by Amy Star
CHAPTER FIVE
Sarah stirred briefly as the sun entered in through the clearing, piercing through a deep frond of cedar boughs and hitting her legs like a warm shelf of light. She raised her arms above her head and smiled. She took in the deep smell of the forest around her and all of its particular scents – moss underneath her, a family of deer somewhere near that were foraging, old traces of human that had slowly been eaten by the forest; like an echo of the past. That’s all scent really was.
She looked down at her toes, which were covered in dust and dirt, and smiled. It felt good to run when in Form, and the Bear in her had wandered long and hard last night, filling itself with the joy of the forests as it scrambled underneath a pale moon. As it happened, she always returned to human form when she slept.
She closed her eyes again and let her mind wander – the last few years had been like a dream to her, something she had dared to believe in but had never really expected as real. There had been pain, yes. She grimaced for a moment, remembering the face of her cousin, Caroline. During Sarah’s initiation, a wretched ceremony that had involved being cast into the wilderness and ordered to find the heir of her family’s hated enemy, the Clawgroves, she had been swept up in the whirlwind of familial politics and old conspiracies.
Caroline’s last words before she died, brought down by Sarah’s own hand, echoed in the young woman’s mind. There is only this.
She caught a whiff of something familiar and crouched low. he opened her eyes again. No, that wasn’t true. There was more, and she had seen it, she had helped to provoke it. With Connor by her side, the two of them had rewritten the past, laid old hatreds to rest, and brought both their families, Clawgrove and Greyback, back together in a unity that hadn’t existed for as long as anyone could remember; longer, certainly, than any of the elders of either family were willing to admit to.
There had been opposition, of course, those who spoke out against their union, but Connor had proved himself as focused and careful in his attention to politics as he had in his pursuit of reconciling his history’s troubled past. Still, Sarah couldn’t shake the image of her cousin – or the fact she had been the one to end her life.
“Enough,” she said out loud to herself and it was enough to shake her reverie.
She stood up slowly and stretched. Her long black hair had grown in the past few years, and now swam almost to the top of her buttocks. She admired her naked beauty in the sunlight. Her full breasts hung like lamps against her chest, swaying slightly as she moved. A cold gust pummeled through the forest and she gasped, felt her nipples tighten in response, goose-bumps standing out against her light areolas. Her stomach was smooth too, and tanned slightly by the summer weather, and as she raised her hands over her head, she could feel the skin rubbing up her ribs, and hugging her belly.
Her hands stayed there as she tried to remember what it had felt like to hold someone inside her. Cora, she whispered to herself. Her daughter had been born soon after the union of the two great tribes – she was a beacon of hope for all Bears everywhere, a capricious child with dark hair like her mother’s. Her eyes were her father’s though, jaded and hard, piercing through any kind of deception. Those who met her learned early on that she probably understood more of what they were saying than she let on, even though she had but a few words at her disposal.
Sarah arched her back and tested the air with her nose – it was harder to find people or things in her limited human form. Since they’d moved back to her old Estate in Washington, she’d spent more and more time in the forest by herself, exploring what it meant to be a Bear. Connor understood the need to be alone, and had not intervened – he was the only one who could see through her actions to the heart of what they entailed. She was still grieving.
Even Connor was powerless to help her. It was a struggle she would have to overcome herself, and this meditation of living and wandering in the bush was like a way of purging those old emotions. She had to admit she missed Connor and Cora when she came out here alone. She headed back toward the clearing where the manor was located, her naked feet striding gracefully over the lawn.
One of the men on duty, who had in fact been her martial arts master during her training here, nodded at her and seemed unperturbed by her nakedness. She was the matron now, she could come and go as she pleased, and whether or not she had clothes on was of no concern.
Inside the manor, she caught a whiff of something liar and crouched low.
There was barely a growl from behind her as she turned, half a second too late. Strong arms wrapped around her back and she felt a hot face press up against her. Connor grinned at her, and she clutched at his T-shirt and smiled back.
