Beary Tales

by Jennifer Malone Wright

  “Look what I made,” Katya called from her place in the water. Nita shifted on the rock and saw that Katya had woven the flowers she’d picked into a crown that fit over the top of her head. “Pretty, huh?”

  The ring of little white flowers was an explosion of color against Katya’s beautiful red tresses. She reached up and fingered one of the tiny petals. “I wish this would last forever. I know they are going to wither eventually.”

  Nita nodded. “They will, but maybe we will find more once we move on.”

  Katya seemed happy with the thought and headed for the bank of the swamp. “Is the water done yet?”

  “Not yet,” Butchy told her. “Once it’s done we’ll have to let it cool down anyway. So it will be a little while longer.”

  Katya frowned. “Oh.”

  Suddenly, the water behind Katya splashed. “What was th…”

  Katya didn’t even get a chance to finish her sentence. A massive alligator rose from the depths of the swamp, its evil looking eyes focused on the pale flesh of Katya’s legs. “Ahhhhhhh!” Katya screamed a high pitched sound that her bear form would have never been able to make. “What is that?”

  “Don’t move!” Butchy ordered, reaching for his wand. But, he spoke to late. Leilanni was on the move. The creature didn’t even see the blonde human running at it until she had crashed into the water and flung herself at the animal which was nearly twice her size.

  Nita jumped to her feet and Butchy stood with his wand at the ready. They both watched Leilanni catch the animal, wrapping her arms around it. A large wave of swamp water rose into the air as they struggling pair sunk beneath the surface.

  “Leilanni!” Katya screamed. “Help her, Butchy!”

  “I can’t do anything right now,” Butchy told her. “They’re underwater.”

  “We have to do something,” Nita added. Maybe if she had been a bear she could have helped, but she was a weak human now and unable to help her friend.

  Butchy glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “I can’t do anything right now, not until they surface and even then, I have to be careful I don’t hit Leilanni with the magic.”

  Just then, both Leilanni and the alligator burst from the surface of the water. She had his powerful jaws held shut with her hands. The gator struggled to free himself from her grasp by whipping his body from side to side, but Leilanni continued to cling to him. Down they went again.

  This happened a couple of times and each time Butchy pointed his wand, ready to save Leilanni, but with the two wrestling and moving like they were, it was nearly impossible to get a straight shot unless he got closer to them.

  We have to get away from here, Nita thought. We need to find safety. The thought was the only thing on her mind, everything else became secondary, and being in a safe place was all she could think of. Safety, safety, safety, a voice chanted within her.

  The gator and Leilanni rose from the water once again, she still had his jaws held shut and her legs wrapped around him. They turned and then splashed back down into the swamp.

  Safety, safety, safety.

  Suddenly, the water appeared to shiver. The entire swamp began to vibrate as a magical force took hold of it.

  Butchy tore his gaze from the place where Leilanni and the gator wrestled to search for the cause. He could feel magic growing thick in the air. Oh God, he hoped it wasn’t Goldalynn coming for them.

  But then, he heard Nita’s voice and focused on her. She had her eyes closed in either fear or concentration and was chanting the word, safety, over and over again. He then realized, she was the cause of this magic.

  The vibration ended, but the waters of the swamp continued to move, only this time the water seemed to be moving in one direction … a circle. Butchy and Katya stared with wide eyes as the filthy water gradually picked up speed and formed into a whirlpool.

  It’s a portal. Butchy thought. She created a portal. Then, it registered to him that they should actually use it while it was still there. “Katya, Nita, Let’s go! We need to get Leilanni when she comes up again.”

  “Go where?” Katya screamed as a strong gust of wind blew through the swamp. It shook the trees and lifted her hair away from her body.

  “Into the water.” Butchy pointed at the portal. “Nita!” he called a bit louder.

  Nita heard Butchy’s voice and her eyes flew open. She hadn’t even realized that they were closed. Now that they were open, she wondered what had happened in the last few seconds. The swamp, which was once calm and flat, was now speeding round and round, creating a large funnel.

