“Like I said, I called him and he came. I know it’s weird. But you and I both know he didn’t jump to the dock back at the lighthouse.”
“I know,” Inga sighed. “He can do something like teleporting, can’t he?”
Rogue plunked himself down and perked up his ears as if he knew he was being talked about.
“Yeah,” Luke said. “I guess. But it doesn’t seem like he’s able to take people with him, so it’s not very useful under the circumstances.” He hesitated for a long moment, because what he was about to say was going to sound insane. Was it really weirder than a teleporting dog, though? “Uh, and I seem to be able to turn into a ghost bear sometimes.”
Inga raised her head from his lap and pushed herself up on an elbow, contorted at an awkward angle on the bare metal floor beneath her. “You what now?”
“I can turn into a ghost bear. Like a hologram or something. I know it sounds crazy. But I was on this ship earlier, and also in the boat. They could see me, but they couldn’t touch me. I understand if you don’t believe me.”
“No,” Inga said slowly. “I do believe you. I think I saw you do it a while back. I just didn’t know what I was looking at.”
“You did?” Luke tried to remember if he had ever felt his consciousness split in that peculiar way before. “When?”
“At the cabin, the first night.” She frowned up at him. “Can you do it now?”
“No,” he said, frustrated all over again. “It doesn’t seem to be under my conscious control, as far as I can tell.” If it was the first night at the cabin, no wonder he might not have noticed.Everything was disjointed then, his awareness of things all over the place from dehydration and exhaustion.
“What made it happen before?”
“I wish I knew! I have no idea at the cabin; maybe it was my bear wanting to come out after being shifted into that form for so long. And today, I guess I just felt like I needed to, because we were in danger and the bear distracted them back on the ship. But we’re in danger now, and it’s not happening.”
“Hmm.” Inga sat up all the way, the coat slipping from her shoulder and exposing far too much of her freckled chest for Luke’s concentration. “Maybe if you focus on how much danger we’re in, it’ll bring it out?”
“I don’t think it works that way,” Luke protested, but he closed his eyes and thought about men with guns. Shaking his head in frustration, he opened his eyes again. “No, if that was going to work, it would have happened when we were captured.”
“Hmm.” Inga frowned and looked thoughtful. “Maybe it’s the opposite of that, then. Something meditative. Perhaps you have to get in touch with your inner bear.”
“I’m not sure that I want to.”
She looked at him curiously with wide-open eyes, faintly lambent in the rain-washed light of the porthole. “Maybe that really is the problem. I’m trying to think how most people get their first shift, but for most of us, it’s very natural. For some people, it comes out in danger. I think that’s what happened with my sister-in-law, Lucy.” She hesitated. “But honestly, Luke, the thing about most shifters is that our animal is part of us. It doesn’t feel strange or unfamiliar. It’sus.”
“I don’t want it to be!” Luke protested. His voice cracked.
Very near them in the small room, there was a sudden ripping sound, and Rogue was gone. Inga whipped her head around. “Where do you think he went?”
“Probably somewhere that’s not going to help us very much. He’s a Newfoundland dog; they don’t have the temperament to bite people. And he doesn’t have hands to get the keys.”
“Right,” Inga muttered. She blinked rapidly, getting her mind back on track. “Okay, Luke, so let’s assume that maybe the trouble you have getting in touch with your bear is because you don’t think of it as part of you.”
“It’s not,” Luke said.
“It is,” Inga insisted. “That’s how we are.”
“I’m not -- I’m sorry -- but I’m not like you, Inga.”
In a voice that was so gentle it seemed to reach into some long-untouched part of him, Inga said softly, “You are now.” She was quiet for a moment, as her words settled in Luke’s heart with the gentleness of snowflakes. Then she went on, “And your animal is part of you too, and it always was. Our shift animals are not intruders. They’reus. And your bear is also you. It always has been. Whether it’s brave and protective, or fearful and defensive, that’syou, Luke. It’s always been in there, it just didn’t know how to come out before, and you didn’t know how to talk to it.”
Luke could tell that some part of him was protesting her characterization of him. It sounded like a split personality. But—wasn’t she right, though? The bear really didn’t feel like something completely separate from him. Brave and protective .... wasn’t that what he had always aspired to, the desire that had brought him into the military in the first place?
He closed his eyes. And this time, rather than reaching for something alien inside himself, he tried to listen to the parts of himself that had always been there. His trust, his fear, his doubt, his needs. He had been trying to commune with an alien intruder. But it wasn’t alien. Inga was right; it was him. And he needed it now as he had never needed it before. Not to attack or scare anyone, but simply tobe—part of him, giving him the toolsto get out of here. If it was him, couldn’t he just ... move his hand, like this, and let the ghost bear part of him come to the surface, setting him free.
He felt the handcuffs slip gently away from his wrists.
INGA
Inga heard a clatter,but didn’t realize what had happened until Luke held up his suddenly bare wrists with an exclamation of delight.
