Chapter 1:
The Bear
I am not my mother.
I know it's hard to hear. I know everyone loves her, even admires her for her sweet self sacrificing nature, her devotion to her many loved ones, and the sort of innocence that still clings her vampire self. I love her too.
But I'm not her.
No one is born a vampire, and by definition, neither was I, but I'm the closest thing the world is ever going to get. And that makes me special.
Humanity's crux is that they are thinking, breathing, conscious things that are born to die. They must accept their transience in the world, because though they are beautiful and creative, the world will go on without them once they are gone. Vampires exist in an opposite reality where they are immortal and will never bear fruit, creatively or biologically. All they do blindly follow their desires through the ages, uncaring at whether they leave their mark on the world, because after all, they ARE the world, and will never leave it. They are stagnant.
But what am I? A child born to immortality, but the only immortal who grows and develops with the knowledge of her eternal life span?
"You're special," Jacob would tell me.
What could I do but acknowledge it?
My father and my mother were my world when I was young. I knew nothing but their love for each other and myself, and it seemed my world was balanced perfectly between their two selves.
But Jacob was different. Jacob seemed like a part of me I was destined to find and rejoin. He was my father, my brother, and myself. I cannot say I loved him, because I have never loved my own body, my own flesh. To me, he was simply an extension of myself.
Until Leah convinced me otherwise.
Leah functioned as a creature outside my world, beyond my extended family, while she roamed the woods as Jacob's liaison to his pack, in another universe. I rarely gave her my notice, she was an object I watched dart between the trees, beautiful and deadly.
When I was old enough to hunt on my own, I preferred to do so, much to Jacob's chagrin. He refused to believe me capable of surviving on my own, but could not deny my anything. And although Jacob's presence was comfortable, the very essence of total security, I had begun in my fifth year to long for solitude.
People at home surrounded me, touching me, handling me, blankets of love. Rosalie adoring me, Alice intrigued by me, Emmet and Jasper playing with me, Esme and Carlise, my father and mother, Jacob. Their love grew and covered me, smothered me, and for God's sake I wanted out.
I began to love the lone hunt.
It was on my third, while I was tracking a lonely she-bear, on which I ran into Leah.
Leah Clearwater had finished her courses at the local community college and was enjoying a relaxing summer before advancing to the University. Although I know she had originally taken her lupine transformation as a curse, Jacob had told me it was now a release. Converting to animal form had become her freedom from society, and she was known to run off for a couple days at a time to wander the Olympic Mountains. Jacob kept insisting she was going to give it up when she went to the University, but Father privately divulged he thought Leah would be sneaking out from her dorms to roam the nearby woods and terrify the native wild life.
And so I found her sprawled out on a slab of granite, enjoying one of the rare sunny days of a Forks summer. She had traveled up this far North as a wolf, and had shifted back into a lovely human girl to sunbathe, naked except for a pair of grimy jeans. Her black hair was cropped short, and she had her arms behind her head, eyes closed against the sunlight. I believe my mother always found Leah to be intimidating because of her androgyny. She was obviously beautiful in a female way, but not feminine. After her escape from Sam's pack, Jacob had noticed her independence and new confidence. Suddenly, for the first time since Sam, people had found her attractive not because of her face, but because of the force of her personality. I had secretly begun to admire her, and she had partly inspired me to break away from home and wander at my leisure. Watching Jacobs' wolf face as he conversed with her, sharing thoughts with her across vast distances, I found I was developing my own desire to talk with her face to face.
"Renesmee," she said, obviously unsurprised by my appearance as she could smell me a mile off.
"Leah," I said, not unpleased my solitary traveling was over, I flopped down next to her and smiled winningly, my pale skin glowing in the daylight. I had not won her over yet, and I knew it, but I also knew it was not far off. "Hello!"
At this age of five years I appeared to be a thirteen-year-old girl, with brown curls and brown eyes. I was beautiful and adorable. Everyone told me so.
Leah sat upward, trying to hide her discomfort at my presence. Leah had never let go of her distaste for vampires, despite the treaty between her pack and my family. She was ineffably polite in our company, having no wish to upset a still delicate balance, but she preferred even the remnants of Sam's pack to our company.
"Are you tracking the grizzly?" she asked, not looking at me.
"Mmm-hm. She's an old bear. I know she took down a full grown buck a couple of days ago." I had been watching this big brown recluse for several days, venturing out into the woods at night while my parents pretended not to notice. "He gored her cheek, here," I drew a line down the right side of my face, "and here," on my left shoulder. The she-bear had ignored her wounds, and devoured the fresh meat. "But she's hungry again, and in a crabby mood today."
"I'm amazed your family hasn't depopulated the state of Washington of bears," she scoffed.
"We don't normally hunt bears here," I said prissily. "Actually, I'm not supposed to for that very reason."
