by Amy Star
That morning when they’d first met, he had smelled like she imagined lumberjacks ought to smell like: wood and sap and the faint caustic whiff of gasoline, the rugged blend of sweat and coffee. It wasn’t unpleasant, per se. She had learned her own scent could be quite powerful, especially when she was in form and the Bear had awakened in her.
But now he smelled more…what was the word? She hated that the only thing she could think of was human. The lingering lye of soap, paraffin from a candle. It was a strange exotic and brisk smell, that reminded her of the river outside which was like a constant humming in her mind, always in the background: reliable and consistent.
She remembered herself and quickly urged him inside, hurtling more apologies as she disappeared back into the bedroom and told him to make himself at home.
“There’s no rush.” Sam said, his hands behind his back. “I phoned Lily at the café, she’s just finishing up for the night and says she’ll join us at the bar in fifteen or so.”
Emily came back out of the bedroom, fidgeting with a bra-strap and saw Sam turn away again. He’d clearly noticed her lack of preparedness earlier, and she cursed herself silently for having forgotten to put on a bra. She didn’t have huge breasts but they were well proportioned, especially when framed in the dozen or so T-shirts she’d brought with her – all of them, she now realized with some dismay, tighter and more revealing of her cleavage than was the norm around Fairbanks.
Even now Sam was carefully avoiding letting his eyes slip to the V-neck of her collar, where the tops of her firm breasts still glimmered with the after-effects of her shower. She dried her hair again, raising her arms above her head, and the T-shirt hiked up again, revealing the smooth tan of her mid-riff and belly-button, which peeked out above the low-cut waist of her jeans.
“Well, let’s not keep her waiting.” She said enthusiastically, pulling on a black zip-up hoodie with the Lulu Lemon insignia strategically placed stitched into the sleeves.
Sam reached out suddenly and caught her by the arm, and she was surprised at the strength of his grip. She turned, flustered, and saw that same mischievous look on his face she had seen earlier in the café. He reached down, still holding her by the arm, and picked up the purple towel she’d thrown willy-nilly onto the back of the sofa and drew her closer.
She was too surprised and taken aback to resist, and suddenly closer to him than she’d ever been. She could feel the heat of his skin against hers as he laughed and plopped the towel down on her head and began to knead gently at her still damp hair.
“Can’t let you go out like that.” he warned. “It may be summer but Fairbanks summer isn’t California summer. You’ll catch a cold for sure and I’d feel responsible.”
She didn’t say anything as he continued to knead her scalp, his brow furrowed in serious attention to detail as he tried to dry every lock of her hair and gently touched her elbow for her to spin so he could dry the back of her head. She let him and felt a tingling sensation that started in her toes and ran all the way up to the small of her back and into her shoulders.
It felt uncommonly good to be tended to like this, even if it was as something as drying her hair. Just that physical connection, the presence of touch, somehow changed everything – you could know someone for decades (or in her case, hours) and suddenly they touched you and it was all different. It was because a touch couldn’t lie, no matter how hard you tried. Words, even the kindest and truest words, could be misread, misinterpreted, used against you. But a touch, the simplest expression of one person’s affection for another, was beyond language. Like so many other things about me, she mused.
“There,” Sam said, satisfied at last. “Let’s go get that drink.”
Sam and Lily’s bar, The Turncoat, turned out to be less than a ten minute walk from the cabins, balancing on the edge of a street corner like an afterthought. Inside the smell of hops was ubiquitous, combined with a faint and jagged odor of wood and solvents. For a moment, Emily was afraid that her sense of smell had suddenly increased on cue with the awakening of the Bear form, but when she turned for reassurance to Sam she saw him wincing likewise at the heavy atmosphere.
The bar-master was an older man bearing a slight belly under his black filthy apron and a receding hairline that revealed too much scalp. It was sunburned and sweaty with the heat of carbon dioxide and so many bodies on a Friday night. It seemed impossible for that many people to have fit into such a small establishment. On the walls were mounted and stuffed trophies, and Emily recoiled, less in revulsion than fear, of the taxidermy heads that stared down at her. A young woman, clearly drunk or stoned out of her mind, accidentally bumped into her and let out a shrieking laugh and a mumbled apology as the embarrassed man beside her shepherded her out into the night air.
“The Turncoat is the place to be on a Friday… or Saturday. Really, any day,” Sam said, correcting himself several times and holding up two fingers to the bar-master who winked and went to work, sliding across two huge tankards of amber fluid.
“It’s not… that different from San Fran,” Emily shouted over the chaos, even though she knew she was lying. The bar scene in California was wild enough in places but here there was a deeper sense of unpredictability. A reserved sense of peril, one with which she found herself suddenly in tune. She chalked it up to the Bear, snoring in its slumber. Threatening to waken.
“Can we go somewhere a bit quieter?” she asked suddenly, tugging on Sam’s shirt.
