Page 115 of An Archer's Redemption

I knew that look. I was about to run yet another errand.

Amazing.

“Dear, I completely forgot Mrs. B. We were supposed to drop a dinner off at her place an hour ago. She’s been laid up witha terrible cold all week, and I told her we’d handle her cooking tonight. If she’s not miserable, she’ll be madder than . . . well, that doesn’t matter. Would you mind running this over to her place? I’ll finish up here.”

I knew both the common room and kitchen were finished but smiled at my mother as if she’d saved me days’ worth of cleaning. “Yes, ma’am. ’Course I will.”

I walked to Ma and exchanged my apron for the wrapped box in her hands, then gave her a peck on the cheek.

Mrs. Betner, known as Mrs. B. to anyone who’d ever set foot in Oliver, lived in a tiny wooden hut on the outskirts of town. At a leisurely pace, it took me forty minutes to make the trek. The widow was asleep and hadn’t even realized dinnertime had come and gone. She was one of Ma’s more talkative friends, but I got off easy. She called out for me to leave the box on her porch so I didn’t risk catching a fever.

If one could even catch a fever, I thought.

I was more relieved to have avoided what surely would’ve been an hour-long chat than any ailment. I could cope with the sniffles, but diarrhea of the mouth was incurable.

The night was chilly as winter battled spring for supremacy.

Clouds blanketed the sky.

I folded my arms and rubbed them for warmth.

I’d only made it a quarter mile from Mrs. B.’s house when I heard a muffled cry. I thought I recognized the voice but couldn’t quite place where I knew it from. I slowed my pace and crept toward the sound, stopping cold as I rounded the apothecary’s dull brick façade.

My mind struggled to process what I was seeing.

A man lay bleeding on the ground, his arms raised as if to ward off an attack and blood pooling beneath his head and chest. Towering above him with paws poised to strike was a massive brown bear.

I’d never seen a bear in person, but I was sure the sketches I’d seen didn’t mark bears at ten feet tall with claws as long as soldiers’ daggers. As I watched in horror, the bear flung its full weight down on the man, ramming its razor-sharp claws into his head and chest until only the meat of its paws was visible.

The mad didn’t twitch or moan.

He didn’t spasm.

He just died.

But the bear wasn’t finished.

As if it held some personal grudge against the poor man, the bear lunged again and again, digging and clawing until there was little recognizable left on the bloody street. I covered my mouth with a palm and told myself to breathe quietly. The bear’s back had been to me, but I didn’t want to give it any reason to turn.

Then, as strange as the mauling had been, something else happened.

The bear dropped to all fours and lumbered a few paces away. It reached down and picked something up off the ground and held it up to its muzzle.

Then the gigantic form shrank to average human proportions.

Its fur vanished, and a silky brown robe flowed with the breeze in its place. I ducked behind the building asthe manturned toward where I stood.

If I was afraid before, I was terrified then.

I waited a long moment until I heard footfalls fading, then peered around the corner.

The man was gone.

I took a few tentative steps from my hiding place and strained to see the dead man in the darkness. I couldn’t recognize his face through all the blood and gore, but a piece of his shredded shirt caught my eye, and I realized where I’d known his voice.

He was the quiet man at the table in the corner.

The one who wouldn’t stop staring at his hands.

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