Page 16 of To Ride the Wind

“Oh!” Her mother clasped her hands together. “What does he want?” She sounded terrified.

Her father didn’t answer for a moment. Instead, his gaze lifted and pinned itself on Charlotte. Her heart began to race, a strange feeling suffusing her.

“He wants Charli.” Her father’s words were almost too quiet to be heard.

“Charlotte?” Elizabeth screamed, sounding actually worried for her sister. “What can you mean, Father?”

“Does he wish to eat her?” Odelia asked, sounding ghoulishly curious.

“Of course he does not,” their father said sharply, his face losing color. “Do you think I would talk with him if he wished to eat any of us?”

Odelia subsided, looking sulky.

“But what does he want, Father?” Charlotte asked in a much quieter voice that nevertheless drew her father’s attention immediately.

“He wants…you,” he said again, as if struggling to know how to communicate the bear’s request. “He wants to take you away with him.”

“Take her away?” Her mother gasped and rushed over to wrap a protective arm around her daughter. “How can you be sure he won’t eat her later, once he’s away from us?”

Charlotte stood motionless beneath her arm, unable to think clearly but free of the fear that gripped her mother and sisters.

“I’m certain he doesn’t wish to eat me,” she said in a faint voice, earning another sharp look from her father.

“Do you know his intentions, Charli?” he asked. “Did he speak of it this morning?”

She shook her head. “No. I am as surprised as any of you. I merely feel certain he doesn’t wish me harm.”

Her father nodded, a strange and almost calculating look coming across his face. “That is a good start,” he said. “Perhaps it is not impossible after all.”

“Does he wish…” Charlotte hesitated, trying to make sense of it. “Does he wish me to go with him somewhere? Does he need a companion?”

Her father glanced once at her mother, seeming to stumble over the word.

“Yes, I suppose it is a companion of sorts. He wishes to make you…part of his family.”

“Part of his family?” Elizabeth asked, still sounding incredulous. “But he’s a bear!”

“He may be a bear,” her father replied, “but he is clearly also a person. Or do you think him a mere animal?” He spoke slowly, as if willing them to read between his words.

Charlotte nodded. It made sense to her. The inhabitants of the Palace of Light might not all wear human form, but surely they must all be considered people. They certainly couldn’t be thought of as animals—not when they were thinking, feeling beings with as much intelligence and capacity for communication as she herself possessed. Probably more, in truth.

But even so, she couldn’t help her thoughts mirroring Elizabeth’s. How could she join the family of a creature from the Palace of Light?

“How could I do so?” she asked. “Surely it is impossible.”

Her father cleared his throat, glancing once again toward his wife. “There is an established way.”

For a second, Charlotte and her sisters merely stared at him, confused. Then Odelia let out a gasping laugh, one that hung on the edge of hysteria.

“Marry him? You want Charlotte to marry a bear?”

“Of course not,” Elizabeth said with a repressive frown. “That’s ridiculous.”

Utterly and completely ridiculous. They must be misunderstanding their father.

And yet, the bear had asked her specifically about marriage ceremonies. It had been the only thing he was interested in. She had assumed he was conducting cultural research, but…

“Of course she couldn’t marry him in the normal sort of way,” her father said quickly. “But a legal marriage would make her part of his family. It would make it all right for her to leave with him. They have different rules in…” He trailed off without saying the words Charlotte knew came next. In the Palace of Light. Was being tied together a requirement for the bear taking her there?

---