“I guess I am getting slow,” she admitted with a grin.
“Remember the first time we met?” he asked.
She nodded. “I tried to sneak up on you, and you kicked my ass. Scraped my belly really well if I recall. I still have the scars,” she said, indicating three very faint discolorations on her stomach above her navel.
“You deserved it,” Connor said wrinkling his nose, “I missed you.”
“I missed you, too,” she said, and kissed him.
His mouth spilled into hers and she pressed her body tighter against him, her breasts squishing against his chest and wrapped a leg around him. His tongue tasted her lips and pushed against them until she finally opened her mouth and let him lick her, his saliva flowing into her mouth and she felt another sexual thrill.
“Not here,” she said, “Someone will see us.”
Connor grinned. He had grown in the few years since they’d met. He was more a man now, strong and tall, and his face was set in a kind of stern puzzlement – the lines around his eyes made him look older, wizened. She touched the side of his cheek and felt the coarse grizzle of a new beard coming in. His eyes locked on hers and there was something fiery in them, persuasive.
“Who cares?” he said, cupping her breast, which made her close her eyes and let out a small sigh of pleasure. His hand trailed down her waist, his fingers tickling at her thigh, and slide into the space between her legs.
“I…” she tried to say. She had missed him, his gentleness, his warmth.
“I missed you,” he repeated, his fingers rubbing against her cleft, and she let out a gasp.
“Later,” she said, fighting back her own desires, and pulled his hand away, brought it to her lips, and tasted herself on him. “Right now, you have work. And I have to get dressed… people will think we’re in a hippie commune or something.”
Connor laughed and kissed her on the cheek. “I’ll tell them to prepare something delicious for dinner. You’re right though, there’s an envoy from the Clawgrove’s coming, one of my father’s stewards.”
Sarah wrinkled her brow. She remembered Connor’s father well – Patrick Clawgrove, the Senator, had been there at the beginning. It was because of him, in many ways, that Caroline had died, and Connor had more or less banished him. He still played a functional role as an elder, but for all intents and purposes, he was but a shadow of his former self. She knew that he probably blamed her for that.
“What does he want?” she said, emphasizing ‘he’.
“I don’t know,” Connor said, his face suddenly grave, “but it was urgent enough for them to send him straight here. I’m supposed to meet with him later today, I’ll fill you in.”
“I’d like to be there,” Sarah said.
“Of course. In the meantime, why don’t you go say hi to Cora?”
Sarah grinned and bounded off in the direction of the living quarters. She peeked in through the open door of the nursery where the maid, Cecily, was crouched over Cora. Cora was playing with a doll and didn’t notice as Sarah crept in – she made a hush gesture to Cecily, who merely grinned and nodded.
“Peekaboo!” Sarah exclaimed, wrapping her arms around Cora.
The little girl squealed with delight and shook, the baby fat of her arms jiggling. She looked up at her mother and la
ughed.
“She hasn’t eaten yet, I’m afraid, I was just about to,” Cecily said in her toned down English accent. She had been there when Sarah was growing up as well, although they were about the same age. Now that she was the matron, Sarah made her Cora’s official caretaker, a task that Cecily undertook with unabashed affection and verve.
“Hello, darling,” she said, picking up the child and holding her against her breast. “Thank you, Cecily. I’ll take care of it. Can you do me a favor and prepare some clothes for me?”
“Of course, m’lady. Did you have a good time in the woods?”
“I suppose so. It’s very warm these days.”
“Shall I set up a bath?” the maid asked, indicating the dirty stains that covered Sarah’s body. She hadn’t even really noticed until now how dirty she got when she was out there. Connor, of course, hadn’t said a word – she suspected he liked her dirty, au naturelle as he called it.
“Yes, please,” she said.
