Ewing (A Cross to Bear #6)

Chapter 8

Ten years later.

Billy sat very still, listening to the others speaking in the room. He could see them, could even have a conversation with them, but he, like any smart man would do, knew that at a moment’s notice or none at all really that bears could and would get angry about how things were put to paper while he was with them. They wanted things to be right and that meant that names were spelled correctly and the order in which you’re telling it was exact as well. One of the elders looked at him.

“You getting this down, young man? You should be making sure that this is all right rather than sitting there like a bump on a log.” Billy told the most senior bear there today that he was and wrote down the names of the three other bears that were with him. They were brothers born of the same parents that had been living here just as bears before the queen of earth had given them magic. “Ezekiel said that you have a contraption that will record us. If’n you do, I don’t want to talk into it. Might steal my voice or something. I won’t be able to roar to keep me safe if that happens. No, you don’t go recording me, all right? And there won’t be none of those picture things like you’ve got either. I have my soul, and that’s all. You mind your p’s and q’s, you hear me?”

He’d had to test the theory if he could or couldn’t record their voices. He could, but he had to hide the recorder because they’d spend too much time on speculating on how it worked rather than talking to him about the mountain and the families that had been long since gone. By the time he got them to settle down and have a conversation with them, they’d be too worn out to do what he’d summoned them for. Billy could do that, too. Summon anyone that he wished to speak to that hadn’t as yet moved on. It seemed like all the bears from the beginning stuck around. They loved watching their families figure out the mountain and what treasures it could give them.

These bears, the first of many that had come to the land now known as the Great Smoky Mountains, had the territory all laid out so that they and their families wouldn’t be hunted by the tribes that shared the land with them.

“You need some pictures too?” He asked Ezekiel if they knew where he could find them, knowing that if they would tell him when it was mentioned that he could go and find them rather than wait a week or two for them to remember where they’d hidden their treasures. He’d found a lot of their ‘treasures’ while talking to the first family than he ever thought possible. “They’re in that big cave where I showed you before. You know the one? It’s got a lot of junk in there too but the pictures were boxed up real nice.”

The cave, one of the largest ones he’d ever been in so far, hadn’t been investigated by the park’s people so far. Not for thousands of years had anyone other than himself and his family been in the cave that had stored so much information as that one did.

Writings on the walls were made with ash from a burnt stick. There were drawings, too, most of which he’d had to have explained to him. They’d been made and colored even with smashed leaves and berries.

He’d also been able to unearth a great many geo and hard stones that turned out to be diamonds and emeralds. Not to say that there wasn’t junk in there, too. A tree branch that had fallen on one of the little bears and killed him had been saved. There were bits and pieces of the forest that they had decided were pretty or maybe someday useful. Other things like that, as well. What depressed him the most was that they thought if they were to put things in the large cave, nothing would bother them. They’d been so wrong. Books and pictures had been put on the wayside.

Things like moles and even smaller creatures had gotten in and made a mess of things. The one thing that he had thought the saddest was the wedding dress that had belonged to a long lost relative that only wanted to keep it nice for their own daughters.

They did find caves that had been homes of some of the tribespeople, humans just passing through, and even the few hundred people who had decided, for one reason or another, to live out their lives in the caves. He’d known of two such people, meeting them when he’d been out looking for information. Even as new as a month ago had he known someone who was hiding from one form of law or the other as well.

“I found the cave that you’re talking about. My dad and uncles are helping me clear it out before the park comes across it. The park will keep everything that they find, and I don’t want that to happen, at least not until I finish with them. The park will put them on display for everyone to see, but for this, our family. The things in there are family and that’s the only place that they should be. In the family.” Jameson, another of the original shifter bears had asked him if there had been any people living in the cave that they’d been using. “No, no humans. But I did find the bodies of your parents like you said that I would.”

Nodding, no one asked him if they’d moved them. They wouldn’t. Where they had lived and died was where they decided they’d stay. He likened that to having their own little cemetery in the cave. Jameson then asked him what he knew about the faerie queen.

