Nora did not scream when she saw the bear.
She was fairly certain it was a bear. Some of the books at the lending library had pictures, and she’d spent hours there with her younger siblings on rainy winter days when Mama didn’t need her. She’d never seen a bear in real life, of course—they weren’t known to wander the mountains of Cumberland, though she’d heard that there were places that one could view exotic creatures for a fee.
This bear looked different from the ones she remembered from the illustrations she’d pored over with Bess and William. It was all white but for its beady black eyes. It was so massive that its head was on a level with hers, even as it stood on all four enormous paws. It watched from the cover of the trees beyond the thicket of brambles, and for a moment, Nora simply stared.
A shriek from behind her broke the trance. Nolan had tripped Bess, causing her to spill her basket of berries, and the two of them were rolling on the ground, pummeling each other and squishing the blackberries so the deep purple juice stained their clothes.
“That’s enough,” Nora snapped at the twins. “Get up, both of you. We’re going home now.”
“Now?” Patience asked plaintively from an elderberry bush out of reach of the wrestling match. “I’ve not yet filled my basket, and Bess will have to start over.”
“We’ll have to come back tomorrow. It’s getting late, and we still need to wash up and help with tea. Maybe we can make tarts or a pie,” Nora added, scooping little Henry into her arms. The three-year-old’s face and hands were stained purple, and he beamed at her with the joy of a child whose belly was full of berries at the end of a rare, beautiful day. Nora couldn’t help grinning back at her youngest brother as she settled him on one hip and bent to retrieve her own basket with her free hand.
Careful not to look at the bear so as not to alarm her siblings, who hadn’t yet noticed it, Nora shepherded the younger children back toward the road to the village, each carrying their baskets with a mix of blackberries and elderberries. Some baskets, like Nolan’s and Patience’s, were nearly full. Bess’s was nearly empty, having dumped as she tripped, and even Nora’s was only half full. She’d spent most of her time keeping an eye on Henry. They really would have to come back tomorrow. Eight children required more than their small plot of garden could provide.
Nora could not help looking over her shoulder once more as she left the bramble patch. The bear remained beneath the trees, its fur practically glowing in the shadows. The silent intelligence with which it watched her was unnatural, as was its presence here in the Lake District. It could only be fae. Nora turned and hurried after the others. She could feel the creature’s eyes on her long after they were out of sight, and a shiver ran down her spine.
Halfway home, Nora’s siblings broke into a race, sprinting to see who could arrive home first. “Don’t spill your baskets!” Nolan gave no sign that he heard her, but Patience slowed down so that she wouldn’t tumble her precious load. Nora wanted to break into a run too, but for different reasons. She couldn’t shake the memory of the bear’s gaze. She set Henry on his feet and took his hand, encouraging him to run after his siblings. His tiny legs could only move so fast, but they made quicker progress than she could while carrying him.
Everyone tumbled pell-mell through the door of the cottage, out of breath and laughing, and Nora closed the door behind them with a sigh of relief. They were home; they were safe. She could put the fae bear out of mind and start on the familiar, mundane work of getting everyone cleaned up and finding food to put on the table.
By the time Mama arrived home with Julia, both red-faced and sweating from long hours laundering clothes at the manor house, Nora had tea preparations well underway. Bess and Patience had helped her to make a berry pie, which was browning in the oven as they played with Henry a safe distance from the fire. Papa, John, and William clomped into the kitchen a few minutes later, stamping dirt off their boots at the door to avoid tracking it on the floor. Yesterday’s rain may not have hurt the harvest, but the roads and paths through the fields were thick with mud.
“Sir Kimble’s family will do well enough this winter,” Papa said, sinking into a chair at the table with an exhausted sigh. “Good harvest this year.”
Nora couldn’t help a glance out the tiny kitchen window at their own garden. They wouldn’t have a bad harvest themselves, just a small one. With Papa and John both working the manor’s fields, and even William helping out at harvest time, care of the garden fell to the rest of the family, namely the younger children and whichever older sister was left to mind them, Nora or Julia, while the other worked with Mama.
Julia pulled the pie from the oven and set it on the table, the fragrant steam calling everyone to their seats without a word being spoken. Mama poured drinks—milk for the younger, small beer for the older—before they all set to, chatting cheerfully about their day.
“Martin Sloane asked after you as we passed the inn,” Julia told Nora with a smirk. “Got all doe-eyed, didn’t he, Mama?”
At fourteen, Julia never missed anything that even hinted at romance or intrigue. William, eleven, snorted, earning an elbow from Julia. Nora glanced at their mother, who smiled benevolently as she scooped the last slice of pie onto a plate.
“I daresay that boy will offer for you soon.”
Nora blushed. She’d grown up with Martin Sloane, and it had been no secret that he’d admired her for years. He was two years older, at twenty, and an ostler with his father at the inn. Nora dropped her gaze to her forkful of steaming berries and pastry, frozen halfway to her mouth. If Martin asked her, she’d accept him. She liked him well enough. He was quiet, gentle, and kindhearted, and it would mean a stable home for Nora and one less mouth for her parents to feed. The fact that she felt no romantic interest in him was irrelevant.
