BEAR SEASON
The drive back to the Cullen household was a silent one. On our arrival, we each went directly to separate pastimes.
Alice immediately booted a series of 42-inch monitors underneath the stairwell. I could hear them each sing as they came to life. She was working on a massive design project for Esme's wardrobe, but Esme remained out of sight on our arrival. She was humming quietly to herself upstairs - probably working on a new design project herself in the study.
Edward went directly to his piano, the centerpiece of our living room. He shuffled through several sheaves of paper before landing on one, and experimentally tapping out a tune, testing the pitch.
Jasper elbowed me in the ribs and nodded toward a set of eight chess boards laid out across the back bank of windows. He and I had been developing our own game of strategy for months, utilizing all eight boards, and three sets each of the chessmen, except the king and queen. Instead, we added a secondary set of nobles we called the consorts. These were nearly as powerful as the queen, but could only travel half the space.
These and other rules had been finalized only the previous week. This was our very first test game. We'd started on Monday and weren't even halfway through it.
We took up our positions on the floor, taking long pauses in between each move. Jasper was a careful player, taking the time to visualize every possibility before choosing his course. I took more risks, tackling several of his pawns in succession and dwindling his forces.
During all of this, my mind lingered on La. She'd looked so sick, collapsed on the ground. I thought of the way she'd felt in my arms as I carried her to the car - so light and easily broken. I also thought about the intensity of her gaze, her ability to see directly through me, and decipher all of my attempts at subterfuge so easily.
Our conversation had been one of small revelations that didn't answer a single one of my questions. The best I could say was that I'd gotten a resounding yes , and I'd discovered that whatever it was that happened in her past was distinctly none of my business.
Edward's tune changed. The melody lilted and swirled around itself. A strong bass was paired with a fresh central tenor. It reminded me of La's sad smile.
"Shit," I muttered as Jasper took down one of my consorts in my distraction.
I refocused on the board, trying to consider my next move against Jasper, but concentration was pointless. Edward's melody sank into my bones in a riot of unwanted imagery that sent my mind reeling.
I saw a life with La. She was back in that white dress, standing at the end of a rose-petal-strewn aisle. In her fists, she clutched a broad bouquet that screamed with loud colors. This time she was beaming at me at the other end of the aisle instead of some silly human. I waited patiently under an arbor laced with white roses. She was still human, but somehow I knew this would be her final yes.
We were surrounded by our family and friends, both vampire and human - all cheering us on as we read our vows.
The idealism of the vision could never be real, because I could not offer her true life. I imagined the beauty of the sleeping girl being lost to stillness. In this vision she no longer breathed, there were no more snores, and her fights with sheets would never come again. The idea made me indescribably sad.
In a huff, I left Jasper crouched over our amalgam chess board and made my way outside. Three large bounds later I was over the river and sprinting toward the Olympic Mountains in the distance.
"Wait, brother!" Jasper crashed through the underbrush in uncharacteristic haste. I screamed, ducked, and turned on a dime at the same time. Jasper halted a few steps behind me, face slack with surprise. His hesitation was all I needed to land one solid right hook directly to his jaw.
Jasper flew backward twenty feet, landed on his ass, and skidded until a tree stopped his momentum. As soon as his motion halted he was on his feet. We met in midair, the cacophonous crash nearly drowned by the sound of our snarling.
"What brought this on?" He ducked under another swing, gripped my arm, and swung me in a wide arc. "I thought you were coming to terms with your little tragedy."
I landed on my feet and dashed back without attempting to answer.
Jasper knelt and leaned into my attack. His shoulder jammed into my stomach as he lifted me off my feet, arms wrapped around one of my thighs.
"I don't want her to die," I grunted and wrapped my arms around his waist. I used my greater weight to flip him backward. We landed on the ground, an entangled mass of arms and legs.
"Then have Carlisle do it!" his voice was muffled. I loosened my stranglehold. His head was locked in between my thighs, his mouth pressed into my jeans.
