Part 1
Willa the witch had sent me a message that morning. The apples were ripe at last. The apples she referred to were enormous and sweet as candy. The tree itself was as big as an oak.
From afar, I could see a woman climbing its branches. She was severely underdressed for a fall day in her purple bloomers and sports bra. They exposed her silky dark skin and toned body to the cool early October breeze passing through the waving leaves. She also had on muddy track shoes. The wind blew my way. She smelled like a cat.
I thought she was aiming for the plump apples at the top until I heard the cries of a baby bird, which stopped abruptly. As I got near the foot of the tree, the woman fell to the grass, landing on her feet. Finally, taking notice of me, she hissed and hid behind the tree trunk. She watched carefully from the other side through her massive bangs.
Her surprise was, well, no surprise. I was an imposing fellow, being a bear shifter. I also approached her downwind and silent. I kept walking, fainting to ignore her. I reached a tall branch to pick an apple. Her mouth half closed as she tilted her head up at the apples. I picked another and handed it to her. In exchange, she laid the dead body of a fat cuckoo chick in my palm. She placed the apple received in a large reeds basket pulled from behind the tree. She hooked it on a broken branch before climbing.
“May I assist you in picking apples?” I put the chick in my breast pocket with the thought of burying it later.
“Sure.” Her fluffy cloud of hair bounced with every short leap or reach up.
“My name is Stephen. What’s yours?” I put the other apple in her basket.
“Cece.” She sat on a branch, making her a higher than me.
Her voice was quiet. I hear every sound she made, as if she said it right into my ear. My gaze was stuck on the subtle movements of her lips at her enunciation.
“Nice to meet you, Cece. What are you doing alone in these woods?”
“Willa sent me. For the apples.” She grabbed one and yanked it off the branch before gazing at the basket below. The fall was at high risk of bruising the precious fruit.
I took the weaved reeds and held it up to her while she put the apple in it. We proceeded this way until her basket was full. She had climbed to the top of the tree and suddenly clung to one of the tree’s limbs. It appeared she realized she was too high for comfort in the thinning branches of the canopy.
“Do you need help to come down?” I put the filled vessel at my feet.
“No…” She put a foot on a death branch, which promptly fell as she pulled herself back up to her safe spot. “Maybe.”
“Jump here. I’ll catch you.”
“Too high.” She attempted to climb down again, slowly this time. She seemed to have difficulties coordinating her limbs.
“I’m still there if you fall.” I could smell her fear.
Once she got to six feet above ground, I approached.
“Move,” she hissed when I reached towards her.
“You’re almost there. Let me help you down.” Truth was, I wanted to touch her.
“Move.”
“Alright.” I stepped back, taking the basket with me, feeling a pinch in the heart.
She jumped, landing on her feet once more. Facing me up close, she tilted her head up towards my face before grabbing the basket from my hands. She must have been a foot and a half shorter than me. Two without the afro. She wasn’t that short. I was the one nearing seven feet.
“Thanks.” She scurried away on the trail to Willa’s cottage.
I followed her since we were going to the same place. It took both her arms to carry the basket full of those mouth-watering apples. I must have been a dozen feet away from her. I could see the hairs on her body rise after a minute of this. In my attempt to give her space, I was creeping her out.
“I am going to see Willa too.” I explained.
“Willa didn’t tell Cece. She didn’t tell me,” she corrected herself, stopping in her tracks. “You walk in front.”
I caught up with long strides, but slowed next to her. The trail was big enough for two.
“May I carry your basket? It looks heavy.” I attempted to make peace.
“Sure.” She pushed it in my hand.
She twitched at the thunder far in the distance and stepped closer towards me. The urge to wrap an arm around her hit me. I was afraid to grow her fear. She, on the other hand, didn’t hesitate to grab hold of my arm to drag me into trekking at a faster pace. I knew little shifters who liked thunder like me. Cece wasn’t one of us. My bear hummed at her touch. Her little hands had a lot of grip.
We made our way in silence for about fifteen minutes until we reached the cottage. As soon as it was in sight, Cece rushed inside past Willa, who walked out.
“I see you ran into her,” she stated, as if she had been counting on it.
“I guess you did not call only because the apples are ripe.”
“I didn’t and bring those inside.” She turned back into the house.
She had a cozy home. Full of dried flowers, wool carpets and wood sculptures. There was the ever-present scent of incense and whatever potion she was brewing over the fire. I had had to argue with her for years so that she would get a gas hub to avoid heat stroke in the summer. At least she had good ventilation with all the windows.
Cece was nowhere to be found in the living room. Her shoes were thrown half hazard in the entrance. I took mine off as they were muddy as well.
“She’s probably in her room.” Willa noticed I was looking for the other shifter. “I’m hoping you would take her in. She needs to be around people. To have a new community.”
“How did she end up at your house? I didn’t know this was a troubled youth camp.”
“She’s forty.”
Age was hard to tell with shifters. Some of us could live twice as much as a human. She must have been of noble descent to be aging this slowly. Cece looked twenty. In my fifties, I appeared to be in my mid thirties. That was because of the beard. I didn’t have many gray hairs.
“Does she have a family? A clan?”
“She won’t tell me. Cece was stuck in her shift for twenty years, living as a community cat until a couple took her in. They brought her to the vet. A friend of mine works at that clinic. He quickly realized what she was and snuck her out of there.”
