The Bearwalker's Daughter

by Beth Trissel

  ****

  So petrified was Karin by the ferocious beast, she thought she might sink back into unconsciousness on the floor while he tore unknowing at her throat unless Jack prevented him. But he only had a knife and tomahawk. No musket. As though one shot would be enough to halt this monster, if such a creature could be stopped. He must stand seven feet high, a foot taller than Jack.

  God help them. A mute cry went out from her very soul.

  In answer, a sense of power flowed into her as if from on high. Not so that she had the strength of angels, or could stand in the lion’s den without quaking, but enough to at least raise her head and look at the bear.

  He closed his mouth. Lowering himself on all fours, he regarded her with uncanny, almost human, appeal while nut-brown leaves swirled around his fur.

  She stared into his inscrutable gaze, then realization came and she knew. It was he who sought her, he who’d called her here. Shequenor. Not satisfied to appear in the fire, he’d burst open the door and engulfed the front stoop.

  “Why is he a bear?” Her voice was so tremulous she scarcely made herself heard above the rain-swept wind.

  Jack had one hand on his knife. The other gripped her shoulder. “Only in this form can he go where he wills.”

  “I’ve never heard of such.”

  “Few have. Fewer still ever witness bear walking.”

  “Yet he is a man?” she managed in a quaver.

  “Yes. A warrior honed of sinew and cunning, with eyes that flash fire, residing in a bark lodge deep in the Alleghenies where he waits. For you.”

  She sucked in a shuddering breath. Jack waved at the obstinate mound in the doorway as if to drive him from the cabin. “Shequenor, be gone!”

  He remained solidly between them and their only escape. This was no phantom bear to be passed through, but flesh and blood.

  “I know you care nothing for my feeble effort. But can you not see how frightened Karin is?”

  The tremendous beast nodded as if he understood Jack perfectly and had no intention of leaving.

  “Shequenor means, ‘The Rock.’ Even now, he’s the unmovable one.” Again, Jack tried to reason with him. “Let her go. She cannot bring back your beloved Mary.”

  With the frightful snarl of an animal baited beyond endurance, the beast lifted his great head and roared. The agony in his primal cry carried on the wind up through the tossing branches into the mist-shrouded ridges. More astonishing, the guttural cry pierced Karin. She knew what it was to suffer loss and felt the creature’s pain. Had grief consumed him as a sort of madness and driven him to assume this awful form?

  Not taking her eyes from his tortured gaze, she pushed herself up on her hands on the floor. The bear raised his paw as if beckoning. And she got to her feet.

  Jack kept a hold on her arm. “What are you doing?”

  She answered like one in a trance, and maybe she was a sleepwalker lost in a nightmare. “I pity his suffering and shall go speak with him.”

  “Oh, no. Pity him from here.”

  “He wants me to come.”

  Bring the necklace, Neetanetha, my daughter.

  A man’s deep voice throbbed in her mind, his mellow timbre heavy with the weight of sorrow. “He wants the necklace, Jack.”

  “I heard.”

  “In your head, like I did? That’s how you argued with him before.”

  Jack shrugged as though he couldn’t believe this anymore than she. And yet, the bear was before them, watchful, impatient, and waiting for her.

  “If you’re going to him, Karin, we’ll go together.”

  She bent in Jack’s grip to gather the fallen necklace in her trembling grasp. The stone’s pearly-blue luster glimmered in contrast with the haze enveloping the trees. The whiteness partly concealed the bear. She stepped shakily toward the man-beast, Jack beside her.

  Clenching her with one hand, he raised his knife with the other. “If you harm one hair on her precious head, I’ll run this through your black heart.”

  If you harm her I will do the same. I lose patience. Bring her to me soon.

  Jack gripped her harder. “How dare you ask that?”

  You know how.

  “Shequenor, I swear, you’re a vile demon.”

  I am your brother, NiSawsawh.

  “Some brother. I prefer Joseph,” Jack muttered.

  He will greet you with his fist. Come nearer, Neetanetha.

