by Amy Star
The sigh of the train was a monotonous grinding that she had learned to filter out – in time, it had become synonymous with her own heartbeat, and she didn’t even notice it now unless she made an effort. She felt a sudden chill through the glass of the window, and sat up, straightened her small, lithe back, and heard it pop under her sweater. They were getting further north by the minute, and soon they would be entering the ancestral lands of the Greybacks.
Opposite her in the other seat, the tall and slender form of Caroline seemed like a perfect statue. Sarah’s first cousin by blood and a decade older than she, the woman was in her forties but looked like she could be anywhere from between sixteen and fifty. A long black dress glided down her firm torso, and the way it caught the sunlight made it look like some sort of hybrid between silk and Kevlar.
Caroline’s legs were crossed, and so were her arms, which seemed to betray nothing of her hard exterior – she was both chaperone, warrior, politician, and a slew of other jobs that only a hard-edged woman could hope to inhabit. In a way, Sarah looked up to her aunt as the only person in the world worth knowing. But it was also true there was no one Sarah feared more.
She let her eyes move back up to Caroline’s face, which was hidden under a veil of impossibly dark black hair, the same shade as Sarah’s, except fuller-bodied. Sarah had often wished she had hair like Caroline’s. In comparison, she was smallish in stature, not so full-chested, but thin and wiry – years of training at the Greyback Mansion back in Washington had slimmed her down and given her a muscle tone which was both flexible and sultry. It reeked of Caroline’s tutelage.
“Morning, sunshine,” Caroline murmured, her eyes still closed and arms crossed. The long sharp fingernails on her immaculately manicured hands flicked, like a cat’s tail when it was dreaming. Or hunting.
“Where are we?” Sarah muttered, raising her arms above her head and stretching. Outside, the train made a wide berth, and below them, they could see the slow slide of granite scree plummeting into the chasm of a creek far below. Sarah shivered.
“We should be passing through the Lion’s Pass,” Caroline murmured, finally deigning to open her eyes, and she regarded the landscape with a level and aloof gaze, “can you feel it Sarah?”
“Feel it?”
“The pull of the ancestral lands,” Caroline replied without waiting.
“Oh, yes, I suppose.”
“You’re terrible at lying. Even if it’s meant to patronize me,” Caroline hissed, and Sarah winced.
The older woman sensed her cousin’s discomfort and relented with a playful smile, “How was your sleep?”
“It was fitful,” Sarah said, “I kept dreaming about a big tree. A cedar. It looked dead, rising pale and twisty out of the ground. I don’t know why, it frightened me. Then I woke up.”
Caroline merely nodded and raised a fist to her chin.
“I’m going to go get some food from the kitchen car, do you want anything?” Caroline asked, rising suddenly. The black dress fell to just above her knee, and the pleat up the side revealed a long triangular arc of thigh. She must be freezing, Sarah thought to herself and merely nodded.
As she passed by, Sarah thought she smelled the strong scent of perfume – something lavender. She turned her head back to the window and looked sleepily out of it before reaching under her seat and pulling up her old knapsack. She retrieved her journal and flipped sporadically through it.
The ancestral lands, she repeated in her head. It was something she had always taken for granted. Since before time immemorial, she had known only the mansion and the wide acreage of the Greyback Estate. It was a place where the Bear in all of them could be released, tamed, tempered, and finally controlled.
“Controlled,” she said out loud, and blushed to make sure no one had heard her.
Even now she could feel the Bear inside her – an animal potential that rippled in her blood, became excited by the scent of the wilderness outside. In her books, she had read about how humans had mythologized her kind. Shape shifters, monsters. It was a cruel act of fate that humanity always feared what it could not understand, and it had been drilled into her from a young age that the cardinal rule for all Bears was simple and to the point: avoid at all costs.
