by Grace, A. E.
“Yeah? So what was your favorite part of today?”
“Sitting in that boat and letting the current take us,” Liam said. That had been pleasant. Quiet, with the sound of water slowly moving, the odd slap and slosh as a small wave broke across their paddle boat’s bow, it had been extremely relaxing.
“Yeah,” Terry agreed. “Me too. Didn’t like the town we stopped at so much, or the temple. Too many other people.”
“It’s one of the few touristy things you can do while also getting away from the tourists,” Liam said. “Rent your own boat, pay off the guide that comes with it, and you’re all alone, undisturbed.”
“Wasn’t it funny when those kids fell in?”
Liam smiled. A group of backpackers had tried to stand on their boat, and it had tipped to one side, throwing them all in the river. “Yeah,” he said. “A little.”
“What’s up with you, Liam?” Terry asked, leaning in and taking another sip of the light, sweet beer.
“What do you mean?”
“Why are you so closed off all the time? What are you hiding from me?”
He didn’t reply. He looked at Terry, and wondered if this was the moment that the pleasantness would evaporate. He hadn’t done this in a long time. It was too dangerous.
“Come on,” she said. “Talk to me.”
But he didn’t. He just drank from the keg, sat back and watched the busy city buzz about, bicycles, mopeds, an array of sounds and smells. Terry eventually got the message. She sat back in her seat, and did the same.
“I think they brew this beer themselves,” Liam said after perhaps half an hour of silence.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. It’s got that kind of homegrown taste to it.”
“I don’t even know what that means. But it packs a wallop.”
Liam nodded. “That’s what I mean.”
“Yeah, it does taste strong.”
“Terry,” Liam said. “Are you hungry?”
“Not particularly,” she replied. “We had that cake thing at like six.”
“Good, because neither am I.” Liam paused, unsure of how to proceed. He knew what he was going to do. He had decided. “You’re right, there is something.” And just like that, whatever they were, whatever they had, was on its way down the road to its end. That’s how it always transpired. “But not here.”
She was sitting up, looking at him intently. “What do you mean not here?”
“I’d rather go somewhere quieter to talk.”
“You’re not up to anything, are you?” Terry asked through a laugh.
“No. Come on, last sip, and then we’re leaving.”
“Where to?”
“The lake.”
*
“Don’t let go of me.” Terry’s smile faded, but this time because she was surprised at herself. She hadn’t expected to say something like that to him, even though they were nearly sliding down the bank of the lake, loose leaves and shrubbery offering no purchase.
“I won’t.” The reply came just a fraction of a second too late, the pause just long enough to make it a little awkward.
“Liam,” Terry said. She softened her voice a little. “I, um,” she started, before stopping. She tried again. “We need to talk.” They had climbed over a rusty chain fence and were now at the edge of the water, next to a small jetty at which was moored a rickety rowboat.
He sighed, and looked at her, and then gestured at the little pier. “Let’s sit.”
“Okay.” Together they walked out onto it, just a few creaking planks of wood separating them from the water of the lake beneath them. Liam went right to the end, and sat, his legs hanging off the edge. They came just shy of the water’s surface. He leaned back onto his hands. Terry went and sat beside him, and, shoulder to shoulder, a film of silence coated them.
She looked out at the lake, seeing the stars and the full moon reflected in the calm water. The lake was almost completely still, save for the odd ripple that found its way to them, from an insect skipping or a bird dipping. Perhaps even a turtle that had risen to the surface to take a wide-mouthed gulp of air. She wondered if she shouldn’t have said what she just did, if maybe she should have just let it be, and see where it took her, them. But she knew she would be unsatisfied with that, too. She and Liam needed to talk. That much was obvious.
“I had a wife,” he said eventually.
“Oh.” Terry’s voice became extremely sticky. She swallowed, hoping that he didn’t notice. Her heart thumped, and disappointment clawed at her.
“She died.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It was a long time ago,” he said without much difficulty. “But I loved her.”