She sat down on a stool by the window and rocked Cora. Cora sleepily held out her hands and Sarah whispered something and propped the child against her left breast. Cora gripped it firmly and drew her mouth around her mother’s nipple and began to suck heartily, a small stream of milk bubbling from the corners of her mouth.
“Shush, now,” Sarah said, rocking the child.
She took particular care and pleasure in feeding Cora – she knew it was only a matter of time before she’d have to wean her, but for now, these moments between mother and daughter were important. She could scarcely remember her own parents, who had died years earlier when she was a child. She knew, though, that she had acquired her mother’s best attributes, which included her dark hair. But there was also the painting – against the walls of the nursery were a number of oil paintings that she had confiscated from the chalet where Caroline died.
Her mother’s paintings were detailed and beautiful, and in her free time Sarah had taken up painting as well, though hers were of markedly less quality and distinction. She regretted not having known more about both of her parents – she looked back down at Cora.
“I’ll always be here, little one,” she said.
It was a promise to the child, but it was also a promise to herself. She had always searched for, and came up lacking, in her pursuit of purpose. Those years ago, when her marriage to Connor had been officiated as a political contract to keep the peace between Clawgrove and Greyback, she had figured her life was a set sequence of events. Her purpose: to promote peace.
But that had been wrong, too. Caroline had been wrong. There was more to life than living day by day for the interest of diplomacy. Connor had taught her that, at first. He had loved her in a way she had never been loved and he had demonstrated that there was nothing stronger than the word of a loved one telling you that they would always be there.
Now, Cora was teaching her something else: what it meant to pass on that devotion. She bent down and kissed the child again, who immediately fell asleep, wriggling with a dream. In the other room she could hear the sound of hot water filling a bath, and smiled.
*
The envoy from the Clawgrove tribe was a man Sarah had never seen before. He was thin, but his shoulders were large and broad, and he hunched slightly, like something out of a Machiavellian play. He had a black suit, bulging at the cuffs, and his hair was coiffed as it to accent the disparity of his eyes; one was normal, focusing straight ahead, but the other turned slightly. Sarah wondered if he’d had a stroke.
They all sat at the large rectangular table that was used for matters of great import: business, family matters and war. The envoy seemed a bit uncomfortable and Sarah cast an eye across the table at Connor. He was always casual but he had slipped on a smooth brown leather jacket over his T-shirt and looked quite dashing. Sarah, on the other hand, had put on a pair of shorts and a small blouse hung precariously off her shoulders.
“It’s highly unusual for my father to send someone in his stead,” Connor began, “but it would have been more unusual, I suppose, for him to have come himself.”
“The matter is one of a sensitive nature,” the envoy began.
“You may begin,” Connor insisted. Several of the Greyback’s envoys were seated opposite, and regarded all with a frank composure bordering on sycophantic.
“What do you know of the Bloodweres?” the envoy said. Sarah saw Connor stiffen at the mention of the name. She pursed her lips; even in her avid study in the library and of all the affairs of the tribes, she had never heard about the Bloodweres.
“Myths,” Connor said, “fairy tales used to scare children into behaving.”
“You forget, even we were once fairy-tales,” the envoy said, and when he saw Sarah’s confusion, “according to legend, during the schisms that created the two great houses, Greyback and Clawgrave, there was another party that did not choose a side. They had grown used to fighting, and they longed for more war – it had become a part of them.”
“And when they would not part with their violent ways, the leaders chose to exile them, yes, yes, we know the legends. But that’s all they are,” Connor said, flustered.
“Not so legend anymore, I’m afraid,” the envoy said, and drew forth a document, “according to your father, who is an expert on the mythology of the tribes, something has awoken. The chalet, which borders both our territories, was razed to the ground last week.”
Sarah gasped. Thank goodness I decided to bring my mother’s painting here, she thought, and realized how selfish that thought was. “By these Bloodweres?”
