“Go away!” she shouted, standing and waving her arms.
She had always found such a tactic worked before, but not this time. The bear just came closer, still not charging but still intent on her. Then it got close enough that she could see his eyes, and she froze. There was no mistaking that deep golden color, and she could have sworn the bear was smiling at her.
In another moment, the bear morphed into something else, and she stood facing Mark Saint.
13
“Your granny sent me this way,” he said, though she hadn’t asked. “She told me to look for the biggest sugar maple.”
He paused and let his eyes roam over the gigantic, old tree.
“Sure is pretty,” he said.
Addy just stood there, wringing her hands and glancing around, looking for a way out of this encounter, a part of her wanting to flee but another part fascinated by what she had seen.
Mark took a step closer, and though she refused to take a step in retreat, she swallowed hard.
“Your granny also told me to look out for a mountain lion,” he said, his voice dropping to a near whisper. “Turned out that wasn’t necessary, ’cause I saw you Shift as you climbed the hill.”
Her eyes snapped to his, then, and hers were wide with fear.
“You don’t have to be afraid of me,” he said, as though reading her mind. He kept his tone soft, his stance nonaggressive. “You’re not alone, Addy, though I got the feelin’ you think you are.”
It wasn’t quite a question.
“I didn’t…” She stopped, not having a clue as to what she wanted to say.
“You didn’t know there are others like you, did you?” He sounded surprised.
She crossed her arms over her chest and hugged herself tightly.
“Granny tells me my daddy did, but there’s no one else in the family. Then Daddy died, and...”
“How old were you?”
“Not quite two.”
“How old were you when you started Shifting?”
“Is that what you call it? About three, I guess. One day I, well, I just found this new game. Granny was surprised but happy for me—I think—then she told me I shouldn’t tell anyone, even my cousins, ’cause they couldn’t do it, and they might tell on me.
“I didn’t know what to do. I mean, I couldn’t stop it, I couldn’t even control it. Granny tried to help, but she didn’t know how to help me.”
“She didn’t remember what your daddy did?”
Addy shook her head. “She’d married Granddad, knowin’ about him, and it was Granddad who taught Daddy. But Granddad died before I was born. There wasn’t anybody else.”
Mark cursed softly under his breath, but when she looked up at him again, he was only shaking his head.
“Let’s sit down a minute,” he said, reaching out to her.
When she didn’t take his offered hand, he didn’t try to touch her but just gestured toward the ground. Addy let herself drop to the soft turf and brought her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them protectively.
“First off,” Mark said, “you gotta know there’s nothin’ wrong with you. There are a lot of Shifters in the world, though most people’ll tell you they don’t believe in ’em.”
“Are you the only one in your family?” she asked, her curiosity overcoming her fear for the moment.
“No. Gosh no. There’s all three of my brothers, our dad, our Uncle Bart. Grandpappy and Great-Grandaddy were both Shifters. There’re some cousins, too.”
“Are you all…I mean, do you all become…”
“Bears?”
Addy nodded.
“Yeah. We’re a bear clan. They tell me Grandpappy and Great-granddad looked more like grizzlies than black bears, like us, but they were both pretty big men.”
Addy snorted in disbelief. She couldn’t help it. “And you’re not?” She dropped her eyes, then, embarrassed to have him know she’d noticed anything about him.
“They say that Great-granddad was almost seven feet tall,” Mark said, stretching out his legs and leaning back on his elbows, “though I’m guessing that’s probably an exaggeration. Sort of like Paul Bunyan.”
She smiled in response to his tone of voice and started, finally, to relax. Then she thought of the way he had morphed—Shifted—right in front of her.
“How do you control it?” she asked. She looked up to meet his eyes once more and prayed he would understand how much she needed to know.
He sat up again, and reached for a nearby stick, worrying it between his fingers as though trying to find the best way to explain it to her.