"Ah." Leah leaned back down on the stone, warm from the sun, and promptly ignored me.
I laid back, the granite rough even through my jacket, pricking my spine. Dense trees encircled our view of the sky, on which encroaching clouds had begun to covet from the north. The sunny day wouldn't last for more than hour.
The silence bothered me. At home, every one was always talking, or Father was reading my mind, and needling me about my thoughts. Of course this was awkward, but I would not relent.
"Truth be told, I haven't decided if I want to eat her or not. The bear I mean. I like her. She's tough, and by herself. I don't think she's ever had cubs, even though she's so old."
Leah twitched beside me. I suppose I was goading her a bit, but I would not press too hard. I just wanted her to talk to me!
"Maybe there's more to being a bear than cubs," she said. "Maybe she likes it out here, by herself, with no other bears around." She looked pointedly at me.
Oh, screw it, I always hated metaphors. I launched myself into the subject I was dying to talk to her about. "I don't know if I can have cubs," I said, monitoring the clouds drifting overhead. "The other's like me, I know, have not attempted it. I wonder, since I can change, and grow, maybe I can create little me's." Leah turned to look at me. I had her attention now. "I have no venom, so I can't turn anybody into what I am. It bothers me, sometimes, that I don't know anyone like me. The other half breeds-"my God, that word sounded bitter in my mouth "- are out there, but Mom and Dad tell me they are dangerous, and that I mustn't seek them out."
The elegant woman next to me turned to my face, startled at the sudden intimacy of our conversation. But I had nothing to lose, and no one else would understand.
"Imagine, Leah, that there are other female shape shifters out there, and they had answers to your questions, all of them!"
My exclamation was swallowed by the last rays of the sun, the tranquil silence of the forest resumed.
"Then, when you are bigger, the size of your parents, you will seek them out." She responded simply, closing her eyes, absorbing the last bit of heat from the granite.
Clouds had settled above us, the light dimming, and my glow was slowly dying out.
Leah sniffed the air. Testing the humidity? "You smell different than your parents, it's difficult to notice with you in their arms all the time."
"How do I smell?"
She paused for a second. "Like a bloody hummingbird in cinnamon."
I laughed. "That was very descriptive, although somewhat unimaginable."
"It's a strange mix, the deathly sweet vampire smell, the blood pumping to your heart that beats so fast it practically hums, and a little something else."
"Something else?" Intrigued, my eyes enlarged as I rolled over to peer at her.
Arms behind her head, her Greek Goddess profile framed against the graying sky, she said, "Jacob. Jacob smells like cinnamon."
There was an ache there, I could see it as well as feel it.
"It sounds like you miss him, although he lives less than a mile from you. Is it because you are leaving for University? You will be able to think at him all you want, and he'll be able to hear, and think right back." The words spilled out in a rush. Did I feel guilt all ready?
She grinned a tight grimace. "Perhaps he doesn't 'think at me' as much as he used too."
"I'm sorry, is it my fault?" I rolled to my knees, concerned and worried. I had never wanted to consider the possibility of me causing a rift between Jacob and any of his wolves. "I can tell him to!"
"Well, that's just it, isn't it? You'd have to tell him, to remind him." She sighed. "He's gone now, just like the rest. His thoughts are only focused on one thing now. I see you more frequently than you imagine." Her words were both bitter and sad.
"My mother can fix that, she can -"
"The solace your mother gives us is a great gift, but she can't, nor can she be expected to focus on blanketing our thoughts all the time. But my Jacob died the day he imprinted on you."
My Jacob. Sam's Jacob, my mother's Jacob, and finally he became my Jacob. I suppose I had missed another Jacob in there, one I had never seen. And suddenly, turning in on myself, I perceived there were a vast many Jacobs, standing behind mine, in an infinite corridor of Jacobs stretching back to his birth. Jacobs I had never met, nor decided to look for. Doubt overwhelmed me. Why did it feel like I had missed something vitally important?
I saw Jacob smiling at me. Laughing with me, playing with me, humming me to sleep. Always focused on me. I felt an overwhelming sense of nausea.
"I don't know if I consider imprinting love or not," Leah pondered, eyes on the sky. Total devotion and dependence upon some one is not something I would seek in a relationship. The thought of a lover refusing life after I died, unable to live without me, I just don't know. I want the person who loves me to value other things in life beside me, otherwise, how could we share anything? A compulsive need to be around some one, I thought that would fix my life. But, what if instead I choose to focus on me, instead of someone else? What could I accomplish with my life if I was thinking about my actions and the world instead of a soul mate?"
I was frozen.
Leah was standing, looking at me, troubled at my distraught expression. "Jacob has never doubted it. Not for a moment," she said. I could see the guilt on her face. "He's never doubted that imprinting on you was the best thing to happen to him."