“How long ago?” Terry asked. It couldn’t have been that long. Liam wasn’t much older than she was. He must have married very young. He turned to her, and looked right into her eyes. She felt the same pang in her stomach and jolt in her chest that she did when their eyes first met in between the train carriages on the way to Pingxiang. It was heady, intense, and when Terry broke eye contact, and was annoyed with herself for doing so. She returned her gaze to his.
“I don’t know exactly, to be honest.”
“You don’t?”
“I stopped keeping track a long time ago.”
Gulping, Terry was at a loss of what to say. “Stopped keeping track? It must have been a few years ago.”
“No. If I had to guess, I’d say about two hundred years ago.”
Terry blinked. She wasn’t sure what was going on. Had he said what she thought he had said? Had she heard wrong? “Excuse me?” she asked with a slight shake of her head.
“You heard me right, if that’s what you were wondering.”
“Two hundred years ago?”
“Yes.”
Red flags shot up flag poles in Terry’s head. This wasn’t right. She didn’t know what was going on, but she knew that this was not right, not at all. Was he messing with her? Was this some kind of prank?
“I don’t believe you,” she said, her voice lacking in conviction. He seemed too sincere, too serious, and the subject matter wasn’t something one just joked about.
“I’m telling you the truth,” Liam said, sighing. He wasn’t irritated, but he seemed disappointed that she wasn’t taking his word for it.
“You were alive two hundred years ago?” Terry couldn’t believe she’d asked it. She felt distinctly idiotic. Her pride was hurt. She realized that she had trusted him. She didn’t anymore. He was lying, there was no doubt about that. Why would he lie about something like that? Why would he lie about a dead spouse?
“Yes.”
“You know what, I think we’ve had too much to drink. I’m going back to the guest house.”
“No you’re not,” Liam said, and Terry turned to him, wide-eyed, challenging. “Please, stay.” It was as much a request as it was an order. “I’ve learned not to tell my story. People don’t want to hear it. I’m telling you because I want you to know. You need to realize that.”
“I like you,” Terry said, “but you’re going to fuck this all up if you do this shit to me now. Don’t tell me stories, Liam. Stop lying. Stop hiding.” She didn’t bother to stop her anger from singeing her tone.
“Listen to me, Terry. There is a lot you don’t know about me.”
“And I wonder why that is?”
Liam paused. “Just hear me out.”
Terry exhaled, but nodded eventually. “Yeah, okay.”
“Everything I just said is the truth, and-”
She interrupted him. “Care to explain to me how you were alive two hundred years ago when you don’t look a day over thirty?” Irritation once again crept into Terry’s voice. “What, are you immortal? Are you a god? Did you find the fountain of youth? Did you drink from the Holy Grail?” She had fired off the questions like bullets from a machine gun.
“None of that,” Liam said, pausing again. He met her eyes, and Terry saw a sadness in the way he looked at her
. “It’s because I’m not human.”
“From Mars, are you?”
“I’m a shapeshifter.”
Terry found herself lost for words for the second time since they had arrived at the lake. She simply looked at him, trying to process just exactly what he meant. Her first thought was not ‘What is a shapeshifter?’ but ‘How long does a shapeshifter live for?’ She asked him.
“Some have been known to live for nearly four hundred years,” Liam said without missing a beat. “But the average is around three-fifty.”
“Okay,” Terry mumbled, drawing out the two vowels. “So what exactly is a shapeshifter?”
“You never read books? Or watch TV?” A brief smile flickered across his face.
“Sure. Like, werewolves? Or like Dracula who can turn into a bat?”
“Um, something like that. Werewolves turn on a full moon, though, and Dracula never really existed, though his myth was probably based off a shifter. Actually, werewolves like you meant don’t exist, either. At least, as far as I know.”
Terry laughed. He had said it so matter-of-factly, and with didactic intonation as well, that she simply couldn’t hold back. She laughed, and laughed, and began to think about just how much she had had to drink. “Okay,” she said eventually, the laughter waning. Liam was simply looking at her with an amused expression on his face.
