Page 3 of The Red Woman and the White Bear

“We’ve had bigger,” Seb said nonchalantly. He reached out to give Briar a reassuring pat on the head. “Remember the one around this time last year?”

Lida nodded, then settled back onto Jackson’s lap. “I hate them, though.”

“It’s the damn fault line. One of these days, I swear it’ll open up and swallow us all whole,” Jackson joked. Lida elbowed him hard.

Seb shrugged and tossed his empty bottle toward the trash bag by the grill. He missed by several feet. “You laugh, but that crack in my driveway is proof enough for me.”

Jackson’s brows shot up. “No shit? I didn’t realize that was from the quakes.”

“Real glad to be back now, aren’t you?” Seb’s tone was sarcastic when he turned to address Aisling, but she answered honestly as her heart rate slowed and her fear of falling trees abated.

“I am, I think,” she said. “Earthquakes and all.”

“So…did you all get in trouble or what?” Jackson asked, drawing the group back into the memory they’d been discussing before nature’s interruption.

Lida nodded, letting out a short burst of laughter that subsided into a grimace as she recalled the ending. “Not until the followingmorning.”

“When Mr. Wilke caught me stuffing my sleeping bag into the trash,” Aisling filled in the rest. “After your beautiful wife threw up in it.” Lida buried her face in her hands when Jackson feigned gagging.

“I’ve always envied you for that, you know,” Seb added and nudged Aisling’s leg with his beer. “If I knew this island half as well as you, you lot would never see me again. I’d be a hermit living out here in the woods somewhere.”

“Says the one who didn’t bring enough firewood,” Jackson nagged, still a bit annoyed. Lida nudged him playfully and Seb rolled his eyes. Aisling leaned forward to put another log atop the dying flames. There was only one left to burn once it finished, but she didn’t mind much.

As the group continued to reminisce on into the night, their laughter mingled with the rustling of leaves and the crickets’ melodic song. She’d missed them, missed nights like this. It was in these moments that she could hardly imagine ever returning to her life on the mainland.

Without the searing heat of the bonfire they’d all hoped for, the temperature grew to be just shy of uncomfortably cold. Once they burned the last log down to smoldering ash and each retreated to their tents for the night, Aisling took one last walk around the perimeter of the campground before settling in. However well her friends had managed to distract her, she couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched from somewhere in the darkness. She imagined keen eyes peering out from the leaves, grasping arms prepared to snatch her up and spirit her away. But nothing jumped out at her. No headspoked out from behind the trees and no hands reached for her ankles from the underbrush. Even still, sleep felt a long way off as Aisling wrapped herself in her sleeping bag.

Like chasing after the tail end of a dream upon waking, she could almost recall what the tiny being reminded her of. Its pinched face was reminiscent of something blurry deep in the recesses of her memory. Her mother would have told her about something like it, maybe. Or perhaps she’d drawn a similar faerie once; it might be buried someplace in the pile of sketchbooks Aisling had found in an unlabeled box in her father’s closet. She hadn’t yet paged through them, but Aisling could recall sitting on the living room rug as a child watching her mother move a pencil over the page in fast, almost frantic strokes. Like she couldn’t get the images out of her head fast enough. Though she would have undoubtedly referred to the being by a part of its name; Aisling hadn’t even thought to ask. Not that it would have understood her either way.

She was nervous, too, that the hunters would have caught her scent. If they’d been as close behind their quarry as they sounded, it was likely. In her haste to flee, she knew she hadn’t done enough to cover her tracks. There was little chance they would cross this far to seek her out, but she thought that she should avoid that part of the forest for a while in case they’d marked her. A shiver ran up her spine, imagining hunters on horseback riding her down. But Briar seemed wholly unconcerned, and she took the cue from him that they weren’t in any danger for the moment. She reached down to where he was curled behind her knees and scratched the top of his head. He stirred, pressed tighter against her, then settledagain. His calm was contagious and eased Aisling’s lingering unease enough for her to allow her eyes to drift closed and her brain to finally quiet.

Aisling hadn’t been asleep for long when she awoke to Briar’s hot breath on the side of her face. She reached up to shove him away, but he panted insistently and drove his wet nose into her ear.

“Alright, I’m up,” she groused. Aisling pushed herself into a seated position. Her legs were tangled in the sleeping bag and she kicked to push it down to her ankles. In the dark, she fumbled blindly until her fingers found her lantern and she switched it on. Briar was sitting now by the flap of the tent, whining softly. He looked hard at Aisling, then through the mesh door into the night. Back and forth.

She groaned. “You can hold it until morning, Bri. Lay back down.”

