by Amy Star
“You really are beautiful,” he said, and before she could blush again, he sat up and kissed her on the cheek, then the forehead. She wanted to cry. Not for the old reasons – out of fear, or stress, or panic – but because of something else. Something she hadn’t dared to believe would ever happen to her, and which she still kept from entering her thoughts in any meaningful way.
Simply feels good to be loved, she said, and left it at that. Even though she knew that was just the tip of the iceberg. But what lay underneath that simple phrase was too much right now, especially when they had other things to consider.
“Chris,” she murmured.
Dylan nodded and stood up, and she couldn’t help but sneak a peek at his firm buttocks as he crawled off the couch from under the small quilted blanket and pulled on his pants again. “I checked on him a few hours ago… you were asleep again, inconsolably lost in a dream,” he laughed. “You sleep deeper than he does, after all.”
“Is he…?”
“Sleepy and disoriented. But good,” he said. “I’m going to make some breakfast. Can you do me a favor? He was in bear form for quite awhile so I think he should make a full recovery. But I am worried about infection… I was thinking I’d make him some yarrow tea. Do you know it?”
She nodded. “Feathery green plant, smells nice? I have basic knowledge of plants and stuff,” she said, standing up as well. It still felt odd to be naked in front of a man but there was also something refreshing about it. The skin around her crotch and legs still felt tight with the dried fluids of both of them, and she could smell it even now – pungent and sweet – and it made her shudder again with renewed passion.
What’s happening to me, she thought. I want him inside me again. The thought, so blasé and straightforward, shocked her. She pulled on her thong and discarded shorts, and found her tank-top as well, pulling one arm through even before she was out the door.
Outside the sun was bright, a call-back to warmer summer days. It was almost possible to convince herself that Chris and Dylan hadn’t been shot by poachers. They’ll be back, he had said, before they’d made love. She gulped, and focused on finding the small sweet smelling plants that would rejuvenate Chris.
And if they come, her mind asked, what then?
***
Two and a half kilometers away, moored to a small blasted hitch of land on a smaller island, the small fishing trawler Pygmalion rocked gently with the ebb and flow of the tide. It was a modest ship, renovated for long distance and long term trips, with a fully operational kitchen and facilities, and only the top of the line radar and navigational instruments; in every sense, a home away from home.
For Arthur Murcheson, it was both his hobby and livelihood. If it had been a woman, he joked, he would have married it years ago, and given the boot to the hard-edged woman who currently held that title. He was always the life of the party, even though that party usually consisted of his own kind: equally hard-edged men who shared his passions of hunting, women, and beer. Misogynistic tendencies aside, it had become a tradition among his small clutch of friends to go on a hunting or fishing trip every summer before the autumn struck in.
He’d heard rumors about a small island off the coast having some of the biggest bears that anyone had ever seen. Part of him regarded these sorts of tall-tales with a bit of skepticism. He was more than familiar, after decades of hunting in the bush, how a four point buck could suddenly become eight. Or how a one kilogram salmon could magically become six. Occupational liars, he said, but he didn’t hold them too stringently to account, since he knew he was at least partly guilty of the same thing.
Nevertheless, he’d taken it upon himself to look into the rumors and found an old fisherman who had attested to it, and even shown him several blurry photographs. But the shape was unmistakable. On a gamble, he’d decided that this year’s hunt he would try to ascertain the legend of the island. With him were his buddies Kyle and Sean, and his son Kieran, just back from university.
Everything had seemed to be going well; everyone was happy and the beer was plenty. The jokes and atmosphere light and jovial, even though all four men knew that they were venturing into protected waters. Fuck the rangers, Arthur had announced. They didn’t really care about poaching and everyone knew that there were no bears this far out. If anything, if they did find a bear and shot it, they’d only be proving that knowledge truthful, right?
His strange logic had been enough for his passengers. But now, things on the Pygmalion were grim, the tension was palpable, you could almost cut it with a knife. In the forward section, there were still screams, long mournful howls that seemed to cut through the bulkheads.
