Val and I stopped for the night not long after the sun had set over the horizon. We could have kept going for a couple of hours yet, but we’d stumbled across a town in the middle of nowhere that had a surprisingly nice-looking inn. Well-kept hanging baskets adorned the outside of the inn, and on one wall was a recently painted mural of a battle of old. Through the frosty window panes, we could see ample flickering candles, and when the door opened to let a patron out, we caught the scent of spiced pastries. When Val insisted we stopped there rather than risking the next inn being less comfortable, I was in no mood to argue. We wouldn’t reach the others for a couple of days yet anyway, even with horse and portals to help us on our way.

  We hitched the horse, and Val’s ability to tie a knot made me suspicious again that she did have more experience with riding than she’s said. Stepping inside the inn, I let the door swing closed behind me, and I closed my eyes, letting the warmth and the smells flow over me. The heat of the fire was pleasant, and as too was that mixture of aromas, pastry and beer. The singing of the bard in the corner, however, was not so—

  ‘Oh, hells,’ my wife said.

  The singing stopped. ‘Val?’ a booming voice shouted across the room. Usually, when someone recognised Val, then there was a fight in our immediate future. But from the tone, this bard was actually excited to see her.

  ‘An old boyfriend?’ I asked, then immediately regretted it when I actually saw the bard.

  This wasn’t a bard. Or, at least, it shouldn’t have been. That booming, toneless singing had come from… a bear. A bear that wore human clothes, complete with hat and lute strung over its back, and walked on its hind legs. I blinked, then looked around at the others in this fairly crowded inn. Few of them gave the bard a second look. Was I completely losing my mind? There was a wild animal in here—a dangerous one!—and nobody seemed to care!

  ‘Boyfriend?’ Val repeated. ‘What do you think I am, a druid?’

  Even if I’d had a witty retort to that, I wouldn’t have been able to say it, because I was pushed aside by the bear—the bear!—who wrapped its black, furry arms around Val, lifted her up, and squeezed. I was about to attack when I realised this wasn’t the bear-bard trying to do Val any harm. It was giving her a… bear hug.

  I just want you to know that I tried my best to describe the hug in other terms, but “bear hug” really is the only apt descriptor for it. So you’re going to have to just let that particular pun go, whether I intended it or not.

  ‘I am so, so sorry,’ the bear said to Val as it released her and set her down on the ground once more. Safe. Without mauling or clawing her. ‘I know that nothing I can do can make it up to you, but maybe I can start by buying you a drink? You always liked a drink, didn’t you?’

  ‘Hi,’ I said, stepping forward and putting out a hand for the bear to shake. What can I say? It was a moment of courage. ‘I’m Styk. I’m her husband.’

  This, as it turned out, was a mistake. The bear’s eyes widened with delight, then it wrapped its hands around me and squeezed me tight in the same way as it had Val a moment earlier. I breathed a sigh of relief when my feet touched the ground once more. ‘And you’re married!’ the bear said to Val with delight, a bright smile crossing its otherwise monstrous face.

  ‘You’d like Lore, I think,’ I mumbled.

  ‘Styk,’ Val said, gesturing to the bear. ‘This is Reginald. Reginald, this is Styk. As he says, he’s my husband.’

  ‘Oh, I’m so delighted! Let me buy you a drink, what will you have?’

  ‘He’ll have a beer,’ Styk said, then gestured to her belly. ‘But I won’t be drinking anything at all…’

  It took the bear—Reginald—a moment to understand. He really would get on with Lore. ‘You’re having a baby!’ the bear squealed with delight, hopping from foot to foot with sheer glee and making the beers on nearby tables wobble. ‘I will see what they can do you.’ With that, Reginald disappeared towards the bar.

  ‘So, err…’ I started. ‘I don’t really even know where to start with the questions here. That’s a bear, right?’

  ‘Don’t tell him that,’ Val replied. ‘He thinks he’s a human.’

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘And… why does he think that?’

  ‘Because I cursed him to.’

  I put a hand to my forehead, then drew a deep breath. ‘Why did you do that, Val?’

  She shrugged. ‘Thought it’d be funny. And it is.’

  I narrowed my eyes at her. Not because I disagreed that it was funny—I was still undecided on that point, the shock of seeing a bear still rattling through me—but because I knew Val well enough by now to know when she was lying. Right now, I was pretty sure she was lying. This flew in the face of all the open communication we’d been doing over the past few months.

  ‘Next question,’ I started.

  ‘Last one?’

  ‘Not even close. Next question: what is he apologising for?’ I suspected that the answer to this particular question would shed some light on what Val was hiding.

  I didn’t get an answer to this one, because Reginald returned, drinks in hand, and nodded us over to a small table in the corner of the room. He’d been served quickly, but then again, I wouldn’t want to keep a bear waiting either. Reginald placed a beer down in front of me, then a juice down in front of Val, but remained standing himself.

  ‘I have been apologising for my misdeeds in the form of poetry,’ the bear said.