"What?"
"Have Carlisle turn her and be done with it!"
I pushed him away from me and sat up. I'd been so caught up with the possibility of La's death I hadn't really stopped to consider how a transition would be possible.
"You think he would do that?"
"Yeah, man." He brushed pine needles and dirt from his shirt. There was a little tear by one shoulder at the seam. "Alice bought me this," he frowned but continued. "At this point, any of us would do it just to put an end to your truculence."
"But what if she doesn't want this life?"
"What do you think Alice's vision meant?" he countered.
For the second time, I tried to envision what Alice would have seen. La's eyes gone red with transition, scent all but eliminated, body hard and resilient. It would be such a relief to not worry about breaking her or feasting on her.
"That vision implies she doesn't have a choice," I said hesitantly.
"No, that vision implies the choice has already been made." Jasper shook his head and got to his feet. He offered me a hand and pulled me up beside him. "Or will be, anyway. As far as we're concerned La Davis is not the hang-up - you are."
"I've got to hear it from her," I disagreed. "I've got to hear from her mouth that this is what she wants."
"Then ask her." He clapped me on the back and led me back under the shadowy pines toward the house. He didn't understand that it wasn't that easy. Asking someone to give up their entire existence for one person wasn't simple. It would be asking that person to watch everyone she ever cared about grow old and die, and all from a distance.
Esme was waiting on the front porch when we arrived, seated primly on the top step. Jasper walked past her to join the family inside. When the door shut she patted the space next to her. As I sat she pulled me into a mother's embrace, gently rocking back and forth with my cheek resting against the top of her head.
"It's going to be fine, Emmett," she whispered. "This will work out for the best. I know it will."
"Thanks," I mumbled back, but I didn't really believe it.
"Love doesn't always come in convenient packages," she added. I laughed humorlessly.
"I didn't think it was supposed to come in impossible ones, either."
"Nothing is impossible," Esme disagreed. "You may be the best equipped, out of all of us, to deal with this difficulty. If it takes time, patience, and self-control - no one is your equal."
All mothers believed the best of their sons. I appreciated the faith she had in me but realized she was simply overjoyed that I'd found someone after all this time. She'd worried Edward and I would be alone forever, and now that I'd found someone, one day Edward might too.
"She'll love you back." Her rocking had stopped. I looked down at her to find a confident smile. "If she's smart she'll know what a catch you are."
"Thanks, Mom."
To Esme, there was no morality question. If her son wanted a person, he would have her, and that person would be grateful for the opportunity.
Inside Edward was playing Chopsticks to Alice's delighted giggles. Jasper was watching fondly as his wife danced around the piano and made faces to distract Edward from his playing. As we entered, Edward switched to Esme's favorite song; one he'd written for her many years ago. She went to stand behind him and rested her hands on his shoulders as he played.
I headed for the stairs to get away from the noise and forge some homework in my room.
"Oh!" Alice stopped her dance abruptly and flitted to Jasper's side. "Guess what, Jasper?"
"What?" He took her hand and returned her excited smile.
"Peter and Charlotte will be in the neighborhood next week so they're going to stop in for a visit!" Alice trilled. "Isn't that nice?"
My hand on the banister made a faint crunching noise as it sank into the wood. Everyone in the room stopped moving and turned to face me.
"What's wrong, Emmett?" Esme looked at her banister, concerned. She would likely replace the whole thing.
"Peter and Charlotte are coming to Forks?" I shot at Alice.
She sighed dramatically. "Calm down! It isn't their first visit."
I forced a breath out through my nose. This was their first visit since La had moved here. If Jasper noticed her scent as special, it was possible those two would as well, and they didn't share our hunting habits.
Alice took a step toward me. "They never hunt here, Emmett. You know that."
This was one of the conditions for their visits by decree of the head of our family. They could visit whenever they liked, but they were not to hunt within 100 miles of our homestead in any direction. Still, if there was even the slightest chance they might find La's scent as appealing as I did they couldn't be trusted anywhere near her.
