Verena's Whistle: Varangian Descendants Book I by K. Panikian (essential reading txt) 📗

backing toward the house. He left my peripheral vision as I kept my eyes on the coop. A black paw poked at the fence from the bush closest to the tree line. A black bear. I could handle a black bear. A brown bear would have me following Theo into the house as carefully and quietly as I could. Brown bears in Alaska were very large and very dangerous. A black bear, however, would likely be scared off by a human, especially a noisy human. It was early for the bear to be out and about though. Break up was months away. Maybe something happened to its den and now it was awake, cranky, and hungry.

I whistled “stay” to Denali and started clapping my hands, trying to draw the bear’s attention away from the coop and scare it a little. The paw withdrew from the fence and a black nose on a long snout poked out of the bush. Dark brown eyes stared at me under small rounded ears. The bear rose on its hind legs to get a better look at me and stepped forward out of the bush. Hmm, just my luck, it was curious.

Denali didn’t like the forward movement and started barking again, very high pitched and aggressive. The bear shook its paws at us and let out a low growl. That was it. Denali launched himself from my side straight at the much bigger animal. Before I could whistle him off again, the bear leaned forward and cuffed the dog to the side, aborting his attack. Denali tumbled head over heels through the snow with a sharp snarl. I was suddenly afraid, not for myself, as I was still some distance from the bear, but for the dog. He got to his feet and I knew he was going to charge the bear again.

I put more force into my “stay” whistle and Denali looked from me to the bear. He whined but didn’t move. The bear, however, decided it was done having fun and with a grunt, dropped to all fours and charged the dog.

I didn’t know what to do. It would be incredibly foolish to get between the dog and the bear. I yelled as loud as I could, trying to distract the bear, and then desperately, I let out an earsplitting whistle. It was wild and shrill and so loud, I deafened myself for a moment. The bear froze in the middle of its charge, stared at me for a beat, and then spun around in the snow. It bolted for the tree line and in a moment, it was gone. I stared at the swaying undergrowth, nonplussed.

“Whoa,” I heard Theo say from the porch. I turned and he gave me a thumbs up, the shotgun over his shoulder. “Nice job. I wasn’t going to make it to you in time.” I gave him a wobbly grin and said, “It must have been playing all along, to be scared off by just a whistle.”

Theo gave me a strange look. “Just a whistle?” he asked and cupped his right ear. “I’ll be hearing that sound for the rest of my life.”

I chuckled and bent to pat the ecstatic-once-more Denali. “You better go home,” I told the dog and then whistled again, this time low and soft. He barked at me and then bounded across the yard and up the driveway.

I walked up to stand beside Theo on the porch. My legs felt a little wobbly and I staggered a few steps in the snow before I caught myself. “How long have you been able to do that?” Theo asked.

“Do what?”

“Whistle with magic.”

I started to snort but then stopped. Was that what I’d done? Did I use magic to scare the bear away? It didn’t feel like magic. Usually when I tried to access my magic, it took serious effort and a lot of concentration. My whistling, on the other hand, was just something I did for fun. It didn’t make sense that a whistle could be magic. I shook my head at Theo.

“Come inside,” he said. “And get the bag.”

Chapter 3

“In your Russian Lit class at school, have you read any folktales about the Nightingale?” Theo asked, sitting on my bed with the bag in his lap. We’d snuck past the family gathered around Dad’s laptop in the kitchen as they shopped for plane tickets and hotels.

I thought hard. “Maybe? Something to do with robbing people in the forest?”

Theo pulled a book out of the bag and handed it to me. “The Nightingale,” he said, “was a Russian monster that lived in the forest and robbed travelers by whistling at them. Its whistle was so powerful, it would knock people unconscious. In the stories, the good guy ends up cutting off its head, but not before the Nightingale causes some pretty serious destruction.”

I fingered the book cover and read the title: “Ilya and the Robber Nightingale and Other Russian Tales.”

“Do you remember that camping trip we took to Yosemite?” Theo asked. “I forget how old we were. Do you remember the man?”

Of course, I remembered the man. I remembered the trip pretty clearly too. I’d been 12 and so excited to go to California. We’d been camping all weekend and it was our last lunch before we got on the road to head to the coast. I was done being grubby and I wanted to hit the beach and see some sea lions. I’d been drinking Sprite all morning; I remember my hands were sticky from peanut butter and jelly and my hair smelled like campfire. All of a sudden, I needed to run to the bathroom. Theo followed me and we took off for the restroom at the end of our campground loop.

Right when we got there, a man stepped forward out of nowhere and grabbed my arm. He pulled me to his body and I smacked into his stomach. He stank overwhelmingly of bleach. His hand gripped me tightly and my