sense, I find myself believing him. It explains his behavior toward me as well. He never wanted to have much to do with me at all, and I saw the constant suspicion in his eyes. Now I understand why. He was a warrior confronted with a ghost. What was he supposed to do?
Chapter Eight
When Ice and I return, it is not sleep that the others have in mind. There is something brewing over the fire, and the bear is laid out, her eyes covered with leaves. There is respect in the way she has been positioned, and for reasons I can’t explain, I feel tears springing to my eyes as I see her powerful body lying dead before the flames. She wanted me dead, but there was something more than her desire for my death.
I can’t explain any of this in words, but we were connected, this bear and I, and somehow, I feel as though we still are.
“The ritual?” Ice stops me next to the fire, his hand on my shoulder.
“She took her first blood. Now she must drink from the mother,” Maverick replies.
My relationship with these men is continuously evolving. It feels as though every day brings something new. The dawn is beginning to rise as Ice sits me down before the fire.
I have been awake too long. I have seen too much blood. I have tasted death. I want nothing more than to just lie down and sleep.
“What do I need to do?”
“Drink,” Maverick says. Hans is ladling some of the brew into a bowl. He brings it over to me and hands it to me with both hands. I take it with both hands too. It doesn’t smell very good, and I’m not in any way hungry or thirsty. I can imagine how I must look right now, my face marked by the bear’s claws, my tattered skirt ruined and dirty and wet, my hair braided as if I am one of them… and now there is this brew.
“You’ve earned this,” Ice says, squeezing my shoulder. “This is not something we share lightly. Drink deep, Riley.”
I look around at all four men and lift the bowl to my lips. The brew smells of fungus and dirt. I hesitate, but their encouraging smiles make me raise the bowl to my lips. I take a sip and gag, but one of them puts their hand behind my head, and someone else’s fingers take my nose, and before I know it, they have poured a good dose of the brew down my throat.
I splutter and spit, looking at them with fury in my gaze.
“What are you doing?”
“Ensuring you get the proper dose,” Hans says. “Settle down and gaze at the fire.”
I shake my head. I am so tired. I just want to sleep. I don’t want to have this stomach-churning brew swilling around in my innards. I want to go and lie down, but they won’t let me.
Maverick and Ice take a place on either side of me keeping me up and awake. Hans crouches nearby and begins to hum. Stryker takes up the tune, then Maverick follows and finally Ice lifts his voice in a song, speaking words I don’t understand. They are not in the common tongue, but they are powerful. I can feel them flowing into me, just like the brew did.
As the minutes pass and the song swells, I start to feel the effects of the brew. It is not an intoxicant the way the alcohol was. It doesn’t make me hazy and warm. It changes what the world is. I am me, but nothing else is the same. Everything from the dirt to the breeze is suddenly alive. I am embraced by all creation, wisps of wind caressing my face, gentling my scars.
The bear lies before me, but she is no longer dead. She gleams with fractal patterns, black lines and rich red sparks marking along her back and sides.
She raises her head to me and I realize that I did not kill her, not in the true sense of the word. I took her into myself. Her flesh is part of me. She has made me broader and bigger. She has given me keener senses and deeper understanding.
I begin to make sounds of my own. I know the words of the song. They come to me through my heart and dance over my tongue without touching my mind. My voice is higher and softer than theirs, but it fits with them.
And then, in the midst of the song, we come together. As one. Not four men and one woman. Five souls joined in the flesh. A thick cock slides in and out of me, pleasuring the wet channel of my sex. I am not just a woman. I am the primal feminine and I am being mated by males who wish to tame a part of me for their own.
I arch my back and let out a moan as another cock slides between my lips and deep into my mouth. I am in ecstasy, feeling everything so much more keenly than would normally be possible. They stretch me, thrust inside me, take me and service me.
I am not entirely sure who is where at any given time, but they all take my mouth and then my sex, one after the other, they make deposits into my deepest places, filling my belly and my womb with their potent juices. I am consumed with desire that takes hold of my entire being, makes me so hungry for them I can barely stand to be bereft of their shafts. I am the bear, but this time the spears of the hunters do not end life, they try to create it with stabbing strokes that stretch and demand my flesh give way to theirs.
Orgasm after orgasm rushes through me, given by the surging bodies of these men of muscle and desire. They are more than savages, they are pure masculine forces of nature and their seed soaks my flesh time and time again until once more we fall into an exhausted pile and sleep.
Chapter Nine
“Time to take her to the tribe.”
“Time to go home.”
The sun rises and so do we. I wake to their voices murmuring in the light. They are quiet, but there is undeniable excitement in their tone. They are working as I rest, and I get the sense they want me to get as much sleep as I can. I want to get as much sleep as I can. This is going to be a very long day for all of us.
