by Maria Amor
“Very close from the way you talked,” Mari forced a smile as she talked. “Ow!”
One of the other women had kicked her.
“So what is to become of me?” Susan asked them. “Marduke says you don’t have a radio here or any way to communicate with the outside. I need to get back to the ship where I was when the balloon trapped me. People are going to worry.”
“We are talking about that now,” It was Hilde. “We don’t have much to do with outsiders up here and we like it that way. Your appearance has created a problem for us.”
“How so?”
“Marduke brought you in and made claim.”
“It was his right!” Mari spoke up. “Ow! Ow!”
Several more kicks from the other women.
“I don’t understand,” Susan said, trying to move the bad leg into a better position.
“The Mother of the Winter Saints has delivered you to him. We have to accept her gift,” Ursula attempted to explain. “When you find someone on the ice, you have to accept her judgment. Marduke felt she had led him to you. And he brought you in making the claim. I don’t know a better way to put it. It is our way.”
“Why don’t you really tell her how Marduke was when he brought her to us?” It was Mari again. “He was crying, don’t you remember?” The other women were silent. No kicks this time. “Don’t hide it from her. He was meant to be find her.”
There were a few more moments of silence. Finally, Ursula spoke again:
“Marduke lost his wife and daughter two years ago to the ice. He was never the same after it.”
Susan was quiet herself. What the hell have I gotten myself into, she wondered. Who are these people and why don’t they want to have anything to do with outsiders? Now a complete stranger was claiming her? Had she just fallen into a hole and emerged in an arctic adventure novel? Would the Viking warriors now come out and sing for her?
“You still haven’t told me where I am,” Susan continued. “All I’ve seen is this room. What is behind that door?”
“Tell her,” Mari said. “She has a right to know.”
“We have lived here on the ice for a long time,” Ursula began, her eyes looking in the distance. “We used to live where it was much warmer, but no one wanted us around. So we came north, where we could live in peace and raise our children undisturbed. And now you have found us.”
“Are you telling me you are some kind of religious group the Canadian government doesn’t know about?” Susan asked. Oh, this was getting too crazy.
“They have known about us. But it has been a long time. The government has forgotten if it allowed men into our lands. We haven’t had contact with the people from the south in years.”
“So how many of you live in this place?”
“Enough. We have plenty of clans and families to keep our numbers strong.”
“Is this some sort of cave?”
“Caves. You are in a system of caves, which extends far below the ice. We found it a long time ago and now we live here. It gives us protection against the cold.”
“And do you have a name for this place?”
“Ursidae. We call it Ursidae.”
The flap of the door flipped up and it was Marduke. He was quiet and stood respectfully at the edge of the room.
Ursula looked at him and returned to Susan.
“He wouldn’t leave your side. You were screaming out in delirium for days. We thought you were gone more times than I can remember. Your fever raged, but we did what we could do to keep it down. When it subsided, you started saying names, which meant nothing to us. That is why we asked about Gary. I thought it might have been someone important to you. But now you say it was just an old friend.”
The other women made to leave the room. Mari was the last one to go, glancing at Marduke and putting one large hand on his shoulder as she left. Something crossed between them, Susan couldn’t tell what. Now it was only herself, Marduke and Ursula in the room.
“She’s presentable,” Ursula told Marduke. “The clothes we made for her fit, but you’re going to need to help her get around, the leg has not healed.”
Marduke walked forward and embraced the woman. She returned the embrace and the two very large people hugged each other. Susan noticed a sleeve of Ursula’s jacket slip down below her arm to reveal a very furry limb. Body hair seemed to predominate among these people, she observed, which might have something to do with the cold weather were they live.
“I’ve told her something about where she is,” Ursula continued. “But not everything. You can’t force her to stay if she doesn’t want to, remember that.”
“I know,” he said.
“I’m leaving now,” Ursula concluded. “You will have some time to visit her, but she still isn’t fully recovered. Don’t stress her too much. Let her get some sleep, she needs it.”
Ursula left the room. Marduke was alone with Susan.
He came over to her bed and sat next to her. Susan didn’t know what to make of the man. If what they were saying was true, she had him to thank for saving her life. But at the same time, where the hell was she? Would they let her go? It was not as if she had anything to return to, her mother was dead and she had nothing to look back on but a father who had abandoned her and some loser boyfriends.
“The women told me you brought me in after the balloon crash,” she said to Marduke.
He waited a few minutes before talking. “Do you remember anything about the crash?” he finally asked.
“I remember hitting the ground when the basket slammed into the ice. I remember being dragged about in the snow. I remember losing my grip on the basket and rolling unto the ice. And I remember seeing a polar bear with the same eyes you have.”
“Did you see anything else?”
“I thought I saw the bear melt and change into you. But the women said I was delirious when they brought me here. Was I seeing things? You tell me.”
Marduke was quiet for a few more minutes. “Ursula told you about this place?”