Arthur’s son Kieran looked as pale as a ghost, despite the fact they’d managed to bandage the wounds and get him cleaned up. But he would be scarred for life – he might even die. He drifted off to sleep, and Arthur watched from a stool as his son held onto his life by a thread. He hadn’t even seen the giant grizzly, it had come out of the woods like a torpedo and slashed Kieran’s belly like a hot cheese wire. The stench of blood and sweat and fear clung to every surface. Arthur leaned down and kissed his son’s forehead.
“You hold on, kid,” he said, and turned.
Outside, Kyle had his arms crossed. Sean was biting his thumbnail, both men seemed balanced on edge, waiting for Arthur to speak first.
“Is he…?” Sean squeaked.
“Out, for now. Bloody bear nearly ripped his guts out… I… I don’t know if he’ll make it.”
“Shit, Arthur, we need to go. The longer we stay here, the worse off Kieran’ll be… he needs a fucking doctor,” Kyle blurted, offering some rational reasoning to the table.
Arthur merely nodded at him. “I know. That’s why Sean is gonna take Pygmalion back to the docks, you got that?” the other man nodded furiously. “You leave in five minutes, go plot the course.”
“What about you?” Kyle asked sharply.
“Go!” Arthur said to Sean, who ambled off obediently, and turned to Kyle. “This isn’t over. I’m staying… I’ve got supplies and I’ve got the outboard. I’m going back.”
“That’s fucking ridiculous Arthur!”
“They almost killed my boy!” the bigger man boomed, and it echoed through the boat. Reluctantly, Kyle took a step back and rubbed his jaw, set with a good four days of scraggly growth that made him look older than he was.
“Arthur, something’s very wrong here… that… that first bear you shot,” Kyle began.
Yes, Arthur wanted to say. Something strange indeed. He was almost beyond happy to see the rumors of the island come true, and on their first day perusing its coastline. The grizzly had been black, fierce and long-legged, although not as big as the original claims but you had to take those stories with a grain of salt. It had been Kieran who’d spotted him first, from the back of the outboard, and Arthur had raised his sights, leveled and shot.
A wave must have hit the wale of the little boat though, because the shot went wide. He saw the bear collapse, though, and the other men had cheered him on as they landed ashore. But when they made their way to where the grizzly had fallen, there was no bear at all – only a naked man, fetal and white on the dark sand, blood pulsing onto the sand around his head like a cruel halo.
“Shit,” Kieran had sad, always the sage, among them.
It was impossible, it had surely been a bear. Sean and Kyle and Kieran had agreed. It was hard to register. Old Native stories about shifters, skin-walkers, came flooding back to Arthur but he kept them to himself, no need to scare the other men. They’d probably laugh at him anyway. And yet, here was the evidence. He had shot a bear but now they were all gawking at a young male.
“Is he…” Kieran was about to say.
Arthur raised his gun again, and Sean’s face blanched. “Arthur what are you doing?”
“Look,” Arthur said plainly, “we’ve been hunting… illegally… off an island that is rumored to have bears. And now, there’s a fucking kid… I’m clea
ning this up. You shut up… Kyle, take them back to the boat…”
The seriousness in the old hunter’s voice was enough to silence Sean, and even Kieran. Kyle had become his right hand, silent and grim but abiding. That’s when it had all gone to hell. Arthur had raised his rifle to finish off the job. They’d have to bury the body somewhere up the hill. Make it deep. Then never talk about it again.
The sound that came next was a growl and a movement of fur and muscle, and when he turned, another grizzly, this one as huge as the legends, was lunging over the sand, impossibly fast. Kyle and Kieran both tried to raise their guns but it was pointless. The grizzly had body-checked Kyle out of the way easily enough, then turned his attention on his son.
“No!” Arthur had said, his face a vicious compilation of hate and fear, and had raised his own gun and fired. He knew the bullet had found its quarry, but it was like shooting at a locomotive. Blood spouted from the bear’s soldier but he only growled at his attacker and swung at Kieran.
