Read Galaxy's Edge Magazine: Issue 2, May 2013 for Free Online Page A

grains and I pick one to chew absently. When I reach my tent by the creek, my pots and pans are scattered, my food supply is shredded and strewn along the bank.
    I’m cleaning the mess when I hear the grumble of a bear. He swipes his paw at me before I see him, and I fall to the ground. The gravel smashes into my elbows and knees. The smell of pine and dust brings me to my senses. He swings at me again, and his paw leaves a scrape down my leg.
    The injury burns. My breath is frozen in my chest and my palms are damp with sweat. I clutch a cast iron skillet and, with no other weapon, throw it at his head. While he rubs his face with a paw, I scamper and trip my way to the tallest pine and climb. He paces below.
    My skin tingles and I feel an itch. The sensation multiplies until it’s like a thousand insects burrowing into me. My skin peels. A wave of nausea crashes into me like the river against the rocks a few feet away. The change is happening too quickly. I hug the trunk, panting. A clump of Amber’s hair falls to the bear. He bats at it and sniffs. Pieces of Amber melt away. When Amber is gone, the bear is gone, too.
    I crawl back to the ruined tent and look in my mirror. A crack runs down the middle, but I can still see my new face in the reflection. I’m still pale, but my freckles are gone and I have blond hair.
    The shaman’s medicine doesn’t work. I’m only half tribe and half white. Maybe I should never have agreed to the medicine. I don’t fit in either world.
    I stay at my campground on the reservation for the next few days. A blond will not do. The tanner sees too many blonds. “Everyone in town is blond,” he told Rose. I spend the time cleaning the mess from the bear.
    ***
    Today I am Mia. My skin looks like porcelain and my eyelids look swollen. I have straight black hair. I run to the village to watch the young man in the tannery. Mia should have a boyfriend who works at the tannery, but he doesn’t look at her. I am not Rose.
    “Can I help you, Miss?” He asks.
    “My name is Mia.”
    “Can I help you, Mia?” His eyes never leave the saddle he is brushing.
    “No,” I say, because I know now I’m not who he is looking for today.
    I leave a rose for him at the table. The last one of the season. I watch him from a safe spot outside the window. He never touches the rose. I go back the next day and the next, but the rose doesn’t move from its spot. It wilts and dries. One day it is gone.
    ***
    The bear comes to me in a dream and when he lifts his face I see the shaman. Her grey hair blends into the white patch of hair on the bear’s neck and it is as if she is holding the bear up for me to see.
    “I’ve brought you a bear,” she says.
    “I don’t need a bear. I need friends, people to talk to. I’m lonely, and your medicine does not work.”
    She moves around me to light a fire and the bear flops to the ground like a pile of the tanner’s skins. “Animal medicine takes a long time to work.”
    The wood smokes for a minute before the first flames lick the chilly night air. The pines that surround the campsite glow, but the forest beyond remains black.
    “I asked for someone to love me and accept me. I didn’t ask for animal medicine,” I say.
    My voice sounds muffled. My lips feel smashed against my teeth. I’m confused to find I’m talking into my arm. I rise and blink in the darkness of my tent. Outside the campfire smokes as if a fire was lit and died hours ago.
    ***
    Today I am Abigail. My skin is so dark it’s black. My hair is also black, but curly and coarse. The tanner notices Abigail. His eyes follow me around the tannery, but his shoulders are tense, his lips are turned down in a frown. I finger a design on a small leather bag for sale. It is of a rose.
    “Put that down.” His hand is gripping a hammer so tight his knuckles are white. “That is not for you. Put that down.”
    He stomps towards me and I fumble the bag back to the display and run to the reservation. My