by Alyse Zaftig
Rose looked down the road but couldn’t see any sign of anything. She was mid-way up one of the gentle mountains with walls of trees and brambles to either side and a road that was entirely ankle-deep mud. After five years of drought, the rain in California was making itself known and the earth was not prepared. If she walked east, back towards civilization and Poppy Valley and Ronald Parker, she’d find people within fifteen miles and maybe Ronald would let her live if she handed over what he wanted. Maybe.
If she walked west, it was into the unknown. It could be thirty miles until she saw another soul. She could hit the ocean and the coastal roads and still be hours from people. Could she survive walking all night in the freezing rain? Well, she had a protein bar and a road flare. She could do anything.
Maybe it wasn’t the smartest decision, but the unknown was still better than seeing Ronald Carter’s beady eyes again.
Rose tightened her jacket around her and huddled under her umbrella. With one hand she gripped the tiny flashlight and trudged off down the muddy road west. She kept to the edge of the road, not because she was afraid of passing traffic—because there wasn’t any—but because the roots of the trees provided a firm footing, even if they almost seemed to grab at her feet. She had to be careful. Walking in the mud would suck her shoes right off and chill her to the bone, but walking on the twisty uneven roots could lead to a broken ankle. There was no good path.
The rain pounded harder as she made her way, winding along the mountain roads, desperate for some light in the darkness. Before each new curve opened before her, she closed her eyes a moment and hoped for a luxurious vacation home full of tourists swigging white wine and watching the hungry storm from the safety of a roofed jacuzzi.
Poppy Valley was full of little tourist rentals and every single one seemed to come with a white wine fridge and a roofed jacuzzi. It was probably a town law. Probably Ronald Carter had written it himself, alongside the law that said every city employee was a plaything for him to abuse.
But the land she was in now, somewhere south of Bearfield and north of the Russian River basin hadn’t been colonized by tourists yet. It was undeveloped and unclaimed and virginal.
The moon was swallowed up by the storm and the low rumble of thunder made Rose’s belly clench.
“This would be a very stupid way to die,” she said. But the trees didn’t say anything back.
She’d been walking for hours, with the rain soaking into her pants and socks and shoes, when she came upon a path leading away from the road, deeper into the forest. She almost tripped when she saw it. There was a mailbox on a post. It was rusted and crumpled in on itself. But it was a sign that a home was near. Shelter was near. The path was a driveway, dipping down the mountain rather steeply and vanishing into the space between trees.
Rose had a choice—she could stay on the road and see what else lay ahead and maybe run across a park ranger or an emergency phone if she was lucky. Or she could walk down the abandoned driveway and find whatever shelter she could until the storm stopped. It would give Ronald a chance to catch up with her, but if she kept trudging along in the wet darkness she’d catch her death of a cold. It wasn’t much of a choice at all.
The little flashlight struggled to illuminate the darkness. It was as if the trees devoured the light. But still, she turned from the main road and walked, step by step, down the driveway. Her feet crunched against gravel and the rain poured down around her like a lazy waterfall, spilling off the road. The canopy of trees above deflected almost all the rain with a hushed thirst.
The path wound down the mountain in a series of switchbacks for almost half a mile, terminating at a large dark home. It was a large farmhouse, built around the turn of the century as best as she could tell. It stood two stories tall and had a large wraparound porch. Holes gaped in the roof and the windows looked to all be either boarded up or smashed out. The front door had two-by-fours nailed across it, marked with deep slashes that looked like they belonged to some wild animal.
Rose had been hoping for warmth or at very least, some place dry, but this home looked like anything but. It was half-rotten and foreboding and if she hadn’t been so tired and cold and hungry, she would have turned away.
Instead she walked around to the back of the house. Maybe there would be a kitchen door she could sneak through? Maybe there would be canned food or a dry room or even the makings of a fire? She clutched her hope hard to her chest because it was all she had left.
The farmhouse was surprisingly deep. It had suffered many additions, performed inexpertly, so that it’s once handsome silhouette now sprouted a hodgepodge of extra rooms built with little care for the history of the house. Rose suspected that in the daylight it would be a motley thing, like an old jacket that was more patch than fabric.
The porch boards under her feet creaked and groaned, but they held firm. The porch’s roof, too, kept the rain off her which only made her feel colder and more chilled.
How had she come to this point? Just yesterday she had been the lone librarian of Poppy Valley, running their one-room library on a shoestring budget with an army of elderly volunteers and creative fundraising techniques. And now here she was, marooned in the vast wilderness, freezing to death outside an abandoned farmhouse.
If only Ronald Carter hadn’t taken a shine to her.
If only he hadn’t been so determined to have her.
If only he hadn’t found out she was a virgin.
If only she had said yes to his disgusting demands.
She would have hated herself, true, but she would have been alive and dry.
Behind the farmhouse stood another smaller structure. It looked like a guesthouse or perhaps an in-law—the kind of tiny house people stuff grandparents into. The roof was intact. The windows weren’t broken. Rose’s heart leapt when she saw it.
Popping up her umbrella, she ran across the muddy expanse between the farmhouse and the guest house and nearly cried with happiness when she found the door unlocked.