The world is back as it was, but it seems brighter. The trees are no longer merely obstacles of wood and leaves; they dance with life in the breeze that invigorates me.
The bear’s meat and skin has been packed onto a sled that is dragged behind two of them at any one time. There are other meats as well, preserved in salts that they brought with them in thick blocks.
“This will be a long walk,” Maverick says. “Tell us if you are getting tired and we will rest or put you on the sled with the meat.”
I don’t want to be put on the meat sled. I have gained Ice’s respect and I want to keep it. I know he won’t respect me if I sit on the sled and am pulled along. I have to stand on my own two feet. I have to walk among them, as one of them.
Before we leave the little encampment, the men make sure to pack everything down. The shelter is covered in large fronds and leaves, the fire is damped down and doused with water. A small stash of food is left in some clay pots that are hung from trees in case someone comes by and needs it.
There is care in every action they take, thought put into every aspect of their behavior. It is in stark contrast to how things are in the city, where we don’t really need to think about what we do in such small ways. The view of those inside the city walls that the people out here are thoughtless savages could not be more wrong. These men are more skilled and more intelligent than almost anyone I met inside the city walls—because they have to be. Out here
a little mistake, a moment of clumsiness or inattention can lead to serious injury or death. The stakes are higher, and these men rise to the challenge every minute of every day.
“Come, little rabbit,” Hans says, taking my hand in his great paw.
We begin the walk.
For a time it is just another stroll. Nothing much changes around us. The trees are still thick, the undergrowth ample. The path they must have cut when they first came this way is already overgrowing with shoots and tendrils. It all feels familiar—until it doesn’t.
I notice that the trees are starting to thin out, and that the bushes grow lower to the ground. The birdsong is not as prevalent and the light is starting to grow. I had gotten used to the perpetual twilight of the forest, so these piercing shafts of light feel simultaneously like an intrusion and a glorious display.
Since drinking the brew, I feel as though my entire mind has been reset. I would never have paid attention to the way the light hit leaves before. It would have been background to the whirring of my mind, a thousand petty and neurotic thoughts whipping through my brain in a ceaseless torrent. I am empty now, and the world comes in to fill me.
The changes around us herald new terrain. There is a certain longing and sorrow inside me because I know we are leaving the place where the bear walks. Through the trees, I see bright flashes of green; rolling grasses are waiting for us. I can tell already that this new vista will be beautiful, but I feel an undeniable sense of sorrow as we leave the place where I was born anew. There is a roar in the distance, a rumble that reaches out to all of us.
I look up at Maverick, who smiles and drapes an arm around my shoulders. “She’s saying farewell for now,” he tells me.
The bear is gone, but her spirit still walks the wilds. I feel a strange sense of sorrow as we leave her territory. I will miss the forest until we return. It is where I became a woman—more than that, it is where I became fully human for the first time. The short hours I spent in the embrace of the woods have changed me forever.
We leave the trees and move into the savannah plains. There are grasses for miles, and in the distance, a great mountain range rises. The sheer sense of space is astounding. I have never been anywhere this large before. The forest felt big, but my eye line was always cut by tall trees. Here, I get the sense the world is infinite. I could pick a direction and run in it forever.
“The tribe lives at the foot of those mountains,” Hans says, pointing out green rises in the distance.
* * *
It is seven days’ walk to the village. By day we walk. At night we make camp and love in equal measure. They fill me over and over with their seed, and I give myself to them with eagerness; well, most of them. Ice keeps himself separate from the sexual interludes. I feel as though he was present when I drank the brew, but he has not been with me since, and I am not entirely sure he truly took me after the bear either.
He is the quietest of them all. Hans and Stryker love to laugh and tell stories of their hunts. Their chatter fills the days and makes me feel wanted and perhaps even loved. Maverick’s watchful eye and stern discipline keep me in line, but every time I so much as glance at Ice, I feel chills running through me.
After seven days, we arrive at the foot of the mountains, where I am told the ground is most fertile for growing crops. There are many small fields outside the village, tended by women and boys who wave and greet us with a mixture of excitement and curiosity.
In the city, nobody knew who I was and nobody cared. There were simply too many people milling about for anyone to really notice a specific individual. Here, it is different. I stand out immediately. There is pointing and excited chatter as the word spreads about the new woman.
I don’t begrudge them their interest. I find them just as fascinating. The village itself is a curious place. There are small hut houses everywhere, primitive in nature, but I also see hints here and there that all the old technology has not been lost. There is evidence of windows of glass, rounded panes that sit inside wooden frames. And there are bits of metal and concrete, not made for purpose, but perhaps salvaged from other places. These people are scavengers, living in the rubble of the world before.
Maverick and the others lead me to a great roundhouse in the very center of it all.