"When?" I barked.
Alice answered severely, clearly not happy about the situation. "Monday morning, but no one is going to hurt La. You know I would never let that happen."
"I know," I admitted. It didn't change anything. "You ready, Edward?"
"Goat Rocks?" he asked and pushed back from the piano.
"Bear season."
"Hasn't anyone ever told you not to play with your food?" Edward called down to me. He was sitting up on a short cliff face above me as I battled with an angry black bear.
"Oh, hey!" I shouted back and waved. The bear tried to take advantage of my distraction to rake one massive paw against my chest. It destroyed my shirt but left the skin underneath completely unharmed. The bear bellowed in frustration, spittle spraying across my face in its rage.
I bellowed back, arms spread to make myself appear bigger. I let the bear take another swing at me and laughed as the animal stumbled backward from the blow. The beast stood more than two feet taller than me and would have outweighed me by several hundred pounds if I were human. No matter how long those raking claws were, it couldn't hurt me, so I let it tackle me to the ground.
Even through my cackling laughter, I could hear Edward's long-suffering sigh. He must be ready to delve into the reason I brought him out here.
One minute!
The bear roared again, but the mighty sound was cut off in a gurgle as we rolled over each other, taking down an enormous spruce tree in our struggle.
My shirt was in tatters, jeans torn in multiple places. Blood streaked down my face and exposed chest, while sap stuck into my hair. I looked a mess, but I was happy with the hunting trip so far. Edward was watching me from the top of the short cliff, shirt in perfect order, not a drop of blood in sight.
Were you able to track down that mountain lion? I thought as I climbed up and settled onto a boulder next to him.
"Of course I was. I just don't eat like a savage." His nostrils turned up at the state of my clothes. What a priss.
"That was a strong one! I could almost feel it when it clawed me!" I plucked at some of the sap sticking in my hair but soon discovered it wouldn't come out quite so easily. "I wish they were stronger…."
"No one said you had to fight your food," he sniffed.
I laughed at his disgust. "Who else am I going to fight? You and Alice cheat, Carlisle refuses to really spar, and Esme gets mad when Jasper and I go too hard."
"Life must be incredibly hard for you, Emmett."
He watched me warily as I shifted into a crouch. "Come on, Edward. Turn it off for one second and fight fair."
"It doesn't work like that," he brushed away my eager anticipation with a flip of his hand.
"Still in a bad mood?"
"Certainly not," he countered. "You're just acting like a child."
"Is that what it is?" I shifted back down to sit next to him and gazed out over the landscape before us. We were seated on a steep side of a mountain that gave us a clear view into a wide valley below. It was green for miles and miles in every direction.
"Is that what what is?" he huffed.
"Your attitude with me lately," I continued. "You think I'm acting like a child with whatever is going on with La."
"I can see that you can't help it, but what you're doing puts us all at risk. You are playing with something far more dangerous than fire."
"I'm sorry. I know this has put everyone in a tough spot."
"Then why won't you make a decision? Either have us bring her into the family, or we all need to move on."
"Is that what you would do?" It was a serious question, and Edward treated it that way. He paused to consider his answer before speaking.
"I don't know," he finally muttered.
"Then you can see why I can't choose for her." Our conversation lapsed into a comfortable silence.
Have you ever thought about how fleeting their lives are? How unimaginably breakable they are? There are millions of ways a mortal can die. Thousands of catastrophic things that can happen to them.
"I can't say I have, no."
My thoughts strayed back to my first encounter with a bear. I'd barely been conscious, but the terror was visceral, the fear and pain as she cracked my bones in her jaws was nearly as memorable as the pain of my transition. I wasn't much of a match for her, huh?
"No, I suppose not." Edward turned to me in confusion. "What does this have to do with La?"
"How does one human have such terrible luck? She's like a magnet." I tried again to pluck out the sap in my hair.
