by Wilson, Tia
“Ok granddad,” Grace said and then thought, he is old enough to be my great great grandfather if not even older.
Grace traced her finger across the map and put a black X at each junction point along their route. She glanced up at Tom and he was looking at her impressed. “Girl scouts. I got a badge in map reading when I was twelve.”
“You’re a woman of many talents,” Tom said.
When Grace was finished Tom looked over the route and their final destination. “I know this place,” he said pointing at the largest X on the map. “It’s a slaughterhouse, at least it was fifty years ago. I was there once before in the seventies on a recon mission.”
“That’s the one. The whole place seemed pretty run down and it didn’t look like it was used for cattle in a long time,” Grace said.
“Tulimak and his father Nasak owned several of these huge meat processing facilities since the early nineteen hundreds. It was their main business for a long time. Myself and a few others hand picked by the Elders would keep tabs on these places. A couple of times we got some humans sympathetic to our cause, employed in the slaughterhouses. We never came up with any dirt on the white bear clan. They seemed to run them as nothing more than a business,” Tom said.
“Are they still in business?” Grace asked.
“They own two smaller places in North America. The world changed around them and they didn’t move with it. Everything became consolidated and was bought up by the huge mega corporations. Nasaks power slipped and he didn’t do anything to keep it under control. He became complacent. Either that or he always had other avenues that kept him rich and powerful,” Tom said.
“What about the black bear clan? No secret millionaires in your ranks?,” Grace asked.
“Not that I know of, we black bears tend to live a more sedate life. I can’t imagine Elder Silas running a big business,” Tom said.
Grace folded the map and handed it to Tom. He checked it again and started the engine. “You ready to get going?” he asked.
I’ve never felt more scared and unsure in my whole life Grace thought.
“Lets hit the road,” Grace said and forced a smile.
The sky had begun to brighten and clouds spread across the sky in a thin layer. The red pickup truck turned back onto the main road and headed in the direction of the first X on the map. Grace glanced back through the small pill shaped rear window and felt a growing dread as they drove on and left the town of Twin Rock further behind.
Grace rested her head against the cool metal of the door frame and looked out at the scenery blurring past her as they drove. Deep greens slowly changed to the golden yellow of fields of parched grass with intermittent flashes of red as they sped past clusters of mail boxes at the end of dirt roads. She stretched her legs out before her and felt the dull pain of the effects of the bile begin to return. It’s going to be a long day if the pain returns, she thought as she flexed her fingers to try to lessen the building stiffness.
Tom glanced at her and asked, “Are you ok?”
“The pain from the bile extract is returning. I can feel a horrible sensation in my joints. Talk to me to try to take my mind off it,” Grace said.
“What do you want to know?” Tom said.
“How old are you. I just realised that I’ve never asked you that,” Grace said.
“It’s hard to say. We don’t count the passing years the same way as humans and dont really keep track of that kind of thing. I’m four hundred years old, but in that time span I might have only been active for maybe two hundred years. The rest of the time I was in deep hibernation,” Tom said.
“You look good for a four hundred year old. Why have you hibernated for so long? Do you not feel like you missed out on all those years?”
“There were many reasons why. When I was younger I got seriously injured and it took years of deep hibernation for my body to heal. I came close to dying and I had no other choice. I was gone for around twenty years that time. Others have been because of heartache, or simply trying to run away from mistakes I’ve made, and as hard to believe as it is sometimes it was out of boredom. I’d feel a disconnect to the time I was awake in and decide to sleep it out for thirty or so years until the times had changed. Those first few months when you awake from such a long sleep are so exhilarating. It’s like being born all over again. Everything is new again, all experiences feel like they are happening for the first time. We have a story that we tell to kids about Magnus the tired. He was a shifter who lived a long time ago and who spent most of his life hibernating. The story goes that he would sleep for decades and then wake up and be dissatisfied with the world. He’d then go back to sleep all in the hope of waking up to a better and more interesting tomorrow. The cycle continued throughout his life,” Tom said.
“And what happened to Magnus?” Grace asked, her eyes closed as she listened to Toms voice and felt the gentle sway of the truck beneath her.
“He’s still out there. Waking up and not appreciating the world around him. Going back to sleep time and again on an endless quest for something better. I think most shifters go through a phase thinking that hibernating for long periods of time to solve certain problems is the way to go. I’ve found that the more contact that a shifter has with humans the higher chance that they will stick around without disappearing into the woods,” Tom said.
“So we are good for something,” Grace said smiling.
Tom gave her thigh a squeeze and said, “Humans make us better. Is that what you want to hear me say.” He pinched the soft flesh above her knee and tickled her inner thigh and Grace squirmed in her seat feeling jolts of pleasure shoot up her leg.
“You know it’s true,” Grace said suppressing a laugh.
The road began to wind up a mountain and Grace looked out the window down the sheer sloping rocky hill beyond the barrier snaking alongside the road. A blue slash cut across the plain below fed from hundreds of smaller streams and rivulets flowing from the mountain towering above the grasslands. The banks of the river were dotted with flowers of bright purple that gave way to soft pink blossoms that sprawled out in a huge circle as if planted like that by a higher purpose.