  She blinked, wondering if what she was seeing was real. The waters around the whirlpool settled, but the inside kept up its furious movement, blurring and wavering with a magical glow.

  “Go into the water, Nita!” Butchy called as he charged into the swamp with Katya right behind him. She knew to do what their Fairy Goduncle told them to do, she trusted that he wouldn’t want harm to come to any of them, so she waded into the water.

  Leilanni and the alligator rose and fell, emerging from the water again.

  Butchy yelled, “Leilanni, we have an escape. Let go, follow us.” He turned to Nita and yelled. “Let’s, go!” Without any further explanation, he plunged into the spinning waters of the whirlpool head first. A flash of bright white light spewed up from the core of the funnel and Butchy was gone.

  Katya went in next. She didn’t dive in as Butchy had done, but hesitantly waded forward until she broke the barrier of calm around the portal. The swirling water caught her in its grasp and sucked her in. With a ferocious scream and another burst of white light, Katya was gone.

  Nita watched and then looked to Leilanni, she didn’t want to go in without her. “Leilanni!” She urgently called to her. “Come on!”

  “I’m coming,” Leilanni growled. “Just go.”

  “Not without you. I’m not leaving.”

  Leilanni forced the gator toward Nita and the portal. “I’m going to let go and jump once you’re through. Go now.” The gator whipped her to one side and she tightened her grasp, keeping the teeth that would have devoured her, tightly closed. “Go!” she ordered when Nita did not move fast enough.

  Nita still did not go, so Leilanni, now fairly close to the whirlpool, pushed with all her might, throwing him as far as possible. Spinning around, she hurtled toward Nita. Her arms caught Nita’s shoulders and embraced her. The two girls broke the barrier and then fell into the churning water of the portal. Their passage was sealed with the explosion of bright white light.

  Now, what these four did not see as they made the next step of their journey, was the alligator, who would not be bested. He opened his jaws and released a furious growl as he followed Leilanni and Nita. The animal lunged into the swirling water and was promptly sucked down into the portal after them.

  Nor did they see the massive black bear who charged fearlessly into the waters just as the portal was closing. His body covered the entire width of the shrinking whirlpool as he landed atop. The magic of the portal reached up and wrapped around him, dragging him down with a flash of bright white light, just as with each of the others.

  With the magic now completely on the other side of the portal, the wind died down and the water slowed, regaining its previous state of calm. The hot sun once again beat down on the dirty swamp, which appeared as if nothing had ever happened there.

  The water, though thick and brown, reflected the overhanging tree branches and the clouds in the sky. Amidst the images reflected, had anyone been around to see it, they would have caught sight of the wavering image of Goldalynn, her eyes narrowed in confusion.

  ***

  Goldalynn frowned as she leaned over the crystal, watching her bears in human skin enter a portal. She didn’t know where they had gone yet, but she would. Who was this last bear? Had one of the three changed back suddenly? Had she mistaken seeing them all enter the portal?

  It felt like a trick of the eyes, an illusion.

  Regardless, on
e or three, she still needed to find them and it was only a matter of time until she did. The first thing she planned to do was attempt to return them to their bear forms. If there was a way to turn them into humans, there most certainly had to be a way to change them back.

  There had to be.

  When she wasn’t watching them with the crystal, she frantically searched through every magical book she could get her hands on, trying to find the appropriate spell. So far, she had come across nothing of the sort.

  She sat back and her smile faded. What if there wasn’t a way? Perhaps she should just find new bears. She was going to have to wait until the next blue moon to attempt to bring William back anyway, she had plenty of time to arrange for new bears.

  The magic wielded by the fat, tutu garbed man, was not a magic she knew. This was different, something stronger than hers. The little man was obviously not human. He was powerful and strong, yet weak in other ways.

  And the portal … in all her research, she had never seen anything that would allow a person to travel from place to place through magic. She would have seen it if it existed in this world.

