On a humid day in August, a hiker on the Appalachian Trail looked over his shoulder to make sure he wasn’t being observed, then left the marked path. He descended into a gully and followed a small creek winding through the mountains. He wandered until he found a sunlit glade tangled with lobelias and black-eyed susans.

He stowed his pack deep in a willow thicket and then, with one last look around him, he turned into a bear.

The first thing he did as a bear was to roll onto his back and wiggle, enjoying the scratch of twigs through his fur. Nice, but not quite enough. He rolled back onto his feet and shuffled through the woods until he found an ancient sugar maple with shaggy bark. He scratched his back against the tree, snorting with pleasure.

He spent the whole afternoon in heaven, exploring the forest. For three years he’d been working long hours each day, and on call more nights than he’d like; chances to shift were few and far between. But now he was lucky enough to have the whole summer off before moving across the country to start his new job. Hiking part of the Appalachian Trail seemed like the perfect opportunity for his human side and his bear side to get back in balance.

Even though he was the only thinking creature around for miles, he felt less alone here in the woods than he ever did in the city. The wood thrushes and warblers in the trees didn’t care that he spent most of his life as a human; to them, he was just another bear. The voles and deer mice rustling through the leaf litter didn’t care. The possums and raccoons who would emerge from their hiding places at night wouldn’t care either.

But people would care. In the almost twenty years since his parents died, he’d never worked up the courage to tell a single human about his secret. And that secret cast a shadow between him and every person he cared about, always keeping him a little bit distant, a little apart from the others. His mother had told him there were other shifters, but she hadn’t told him how to find them. She never could have imagined that he’d be alone in the world by the age of ten.

As he wallowed in a patch of elderberries, stripping the juicy ripe berries from their branches, he noticed the sky clouding up rapidly. He had to admit, one of the great things about being human was the climate control technology; this bear had the sense to get out of the rain.

Using his keen nose he followed his rambling trail back to where he’d stowed his pack. The first rain drops were already falling by the time he shifted and put up his tent. He crawled in and zipped it up, and the rain turned into a drumming downpour.

After tossing and turning on his sleeping bag for half an hour, he shifted again. As a bear he curled up comfortably and dozed through the storm.

A strange sound roused him, flooding him with a sense of danger. There it was again! A squealing, trumpeting sound, barely audible above the din of the storm. He had clawed open his tent and rushed out into the rain and wind before his rational mind caught up to what was happening. It was the sound of a bear cub in trouble.

His heart raced as turned his head this way and that, desperately searching for the cub. Every fearful cry stabbed at him, just like the screams of a human child would. He would do anything to protect this young life from danger.

He tracked the sound down to the creek, now swollen to a raging torrent from hours of heavy rain. The rain was blinding, but by sound and by smell he found the cub, clinging to a clump of branches surrounded by rushing water. He waded in. The water hit him like a truck. He struggled to cross the flooded stream.

Just as he reached the cub and grabbed the scruff of its neck with his teeth, the sapling holding the clump of debris in place gave way. The bear was knocked from his feet and swept downriver.

He paddled frantically, holding his head up to keep the cub out of the water. The river gained strength with every moment. Great logs were lifted from their resting places and small trees were torn from the earth. They all became missiles in the torrent, and the bear was battered and bowled over, but he struggled to the surface again and again. He couldn’t even tell if the cub was breathing any longer, but he wouldn’t let go – until a tree trunk crashed against the back of his skull, and everything went black.

Chapter 2

Lauren Gold awoke to the trill of bird song and the chattering of teenage Girl Scouts. She tried to stretch out the stiffness of sleeping on the ground and wiggle out of the tent without waking Stacey, the girls’ troop leader.

She found most of the troop up already, with two of the girls lighting the little camp stove and the rest bartering different flavors of hot chocolate packets.

“Good morning, ladies. Did everyone stay dry?” Lauren asked.

Two girls made sad faces, and one of them said, “I think we put our rain fly on wrong. We woke up with a lake in our tent.”

Lauren held up her cell phone and wandered around the clearing, checking for a signal. When she picked up a bar she checked the weather. The rain that hit them yesterday wasn’t supposed to have come this far north; obviously the clouds didn’t get the memo. When the app launched, Lauren’s eyes widened.

“Oh fu—udge,” she substituted for the girls’ benefit. “There’s a ton more rain headed our way. Everyone, drink your cocoa and split whatever food you’ve got left. We need to hustle.”

Stacey was crawling out from their tent. Lauren filled her in.

“Let me pull out the map and check,” Stacey said, “But I think we’ll get home fastest if we head south to the river and follow it to the Sheldon Road. We can call everyone’s parents and get a ride from there, if we have a signal.” It was an eternal problem out here in the mountains. “Or we can at least shelter at one of the farms there.”

