He was clad in clothes made of a heavy brown cloth, decorated with ivory beads. Over this he wore a fur cloak. “I caught the fish we eat.” He gestured toward the still-glowing embers on the cave floor where she had cooked their meal. “I carried you through the rains and over the gorge.”
“You are a boy.”
“I am.” He smiled tentatively. “And I am the beast who slept in the nests of ice and snow that you made. My people are not bound to one form …. I am called Bjarn.”
Nesha sat down. What he said was stranger than anything she’d ever heard, but as he moved, she knew it to be true. The boy-who-was-a-bear tilted his head a bit when she spoke to him, just as the ice-bear had. The startling black eyes that stared from the boy’s face were the same eyes that had peered at her each morning when she woke. Bjarn spoke the truth.
Nesha wasn’t sure what question to ask first. “Why travel with me? Why bring me here?”
For a moment, Bjarn stood silently. When he spoke, his voice was rough. “The lands grow warmer. My people struggle with the heat; the months when the cold seems to grow less cause such sickness.” Bjarn sat down in front of her and took her hands. “Your gift … it would bring such peace to my people. The eldest suffer when the warmth grows too much. I am not skilled with words. I thought if I could bring you to my father, he would know what to say.” Bjarn looked at the other bears and then back at her. “Will you stay awhile with us?”
Nesha imagined people cherishing her cursed breath, a life where she was not feared. “And if I wanted to return home in the coldest months?”
Bjarn looked solemn as he said, “I would carry you there if you wished. Or if you’d rather, there are others who could carry you.”
As she considered what Bjarn had said, Nesha gazed at the waiting group of bears. Most sat nestled in the rocky crevices, but a couple wrestled with the cubs. She looked back at Bjarn. Though his form was different, Bjarn was the same kind creature he’d been as an ice-bear. “I would have you travel with me.”
“I would like that very much.” Smiling, Bjarn pulled her to her feet.
Clutching his hand in hers, she turned toward the mouth of the tunnels. “Can I meet them?”
He grinned and waved at the ice-bears. One of the largest ambled forward first.
“My grandmother stays in this form almost always since the snows are so brief.” Bjarn rested his face on the great bear’s head in a hug of sorts. “She had heard the stories whispered of you, of your gift, and so I traveled to find you ….”
“Thank you,” Nesha murmured to the bear, joyous at hearing her icy breath called a gift, at finding a home where she would be welcome in the months away from her father’s lands.
The bear rubbed her muzzle against Nesha’s arm.
Bjarn pointed at several cubs who were rolling perilously close to a cluster of stalagmites. “The youngest, my sisters, stay furred as much as they can. They race through the cave tunnels”—he paused and shook his head as one of the cubs hurtled toward another, larger bear—“until my father takes them out to explore the ice dunes and give the elders a bit of quiet ….”
And so long into the night they sat and talked, the girl who carried winter’s kiss and the boy who was a bear.
Thus began their new life. Bjarn still carried Nesha when they went out during the day, but now they were joined by Bjarn’s family. Now, for the first time in her life, Nesha could laughed freely, setting snow squalls to dance over the ledges. Her new family-who-were-bears did not fear her; instead, they spun and laughed in the cold air. And when they returned to the caves, Bjarn walked hand in hand with her—listening as she told him of her life and dreams, and telling her of his life and dreams.
This was the way of their lives for many months.
Then, one winter afternoon, the sky heavy with snow, Nesha said to Bjarn, “Come with me to see my father.”
Bjarn asked, “To stay?”
“No. This is my home.” She motioned toward the great white plain where the cubs were sliding in circles. “With them, with you. Now and always.”
“Always,” Bjarn repeated softly.
And so it was that Nesha shared the first of many kisses with Bjarn, the boy-who-had-become-her-beloved.
TOMORROW
He pulled a long, thin blade and slit open the stomach. He reached his whole forearm inside the body. His other hand, the one holding the knife, pressed down on her chest. “Until this moment, she could recover.”
Eliana said nothing, did nothing.
“But hearts matter.” He pulled his arm out, a red slippery thing in his grasp.
He tossed it to Eliana.
“That needs buried in sanctified ground, and she”—he stood, pulled off his shirt, and wiped the blood from his arm and hand—“needs to be left at crossroad.”
Afraid that it would fall, Eliana clutched the heart in both hands. It didn’t matter, not really, but she didn’t want to drop it in the dirt. Which is where we will put it. But burying it seemed different from letting it fall on the dirt road.
Sebastian slipped something from his pocket, pried open the corpse’s mouth, and inserted it between her lips. “Wafers, holy objects of any faith, put these in the mouth. Once we used to stitch the mouth shut, too, but these days that attracts too much attention.”
“And dead bodies with missing hearts don’t?”
“They do.” He lifted one shoulder in a small shrug.
Eliana tore her gaze from the heart in her hands and asked, “But?”
“You need to know the ways to keep the dead from waking, and I’m feeling sentimental.” He walked back toward the crypt where the rest of their clothes were, leaving her the choice to follow him or leave.
TODAY
“Back later,” Eliana called as she slipped out the kitchen door. The screen door slammed behind her, and the porch creaked as she walked over it. Sometimes she thought her aunt and uncle let things fall into disrepair because it made it impossible to sneak in—or out—of the house. Of course, that would imply that they noticed if she was there.
Why should they be any different from anyone else?
She went over to a sagging lawn chair that sat in front of a kiddie pool in their patchy grass. Her cousin’s kids had been there earlier in the week, and no one had bothered to put the pool back inside the shed yet. The air was sticky enough that filling it up with the hose and lying out under the stars didn’t sound half bad.
Except
