The Bearfield Baby Heist

by Jacqueline Sweet

  Cold and distant and no help at all, Mina had always felt vaguely creeped out by stars. It went doubly so now. They were eyes watching her, judging her. They were plotting against her, the stars were. Watching from an impossible distance but making plans to mess with her life.

  There were no sounds. No wind shook the slender eucalyptus leaves. But tattered strips of bark slowly unpeeled themselves and plopped to the ground like overripe fruit.

  Mina was sure she was dreaming, but everything seemed so real. But surely Peter and Vera wouldn’t have just left her there and skedaddled. They must be nearby, watching her like the stars.

  She tried to sit up, to turn her head, but her limbs wouldn’t respond. Sleep paralysis, Mina thought. It will pass. But it didn’t. The stars slowly rotated overhead and shadows lengthened on the trees, but still she couldn’t move.

  At the corner of her vision, one particularly dark shadow broke away from the trees and circled around her. It wasn’t a ball of blackness so much as a void. Or a blind spot in her vision. She tried to focus on it as best she could, but her eyes just couldn’t see whatever the thing was.

  The void sang to her in a grandfatherly voice. It sang tuneless songs that calmed Mina, even as she wanted to scream. The grandfatherly shadow sang, “I know what’s best” and “Do as you’re told” and “You’ll be safe as long as you obey.”

  She wanted to plug up her ears, to chase the sound away. Mina tried to recall every catchy song she’d ever had stuck in her head. “All the single ladies, all the single ladies,” she hummed. “Can't read my, can't read my, no he can't read my poker face,” she sang. But the grandfatherly voice deepened and grew louder, like it was almost yelling its songs of obedience.

  “Stay asleep, little girl. The Cuckoo is here,” it said.

  “I get knocked down, but I get up again. You’re never gonna keep me down,” Mina sang.

  “Your baby is my baby, when the Cuckoo nears,” it said.

  “I get knocked down, but I get up again. You’re never gonna keep me down,” Mina sang.

  “I’ll leave you a gift, all new and pink,” it said. “And when it dies, boy will it stink.” There was a cruelty to the voice now, the gentle fatherly authority grown twisted and sour and patronizing.

  Mina tried to remember more songs, more lyrics, but as she grasped for them she only found drifting flower petals floating on clouds of sickly blue ash.

  “Just stay still,” the Cuckoo sang. “It will be over soon. And no one will know, not even the moon.”

  The shadowy shape loomed over her, blocking out the stars. Or maybe the stars were the shadow’s eyes, watching her from a terrible distance. The shadow was man-shaped now. This close to her, Mina could almost make out its edges. It had fingers and ears and a bulbous nose. But whenever she tried to focus on it, her eyes darted away.

  The shadow touched her with warm dry fingers that rustled like dead leaves. It squeezed her wrist and checked her pulse, then squeezed her belly from different angles, pushing too hard against the baby within.

  “Almost ready. Almost ready,” the Cuckoo sang. “But time is running out to do what we should. We’ll hurry things along and be gone from this wood.”

  Mina couldn’t move. She couldn’t even blink. The more she thought about it, it seemed like her eyes weren’t even really open. The Cuckoo pressed down on her belly in a too-firm massage, like he was trying to push her baby out.

  Where was Matt? He should have been there by now. He was supposed to swoop in, turn into a bear and slap all the bad guys silly. Had they taken Matt out? Locked him up with magic chains in a basement somewhere? The idea was impossible. Nothing could hold him back. He was the sweetest man nine days out of ten, but when someone threatened Mina he became a warrior. Time and again she’d seen it. So where was her warrior now.

  Something light and cool and clean approached. From beyond the blur of the Cuckoo’s shadow, Mina saw it hovering like a sphere of twinkly blue light. The sphere pulsed with laughter, not the toxic false mirth of the Cuckoo but rather something pure and joyous.

  “Don’t worry,” the sphere said in a happy chirpy voice. “Everything will be okay.”

  “No it won’t,” Mina replied. “This thing is going to steal my baby. It’s going to take her away and leave me with a fake. I can feel it.”