He seemed to sense her discomfort and nodded instantly, looping his own arm under hers and motioning towards a staircase that led to a partial second floor deck in the vast bar. She let herself be carried through the crowed. It was uncanny – people just seemed to move out of the way when they saw Sam. It was more than just respect, she realized, when she saw a stricken look of panic in one of the patron’s faces. It was fear.
The upstairs was a bit less rowdy, and seemed to be inhabited by the older generation. Sam and Emily were easily the youngest amongst them and she enjoyed the toned down atmosphere. Beside them two older men with big beards smiled happily and muttered something to each other.
“And here she is.” Sam said suddenly, pointing behind her.
Emily didn’t have time to turn around before she felt another pair of lithe arms wrap around her neck in a clumsy hug, and heard Lily’s giggle in her ear. The Native woman slumped down in the other chair and let out a deep sigh, the creases of her mouth flexing wildly as she explained that it had been an exhausting day.
“I’m surprised,” Emily chimed in, “I don’t think I could do what you do. Handling orders and what-not, I’d be confused by the second customer. I’m also way too clumsy.”
“Don’t tell me that!” Lily exclaimed. “I was counting on hiring you if my two other employees don’t shape up. I love them to death, but they’re high school kids… they’re more interested in camping, slacking off, being kids, y’know. Of course, that’s the way it should be. I would have hated having a job at their age.”
“You did though, didn’t you?” Sam teased.
“Only on account we were poor growing up and mum was sick.” She said, sipping her beer, “Otherwise, I totally would’ve been with the rest of you, pissing away time down by the river or in the bush where-”
“Anybody want a second round?” Sam interrupted, standing up and heading down the stairs to the main bar.
Lily shut her mouth instantly, and Emily detected something pass between them, a weird sort of tension that flickered in a glance and then died away. Lily regained her composure and put a hand on Emily’s.
“I take it you two grew up together?” Emily asked.
Lily nodded and she could see that her long bangs were braided into tight pleats that disappeared under the long lustrous mane of a ponytail. Black as anything Emily could imagine, like it took the light in and wouldn’t let it go. Lily’s round face blinked and she rubbed a finger under her chin as she tried to recollect.
“Sam was always
nice to me. It’s not always easy being Native up here. I actually grew up on a reservation, but after my dad disappeared, me and mum moved here. School was really tough. I was the only dark skinned kid in my class and all the other kids liked to tease me, you know how awful youngsters can be. Sam protected me though. Got more than one bloody lip for it, but…” she looked up suddenly, as if she’d been caught in the middle of something private, “well, he’s a good guy.”
“It’s funny,” Emily began, “I guess you find that everywhere.”
“I bet you were one of the few ones who had a good high school experience,” Lily joked.
“Why do you say that?”
“I dunno… you’re cute, you seem sharp,” Lily said over her beer.
“You give me too much credit. I wasn’t that amazing… in fact, I kind of just tried to avoid high school. I was like the ghost in the class. No one noticed me, and I was thankful for that.”
“That’s better than having everyone notice you,” Lily replied acerbically.
“I figured that people up here would be more forgiving, accepting. I don’t know why I thought that, I just hoped I guess.”
Lily reached out and touched Emily’s hand again and the blonde girl winced, as if she’d been hit with an electrical charge. Lily’s finger tips were heavily callused, as if she’d been working with her hands for years. But they were warm, and the gesture itself seemed to try to expound on something neither of them could properly enunciate.
“There’s actually something we wanted to talk to you about.” Lily began slowly when she saw Sam return and place three fresh beers on the round table, “kind of in the same vein. Sam told me about you a bit, why you came up here.”
Emily looked to Sam, and he nodded back. “That you didn’t really fit in when you were in San Francisco. You know why you didn’t fit in. Hell, we know it too.”
Panic flared up again in Emily’s mind and she recoiled from Lily’s touch and stared hard at both of them. They were both being vague, dancing around something, but she couldn’t be sure what it was. Her hands buckled into fists in her lap again, and she felt her arms quivering as she clenched harder, trying to slow the beat of her heart. The Bear in her started to shift, squirming impatiently like a child – she knew it was impossible, that Lily and Sam could know anything about it, about her. But at the same time, the way they looked at her, the way they both exchanged glances now across the table, it was like they had planned this; some sort of shifter intervention. Emily tried to smile weakly and brought the beer to her lips as a diversion, but she could still feel Sam’s gaze on her. He rubbed his face and looked around the room.
“Listen, this place is giving me a headache. What do you say we head down to the river? I’ve got a six pack in the fridge at home, and besides, it’s almost a full moon tonight. I could use some fresh air.” he suggested.
Lily nodded but waited to see if Emily was okay with it. Reluctantly, she nodded and followed them out of The Turncoat. It was chillier, and she zipped up the front of her jacket and exhaled slowly, saw her breath congeal white in front of her and then fade. The smell outside was like wood smoke and ice, fresh and unforgiving, and she was surprised how quickly it sobered her up.