That’s not to say it had been a lonely childhood and adolescence – there were plenty of others at the Estate, including Caroline, with whom she could play and talk and learn. But deep in her heart, she knew it wasn’t the same as being out there, in the real world. She flipped open another page on her journal, and combed a long lock of hair the color of nightshade, over one ear. Her journal was what kept her sane, a chronicle of her feelings and dreams, with which she had hoped, in private, to untangle the many threads of her life.
She leaned back in the seat, and the leather creaked under her as she drew up both knees, felt the fabric on her knees stretch against the movement as she reached into one pocket and pulled out a dull pencil. She began to draw a tree on the open page, a long tall cedar stretching up into the sky like an accusing finger. She shivered again. It’s coming, she thought.
*
The train finally came to a stop and lurched Sarah awake again. Her knees slipped out from under her and banged against the side of the train. She swore and sat up straight. Outside, she could see they’d arrived at a small station, although it looked a bit informal. She tugged at the cuffs of her sweater, pulling their grey sleeves down over her wrists. In the reflection of the glass she suddenly caught a glimpse of herself, and frowned.
She always found herself comparing herself to Caroline, and it bugged her. Caroline was the epitome of a 1920’s femme fatale, distinctly dangerous and lovelier than anything else that shared the screen. Sarah pinched at her small chin and wrinkled her nose again. The sharp angle of her chin and the high cheekbones gave her an almost elfin appearance. Cute, maybe, but not beautiful, she thought, and pulled another lock of the black ebony hair over the curve of her ear. The black hair was a genetic marker, something that had been handed down through the ages.
Like mother’s, she thought with the briefest twinge of sadness. With her eyes closed, she could still picture her standing next to her father. Both of them seemed imbued with a kind of royalty you only found in paintings, and Sarah wondered if they’d actually been like that, or if her memory of them over time had simply embellished them.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said astutely to herself.
After their death, it had been Caroline who had taken care of her, and while Sarah may have despised her harshness, she couldn’t help but respect the woman. Caroline had more or less held the family together after that tragedy – her role as a negotiator between the other Tribes had kept the peace, a peace that had been upheld for centuries. But it was also an unstable peace, one which could slip off the edge of a blade. Especially if that blade ends up between someone’s ribs, she thought callously.
She pulled up her knees until they were hugging her chest. That’s why I’m here, she thought, and felt a wormy sensation burrow against her navel. She felt a bit sick and took in a deep breath. Even though she’d been preparing for this moment her whole life, it didn’t make things any easier or simpler – and as much as she understood the need for peace, part of her hadn’t fully accepted the fact of the circumstances.
“I’m going to be married off,” she said again out loud, but this time didn’t care if anyone was listening. A marriage of convenience, Caroline had called it. It still felt wrong.
Out of the window, she saw porters unloading the train, and moments later Caroline strode back into the cabin. She had changed into another dress, the same black reflective material, but longer and with a heavier bustle that gave her an even more ominous presence.
“You ready?” Caroline asked.
“I…I don’t know,” Sarah admitted.
Caroline let out a long sigh and sat down, bending forward toward Sarah in a gesture the younger woman found out of character. “You know this is necessary,” Car
oline began.
“Why is it necessary?”
Another long sigh from Caroline. Sarah bobbed her head, making the short pixie cut dance around the base of her neck. “Not this again. You know what this means to us, to all Greybacks. You can’t back out now.”
“I could, if you let me.”
“And you certainly know me better than that.”
“I know, I just… it doesn’t feel right. In this day and age, having arranged marriages. Even if I understand the purpose behind it, that doesn’t make it right. Politics, that’s all this is.”
“Politics,” Caroline nodded in assent, “is what has allowed our house to grow into what it is. And it is politics that will keep it alive, long after both you and I have earned our gravestones in the Greyback cemetery.”
“So sayeth the bey,” Sarah rolled her eyes.
“I know you don’t like this aspect of family matters,” Caroline prodded, “but it is important. This is the most important day of your life.”
