Chapter Three – Taran
Chapter Three
Taran
I followed her from a safe distance. She had an awkward way of walking. She stepped lightly, like a cat, and instead of using her hands to push away the vegetation, she kept her arms wrapped around her body and avoided touching anything. If there was an obstacle, she walked around it. At this pace, she was going to reach her destination... never.
I didn’t know what to make of her. The more I watched her, the more she seemed like she wasn’t even related to her awful family. She wasn’t what I’d expected, that was for sure. The daughter of Bill Everhart – who I considered to be one of the most despicable people in the country – was a delicate, anxious little thing that was terrified of her own shadow. Was Bill even certain she was his? Maybe she was adopted...
I’d thought she’d be as rough, and selfish, and disrespectful towards nature as her father. Now that I was so close to her, even if she didn’t know I was here, it seemed silly that I’d almost expected her to stomp through the forest, snap branches off the trees just because she could, and chase away any living creature she came across. I’d imagined, even, that she’d come equipped with a rifle, because her family surely hunted for sport. There was no rifle in sight.
I was intrigued by her. I was curious to find out what frightened her so much. But I couldn’t let her know I was here. The next three days were going to be long. The contract I’d signed said Thea wasn’t supposed to know she had a bodyguard. She was to believe that she was alone in the woods, hiking all by herself. From the shadows, my duty was to make her journey safe and easy, deliver her to the resort where her future husband – along with his and Thea’s family, and all the wedding guests – awaited, then retreat into the forest and report back to Monster Security Agency.
That was all. That was my job. Boring, yet easy enough. In these parts, the forest wasn’t even dangerous. All I’d have to fight was my curiosity about this young woman. Why had she cried before starting her journey? Why had she panicked? Was it because she didn’t want to get married? Had she been threatened? Forced into it? She looked and behaved like she was walking to her death. She kept murmuring to herself, too. Words of encouragement, and sometimes words of defeat.
“I can’t do this. Who do I think I am? I can’t help him; I can’t even help myself...”
Help who? Who was she talking about?
I had so many questions. That I couldn’t just let her know I was here was starting to grate on me. First of all, she was torturing herself, and I was supposed to shut up and watch, when I could’ve told her that I was watching her back and she was safe. Second of all, if I could talk to her, I could’ve found out what she was thinking and why she was acting this way. I wanted to ask her why she’d agreed to this madness if she wasn’t up for it.
But what was the madness, exactly? The fact that she was getting married to a man twenty years her senior? Or the fact that said man had made her walk through the woods for three days to reach him? If that wasn’t a red flag...
After following Thea for an hour, moving in such a way that she couldn’t tell I was there, I had to admit that, despite my dislike for her family, I wanted to hear her side of the story. Because something wasn’t right here. I didn’t have the whole picture, which made me believe that even though this job was easy on first glance, there might’ve been more to it. And when I found out what it was, I wouldn’t like it.
I focused on her for now. It was painful to watch her wince and try to make herself small when a branch snagged at her sleeve, or a leaf brushed her shoulder as it fell. She was tense, and every few minutes, her chin would wobble, like she was about to burst into tears. After another half hour, I couldn’t take it anymore. She might’ve been Bill Everhart’s daughter, but she was nothing like him. I decided to help her.
My thoughts reached to the trees of the forest. They weren’t leshy, like me, so they couldn’t move like I did, but they could gently retract their branches and vines out of Thea’s way as she passed. With a bit of insistence on my part, I even made a bush subtly scuttle away. Thea stared at it when it moved, blinked in confusion, then kept walking.
I knew she’d been isolated inside a bubble where monsters were an afterthought. Families like hers, old and rich, only wanted to deal with humans. They rarely did business with monsters, and when they did, it was because they needed us for our physical strength or supernatural abilities. Even then, they treated us like we were second-class citizens. Not all wealthy families were that way, but the world where Thea came from certainly was. When her father hired me, he didn’t want to deal with me in person. Everything happened through my handler, Harrison, who was human.
