by Sammie Joyce
My heart stopped as my breath got caught in my throat. Someone was most certainly staring at me.
A girl, no less, her long blonde hair streaming around her face as she gaped down with unabashed amazement.
Oh no, I thought, my heartbeat returning to fill my chest in an uneasy rhythm. Did she see me shift?
Even from the distance between us, I could see the awe in her eyes and I honed my hearing to detect her pulse. Instead, I heard the panicked cries of others, yelling her name.
“LOWELL! LOWELL, COME ON!”
That was even worse. There was more than one of them and they each sounded terrified.
Would they have been so alarmed merely to have merely seen a grizzly, I wondered. Possibly. But not at that distance. At that distance, a grizzly wouldn’t be a threat to them. They had another reason for being scared.
I threw my head back again, meeting her gaze steadfastly and unleashed a deep, sonorous growl meant to frighten her back and out of my eye range. To my utter shock, she remained in place, eyebrows rising in interest.
She’s not frightened in the least.
I didn’t know what to make of that, what that meant for me. In any case, I wanted her to go away, to leave me be. Anger replaced my curiosity as we held one another’s stare, both of us refusing to end this game of stare chicken. What was she doing up there anyway? This was a special place, not a location for a bunch of kids to make a mess and destroy. Gods knew, they had certainly done enough of that. Our lands had been ravaged for centuries by nosy kids just like these.
“LOWELL! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!” a girl screamed.
Suddenly, a hand reached out and pulled the blonde back from the ledge, finally breaking the gaze between us.
Bizarrely, I felt sense of loss when she disappeared from sight but I dismissed it immediately. I had no interest in this girl unless she had witnessed something she wasn’t supposed to have seen. I stood, watching the spot from where she’d disappeared, wondering what to do next.
If she’d seen something, I couldn’t just let her go. I’d have to do something about it—for my safety and everyone else’s. My paws curled around the bank of the river, as if they were reluctant to move.
What is wrong with you? I yelled at myself. Go find them before it’s too late!
Without giving myself a chance to reconsider what I’d decided, I bolted off, determined to catch the girl and keep her quiet.
3
Lowell
If the din on the way to the Landing had been loud, it was unbearable on the way back. I couldn’t differentiate between the pitches and tones, everyone almost screaming at once as they recounted what we’d seen. There didn’t seem to be distinguishable voices, only a loud shouting that bounced into my head from all angles.
Madison had barely managed to shove me into the car, once again sandwiching me in the backseat before Alex squealed out of his parking spot. In seconds of the doors closing, we were racing out of the woods. I was slightly concerned that he might drive into a tree, but I had to remind myself that he knew his car and the roads much better than me, even in his fear.
He knows these woods but he doesn’t know what it was we just saw, does he?
I felt a shiver shoot through me and I was surprised to realize that it wasn’t alarm but excitement.
“Okay,” Hailey whimpered. “I know that we didn’t just see that, right? I mean, we were just high, right?”
“Oh no,” Parker interjected. “That was real. I saw it and you saw it and we all saw it. There’s no denying it.”
“There is just no way,” Maddy breathed, shaking her head in disbelief. “No way. This is group hysteria.”
She was trying to keep her cool but I could hear the waver in her voice. In his nervousness, Parker continued rambling, not realizing that everyone else was still speaking around him. I almost felt sorry for him and the others. They were genuinely frightened by what they’d seen but I was feeling exactly the opposite way. If anything, I was resentful of Maddy for having pulled me away. I would have liked to have seen what the bear was going to do next. In the end, I suppose it was better than being left in the middle of nowhere without a vehicle, because I had no doubt if I hadn’t moved that they would have left me there.
Still, I wished I’d had more of an opportunity to see what else the bear creature could do and if he’d change back again. Had he done it before? He certainly seemed to have done it with ease and grace. Watching him fish had stolen my breath away. I don’t know why he’d seen me so suddenly when I’d watched him for almost a solid two minutes before he whipped his head around. I wondered if the others’ screams had something to do with it.
Yeah, he’s definitely done that before. And he knows those woods and that water too. He’s from around there. I wonder if I can find him again.
The idea filled me with renewed purpose and I stared out the window, my mind looking for landmarks so that I might find my way back out there without the buzz-killing kids. Suddenly, I remembered why I hadn’t wanted to go with them in the first place. In those moments, they seemed so much younger than me and not just because they were scared. It was a problem I’d found I’d had with a lot of kids my age, not just here in Alaska.
The other students simply weren’t as worldly as me. Not that it was their fault—after all, what other kid has been shipped off to three continents in ten years for school? In this instance, however, I wished they could appreciate the uniqueness of their experience without being tainted by childish emotions. Real or not, the bear wasn’t going to hurt us—certainly not from the distance between us.
Again, I had to remind myself that they were kids. We all were.
We’ll all be old enough to vote soon, I thought irrelevantly but somehow that didn’t make my friends any older from a maturity standpoint. I knew I’d come back for sure and investigate this more. It was the most exciting thing that had happened to me since I got to Alaska.