She didn’t see the eyes watching her from the farmhouse. She heard the rumbling growl that echoed from its depths, but she took it for thunder, not the warning sounds of a furious animal.
Rose barged into the little cottage—it was no bigger than her bedroom back home—and found it dry and pleasant. A bed huddled in one corner opposite an old wood stove. And the rest of the place was taken up by a tiny kitchen and the smallest bathroom she’d ever seen. It was unadorned, save for shelves of books that circled the ceiling, just above her head.
Beside the stove was a neat stack of firewood in a basket. Would anyone care if she used it? Of course not. The place was abandoned. And anyway, without heat she would die of exposure. Rose told herself she had no choice, as she got a fire going and stuffed wood into the stove. The dry old logs took the flame eagerly, flaring up and giving their heat and light to her. Rose stripped off her wet clothes and arranged them near the stove. “Get dry by morning, my pants, and we’ll find a way out of here,” she said.
Beside the bed was a chest and Rose raided it for clothing, finding an old nightgown that smelled of crisp cedar and a thick quilt that had been made with love. Once she was warm and dry, she ate her protein bar and poked around the kitchen. The fridge had no power, of course, and was empty. But beside it she found a wine rack with two bottles bearing dates from the eighties. One red and one white beckoned her. She decided to drink the white, since no one would miss it, and so with her belly full of soy protein isolate and well-aged wine, she fell asleep before the fire and dreamed of running down muddy roads.
She didn’t see the monstrous form that peered in the windows. She didn’t see the hate that burned in his eyes. But her dreams grew troubled in his presence nonetheless.
Chapter 2
It was a troubled night for Liam. He never did well when the moon was full. It seemed to bring out the worst of the beast inside him. And he didn’t need any help in that area. To make it worse, a powerful storm had settled overhead, blowi
ng in from the north and bringing with it freezing rain and a wind that shook his tattered home to the foundation.
Liam hated the rain. Water belonged in rivers full of ripe salmon or in the mountain lakes where the sweetest berries grew. Water should know its place, he decided and its place was most definitely not soaking his fur to the bone.
If he’d been a real bear then thick oils would have made the rain run off him without trouble. If he’d been a man, then he could have used an umbrella or a raincoat. But he was neither. He was Liam Half-Bear, forever cursed and miserable when wet.
He’d slept most of the day away again, curled up in the corner of his living room in a pile of old blankets and ripped up cushions. His belly had been full, yes, he recalled that much. He’d caught one of the rare tule elk that strode the high ridges and its meat had been sweat and delicious once cooked over a fire. He’d shared the kill with a mountain lion and left the offal for the ravens. It was the least he could do. He knew his presence placed a burden on the local animals. He ate too much, too often. So he tried to be mindful and to give back when he could. But the beast in him was a jealous, ravenous thing, and sharing wasn’t always easy.
Had he dreamed? He suspected he had. His mind had the lingering feeling of remembering, though the actual memories were lost to him. It was like coming into your home and sitting on a chair only to find it still warm from the previous occupant. He couldn’t touch those old memories, but he knew they were there.
It had been so long since the curse took him. Decades, he guessed, though his bear half found the idea of time absurd. There was no such thing as time, the bear decided. There were seasons, yes, but time was a circle. There was eating in the spring and feasting in the summer and then the slowness of autumn that gave way to the slumber of winter. And that was all. Life began anew every spring. And if the man called each of these cycles a year and tried to count them—well, let him. It hurt nothing to let the man half of him clutch his odd ideas like a handful of berries too beautiful to eat. In time, the ideas would fade and the man would grow silent and Liam Half-Bear would be a beast again, tromping through the woods.
Liam sat in his home and listened to the sound of the rain and seethed. He wanted to go out to see his land. The longer he sat in the house, the more his thoughts returned to him. And with the thoughts came anger and sadness and rage. He needed to leave before that happened. The old farmhouse couldn’t take any of his furious outbursts. There were few windows left.
So even though it made him soaked and miserable, Liam Half-Bear went out into the storm to take in the air. Was it because being sodden gave him something to focus his misery on? It was a concrete thing, an actual thing, not the ephemeral regrets that taunted him as he slept. He would rather be mad at the storm than mad at himself, he supposed.
The woods in the rain were devoid of game. Every animal, it seemed, was smarter than he was, and hid in their burrows as the downpour lashed the land. The soil had been dry and yes, he had worried that this year the berries would be even fewer and tarter than last, but this amount of rain was preposterous. It was wasteful. The man inside him tried to talk about droughts and storm cycles, but the bear ignored his man-words. “These things happen,” he bear-splained. “There is no use giving every thing under the sun its own name.”
It was that time between winter and spring. He’d woken from his hibernation but there was little to eat that didn’t run on four legs. It would be days before the strawberries were delicious and he forced himself to hold back. They were green now, with some turning white. They would taste bitter and terrible. So instead he found one of the beehives he’d been saving for a rainy day.
