Page 24 of The Girl Who Cried Bigfoot

I hand her a simple mesh veil, the only concession to her humanity. She slides it over her head, her face becoming a soft-focus blur behind the dark netting. I don’t wear one. The colony at the old site knows the scent of my skin as well as they know the nectar of the fireweed. They have known it for longer than Wren has been alive.

We walk through the undergrowth, moving away from the established trails. Beneath our feet, the ground is spongy with moss and decaying leaf litter. I lead the way, stepping over fallen logs with a grace that usually surprises people of my size. Wren’s breathing is a bit faster now, her boots catching on a stray root. I stop and wait for her to find her own rhythm.

“Stop,” I whisper when we reach the break in the trees. “Listen.”

At first, there is nothing but the wind in the hemlocks. Then, a low, tectonic hum begins to vibrate in the air, settling in the marrow of my bones. The hives are in a natural amphitheater of gray stone and ancient cedar, white wooden boxes that look like discarded teeth against the dark green of the forest. Thousands of tiny gold-and-black bodies move in a shimmering cloud above them.

Wren freezes; her hands clench at her sides. Her instinct is to flee, to flinch, to protect the vulnerable skin of her neck. It is the most human reaction possible—the terror of the small against the many.

“Stay calm or the bees will know,” I say, stepping closer to her until the heat of my body is a secondary atmosphere for her to inhabit. “They’re not afraid of you. They’re afraid of what you might do because you’re afraid.”

Gently, I take her hand. Her fingers are ice-cold and trembling against mine. I don’t pull; I just hold. I wait for the tremor to subside, for the frantic thrum of her pulse to settle into something sustainable.

“Deep breaths, Wren. From the belly. Let the air move through you like it moves through the trees. You’re just another part of the landscape. A stone. A stump. Nothing worth stinging.”

When she closes her eyes and breathes deep, the tension bleeds out of her neck and her shoulders relax completely. It takes a full minute, but eventually, her hand goes limp in mine. I can still smell the sharp, metallic tang of fear emanating off her, but it’s lighter now, as if she has placed it in a box and closed the lid. It’s an impressive display of will. Most humans can’t manage it.

“Good,” I whisper. “Now, walk with me.”

We approach the farthest hive that sits in the deepest shadow of the cedar. This is the old site. The colony here is a lineage I have tended since her great-great-grandmother was a girl with a sharp tongue and a stubborn streak. I have requeened them countless times, meticulously selecting for the calmest temperaments, the most resilient workers. They are a living record of over a century of quiet labor, a guardianship that fits in the palm of my hand.

I puff a small cloud of smoke at the entrance. The hum changes pitch, dropping into a drowsy, contented drone. Sliding a hive tool under the lid, I lift it. The sound intensifies into a golden roar that makes the air feel thick.

“Look,” I say, beckoning her closer.

Wren leans in, her breath catching. The top of the frame is a carpet of bees, a shifting, undulating mass of life. They move with a collective intelligence that makes individual identity seem like a clumsy mistake. I lift the center frame, the wood heavy with honey and brood.

The comb is a masterpiece of geometry, perfect hexagonal cells filled with liquid gold and capped with white wax. In the center, the larvae sit in their cradles, tiny white crescents of potential. A few bees crawl over my fingers, their delicate legs tickling my skin. I don’t flinch. I don’t move. I am a part of the hive now, and they whisper truths to me that I don’t want to hear.

“This is where it starts,” I tell her, my voice barely audible over the hum. “People think the forest is about the big things, like the ancient trees or the bears. A lot of them think it’s about me.” I shoot her a wry smile. “But if the pollinators fail, the forest will become a corpse. They are the first thing to falter when the stress gets too high. Long before the needles turn brown, the bees stop dancing.”

Wren reaches out, her hand hovering inches from the frame. She wants to touch it, but the human warning system is still shouting in the back of her head. Supporting the weight of the frame from beneath, I guide her fingers toward the edge of the wood.

“Steady,” I say. “You’re doing it.”

As soon as her fingers touch the rough cedar, a bee lands on her thumb. It stays for a second, then takes flight again. Wren doesn’t even blink. She is perfectly still, a statue of copper hair and mesh, lost in the sensory overload of the colony. The smell of the hive is overwhelming here—warm wax, floral nectar, and the earthy, fungal scent of the propolis they use to seal the cracks. It’s the scent of life in its most concentrated form.

“It’s beautiful,” she whispers. “And terrifying. Like a city where everyone knows exactly what to do.”

“There is no ego here,” I say. “Only the work. Only the survival of the whole. All bees care about are the nectar flow and the temperature of the brood nest. It’s a cleaner way to live.”

The light filtering through the veil catches the curve of her cheek. For the first time since she returned to this mountain, she isn’t performing. Here, in the heart of the woods, she’s allowing herself to be small. It is a rare gift to witness a human in this state. Usually, they are so busy trying to be large that they miss the power of being nothing at all.

When she steps back, I catch a whiff of her scent, something citrusy in her hair that sends an intense pulse of heat through me. I’ve never felt such a sensation, and I have to give myself a mental shake as I lower the frame back into the box and replace the lid. The transition back to the world of two legs and complicated thoughts is jarring. I feel the weight of my own body again, the itch of the flannel against my shoulders, the looming threat of the documentary crew and the viral storm Wren is trying to navigate. Out here, with the bees, the world feels manageable. Beyond the clearing, it is a mess of competing hungers.

I scan the perimeter of the hive site, a habit I can’t break even in my most unguarded moments. My eyes catch something at the edge of the clearing, near the base of a lightning-struck fir. A branch is snapped, the white wood of the interior showing through like a fresh wound. Below it, the thick carpet of moss is matted down in a shape that didn’t come from a deer or a bear.

A boot print. Far too close to the heart of my territory. The margin is shrinking. The people with the cameras are starting to bleed into the only places where I can breathe freely.

I don’t say anything. I don’t want to break the stillness that has settled over Wren. Her hand is resting on the white-painted wood of the lid, her head tilted back as she watches a late-returning worker spiral down from the canopy. She looks peaceful, a word I haven’t associated with her since she arrived at the lodge.

“We should head back,” I say, my voice rougher than I intended. “Marge will have dinner waiting, and Walt will be wondering why the truck isn’t in the lot.”

Wren turns toward me, pulling the veil up and over her head. Her face is flushed, eyes bright with quiet wonder. For a second, I think she’s going to say something real. Because I want to. I want to tell her that I’ve never touched a woman like I’ve touched her hand, that the silence between us has started to feel like a conversation. I want to say all those things, but I don’t.

Instead, she swallows hard and averts her gaze. “You know, for a man who claims to be a terrifying forest monster, you spend a lot of time playing with bugs, Rowan.”

Her dry delivery deflates the moment before it can become something I don’t know how to handle. I feel the familiar itch of irritation, but beneath it, there is a strange, unwanted warmth. She’s using the humor to process the fact that she just stood in a cloud of stinging insects and didn’t die. It’s her way of coming back to herself.