  The glowing blue sphere flew through the air like a hummingbird. It placed itself between Mina and the Cuckoo. The blue light cut through the Cuckoo’s disguise and Mina saw it—saw him—as he really was.

  The Cuckoo wasn’t some horrible thing of shadow and song, it was an old man with neatly combed white hair and a summer suit the color of fog. He had that round old man nose that guys got in old age and rimless glasses that hid his eyes behind reflected light. He was clean shaven and had pink skin. His breath smelled sickly sweet like cough drops and candy canes.

  “He’s just a man,” Mina said. “I can fight a man.”

  The Cuckoo pushed down even harder and Mina groaned through the pain.

  “You need to wake up now. It’ll be okay,” the blue light said. “But you need to wake up, Mom.”

  Mina opened her eyes and was dazzled by daylight.

  It wasn’t night. She wasn’t on a camping mattress, but rather a gurney, one of those collapsible ones that paramedics used.

  “Well, look at who’s awake,” said a cheerful voice.

  Mina blinked and squinted. The sun made it hard to see, but there was an old man in a fog-gray suit standing over her. He had a stethoscope looped around his neck and surgical gloves on. Behind him was an ambulance, though not the lone Bearfield ambulance that Peter sometimes drove. It was marked, “Mercy Springs Emergency Services.” Leaning against the ambulance was Peter, who had a worried look on his face. He was chewing on his fingernails and muttering to himself. Vera and her bag of knockout powder was nowhere to be seen.

  “Let me go,” Mina said. “Let me go and maybe you can walk away from here with your kneecaps attached.” She tried to sit up, but her body felt distant and numb.

  The old man laughed. “Such spirit! Oh ho ho, I do love a woman with spirit.” In person he looked like Colonel Sanders or Santa Claus, with a veneer of kind professionalism. But Mina could still sense the shadow that lived under his skin.

  “My name is Doctor Tannenbaum,” he said. “I’m here to help with your baby.”

  “I have a midwife,” Mina said. “And a doula. We’re planning on a home birth.”

  The doctor threw back his head and laughed. His whole body shook with it. “A home birth! Of all the ridiculous things. Did you read about that in some ladies’ magazine? Or maybe you saw it on Pinterest?” He shook his head. “No no, I’m afraid that’s quite impossible. It would not be best for your baby.”

  Mina felt a sweet rage bubbling through her blood. She wiggled her toes. “You don’t get to decide what’s best for my baby, asshole.”

  The doctor laughed again. “Such language! I hope you don’t plan to speak that way around your baby. Little pitchers have big ears, you know. And of course we know what’s best for your baby. We have tradition and science behind us. Ten thousand of the brightest men have studied this and made the best decisions for you.”

  Mina glanced around. “We’re in a field. You think having my baby in a field is better than at my home?”

  “Well, this isn’t where you’ll deliver your baby to us. This is just a sort of temporary stop. Our associate had to go get rid of the car, after you destroyed the rear electricals and after one of your silly friends called the police. Vera is driving it into a barn some distance from here, but when she gets back we’ll take you to my office and take care of this little baby problem you have. They may be on the lookout for that rental car, but no one looks twice at an ambulance.” The doctor smiled widely, as if he’d just announced tomorrow was Christmas.

  “We should just go now. We can get Vera later,” Peter muttered darkly.

  “Now now, Peter. The best minds have put to
gether this plan. It’s not for you to question it.”

  The rage bubbled and boiled in Mina. Maybe she should have been frightened. Surely it’s what the doctor wanted, with the way he spoke to her. But she wasn’t scared at all. She was furious. Furious that they wanted to take her baby. And furious at the condescending way the Cuckoo spoke to her.

  Matt knew about the car. Matt had called the police. Matt was looking for her. She could feel it. She just needed to buy time, to stall.

  “Your name isn’t Doctor Tannenbaum. You don’t need to pretend around me. I know who you are.”

  “Oh dear, the patient thinks she knows best!” laughed Doctor Tannenbaum again.

  “You’re the Cuckoo.”

  The doctor’s smile froze and fell from his face. “You heard my song then? The Cuckoo’s song?” he hissed. “How did you hear it? That song is a secret I sing to the world, a secret that keeps your baby nice and sleepy until he’s given to his new momma.”