“By the outcasts, yes. We thought them dead, but it is possible remnant packs of them still wander the wilds. They would never be accepted by anyone in the great tribes, and will probably live on the fringes of our territory. But nevertheless, they appear to be growing in strength.”
Connor looked over the documents that the envoy had brought. “My father is nothing if not prudent,” he said to Sarah, “if he was worried about this, then there must be some tangible threat. What does my beloved father want us to do about it?”
The envoy hesitated. “The Bloodweres have been outcast for centuries. It is your father’s belief that this latest attack on hallowed ground is a way of signaling their presence. Your father believes it is time for them to come home. He wants you, both of you, as the leaders of your houses, to try and negotiate with them.”
Connor struggled with a decision for a moment, and Sarah could see the gears grinding in his brain – unlike his father, he was a perfect diplomat. Fair, but uncompromising. He clearly understood the need for peace. But the Bloodweres were an unpredictable force, something to be reckoned with. It wasn’t something they could just ignore.
After a pause, he placed both palms flat on the table and seemed to have reached a resolution. “Very well. I will depart tomorrow, and attempt to arrange a meeting with their leader,” he said.
“It must be both of you,” the envoy said, indicating Sarah.
“Out of the question,” he fumed, and Sarah saw his eyes flash dangerously.
“The Bloodweres will only negotiate with both heads of the family – if your father is correct, it is the only way to persuade them. You have unified the houses; therefore you must act as one.”
Connor was about to raise his voice again when Sarah spoke up in a soothing and tempered tone that seemed to lull everyone in the room. They knew she wasn’t just a figurehead – more often than not, the affairs of state ran through her, and her eidetic recollection of history and facts was incalculably valuable. Everyone turned in deference toward her.
“My love,” she said, “it is as the envoy said. It would show weakness – or worse, disrespect – for only one of us to show up. I will accompany you.”
“It’s too dangerous,” Connor shook his head, “we don’t know anything about them.”
“We know enough,” she replied, “we must show strength.”
“What about Cora?” he said.
Sarah stopped and fum
bled for a moment, but long enough for Connor to see her hesitation. “We’ll all go,” she said, “she will be safer with us, than if we leave her here. I don’t trust these Bloodweres, but I don’t trust your father, either.”
The envoy seemed shocked by something so blasphemous, especially against his master, but Sarah eyed him squarely as if to remind him that he was on her territory now.
“You don’t think he’d do anything, do you?” Connor said, but the slowness of his speech indicated he wasn’t sure himself.
“I don’t know,” Sarah admitted, “but I want Cora with me. And I’m not letting you go alone. I leave you alone for two minutes without supervision, you’d tear this poor man to shreds and feed him to the dogs.” There was supposed to be a lingering humor and irony in her voice, but the envoy apparently didn’t get it and shrank back, visibly offended again, but also freshly terrified of this tall and graceful woman who had shown her teeth on more than one occasion.
“Then it is settled,” the envoy said after another pause. “We leave tomorrow.”
It was agreed that Connor, Sarah, and the others in their troupe including, with her recommendation, an armed party to protect them, would meet at the nearest village outside the razed chalet. The borderlands between the Clawgrove and the Greyback territories lay there, in a vast wilderness. It was a perfect place to roam free and wild as a bear, but it was also an ideal habitat for outcasts if, as Patrick, Connor’s father, presumed, the Bloodweres were hiding.
On the long train ride there, Sarah went over all the books she could find on the Bloodwere’s mythology and the legends leading up to their exile. Across from her, Connor held Cora in his arms and played another game of peekaboo. The small child giggled in delight again, her bright eyes flashing.
“I think this cub is getting bigger!” he announced, raising her up.
Cora squealed and Sarah smiled across the table. Connor had become a good husband, but he made a good father too, something she was secretly glad and grateful for. She could still remember their first night of lovemaking in the ancient woods, the passion and the fire of it, both of their bodies mingled in a sweaty contortion of limbs and embraces.