Bearing
Page 3
“Little sister.” He shook his head, his voice gentle. “I’m not going to hurt her.”
Mikayla leaned against him, and he fed her in small bites, one arm supporting her.
“We’re going to have a healing for her, you know,” Suzi said. “If she’ll let us.” She glared at Mikayla. “And then we’re taking her back to Texas. For good. Healed or not.”
Angus set the fork down and used a napkin to dab Mikayla’s lips. The touch pleased her like a kiss. He brought his mouth to Mikayla’s ear. “Is that what you want?”
How could he make her decide? That took so much effort.
“What kind of stupid question is that?” Suzi slammed both hands onto her thighs and leaned forward. “She’s going to college in the fall. She has a scholarship. You think she can go to school like a freaking rag doll?”
Mikayla lolled against Angus. The years spread out before her. Classes. Cross-country practices. Exams. Papers. Moving into a dorm. Meeting new people. Exhausting, endless work. And for what? She was already so comfortable. He asked her again, “Is that what you want?”
She gazed at Suzi. What if this was the last time she ever saw her? A choking sadness pushed up in Mikayla’s throat, but she knew what she had to do. She had chosen, or been chosen, already.
The log cabin was cozy, neat, and warm. Self-sufficient and isolated, it had solar panels and spring water and a fireplace. Mikayla nested in various places: sometimes a hammock on the porch, looking out at the tall green mountains; sometimes a daybed in the living room, listening to the birds outside; and most often their bed. Though she never took him up on his offers, Angus assured her he could take her into town whenever she wanted and even to Texas to visit her family.
Her parents had been sad and angry when she chose to live with him, but she was an adult and they had to let her. In their not-quite-nagging way, they and her sisters had kept urging her to come home whenever they called, and she’d mumbled vague promises she didn’t have the energy to keep. Then she’d let her phone service lapse.
She dimly thought about Janelle sometimes and how she’d seen Janelle at the powwow last year, so of course she could go out if she wanted to. Angus would help her. She didn’t ask him to, though. The laziness was too sweet.
She watched herself grow big and round, sinking into her own body as if it were another soft mattress. Angus pleasured her daily. When he left for her hours, she missed him, but she knew he had to hunt, gather firewood and food, and sell some of his wood carvings in town. It was how he took care of her, and he never left until she was cleaned and fed.
One time while he was bathing her, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror as he helped her out of the tub. Her new face was peaceful above a thick neck creased with fat. She thought of it as comfy. But then another face ghosted in and merged with hers, peering out through her skin. A bear.
For the first time in months, she felt something other than lazy pleasure. A chill shot through her. Angus was combing her hair, and the comb felt like claws. She turned her back to the mirror and buried her face in his chest. “Did you see that?”
“Yes. Don’t be scared. It doesn’t have to last. It happens when you’re pregnant.”
She hadn’t spoken so many words in a row in weeks, hadn’t felt so much emotion. Drained, she let him dress her in the warm new sweatsuit he’d bought for her. He carried her to the hammock on the porch, kissed her, stroked her massive belly, and walked off into the woods.
Pregnant. No wonder she was so fat and tired. How had she not known? She must have taken in his seed the very first time they made love. Somewhere in her velvety brain, she knew this didn’t explain everything, but she couldn’t work hard enough to understand the rest.
As always, she slept in fragments, dreaming about him, sometimes as a bear licking and loving her. When she woke and saw a bear at the edge of the clearing around the cabin, she wondered for a moment if it was him but then saw it had half-grown cubs trailing it. They rolled and played, and though she’d been taught all her life to avoid bears, she enjoyed watching their antics.
The mother bear went into the woods and returned, dragging the bloodied and partially devoured body of some creature into the yard. A small calf? There were free-range cattle around Mescalero. Refugio’s father raised them, in fact. Mikayla wondered if the meat Angus brought her was from bear-caught calves, and almost laughed—she’d made fun of his name as a kind of cow. The three cubs converged on the carcass and the bear family began snarfing and crunching, the cubs shoving each other.
Mikayla dozed. When she woke, the cubs had vanished and their meal was gone except for one fragment. The mother bear reared up and bared her teeth, standing over that one bloody bone, then made a coughing sound, dropped to all fours, and waddled into the woods. Mikayla could see now what the animal had left behind. A broken skull. A human child’s skull, with fragments of tissue clinging to its bowl-like surfaces.
How could she have thought that bloody body was a calf? What else had Angus blinded her to? He fed her so lovingly from rough white bowls. Bowls full of meat and pine nuts and small wild berries.
Mikayla tried to move, but she couldn’t. She was too heavy, too slow, too strangely comfortable. It was too late.
