Chapter 9 Luke
LUKE
In spite of his bold words, Luke did find it a bit chilly at first, but it was fine once they started moving. Inga gave him a water bottle. The dog trotted along with them, sometimes behind, sometimes in front, sometimes wandering off to the side to investigate an interesting smell.
Walking along the top of the cliffs was easy enough. The ground was rocky, with scrubby bushes and not much else to impede them. What trees existed were gnarled and sparse.
Inga carried the conversation at first, chatting lightly about her hometown, her brothers (two), her sisters-in-law (two), how lucky he was that he’d arrived in the spring and escaped the Newfoundland winter (if she only knew), and what she seemed to think were relatable anecdotes about being a polar bear shifter.
“Our house is built on pilings over the bay, and we have a trapdoor in the living room. The whole setup is so that we can go in and out under the house without being caught in mid-shift by the neighbors, though honestly I think my entire family is being hopelessly naive if they think half our neighbors haven’t figured it out yet.
Anyway, the problem with having a trapdoor in the floor and two brothers is that sometimes people leave it open.
I came in one time with my arms full of groceries and was just trying to carry them to the kitchen, and suddenly I found myself in freefall with my arms full of grocery bags filled with eggs, bread, and hamburger. ”
Luke laughed. “Did you rescue anything?”
“Believe it or not, most of the eggs were fine, though we must’ve spent half an hour fishing them one by one out of the bay. The bread was the worst off. Let me tell you, bread soaked in salt water is pretty sad. We ended up using it for French toast and putting a lot of sugar on it.”
“I wouldn’t have minded growing up in a place like that. I was always moving around when I was a kid.”
Inga gave him a swift, delighted glance, her eyes bright, and he realized this might be the first time he’d talked about his past at all. “That must have been interesting, though. Was it mostly in the city? You must have had trouble finding places to shift.”
And once again their burgeoning camaraderie crashed into a wall. “I—didn’t shift much, growing up,” Luke said.
“Oh.” Inga sounded as if something had become clear to her.
“I’d rather not talk about my past, if you don’t mind.” He immediately wanted to kick himself for shutting her down, and hesitated to look at Inga, not wanting to see her lovely, open face shut down.
But when she spoke, there was nothing but sympathy. “Yes, of course.”
Clearly she thought she’d figured out something about him. Luke decided to let her think that, whatever it was.
She doesn’t know who I am. She doesn’t know who I’m running from.
And she’s better off that way.
But it was too nice a day, in too nice a company, to keep entirely to himself for long. He ventured a question. “This Westerly Cove sounds like a nice place. I’d love to see it someday.”
And she was off and running again, talking happily about her hometown, the fishing boats and the way that the collapse of the cod fishing industry had led some people to leave and others to find different things to do for a living.
The town was on the road system, and although the shifters obviously had mixed feelings about it, Inga reported matter-of-factly, they were trying to do more to encourage tourism.
“We hope people will come for the gargoyles, at least. They’re unique and photogenic and interesting.”
“Gargoyles?” He thought of that moment at the spring, looking up and seeing it. “I saw the one at the spring.”
“Oh yeah, we brought that out with us a few years ago, to bless the place,” Inga said without any apparent irony. She said it just like someone might talk casually about setting up a shrine or getting a priest’s blessing.
Luke began to wonder if this lovely, vivacious woman was in a cult.
“What do you mean, bless it?”
“Oh ... well ...” Inga looked a little embarrassed. “We don’t talk about this much with outsiders—but you’re a shifter, so you’re fine.”
Luke tried not to squirm.
“The gargoyles in our town are all made by one person,” Inga said.
“His name is Mace MacKay, and his family has lived there since—well—forever, just about as long as the town has been there. They have a big stone house that looks like something out of another century. And he carves gargoyle statues out of stone. His family does, I mean. They’re all over the town. ”
“A family of sculptors?”
“Yeesssss,” Inga said slowly, drawing it out, with a sudden evasiveness that was unlike her.
“Anyway ... so Mace’s family makes gargoyles, and we place them around the town, in parks and gardens, on roofs.
There is a belief, and I’ve been hearing about it ever since I was a little kid, that they protect us.
There are old stories that say the gargoyles keep anything dangerous out of the town, and they’ll come to life and protect us if we’re ever in danger. ”
What a lovely fairy tale, Luke thought. “That’s nice,” he said, and immediately hoped he hadn’t sounded insincere. “I mean, really. It’s nice.”
“I know what it sounds like. And to be honest, I don’t know if I believe it myself. But it’s wonderful to think about, don’t you think?”
That your town is special, and protected from all danger by good magic? Yeah, Luke thought, that’d be great.
He wondered how much better his own life would have been if he’d had magic to protect him.
Their route seemed meandering, but Inga had strong legs and made good time, and Luke found his own body settling easily into the hike.
He had always been in good shape with a strong outdoorsy streak, but he could tell that his body behaved differently as a shifter.