“Nothing more than you’ve told me. I’ve met her, of course, you know that. And you all have to give me permission to ask her what she’d done that day and why. That’s the only reason that I’m asking you. So I have a good record of the day that she gave you all the magic to walk and talk with man.” Benjamin, the very first bear shifter, said that he’d give him permission, being the oldest, that would make it so. “I won’t go to her with only one of you giving me permission, Uncle Benjamin. It’s all four of you or nothing. I won’t invade any information that you might not care for me having. This is a big undertaking and I don’t want anyone to feel like they’ve been pressured into something when they didn’t want it to happen. I don’t want to ever have any of you coming back on me telling me that I did you wrong.” His uncle just nodded.

In the end, they’d all, all the generations, had given him permission to speak to the faerie queen, who had asked them to be men and bears. She wanted them to be able to live out their lives on the mountain and to show other bears, the rest of them, how to live there without being harmed. It had made it so that before, the creatures that lived there were protected by the park and had a fighting chance of surviving when man decided that they were much more useful dead than alive.

It took Billy months to gather up the information that he needed. A year of him going through dusty boxes and crates. Trunks of old pottery and finds had been the pain of his existence. He had more cobwebs in his hair, his mother told him, than most people did in the world over a weekend. But he had a desire to be able to find family information and to make it so that anyone who wanted it was able to get it, too. Then he’d been granted permission to not only speak to the queen of the faeries but to go to her realm while he was doing it. His aunt Sunny had gained him that audience, and he would forever be grateful for her doing so much for his cause.

“I so loved the bears and what they stood for when I first saw them. To think that something so large and so scary looking could be the best of parents to their young. I loved to watch their gracefulness too in climbing mountainsides as well as trees. I also was sad that so many of them were being killed off for only their coat and how it would keep humans warm. Leaving the meat behind because they thought it too much effort to at least attempt to make sure that their families were fed as well.” Lilliane, the first queen of faeries, had not just made it so that bears could walk among the humans but wolves and cats as well. “We have all learned a great deal from their counterparts. Man and beast can live together if they wish, but for a time, it wasn’t unheard of for humans to kill off their neighbor simply because they were a beast, too. Such a tragic ending that my animals had to go into hiding for so long that I feared that there would never be peace between them.”

“What kind of magic did you have to use? That’s the question that most of them ask. Not the exact knowledge, but basically why you chose some bear families over others. And what is your strongest family now.” He thought that an easy question but it wasn’t for the former queen. She looked out over her own fields and stared for so long that he thought her not to answer. “You don’t have to tell me, my lady. I think it was mostly for my own curiosity rather than anything else.”

“It’s all right, young Billy. I shall answer.” She smiled at him then. “Hands down, my greatest creation would be the Cross bears. Not only did they take the magic that was given to them and make it better, but they never harmed others or other families with the knowledge that they had. Also, they would help any of the other creatures. Be they bear or cougar, the Cross bears were one that could be depended on. All throughout the years.” It made him proud to be known as a Cross bear.

Even though he’d been changed when he’d been nothing more than a small child, his pride was there. It was the only thing that had saved him, everyone thought when they heard the story of his coming to the family.

It took him several months to get all the information in order. Pictures, too, were put aside that he wanted for the book. No one would read it, he thought, but for the family. He was fine with that, too. So long as the words were put out there where anyone and everyone with the last name Cross could see where their family had come from and how they’d prospered over the decades.

The pictures were his friend. Since he could go back and talk to the people in them, he had a firsthand accounting of the day. Sometimes, they’d put someone up for the night as they were thinking to get pictures of the falls they’d only heard about. The price of a picture would be a great deal to those that had wanted one so to be able to trade for it made it seem all the more special.