“That was a controversial idea for a lot of the older shifters,” Tom said. “The older ones had been always suspicious of humans. They saw them as a true blight on the planet and a source of misery for all shifter kind. Witch hunts, human sacrifices and tales of supernatural creatures usually stemmed from human and shifter interactions. The first witches killed in Salem were actually all shifters. The panic quickly spread and pretty soon the towns leaders were killing innocent human women who failed their flawed tests. After the first few shifters were burnt at the stake, most left under the cover of darkness and probably for nearly a hundred years no shifter went anywhere near Salem,” Tom said.
“How come you managed to keep secret for so long?” Grace asked.
“I don’t think we have. Every culture has stories of a creature living in the woods with human like characteristics. They call him Bigfoot in the states, yeti in others countries. It goes by many names and it’s all the same thing. A human has spotted a shifter in mid transformation and not known how to categorise it. I know the shifter who started the whole Bigfoot trend in the seventies. He’s a very nice guy, spends more time reading then talking to shifters or humans. He’d been out hunting in an area he thought was remote when some hikers caught a glimpse of him. They saw some of his face, his hunched over shoulders and the fur covering a humanoid body. He escaped into the woods before they got to see anymore of the process. Born from this encounter was the modern story of Bigfoot. The people who saw it embellished the story and a legend was born. As well as a book deal, late night talk show appearances and merchandise for the married couple who spotted our hapless shifter,” Tom said.
“You have been among us all along,” Grace said with wonder in her voice.
“More or less. We would all rather that we weren’t known at all. You’ve seen how our clan
likes to live. Solitude and privacy is paramount,” Tom said.
Grace could feel the pain begin to increase in her knees and elbow joints. She looked at the road ahead, anything to distract herself from the mounting pain. Up ahead on a slight curve of the road was a gravel service road leading off the main road and towards a rocky bluff before curving off around the other side of the mountain. At the start of the dirt road and beside a telephone pole was a wooden utility shack leaning at an angle close to collapse. Parked beside it was a black SUV with tinted windows and the engine idling.
Grace glanced at it as they approached and then she started to turn back towards her view of the river.
Her head whipped to the side as the black SUV rammed into the side door of the pickup. Graces mouth snapped shut with a clack and she jerked forward hard against her seat belt. Everything outside the windows was a blur as the truck spun around in a complete circle. Tom grunted as he tried to gain control of the steering wheel. The acrid smell of burning rubber filled the air. The truck came to a halt turned around and facing the way they had just came.
Grace looked at Tom and tried to shout a warning. It was too late. The SUV slammed into the side door and the metal frame buckled like it was made out of cardboard. Grace screamed as the SUV revved its engine and began to push the pickup truck across the road.
Tom looked at Grace his eyes wide with shock, “Get out of the car, NOW,” he ordered her.
Her fingers seemed to be made of putty as she fumbled at her seatbelt cover. Blood was soaking through Toms trousers around the place a metal fragment from the door passed through his leg right above the knee cap.
The SUV revved again and the truck jolted across the road another few feet. The grill of the SUV filled Toms window and it looked like a smiling metal beast peering in at its hapless prey.
The seat belt released with a pop and Grace turned to Tom. She could see he was stuck and she was frozen with fear.
“Go,” he shouted in a roar mixed with pain and fury.
She pushed her side door open and it slammed against the roadside barrier with a metallic clang. The gap was no bigger than than the span of her hand. She looked over the edge and felt her stomach lurch as loose pebbles tumbled over and cascaded down in a dusty cloud. The river below looked like the most iridescent blue and the colours of the flowers popped, leaving an after image burnt into her eyes.
“I can’t get out,” she stammered pushing in vain against the door.
The pickup truck lurched again as the SUV roared its engines and the sound of tearing metal sent a cold shiver down Graces spine.
Tom grabbed her by the shoulder and shouted, “Put your belt back on.” He seemed strangely calm and the way he looked at Grace with his jaw clenched made her pull back from him.
He knows we are going over Grace thought as she frantically tried to fasten her seatbelt again. Her hands were shaking and she missed the closing mechanism on the first try. Sparks flew in yellow pinwheels outside her window and she glanced at Tom as he gripped the steering wheel.
She tried again and her shaking hands missed the mark. The road side barriers buckled and tore with a scream like the sound of a banshee. The pickup truck began to tilt and slide over the edge.
With a clunk Grace fastened her seatbelt and then her world was flipped upside down as the truck slid over the edge and then rolled over.
The outside world was nothing more than a blur as Grace felt every organ in her body shake, contract and bounce painfully as the truck rolled over again and again as it careened down the hill.
It seemed to go on forever as her arms slammed around the cabin and smacked painfully into the roof and then the side door. I am going to die, Grace thought.
The truck flipped over one more time onto its roof and then skid across the loose gravel at the bottom of the embankment. The windscreen safety glass splintered and popped and caved inwards encased in its protective covering. They slowed to a stop and Grace jerked painfully against the belt across her chest one last time. Grace let out a breath she had been holding the whole time and stared ahead.