The bear half of Liam had to acknowledge that the man had some decent ideas. They’d cultivated gardens for eating. Damned rivers to increase the salmon population and made a map of every honey-dripping bee hive within twenty miles. This was all the man’s doing. He liked looking to the future and making plans and talking about time—all things the bear detested. How could they be two sides of the same soul, when they were so different?
Had they always been so different? The bear didn’t think so. It was more likely that the witch’s curse that trapped him forever as a half-bear had driven a wedge through the center of his heart. And like a tree that is split by lightning yet continues to grow, so did the two halves of Liam’s soul grow until neither resembled each other. In being confined by the witch as a half-bear and half-man, a duality had developed. If their flesh couldn’t have two shapes, their heart would.
The walk to the bee hive took an hour. One hour of furred feet squelching in the mud, of rain pelting the tarp that covered his head and upper back, of the probing winds chilling every inch of his skin. But it was worth it.
There was an old oak that lived even though its chest was hollow. The man called this the Honeytree even as the bear scoffed. The hollow in the tree was heart-shaped and huge, nearly as big as Liam himself and a proud old colony of bees had taken up inside it, crafting the hive to end all hives. The tree was technically in the Ravenswood, where the raven shifters of Rook’s Roost used their dark magic to twist trees into unnatural shapes and the arcane energies they poured into the ground made all the plants grow larger and more wild.
The raven’s tricks had changed the bees, too, giving them unnaturally long lifespans and causing them to grow as large as a man’s eye. Stealing honey from the hollow oak had been a goal of his for years, but he also enjoyed not getting stung all over by angry bees with stingers the size of pencils.
Tonight though, tonight was a night for foolhardiness and sweetness on his tongue.
Bees would not—could not—fly in the rain. Not even the swollen braggarts of the honeytree hive could manage that trick. So Liam Half-Bear ate his fill that night, slashing open the hive with his clawed hands and devouring a bellyful of the sweet, magical honey. The bees buzzed at him and tried to fly, but the storm kept them away and Liam laughed in their angry insectoid faces.
Even so, they’d stung him a dozen times around his mouth as he ate. The pain and swelling was worth it though, for the taste of their honey. It was light and creamy with flavor notes of cinnamon and apple and a hint of something dark and earthy in the aftertaste that made him crave more just so he could understand it.
But after eating all he could and after the final bee stung his tongue with its absurdly large stinger, he gave up and went home, trudging through the miles of muddy forest on the way.
There were no scents in the air but the homey petrichor of the rain and the redolent stink of the mud. Liam missed being a man then, and being able to turn off his sense of smell. Sometimes it was just too much. His face ached from the stings and his tongue had swelled up comically large in his mouth, but still he could taste the honey on it so all was as well as well as could be.
He thought nothing could sour the mood of his victory over those arrogant bees, but the storm proved him wrong, and over the course of twenty miles his good cheer faded replaced with a murderous grumpiness that wished for something large and bold to war with.
Finally, he found his way back home, squeezing through the back door of the house and leaving a trail of mud and water on the floor of his destroyed kitchen. He considered trying to start a fire to get warm. Matches were difficult with his half-bear hands, but on a night like this—with the chill creeping into his bones—it would be worth the frustration. He could go into the cottage, he knew. It was always warm and dry in there. And the stove would be easier to light than the half-broken fireplace in his house. But no—the cottage was off-limits. It had belonged to her, his lost love. The name he couldn’t recall and the face he couldn’t see, except in his dreams. He couldn’t enter that cottage until he was a man again. Not until he deserved it.
A sound came to Liam then. It was so rare that it took him a moment longer than it should have for him to place it. It was a human voice—a woman’s voice—and she was talking to herself.
Fury raged through him then, bor
n entirely from the bear’s portion of his soul. How dare someone enter his den? Hadn’t human women already taken enough from him? What more did they want?
The last time a human had come unannounced to the house, it had been a developer looking to tear down his home and build something new and vulgar in its place. What would this one want?
He peered out a broken window with blazing eyes and watched her carefully. She was a curvy thing, ill-dressed for the weather and smelling of fear. She did not seem like a threat at all, but Liam had been fooled before. The man half of him tried to calm the bear, but the moon was full that night and the man could sooner have calmed a river by speaking to it. Suddenly, the pain of the bee stings became more acute and the miserable wetness that hung from him grew heavier. His rage blossomed. Here was a thing he could fight. It would be little contest and he didn’t want to kill her, of course. But to see her face when he roared would please him. To watch her round butt shake as she ran away in terror would also please him.
The intruder circled his home and then, in a terrible affront, entered the cottage.
The man in him tried to hold the bear back, but it was no use. He was all beast that night.
On silent feet he crept out of the house and stalked over to the cottage. He would break the door in. He would drag her out with his teeth around an ankle and hurl her down the road. How dare she enter the cottage? Couldn’t she tell it was meant for someone else? He’d kept it perfect, so that when the she he couldn’t remember returned, she would be pleased with him.
Liam stormed over to the window of the cottage to take one more look at his prey before acting, and witnessed her sitting on the bed, wrapped in a blanket and sobbing.
The sight made Liam stop cold. She wasn’t some scrapper come to steal his house. She wasn’t a thief. She was a person, alone and scared and beautiful, seeking shelter in the night.
