Chapter 20 Humming
humming
BELL
The wood was humming. Singing to me, like that piece of soapstone had before I decided to go into debt to purchase it for my thesis project.
I peeled off the last piece of bark with the kitchen knife. I’d have to figure out how to resharpen it after this was all done.
But there it was.
An animal.
I squinted…. Actually, a bear. Stuck inside the cedar round. It wanted out. Needed me to free it.
“I’ve got you. I’m going to find you,” I whispered, though I wasn’t sure how. I’d never worked with wood as a medium before. Didn’t even whittle. At about three feet tall and just as wide, I couldn’t even pick up this piece of brand-new-to-me media.
Luckily, Ravik had answered my “Can I have this?” with “I’ll send Boone over with it” before going back into the house.
Conversation over. No questions asked.
Less than fifteen minutes later, I had a big honking piece of wood sitting in front of my metal chair. Boone was the one who told me it was cedar and asked what I planned to do with it.
“Not sure,” I answered, just happy it was still humming. “Bye,” I said as I began the long process of peeling the bark off with my only kitchen knife.
A few times, I wondered if maybe I was losing my mind. Could be that the trauma had finally cracked something essential in my brain.
But when I finally got the rough bark peeled away, revealing pale wood beneath, I could see it—the bear trapped inside.
“Ready to take a break?” A warm, resonant voice interrupted my No, you’re not crazy, just an artist discovery.
I blinked up at Zion, who was standing there with two covered bowls. He was wearing an argyle vest over a tie and a white button-up, and partially blocking what turned out to be the light of the setting sun.
Which meant I’d been out here on the cottage’s back deck, peeling away bark, for hours. Now that he mentioned it, my stomach started growling at the flavorful smell coming from the bowls.
“Is that for me?” I asked hopefully, suddenly starving.
“It is,” Zion confirmed.
My tummy cheered—then soured when I saw he also had that overnight bag I’d seen when I Goldilocksed his room slung over one shoulder.
Reporting for inside sentry duty.
“Boone thought you might have missed lunch,” he continued. “So, Ravik put an extra bowl in my oven.”
He nimbly stepped onto the back deck with me, careful to avoid the scattered pieces of bark. “May I join you for a late supper?”
It wasn’t technically nighttime yet, but it felt churlish to take the bowl of food and just bounce back into the house without letting him come in to eat, too.
So after washing up, we ended up sitting next to each other on the couch, eating a dinner of what turned out to be moose stew and something Zion called bannock bread.
I’d never had either before, but let me tell you, both were delicious.
Which made me feel some kind of way, considering that this morning, I’d yelled at the guy who made this dinner and told him I didn’t want him in my space.
It had felt like the most fitting response at the time, the only way for me to gain some power after he’d basically called me helpless to my face. But now, the conflict churned in my stomach alongside the stew.
I wasn’t used to disliking anyone outside of Dennis—but I couldn’t seem to stop being angry with the first maul, either.
I ate in silence, trying not to think about how this was yet another truly thoughtful gift from Ravik—one I didn’t deserve.
Well, at least I ate in silence. Zion immediately launched into a lament (a lament was actually what he called it) about his day, which had been particularly long thanks to auditions for that pageant he’d mentioned during our walk.
Apparently, an unmotivated ne’er-do-well—again, his words not mine—named Jacobi Baerlow not only had the temerity (also his word) to put forth the best audition for the pageant, but then, in his biggest display of presumption yet, called Zion Unc while announcing to everyone waiting to go on after him he’d obviously get the role because they were related.
“You’re related to him?”
“Not really. At least not in the Ayaska sense. Noelle’s third maul is his mother’s brother.
So I suppose we’re in-laws. But in the past, I’ve refused to cast my own children in pageant roles due to Mara’s penchant for questioning the script, Mak’s lazy diction, and Takoda’s wooden delivery.
Does he truly believe I’d favor him due to a distant familial connection? ”
“So you’re not going to cast him?” I asked, trying to keep up.
“Of course I’ll cast him.” He tore off a piece of bannock with more force than strictly necessary. “The boy is an effortless natural talent and magnetic in the role. If he shows up to rehearsals and does the necessary script work, he will be our greatest Great Serpent yet. It’s infuriating.”
I found myself smiling, despite my inner conflict over scarfing down Ravik’s stew. “It sounds like you have your work cut out for you on top of a full teaching day.”
“I do,” Zion agreed. “But the pageant does not feel like work. Putting on the production is what I look forward to most every summer. Teaching those apathetic brats—not so much.”
Wow. Burnout much? As the sister of a former teacher, I could see all the signs that Zion was still working, but beyond ready to retire. But keeping it light, I just asked, “So what grade do you teach?”
That launched us into another discussion about how Bear Mountain only had enough students to have one schoolhouse with one teacher who taught everything from first to twelfth grade, which consisted of twenty-five to forty students in any given year.
“Sometimes it’s a bit hard to keep it all straight.
Many of the more promising eleventh and twelfth-grade students are sent to the closest human high school for advanced classes that I cannot provide, and there’s certainly a lot of having the older children help the younger ones.
But somehow it all sorts itself out in the end.
Our boys are compelled into national service at eighteen, unless given special exemption.
But our college admission rates for the girls who don’t maul up early are quite high. …”
We ended up spending the rest of dinner talking about how younger maul bondings before the age of twenty-five were starting to fall out of favor, but how the number of births kept going up.
“In about ten years, I believe they’ll need to expand to two or three teachers to support the student population, which makes it that much more concerning that they appear unable to find one to replace me. But enough complaining…”
He rose with his bowl. “If you like, I can sort out your hair. I brought my clippers with me.”
My hand went automatically to the rough buzz job I’d given myself a few days ago with his electric razor. It was already growing out uneven and patchy in places. But I’d been ignoring it.