He pawed at the flap, nearly catching his nail on the zipper. He’d have figured out how to pull it open if Aisling hadn’t pushed him aside first. With another groan, she slipped on her boots. Briar seemed almost surprised when she hooked the leash onto his collar before she pulled the zipper down and nodded for him to go on. She could have let him out by himself, but she didn’t trust the forest tonight.

“It’s not you, it’s me, buddy,” she muttered. In the haze of sleep, it took her a second to realize how silent the night had become, just as it had moments before the earthquake. The crickets had hushed and the owl that had been perched above since sundown had ceasedits hooting. The only sound was a breeze that rustled through the pines and wove through the brush, a dry whisper. But this time, the earth didn’t tremble. Something else had drawn the silence across the campsite.

A glimmer caught Aisling’s eye—a distant object up the trail was catching the silvery moonlight and reflecting it toward her in a flashing pattern. A long, low whistle accompanied it: one unbroken sound, carried on the breeze. Its pitch couldn’t have been matched by the owl, nor any other bird Aisling would have recognized. She tugged on Briar’s leash, but he’d heard it, too. He was rooted to the ground, immovable even when Aisling insisted he return with her to the tent. He rarely ignored her commands, if ever, but now he was so captivated by the small flickering light that he was deaf to her words. Then, he began pulling her towards it.

“Briar,stop,”Aisling hissed. She didn’t want to wake the others, but panic was beginning to rise in her throat.It’s a trap,she thought as she frantically tried to corral her large dog.The hunters came back for me.If they couldn’t have their quarry, the human that had aided in its escape would be the next best thing—and certainly a much greater prize. She wrapped the leash twice around her hand to stop it from sliding through her sweaty palm and leaned her weight against it, but it was no use. Briar had a one-track mind and he was determined to drag her to that whistling light.

She hadn’t thought to grab her pocketknife, or even to put on her coat before climbing out of the tent. She was grateful at least that she’d kept ahold of the lantern, but its dim light hardly madea dent. This was wilderness dark, thick and heavy as a woolen cloak and twice as strong as any light source she could throw at it.

Briar pressed forward, and as the pair neared the light, it stopped flickering. It was a still beacon now, and whatever held it a little over a foot off the ground didn’t back away as they approached. Though he was bound and determined to reach his target, Briar’s posture was relaxed. His tail hung down and swung loosely with each step, his soft footfall belying his size. And when they finally drew close enough to discern the figure in the middle of the trail, Aisling’s breath caught in her throat. Almost as if a fragment of a dream had materialized in front of her, there stood the very same tiny being that she had rescued just hours before.

Briar, oblivious to the weight of the being’s return, wagged his tail and approached her with an air of fascination. Aisling’s mind raced as she tried to make sense of the situation, but there was an undeniable pull that drew her closer. With bated breath, she took a hesitant step forward, waiting for the being to make her next move. She lowered the tiny shard of mirror she’d been using to signal to Aisling and darted a few yards up the trail, stopping to turn every few steps. She wanted the pair to follow, Aisling realized. Placing the blame for her shivering on the cold instead of her fear, Aisling followed Briar’s lead. He, too, continually glanced back at her as though to reassure her they were safe.

The group came upon a fork in the trail not far from where they’d parted ways earlier that evening. Rather than taking theleft or the right path, the being instead continued straight, plunging into the woods. Aisling hesitated. Her raw nerves were still on edge—this was close, too close, to the path of the hunt. The party could still be nearby. When the small female stopped to wait for them, impatience obvious on her face, Briar doubled back to heel and pressed against Aisling’s thigh. She relaxed; she trusted his intuition implicitly. If he was willing to forge ahead, she was too. Still, she dimmed the lantern to its lowest setting. The faint glow illuminated only just enough ground for her to see her next step and narrowly avoid the roots and rocks that dotted the ground. Navigating through the darkness, she was truly putting Seb’s theory to the test.

They followed the being through the underbrush for what felt like hours, trudging ever deeper into the woods. The further they got, the more excited the tiny thing seemed to become. By the time she stopped, she was practically vibrating.

She’d led Aisling to the edge of a clearing, at the center of which stood a dense thicket—a tangle of towering trees and thorny bushes, their gnarled branches interlocking to form a web of shadowy limbs that came together as a sort of cave. Moss-covered rocks and fallen logs lay scattered on the ground, a testament to the passage of time that had long hung heavily on the island. The moonlight was different there in the glade. Brighter. Shafts of silver pierced through the clouds and diffused softly over patches of ferns and delicate wildflowers. The air carried the heady scent of damp earth and decaying leaves. To Aisling, the thicket itself seemed almost sentient, possessed by an awareness that sensed her group’s approach and beckoned them closer.

Without warning, the being quickly scampered off. Aisling tracked her by the movement of the tall grass that she pushed through until she disappeared into the brush altogether.I’ve come this far,Aisling thought.

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