Once word got out about the hospitality of the Cross Mountain people, others showed up for a night’s stay for the price of whatever wears they’d been hawking. A pretty tin can with candies in it. Yards of fabric that the man was going to sell to the tribes once he made it to them. Even though they had all the meat that they wanted, they would trade for a night’s stay with a meal for some fish caught in the many lakes and rivers.

Seeds were a big thing too to trade. That was how the family still had tomatoes and corn, trading with the tribes when they were able to get them. Furs, too, of other animals around were traded for wood to light a couple of fires. Even magic was traded from one person to the next and had value like nothing else.

Billy took an entire year to write the first installment of the Cross family. He’d been thrilled, too, when he’d unearthed a cookbook written in the hand of the person who had perfected the recipe. Other tidbits as well. How to get molasses and honey. The best way to light a fire without smoking yourself out. How to mend pants and shoes. The best way to sharpen a knife. It was all in there. Every bit of the information that he found and was able to shed some light on, he put it in the book.

Alas, he’d been sad when it all wouldn’t fit into the first book. His partner had been excited when he’d been upset about how much stuff was left untold. She wanted him to write many books, some of them with only information about the first bears and their families or simply a book of recipes that he’d been given on how to make a year’s worth of living and eating from his finds. Bits and pieces of it had been there in the first book with just enough information.

~*~

Twenty more years later.

Billy didn’t touch the box that was on his table. It had been delivered about an hour ago and sat there where he’d put it since then. He knew what was in it, the ‘from’ address as clear as it was to him who was to receive it. There was a box knife sitting next to it, along with a small trash bag for whatever trash might be in it. Mostly, it would be packing material, but he didn’t want to make a mess when opening it after his guest arrived.

“Do you think she’ll come to see you today? She didn’t come the last time you had a box.” He looked at his wife and mate of eleven months and told her that she would be there. That the other box hadn’t had much to do with her. And that she would know today’s delivery was a big deal for them both. “I hope you have a good visit with her. I know how much you miss getting to see her.” She kissed him on the mouth quickly. “I’ll be back this evening. I have a great deal of paperwork that needs to be done, as well as some filing on the sale sheets that we’ve made this week.”

After telling her that he loved her, hugging both her and their child that Margo still carried, he made his way back into the kitchen to wait. He thought that the waiting was much better than it used to be before. He supposed it was because they’d been together so many times that he felt like she’d never leave him.

He knew that he’d never leave her.

The two of them had formed a bond long before he’d been living with the Cross family. He wasn’t even a day old. Billy also thought that he’d had one with her long before that, even before he’d been born. But now it was different. He could speak to her now, and he loved that more than anything in the world. Besides his wife and soon-to-be child coming to him.

He looked around the room, the room that had been here for longer than most of the other nineteenth generation of Crosses. The meeting place in all the homes that were built on the mountain. That’s what made this one so special. It had been meeting and greeting people for more generations than most of the people around here even thought about anymore.

And he knew them all now. Billy had talked to most of them even before the idea of a book had come to them. It became just what he wanted it to be. A history of not just the people that were living on the land now but all the generations back of Cross bears and how they had become the first shifter bears that were ever. His family.

The tightening of the room had him smiling. The power that it took to bring her to him no longer surprised nor harmed him. Turning in his seat, Billy looked at the magic that was bringing his favorite person to him, to all the people on the mountain, both gone and present.

“Why haven’t you at least peeked at it?” He looked and smiled at the little woman who had appeared before him. “I would have had that box opened up, the contents spilled all over the place, and the box out to the burn pile.”

“No, you wouldn’t have. You would have done the same thing if our roles were reversed. How are you, Grannie?” She told him, in her no-nonsense way, that she was dead. That was how she was. Dead as dead could be. “So you are.”

When Billy was no older than a few days old, he knew somehow in his small time on this earth that he was going to die. His parents, the biological ones, whoever they were, had left him in the house that they’d brought him to because they cared more for the attention that having a child gave them than the child itself. As surly as he lay in his own wet and dirty diaper, the empty bottle at his feet, that he was not long for this world. Then, a speck flew in front of his face one day. It was then that he was able to not just put a face to the person that he’d been talking to forever but gave him hope. Something one as young as he’d been didn’t have until then.