“We are going to see the chief,” he murmurs in my ear. “Say nothing in his presence. Understand?”
I nod quickly, sensing that there is some tension. They are worried about something, and that tension only seems to rise as we are welcomed into the roundhouse and conducted into the presence of the chief himself.
He is a massive redheaded man with eyes like emerald, a thick mane of hair, and great muscular legs and arms. He wears tanned furs and leathers stitched together skillfully in a pattern that mimics the lines of his torso. Whoever made his clothing is talented beyond belief. I find myself staring at him, my mouth open until Stryker reaches over and taps me under the chin to remind me to close it.
He is a fearsome-looking man, but there is a kindness to his eyes and demeanor that sets me a little at ease, though I still find myself hiding behind Maverick and Ice for the most part. They are my protection from all that is strange and frightening.
“Chief Conan,” Maverick says, speaking not with deference, but with respect. “We would present our mate to you.”
“Your mate?”
Maverick takes me by the arm and pushes me forward. I find myself under the inspection of the chief, his eyes running over me not with the carnal heat I have come to expect from all savages, but with keen interest. He is weighing me not as a potential mate, but as a member of his tribe.
“What have you brought from the forest?” he rumbles. “They didn’t grow young women there last I checked.”
I feel the men draw closer around me. They are protective of me. I have a flash of imagery in my mind of being a piece of meat surrounded by wolves. They are worried the chief will want me, I think. And what if he does? What then?
“This is Lulu Ursa,” Maverick introduces me by a name that sounds strange to my ears.
“Bunny bear?” Conan snorts.
“She has the spirit of the bear,” Maverick tells the chief. “I wear her claws. We had to face the bear to take her, and then, when she had taken us as mates she slew the bear.”
“This girl is a bear slayer?” Chief Conan laughs. “You have returned with a pretty girl and a very tall tale. Which tribe is missing its maiden?”
“I’m from the…”
Maverick claps a hand over my mouth before I can tell the chief I am from the city.
“She was a stray from the West Winds.”
“A stray?” Chief Conan seems to be unconvinced.
“A runaway,” Ice says, his natural growl sounding to great effect. “She is headstrong, willful, and often disobedient.”
“A true redhead,” Conan laughs. “Very well. If you wish to build a family home, you have my blessing. The cooks are already preparing the feast. Go and make your preparations, and welcome, Lulu Ursa.”
I do not think I will ever get used to that name, but Riley doesn’t seem to fit who I am now either. Riley was an innocent, virginal girl from the city who knew nothing about men or life or the world beyond the walls. Lulu Ursa is an entirely different woman, one I might grow into being, given enough time.
Maverick and the others give their thanks to the chief and draw me away. I can sense tension among them until we clear the gaggles of interested savages, men and women and children dressed in brightly woven clothes and furs.
I get the sense that though these people all rely on the hunters to bring them game, the hunters aren’t quite part of the tribe. There is an awe and a suspicion in the gazes, though the young men seem particularly eager to catch Maverick, Ice, and Hans’ attentions.
* * *
There is a house for hunters at the verge of the village. It is quite large and well made of wood. These savages have retained skills from the long ago, which mean their homes se
em to be very comfortable and dry. I am glad. We have been camping in shacks under the stars for two weeks now and it is nice to know the concept of ‘indoors’ still exists.
I have so many questions, and they all burst out the moment the door is closed.
“Why did you say that I am from the West Winds?”
“Our chief refuses those of city blood. Especially women,” Maverick explains. “It is easier for him to believe that you are a stray from another tribe.”
“Why? And why does Stryker get to be part of the tribe if I don’t get to be?”
“Stryker passed many trials,” Ice interjects. “You would not survive them.”
“I bet I would,” I say, instantly galled. “I killed a bear!”
“By mistake,” Stryker chimes in. “Fate and fortune can be kind in a rare while, but the trials of the tribe are not for the faint-hearted or those who have to rely on luck.”
I don’t like lying about who I am or where I’m from. I know nothing about this West Winds tribe, and attempting to pass myself off as one of them seems like a bad idea from the start—as does lying to the chief.
It is not my decision though. Nothing has been from the beginning of this. My men lead me from the chief’s home all the way out to the verge of the village, where a well-made house stands distant from the rest of the tribe.
“Why is this house so far away?”
“We shed blood,” Ice explains. “These people do not like to spill blood or take souls. To do so is to invite the fury of the spirits. We are not just hunters. We are warriors. We are the ones with the spears and the knives.”
While we speak, food is brought to the house, presented beautifully on porcelain plates from the before times. It is placed next to the doorstep and then it is left.
We can hear the music and see the dancing, but Maverick and the men do not make any move toward it, and I have the sense we would not be welcomed.
“You’re outcasts in your own tribe?”