Sarah bit her lip and was about to disagree – it didn’t seem fair that she didn’t get to decide for herself what the most important day of her life was going to be. But when she saw Caroline’s cold and calculating stare, she fell silent and looked glumly out the window again.
“C’mon, it’s a long car ride to the chalet. We need to make you look presentable, and I don’t have much to work with.”
Sarah grabbed her backpack and slung it over one shoulder. Caroline had always tried to teach her a certain propriety when it came to manners and appearance. Appearance is everything, was her motto. But for Sarah, she had passively resisted at every step of her Formal training – when she was supposed to be learning proper tea etiquette, she’d disappear into the woods with a bow and arrow and bring back a grouse, much to the chagrin of the Greyback’s temporary matron.
As they exited the train onto the deck of the train platform Sarah pulled up the collar of her sweater to guard her chin against a cold gust of icy air that spiraled down off the track. In front of her she could see all the workers, and even the station attendants, shrink back from Caroline in a kind of muted deference.
“Stand tall,” Caroline hissed over her shoulder, “you represent our Tribe now.”
“Sorry,” Sarah whispered back.
Sarah did as she was told, straightening her back, but when Caroline turned her head forward she stuck out her tongue and slunk her spine. The panic that gripped her earlier – the imminence that she had felt as they came ever closer to the ancestral lands – was even stronger now. She could feel it, whatever it was, that Caroline had spoken of so eloquently.
A man who was thin and looked like the quintessential butler, greeted Caroline, but she never stopped moving, and the poor man had to hobble beside her while he talked in a quick and frantic manner. Sarah realized it wasn’t English, but she couldn’t place the pidgin. She was even more surprised when Caroline responded in the same cryptic tongue, and looked over her shoulder with a sly grin at Sarah.
A black Citroen was waiting for them at the end of the platform, and Sarah dared to glance back at the train one more time. Huge mountains to the west and north loomed out of the horizon like icebergs, their striated sediment frozen in time, hearkening back to a primal age. Sarah imagined her kind, back then, roving over the plains and wildernesses. A whole species of Bear exploring the land before them, ruling over it with a symbiotic will.
Times have changed, she wrinkled her nose.
*
The ride up the chalet was uneventful, and Sarah closed her eyes again and let her mind go blank, a technique she had learned and mastered in the years leading up to this encounter. The butler had also revealed himself to be the chauffeur as well, and she could see him giving quick agitated looks in the rear-view mirror when he thought neither of his passengers were looking.
When they arrived, he abruptly grabbed their suitcases from the back and ushered them into the main hall of the chalet. It had all the look of a European castle to it, nestled deep in the Canadian wilderness – the idiosyncratic composite of both images, the castle and the landscape, caused Sarah to gasp aloud when she saw its luminous white pillars rising in front of her, contrasted sharply by the dark green conifers that spiked up the far mountainside. The chalet itself had been constructed on an outcrop, and hundreds of feet below them, a blue glacial river journeyed through a bright green marsh.
“The chalet was constructed some five hundred years ago,” the butler interjected, more for her own benefit, Sarah realized, than for Caroline’s, who looked bored. “The ancient headlands below are the rumored fields of the first Bears, before there were any Tribes.”
Sarah had heard all of this before, of course, in the many dusty tomes and books that comprised the Greyback library back in Washington, but she liked the butler and leaned in closer. “It’s very beautiful… hard to believe it was the source of so much strife,” she said, noticing Caroline’s annoyed look.
The butler gaped for a second, unsure how to proceed. “While it’s true, there was an eventual schism between the Bears, which led to the creation of the two different Tribes, Greyback and Clawgrove, one should not forget that the soul of every Bear is one.”
“Indeed,” Caroline hissed, as they entered into the main hall.
“This manor,” the butler continued, “was constructed after the War, which claimed so many of our brethren. It was built in the DMZ between both Tribe’s lands, in the hopes that it would foster peace. So it has stood for centuries, as a beacon of the peace that was eventually reached.”