"I know," I strangled out, ashamed at my display of emotion.
Leah held out her hand to me.
Taking it, I sent her a memory of Jacob, as bright as I could make it. He was pressing his hands to the glass of a window at my home, looking out into the rain intently, his mind concentrating on seeing Leah through the trees.
She yelped and jumped back. Shaking her head, she said, "I'm sorry. I don't ever talk to any one without discretion, but when you just poured out your heart to me, I became lost in my own thoughts, and started rambling. I didn't mean to upset you. It was very callous of me."
Gentlemanly, I thought. Jacob had said she'd lost her aggression to a gruff politeness.
"Let's go find your she-bear."
"I can't," I said lamely. "I'm not fast enough to catch up to her now."
Leah smirked, and tossed her short black hair, and suddenly she looked just like Jacob. "Yes you can."
Leah was small for one of the werewolves, sure, but she was still more than twice the size of a natural wolf. And while she ran, no, glided underneath me I felt I saw the forest through the eyes of a supernatural wolf.
The only protected part of the Hoh Rainforest is near the reservation, a division of Olympic National Park, some 25 miles along the Hoh River. The rest of the unprotected trees along the shoreline of the river have been logged. Sometimes Jacob and I would imagine what the place would look like before the axe: beautiful, serene, and vast.
My bear had wandered into one of the few left over remnants of an ancient unprotected primeval rainforest. Spruce and Hemlock trees rushed passed us, while Adler and Fir trees towered above, letting in only the dimmest light. Moist tendrils of moss hung from the branches, draping the bark in bright green. Beads of water fallen from above clung to my skin like little pieces of glass. Droplets glanced off of Leah's light grey fur while she flew over a moldering log. I clenched wads of her soft pelt in my fists as I leaned over her back, molding myself to her speeding form, but I sensed I was no real weight for her to bear.
Propelling herself along a fallen tree, she launched us over the dense network of roots rising up at the base. I could not see the sky, the old growth forest trees creating a web of cross crossing branches and tangled spills of moss. Dim rays of light stabbed down to the undergrowth, lighting our path.
This is a holy place! I thought to Leah, and sent her my vision of our forest hallway as a cathedral.
She snorted and shook her head gleefully.
Eventually, we found her, my old scarred she-bear.
She was rooting through a crumbling log for grubs. Ripping through the putrefying bark with her paws, she shoved her agile nose in, sniffing and searching, occasionally gobbling up some worm or beetle thing. She glanced up when she saw us, and I noticed the still healing wounds on her face and shoulder. Large black eyes squinted at us through the gloom, and the great head turned away, back to business.
I had the sudden irresistible desire to go and clasp that large shaggy neck to my chest and whisper to her curved and fuzzy ear that I loved her, that I understood her.
I sent Leah the image of the three of us, the half-breed, the wolf, and the bear on that slab of granite, watching the sun emerge from behind the cloud cover.
We stood and watched the she-bear for a while longer, and then Leah turned us and left.
Clinging to her back as we traveled home, away from the hall of mosses and trees, I thanked the world silently for today, as the sun burned behind the clouds as it dipped beneath the horizon.
Leah dropped me off near home so I could wander back by myself. We said nothing as we parted. I gave her a look of gratitude and she licked my hand then darted off. As I started walking home, I heard her howl into the night and saw her silhouette against the stars.
For the first time, I was very envious of the freedom bestial form had given the La Push pack.
The lights of home were all shining bright as I walked to the door, our little cottage. I could almost feel my father scanning for my thoughts, while I tried to keep the blanket of happiness of the day coating my mind. The electric fireplace was burning cheerily, Mom and Dad were in each other's arms on one of the couches, while Jacob prowled by the window.
"You've been gone a long time," Mother stated cautiously.
"You find your bear?" Dad asked.
"Yep!" I draped myself on the couch opposite. "It was a beautiful day."
Jacob said nothing, disgruntled at my long absence.
My parents excused themselves politely, and crept back to their own room, my Father giving me the look that said, "Tonight, I will be forgiving and keep my mind focused on other things than yours". I knew that look. It was a loving look.
Jacob still paced by the window as I enjoyed the fire.
As he rounded closer to me I grabbed at him and pulled him near me. A moment's resistance, then he submitted to my pounce and let me curl up in his lap. He was becoming awkward with this level of affection, carefully letting me define the boundaries. I was turning into a woman day by day, and it was quite a lot for his wolfish head to get around.
I clasped him to me, and thought furiously at him, I will endeavor to deserve you, to take care of you, and take the time discover all of you.
He let me hold him, and buried his face in my hair.
"Hey, whatever it is, it's all right," he said in my ear.
I wept.
I only have a wikipedia understanding of the history of Olympic National Park, but I have visited the Hoh Rainforest and think it's one of the most beautiful places in the world.