Page 47 of Once Upon A Bear

Guinevere shrieked, clapping her hand over her mouth. “Oh, no.”

She had thought the first one was bad. This was worse.

She’d gone from too much hair to far too little.

“What?” Gideon asked, looking around the room as if that would tell him anything.

Her hand stole over her mouth once more, and she pointed him toward the mirror against the wall near her bed.

Gideon hurried over, and when he finally saw himself, bald as a baby, he yelped so loudly they probably heard that too.

“What happened?” he hollered, patting his head frantically. “I can’t be seen like this. Make it come back.”

He turned to her, frantic.

“I can fix this,” Guinevere said with a grimace. “I will fix it.”

“You have to,” he said. “I can’t be seen like this. My mother will freak out.”

“You’ll just have to wear a hat tonight,” Guinevere said, wincing. “And I shall have a new potion ready for you by tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” he asked.

“Yes. Tomorrow,” she promised. “I will make it happen. I will start it right now, and you can even borrow my hat to take home.”

It was an incredibly warm hat. Gertrude at the inn had crocheted it for her in exchange for a healing potion for her eyesight. It kept her warm, and that was better payment than money. And it hadn’t taken any of Gertrude’s hard-won coins from her.

She hurried over to pull it from the drawer of the table beside her bed.

“I don’t want to have to wear a hat,” Gideon mumbled.

This was all her fault.

“I’m sorry,” Guinevere said, wincing as she held it out to him without making eye contact. “I told you, I’m not a very good healer.”

Gideon let out all the air in his body, then reached for her and gripped her shoulders.

“You are,” he said firmly. “I’m sorry if my reaction made you think that you aren’t. You are a good healer, and you will fix this. I have no doubt. I just hope you can fix it soon.”

“I will,” she said, the words coming out in a rush as she nodded her head. She had no choice but to fix it.

“Do you mind if I stay and watch?” he asked. “I would love to see you make a potion.”

Guinevere warmed as he let her go, as if he was waiting for her to make her decision without his influence.

“You may stay,” she said. Mostly because she didn’t want him going home for his family to discover that he was now bald…definitely not because she didn’t want him to leave.

She crossed the room to the shelves where all her supplies were and quickly gathered the selection of herbs she needed, another potion vial, and the excess brewed tea she’d made for the first potion.

If she hadn’t healed Kellan, she might have had enough energy to prepare the potion for him today, but since she had used magic to ascertain that Kellan was well, she’d already expended more than she should have today.

Carrying everything to the table, she began flipping through her notebook to find the first two recipes, then began working on a way to make them meet in the middle.

Although…maybe it wouldn’t take as much as she’d thought.

“By the way,” she asked, “how did you become a bear the first time?”

“I met a madman in the woods,” Gideon growled.