Terry’s anger ruffled, and she put a hand on her hip. “What?”
“Nothing. Just, I didn’t expect you to laugh.”
“Yeah,” she said. “And I don’t really know why I’m laughing.”
Liam said nothing to that, and Terry’s frustration only grew.
“So, anyway, what exactly can you shift into?”
“A bear.”
“Anything else?”
“No.
“That’s disappointing.” Terry knew she was being nasty, but she couldn’t help it.
“You don’t believe me, do you?”
“No.”
“What if I showed you?”
“Go on, then!” Terry had almost shouted it, daring him. She found herself once again getting angry, and she realized where it was coming from. She couldn’t possibly be with this person. Worse than rejection, it was disappointment. She had invested so much into the possibility, and now he was spouting this nonsensical bullshit. It was all just a heap of disappointment.
When Liam got up, her eyes didn’t follow him. She stared at the surface of the lake, trying to count the reflected stars. She lost count at thirty something, and so looked over her shoulder. Liam was nowhere in sight.
“Figures,” she murmured. She was busy teaching herself a lesson, chiding herself internally for liking him as much as she did, and as quickly as she did, when she heard a rustle behind her. “Piss off, Liam,” she whispered, and she looked over her shoulder and screamed.
A great brown bear was at the foot of the jetty looking directly at her. She covered her mouth with her hand, willing her voice back into her vocal chords. It was a fucking bear! Her first thought was to run, but then she remembered that running from wild animals was generally a bad idea.
It was only after interminable seconds of panic and pure dread that Terry realized the obvious: Liam had been telling the truth. “No fucking way,” she said, shaking her head. She didn’t believe it, she couldn’t believe it. That Liam, a man, had transformed into this big hulking beast was beyond the realm of possibility. Terry furrowed her brow. Where did all the extra meat come from?
Her racing thoughts were silenced when the bear took a padded step toward her. She saw the huge paw lift up, bend at a joint practically invisible beneath the beast’s shiny coat, and come softly onto the first wooden plank. The small pier groaned loudly, and Terry thought she might have felt the entire thing wobble.
“Wait,” she said, putting out a hand, but the bear was already taking its next step toward her. She could hear its breathing even though it was half a dozen meters away, deep and calm, as though the thing was sucking up gallons of air with each breath it took. And the way the bear’s chest and back heaved with its breathing, Terry didn’t doubt that for a second.
The animal had a fantastic strength to it, each step it took deliberate and assured. The wooden planks continued to complain, creaking and bending beneath the weight of the beast. The animal’s whole body moved with an odd grace she didn’t expect from something so large. She could see the bear’s shoulder blades jut up out of the creature’s back with each forward step, framing its gigantic, utterly inhuman head.
“Fuck,” Terry whispered to herself. The second wave of mind-blowing understanding came crashing down on top of her. Every culture, every people, had legends of men and women that could turn into animals, or were grotesque amalgams of human and animal. Those legends, those stories, were all based off truth! How many shapeshifters were there in the world? How many were like Liam, living for centuries?
Terry half expected to faint. Isn’t that what people did in the movies? See Dracula? Faint. See Frankenstein? Faint. See aliens? Faint. But she wasn’t fainting. Her mind felt clearer than it had the whole night. All that buzz from the beer hoi had worn off. Her vision was no longer fuzzy around the edges, and she could feel the quick pulse of adrenaline in the veins in her wrists and her fingers.
Right on the edge of the pier, she could not step back unless she wanted to get wet. She wasn’t about to try and run away, either, even though every instinct in her body was screaming at her to run. She knew it was Liam beneath all that muscle and fur. She could see it in the bear’s tiny eyes.
The bear did not stop its slow advance. She could feel the beast’s heat, now. It was only a mere two meters away. She hadn’t realized that the heads of bears were quite so large. It was huge, dwarfing her own, and the beady eyes and heart-shaped button of a nose were blacker than the night sky.