“They trapped me in a cage to cut up my belly.” Cece sat down on the stairs with a Yoyo. “That’s what they did to my friends.”
“They were trying to get her spayed.” Willa specified.
That thought was horrifying. Especially considering how few shifters there were, compared to the human’s growing population. We even had to live in secret to keep our numbers from dwindling.
The kitty in human skin stuck her arm out of the railing to play with her toy. Two of the witch’s cats were under her hand, swiping at the chunk of wood. The thunder approached. Cece caught her Yoyo and ran down the stair to hide under them with the other cats, that purred unafraid.
Willa gestured towards the dinner table and brought out two peeling knives. I put the basket down.
“Cece, I’m going to talk about some things that concern you.” She handed me a knife. “It would be better if you were sitting with us.”
“I hear you fine.” The voice from under the stairs had gained a higher pitch.
“It’s not polite.”
The dark beauty stuck her head out from her hide. Lightning hit nearby, prompting her to freeze. Then the rain started.
“I don’t mind if she hides. It must have been scary to live through thunder storms without a proper shelter.” I waved at her as she crawled back under the stairs.
“I can’t keep her.” Willa shook her head. “I would love to, but she needs to be around people. One day, she might even find her mate. For that, she needs to learn how to live with others.”
“How am I supposed to help with that? What about Athena?”
“You want her to have one more person to pay for?”
“What about the wolves?”
“She’s afraid of them. They smell too much like dogs.”
“Bears are supposed to be scarier.” I reminded her.
“Stephen is not scary.” Cece whispered from her hide. Those words melted my heart.
“You’re one of the pillars in town.” Willa pointed her knife at me. “And there is probably somewhere in the hotel you can put her. I’m sure you can help her find her place in this city. As a person this time.”
“I have no problem taking her in, but does she want to?” I nudged towards the cats.
If she refused, I would have to suddenly need to swing by Willa’s for her disgusting sleep teas or something.
“Do you, Cece?” Willa turned her head to the staircase.
“Sure.” Cece’s answer was buried under another thunderclap.
“What?” A witch, yes, but she still had human ears.
“She agrees.” I held my peeled apple. “How do you want us to cut them?”
“Is that what she said? Do you agree Cece?”
The big kitty got out of her hide to run under the wide oak table, swiftly pulling a chair out of her way. She sat cross-legged, holding her wooden yoyo to her chest.
“Are you alright?” I bent down to talk to her.
“Sure.” She got in the fetal position, hugging herself. “I want to go with Stephen.” She poked Willa’s leg. “I like him. He’s nice.”
My heart was jumping out of my rib cage. I cut her a piece of apple and handed it to her. She snatched it and ate it in one go. Then she moved to lean on my left leg. I had to fight the urge to pet her. Urge that was growing with her rubbing her cheek on my knee. Thunder hit, having her wrap her arms around my calf.
“That kind of behavior is not acceptable in your human form.” Willa scolded her.
“Why did you turn Cece—me human?”
“I just undid your curse. Maybe your cat got tired?”
Her cat seemed to be close to the surface by the way she acted.
“I don’t want to be put in a cage again.” That was probably why her cat didn’t want her to shift.
“You won’t be in a cage again.” I gave her another slice of apple. “Not under my watch.” I listened to her munching on it.
“Then it’s settled. Tomorrow, she goes back with you.” Willa was a bit too eager to be rid of her.
“Tomorrow?” I had to get a room ready for her. I would not throw her just anywhere in the hotel. She deserved to live in a house after what she had gone through.
“You don’t want her to go out into the storm, do you?”
“Do you?” Cece tested me.
“We can go tomorrow. You’ll have time to pack your things.” I fed her some more.
“I don’t have any.” She spoke with her mouth full.
“I’ll buy you what you need, then.”
“You will have to work at one point.” Willa gave her a warning that also told me not to treat her like a cat.
It was worse than meeting a normal cat. I was fully ready to bring her home and have her live rent-free forever. All she had to do was let me pet her and I would definitely let her have everything that I owned.
“In due time.” I added to the warning while handing Cece more oversized apple slices.
“You know cats can be very manipulative by instinct.” Willa sighed.
“What of it?”
“She’s got you feeding her already.”
“I don’t mind.”
“I’m hungry.” Cece complained.
“We have to peel five more of these first, then I’ll make some rabbit stew.” Willa cut her apple, putting the pieces in a pot on the table.
“I caught the rabbit.” Cece specified.
“I can peel the other five while you get the stew going.” I grabbed another apple the size of a small honeydew melon and used my knife on its pinkish skin.
“Remember to put them in the pot and not in her mouth.”
By the time we were dining, the thunder had calmed, but the rain kept going. Cece sat next to me at the table as we ate the stew. After a barely noticeable sunset, she stuck to me on the couch while we watched game shows on Willa’s old TV eating apple sauce. Despite Willa’s complaints about her behavior, Cece had self-control. She opted to lean on me instead of climbing on my lap like the other cats. I scratched their heads, earning them a jealous glare from her. Likely due to taking the attention of the big, warm visitor away from her.
After sneaking out in the rain to bury the dead cuckoo chick Cece had gifted me. I lay down in my boxers, feet hanging off the edge of one of Willa’s tiny guest beds. I closed my eyes, drawing up the wool to my chin, exposing my feet. I didn’t enjoy wearing socks to sleep, but I had to every time I slept outside of my house.