  She rose, pulling her cloak tight against her, and strode slowly away from the table holding her crystal. Perhaps, she thought, the magic was not of this world. That would explain it.

  Goldalynn was not above believing there could possibly be other realms with magical creatures living in them. With magic, anything was possible. On the other hand though, she had never once learned or heard of anything like that except in the childhood fairytale books her mother had read to her.

  With that thought in mind, she lifted her hand to examine her wound. When she’d first cast the spell on the bears, her wedding ring had caused a burn on her ring finger. Her Grandmother’s healing salve healed it quicker than any ointment she could acquire from a market. However, a tender pink scar still lingered. Enough time had passed for the pain to dull, allowing the return of the ring to its proper place on her finger. Although it still stung, she was unwilling to discard the symbol of her unity to William.

  She wandered into her bedroom, flicked on a small lamp, and shed the cloak. Leaving it on the back of a chair, she fell onto her bed and closed her eyes. Her body was beginning to shut down on her, she had used far too much magic over the last couple of days. Most of what magic consisted of was energy from the body of the witch. She was basically a vessel from which the energy transferred, so the more one used, the weaker they became.

  The dark-haired Goldalynn turned onto her side on the soft bed. As slumber tried to take her, she opened her eyes, fighting to keep them open.

  She reached for the framed picture of her love sitting on the small round table beside her bed. Gently, she ran her fingertips across the glass that encased the photograph. William’s face stared back at her, full of love and hope. He hadn’t a clue his life would end before it had really even begun.

  Goldalynn used the back of her hand to wipe the wetness from her cheeks. She had never spoken a word about the curse to William. Perhaps she should have … maybe then he would have been more cautious. Perhaps he would still be with her today. She had been positive that their love was stronger, that they would be the first in the family to rise above the curse with the power of their love.

  Goldie

  “William?” She’d heard his voice! It was him.

  Goldie, this is not the way.

  Wonderful, now she was hearing things. William was dead, gone from this world. Hearing him speak to her was impossible, so the only option was that she was going insane from the grief.

  My love, don’t shut me out. Open your mind.

  Angry with herself for being so weak that she imagined William speaking to her, she did the exact opposite of what the voice requested and closed her mind to anything but the journey ahead of her.

  Even as her tears fell and her body shook with sobs, Goldalynn had resentment and hate eating at the place in her heart where love once dwelt. She knew not what would ever replace the blackness that grew each day like a spreading disease.

  She replaced William’s picture and the precious calm of sleep finally found her, but only after her pillow was soaked with tears. Her mind did not stay closed for long, though. She dreamt of her love and wandered through bittersweet memories of days that would never come again.

  Chapter Six

  Magic is a fickle thing and rarely does what one would expect. The portal they fell into held true to that rule as it opened above a large parking lot and unceremoniously, spit them out one at a time.

  Leilanni let out an oomph as her body thumped against the hot pavement. Immediately shoving her hands over her head, she pushed away from the asphalt and regained her footing. Animal instincts in overdrive, she quickly assessed the situation. Almost simultaneously, the gator landed a few feet away, and snapping his jaw shut, he spun to face her. A loud hiss warned her of his impending strike and she leapt to her left just as he lunged.

  Bending her knees, she put her hands out in front of her and began weaving side to side. “Shhh. You’re all right.” She soothed.

  A thud followed with an expulsion of breath behind her, let her know that another of her party had joined them.

  “Sheesh!” Nita’s voice exclaimed.

  Keeping her eyes locked on the gator, Leilanni motioned to Nita. “Get back and stay there.”

  “Okay? How did you get here before me?” Nita responded.

  Piece by piece the landscape around her came into view. Thick black stone with unusual yellow lines blanketed the area. A heavily wooded forest surrounded the outside of the stone. Off to her left, a human dwelling stood next to an algae-covered pond.

  The gator lunged again and simultaneously, the flutter of Uncle Butchy’s wings created a light breeze that ruffled the back of Leilanni’s hair.

  She dodged the reptile again and began to circle him, drawing closer with each step.