  “Cuckoo? What’s she talking about, Doc?” Peter asked.

  “Nothing, dear Peter. Nothing at all. She’s just addled from all that sleep dust you keep tossing at her.”

  “We should put the Hades’ Crown on her again,” Peter said. “It’s not safe having her in the open like this.”

  The Cuckoo sighed. He reminded Mina of a teacher she’d had in high school who let out exasperated sighs whenever a student asked a question, as if explaining the world to someone else was the dullest thing imaginable. “Dear Peter, if you put that on her I will not be able to do my job. You may be just a weak, dumb human but I am so much more.”

  Peter’s face reddened at the insult, but he didn’t offer any more suggestions.

  Feeling returned to Mina’s hands and feet. She was still a long ways off from moving her legs, let alone running away.

  “Why? Can you tell me that? Why do you want to steal my baby?” She grinned at the Cuckoo defiantly. “Not that you will of course. You’re going to try and my husband is going to remove your kneecaps and I am going to walk away from here with my baby.”

  The Cuckoo removed the stethoscope from his neck and inserted the hard little buds into his ears. He pressed the cold disc of the instrument to Mina’s belly, listening for a few seconds at different angles.

  “One of the greatest betrayals the bear spirit leveled on her people was to require them to seek out mortals for mates. Instead of the blood becoming stronger and more pure over time, it is instead constantly watered down with weakness. And not only did Matthew Morrissey mate with a mortal, which though shameful is necessary, but he had the temerity to pick a mate who wasn’t even the same color as him.” The Cuckoo frowned at Mina and behind the reflection of his glasses she saw a shard of hate staring back.

  “We’re fated mates, you racist ass. Neither of us planned this. We were drawn to each other. Destined for each other.”

  “Yes, well I’m sure it feels that way. But infatuations always do.”

  He wanted to steal her baby because she was human, and because she was black and Matt was white.

  It was funny, but the shifter thing was such a hard idea to get used to that Mina sometimes forgot that Matt was white. But apparently Bearfield’s enemies had never forgotten that she was black. When she got out of the mess she was in, she’d have to warn Allison.

  “There are other families. Deserving families of devout bears who can’t have children like yours.” The Cuckoo’s face twisted into an exaggerated frown. “The bear spirit shuns them—she’s a fickle one, that woman. She gives so much to her people, but robs them of true happiness and purity. She gives them only sickly mortals as children, denying them the god-like offspring they’ve earned.”

  Something squalled from inside the ambulance. It was a warbling shriek, earsplitting with need and hunger. Peter Parstip went pale at the sound, but the Cuckoo beamed.

  “Do you hear that?” he said. “That’s one of my children.”

  “It sounds hungry,” Mina muttered. Feeling had returned to her limbs. She could hear the highway again. Smell the chewing gum in Peter’s pocket. The sound of the Cuckoo’s heart was loud, too. It sounded like a rabbit’s heart, fast and weak, pittering in his chest like it wanted to fly away from him.

  The Cuckoo laughed again. “Oh ho ho, she is hungry. She will always be hungry. My children have such appetites. But that’s why we find milk mothers like you, who have so much to give. Surely you can share some with my little birdie.” The Cuckoo stuck out one pink, stubby finger and poked Mina’s breast as if she was an animal he was sizing up for slaughter.

  “This is your thing, huh? You steal babies and plant your little monsters? What then? Do you show up one night when they’re ten and steal them back?” She smiled at him to show she wasn’t even slightly afraid, though she really actually was. “You think biracial families are immoral, but your whole life is predicated on sickness, isn’t it?”

  The Cuckoo did not like being talked back to by a woman. His face pulled in on itself, like he’d eaten a lemon. “Peter, are you sure you don’t have extra sleeping powder?”

  “Yeah, sorry boss. Vera had it on her and she still isn’t back yet.”

  The hungry thing in the ambulance cried louder.

  “They’re so much easier to deal with when they’re asleep,” the Cuckoo sneered. He picked up a doctor’s bag, one of the old fashioned kind, all black and shiny, and placed it on Mina’s thighs. He hummed a little tune as he rummaged in it.