  ‘Oh?’ my wife replied, and to say that her reply was half-hearted was understating it; she really was just asking to be polite. Nothing about her demeanour shouted “I want to be here”.

  ‘Yes! Just yesterday, I ran into old Runasc, and had to come up with one on the spot. It went like this.’ He strummed his lute and sang…

  There once was an orc from Sif Quarry

  Who’d earned himself fortune and glory.

  Along came a bard

  Who squished his head hard

  And now is so terribly sorry.

  Reginald paused for a moment, letting the last note ring out, and took a seat on a stool that I didn’t think would hold his weight. ‘Well? What do you think?’

  ‘Glory doesn’t rhyme with quarry,’ I replied.

  ‘Yes it does. Glorry, quarry. See?’

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  I furrowed my brow. ‘Well it does when you mispronounce it, yeah.’

  Reginald shook his head, apparently bored with my feedback, and turned to my wife. ‘I wrote one for you, too, Val, for if I ever saw you again.’

  Val’s eyes snapped open. ‘Oh, that’s not—’

  But already the bear was standing once more, strumming his instrument and opening his mouth to bellow out the words.

  There once was a talented sorcerer

  Who had both power and force on her.

  She knew a cute guy

  But had to say bye

  Because I killed him in Seckle Thur.

  I coughed midway through a sip of my beer. So many more questions immediately sprang to mind. What guy? Had Val forgiven Reginald for this? Did the bear always use the same rhyming pattern? And could he maybe hire an editor?

  ‘Val, what’s he talking about?’ I asked.

  If it was possible for a bear to pale, Reginald paled. His furry shoulders immediately sunk, and his eyes widened just as Val’s had a moment earlier. ‘Oh, I thought… I’m so sorry. I’ll have to write you another—’

  ‘That’s quite alright!’ my wife cut in, voice just a little shaky. She looked from the bard to me. ‘He should know.’

  Reginald nodded thoughtfully. ‘I was a younger man back then. A man with a terrible temper. I allowed certain beast-like instincts to overpower me, and I lashed out at a young man. A young man who Val was fond of.’ He turned to Val. ‘I really am sorry, Equivalence.’

  I forgot that was Val’s full name sometimes.

  ‘It’s alright, Reginald,’ Val said. ‘It was a long time ago. And things were… different back then.’

  Certain parts of this story were clicking into place with every second that passed. This was a very good reason for Val to put a curse on someone. Which would mean… ‘So Reginald didn’t think he was a human back then?’ I asked Val. ‘He was just a bear?’

  Reginald roared with anger, knocking the table over and making Val and I freeze. At last, the locals reacted, though not with the level of panic that I thought the situation deserved. If I wondered why this was, it was answered by the bear closing his eyes, breathing deeply, and slowly counting to ten.

  ‘I’m sorry if I…’ I started.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Reginald said. ‘I would just rather nobody called me a bear. It makes me angry. Just because a man is a little tall and a little hairy, people think they can call him names.’

  ‘Oh, that’s not—’ I started, but a glance from Val made me think better of finishing that sentence. Reginald was really convinced he was human. ‘That’s OK. Sorry.’

  Reginald nodded, then sat down once more. ‘It’s water under the bridge. I can’t expect others to forgive me if I don’t forgive them too.’ At that moment, he poked his head up, looking over my head, as someone else caught his sight behind him. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I have another apology poem to sing.’

  Val waved him away.

  ‘How many people did he hurt?’

  ‘I mean, he was a bear, wasn’t he?’ the witch replied, keeping quiet enough that Reginald wouldn’t hear her. ‘That’s what they do.’

  ‘I still think cursing him was a bit much. As you say, he was a wild animal, after all.’

  Val shrugged. ‘What, would you rather I’d killed him?’

  ‘It might have been better than…’ I gestured to the bear. ‘Than this living torture.’

  ‘What torture?’ Val asked. ‘Being human. If that’s torture, then we’re all suffering.’

  I had no convincing response to that particular point, so I let the matter drop. ‘I’m sorry about your boyfriend.’

  Val squeezed my hand. ‘It’s OK. I was a long time ago. We were young; it wouldn’t have lasted.’

  ‘You really haven’t had much luck with romance, have you?’

  ‘Not until—’ Val immediately caught herself.

  I couldn’t help but smile. ‘Go on. You can say it. I believe in you.’

  The witch smiled back. ‘Not until I met an idiot Bladespinner,’ she said.

  I pecked her on the lips. ‘Proud of you.’

  Val sighed, sipped her juice and then sunk her face against me shoulder.

  ‘Feeling cosy?’

  ‘Trying to get a whiff of your beer,’ she replied. ‘I miss it.’

  We sat like that for a while, drinking by the fire, listening to the bear sing his weird poems, and I took great pleasure in it. It was nice to have a moment to ourselves, just this once. I savoured it, because who knew was tomorrow would bring?

  These days, it certainly wouldn’t bring anything good.