“She said there are clans and families here and you live in a cave system below the ice. And the government might know about you, but might have forgotten you were here. Are you some kind of religious group?”
“No. Much more.”
“What do you mean?”
“The bear you saw on the ice, it was me.”
“Now you are making no sense whatsoever,” Susan shot back at him. The leg was starting to loose circulation and she moved it.
“Ursula is allowing me to decide whether to tell you about us or not. I want you to know. The Mother of Winter Saints sent you to me and I don’t want to hide things. I was the bear you saw.”
“You were wearing some kind of bear suit?” Susan probed. She was starting to get a little fearful. Did these people have some weird religious rite that involved human sacrifice?
“We are Corbinians,” he told her. “We can turn into bears at will. We don’t know how it works, but it does. Our legends say that a bear once carried St. Corbin across the mountains and he blessed the bear and all its descendants with the gift of human knowledge. Since that time, we’ve been able to change from human to bear whenever we need to. As a bear, we still have the knowledge of good and evil, just as we do in human form. We prefer to stay in human form, but being a bear has its advantages.”
“Like when I found you,” he continued. “I was out hunting seal in bear form when I saw the balloon fall from the sky. I went out to investigate and found you. I had a pack with me. We have a rule to carry what we might need as a human if you are in ursine form. I was able to transform back to human and get you out. I couldn’t have wrapped you in the blanket as a bear.”
Susan stared at Marduke in disbelief. “And you expect me to believe this story?”
Marduke sighed and began taking his clothes off. Susan thought about yelling for help, but maybe he was trying to make a point. He was hairy; she had noted his body earlier. When he stripped off his leggings, she
saw how hairy he really was. She couldn’t even see his cock under all that fur.
He leaned back and started to change. Marduke grew and grew, soon he was big enough to fill the room in the cave. His furry body had changed to white and his head began shifting into a bear form as his teeth grew. Marduke’s hands started merging together to form paws. He dropped down on all fours and looked at Susan.
Then she fainted.
CHAPTER THREE
Susan looked up. The bear was gone and Marduke was putting his clothes back on.
“You were telling the truth,” she said to him. “You really can turn into a bear.”
“You are one of the first outsiders to see it happen twice,” he told her. “We’ve always been feared for the ability. People don’t understand why it happens.”
Marduke helped Susan out of the bed she had been in for the past two weeks. Her leg still hurt badly, but she could put weight on it with his help. Marduke took her by the shoulders and let her walk with him. This was the first time she’d left the room since arriving in the caves.
Susan felt warm and protected by him. She could feel his arms hold her with little effort as he walked her out of the room and into the caverns beyond. The women had said he’d “claimed” her, whatever that meant. As she walked out of the room with his assistance, Susan marveled at the world his people had created.
The first thing she noted was the paintings on the walls of the cavern. They were bright, colorful and illustrated their myths and legends. Marduke told her the story of each one as they passed. One painting showed the saint who blessed the bear, which they claimed was their common ancestor. Another painting portrayed heroes from their past. Further down she saw a long piece that portrayed their journey to the lands of the far north.
“Where are we going?” Susan asked him.
“I’m going to show you my world,” he told her.
“Why?”
“Because I want you to see it and understand us.”
He stopped a few minutes into the tour at a small alcove in the wall and brought out a crutch.
“Here,” he said, “I made this for you. You can use it to move around with until your leg is stronger.”
Susan put it under her arm and the weight was taken off her leg. She still held on to Marduke for guidance and, secretly, because she loved the way he felt.
He showed her the passages lit by the fire of seal oil and the secret entrances to the world outside. They visited the great hall where the council of elders met to decide the future of the clans. She saw small children being led by their mothers. And she witnessed hunting parties returning with fresh meat for the tribes.
The underground kingdom of Ursidae had existed for the past hundred years. The bear people had relocated there after its discovery by a hunter from one of the tribes. They were stranded on the ice, searching for a place to live when it was found. Their numbers amounted to only a few hundred, but it stayed steady. They knew how to regulate the birth rate and the ice took care of the death rate.
Mating with outsiders had produced children who couldn’t transform into bears, so it was discouraged. Careful records of the lines prevented the blood from becoming too thin.
They encountered Ursula at one part in their tour, who had stopped and greeted Susan.
“I’m glad to see Marduke is taking the time to show you around,” she said. “I’m also glad to see you are feeling better.”
Eventually, he brought her back to the room where she had been confined. Susan knew he had to leave, but asked him to stay with her awhile. “I’m told you suffered a loss,” she said, “recently.”
“I was taking my wife and daughter out on the ice,” he explained. “It was to be our daughter’s first time transforming. It’s a special occasion for us.”
“We were out alone when the ice broke, I don’t know why. I lost them instantly. They sank without even crying for help.” He was sitting on the bed with her. Marduke had dropped his head when telling the story. “So when I found you, I felt it was a gift. A chance to get back part of what I had lost.”
