The Bear Between Us

1. Elowen

ELOWEN

The lavender is lying to me again.

It smells right, looks right, sits in its little glass jar exactly the way dried lavender is supposed to sit. But I know the difference between a plant that wants to help and one that's just going through the motions, and today this particular batch is doing the bare minimum.

I tip a measure into the small muslin sachet on my workbench and coax it, gently, the way my grandmother taught me.

Not a push. More like a suggestion. I think of rest, of slow breathing, of the particular quality of darkness behind closed eyes when sleep comes easy, and I let that intention move through my fingertips into the herbs.

The lavender warms slightly. Cooperates.

"There," I murmur. "Was that so difficult?"

From the front of the shop, Nessa snorts.

She didn't hear me. She snorts at her phone approximately every four minutes, which I've learned to tune out the way you tune out a clock ticking.

It's just part of the atmosphere of Briar and Root, like the smell of dried herbs and beeswax candles, and the soft creak of the floorboard near the door that I keep meaning to fix.

The shop is small and I've made peace with that.

A narrow front room lined with shelves, every inch of them occupied.

Tinctures and teas, dried bundles hanging from the ceiling beams, little handwritten cards describing what each remedy is for.

Nessa added the aesthetic lighting and the chalk menu board last autumn and I have to admit it looks good, even if I spent three evenings watching her drill into my original shelving with more confidence than precision.

The back room is mine. Workbench, reference books, the good jars, the things I don't put on the public-facing shelves. The things that require a little more than good intentions and quality sourcing.

I tie off the sachet and set it with three others in a small basket.

Mrs. Calloway's weekly order. She'll be in at half past eleven, same as every Thursday, and she'll tell me the sleep sachets aren't working while holding visible evidence that they are, because she looks rested and she's stopped mentioning the migraines.

I don't mind. She's lonely, mostly. The sachets are an excuse.

"Elowen." Nessa appears in the doorway, leaning against the frame with her phone pressed to her chest. Her hair is up in its usual chaotic bun, two pencils stuck through it that she put there this morning and has certainly forgotten about. "Your nine-thirty is here."

I glance at the clock. It's nine twenty-two.

"Early," I say.

"I know, I told her, she just kind of." Nessa tilts her head. "Sat down anyway."

I untie my workbench apron and hang it on its hook. "Put the kettle on, please. Chamomile blend, the one in the blue tin."

Nessa disappears. I take a breath, straighten my sleeves, and go to meet my nine-thirty.

Her name is Petra Wendell and she's been coming to me for about six months, mostly for anxiety blends and the occasional tension headache remedy.

She's in her early forties, works remotely, moved to Dunmore from somewhere larger and louder two years ago specifically for the quiet.

She told me that in our first consultation, in the tone of someone confessing something slightly embarrassing.

Today she doesn't look like someone who found quiet. She looks like someone who hasn't slept properly in a week.

She's sitting in the low chair across from my consultation table, her coat still on, her hands folded tightly in her lap. She smiles when I come in but it's the kind of smile that takes effort.

"I'm sorry I'm early," she says.

"It's fine." I sit across from her and settle into the familiar rhythm of it, present and calm, the way I've learned to be in this room. "How are you doing this week?"

The smile slips a little. "Honestly? Not great."

I wait. She'll find the thread of it at her own pace.

"I've been having dreams," she says finally. "Bad ones. Well, not bad exactly. That's what's strange. They don't feel like nightmares while I'm in them, but I wake up and I just feel." She pauses, searching. "Hollowed out. Like something took up too much space."

I keep my expression neutral and attentive. "How long has this been going on?"

"About ten days. Maybe two weeks." She unfolds her hands, refolds them. "They're always about the forest. I'm always walking into it, and there's something in there, and I know I should be afraid but I'm not. I just keep walking." She looks at me. "That sounds strange."

"It doesn't," I say, because it doesn't. It sounds like exactly the kind of dream I'd expect someone living on the edge of Dunmore's forest to have, especially lately.

Except it's not just Petra. This is the third consultation this week where the forest has come up.

Two others described the same quality of it, that strange pull without fear, the sense of being called rather than threatened.

Petra is watching me intently.