  “She’s near enough,” Jack argued.

  Let her come.

  “Not without me, she’s not.”

  The grizzly lifted his snout, sniffing in Karin’s direction as she tottered toward him on legs so shaky she doubted she could stand if Jack hadn’t supported her. Apparently satisfied with her scent, he lowered his snout. Jack, he didn’t bother with. His musk must be familiar to this most unlikely of brothers.

  Closer.

  Together, she and Jack crossed the remaining distance to the door. He halted her a few feet from the giant bear. “Stop here.”

  Not that this minute distance mattered if the creature chose to rip their hearts out. He didn’t. She stood looking into his eyes, transfixed. His hypnotic gaze held night forests in their black depths. Lifting paws that could slice her to pieces, he gently placed the pads on either side of her shoulders and took her measure, then blinked as if in pain, yet also in approval.

  He lowered his paws. You have your mother’s eyes, the color of rain and sky, of the wind-driven heavens.

  “Yes,” Jack agreed. “So fair she is.”

  She belongs not to you.

  “She shall, Shequenor. I swear it.”

  “Only if you prove yourself worthy. Her worth I see.

  “As do all. You will never take her from John McNeal.”

  The beast rumbled low in his chest. Find a way.

  Dismissing Jack with a shake of his snout, he spoke again to Karin. The necklace, Neetanetha.

  She shakily extended the glowing, claw-ringed orb. Place it around your neck.

  Taking the cord, she slipped it over her head. The lustrous stone nestled at the ruffled edge of her bodice. Its warmth heated her skin.

  Keep this with you always until you come to me.

  Everything in her quailed at the thought. She couldn’t possibly leave her family and journey to him. Not even with Jack. What, who, was he?

  The bear leaned forward and lightly touched his fist-sized nose to her forehead. He smelt of brambles and woodlands…a wild blend of earth, wind, and sky.

  Do not fear so. Rest now. Eat.

  His voice soothed her and she relaxed a little.

  He lifted his big head as if at a summons and listened. For a moment, his eyes returned to hers and probed her innermost being.

  Until our paths cross again. Tanakia. At that strange farewell, haze closed in around him and he was gone.

  A hawk couldn’t have flown more completely, or an owl glided out of sight in an instant. But Shequenor had. She stared into the vapor wondering if she’d dreamed it all and when she would awake.

  “And yet, the door is marked,” Jack said, as if he knew her thoughts, or also wondered if he’d imagined the encounter.

  Karin fingered the smooth gem and her hand tingled with its power. “Shequenor didn’t take the necklace, Jack.”

  “He has its mate. I saw at once the stones were of a kind.”

  “Likely some strange magic will happen when the two are rejoined.”

  “Then we will keep them apart.” Jack gestured at the stoop where moments before the bear had been. On the rain-slicked wood lay three plump newly-killed pheasants. “Shequenor provided our dinner.” Then he ground his teeth. “Damn him.”

  “What?”

  “The last time I saw him he said he would take pheasants before I killed a single one. And the devil’s right. I’ve lived mostly on squirrels and rabbits, an occasional deer.”

  A tremor passed through Karin. “Is he always right?”

  Chapter Seven

 
Bent over the trestle table, Jack sliced the browned pheasant with his knife. Succulent juice ran down from his fingers. He’d found a few pieces of cutlery on the shelves built into the log wall near the hearth, including the flat stone where he cut the roasted game. Wooden trenchers waited to serve up the steaming portions.

  This snug room and savory meat seemed the lap of luxury compared to the cold meals he’d eaten along wet trails, but Karin was accustomed to far better. And who could blame her? John McNeal had done right by his sacred granddaughter.

  God in heaven. Jack might even be forced to join ranks with the McNeal men to protect her. He ground out a sigh. It would mean betraying Shequenor, despised thought. Jack was no traitor, but did brotherly vows hold fast when one of them had run mad as his Shawnee brother surely had? Not only that, it would be mighty tough to band together with clannish males who wanted nothing more than to see his backside ride off into the hills. And that was under the best of circumstances. If he turned up dead, they’d not grieve for him.