Winter. She slept. He no longer came to her. The earth embraced her. In her dim stirrings, she felt the soft soil against her back and the movement of new life inside her and then drifted off, no longer even dreaming, in the deepest peace of her life. Her labor came during her slumber, and she scarcely felt it at first. Then she woke.
She could sense the shapes of them inside her, three of them. They had snouts. She sat halfway up, leaning on the wall of her hole, the way she’d helped her mother to curl up when Ursula and Ally were born, taking turns with her father, supporting Mom when the midwife told her to push.
Mikayla looked down at her chest and belly. They kept changing, back and forth. Human, coppery-brown and smooth, and then hairy and dark with six hard black nipples. With every push came a surge of power. Her body grew stronger. The urge to move returned. When she had the bear belly, she wanted to roll onto her side, but when she was human she wanted to half-sit—it was a choice. This was what Angus had meant—it doesn’t have to last. She could choose again. If she focused on her human breasts, she could keep them. If she decided on her bear nipples, they stayed.
The contractions seized her with agony while she was human. When she chose to be a bear, she almost slept again, drowsing though her labor. The first cub, so small, so helpless, slid out more easily than a human baby’s big head. Was she having them early? Were they premature? It must be cold outside, and the cub was not fully furred but downy, weak in the hindquarters, and it looked somehow blind.
She chose her woman form. The bear brain didn’t think, and her mind was boiling with panicky questions. How could she care for the cubs as a human? Would she have to bottle feed them? Did they have teeth already? How would she keep them warm? Did Angus want bear cubs? Had he meant to turn her into a bear, or was it something he couldn’t help doing to a woman he loved because he was part-bear?
He’d been so sad that Janelle had left him—had chosen the cubs. Mikayla could raise the cubs better as one of their species, but she had to stay human for him.
She dragged herself to the edge of her lair and looked out. It was night. The seven stars, the hunters and the little sister, glowed in the icy blackness between the trees. The air was bitter and she was naked and had lost most of her fat. The second cub slid from her, wet and bloody. She felt the third descend, her contractions still strong, her pain overpowering. Somehow after her months of torpor, she found the strength to push again, screaming into the forest.
Steps scuffled in the snow. Angus? No. Too many feet. She knew the sound of that heavy breath. Someone else had come out of hibernation. How? That wasn’t natural. Bears didn’t do that, did they? Her mind shot back to summer and fall. The bear that had rocked the camper and battered against the door. T
hat hadn’t been Angus. The one that had bared its teeth at her as it left the skull. That hadn’t been natural. Janelle.
Abandoning the cubs, Mikayla plunged into the snow. Her legs, weak from disuse, gave out, and she tripped, slid, and rolled, landing on her back against a fallen log. The scuffling and snuffling of the bear drew closer. Above, she sought the hunters and the little sister, praying for escape, for rescue. One of the seven stars winked out.
Author’s Notes
The story of the bear and the seven stars is adapted from a story in Myths and Tales of The Jicarilla Apache Indians by Morris Edward Opler, Dover Publications, New York, 1994.
The Apache concept of bear sickness refers to the symptoms of heaviness and lethargy which Mikayla first manifests, not transformation into a bear. A Cree bearwalker can curse people, as can any bad shaman. Angus’s version of that power and what it does to his lovers are my own invention.
Mrs. Yahnaki and Refugio Baca appear again in Ghost Sickness, the fifth book in the Mae Martin Psychic Mystery Series. You can learn about this series of murder-less mysteries and find sales links on my web site:
http://amberfoxxmysteries.com
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About the Author
Amber Foxx has worked professionally in theater, dance, fitness, yoga, and academia. She has lived in both the Southeast and the Southwest, and calls New Mexico home.
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Did you love Bearing? Then you should read The Calling by Amber Foxx!
The first Mae Martin Psychic Mystery
Obeying her mother's warning, Mae Martin-Ridley has spent years hiding her gift of "the sight." When concern for a missing hunter compels her to use it again, her peaceful life in a small Southern town begins to fall apart. New friends push her to explore her unusual talents, but as she does, she discovers the shadow side of her visions— access to secrets she could regret uncovering.
Gift or curse? When an extraordinary ability intrudes on an ordinary life, nothing can stay the same.
The Mae Martin SeriesNo murder, just mystery. Every life hides a secret, and love is the deepest mystery of all.
Read more at Amber Foxx’s site.
Also by Amber Foxx
Mae Martin Mysteries
The Calling
Shaman's Blues
Snake Face
Soul Loss
Ghost Sickness
Death Omen
The Mae Martin Mysteries Books 1-3
Standalone
The Outlaw Women
Bearing
Small Awakenings
Watch for more at Amber Foxx’s site.