“You’ll not die, young man. I won’t allow it.” He, unsure of his abilities to speak to her, told her that his little body was exhausted and starved. He’d been too long without anyone to love him too. “You’ll not die. I have plans for the two of us. You’re going to be my ears and mouth when you get to my mountain, and I won’t have you leaving here without a good fight. You’ll be loved up, you will. Hugged like they’re hugging the stuffing out of you. I promise you, little man, you hold out, and it will be worth all the pain that you’re suffering now. They’ll come for you, little man. I swear it on my love for my mate. They’ll come for you.”

It had been three more nights and days before someone did indeed come for him, but he feared that all the promises that Grannie had made to him were for naught. He was too weak to even take a bottle now, much less be afraid of the hereafter.

With him being starved, his little body full of infection, and along with the fact that he was so dehydrated, he was ready to die. Billy—who had no name until he was brought to the hospital thought that holding on, even for the elderly woman, was too exhausting to try and live.

But live he did. And survived. His father, the man that he’d come to know as his dad, had given him some of himself so that he would live. Over the next few days, he’d see the man, Grannie had promised him that he’d be just what he needed, and he was, but over the next few days, when it looked like things were lost, his dad gave him a little more of himself every time. He could feel, even back then, that he was getting stronger and better then his mom came to give him the love that he thought that he’d miss out on. Billy was loved. Like all the other kids, he was loved.

“Now you’re going to help this old woman. You don’t have to. You can turn me down should you think that it’s too much, and I can tell you, young Billy, that at times, I fear it will be too much, but you only have to tell me no one time, and I’ll go away. Not forever. I don’t have it in me to leave here when there is so much love around.” She had looked in on him while his parents both of them cared for him so that he’d be where he was today.

“Billy?” He turned and looked at his grannie. Dead longer than he’d been alive but still just as spirited as he’d been told she was when she was living. Asking her if she was ready, she smiled at him. “Them others, the ghosts that you talk to. They’re going to be so jealous about this today. I’ve been…well, since you were a wee little one, I’ve been waiting for this day to come. I had me a story to tell, and you helped me tell it. Helped all of us tell it, you did. You did me proud, little Billy.”

He laughed every time she said that to him since he’d grown to tower over her and outweigh her by several pounds. More than likely a hundred or so. But he loved her and what she’d give him. Peace. And her love.

“You remember the first time you told me the story of how you’d come to be born on this mountain? I had to talk to my dad then because I had knowledge that he nor my uncles had. It was then too much for my ten-year-old mind to take in but he was gentle and understanding to me.” Grannie laughed. “He missed you. All of them still miss you.”

“I miss them too. So very much. That day that my Alford was taken from me, I wanted to die right then and there. But there were things that I had to do, and I knew that if I left them so soon after losing the only father they ever knew, it wouldn’t be good for nary a one of them. I knew that I had to make things right for them to be able to go on.” He reminded her that it was doubtful that any time would have been a good time for them. “That’s very true. I knew it when they were all there that while I couldn’t live without my true love, they’d understand my leaving more than anyone could.”

They had worked at the park. The Smoky National Park for decades. Doing the work to get paid and then later volunteering when they needed them for that. But one day, a man, a human no less, had been having a bad day and had pulled out a gun to use on all those around him. He’d not killed five little girls because Grandda had protected them with his body. Losing his own life was never anything that he ever regretted when he’d been able to save those children.

Grannie had missed him. Her sorrow, so profound, had her leaving her earthly coil behind when she decided that she’d join him. Bears, many of them bears while shifters came to the homestead, too, came to the house that night to pay homage to her and the man that she loved, letting her grandsons know that they would surely be missed.

