Taming the Beast

“What’s your name?” Liam asked.

“Rose,” she said. “And thank you for breakfast. Can you tell me how far it is to the coastal road? I should really get going.”

Liam sighed heavily. “It’s forty miles still, give or take. Not many people take this road anymore. It’s too slow and too poorly maintained.” He stood up from the table. “Is your car nearby? I didn’t see it outside, so I assume you got stuck in the mud.”

“Flat tires, actually. So I’m hoofing it.” Rose knew she should stand up and leave, but she didn’t want to. There was something deeply intriguing about this sad hunched man and his incredible food.

“That is a very long walk,” Liam said. “You’d be better off heading up to Bearfield. If you take the right paths, you could get there on foot in two hours.” He looked down at his hands, flexing them as best he could. “I could show you the paths.”

“I can’t go to Bearfield,” she said. Ronald would look for her there. It was the nearest city to Poppy Valley. “I need to get away. Get farther away.”

Liam cocked his head at her. “You wouldn’t be able to walk to the coastal road before nightfall. And you don’t want to be in these woods after dark. Trust me. There are dangerous things out at night.” There was a menace to his tone that sent chills down her spine.

“I can’t stay here,” Rose said. “There are people looking for me. They’ll find me if I stay here.” But she didn’t believe her words. Maybe she could stay? Would Ronald come to this old house? If she stayed off the radar for a few days, would he give up? Would he assume she got as far as San Francisco or Santa Rosa or Eureka and send his goons there for her? Every day that she stayed hidden was a day Ronald would have to expand his net.

“I have a phone,” Liam offered. “You could call someone for help?” He shrugged and it was like mountains rearranging themselves. What did he look like under his hood?

At first Rose decided it wasn’t her business, but then the curiosity burned at her and she decided that before she left she would find out.

Chapter 4

Just before dawn his mind cleared. It was always the way. Darkness brought out the beast in him and the moon gave it power. But the sun—the sun gave rise to the man.

His memories of the night were absolutely clear. He recalled the pounding rain, the honey feast, the face full of stings and also the mysterious visitor who camped in his cottage. The beast in him still raged at her intrusion, but Liam was curious and cool headed that morning. What could possibly bring a woman like her into his sad decrepit world? W

hat would make a person think a collapsed pile of timber like his could possibly be a good idea? Even in a storm as fierce as last night’s?

He had questions—so many questions—but also the prospect of having a guest for the first time in so long was hard to pass up. To have someone to talk to, to listen to—he couldn’t pass that up. He forgot how lonely his world was until someone showed up and reminded him. Usually his mornings were spent sleeping or reading or wandering the woods. There was always a chore that needed doing that could fill his time. And after all these years he’d grown used to a dull sort of existence during the daylight hours. At night, when the beast came alive, that’s when life began. Daytime was just for waiting.

Liam cleared a space in his kitchen as best he could, lamenting as always his misshapen hands. In his dreams his hands worked again. They were strong and supple and well defined. But in the cold light of morning they were clumsy things that could barely hold a spoon. In the cellar he had dough he’d been saving. All it took was some sunlight to wake it up. It was an old technique—his mother’s technique—for having fresh bread every day. She called it sunbread and it tasted like nothing else in the world to him. When she’d grown ill and his father had purchased bread from the supermarket in town, Liam couldn’t even bring himself to eat it. It was a flavorless, spongy thing. He’d rather eat a mattress, honestly.

Baking bread was one of the few human things he had left in his life. It helped that he could knead the dough just fine with his half-bear hands. But also, the beast enjoyed the taste as much as he did and didn’t fight him at all.

Liam stoked a fire to life in the oven and found his clothes to wear. The bear in him hated the clothes, but if the visitor woke early, he’d rather she didn’t see his naked ass waddling around the land. Better to be uncomfortable in pants he decided, even as his bear complained fiercely.

The clothes had been a gift. The one person who ever visited the house to see him brought them to him years ago, along with an invitation to move to Bearfield. His family had been banned years ago from the town, but the man who visited—Sheriff Pete—said an exception would be made for Liam, on account of his condition. There was even talk of researching a counter-curse. But he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t move to where people were. He’d tried it—more than once he’d made his way to town—but the looks of fear and revulsion in the faces of the people he met had set a stone in his heart and he’d turned away.

Sheriff Pete stopped by monthly to check in on Liam. He often brought new books and groceries. Back when Liam had been more of a man, they’d played cards together. But the rules didn’t stick in his mind anymore. It seemed that every winter, he lost more of who he was. More of him faded away. How long until he’d be nothing but the beast?

Before the curse he’d been able to shift from man to bear as easy as breathing. Before the curse, he’d been a different person. A thoughtless youth, pretty and strong and cruel in his ignorance.

Satisfied that the stove was well-fired, Liam turned out the rounded loaf of bread onto his baking stone and slid it into the oven with his bare hands. The fire raged, but couldn’t burn him. It didn’t even singe his hair. With the bread baking, he had time to run down to his chicken coop and to take the morning’s eggs from his hens. They were motley birds with feathers of every color. They wandered the woods freely by day and returned to the coop every night. A different person would have worried about foxes or wolves stealing the hens, but no wild animal was that stupid. Liam’s bear scent was all over these woods and every animal knew what was his.

With careful movements he lifted the eggs between his two paw-like hands and deposited them gently into a straw filled basket. Once he had it full, he made his way down to the creek. He had a cooler submerged in the near-freezing water that kept his food fresh. He’d had a refrigerator once, but it had proven difficult to use. The cooler was better. He set his egg basket down and lifted the cooler free from the water. It was a red plastic thing, scratched and beaten up, but still working well. Inside he had the last of his bacon—from one of his own pigs—and a knob of butter that would be perfect for frying the eggs.

He ran up the hill to his house with the food in hand, his thick feet smashing holes in the muddy earth like meteors fallen from space. He looked around at the ingredients and couldn’t shake the feeling that something was missing. Coffee, for one, but that was impossible. What else then? What did mortals like on their breakfast plate?

Honey, he decided. Honey would be perfect. Everyone loves fresh bread dipped in sweet honey. But the tree was miles away. What if he returned and she was gone? Liam closed his eyes and focused his senses, letting his keen ears hone in on the cottage, on the low crackle of the dying fire within and the gentle snoring of his visitor. No, she’d be asleep a while longer. Plenty of time.

Liam removed the sunbread from the oven, wrapped it in a kitchen cloth, and set it in his breadbox to stay warm. Not for the first time, he glanced at the catastrophic mess of his house—his kitchen in particular—and wondered what the visitor would think. She’d think him a monster, obviously. With the way he looked and the squalor he lived in—what else could she think? She’d feel a disgusted sort of pity for him, he knew. She’d eat his breakfast because he forced the idea upon her, and then at the earliest opportunity, she’d run.

Everyone ran from him. He was a monster after all. What else could they do but run?

But even so, if a breakfast was worth cooking, it was worth cooking right.

Liam ran through the woods at breakneck speed, startling a family of deer and several flocks of birds. He got to the hollow oak—the honeytree—in record time. The opportunity to show a little kindness was such an impossibility in his world—such a novelty—that he couldn’t resist it and it propelled him with an unheard of speed.

The bees were swarming around the tree. They were already constructing new walls out of their secretions. For a moment Liam wondered what they thought of the night’s attack, if they thought at all. Was it spoken of in hushed horror in their hive? Did they view him as a gargantuan terror or rather as some sort of force of nature, like the lightning strike that created the hollow their civilization dwelt in?