The wood stove seemed intuitive and easy to use, though I could barely pay attention as Boone walked me through how to start the fire, feed logs into it, then turn the dial to adjust the airflow and control the heat.
“Be right back,” he said again after he was done explaining.
But instead of wood, he had another Barrington tote when he returned through the front door.
It turned out to be full of mostly black clothes: knit tops, a couple pairs of leggings, and some joggers. There was also a green button-up shirt and a soft hoodie with RCMP written across it in cracked golden block letters. The last two items were way too big for me.
And when I looked up from the bag, I found Boone once again rubbing the back of his neck. “Vik and Z wanted you to have options other than my work flannels. Let me know if any of the other clothes don’t fit, tho. Vik guessed small, but you know it’s hard for us bears to guess the proportions on human women. One of us can drive you down there if you want.”
I didn’t want. I’d washed Boone’s blue-and-white flannel in the sink and let it dry on the line before showering yesterday, then done the same with the red-and-black one.
In the back of my mind, I’d known I’d have to wear something else eventually. But I hadn’t wanted to ask. If I was being truthful with myself, the reasons went beyond the usual not wanting to be a bother. Boone’s shirts had become my fully grown woman version of a safety blanket ever since he gave them to me. No matter how wild the situation got, I felt warm and protected inside of them.
“Thank you,” I said for what felt like the millionth time.
Why did I have the feeling it wouldn’t be the last?
Boone left me in peace, but that didn’t mean he left.
That evening, I found out why he and Ravik had insisted that I move into a place between two other houses when I emerged from the cottage for the first time to try to take a short after-dinner walk.
As soon as I set foot on the road, Boone and Zion came jogging out of the houses to my left and right, and Ravik came out to the porch of the house across the way.
I nearly tripped over my own feet when I realized they’d boxed me in. One house on each side, one across from me. A triangle, with me in the center.
It’s our job to protect you.
Boone’s words from the day before whispered through my head. Another tug-of-war went off inside of me between “What nice guys!” and “What the hell?!”
Meanwhile, on the front porch of his house, Ravik raised a mug that looked exactly like the one he’d sent over with Boone and took a sip, while staring straight at me.
I quickly averted my eyes, just as Zion fell into step beside me on the right side while Boone flanked my left.
“Good evening, Bell,” Zion greeted. His rich voice made me feel like I’d just tuned into a walking version of NPR. “Do you mind if Boone and I join you for your evening constitutional?”
After everything they’d done for me, it felt surly to say no. But I hedged, “I’m only taking a short walk. I’m kind of tired.”
I’d spent most of the day bleaching the moss off the house. And let’s just say, I fought the moss, and the moss won. My hands were insanely dry, my shoulders ached from reaching, and I was pretty sure I’d ruined one of the new black tops Ravik had gotten me with my overzealous cleaning.
Even worse, I wasn’t sure if it had been worth the effort. There were still green stains all over the house where the moss hadbeen, and I hadn’t even attempted to get to the patches on the roof.
I rubbed one of my aching shoulders as I warned them, “I’m not going to be much for conversation tonight.”
“Fret not,” Zion assured me in that resonant tone of his. “As my students will aver, I can talk enough for an entire classroom of sullen teenagers.”
As it turned out, this was not an overstatement. Zion launched into a lecture about the history of the Outer Limits and the nearby Mining Works, which had attracted bear labor from all over Canada and Alaska and endowed the Ayaska with a near billion-dollar trust before it was fully tapped out in the early 2000s.
“Rare earth and PGMs, as they call the Platinum Group Metals, first tapped in the seventies in perfect time for the rise of the worldwide technocracy, which would require such materials in droves.”
I’d only meant to walk for fifteen minutes, tops, but Zion was unfortunately an extremely engaging orator, which made it too hard not to ask further questions about how the Ayaska came to discover they were sitting on … if not a gold mine, certainly enough money to keep them fully endowed through the coming century.
And then we got into how the Ayaska had operated as a communal society for millennia.
What was supposed to be a mutinously silent fifteen minute walk turned into an entire two laps around the ghost town, which was more like a village, situated along the lake.
Boone seemed happy enough to lumber along beside us as Zion answered all my questions about Bear Mountain sociology, which apparently dated back all the way to the Ice Age—or, as Zion wasquick to correct, “the last glacial period, which ended about twelve thousand years ago.”
Main point, the tribe was older than the Christian Bible, and they even had their own version of the creation tale that involved a great ancestor they referred to as Mother Ursa—“in English, not the original Ayaskan” Zion made sure to caveat—and The Great Serpent, a creator god, making a deal to free the Ayaska from his tyranny.