“I think my dad took it harder than most.” She nodded and while ghosts couldn’t cry, she was able to do things well beyond what others had been able to do that came to see him with stories like the one that he had written. “He didn’t know anyone but the two of you. His parents had died long before he could remember their faces anymore. To remember their voices. I hurt for him because I know that kind of love for a parent. I couldn’t have gone on all these years without my mother’s voice in my heart nor my dad’s heavy hand on my shoulder.”

“You’re a good boy.” She laughed, and he smiled. “Ewing was so afeared for you when he first heard that you could speak to the dead, especially to your grandda and I. He knew that he had to let you believe it but he wasn’t willing to believe it of you just then. Then you got him to listen to you, didn’t you?”

“Yes. I told him what you told me that night. That you wanted me to write a story about the mountain, and that it had to be in your words. You had me knowing things, a great many things that I wouldn’t have known without you around. Such as the first family, all bears who came to claim the area as their own.” She told him that he scared his daddy. “I did. And my heart hurt for that.”

“But he, like the others, they came around too. I think they enjoyed them stories more than I think people will that reads the book.” She eyed the box and then looked at him. “You gonna open it, or are we just going to hope that it looks as pretty as I hope it does?”

“I’ll open it for us.” The box knife broke when he dropped it. He wasn’t worried that it might be a bad omen. Billy had grown up with a lot of magic surrounding him and in him. His own family was more powerful alone than any one group of beings that he knew of. Once the tape was cut, he reached into the box rather than opening it up to look inside. “Oh my, Grannie.”

The book, a hardback, had a cover on it. The cover picture, a picture of the homestead that he’d found, a tintype picture that had been taken when Grannie, one of the many children sitting on the front grass was only three years old. Grandda was in the picture, too, but he was a bit older, standing next to the mister of the house because he’d been there when the picture man had shown up. It had been a grand celebration, she’d told him, with them killing a hog and cooking it right up for the mountain people to enjoy.

They shared many a meal in the very spot where the hog had been cooked. The fire just big enough to cook the meat rather than burn it had been there for weeks after that meal was done. Even the people in the small town—back then, it had consisted of a trading store, a wheelhouse for making flour, and cracked corn for the chickens. As well as an inn for people traveling through the mountain.

What amazed him and humbled him as well was that he’d spoken to all the forty-one people in the picture and could now point out any of them and tell you what their names were. How they’d died—most of them met a tragic end at a very young age—as well as when they’d been born. They had become his extended family even though none of them were related to him in any way, he still thought of them as family.

“Boy that looks like the day that it was taken. Where did I put that thing?” He told her that it had been in the big bible that she’d told him about. “That’s right. It took us a long time to find it, too. I’m surely glad that I kept all that nonsense. It doesn’t seem like that now, but back then, it was hard to think that anyone would care after all the time that passed. You made that list for the book, didn’t you, little Billy?”

“I did. Let me have a look at it now.” Going to the pictures that had been added in the middle of the thick book, he was glad that he’d insisted that the family tree be put in the storybook as well. It was huge. Families back in the day had as many children as they could afford. But one thing about living where they did, was they had plenty of meat, vegetables as well as fruits. He laid it out on the table for her to look at. “I didn’t think they’d do what I wanted.”

“Well, you sure did put up enough fuss about it. But I think that it was worth it. It looks just like I thought it would. Pretty, ain’t it?” He had to agree. It was nice. Seeing all the names there made him feel proud of his work. But there was no way that he could have done it without all the family helping him with it. Those living and dead. “You read it to me if you’ve got the time. I want to hear the story out of your own voice. I need to hear it, I think.

“All right.” Picking up the book, knowing that since he’d gotten a copy for everyone that lived on the mountain, he’d save this one special for his parents. After all they’d done for him, he’d be happy to let them know that he and Grannie had enjoyed their copy together.

“Let it be known,” Billy started on the first chapter. “That this is the story of the Cross family, and it shall be known as “A Cross to Bear.”