The girls had all been pretty rattled by yesterday’s storm, and broke camp in record time when the adults explained the situation. As Lauren pushed her way through the underbrush with the whole troop following behind her like ducklings in a row, she was glad she’d brushed up on her compass skills earlier in the summer. Mostly her job kept her close to the park’s visitor center, doing things like teaching kindergarteners about tree rings and leading retirees on bird-watching hikes; taking the Girl Scouts wilderness camping had been a welcome change of pace, but she hadn’t imagined it turning into a race against time.

When they hit the river, the ground was still falling steeply from the mountain ridges. The river leapt from rock to rock, and Lauren and the scouts scrambled down alongside it. But soon they reached flatter ground. The river broadened and the trees opened up to a meadow. Driftwood had been thrown up high on the river banks by the flood in the night. Lauren’s eyes were drawn immediately to a shape that was strange and out of place.

“Holy shit,” she said without thinking once her brain registered what it was. Then she clapped her hand over her mouth.

“Oh my god is he dead?” squealed Kelsey, peering over Lauren’s shoulder.

There was a man lying motionless among the driftwood.

“Everyone stay back, let me check it out,” commanded Lauren.

She approached the man cautiously. He was dressed like a hiker, with boots, shorts, and a t-shirt. Hard to judge with him lying down, but he seemed tall, and he was definitely broad-shouldered and well-muscled. His arms and legs were covered with bruises and scrapes.

Lauren knelt beside him, and her first look at his face took her breath away. Straight nose, high cheekbones, long, dark lashes... he was handsome like a hero from a story book, washed up here like something from an ancient myth.

He seemed to be breathing. Lauren put her hand on his chest. The man’s eyes flew open and he stared at her, his face moving through expressions of confusion and fear.

Chapter 3

The man’s dreams were full of pain and dark water. He was searching for someone, protecting someone, but he couldn’t even remember who. Then a beautiful woman appeared before him, bewitching, filling his whole field of vision, with sunlight shining like a halo behind her wild brown curls. Was this who he was protecting?

No, wait, was it... “The bear?” he croaked, and only when he heard his own voice did he realize he was awake.

“There was a bear here?” the woman asked, with a look of concern. “Great, that’s the last thing we need. Hey, Stacey?” she called over her shoulder.

The man began to struggle to sit up, and the woman immediately pressed him back down.

“Whoa there, big guy. We have no idea what kind of injuries you might have, so just hold tight.”

An older woman appeared, and the young woman opened her mouth to say something, but a child’s voice yelled, “Oh my god you guys, there’s a baby bear!”

The man turned his head toward the voice, and the resulting stab of pain almost made him black out again.

“Uh-huh,” said the young woman, staring at him intently. “That is exactly what I’m talking about. Hold still.” Her hand on his chest was a comforting warmth.

“Fran always says to leave animal babies right where they are unless they’re obviously injured,” she called to the girls. “And everyone keep an eye out for the mom!” He couldn’t tell how many girls there were, but it sounded like a whole flock of them cooing and exclaiming over the bear cub. When he said
the bear
, was that what he meant? He couldn’t remember. In fact, he couldn’t remember what he was doing here, or how he got here.

He couldn’t remember
anything
.

Panic washed over him. He wanted to jump up and run, search for answers, fight against
something
... He grabbed the woman’s hand. Her gaze returned to him, startled.

“I don’t remember anything,” he told her.

“Like, you don’t remember yesterday? Or how you got here? I think that happens sometimes with head injuries.”

“No, I mean I don’t remember anything.” He closed his eyes and searched his mind, then told her, “I don’t even remember my name.”

“Okay,” she murmured. “Okay okay okay.” Her face was screwed up in concentration and she bit her lip. Then she jumped up and put her hands on her curvy hips, her attitude determined.

“Okay. I am going to figure this out. You’re going to be all right. Don’t move.”

She grabbed the older woman and pulled her aside. He could only hear snatches of their conversation, something about the rescue copter at the ski resort, something about the bear cub. Instead he focused on his limbs, carefully tensing and wiggling each part, one by one, assessing his condition.

When he didn’t sense any pain from broken bones, or any numbness or tingling from nerve damage, he moved his arms more freely, patting down his body. Contusions and lacerations all over his arms and legs, but nothing dangerous. He prodded his abdomen: no areas of tenderness. He poked at his ribs and took a few deep breaths: one sore spot that could be a bruised or cracked rib, but he didn’t think there was any pleural involvement. The head injury was the only area of concern.

He turned his head again, much more slowly this time. The movement hurt, but there was no wave of nausea or looming blackness waiting to engulf him. He saw both women pacing, talking on their cell phones. He saw six girls of all shapes and sizes clustered around the bear cub, which was awake and whimpering. Two more girls were looking at him and whispering. He smiled at them and they giggled.

He waved the two girls over. They came with more whispers and giggles.

“Hey, can you guys help me with something?” he asked, and they nodded. “What’s your leader’s name?” He pointed to the curly-haired young woman.

“That’s Lauren,” one girl said.

“Okay, I’m going to try to sit up now, and if I black out, I need you to tell Lauren what happened. Got it?”

“Are you sure you should do that? Lauren said to stay still!” one girl protested.

BOOK: The Bear With No Name

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