Sam happily took point and rushed ahead of the women to get the beer while Emily and Lily slowly and leisurely plodded after him. Emily kept her hands in her pockets and tried not to make eye contact. Now that she was outside, she suddenly longed for the ambivalent noise of the bar – at least there it was possible to blend in, disappear. But then, that’s what I’ve always done, she thought absurdly to herself.
“Are you okay?” Lily asked suddenly, her voice squeaking out of her throat.
“Hm, yeah, sorry. I think those beers hit me harder than I thought. Just trying to clear the cobwebs a bit, I’ll be okay.”
“Okay,” Lily replied, not really believing it.
When they reached Sam’s cabin he was already down by the river and waved to them with a flashlight. He had positioned three lawn chairs out on the dry flood plain of the rocks and had another beer open. Above them, the yellow moon was climbing the sky and it painted everything below it in a kind of pale blue shimmer. As they sat down and sipped in silence for a few moments, Sam broke the stillness again.
“Listen, Emily… back in the bar. I didn’t mean to upset you. I know that you’ve probably been hiding most of your life. When you live with a secret that long, it becomes a part of you. You can almost start to believe in the lie you tell yourself.” Sam mumbled.
Emily stood up again. She’d had enough of it and danger seemed to pulse through every nerve of her being. The lawn chair tipped over and clattered on the rocks and both Sam and Emily turned hurriedly toward her.
“I don’t know what you’re-”
“It’s okay, Emily.” Lily said, standing up and trying to calm her with her voice. It wasn’t working. The blonde woman was livid, tensed like prey that had been flushed into the open. “Sam, you bumbling idiot,” Lily hissed back at him, “you really do lack tact.”
Sam scratched his head sheepishly again. “Yeah.”
“Just show her,” Lily commanded over her shoulder, “words can come later. Right now she just needs to see that she’s not alone.”
What happened next seemed dream-like in its intensity. Something that seemed impossible rationally, but the moment it happened you knew it couldn’t have been anything but possible. Behind Lily the tall man unbuttoned the front of his shirt, and Emily could see the rippling muscles of his chest even in the dim light. He turned around bashfully and she heard the metallic grind of a zipper and Sam pulled his pants and boxers down in one deft movement.
Emily resisted the urge to raise her hand to her mouth when she saw him standing there, fully naked in the moonlight. He seemed to be made of wood, every muscle toned to the exemplary model of a predator. The white angle of his buttocks caught the moonlight and Emily suddenly found a raw desire well up at her navel, a kind of warm numbness that went right to her cheeks. Lily obviously noticed and chided Sam.
“I said show her, not flash her,” the Native girl remarked.
Sam smiled and turned toward them, and Emily did bring up her hand to her mouth this time. He was even more gorgeous than she had imagined. She tried to avert her eyes from his lower half, but even in the darkness she could see his member swinging in the shadows, the overgrown olives of his testicles mounted between the bulk of his thighs. His abs tightened and buckled as he let out a small chuckle and he held out his arms at either side, palms toward her, an unmistakable gesture that mean I’m not going to harm you. It was primitive, but it resounded with Emily, even though she acknowledged it was calling to a part of her soul she had long since tried to forget and bury.
“Here we go,” he said softly.
In the next moment he seemed to writhe, like he was possessed of something, and Emily could hear the familiar sound of bone cracking and sinew rewiring itself under the flesh. She darted forward, her medical expertise coming to the forefront of her mind, but Lily had anticipated it and stepped in front, wrapping her arms around her.
“Just watch,” she whispered.
Sam let out a groan and toppled forward on his knees in a series of convulsions that shook his naked body. The sounds grew louder and she hear him growl, and suddenly, his shoulders became larger. A huge dense forest of black fur seemed to sprout magically from his back, down his arms, his legs. Even Sam’s head blended into a kind of low moan as his nose and mouth jutted outward.
Emily knew instantly what was happening, but still couldn’t accept it. Tears welled in her eyes as she watched him transform in front of her, until at last the Bear that was Sam gave a last shake and turned its small black eyes toward her.
“We knew you were one of us the first time we saw you.” Lily whispered, still holding Emily, who had grown weak and could only stare through her tears, “we could sense it.”
“How-”
“Sam and I have always be
en like this. There are others, too. We look after one another, keep the secret, protect our own. It’s why you came here. Can’t you feel it Emily?”
“I don’t understand,” she said, shaking her head and falling to her knees. Lily kept her arms fastened around Emily’s shoulders until she stopped trembling.
“You haven’t been in Form for a long time. If you had, you’d have recognized Sam and I as Bears too. It’s instinct… we try to find each other. I think that’s why you came here.” Lily explained.
Emily gulped and tried to stand up and Lily helped her. The Bear behind them let out a small little woof, more like a playful acknowledgment than anything sinister, and Emily laughed. It was definitely Sam, laidback and carefree. He snorted and moved toward her, and Emily flinched, just for a moment, as the big lumbering creature sniffed her outspread hand and licked it fondly.