This might be the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to you, I corrected myself. And that’s saying a lot.
Considering I’d already lived in four very different countries, I was making a bold statement, but really, a guy who became a bear? There was no such thing…was there?
If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it either, but there we were, speeding away from the scene like Alex was terrified the beast was on his tailpipe.
On a whim, I turned my head to look out behind the rear windshield, my heart hammering with expectation but of course I was disappointed. There was nothing but a thick of trees in our wake.
No massive grizzly panting and chasing after us with saliva dripping down his fangs. I was morbidly displeased, my unhappiness growing with each mile we gained.
“Who was that guy?” Alex wanted to know when the din finally settled enough for me to hear his voice. “I mean the guy, not the bear. We know everyone around here, don’t we? I didn’t recognize him. He didn’t even look slightly familiar. He doesn’t go to Novak, does he?”
I thought of what the tanned and attractive man had looked like before he’d become the beast. His bare skin had glistened in the sun, boasting several tattoos but the distance between us had been too great for me to determine what they were specifically. Even so, I had been certain that he had looked right at me. I thought we’d shared a long stare.
Or maybe that was just wishful thinking.
“M-maybe he’s one of those mountain men,” Hailey breathed, her voice shaky. “You know, the ones who live in the backwoods and have bunkers and an arsenal…”
For the first time since racing away from the Landing, the entire car fell silent and I embraced the quiet with gratitude. While my headache had miraculously disappeared, I could still feel the dull ache at the base of my skull. It wouldn’t take much to make it come back.
“Should we go to the Sheriff?” Madison mumbled. “Tell him what we saw?”
Parker scoffed at the question and Alex added his own snort.
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“No one is going to believe it,” Parker countered, shaking his head until his glasses slipped over his nose. I had to admit that I felt a burst of relief at his argument. I didn’t want to share this incredible secret with anyone, even if they did believe us. There was some perverse pleasure in knowing something that no one else in the world could know for sure.
Werebears do exist!
I certainly didn’t want to say anything, at least not until I could learn more about this mysterious creature.
I wonder if he’s alone out there.
The thought made me a little sad.
“Are you okay?” Maddy asked suddenly, nodding toward me. I bobbed my head and offered her a half-smile.
“Yeah,” I replied. “Just thinking.”
“We’re all thinking,” Parker grumbled. “I think we should stop thinking. I just want to forget that we saw that…thing.”
I wasn’t sure I like the categorization but I kept my mouth closed, absorbing all their words in spite of my desire to shut them out.
“You know this isn’t the first time someone has seen something like this,” Alex murmured. His voice was so low that I had to strain to hear him.
“What?” I demanded, blinking at the unexpected words. “What do you mean?”
“Alex, don’t be dumb,” Hailey interjected. “Those are all urban legends.”
I was beyond intrigued and stretched my chest forward across the seatbelt I’d somehow managed to enlist upon our abrupt departure.
“Tell me about them,” I encouraged but to my surprise, no one seemed to want to.
“What’s the big deal?” I pressed insistently. “What are the stories?”
“It’s like Big Foot or the Loch Ness Monster,” Parker finally explained, sounding embarrassed. “We’ve had sightings in these parts about things like that.”
“Sightings of people becoming bears?” I asked dubiously. It was the first I was hearing of it since I’d come to Alaska.
“And other animals,” Hailey added evasively, shooting Alex a look as she gnawed on her lower lip. The driver tightened his hands around the wheel.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know,” Hailey sighed and I could tell she wished she hadn’t offered anything. “I mean, up until now, it’s all been a kooky theory. Only people with tinfoil hats come up with crap like this.”
“Says the girl who thinks the bear-guy is living in a bunker with an arsenal,” I barked sarcastically.
All eyes were on me and I was stunned at my own tone. I had no idea why I felt so protective of this creature but I didn’t want to think of him as some odd freak. How could having an ability like that be shunned? If anything, it was a miracle of biology and needed to be studied and understood.
I sank back against the seat and clamped my mouth closed, eyes trained back out the window. I had no reason to defend this strange beast and the look on everyone’s face told me I was reacting badly. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to apologize.
If you say dumb things, expect dumb responses, I thought but at least I kept that one to myself.
The sun was beginning to slip down over the horizon as we exited the backwoods and found ourselves on a road leading into town.
“Let’s just keep this between us tonight,” Parker suggested. “I think we can all agree that we don’t want to be riddled with unnecessary questions tonight, right?”
His emphasis was unmistakable. We didn’t want to be riddled with questions when we had all been smoking pot. Someone was bound to figure it out and we’d be dismissed as idiots.
There was a mutter of agreement among them but I had already managed to tune them out. My mind was back on that cliff, replaying the scene in slow-motion. There had been nothing wrong my eyes or theirs. We knew what we’d seen, even from the distance between us and the pot we’d smoked. After all, what were the chances that four of us all had the same hallucination? That wasn’t the way marijuana worked after all.