Everything went into slow motion then, and even now as he thought about it, everything was a blur. Somehow they had pulled Kieran away from the monster, and Arthur had fired again and missed. They’d made it to the outboard and then he’d seen another person – a woman. She had screamed at the bear and then both of them had disappeared back into the woods.
Impossible, he wanted to blurt. In the other room, Kieran made another groaning sound.
“I’m going back to that island,” he repeated.
Kyle gave a curt nod. “Then I’m coming with you, Art… you’re not doing this alone. Sean can take the Pygmalion back on his own. And you’re going to need another gun, I think. But just what do you plan to do? You… you saw it, too… that kid, he was a bear.”
Arthur wasn’t prepared to give his friend his theory, not just yet. Not until he could confirm it with his own eyes and preferably at the end of his own rifle. Yes, the kid had been a bear. And, he suspected, the woman who had appeared on the beach probably was too. Shifters. The legends were almost impossible to believe, but… his eyes flashed.
What could be a better test of a hunter’s skill then to bring in something so rare, so exotic that it defied the imagination? He licked his lips and gave Kyle a stern look.
“Get your goddamn gun, then,” he said. “Five minutes. Time to take this fight to them.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Chris opened his eyes slowly and tried to speak, his lips were parched and was pleading for water, but no sound came. It took a few moments for him to remember where he was. He saw the rafters of the cabin’s roof, the smell of his own sheets and an animal sort of odor that hung about him like a wraith, the whispering boughs of cedar trees through the single-paned window. The island.
He grunted and tried to readjust his posture but was rewarded with the effort by a twisting, jagged pain that speared through his shoulder and radiated into his chest. He gasped, not daring to scream aloud, but wondering what sort of fire had taken over his muscles. He looked down and saw a thin white wrap criss-crossing his shoulder blade, the center darkened to an almost rust color. I’ve been shot, he remembered and laid his head back down on the pillow.
It all seemed like a horrible chapter in some dusty paperback. The island. He’d been here six months already, acting as a patron for Dylan who was undergoing his final rite of initiation as a bear. And Sarah, how could he forget the beautiful, kind, incipient Sarah? She was to be Dylan’s bride, although he imagined she was taking the role with somewhat less motivation than most maidens. Then he remembered the poachers.
He closed his eyes against the memory of pain and fire. They’d shot Dylan and he was naked and bleeding on the sand when Chris had found him. Rage had overpowered his good sense, and he’d charged the poachers, fully shifted into the mighty brown grizzly. He’d injured – perhaps, killed? – one of them in the heat of the moment. Another of the poachers had shot him.
It was all a blur after that except that he had forced himself to stay as a bear as long as he could, hoping that it would give him more time to heal. How did I get back, he wondered. Probably Dylan, he thought. This was not the sort of training he had had in mind for his young disciple. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and tried to speak again.
Before he could utter a word, the door opened slightly with a creak and he saw Sarah push it wide with her knee. Both of her slender pale arms were occupied with a tray and his eyes widened at the aroma of salmon and herbs. She had on her iconic green bandana, forest green, that pushed up on her forehead and caused her silky black hair to jut out behind in a flared tail.
“Breakfast is served,” she said, using the back of her bare leg to close the door again.
“Smells and looks amazing…” Chris said, struggling to a sitting position.
“How do you feel?” her voice changed, and although his attention was on the food, he knew she was scrutinizing the tight bandages on his shoulder. “You… you had a fever for a few days. I’ve never seen someone burn so hot… we were all really worried. Does… it still hurt?”
“Imagine it’ll hurt for awhile,” he said, trying to grin, while taking a bite out of a piece of toast, “but the bullet went clean through. Now it’s just a matter of knitting. What’s the situation?”