Patience, too young to care much about her eldest sister’s matrimonial prospects, piped up to tell about the berry picking and just how many hundreds of berries she saw on the brambles. Her golden braids flicked side to side as she made sure to include the whole table in her story. Nora, grateful for the reprieve, ate the cooling bite from her fork and quietly listened as the conversation shifted from topic to topic.
For an insane, fleeting minute, she considered telling her family about the bear she’d seen. She had no doubt that they’d believe her. Nora wasn’t known for telling tales. What happened in her imagination stayed inside her head. But she held her tongue. She didn’t want to alarm her younger siblings, nor did she want her parents to forbid them from going berry picking again tomorrow. They needed what the children foraged to make preserves to last the winter. And Papa and John couldn’t spare time away from the manor’s fields to play guard.
When tea was over and the kitchen cleaned, the whole family prepared for bed. It had been a long day for everyone, and there were fewer complaints from the younger ones—Nolan and Bess, in particular—when everyone shared a bedtime. There wasn’t much else to be done, besides.
The cottage consisted of three rooms—a bedroom, a parlor, and the kitchen—and the parlor had long since been turned into a second bedroom. Mama and Papa shepherded Henry and Patience into the bedroom, where they’d sleep in trundles beside the big bed. Nora and John herded the rest into what used to be the parlor. Nora remembered when the room had housed chairs and a sofa, up until the twins had been born. Now there were two beds, one at either end of the room, with a quilt hung as a curtain between them. The three boys had the bigger bed at the front of the house because John was growing so tall, and no boy wanted to snuggle too close to his brothers. Nora shared the smaller bed with Julia and Bess. They didn’t mind snuggling. Summer was only just ending, but autumn and winter would come, bringing drafts and chills and frost.
Nora changed into her nightdress by candlelight, then settled into the bed beside her sisters. As she listened to her siblings’ breathing slowing into sleep, she thought again of the enormous, white, fae bear. She wondered why it had been watching her. It hadn’t shown much interest in her siblings, who would make easier mouthfuls, if a full stomach was its goal. Somehow, she didn’t think it was. The bear wanted something else, and she couldn’t imagine what.
With a sigh, Nora turned over and curled against Julia. The long day weighed heavy on her eyelids, and the mysterious bear was relegated to the realm of dreams.
***
Nora stayed home to mind the children again the next day. After a hasty breakfast of bread and bacon, Papa and the oldest boys hurried off to the manor. Mama and Julia stayed long enough to help clean up then set off to the miller’s house. A family’s laundry day, or days, required all hands and sometimes extras, and Mama had work for most days of the year helping the families of the surrounding villages.
Once the morning fog had begun to burn off, Nora and her crew of foragers grabbed empty baskets and strolled, skipped, or raced to the bramble patch, depending on the child’s mood. They spent hours picking berries in that patch before moving on to another. By the time they headed for home, all the baskets were brimming, every finger was stained purple, and several exhausted children were yawning.
Nora carried a drowsy Henry on one hip. She was tired too, but she continued to shoot glances into the hedges and thickets that lined the road. There had been no sign of the bear all day, leaving her feeling a confusing mix of relief and disappointment. She wanted to know why the bear had been watching, but more than that, she wanted to know that she hadn’t imagined it.
Nora went with Mama for the next two days while Julia stayed home with the others. After hours of scrubbing with lye soap until her hands were raw and hauling leaden baskets of wet linens out to hang in the rare sunshine, Nora was too exhausted to even look around her on the walk home. She stumbled through the evenings, noting that Julia gave no word or sign that anything unusual had happened. By the time she woke up the next morning, Nora had almost decided that she’d dreamed the bear.
Until it was her turn to stay home again.
Nora and her younger siblings were in the back garden, weeding and harvesting what they could. Their cottage was at the southern end of the village, butting up against a wild field sometimes used for grazing. There was no fence around the garden, and the children alternated between helping and running through the field, laughing and dodging each other. Nora let them; their joy was uplifting, and they’d sleep well at night. She stayed in the garden, working, with Patience at her side more often than not, casting glances at the others to make sure they were all still where she could see them.
It was at one of those moments, when she sat back on her heels and stretched her back, her gaze seeking out the four wild things shrieking with laughter, that her eye caught on something large and white. It was off to the side, in a small copse of trees behind the neighbor’s garden. At first she thought it was someone’s sheep that had gotten away from its flock, but it was too large for a sheep. A cow? No, too large for that too. Nora’s heart thudded into a galloping rhythm as she got to her feet.
She took two steps toward the creature before logic caught up with her. What did she think she was going to do? Confront a bear? That couldn’t talk? But how else was she to find out why the fae beast was watching her? Because she could feel its eyes, even from this distance, boring into her. Another happy screech from Bess reminded Nora that she wasn’t alone. Somehow she wasn’t worried that the bear would hurt them—its attention was entirely fixed on Nora, and it didn’t seem actively predatory at the moment—but she didn’t want the children to panic. She hesitated, torn between getting answers and guarding her siblings. And in that moment, the darkening clouds that had been threatening for hours let loose a deluge.
Nora was soaked in seconds. She kept half an eye on the bear as her brothers and sisters raced back into the house. Nora followed, sweeping a backward glance at the bear as she scooped up the basket of vegetables they’d gathered. It made no move, just watched as she closed the kitchen door behind them.
Copyright 2025 by Eliza Prokopovits