The Bear's Secret Surrogate

by Amy Star

  It was a nice night, at least. The sky was almost entirely cloudless, so the entire world was bathed in silver moonlight. Without the lights of the city around, it seemed as if the moon was bright enough to swallow the entire world, and the only thing keeping her and Atticus from falling into the sky was the canopy of trees above them.

  Moonlight dappled through it in spots and lines, as the top of each tree seemed curiously unwilling to touch the branches of any of the neighboring trees, leaving perfect dividing lines between the individual treetops. It was pretty in a strange sort of way. Casey couldn’t quite resist taking a few pictures with her phone.

  When at last Atticus slowed, it was in a patch of ferns, a single pool of moonlight landing in the middle, falling unfiltered through one of the few holes without any tree coverage. Heaving a sigh, Atticus tossed himself down to the ground, rolled over, and began squirming back and forth on his back.

  It took Casey a moment to realize that he was scratching his back, and once she made that connection, she couldn’t quite prevent the whoop of laughter that escaped her before she could clap a hand over her mouth. She wheezed fitfully behind her hands, trying to pretend she wasn’t laughing and failing impressively at that attempt.

  Slowly, Atticus turned his head to look at her upside down, blinking at her. His eyes narrowed slightly, and he rolled back over and heaved himself back up onto all fours. He took a step towards her, followed by another, and Casey began to back up as he got closer.

  To no avail, though. He closed the distance between them without any issue and knocked her backwards onto the ground simply by prodding her with his nose. She opened her mouth to complain, only to pause when he yawned theatrically and flopped down, resting his head on her chest.

  Casey squirmed fitfully beneath him, but it was no use. She was stuck until he decided she had learned her lesson and would let her go. And she couldn’t even properly sulk, since she couldn’t slump while she was on the ground, and she couldn’t fold her arms over her chest when his head was on her chest.

  Instead, because she was a mature adult, she resorted to grabbing one of his ears and gently but steadily pulling on it until he got fed up and let her go, lifting his head off her to let her squirm her way out from under him. She patted the top of his head afterwards, right between his ears, and snorted out a laugh when he prodded at her with his nose in something that seemed like mock offense.

  (It was a strange thought, to look at a bear and know he was being sarcastic with her. She was willing to wager most people didn’t get to have that experience.)

  It wasn’t quite the start to the night that Casey had been expecting, but then again, maybe it was exactly what she should have expected.

  Atticus hoisted himself back to his feet, and Casey fell into step behind him as he carried on walking. To her knowledge, there was no specific game plan for the night, and if she asked, then Atticus wouldn’t be able to give her an answer until after the fact.

  She had never been a huge fan of surprises—they had frequently meant bad news growing up—but she supposed she could get used to them. But even that was assuming they did anything that could even be called a surprise. It seemed entirely possible that they would just spend the night wandering through the woods until it was time to head back to the car.

  And that, too, was something Casey could be okay with.

  *

  The number of trees lessened as they meandered, until there were more shrubs than actual trees, and the ground got rougher and rockier. Casey wouldn’t say they left the woods entirely, but the woods did thin out considerably for a stretch, though she could see where it began to thicken again on the opposite side with her naked eye.

  There was a rushing, babbling noise not far off, and it took Casey until they were almost upon it to identify it as a river. It wasn’t exactly a noise she was familiar with; even roaming around Atticus’s property as thoroughly as she had, the biggest source of water she had found was a pond, and the only moving water she had stumbled across was a stream no wider than a surfboard.

  She approached the edge of the water carefully, leaning over the edge where the dirt dropped away to look down at it. Reaching a hand out, she grabbed the trunk of a narrow tree for balance, growing partially sideways over the water, some of its roots bared from where the dirt had fallen away entirely.

  As she watched, a leaf drifted down to land on the river’s surface and float away, and a fish swam past. Not enormous but not small, and there was nothing really unique about it—it looked about as stereotypically fish-like as it could—but the fact that it was bigger than a kitchen spoon and wasn’t in an aquarium was a bit of a novel concept just then.

  Atticus wandered a ways along the water’s edge until he found a section of the bank that was more of a gradual slope into the water. He waded in until he was standing nearly up to his belly in the water, and Casey watched him with bewildered interest.

  She recoiled a step in surprise and nearly tripped over one of the tree’s roots when, without any warning, Atticus surged forward, plunging his face into the water. When he pulled his head out of the water once again, it was with a fish caught between his teeth, flapping and wriggling in distress for a few moments before it went limp.

  Right. Bear. Carnivore. She probably should have seen that coming. She shook her head slightly and turned her attention elsewhere so she didn’t need to watch him tear the fish to shreds, and so she didn’t need to watch him catch and eat two more after that, though she could hear the splashing as he plunged into the water after them.