Susan put her arms around the big man and held him for a while. Soon, his arms slipped around her too. “You don’t have to leave,” she whispered in his ear.
“No, I can’t stay. I need to talk to the elders tonight. When I’ve had a chance to speak with them, I’ll come back.”
He left by the flap and Susan, disappointed, lay amid the furs alone.
*
When the balloon had left the ship with Susan in it, the entire expedition went on lock-down. The storm struck just as she was sent flying over the ice fields and there was nothing anyone could do. The captain made the decision to wait until the weather improved to send out a rescue party. Everyone involved with the tragedy was sent to confined quarters.
Dr. Matteson was furious that any crew-member had been allowed near the basket in the first place. Elliot had a story already prepared as to how the burner flamed without anyone doing a thing to cause it to happen. Of course, he had bravely tried to pull Susan out of the basket, but she was hopelessly trapped inside it and had refused his help out of fear. The security cameras showed something else. Elliot’s story didn’t hold water. Dr. Jones was sure the expedition was finished and they would never get funding for another study.
“Heads are going to roll over this,” he told Matteson the next day as they were trying to make some use of the data they were able to get from the balloon.
They were unable to track the balloon very far. The storm had totally messed up the reading they could’ve received from it. It didn’t appear there was much they could do so long as the storm raged over the ice and snow. At one point, the ship was on the verge of being recalled to port, even with an ice-breaker on stand-by.
But after the storm ceased, the Canadian Coast Guard pulled into the operation and tried to track where the balloon might have landed. By then, it was impossible from all the snow and ice, which had been deposited. The tracking signal in the balloon had ceased to function after it was in the air for a few minutes. They tried to estimate where the wind might’ve taken it. But it was assumed Susan couldn’t have survived long on the ground, even if she had lived through a crash. Her father was notified, but he wasn’t interested enough to put out an inquiry.
With no further interest from the south, the expedition posted a memorial on its website and decided to continue north without the balloon. Susan would have been depressed had she knew so few people had signed her memory book online. She became another one of the faceless millions who have come and gone on this planet over the millennia. The crew breathed a sigh of relief that no lawsuits or repercussions would take place over the accident.
Or so they thought.
*
Back in the caves, Marduke was arguing before the council of elders. He felt Susan rightly belonged to him as the Mother of Winter Saints had given her to him. The council, which included the women Susan had met when she recovered, wasn’t so sure.
There were nine of them sitting on chairs carved from limestone in the chamber. It was lit by lamps and decorated with the paintings Susan had noted when she first looked up from her bed. The council met on an irregular basis, and was the only way the clans inside the underground cave network had to work out their differences. Normally, it was over how much seal meat should be taken on a given year, or could they afford to trade with some clandestine parties down south. This was the first time in years they had to discuss an unauthorized contact with the outside world.
“Do you realize the danger we are being exposed to?” Ursula called out to Marduke, who was standing before the council.
“I am aware of it,” he told them. “And I’m fully ready to take responsibility for my actions.”
‘It’s not just you who will be responsible,” a large man named Rufus, sitting next to Ursula, pointed out, “we will all be taking responsibility for this woman.”
“We understand your loss,” Thora said. She was the
speaker for the council. “But you have to look at what we are risking.”
“Besides,” Hilde brought up, “we don’t know this woman. There are rules about having contact with the outsiders.”
“I am aware of those rules,” Marduke said. “But the circumstance of Susan’s arrival has changed everything. It is nothing short of a miracle she survived the crash. It was another miracle I was there when the balloon went down. It was a third miracle when I brought her back here and she didn’t freeze to death on the way. How can you sit there and say she wasn’t meant for me to find?”
The council was silent.
“We still have to contact the ship she was traveling on,” Rufus brought up, “They need to know she is alive.”
“How can you suggest such a thing?” Ursula shouted. “Is it not bad enough she knows about us? Now you say we need to let the southerners know she is here, living among us?”
“We can’t keep her here against her own will.” It was Thora again. “If she wishes to stay, that is another issue.”
“The ship must be contacted.” Rufus again. “We need to find a way to send someone to them. Does anyone know where the ship is?”
“We can send out some hunting parties,” Thora suggested. “We know where the ship was when the balloon was launched. It can’t have moved very far.”
“We need to reach a decision,” Ursula stated. “Marduke, you are dismissed. Wait outside the chamber hall and we will give you our judgment.”
He bowed and left the chamber, praying for a favorable result.
*
Susan was still in her bed, wrapped in the furs the bear people had provided. She removed her warm clothes and was waiting for Marduke. She couldn’t help but have strong feelings for him. He seemed a kind, strong man who had risked his own life to bring her to safety.
She rolled over in the bed and thought about Marduke. What did she really know about the people who lived in these caves? She knew they could change into bears at will, but what kind of bears? Could they only change into polar bears, or did they have the ability to change into any kind of bear? It probably didn’t matter this far north as only a polar bear could survive in the cold. At what age did they manifest the power to transform? Was it something you had to learn how to do?