  More compelling than anything, though, was the cadence pulsing inside, the insistent beat born of a deep-seated yearning Jack hadn’t even realized he harbored to have far more of a woman’s love than he’d ever known. From the dawn of time, this intoxicating rhythm had waylaid many a man, but he’d resisted the siren song. Until Karin.

  He envisioned himself enveloped in her warmth, romping laughter filled with her giggles, her seeking lips...turning over and over in each other’s arms molded against her smooth skin…her moans of ecstasy, his. What joy it would be to wake and find her curled by his side. And someday, having their children hurl themselves at him when he came home. Most of all, having a real home.

  For nearly as long as Jack could remember, he’d been a warrior, soldier, frontiersman, and mostly content with his lot. Now he was in a volatile state of upheaval. The essence of everything he desired was huddled on the bearskin before the hearth, her face carefully averted from the flames for fear they might spring to life again.

  This fearfulness wasn’t the mood he’d hoped to create. Again, he silently cursed Shequenor. Why must that old he-bear sire such a captivating daughter, and then warn Jack away from her? Unless he proved himself, Shequenor said. What did that mean?

  Karin lifted her bewildered gaze to his in search of answers he was hard-pressed to give. Still, it fascinated him how her eyes altered with her mood, bluer when happy, as she’d been during the ride here on Peki, while gray mixed in like pewter skies when she was troubled. Judging by the storm-veiled haze there now, she was mightily weighted. He wasn’t exactly easy in his mind either, but bent on avoiding Shequenor’s demand that he return with her in tow.

  What on earth should he do? First, feed them both. She was too distracted to bother about food. Then wait out the night here. Rain no longer pelted the cabin. Wind-scattered clouds had flown, reminding him of the thunderbirds Shawnee said beat their wings among the clouds to cause the booms in the storm, their flashing eyes, the streaks of lightning. Eerie light emanated from the necklace at Karin’s throat like some all-seeing eye.

  Keeping these thoughts to himself, Jack said, “The stream will still be too high to ford. There’s nothing for it than to stay put. I’m sorry.”

  She nodded, apprehension in her face at remaining one more moment in this place.

  There’d be the devil to pay upon their return to the McNeal homestead, and Jack was doomed either way. But he’d have to be senseless to complain. Letting himself feast on the vision before him, he settled on the thick fur beside her, a trencher in each hand. The fire blazed with fresh kindling. She didn’t really need the mantle she’d retrieved from the peg, yet she shivered, her eyes scouring every corner.

  “Here.” Jack extended the square platter.

  She absently took the trencher. “Do you think he’s really gone?”

  “Shequenor delivered his message. One hell of a way to do it. But yes, he’s gone.” Jack tore a piece from the meat and held it to her lips. “Taste this.”

  Karin obliged him by chewing the tidbit. That went better than he’d expected. He found himself thankful for the obedience she’d been taught by the McNeals and doubtless his mother. He could draw on this instinctive response if she regarded him as an authority.

  “It will be all right. I’m not sure how, but it will,” he assured her, pleased when she edged nearer until her shoulder pressed his side and her arm rested against his. The heat from her body penetrated the cloth between them and his warmed her in turn. The bulk of her wonderful hair had come loose and it spilled over her in an excruciatingly beautiful tide.

  “Eat,” Jack prompted her, fighting the impulse to run his fingers through the black wealth.

  She picked up a portion of the pheasant and bit into the meat, chewing with more relish. “Delicious.”

  “There. See?” He wolfed down his share, licking the juice from his fingers and chasing the meal with fiery swallows from the flask. He gave Karin a shot to steady her, then stood and ambled to the wall to tuck the flask in his coat pocket. He turned to see her wipe her mouth with the back of her hand.

  Brow furrowed, she asked, “What will we do?”

  Sitting back down beside her, he said, “First of all, swear to me you will not speak a word of what passed here to anyone.”