  Was it time to run? If she tried to escape too early, they’d catch her and hide her again. But trying too late might mean missing her opportunity. How would she know when the time was right?

  Her cub rolled over inside her and stretched. The Cuckoo gasped with delight. “Look at this big girl! So strong. Oh she will do well with her new mommy and daddy, won’t she?” He stooped over and pressed his lips almost against Mina’s belly, and whispered in some odd arcane tongue, like he was talking directly to her unborn daughter.

  “What are you saying?”

  The Cuckoo giggled and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Secrets and secrets and so many secrets,” he sang. “And the baby sings back to me, you know? She says it’s time to be born and I quite agree with her. Peter, I think we will forego the clinical setting and do the procedure here. This child is ready and we cannot wait much longer.”

  “But Doc, we’re in a field?”

  “I’ve been delivering babies in fields for hundreds of years, my good boy. These hospitals are just a modern affectation. The old ways are the best ways, everyone knows.” The Cuckoo took out a variety of medical instruments and placed them on Mina’s belly, on her thighs, on the gurney next to her. She saw a scalpel and gauze and fat tongs that looked just the right size to hold a grapefruit or a baby’s head. Half of the things he pulled out she felt but couldn’t see. And then the Cuckoo removed a syringe that was sickeningly long and thin. It dribbled with a pale yellow fluid. The Cuckoo flicked the needle a few times with a fingernail and then squeezed out a jet of fluid.

  “This is—well—think of it like Pitocin. It’ll get your deliverance started in a jiffy!” The Cuckoo laughed and turned to look at Peter, who was still leaning against the ambulance and scowling. “Boy, why aren’t you laughing?”

  Matt wasn’t there.

  Michael wasn’t there.

  Big scary Marcus wasn’t there.

  The only bear shifter around was the cub inside her. Mina had to save herself. No more stalling. No more waiting for her rescuers. It was up to her.

  The anger and fear in her blood made her strong. Her cub’s magic was at full force, strengthening her, as if it knew what was about to happen and wanted to do everything it could to stay with her.

  The Cuckoo turned back toward her, the syringe held high so that the dappled sunlight made it glow. Bits of sediment—leaves and twigs and worms—floated in the glass chamber of the syringe. There was no way in hell he was sticking her with it.

  He grasped h
er arm and leaned over, peering closely at her forearm. “Hmm, I think all your veins are hidden behind some mommy fat!” he laughed. “This might take a few tries.”

  Time slowed down for Mina. The syringe hovered in the air in the Cuckoo’s fat pink fingers, moving towards her as fast as a slug crawling on ice. Matt had told her about this, about how when he was in bear-mode and his power was flowing, time stopped. The old timers had a name for it—they called it “Wearing the Aspect” and they swore it was when the great bear spirit herself was guiding them.

  Maybe it was the bear spirit. Maybe it was adrenaline. Mina didn’t know or care. She snapped her left hand up, seized the syringe and twisted it upwards, stabbing it right into the Cuckoo’s chest. Time sped back up and the old man yelped in shock and slipped forward, stumbling. As he fell the plunger of the syringe slammed against the gurney and injected whatever the hell was in the tube straight into him. The old man collapsed onto Mina, and then rolled off twitching to the muddy ground.

  Mina grabbed a scalpel in one hand and the tongs in the other, then turned to Peter. “No one is taking my baby,” she roared. For a moment she could swear there was a bear in her—more than just her cub.

  But Peter had other plans. In his grip he held a handgun. “Sit down, Ms. Brooks. I’m not afraid to use this.”

  Chapter 6

  Driving down the highway with a giant bear in the back of your Jeep is a great way to attract attention. Even with Michael wrapped in a tarp with just his big snuffling nose sticking out, they were a spectacle. Cars honked at them. Sped up and past to get a better look at whatever they assumed Michael was. A cow? A trick? Some Burning Man art thing gone weird? Who could guess what they thought? All Matt knew was that he wished they’d back off a bit. It was hard enough driving with a one-ton bear butt dragging them down, add in the gawkers and honkers and countless swerving cars and it was a recipe for disaster.

  “We’ll get her back,” Allison said.