All the evidence was leaning toward what I’d already known from the beginning—that the shifter bear was real.
And now I wanted to find out everything I could about him.
I cast my car mates a sidelong look and swallowed my thoughts. It was going to be my private quest. I didn’t need a bunch of kids dragging me down.
4
Davis
My paws flew against the foliage, kicking up leaves and dirt along the way, and I barely noticed the spray of pebbles at my backside as I moved. Normally I would have taken a path of more resistance, hiding my huge body in the trees, but time was of the essence right now, and I had no choice but to use the beaten paths as I could find them.
I had no real way of knowing which way the group had gone but I allowed my instincts to guide me and I headed toward the only road I knew that lead to that particular overlook. Those were my woods, after all. No one knew them better than me. If those kids thought they were going to get away, they had another thing coming. They had a bear on their trail, one with a nose better than a bloodhound.
I didn’t remind myself that the kids barely seemed younger than me. If I’d had to guess, I would have placed them as freshly graduated but it had been few years since I’d completed my schooling and mine had been a much different affair. Our kids didn’t look like other kids.
Now my school was my art, one that I worked at every day.
Urging myself to move faster, I could almost hear my father’s infuriated tone in my head.
“How many times have I told you not to shift out in the middle of the day, Davis? You’re careless, reckless. If we’re caught, it will be all your doing! You’ll have no one to blame but yourself for this!”
“Haven’t been caught yet,” I’d always retort smugly.
And here we were.
Gods, I can’t tell him about this. He’ll have kittens and I’ll never hear the end of it.
My claws closed in around the ground and I climbed up against the escarpment, digging in solidly as I moved. The motivation of the tongue lashing I was going to get was enough to put an extra spring in my step. I would have preferred to have run all the way, but this was simply faster in the interest of time. I wasn’t the fastest climber but it was still quicker than running full speed in my bear body.
Panting, I yanked myself fully to the top where I had last seen the blonde and paused to look around. The faint scent of marijuana lingered in the air and I felt a flash of hope at the smell. If I had been seen by the girl, maybe it could be dismissed by what she had been smoking.
Assuming she’d been party to it in the first place. I have no idea if she was smoking too.
The truth was, I had no idea what to expect. All I knew was that I needed to find them and learn what they knew. It wasn’t the first time I’d been seen, of course. I had encountered enough townsfolk in the woods in both my human and bear form, but this might have been the first time I’d been caught doing the physical act of shifting.
If I was right, the question now was, what was I going to do about it? A slight chill passed through me, even though I tried to pretend the thought didn’t bother me. I would need to cross that bridge when I came to it.
If I came to it.
For all I knew, my imagination was just working overtime and the girl had seen absolutely nothing.
At least that was my hope.
But if she truly hadn’t seen anything, why had she there so mesmerized by me? Would she have been so awestruck just to see a grizzly? In those parts, we were fairly commonplace. Most people would avoid eye contact with a dangerous animal but there she was, eying me from the ledge like she knew all my secrets.
Another shiver coursed through me but this one was decidedly more pleasant than the last. I was losing my train of thought.
Maybe she’s not from around here, I reasoned, continuing with this pointless game of “what if.” It accomplished nothing and I was no closer to finding the kids than I had been five minutes ago.
I continued to asc
end, ducking through the woods through a short cut down along the escarpment and when the trees began to thin again, showing the road, I slowed. I hoped I’d outrun them but even with my speed, I wasn’t a car, driven by a scared teenager.
All I could hear was the gentle tweet of the songbirds, chirping back and forth to one another and a deep sense of worry began to overcome me. I was sure I’d missed them by now. I could only have been a couple minutes ahead at most. Now what was I going to do?
I thought about returning to the community and telling my family and the others what I’d done but that notion was the least appealing one yet. It wasn’t merely the chiding I’d get that bothered me—it was the knowledge that I’d endangered everyone by not heeding their endless warnings about shifting so publicly.
On the other hand, they needed to be forewarned, didn’t they? If there was a chance that someone was going to come looking, everyone needed to stay in their mortal skin and be extra diligent—because of me. If I didn’t warn them and they were caught shifting…
I didn’t need to finish my own thought. I was in a real mess here and I couldn’t see the easy way out for once. I smothered a grimace, falling back on my hind legs to stare out into the road. I had no choice. I needed to go home and—
The sound of a vehicle approaching stopped my thoughts mid-sentence and I ducked fully into the brush, my black eyes following the noise. My pulse quickened and I exhaled in a rush of breath when I saw a dark red sedan barreling down the slope, crammed with five people inside. At first, the realization that there were that many of them made my heart jump into my throat. This was worse than I thought. I’d anticipated three, but five people had potentially seen me shift? I was never going to hear the end of this from my sleuth or the other shifters. The faces inside the car were a blur but I caught the distinctive flash of blonde hair in the back seat and as the car whipped around a hairpin turn, disappearing, I saw something that made me exhale with relief.
Okay, I thought with some contentment. Okay, that’s good.