The widow’s cottage didn’t have any mirrors, and I would have had to ask Zion directly to borrow his clippers again. Which wasn’t something I wanted to do. But here he was… offering.
“Cutting hair is touching.” I blurted the words. Then hated myself for how I sounded. Like a scared girl, not a grown woman who’d claimed to Ravik she could take care of herself.
Ravik’s earlier words echoed in my head: “Baby, no you can’t.”
“It is.” Zion agreed, drawing me back to the present. As talkative as he’d been before, he gave me only those two words. Then waited.
Though I was sitting down, it felt like I was balancing on a tightrope.
I could say no. Keep the careful distance I’d been maintaining while we chatted about him exclusively. I liked making it about others. Never about me.
But something about the quiet offering, the lack of pressure, the way he patiently waited for my answer…
“Okay,” I decided out loud. “Yes.”
Zion stood and held his hand out for my bowl. “I’ll get the clippers from my bag after I clear these dishes.”
Was he being courteous by adding a chore before he came back? Or giving me a few minutes to wrap my mind around the incoming haircut?
Either way, I felt a little more at ease with the idea by the time he returned, and I’d taken at least one touching step out of the process by tying my locs up in a bun on top of my head.
I didn’t flinch when he draped one of the old towels I’d found folded up in the closet around my shoulders. And I kept the rest of my body still when he adjusted my head to the angle he needed for better access. His touch was light, efficient.
Now that it was dark, I could see us in the reflection of the cottage’s back window. He looked like a consummate professional doing his job.
“Would you like for me to take the sides all the way down?” he asked above me. “I have guards for a fade, or I can shave it completely off.”
I fretted over the decision. But why not embrace the gray? I liked the dramatic contrast against my dark dreadlocks, and it wasn’t like I’d brought any of my home dye along to cover it up.
“Fade it, please,” I heard myself say. “I want to see the gray.”
Zion didn’t question my choice, just switched to a different guard and went to work.
The buzz of the clippers filled the cottage. They hummed against my scalp, and with each pass, something loosened in my chest.
Small gray spirals fell onto the towel.
I watched him work in the darkened window. It felt crazy to have someone this smart, handsome, and apparently heterosexual tending to my hair.
I thought about how I’d been planning to find a barber within walking distance of my apartment to do this on the way back from Gemidigee that Thanksgiving.
Small mistake, because that led to the memory of hugging Noelle goodbye, thinking it would only be a few weeks before I saw her again.
“I told Noelle at Thanksgiving…” My voice thickened, and I had to swallow down my regret. “I told Noelle at Thanksgiving that the next time she saw me, I’d have this updated hairstyle—that I’d be looking fresh to def. And she was like, ‘Mom, nobody says fresh to def anymore.’”
“I personally never said it,” Zion admitted over the buzz. “But I’ve often admired the Black American tendency toward wordplay. It expires and evolves with such remarkable speed, yet wields worldwide influence.”
I let out a small chuckle because that was one way to describe AAVE.
But then I sobered. “Now I can’t even bring myself to face Noelle. Or Holly. And they’re so close.”
Zion didn’t respond. For so long, I wondered if he was judging me. But then he said, “I haven’t talked to my only daughter, Mara, in thirteen years.”
“Thirteen years?” I repeated, unable to keep the surprise out of my voice or from asking, “What happened?”
“She was bearless, you see—that is how the Ayaska refer to shifters who cannot turn, even at the full moon. Therefore, Niska exiled her. For her own good.”
He kept his tone professorial as he answered, but I could hear the conflict underneath it.
“I thought she should stay, perhaps take over my position as the town’s school teacher.
But then, there was an encounter with an unsuitable bear—a rather mentally unstable shifter who would go on to become the leader of a notorious motorcycle gang.
Niska exiled Mara in the hopes of saving her from a lifetime of misery with that unsavory fellow. ”
“But Mara didn’t see it that way,” I said quietly.
“No, she did not see it that way.” Zion tipped my head down to get at my kitchen. “She keeps in contact with her womb twin, Takoda—your daughter Holly’s first maul. But she hasn’t spoken to me or Ravik since. She didn’t even come home for her mother’s funeral. So you see, Bell…”
The clippers clicked off. He brushed away the last of the curls from my neck. “It could be much worse. You’ve only been out of contact with your daughters for a few months.”
He was right. My failure to connect with Noelle and Holly suddenly felt not nearly as bad after hearing Zion’s estrangement story.
I sat there for a moment, feeling the weight of his loss compared to my own avoidance.
The silence stretched between us, and I knew I shouldn’t show an interest in his personal life.
Not if I wanted him and “his maul” to stop thinking of me as a possible love interest. But I found myself turning on the couch to ask, “So you just gave up on ever reconciling with her?”
“Actually, I’d planned to move to Vancouver after the school year ended. To track her down and stay somewhere closer to her.” Zion placed the clippers back in their carrying case. “Even if she never finds it in her heart to forgive me.”
He looked down at the floor. “But your arrival changed my plans.”
Something warm flickered inside of me before I could stop it. But then, I said, “What? No, you should still go.”
“Oh, I will travel to Vancouver after the school year ends in December.” He removed the towel and went to the old metal trash can beside the kitchenette to give it a gentle shake. I watched the old curls tumble into its void. “But then I’ll come right back to our maul, Bell. Don’t worry.”
I hated the way a knot I didn’t even know had formed in my chest loosened when he promised to come back.
Or how long it took me to remind him, “I probably won’t… I probably won’t even be here after the wedding.”
“Alright, sweetheart.” Zion lifted an eyebrow, folding the towel with deliberate care. “Would you prefer an uncomfortable conversation for which you are demonstrably unprepared, or shall we watch some telly?”