Chapter 61 - Fables and Fairy Tales [https://cdn.midjourney.com/8f1f0063-79b9-4ecf-a4d3-4d579031fbd1/0_2.png]

Seated in the back seat, sharing space with two gleaming shotguns, supplies tucked around her, Kennedy fastened her seat belt. The two men, Terry and Jeremiah, spoke in bear in the front seat. The sound rumbled through her chest. Red hadn’t arrived in time. He was still in town, trying to find enough Red Ursa to take her through her pregnancy safely if they had to suppress her. She would not take it, even though her little family was pulling apart like wet tissue. On her lap, she gripped the stuffed black bear she’d found. In the last few moments before they’d left, she’d run to the barn to retrieve him. The truck engine roared to life, and Terry shifted into reverse. His tires ripped through the grass.

As they approached the highway, following Nan’s car, the two older women turned left, leaving them, heading west to stay with one of Nan’s friends. For their own safety, they couldn’t know where Kennedy was going.

Once they had settled the last cat carrier into Nan’s car, her mother had gripped her arms hard before they got into their vehicles. “Kendie, listen to me. Don’t trust anybody. You just make it through this. Do you hear me?” She gave her a fierce shake and then a tight hug. Surprised, Kennedy held onto the mother she had known in her childhood, gleaming through the broken vessel of the woman in her arms. With strength and determination, her mother declared, “I am going to meet my grandbaby. Do you hear me?”

“Yes, mam.”

Fingers biting into her arms, her mother said, “Promise me.”

“I promise.”

With the words lingering in the air between them, her mother released her and limped to the passenger side of Nana’s car.

Her mother and grandmother disappeared up the on-ramp, finally united about something. Low in her belly, Kennedy felt a flutter, like a bubble rising along the inside of her abdomen. Was that the baby? The little one pulled her toward change even though she was awake. Not now. Not in the car. Rocking herself back and forth, she took deep, slow breaths to calm herself. “It’s okay, Little Bear. We are okay.”

“Are you okay?” Jeremiah turned and looked at her.

“Yeah. I think my anxiety woke him up in his waterbed.”

Waiting for the tingles along her wrists and ankles, she said, “Tie me up if I start to change. Between the two of you, if you act quickly, you could strap me down. Protect yourselves if you have to, but try not to hurt the baby.” Would they survive wrestling with a bear?

Jeremiah reached back between the seats and rested a hand on her knee.

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These were her men, bound to her, held by their sweetgrass rings. She let her shoulders down and began a lullaby from her childhood. She closed her eyes to force out the reality of how Terry’s truck was screaming down the road. Her mother used to sing songs to her when she was little and couldn’t sleep. Low and melodic, there weren’t any words. Jeremiah, and then Terry, sang with her. The sounds they made comforted her.

Eyes closed, she focused on how safe the song had made her feel when she was small, when the world was full of sunlight and her father’s laughter. Terry’s low, rumbling voice shook the bones in her chest. “These are your fathers,” she whispered to the baby as the men continued the melody. “Hear how strong they are. How broad their backs. How true their hearts.” Hand spread wide over the tiny universe he lived in, she whispered, “Remember the stars and sleep.”

Terry turned the truck onto a back road and dropped his speed. The car grew quiet except for the rumble of the road. Terry spoke to her in bear, and she understood even less of the language than she did of his sign.

Jeremiah said, “We didn’t know that you knew any of our tongue.” Terry nodded.

“I didn’t know the sounds of the lullaby were words. My mother would sing it to me when I was sad.”

Adjusting the mirror so that he could see her, Terry, eyes full of worry, said, “Rest.”

*

Doc Terry…

He tried to keep his face calm as he glanced at Jeremiah. There was a truck behind them that had matched them turn for turn and it wasn’t being driven by Red. He didn’t want Kennedy to worry. They needed her calm. If she panicked, they might end up with a terrified bear with adorable tan ears trashing the backseat and being a general hazard. If he could have medicated her into sleep without risking harm to the baby, he would have, but such things weren’t predictable during pregnancy. The baby still might turn them both. In bear, he told Jeremiah, “Text your cousin. I think we have a tail. Has he left yet?”

Jeremiah looked behind them and his brow furrowed.

In the back seat, Kennedy rocked, eyes closed, hands on their little traveler. There was no way David would have betrayed them. He’d known him his whole life. Why had Snow called him home? Did the council force her? Had she been trying to keep him out of danger? Did David bolt after Snow gave him some secret code? He couldn’t see Snow or her mother betraying them, but the video was bad. Only a desperate situation could make his mother pause in her final grieving. Her warning had seated a sliver of fear into his heart, sharp and quick as a snake bite. Its poison made it hard for him to think clearly.

They could never scrub the images from the Internet, not even if they asked for help from the wolves. The wolves had probably been the first to find the video and report it to the community. Their kind paid attention to humanity in ways that bears did not. Their kind watched over the sheep because they believed it was their job to do so. For himself, he preferred as little contact as possible with their kind. Shepherds were hard enough to navigate. Letting her go home had been a mistake.

He wasn’t the type of man who could convince himself to trap a woman and hold her captive for any reason. They were dying out anyway. What did it matter? As far as technology had progressed, exposure was bound to happen.

Glancing into the mirror, he caught Kennedy’s gaze. Vulnerable. Fragile. She mattered. He loved her and Little Bear. Gripping the steering wheel, he made her a promise in bear. “You will not die before I do.”

Changing his plan to leave the state, he took a hard right. They weren’t going through the back woods, cities would be safer, more eyes. The council would avoid exposure, they had to. It had been generations since the sheep had hunted them, in the time before their history became fables and fairy tales used to scare human children. The world had been upside down for a long time.