So, given her background, I doubted that Thea expected to see monsters on her way to the resort. If a bush moved a bit to the right, and a branch bent away from her face, it was doubtful she’d think there was something supernatural involved. Critters in the underbrush and the wind playing tricks – those were good enough explanations she could be comfortable with. If I respected my contract and did my job right, she would make this journey without ever learning of my existence. She would never know my name, let alone that I’d spent three days and two nights watching over her.
Now that the obstacles were moving out of her way on their own, Thea picked up the pace. The next half hour was uneventful. Then we emerged into a clearing, and Thea stopped dead in her tracks. She froze so hard and so fast that my roots, which crawled over the ground before me as I moved, almost tripped her. I moved back a few inches to give her space, then I saw it...
A bear cub. It was playing and rolling in the grass, but when it noticed Thea, it got up to its short, plump feet and stared at her. They stared at each other for a full minute, then the bear cub took a few steps towards her. I was standing right behind Thea, silent and unmoving, waiting to see what she would do. She took one step back, then another. Good. Nice and slow. She walked around me, not even looking, and I thought this was going to be fine. The bear cub was curious but wasn’t going to do anything to her. All Thea had to do was keep her cool and keep walking backwards.
But then there was a rustle at the other end of the clearing, and a deep, angry growl. I knew Momma Bear had to be nearby, and I’d just hoped she wouldn’t show. No such luck. I bent my branches towards Thea, feeling her panic grow. And I thought, thought hard... “Don’t. Please don’t. Do. Not. Run.”
She ran.
She turned on her heel and bolted, and there was nothing I could do to stop her. Clearly, she knew nothing about being out in the wilderness. Nothing about the behavior of bears, and that when you came face to face with one, running was the worst thing you could do.
Bears posed no danger to me. In the woods, I was probably the most dangerous monster there was. My ability to camouflage and change shape from a tree to whatever else was needed was one of my biggest advantages. And that was what I did now. I placed myself between Thea and Momma Bear. Thea kept running and panting, and the bear was bent on catching her, so I stopped the beast by spreading myself and turning into a wall of bark, branches, vines, and leaves. The bear halted and looked at me in complete bafflement. It tried to get around me, but I spread even further, moving with the bear to the left, then to the right, until it huffed and gave up. Momma Bear went back to her cub, and together, they disappeared between the trees.
I shrunk back to my original shape and looked around me. Great. Thea was nowhere in sight. How far had she run? I couldn’t wait; I had to find her. Seeing how clueless she was, there was a good chance she would get herself in trouble again, especially if she kept running through the woods like a headless chicken.
Roots crawling over fallen branches and leaves, I moved fast, trying to find her. I extended my branches in all directions, searching for her, for her scent, for a sound that might indicate where she was. After a few minutes, my roots found her backpack. In her panic, she must’ve dropped it. I bent down and inspected the ground with my vines and saw a splatter of blood on the grass. The backpack was stuck between a tree root and a rock, which led me to believe that Thea had fallen, hurt herself, and when she tried to retrieve her backpack, she hadn’t had the strength to get it unstuck. Thinking the bear was in pursuit, she left it behind.
All her provisions. She’d given up on them. How did she think she was going to survive without whatever was in her backpack? I let out a sigh, grabbed the thing by the straps, and pulled hard. It got unstuck on the second attempt.
I found her a few minutes later. She was hiding behind a massive tree, curled up in a ball, rocking back and forth, but not making a sound. I was glad she wasn’t crying, at least. When she cried, I didn’t know how to feel. I didn’t know what to do. I just knew that her tears made me feel uncomfortable, like it was my fault she was sad, and that made it so much harder to remain hidden.
Gently, I placed the backpack next to her hip. She didn’t sense my presence. She didn’t hear me or see me, so I found a good spot a few feet away and stopped, once again unmoving. There was a soft breeze that ruffled my leaves and Thea’s hair, and for a few minutes, we stayed like that, she and I. She didn’t know I was here. She didn’t know that I’d just saved her life, and that she was safe.
Nothing was going to happen to her. Ever. I wouldn’t let it.
I waited patiently, watching, observing. Within my body, something stirred. I was made of wood and bark, but when I was so close to her, and felt like she needed my protection, it almost felt like I was made of flesh too.