A rush of warm breath washed over her, but it didn’t smell like much. In fact, and Terry grinned, it was almost like there was a fleeting hint of the smell of the mint she’d shared with him.
“Liam?” she asked, her voice lacking the volume of confidence. The bear didn’t respond, and she didn’t know if she had expected it to. She might have just cracked up into laughter if the bear could speak.
“Is that really you?” This time, though, the bear did respond. It moved its head down and then up; a slow, single nod. “Oh my God,” Terry breathed, shaking her hands in front of her like she was trying to dry them out or fling off a bug, a wave of nerves and nausea flooding into her. She turned around, rocking from the balls of her feet to her heels, and then spun back around again when she thought it probably wasn’t a good idea to turn her back on a bear.
“I can’t believe it,” she said. “I’m sorry, I just can’t. This is too fucking much. Stop it, I don’t want to see you as a bear anymore.” She looked into the bear’s eyes, was instantly afraid she might provoke it. It was that instinct, she just couldn’t let it go, and it was scaring her, making her feel both insecure and uncomfortable.
She tried to find somewhere on the bear’s face to look, and when she found the creature’s ears, sticking up off its head at a wide angle, tiny things that looked disproportionate to the bear’s head, she let out a sudden laugh. They were actually really cute! She wanted to just grab them and pull on them, and in the frenzy of emotion she was feeling, had to actually bite back the urge to do so.
“Please,” she said, looking at Liam – the bear. “Turn back into, uh, a human?” She asked it, and the idea that Liam, technically, might not be human shocked her senses into eerie clarity. She looked around, her head on a swivel. Someone else could be watching them! What if somebody saw? What if it was a police officer or a guard – would it look like she was being attacked? Would they shoot at Liam?
“Turn back,” she said, urgent. “Come on, Liam. It’s dangerous.” And the bear obliged. Before her she watched as the brilliant brown coat shortened, as though growing back inside the body, and she saw the hulking mass of musc
le and bone shrink, recede, withdraw. It pulled inward, like it was being sucked into a black hole, lumps disappearing at once in a fashion that made her feel sick, like the worst kind of body horror. She saw the shape of a man now, just a vague outline, an impression, a hint. But it became more solid, more certain, and soon she could see the shoulders, arms. The bear’s body became a recognizable torso, the hair was almost all gone, and now she was looking down, at a crumpled thing on the pier, watching as it morphed, almost too slowly that it was uncomfortable to witness.
And then it was Liam. He was completely naked. Terry stepped back absent-mindedly, found no more pier, and was strangely okay with getting completely soaked, when Liam’s arm darted out of his crouched figure to grab her hand and pull her back. He was on his knees, and she didn’t even bother to try and hide the fact that she was looking. She was definitely looking.
His body reminded her of a sword; nothing wasted, and everywhere a hard edge or surface. As her eyes traveled downward, her mind telling her not to stare, she saw his manhood, and she was impressed, though unsurprised.
“Thanks,” she said, her voice breathy, and Liam smiled a little at her, and she became quite embarrassingly aware that he had watched her stare. “Sorry!” she said, turning around quickly.
“For what?” Liam asked. Terry heard him get up, heard the planks creak again as he made his way back to the bank. She turned, unashamed of wanting to look at his bum. And yeah, it was a nice ass, generous and obviously firm.
“Um, looking?” she answered even as she watched him. He reached the bank, and there she saw at his feet something she hadn’t noticed before. It was his clothing, and hilariously, it was folded neatly. “You folded your clothes?” she blurted, shaking her head at him. Everything was clashing.
“Yeah,” he said, shrugging at her and smirking. “Old habit, I guess.”
“Uh huh,” Terry sounded.
“You’re still looking.”
“Oh!” Terry turned again, Liam putting on his briefs disappearing out of the corner of her vision. “You know,” she said, throwing her words up and over her head. “People aren’t usually comfortable with getting naked like that.”