Sounds of metal against metal ricocheted across the field. I ran like my life and my sons’ lives depended on getting to her before she got to the overgrown arbor. Muscles thickened as they rippled over my shoulders and down the sides of my neck. I scented Meribah’s glee, even as Bear and I closed in.
Risking it all, we leapt, pushing Meribah off her feet. I wrapped my arms around her legs as she kicked my ribs with the flexible metal armoring her heels and smacked my head with the side of her fist.
Bear grumbled, shook off the blows, and swiped a paw down Meribah’s front.
The black claws slicing through the zipper weren’t my claws, but it was me who felt the sections of cloth give way. It was me who flipped her over, grabbed her hair, raised one arm to the sky, and chuffed out decades of pain, sorrow, and loss as I struggled not to end her life.
“Noémi,” Meribah screamed. “Stop. Please, please stop.”
I couldn’t stop.
I lowered my snout to her arm, opened my jaw wide, and clamped down below the shoulder joint. My incisors and canines punctured her protective sleeves and lodged there, tasting metal and blood and reveling in the rush of the hunt.
Bear. Bear, we have to stop.
Bear growled, shook her head, ripping flesh and pressing a massive paw to the center of Meribah’s exposed upper back.
Justice. We will get justice. For you. For Noemi. For Genevieve.
All the tears I wanted to cry dried up.
I had tasted Meribah’s blood.
“Calli.”
I released Meribah’s arm, pawed away the ruined sleeve, and licked her torn flesh. I ignored the annoying voice coming from inside my head and the raging voice behind me and sniffed at Meribah’s hair.
“You took her from me,” Bear bellowed, her breath coming out rough and ragged as her grief shredded my vocal cords.
“I didn’t know what I was doing. Noémi, you have to believe me. I did not know.” Meribah swept her uninjured arm across the grass and planted her palm under the front of her shoulder. “Get off me. Let me up. Let me explain.”
“No.” Bear backed up, sat on her haunches, swayed side to side. “No.”
Meribah’s left arm was a bloody mess. She staggered to her feet, turned, and stumbled backwards. Blood scored the side of her dress, bright red against row upon row of reflective scales.
“We were still children,” she spat. “Thirteen-year-old girls who did not understand who they were or what they were doing. You had your bear and I had my masks, and we didn’t know. We did not know.”
Even with an arm out of commission, Meribah was able to get one blade then two then a third to extend from the fingers of her working hand. She swung that arm away from her side, while pressing her ravaged arm, elbow bent, against her chest. “Do you want me to end this now? Finish separating you from your damn bear so you can go in peace? Because I’ll do it. I’ll cut you and cut you until you’re just a pile of shredded memories, and then we will be done, Noémi. Done.”
Bear trembled. I felt her heart clench.
No, no, I thought. I need you. I need you, Auntie Noé.
A tangle of voices rose around me. “Calliope” from one side, “Calli” from another, and I looked past Meribah to Maritza. With both arms raised, a needle in one hand, she frantically stitched Noémi’s memories into the blanket even as they threatened to shred like the field grass underfoot.
A different wolf—silverly-white and purpose-filled—swiped my side, stopped in front of me and bared its teeth at Meribah. She laughed.
“Oh no, no you don’t. You have no part of this,” she said, and when the wolf lunged, nipping at the air, it forced Meribah backward, step by step, all the while pushing her closer to Maritza, her thread, and the gaping mouth of the underland.
Bear dropped all of her weight onto me. I heard the click of her claws as they met at my chest, felt the rough pads on her paws as she patted my face and shoulder and urged me to turn around.
As I did, with the silver wolf still worrying at Meribah’s legs, Bear manifested.
The towering Kodiak I had sensed her to be stood on her hind legs, massive shoulders rounding, and shook her head. Her muzzle pressed against my chest, snuffled the side of my neck, urging my arms to find comfort in her fur.
I know, I know. You loved me, and I know that now. You kept me alive. You kept me safe. I love you, Auntie Noé.
Bear poured one last, love-filled breath into my chest, and then she lumbered away, melding with the growing darkness.
And I was back in my body, my shirt sticking to my sweaty back, dirt in the cuts on my feet and between my fingers, the sour taste of Fae blood on my tongue. I spat out the remnants of Meribah and wiped my mouth.
“Turn around, Calliope.” Meribah’s blades rested on the silver wolf’s exposed belly. The other wolf howled from farther away.
“Let him go,” I said.
“I want safe passage out of here. Then I will send him back.”
The wolf’s displeasure rumbled low in its throat. Meribah poked, pulled, and drew a thin line of blood up the wolf’s belly. Behind her, too far away for her magic to make a difference, Maritza stood still, her arms no longer raised, the blanket of memories gone.
And off to my right, a familiar apple tree stalked across the short bit of field separating us.
“Jessamyne, now would be a very good time for you to redeem yourself,” I yelled, “or I’m going after you when I finish with this bitch.”
I didn’t know I had it in me to lunge at Meribah barehanded, no weapons, no claws. Jack had Doug cornered, if the all too familiar voice was to be believed. Kaz and