He was stronger, more durable, less likely to get winded.
Every now and then, they saw boats out on the water—fishing boats, larger ships, occasionally a small sport boat skipping along.
None of them were that close, and after the first few times, Luke stopped experiencing the urge to dive for cover.
From the ocean, if anyone did see them, all they’d see was a pair of hikers out for a ramble in the lovely spring weather.
Inga pointed out a couple of old shipwrecks, bits and pieces of wreckage visible on the shore. None of them were the boat she was looking for, however.
“I think it’s simply gone,” she said. “It’s probably halfway to Iceland by now, retracing the Viking route across the Atlantic.
We may as well plan to get by without it—and along those lines, around here somewhere is where I stashed the extra gear from the boat, so let’s pick that up.
There’s some more food I wasn’t able to bring with me. We might need it.”
“What’s the plan, exactly?” Luke asked as they turned inland on a narrow path that Inga seemed to know. “If we can’t find the boat, how much trouble are we in?”
“None,” Inga said promptly. “We’re bears, remember?
We can live off the land all summer if we have to.
But it won’t come to that. My family knows where I am, and if I don’t show up after a few days, someone’s going to come looking for me.
” She pointed inland. “If we have to, we can walk that way for a while and we’ll eventually get to a road and can hitchhike.
Technically we could even walk overland to Westerly Cove as bears, but I’d really rather not. ”
They found her gear stashed in a hole in the rocks. There was a cooler, which she decided to leave as it was too much trouble to carry, but she parceled out the remaining items between the two of them: some freeze-dried and otherwise packaged food, emergency flares, a tent.
“Most of this stuff was in the boat in case it got wrecked or stranded somewhere,” Inga remarked, distributing their loads. “And some of the extra food I brought.” She held up a vacuum-sealed loaf of bread. “Oh, I must’ve overlooked this yesterday. That’ll be nice to have.”
“You aren’t really set up to feed two extra mouths,” Luke remarked, glancing over at Rogue, who was watching hopefully.
“No, but it’s fine.” She gave him one of her sunny grins. “I came out here to be alone, but I’m actually pretty glad I’m not. It’s really quiet with just one person, especially now that I’m stuck here until someone comes to get me, unless I take drastic measures, I guess.”
There was a large jug of bottled water among the supplies. Rather than carry it, Inga decided to make a late lunch. Luke watched, impressed, as she deftly put together a small campfire and pulled out some freeze-dried packages of food.
“Some of these heat in a pan, and some you heat water and pour it in,” she said, squinting at the directions. “What sounds better, beef macaroni or stroganoff? Oh, there’s a chicken and mashed potatoes one, too.”
Luke decided not to find out what reconstituted chicken and mashed potatoes in a pouch tasted like. Even MREs had never gone that far, at least that he’d had the misfortune to find out. “Beef macaroni sounds good.”
“Excellent choice, that’s my favorite.” She found a beat-up metal camp pan among the supplies.
“I didn’t bother taking this with me because I knew there were cooking supplies at the cabin.
Also, I think it’s been used to bail the boat a few times.
Let’s just rinse this thing, and we’ll have a not-so-fresh hot lunch in no time. ”
Camping out with Inga would be fun, Luke thought. It was fun. He crouched beside the campfire and fed it small twigs.
“If it’s not too personal, can I ask if you have a mate?” Inga asked suddenly.
“What?” He looked up from the flames, startled. “Er ... is that a way of asking if I’m single?”
“Sort of, I guess.” Inga’s cheeks were pink from more than the sun and the fire. “I did mean what I said, just asking if you’d found your mate yet. I haven’t, by the way. Just a data point, throwing out there for consideration.”
She was cute when she was flustered, but Luke felt flustered too. She said it like there was only one, like she thought he ought to have, what, a soulmate or something? “No,” he said. “I’m single.”
“Yeah.” Inga idly tossed a crumpled wrapper into the fire; she had peeled and eaten her granola bar earlier. “They say you know at first sight. My brothers both knew. But I’ve always wondered myself. Can you really know for sure? What if you figure it out over time?”
What in the heck was she talking about? Luke felt as if he’d been pulled into a conversation that he had only half the context for. “Is this still about whether I’m dating anyone? Because I’m not, I told you that.”
“No, I—” Inga stopped and huffed out a breath. “You know what, never mind.”
Had he upset her? He was about to ask when she leaned forward to reach for the pan on the fire. “Water’s boiling. Lunch in a few minutes.”
Rogue, stretched out in the sun, rolled over and sat up, ears pricking forward. He had clearly recognized some part of that sentence.
“That is one smart dog,” Inga said, pouring the hot water into the pouches. “Where’d you get him?”
“Uh ... I just picked up him somewhere,” Luke said.
He was still wondering why she had freighted her questions about his single status so oddly; had he done something to make her think he was married?
Was every conversation going to be a minefield of things he didn’t dare talk about?