All she could see were thousands of tiny lines and a sky filled with an endless amount of sparkling diamonds. They twinkled calling her to take them as hers. Grace lifted her arm and it felt like it was encased in concrete and she tried to touch the diamonds. Her fingers clacked against something and then the fuzziness left her brain. She pushed the sheet of windscreen glass off her and out of the truck. She undid her seat belt and crashed to the ceiling in a ball, feeling something crunching under her.
Tom was in his seat upside down and secured by his belt. His side door had been ripped off in the tumble down the incline and the piece of metal pinning him had been torn out. Blood flowed freely from the wound above his knee and dripped onto the trucks ceiling forming a thick sticky pool.
“Tom,” Grace said reaching out to him. Her throat felt like it had been scrubbed with a wire brush.
His eyes flickered open and he tried to focus on Graces face. “Run,” he said in a low growl.
Grace rolled over onto her back and stared up at the floor of the truck. She lay there panting, every part of her body feeling like it had been punched multiple times. The stinging smell of leaking fuel filled the cabin and Grace looked at Tom with wide fearful eyes. He was hanging from his seat and making no attempt to free himself. She got under him and pressed on his seat belt release. Nothing happened. Blood dripped on her from his leg wound. Her breathing was a rattling wheeze in her chest. She tried again. It was jammed. They are going to be coming for you she thought as she tried to depress the stuck button. It worked and Tom came tumbling down on top of her.
He rolled off her and she began to crawl out the hole left were the front wind shield should of been. Tom followed her, dragging his injured leg stiffly behind him. She got clear of the truck and lay on her back breathing deeply. She looked up the steep incline they had careened down. The soil was ripped open in a deep gouge and the truck had come to a stop close to a massive boulder. She looked at the peak and three men in dark clothes were looking down at her and the wreckage.
She tried to focus on them and rubbed her grit filled eyes. An older man flanked by two identical looking men were staring at her. At this distance she couldn’t make out his face properly. Was he smiling at her Grace wondered. The older man waved down at her, an old friend greeting someone they knew. A chill went down Graces spine.
She looked over at Tom and his chest was heaving as his jaw opened and closed silently and his eyes stared wide at the people above them. All colour was gone from his face.
“Who are they?” Grace asked and she could hear the shake in her own voice. Toms fear was infecting her like a virus and she felt like she was in a dream, her limbs not working as something out of a horror movie got closer and closer to her.
“They cannot capture you. Go now,” he said shouting the last words at her.
The anger in his voice cleared the fog and she looked back up the incline. The three men were starting to make their way down, not rushing and coming at a steady clip down the loose gravel slope. The older man was smiling as he made his way down.
Grace stared in Toms eyes and he said, “I’ll hold them off. Get back to town. Don’t look back and stop for nothing. Go,” he shouted and the rage in his voice frightened her into action.
Grace got up and started running for her life.
Epilogue
Change Or Die
Some of them had covered vast distances to be at the gathering. Several of them had not seen another clan member for decades until the message was received to gather for a meeting. They crossed rivers packed with trout and walked through packed thickets of sharp spiny bushes. A few travelled as humans while some of the older and more remote clan members chose to make the journey shifted into their bear form. These clan members were finding they spent less and less time walking on two legs as a human and more time in what they deemed was their true state.
When Eld
er Clay passed above a black bear and her cub down by the rivers edge they both paused and appraised each other. The shifter looked at the bear and her year old cub and felt the pull of jealousy. They were something he could never be, pure of intent and purpose. Elder Clay had always struggled with his dual identity and was never able to reconcile his animal side with that of his human soul. He felt like a fraud, a creature who looked like a bear but could never fully embody the animals essence. He had spent the last decade wrestling with this dual nature as he lived in solitude while ranging over a huge area of wilderness.
For several years Elder Clay had stayed transformed into a bear in an attempt to meld the animal with the human. The harsh reality that he was neither, happened any time he crossed another bears path.
As he looked down from the rocky outcrop at the mother and cub he thought he felt a moment of recognition pass between them both. Two animals bound together by nature. Then the mother reared up on her back legs and roared as strings of white foam sprayed out of her maw in wide arcs. The fur around her neck puffed up as the mother stood her ground. Elder Clay gave her one final look and then moved on. The journey ahead was long and the bears rejection of him was another stone on his back weighing him down.
The two brothers lived in a cabin a couple of hundred miles away from Twin Rock. They had built their house from trees they felled themselves sixty years ago. Both men lived a sparse life and sometimes days would go between them and they hadn’t said a word to each other. This was how they liked it. They hunted in the woods and grew their own vegetables in an area they had cleared out close to the cabin. Once a year they ventured into town for supplies, never spending more than a few hours there before they returned to the sanctuary of the woods. Like all the clan members who were now travelling to the location known only to a few, they had both had a dream. One so vivid and clear that it wasn’t to be ignored. Dreams held a powerful place in the clans lore. Dreams often contained visions of a future to be visited upon elders at times of great change.