“Gwenika,” Brena said, “Walk until you are out of sight, then find your sister and run to the clanhold as fast as you can.”
“But Mama, what about you?”
“Go.” For once, to her relief, Gwenika did as she was told and ran away through the woods.
“Go.” For once, to her relief, Gwenika did as she was told and ran away through the woods.
Slung over her shoulder, Brena wore a bark fiber sack where she kept a number of useful things: herbs, a water skin, a rock-like lump of sugar, another of salt, various elixirs in stoppered jars no bigger than a finger.
“I’ve helped many wounded animals,” she said. She lowered her body to a crouch, with her arms at her sides, as unthreatening as she could make herself. “I can take out the arrow for you and staunch the bleeding.”
The bear shook its head, as if it understood her.
“I know what you are,” added Brena. “I know why you approached my daughters. But if you want help, you’ll have to come to me. I won’t let you subvert them with your faery wiles.”
“Stay away, human,” growled the bear. She had a low, but unmistakably feminine voice. “I’m not so weak yet that I can’t still kill you.”
Bears did not talk. Faeries did. “I knew it. You are a Brundorfae.”
The bear shuddered and tried to back away. Instead, she collapsed. Another spasm rippled through the beast’s body and she howled, in terrible pain.
“Let me help you,” said Brena. “I have herbs. Medicines.”
“I don’t want your damn help!” said the she-bear faery. Dry leaves crackled under her thrashing body.
“Then why did you approach us?”
“Didn’t think you could see me,” wheezed the bear. “Human young see us, but human olds mostly ignore us.”
“Well, this human ‘old’ sees right through you, faery bear,” said Brena. “I know why faeries prey on virgins. Once a woman has been screwed by a man, she’s not naïve enough to trust your ilk either.”
The bear made an odd snuffling sound. Almost like chuckles. At the end, however, the sound turned into another roar of pain, and the bear again twisted in a futile attempt to bat away the arrow.
“Are you going to let me help you or not?” asked Brena.
“No! I told you to leave me alone!”
Brena inched forward in small steps. Her heart was pounding so hard she was sure the bear could hear it. A bear was still a bear, and the fact that it was a faery bear only made the situation more dan- gerous. Once she reached the bear’s side, she knelt and examined the puncture. The bear writhed in pain, too weak to stop her.
Brena tried to remember everything her mother had taught her about war wounds. Beware the barb. The arrowhead will want to stay under the blanket of flesh to continue its misdeeds. “I’m going to have to cut it out. It will hurt, I’m sorry—”
“Just leave!” ordered the bear, showing her canines...
TO BE CONTINUED
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