"How so?" Edward took pity on me and pulled a packet of wet wipes out of his pocket. He handed them to me with a smirk.
I immediately applied one to a particularly large chunk behind my ear. "Think about it; of all the places in the world she could have ended up, she landed in a vampire nest."
"Yes, but a vampire nest full of individuals that subsist off of animals. I would call that lucky."
"Except I nearly killed her on day one." The chunk came free without tearing out any of my hair and I moved to one at my temple. It wouldn't budge.
"...And apparently you have more self-control than any other vampire in the world, except perhaps Carlisle." His tone suggested he was as surprised as I was about that.
"Alright," I tucked the wipe into my pocket and got to my feet. "How about the van?"
"You're going to blame the van on some kind of cosmic force?"
When you put it like that… We made our way into the valley, jogging at a slow pace.
"You sound like you've lost your mind, but I see what you mean about humans being fragile. I will mention that, currently, the biggest danger to La is you, and you're here. "
"I think you've missed the point, Edward."
"Oh, I see the irony, I really do. A vampire in love with a human is pretty bad luck," he allowed.
We approached a wide stream at the bottom of the valley. I kicked off my shoes and dove in to rinse the blood from my body. When I resurfaced Edward was waiting by the bank ready to resume our conversation.
"Despite your objections, I maintain that there is an easy solution to this problem."
An image of her face popped into my head, skin like flawless brown alabaster. "No."
"It would solve your issues with mortality, and her lack of edible scent would negate the issue of your desire to kill her. Wouldn't you agree that it's the best way?"
"For me or for her?"
"For you," he said easily. This was an obvious answer for him only because he had never felt the need to protect someone before. Jasper had said something very like to me when La had first fallen into my life. " You've never felt about anyone the way I feel about Alice…" I better understood what he meant now.
"And what about her, then?"
"You didn't mind so much," he reminded me. This was an understatement. I'd found a pleasure for life in vampirism that never would have been possible as a human. It wasn't the same for La.
"You did."
Edward's transition had been more traumatic. The loss of his family to the Spanish flu had been abrupt and at a time in his life when he should have had many bright years ahead. He had a plan for his future, a military career to look forward to. Instead, he woke up to an entirely new existence with a stranger that effectively shut out any possibilities for a smart young mortal.
"I suppose I did," he allowed. We walked through the woods slowly, meandering vaguely west.
"I can't force this on her, Edward."
"You're right. I'm sorry for pushing." He gripped my shoulder and gave me a light shake. I was glad to have my brother back.
He went on to say, "What I don't understand is your plan."
"Plan?"
"You won't change her without permission, and you refuse to leave her alone."
Where are you going with this?
"If you can't court her safely, what are you going to do?" He had a very good point, but he wasn't quite correct. Leaving her alone right now wasn't an option with Peter and Charlotte on the way. At least for now, she was safer with me close by.
As far as courting her...
"I can chase her, I just probably shouldn't, you know, touch her until she's a little harder to accidentally kill."
Edward was too much the gentleman to plainly speak about where I was going with that statement. As long as we'd been living together, I'd never seen him show any interest in anyone. There had never been anything more than a cordial friendship in more than eighty years. Esme worried that he'd been too young when he'd been changed, but now I wondered if it had more to do with finding the perfect partner.
"And if she says no?" The scent of a mountain lion on the wind caught his attention. We dropped into hunting crouches.
If she says no I will force myself to leave. As much as I tried to push conviction into the thought, it felt flimsy.
I was anxious being away from her now, even though I was fully aware that I would be back in two days. I dug my phone out of my pocket to check for new messages. Alice would have called if something had happened, and of course, like Edward had pointed out, until Peter and Charlotte arrived, she was safer with me gone.
There was nothing to worry about.
Edward leaped forward in a graceful arc. The mountain lion was crouched behind a fallen tree, hunting its own query. Edward snatched it from the ground and broke its neck in one clean motion. He fed quickly and quietly without spilling a drop.
But where was the fun in that?