  Thankfully, there was no shortage of things to observe to keep her distracted. A fox was watching them cautiously from the opposite side of the river before it darted away once it realized Casey had spotted it. An owl hooted ominously from somewhere in the trees, always remaining stubbornly out of sight no matter what direction Casey turned. She didn’t even realize that Atticus had finished eating until he sidled up next to her and prodded her with his nose, pointing off into the distance with his muzzle once he had her attention.

  They didn’t cross the river, and for that, Casey was glad, but she was happy she got to see it, at least. They turned and ventured back into the trees.

  *

  It would surprise no one to hear that Casey was not exactly a nature expert or a survivalist. She knew basically nothing about any of the plants surrounding her. She knew something about poison ivy having three leaves, and she could recognize when a tree was an evergreen or when it was not an evergreen, but her knowledge got no more specific than that.

  As such, she took pictures of everything. Every type of leaf, every flower, every berry, every shrub and plant. She didn’t try to sample any of it, of course. She had more common sense than that. But if any of it was edible, well, she wanted to know that for future reference. It seemed like it might be the sort of information that would add a little something extra to any future full moon excursions.

  Every so often, Atticus watched her as she finagled a branch into a better angle to get a picture of it, and though his expressions were a little hard to gauge in his current form due to being largely nonexistent, she was pretty sure he looked amused. She couldn’t really help herself; she just wanted to know more. She was in the middle of this life now, and she wanted to know all she could about it, even if it was just something as simple as the plants.

  Besides, it would probably be at least a little satisfying if she could identify which of the plants and trees growing on Atticus’s property were the same as in the forest, though Atticus’s woods leaned far more towards prickly trees, rather than leafy trees.

  (Thinking about it, the lower, thicker branches and the constant carpet of needles probably helped Georgia go unseen. It was a slightly irritating thought, and Casey ushered it away. She was in a good mood, and she didn’t want to think about such things.)

  Casey lost track of time for a little while as she enjoyed the sights. Every so often, Atticus would draw her attention to somethin
g in particular, she would snap a picture of it, and it seemed to become something of a game as he searched for some of the strangest treasures the woods had to offer, as if he was trying to impress her. She couldn’t deny that it was working, though, and it was strangely endearing on top of that.

  For a time, she managed to forget to some extent that the rest of the world actually existed; it was just her and Atticus and the woods in every direction, and she couldn’t think of a single complaint about it.

  She was supposed to be coming up with hobbies. Maybe this could be one of them. The thought made her chest feel warm in a slightly foreign way, and she figured that meant the thought deserved deeper consideration.

  As was generally the case, though, good things eventually had to come to an end.

  Hearing the peace of the forest abruptly interrupted by her cellphone ringing, Casey ground to a halt, sneakers slipping in the mud for only a moment before she caught her balance and pulled her phone out of her pocket. She didn’t recognize the number, and she answered it with a cautious, “Hello?”

  (She spared half a second to marvel about the fact that she still had cellphone reception, even if it sounded like the voice on the other end was being gargled through a kitchen blender.)

  “Is this Casey Grevieux?” the voice on the other end of the line asked, and it was vaguely familiar.

  “Yeah,” she returned slowly. “Who’s this?”

  “Apologies, Mrs. Grevieux. This is the police chief.”

  Casey drew in a sharp breath, and Atticus cocked his head, looking at her over his shoulder. Casey waved a hand at him in no specific gesture, though he seemed to understand the intent of “I’ll explain in a minute” as the police chief continued talking. With some reluctance, Atticus turned his attention back to drinking from the stream.

  There had apparently been a lead on Georgia Carmichael’s location, and there had even been a sighting, though she had dropped off the radar again before she could be taken in. The chief just wanted to keep them up to date, and Casey managed as polite a “Thank you” as she could before hanging up.

  Atticus turned to look at her again, large head once again cocked curiously to one side. Casey sighed out a slow breath. “Georgia knows we sicked the police on her now,” she stated. “She’s probably going to do something we really don’t want her to do.”

  Atticus heaved a grumbling sigh and flopped down flat on the ground. Nodding once, Casey sighed. “My thoughts exactly.”

  She had been hoping for an uneventful night, full moon aside. Or maybe even for good news. She really should have known not to expect that much with the way everything else had been going.

  C HAPTER 13

  There was nothing they could do just then. It wasn’t even that late into the night yet; they had hours yet to go before they could return to the house, and even then, there was no guarantee that they could actually do anything.

  (Though they had no doubt that Georgia would be at the house at some point that night. They would need to check her budding nest to see if she left anything worthwhile there.)

  Even when she wasn’t doing anything herself, it felt as if Georgia was toying with them. Like she was playing some game where the only goal was not to let anyone else have any of the pieces. Casey was getting more than a little fed up with it, but the fact still remained that she couldn’t do anything just then.