  Eyes pensive, she licked the end of her thumb. “Very well. I swear it. But how am I to explain the necklace?”

  “You’re not. Slip it into my pouch.”

  “But the bear—Shequenor—my father—said I’m to wear it always.”

  Here, her innate obedience was at odds with Jack. “If John McNeal, or any of your relations, sees it, we’re done for. At least, I am, for bringing you here and helping you find it in the first place.”

  A hesitant nod, and she said, “I wouldn’t want you to suffer on my account. You keep it for me then.”

  She lifted the necklace from around her neck. The stone glistened in a shimmer of opalescent blue and the claws seemed to scratch at the very air. She hurriedly slid it into his pouch. Had Jack’s imagination leapt to new heights or did the gem actually burn through the buckskin at his waist?

  Masking his incredulity, he smiled. “Good. If you must speak of the bear, simply say a large male attacked the cabin. That’s enough to explain your fright.”

  She set the trencher down. “But it’s not the truth.”

  “In a way, it is. Besides, who can grasp the truth?”

  “Not I. And yet, the creature was gentle to me.”

  “Yes, he was. So, you needn’t be so frightened.” Jack laid his vessel beside hers and circled his arm around her bundled form. He drew her nearer, gratified when she nestled against him. “I will guard you, Karin.”

  “From Shequenor?”

  “From anyone, but especially him if need be.”

  “Suffering drove him to black magic.” She spoke with the empathy of one seeing beyond herself deeply into another. “He’s more powerful than you, Jack.”

  “Then I must be stronger still.”

  “Or I must,” she said in a small voice.

  Jack nuzzled her cheek, a blossom beneath his lips. Her soft skin glided across his mouth. “Powerful, you are not.”

  “Is there not power in goodness? In God?”

  “Of course. I didn’t mean there wasn’t. It’s just that I’m not well acquainted with the Divine.”

  She gazed up at him. Glistening eyes bathed him in liquid silver. “Perhaps ’tis time you were.”

  “Lead on, sweetheart. You are the closest thing to an angel I’ve ever known.”

  She remained motionless, wondering.

  Everything Jack wanted in a woman poised only a breath away. God forgive him, he couldn’t help himself. Lifting his hand, he circled her cheek, smoothing her dewy skin. “You are so lovely,” he whispered, and trailed his fingers through her glorious mane. “Kiss me.”

  She stared at him for moments, minutes? He lost track of time, lost as he was in her. Then she
seemed to come to a decision. Her eyes drifted shut and she tilted her face nearer, nearer...the heavens opened and a heavenly choir poured celestial chords into his heart as she closed her lips over his waiting mouth. Rapture. And she’d come to him.

  Welcoming her with all the tenderness he had, he cradled her to him. Here was wealth beyond all riches. Harder he pressed her mouth, tugging at her lower lip and her upper, then reclaiming all, and she returned the heated pressure without protest.

  He caught her to him in a flood of molten fire. Could this be? What defined reality that Jack held such a woman in a passionate embrace?

  Back her head arched as he kissed her. Oh, how he tasted her sweet mouth, having care not to alarm her. Then he drew her down onto the bearskin, claiming her lips as he undid the cloak at her throat. The mantle fell away and she sighed as he buried his face in her neck, tasting the silken curve beckoning to him unbearably. Flowery perfume like a thousand blossoms tempted him even further and he kissed down her throat, spreading goosebumps over her flushed skin.

  Before him, the top of her tantalizing breasts curved above her bodice, damn near overpowering. He could unlace those stays in seconds and the petticoats, gone just as fast—the shift easily banished—then hold her naked in his arms as he’d dreamed.

  Hunger seized him like a wolf ravening his gut and his manhood swelled with an obdurate design of its own. Take her now. Take all! She’d not refuse him.

  No! He shook his head, trying to fight off this insanity.

  What was he thinking? How in heaven’s name could he ravish an angel?

  He drew back and looked at her rose-blushed mouth parted under the heat of his kiss. Her eyes opened, bluer than he’d yet seen...trusting, wanting.