It was all a little too abstract for Sarah to keep up with. She knew of the Great War from reading and knew about the final battle that took place between the Greybacks and the Clawgroves, but it was hard to imagine anything so terrible. She thought of the green marsh outside the chalet, of what it would have looked like painted in the blood of both Tribes, and the thought scared her so she shook her head.
Inside the hall, another group of men were waiting, and Sarah recognized one as the head of the enemy Tribe. Senator Patrick Clawgrove was a full-bodied man, wide in girth, but powerful enough to crush a man’s hand every time he shook it. A shock of white hair sprouted from his mottled head sharply, and he had a grim look on his face as she approached the two women. Sarah instinctively lowered her eyes and cowered behind Caroline, who only stopped moving when the Senator was firmly in her path.
“Ms. Caroline Greyback,” he said, with what Sarah thought was genuine courtesy, “and…Ms. Sarah Greyback, I take it?”
Sarah stepped forward. She could feel the eyes of the other envoys behind the Senator like knives. She was then very surprised to see the old man smile, his eyes flexing into wrinkled nests as he gently kissed the top of her hand.
“You probably don’t remember me,” he said at last, “but we’ve met before?”
“Oh? I’m sorry, Senator, I don’t remember.”
“Oh! Please, don’t call me Senator, I hate that title. Patrick is fine. After all, we are family. Or, we will be soon, which is the same thing to me. Please,” he said.
“Very well,” Sarah said, relaxing a little.
“You probably also don’t remember this place, although you’ve been here before. When you were probably, oh, how old was she Caroline? Two, three?”
Caroline lifted the sharp angle of her chin and shrugged.
Patrick raised his shoulders as well. “You were here with your mother and father. I remember I picked you up and you squealed. You were a very happy child. I hope Caroline hasn’t tempered the spirit too much,” he said with a wink.
Sarah saw another flash of anger stir behind Caroline’s visage, but it was gone as soon as it had come. “Shouldn’t we be making arrangements?” Caroline suggested.
“Of course,” Patrick admitted, “I’ve already taken the initiative. Connor has already left, and should be on the fringe of the border by now.”
Sarah’s heart suddenly beat faster at the mention of his name. Up
until now, she had only thought of him the way she had thought of this marriage – as something abstract, not quite real. An intangible question that she had never felt inclined to answer. Tradition prohibited either of them ever meeting or seeing one another’s likeness until they’d come of age. Apparently it was supposed to ensure that neither of them had any pre-existing bias, but she suspected there was a more mythological component to the whole affair – if two lovers had never met before, and suddenly recognized each other in the wilderness, it added a bit of flair to the romance.
Sometimes our families have a weird way of going about things, she said. Even though she was able to recognize she was sheltered, the hours and hours spent reading through the shelves of books at the Estate had granted her at least a credible outside perspective – the Greybacks and Clawgroves, like all great families through the centuries, couldn’t escape the eccentricities of isolation and power. She wondered how it had sculpted Connor and if she would actually be able to see him as more than just an obligation, a duty to her household.
She had, of course, imagined what he might look like – if he was anything like the simpering envoys she had been used to, he was probably a skinny, sycophantic, arrogant politician.
The thought turned her stomach.
“Where has he gone?” she suddenly blurted, and saw the surprise in both Caroline and Patrick’s faces. “I mean, I know we aren’t supposed to see each other…but….”
Patrick intervened. “He’s a brash young lad, that one. Full of his mother’s spirit, bless her soul. As you know, you both must start at separate ends of the ancestral lands. He… got impatient, and took off this morning. But it is for the best. I do apologize for his impertinence.”
“One can hardly be blamed for wanting out of this stuffy manor,” Caroline said, taking a certain pleasure in the Senator’s sour expression. “But like you said, youth is brash. I think it bodes well – Sarah is just as fiery when it comes to regulations. They will no doubt make a good match.”