"Dreams like that can be the mind processing background anxiety," I say, which is true, as far as it goes.

"The forest is a significant presence here.

It's not unusual for it to feature prominently.

" I reach for my notepad. "I want to adjust your blend slightly.

Add some mugwort to support deeper, more stable sleep, and some passionflower for the anxiety response.

I'd also like you to keep a brief note when you wake, just one or two lines about what you remember.

Not to dwell on it, just to externalize it. "

She nods, visibly relieved to have a plan.

I write the note, talk her through the changes, and let the consultation settle into its natural close. By the time Nessa brings the chamomile I've already finished up, and I send Petra off with the new blend and Mrs. Calloway's sachets in a separate bag to make sure they don't get mixed up.

Nessa waits until the door closes.

"She looked rough," she says.

"She's not sleeping well."

"The forest dream one?"

I look at her. "You've been listening at the doorway again."

"I've been restocking the display shelf which is directly adjacent to the consultation room, which is not my fault architecturally." She perches on the edge of the front counter, eyes bright with curiosity. "It's the third one this week, right? The forest dreams?"

"Don't make it into a pattern, Nessa."

"It is a pattern."

I pick up my notepad and don't answer, because she's right and I don't want to encourage it. I move back toward the workbench to start Petra's adjusted blend, measuring out the mugwort with more focus than it strictly requires.

It's while I'm doing this, hands occupied, attention split between the herbs and the list of afternoon appointments, that it hits me.

Not a sound. Not a vision. A pulse.

It moves through me from the ground up, fast and deep, like something enormous just shifted its weight far beneath the soil.

My hands go still on the workbench. The jars rattle, or I think they do, but when I look they're sitting exactly as I left them.

The candles don't flicker. Nothing in the room has changed.

But the air feels different. Thicker. Like the moment before a storm when the pressure drops and the birds go quiet.

And underneath it, just at the edge of what I can properly perceive, something that feels like listening.

"Elowen?"

I realize I've put both hands flat on the workbench. I straighten up and turn. Nessa is standing in the doorway again, no phone this time, watching me with an expression I don't see from her very often.

Concern.

"You okay?" she asks. "You just kind of stopped."

"I'm fine." I pick up the measuring spoon. "Static electricity. Do we need to restock the willow bark? I thought we were getting low."

Nessa doesn't look entirely convinced, but she pivots to it. That's one of the things I value about her. She knows when to let things go. "Yeah, we're getting low. Also the valerian, and I think the St. John's wort."

"I'll do a forest run," I hear myself say.

Nessa blinks. "Now? You've got afternoon appointments."

"Tomorrow morning, then. Early, before we open." I'm already mentally cataloguing what I need and which sections of the forest edge I prefer for the better stock. It's a routine thing. I've done it dozens of times. The forest and I have an understanding, or I've always told myself we do.

That pulse is still faintly present somewhere under my sternum, like a second heartbeat that doesn't belong to me.

"I can reschedule your Thursday afternoon if you want to go tomorrow instead," Nessa offers. "Mrs. Calloway usually doesn't mind, and the Tremont consult can move to Friday."

"Do that." I tie off the new sachet. "Thank you."

Nessa disappears to manage the calendar, and I stand at my workbench and try to convince myself that the feeling is fading.

It isn't.

By closing time the shop is quiet, the afternoon appointments finished, the surfaces wiped down and the till counted. Nessa has gone home. The village outside is doing its early evening thing, a few cars, someone walking a dog past the window, the lights coming on in the bakery across the street.

I lock the back room first, then the workbench. I pull on my coat and collect my bag and run through the closing checklist by memory the way I always do. Candles. Windows. Thermostat. Front display straightened.

The front door is the last thing. I turn the key and test it, step back, and glance once more through the glass at the dark interior of the shop I've spent five years building into something that works. Something manageable. Something mine.

Then I turn toward the street, and beyond the rooftops and the last amber light of the day, I can see the line of the forest on the hill.

It looks the same as it always does.

But something in me knows that it's awake.

I pull my coat tighter and walk toward home, and I don't let myself look at the trees again.

Tomorrow, though. Tomorrow I'll go in.