Her ToyBear

by Bonnie Burrows

  It was a secluded place where only bear shifters and the few humans that they trusted ever went. The Glade was reachable by a long hike along forest trails, down hills enclosed and shrouded with trees. After a properly fortifying breakfast, it was there they would take Wesley. He would strip naked, step out into the Glade, and let his bear self take him over completely. In his Ursan form, he would go into the forest. At the end of his Calling Time, he would emerge again to resume his human life.

  Vernon and Jocelyn again reminded Jennifer that the majority of Ursans came through the Calling Time successfully. Only rarely did a werebear answer the Calling and not return. They themselves had been through it all their lives. As Wesley was their son, made of the same stuff as they, with a heart pumping their blood in his veins, he had come through this time twice already. They expected him to return, and so, they insisted, should Jennifer. Accepting their words, Jennifer resolved to be her bravest self in the hours to come. And Wesley gave her hand a squeeze under the table for support.

  _______________

  At the end of the trail, the forest canopy and underbrush gave way to a broad, open, sunlit place of grass and flowers, about as wide as the football fields where Wesley had played in college. He took Jennifer by the hand, and with his parents behind them, they stepped out into the Osborn Glade.

  What greeted them was like a sight out of some fantasy artist’s painting, Jennifer thought. It was a pastoral, serene tableau of nature through which butterflies flitted, lighting on flowers and wafting away, while here and there stood couples and small groups of people.

  In these clusters of figures, certain individuals stripped off their clothes and handed them to the ones accompanying them. Kisses and hugs were exchanged between the clothed people and the naked ones before the naked ones squatted or stooped down in the grass and transformed into bears.

  With roars of farewell, the morphed Ursans lumbered off and disappeared into the darkness of the forest on the far side of the Glade. Their human companions—lovers, spouses, family members, and friends—watched them go, accepting the needs of the Calling Time and looking forward to their return. Or hoping for their return, as the case may be. Again, Jennifer reminded herself that most of these people, probably all of them, would soon be welcoming their loved ones back.

  Then she turned to Wesley and said in her bravest voice, which belied the dread churning in her stomach, “So…it’s your turn now.”

  He squeezed her hand again. “My turn. And you’re gonna be here waiting for me.”

  She nodded, stifling a sob that she felt welling up inside her. “I will,” she said.

  Knowing that Jennifer could melt into tears at any moment and not wanting to see it, Wesley pulled her close. They wordlessly held each other there at the edge of the Glade until Jennifer sensed a feeling coming over Wesley. She felt his body turn feverishly hot, his arms and legs shaking, his breath speeding up.

  With a grunt, he broke the embrace and held her at arm’s length, breathing heavily. Jennifer saw on his face the same alternately flushed and pale expression as before. He looked as if he would lose his breakfast in the grass at any moment. Now, as then, she could hardly stand to see him this way, but she forced herself to stay strong. He needed her to stay strong.

  “Wesley, honey,” his mother said, “let’s get you out of those clothes.”

  With his mother’s help, Wesley peeled everything off his trembling body. He handed his shirt, jeans, and briefs to Jennifer, while Jocelyn picked up his socks and hiking shoes. When at last he was naked—now showing that his entire body, not just his face, was in that same state of alternating redness and pallor—he rasped out, “I’m gonna change. I’m changing. I’m…UUUHHHRRROOOOWWWW…”

  In mid-utterance, the humanity disappeared from his voice. In the next moment, he sank to his knees and then fell onto his hands, and a moment after that, he no longer had either knees or hands. The young human distorted and shifted, black hair breaking out from the now-ursine head to the paws and talons that had been his fingers and toes, and he was once again a bear.

  The transformed Wesley moved his head from side to side as if trying to shake off a hangover and grunted and roared as he settled into his non-human shape. Jennifer gulped, feeling as numb to see him this way now as she was terrified the first time. She didn’t dare let herself feel her fear head-on, using calm and reason—or at least the appearance of them—to deflect them.

  Vernon stepped over to the bear and touched and patted the black-furred head. “Go on now, son,” he said. “We’ll see you in a day or two. There’s our boy.” The bear lifted his head and roared at Vernon.

  “Take care out there, darling,” said Jocelyn, bending over and kissing the top of the bear’s head where Vernon had petted him. Wesley nuzzled his mother’s face affectionately.

  Then the bear turned toward Jennifer. His ursine eyes fixed on her, he loped over beside her and put his snout on her stomach, rubbing at her, asking her to touch him. Jennifer dropped Wesley’s clothing in the grass and put her hands on either side of his neck, sinking her palms and fingers into his fur.

  She wondered how she could ever have feared him. The way he now rubbed his bear face into her stomach now reminded her of all those nights when he had buried his man-boy face in her bosom when they were together in her bed. The body was different, but the love and affection of her Wesley were still so much the same.

  “I know you’re coming back, Wesley,” she said. “Just…do what you need to do and remember I’m waiting.”

  Pressing his bear face and neck against Jennifer’s body, Wesley made a low, soft growl that may well have been a bear’s way of saying, I love you. Then, slowly, he backed away from her and turned to face the far side of the Glade.