  “Oh, snap!” Uncle Butchy declared.

  The beast clamped its jaws with a loud thwack, swinging his tail in a wide arc.

  Leilanni reached out and slapped it on the nose, causing it to chomp at her again. For several seconds they moved in a macabre dance; circling, weaving, and dodging around each other. As Katya’s squeal announced her arrival and distracted the slimy beast, Leilanni jumped on its back and slammed its maw shut.

  “Whoa,” Nita whispered in awe.

  “Double whoa,” Katya chimed in.

  Uncle Butchy’s slack jaw tightened as he smiled. “Damn, girl. You got it goin on!”

  Cocking her head to the side, Leilanni glared at him. “A little help here? If I let go...”

  “Oh, yeah. Umm ... well...”

  Leilanni found no humor in the situation. “Butchy.”

  “Yes. Yes that’ll work,” he said to no one in particular and danced up to the pair. Shoving his hand in his magical bag of tricks, he tossed the sparkling dust across the gator’s head.

  Before anyone could react, Leilanni found herself sitting astride the back of a very large, completely naked, human male with her hands wrapped tightly around his jaw.

  “For crying out loud!” Leilanni leapt to her feet. “A little warning would have been nice.”

  Nita pressed her hands against her cheeks and shook her head. “Here we go again.”

  Every muscle and sinew in the man’s body bulged as he rose to his feet and looked around in wonder.

  Katya pointed at the man’s nether region and exclaimed, “I’m pretty sure that’s not a hoo-ha.”

  Butchy’s face turned bright red and in a blink, the man was dressed in dark-blue jeans, a black tee-shirt, and black boots.

  The man ran his hand through his sleek raven locks. His eyes opened wide as his hands ran over his heavily muscled chest. He looked questioningly at Uncle Butchy, exclaiming, “Crikey! What’s this now?”

  Giving a short bow, Butchy responded, “G’day, um ... Paul. Yes, that’s the perfect name for you. Paul it is. Welcome to the chaos.” Then m
otioning to each of the girls, he said, “This is Nita, Katya, and of course you’ve already met Leilanni. I’m Butchy, and I guess I’m your Fairy Goduncle now, too.”

  “My fairy what? What am I? How did I get here?”

  Leilanni issued a loud groan. “We don’t have time for this, we need to figure out where we are and what we’re doing here.”

  Butchy grinned and patted Paul’s bulging bicep. “In time, my precious. We’ll explain as we go.”

  “Go? What do you mean go?” Leilanni sputtered. “We can’t take him with us. He just tried to eat us! We can’t trust him.”

  “Right,” Nita and Katya chimed in simultaneously.

  Crossing his arms, Uncle Butchy spouted, “Of course he must go with us. We must need him or he wouldn’t be here. There’s no such thing as coincidence.”

  The three girls traded uncertain glances.

  Shrugging, Nita said, “Fine. He can come with us, but,” she paused and pointed at the new arrival, “Leilanni is watching you and you’ve surely discovered she’s not to be messed with.”

  Paul nodded his head in acceptance and flashed a smile at the blonde warrior.

  As if in reply to his offer of friendship, she moved her head from side to side and popped her neck. “No funny business ... Paul.”

  Butchy’s wings fluttered lifting him off the ground. “Well, okay then. Now that we’re sorted, let’s check out the cabin. There’s a reason why we landed here.”

  ***

  Leilanni ran her hand in a circle around the pane of glass in an attempt to clear months of grime from the surface. The crud smeared, leaving a maze of spiraling lines in its wake. Sighing, she glanced at the filth now covering her fingertips and eyeing her once-white apparel, wiped her hand on the leg of her pants. Pulling the sleeve of her jacket over her fingers, she tried again. This time, the debris clung to her coat, allowing a small opening to peer into.

  As soon as she pressed her face against the glass, the sound of wood rending boomed through the structure. Spinning towards the noise, she saw Paul standing in the now open doorway of the cabin grinning like a fool.