  Instead, she followed Atticus as he meandered aimlessly, careful to stay behind him to walk in the paths he cleared through the underbrush, his sheer mass crushing the foliage flat. If he had a goal in mind, he gave no indication as to what it might be and it wasn’t as if Casey could ask. The night was warm, though, and the woods were alive in every direction. Casey supposed she was alright with a bit of mystery.

  That was all they did, really. They spent the rest of the night wandering, occasionally looping back through an area they had already passed through, evident only by the flattened plant-life. Every so often, a crow cawed from above, and Casey would look up to see an enormous bird perched on a branch above them. It always flew away too soon for Casey to really gauge if it was big enough to be Lydia, but she assumed it was her.

  At some point, deep into the night, Casey ground to a halt when she heard howling in the distance, the sound traveling so far so clearly that it was as if it was coming from right beside her. A series of howls answered it afterwards, and she wondered if any of Branson’s pack members were in the woods with them or if he was simply communicating with the local wildlife. In either case, she figured it was pretty cool.

  The sound was haunting but beautiful, and Atticus cocked his head up to listen until the last note faded away. It seemed an accurate representation of the forest as a whole after darkness fell, haunting in its isolation but beautiful in its peace.

  Casey found herself wondering when she became so poetic, and she decided that maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. Sometimes, poetry was really the only proper response.

  When silence fell once again, save for the chirping of insects and bats, Atticus and Casey carried on walking.

  It seemed like the night passed too quickly before Atticus was turning and heading purposefully along in a single direction, cutting across old paths every so often. Casey jogged along behind him as he finally moved at something other than his leisurely, lumbering pace, evidently intent on his new direction.

  As they approached the edge of the trees once again and the parking lot became visible, Casey understood. If she squinted, she could just see the beginnings of the sunrise along the eastern horizon, the ink dark sky lightening to dusty silver. The night was almost over. Atticus yawned and lay down on the ground beside the car, his muzzle resting on his paws as he waited. Casey sat down on the hood of the car, staring into the east with something like wonder on her face.

  Ten minutes later, Lydia fluttered out of the trees and landed on Casey’s shoulder. She barely fit, but evidently, she decided that was an unimportant detail and instead occupied herself with absentmindedly preening a strand of Casey’s ponytail.

  The sky was turning all sorts of shades of gold and pink and lilac by the time Branson trotted out of the woods to join them, and that seemed to be the cue that the night was over. Atticus heaved himself back to his feet, and Lydia hopped down from Casey’s shoulder to glide gently down to the ground.

  They transformed and got dressed without a fuss, and after that, it was time to go. Casey explained the phone call in the car; no one seemed particularly surprised.

  *

  The drive back to the house seemed to go so much slower than the drive to the park. Granted, they had been awake all night, Casey supposed, so at a guess, she would say that being tired had something to do with it. She stared out the window, watching the trees blur past. No one said anything, and she was pretty sure Branson and Lydia spent at least half of the ride dozing in the backseat.

  It had been a decent night, though. More enjoyable than Casey had expected, at any rate. The news they got hadn’t been ideal, but at least it hadn’t managed to ruin the rest of the night. As strange as it seemed to say, Casey was pretty sure she could come to look forward to nights like that in the future, whether they were on the property or somewhere else.

  But it seemed a bit early to think about things like that. They still had a problem they needed to deal with, after all, and it was an issue that deserved their full attention. And as it turned out, once they made it back to the house, it was a problem that was very keen on making itself known. Because of course, they weren’t allowed to just have five minutes to rest. That would make everything too easy.

  (Casey was pretty sure she was getting more cynical. She would need to try to put a cap on that at some point, she wagered.)

  The window into Casey’s suite was open when the car pulled to a halt in the driveway. It was the first thing she noticed as the car got closer to the house, and she pointed it out quietly. Everything else seemed too quiet, though she was willing to bet that, at least, was just in
her imagination. She glanced furtively around the car to see Atticus, Branson, and Lydia all looking quietly put out by the situation. It was gratifying, in a strange way, not to be the only one fed up with the entire ordeal.

  If only it would just stop happening so they could all get on with their lives like normal.

  Branson held up a hand, silently telling the rest of them to wait as he got out of the car. He disappeared into the garage, and a moment later Casey could just barely hear the sounds of claws clicking across concrete.

  For a few long minutes, they simply sat in the car, waiting. Either for Branson to come back or for some sign that something was wrong.

  Finally, after just enough time that they were all beginning to get uncomfortable, Branson emerged from the garage again, shaped like a human but wearing only a pair of pants. He lifted one hand and ushered them towards the house with it before he turned to finish getting dressed.

  The three of them in the car all let out an audible sigh of relief before they got out of the car to head back inside.