  Jennifer gathered up the clothing she had dropped but never took her eyes off him. She stood up again and was hardly aware of her own movements as she stepped over beside his parents and watched him lope his way across the expanse of grass and flowers to the wilderness in the distance. Everything was silent in the Glade. All of the other Ursans who had come for their Calling Time had already crossed the meadow and disappeared. Wesley was the last.

  And then, at the edge of the far forest, there was movement.

  Jennifer and the Hornes watched both the retreating bear figure of Wesley and something that was happening in the underbrush where he was going. There was a shifting of the vegetation, and a shape that appeared in the shadows. The shape moved out into the light, and they saw that it was another black bear.

  “Is that someone coming back from the Calling Time already?” Jennifer asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Vernon replied. To his wife, he asked, “Does that one seem familiar?”

  “I think…” Jocelyn answered, squinting, “…it’s a female.”

  Now Jennifer narrowed her eyes at the other bear as well. “A female?”

  Wesley reached the spot where the other bear stood waiting for him. At once, the female reared up on her hind legs and roared out at him, an utterance that sounded oddly like a greeting. In response, Wesley stood up as well and returned her roar. The two bruins stood roaring at each other in the sunlight—until Jocelyn tugged at her husband’s sleeve. “Vernon,” she asked with a sudden urgency, “do you think that’s…?”

  “It could be,” Vernon said. “We thought she might be here, after all.” His voice took on a tone of dismay and alarm that made Jennifer take her eyes from the two bears at the far end of the meadow and cast a worried glance at Wesley’s parents.

  “She?” Jennifer asked, feeling as if her heart were knotting with new fears. “Who are you talking about? What do you mean?”

  Jocelyn looked over at Jennifer nervously. “Whenever a werebear goes into the Calling and doesn’t come back as a human again, the word gets out. The community knows about it. We heard about her giving up her human form, but Wesley was in the city, where the word doesn’t get around as well. We didn’t have the heart to tell him.�
� With a pained look and an equally pained voice, she clung to her husband’s arm. “Oh, Vernon, we should have told him.”

  “What good would it have done? We talked about this. He just would have blamed himself. He would have held himself responsible for…for…”

  Jennifer, now no longer alarmed but outright frightened, demanded, “Responsible for what? Tell me! Who is that?”

  “Adela,” said Jocelyn. “When she and Wesley broke up, she stopped wanting to be human. She spent more and more time as a bear, and when her Calling came, she gave up completely. She went into the forest and never came back. If she was there waiting for him, that must be…”

  Jennifer half-screamed: “Oh my God! Wesley…!”

  Dropping his clothes, she broke into a run. Now actually screaming, she hurled his name into the meadow: “Wesley! Wesley…!”

  She was perhaps ten feet across the grass when she felt Vernon’s hands at her shoulders, pulling her back. “You can’t go, Jennifer!” he cried. “You can’t follow!”

  In a second, Vernon had her by the arms, and Jennifer struggled in his grasp like a wild animal herself. “Let me go! Damnit, let me go!” she shrieked and wailed. Kicking and sobbing, she felt herself being dragged back to their side of the Glade. “Wesley! Wesley, come back! WESLEY…!”

  On the far side, the two bears dropped back on all fours. Adela turned and headed back the way she came, looking over her shoulder once to roar at Wesley. At first he did not follow. At first, Wesley stayed there at the forest’s edge and gave a backward glance across the Glade, where he saw his father pulling the screaming, kicking Jennifer away across the grass and heard Jennifer scream, “Wesley! WESLEY!”

  Then, Wesley turned, followed Adela into the thicket, and was gone.

  Across the meadow, Jennifer collapsed onto the grass, still in Vernon’s arms. Her screams dissolved into sobs. “Wesley, come back. Please come back…”

  “He will come back,” Vernon said. “He will, I know it.”

  Her emotions turning on a dime, Jennifer wrenched herself from Vernon’s hands. As if her fear and shock had lit a fuse inside her, she scrambled to her feet and exploded at Wesley’s father. “How do you know he’s coming back?! How do you know? She was waiting for him! Damnit, SHE WAS WAITING!”

  Holding up his arms, trying to calm her, Vernon said, “It doesn’t matter. She gave up her human life because she didn’t think there was anything in it for her any more. She stopped caring about being human; she only wanted to be a bear. She didn’t think she had anything else to live for. Wesley has something for him in this life. He has you.”

  In a rising fury, almost insane with horror and despair, Jennifer thrashed and flailed at him, striking him about the chest and shoulders. “You knew! You knew about this! You knew and you didn’t tell him! He would have wanted to know and you didn’t tell him! How could you? HOW COULD YOU NOT TELL HIM?”

  Nearing tears herself, Jocelyn took Jennifer by one arm, and Jennifer, angry beyond reason and unwilling to be appeased, pulled herself away. “There was nothing Wesley could have done,” she said. “She chose not to come out of the Calling. He couldn’t have brought her back. And he told us he didn’t love her anymore, so there was no point.”