She seemed reluctant to speak. Chris saw something play across her expression but let it go. His first impression of Sarah had been very much like Dylan’s, he supposed. She was strong, stronger than she let on but she had a stubborn way of needing to prove it – sometimes even she overestimated how strong she was but he didn’t think it was his role to intervene.
“Dylan….is better. Still dizzy,” she said, referring to the bullet graze that had clipped his forehead, above his ear. “He’s taken to walking the trails, trying to make sure that the poachers don’t return. He…”
“He thinks they will,” Chris said. It wasn’t a question. The two of them had grown up together and in the time they’d spend on the island, Chris felt as if he’d come to understand his young friend in a decidedly intimate way. As patron, it was, after all, his duty to understand what Dylan was going to do before he did it.
Sarah merely nodded, her jaw stiffened as she sat down on the side of his bed and looked out the window. Chris fidgeted uncomfortably and tried to avoid the silence by picking at his salmon, but he knew there was too much not being said on both ends. She looked different this morning, although he found himself unable to localize what exactly had changed.
“What do you think?” he finally queried. His voice was barely a voice, it seemed to blend into the automatic sounds of everything around him, the shuffling of the sheets, the clink of the fork.
“I don’t know,” she said, pivoting on her torso. “They shot both of you. And… the other one…” Her chin was drawn tightly, and he noticed the small divot in her upper lip, just under her nose, and how it dimpled as she pursed her mouth. I’m missing something, he realized.
“It was a mistake,” he said at last, referring to the poacher he had wounded. “I let my instincts get the better of me.”
“If you hadn’t, Dylan would probably be dead,” she reminded.
That didn’t soften the blow or the implications of what he had done. He shuffled his back again, trying to remain in a sitting position. His massive chest heaved gently with each breath, like a sail of muscle catching wind. In his heart, he also believed they would return. They had started something by shooting Dylan, but he had kept it going by nearly killing one of theirs. They’ll be back, he mused, the thought hardening like cement in his mind, and stronger than ever.
He saw Sarah turn her head away again, as if trying to avoid eye contact, and his hand unconsciously went out and touched her own, which was propped on the sheets. She didn’t pull away, but her head snapped in his direction.
“You saved my life, too,” he whispered. “I won’t forget it.”
“This is such a mess,” she shook her head. His hand tightened over the small ball of her fist a
nd she let out a single sob and turned her head away from him again. “Don’t look at me.”
He flinched but couldn’t help resisting a smile. Suzy often had done the same thing, as if not being able to see something negated its existence. Whether that meant hiding her face during a scary movie at the cinema, or turning away so that other people couldn’t identify the pain written on her face. He went rigid and removed his hand. Suzy. It’d been years since she’d died, and yet the specter of her memory still haunted him. Sweet Suzy, whom he’d met during his initiation.
This isn’t Suzy, he reminded himself shamefully. This is Sarah, Dylan’s mate, knock of your sentimentalism old man. He finished off the food on his plate and his stomach growled in response, grateful for the nutrients. The process of healing, especially for shifters, took a lot of energy, and he had been in a fever dream for nearly two days. He realized now that he was still ravenous.
“Give Dylan my compliments,” he said, trying to lighten the mood, and succeeding, barely. “Listen, we’re all fine, okay? Look at me…” he touched her hand again until she looked at him with those deep cavernous eyes. “All alive, and hungry as a bear oughta be, right?”
She chuckled at his casual demeanor. “Fair enough. I’ll stop worrying… but I think we should try and figure out what we’re going to do, if they come back.”
Or when, he thought judiciously, but covered it with an assenting nod. “Agreed, we should-” he almost choked on his own spittle when he realized what they had overlooked. “The radio! The satellite radio!” Sarah was almost startled off the bed by his exclamation. She gaped at the man the way one might gape at a wild dog – unsure whether it will lick your hand or bite your throat. Chris coughed and tried to clear his throat. “Sorry… just, when you’ve been living without conveniences for such a long time, you tend to forget they even exist… there’s a satellite radio, in my closet. Use it to contact the mainland but only in an emergency.”