David Farland - Beyond the Gate

She presented him with a little package’ wrapped in bright red paper with a white bow.

He opened it. Inside was a pair of booties and a receiving blanket. Orick looked up , his eyes wide with surprise.

“I got sick on the ocean, all right,” Maggie said, “but I never did really stop feeling queasy. I checked with the doctors here. It will be a boy.”

Gallen grinned, and looked away wistfully. “No blood kin left,” he whispered, “so you’ll make your own.”

“I will,” Maggie said, “with your help. And I’ll have a dozen of them if I want.”

Gallen grabbed her and kissed her roughly, and Orick smiled and left them alone.

It was a pleasant day, with cold suns rising up through the clouds, and a sky filled with streams of light. Later that day, Orick sat Gallen and Maggie down and read to them from his new Bible about the birth of Jesus in ancient Jerusalem, with King Herod seeking the lives of infants, and angels announcing the birth of the King of Heaven.

That afternoon, there came an insistent pounding at the door. Maggie answered it, and one of the guards stood outside. “You’ll want to be leaving the city tonight,” he said softly. “The dronon are back.”

“We can’t leave yet,” Maggie begged. “We’re waiting for a friend to get out of the rebirthing vats.”

“I checked on it,” the guard said. “They’re taking her out early. Her body will be a little younger than she wanted, but they’re downloading her memories now.”

“We can be there right away,” Maggie said. She didn’t need to tell Gallen and Orick the news. Both of them were already racing around the spacious room, grabbing clothes to pack.

This will have to be a hasty farewell, Maggie realized, and she fretted for Tallea, a young girl who would be traveling alone through the winter, heading south.

In a matter of minutes, they were hurrying through the dark streets. A chill wind had picked up, and it blew frozen snow through the air. Clouds were moving in from the south, a horrendous dark storm.

They reached the great halls, which were closed for the night, just as the snow began to fall. One of the judges had come out to meet them. He was appropriately dressed in a long gray cloak and a sagging peaked hat with a broad brim.

“There you are!” he called as he saw them running up the broad stone steps from the street. “Your friend is reborn, and she awaits you!”

He waved up toward a darkened doorway, and Maggie saw movement behind the thick glass. The door opened a crack, and something hairy moved in the darkness.

Maggie had expected to see a young woman covered with the soft reddish-brown fur of the Roamers, as she remembered them from previous lives. But this creature was more heavily furred than she’d imagined, and its pelt was far darker.

Tallea lowered to all fours, and Maggie heard Orick gulp in astonishment.

“She’s a bear!” Gallen said.

“Yes,” the judge said. “When we read her memories, we found that at the last moments of her life, she had a change of heart. So we made her the body she desired.”

The young black bear was small, and appeared to be only about a year old. She walked down the steps carefully, as if unsure of herself.

But when she was within twenty meters, she suddenly hunkered down and ran toward them at great speed, hit Orick full tilt and knocked the bigger bear over on his side. He grunted, and she jumped up on him playfully, and bit his ear. “Orick! Orick!” she shouted. “Being a bear is great! Why, you’re strong as an ox and all dressed in leather!”

“Well, I’ve never minded it,” Orick grunted, not quite sure what to think.

Tallea hugged his neck, wrapping her paws around him, and licked his face. He licked her back shyly, and Tallea growled in his ear, her voice husky with desire. “Ah, Orick, you and I will have a grand time. That is, if you’ll have me?”

The little she-bear looked up at him with big brown eyes, and Orick glanced at Maggie and Gallen imploringly, as if they would tell him what to say.

“Do it,” Maggie said.

“She’s not like the she-bears on your world,” the judge told Orick. “She loves you as fiercely as any Caldurian can, and she will stay by your side always.”

Orick got up on all fours, then very gently, very passionately; licked the young she-bear’s muzzle with his long tongue, softly at first, then more fiercely, and Maggie found herself vaguely disturbed at how sensual a bear’s tongue could be.

And after the bears exchanged long, sweet kisses, the guard came through the dark and stood at the foot of the steps. “The dronon are coming,” he urged. “We must hurry away.”

“Where are we going?” Tallea asked.

“I don’t know,” Orick said, though Maggie was sure that Gallen had told him the name of the world. But for the moment, that information seemed to be driven from his mind. Orick just stared at the young she-bear.

“To new worlds, and safety, I hope,” Gallen said, and he took Maggie’s hand. They hurried down the broad steps and into the streets.

The new falling snow swirled around them in the darkness, and covered their tracks. Within moments, no one would ever have guessed that they had passed along that road.