  Jennifer fixed them with a seething look as if to melt them where they stood. “Wesley still cared about her. He told me once that he had asked about her when he came back here, and no one told him anything. None of you told him anything. And you knew. You knew… My God, what kind of people are you?” She glowered at them, a bile of sudden hatred rising inside her.

  “But you’re not people at all! You’re not even…not even…!” The words caught and choked in her throat. She felt herself becoming everything they feared, everything from which they hid themselves and their entire nature, their whole way of being. Standing in the same meadow with them, she might as well have been standing on a different planet.

  “This is your way,” Jennifer went on, more quietly but just as angrily. “Your whole existence is a secret. You even keep secrets from each other. You kept this from your own son. And now he’s out there…with her. You didn’t tell him. Damn you, you didn’t tell him.”

  “He felt so guilty about their breakup,” Jocelyn said. “He felt like he’d abandoned her. We were afraid that if he knew she’d given everything up, he’d never get over the guilt.”

  “You didn’t trust him with his own feelings. You say you think he’s strong, that you respect him as the strong young man you raised. But you didn’t think he could take knowing about someone he loved. You are such a couple of hypocrites. If he doesn’t come back…”

  “He will come back,” Vernon growled, almost like a bear.

  “And you’re so sure of that?” Jennifer asked.

  “Yes, I am,” Vernon answered. “Wesley made his choice, the same as Adela made hers. He chose a human life. He chose to live in your human city. We knew there was no turning back for him, just like there’s no turning back for Adela. That’s how we know he’s coming back.”

  “And if…when he comes back, he’s going to ask why you, his parents, who he’s supposed to be able to trust, didn’t tell him about his girlfriend. What are you going to tell him?”

  “We’ll deal with that when the time comes,” said Vernon. “And the time is coming.”

  Jennifer’s fury with them was as great as ever, but her voice now took on a hard, cold edge. The arms with which she had beaten at Vernon now hung stiff and quivering at her sides. “It had better be coming. He had better come back to me—back to someone who loves him and wouldn’t have kept a thing like this from him. If he doesn’t come back, this will be on the two of you forever. The two of you, don’t say anything else to me, don’t call me, don’t try to see me, until Wesley comes out of that damned forest and comes back to me. I don’t want to hear another word out of either one of you until then.” And with a final look that said, Damn the both of you, she made her way back to the trail back to the Lodge—alone.

  THE FINAL CHAPTER

  The moment kept playing in Jennifer’s head like a recording stuck in a loop. There was Wesley, morphed into his other shape, crossing the meadow. There, at the edge of the forest on the other side, was the other bear, the one he’d once loved. Adela roared out to Wesley, and Wesley answered. They stood on hind legs together, hurling out their animal sounds of recognition.

  And then they dropped to all fours, lumbered off into the thicket, and disappeared into the dark, two old lovers reunited. And all of Jennifer’s screams and cries for Wesley to come back to her had done no good. He was gone, as if the forest were reclaiming its own.

  On the way back, along the forest trail connecting the Lodge property with the Glade, Jennifer had run at first. She ran through the wooded hillside, wanting to put that meadow—and Wesley’s parents—as far behind her as she could, as quickly as possible. By the time she was halfway back up the trail, she was breathless and exhausted but still kept moving, however more slowly for want of energy.

  Her movements felt mechanical, as if she were a robot, not a woman. But she pressed on until she practically came staggering off the trail and back onto the Lodge grounds. Somehow, panting and shaking, on the brink of tears, she got herself back into the lobby and up to her room.

  Along the way, she turned her face from the sight of everyone she passed. She reminded herself of a wounded animal in the forest who wanted nothing more than to find a place to hide where the other animals could not find her, where she could either heal or die. That, she thought, was probably what injured bears did.

  She had fallen onto the bed in the suite and not moved again. The memory of falling into this bed with Wesley last night was so keen, it seemed to burn at her bones. It was all she could do to lie there, crying pitifully, calling his name.

  In her ursine way, Adela must have been calling his name too, there in the Glade. What human meaning lay in those roars the two of them exchanged? What were they saying to each other? Through
bitter tears Jennifer imagined Adela calling in some inhuman voice that only a bear’s instincts could hear: Wesley, you’re back. You’ve come back. I’ve missed you so. I’ve been waiting here in the forest, waiting like this, for you to come back. Come away with me, back to the wild. Be wild with me. Make love to me. Never leave me. My Wesley, never leave me again…

  And just like that, he was gone, leaving Jennifer to wonder: How much of the human Wesley was still truly there when he became the bear? How much of his humanity was left, even now? In this Calling Time, when the bear took over completely, would he be unable to find his way back to being human and back to her? Would being with Adela in the forest make him forget completely the life and the love that he had with Jennifer?

  The thought of it—the awful, terrible, painful thought—made Jennifer cry that much harder. Wesley had been prepared as well as he possibly could be for the return of the Calling Time. But nothing had prepared him for Adela. Especially not his parents.