"Controlling your emotions, Bella," Jasper answered. "I've never seen a newborn do that-stop an emotion in its tracks that way. You were upset, but when you saw our concern, you reined it in, regained power over yourself. I was prepared to help, but you didn't need it."

"Is that wrong?" I asked. My body automatically froze as I waited for his verdict.

"No," he said, but his voice was unsure.

Edward stroked his hand down my arm, as if encouraging me to thaw. "It's very impressive, Bella, but we don't understand it. We don't know how long it can hold."

I considered that for a portion of a second. At any moment, would I snap? Turn into a monster?

I couldn't feel it coming on.... Maybe there was no way to antic.i.p.ate such a thing.

"But what do you think?" Alice asked, a little impatient now, pointing to the mirror.

"I'm not sure," I hedged, not wanting to admit how frightened I really was.

I stared at the beautiful woman with the terrifying eyes, looking for pieces of me. There was something there in the shape of her lips-if you looked past the dizzying beauty, it was true that her upper lip was slightly out of balance, a bit too full to match the lower.

Finding this familiar little flaw made me feel a tiny bit better. Maybe the rest of me was in there, too.

I raised my hand experimentally, and the woman in the mirror copied the movement, touching her face, too. Her crimson eyes watched me warily.

Edward sighed.

I turned away from her to look at him, raising one eyebrow.

"Disappointed?" I asked, my ringing voice impa.s.sive.

He laughed. "Yes," he admitted.

I felt the shock break through the composed mask on my face, followed instantly by the hurt.

Alice snarled. Jasper leaned forward again, waiting for me to snap.

But Edward ignored them and wrapped his arms tightly around my newly frozen form, pressing his lips against my cheek. "I was rather hoping that I'd be able to hear your mind, now that it is more similar to my own," he murmured. "And here I am, as frustrated as ever, wondering what could possibly be going on inside your head."

I felt better at once.

"Oh well," I said lightly, relieved that my thoughts were still my own. "I guess my brain will never work right. At least I'm pretty."

It was becoming easier to joke with him as I adjusted, to think in straight lines. To be myself.

Edward growled in my ear. "Bella, you have never been merely pretty."

Then his face pulled away from mine, and he sighed. "All right, all right," he said to someone.

"What?" I asked.

"You're making Jasper more edgy by the second. He may relax a little when you've hunted."

I looked at Jasper's worried expression and nodded. I didn't want to snap here, if that was coming. Better to be surrounded by trees than family.

"Okay. Let's hunt," I agreed, a thrill of nerves and antic.i.p.ation making my stomach quiver. I unwrapped Edward's arms from around me, keeping one of his hands, and turned my back on the strange and beautiful woman in the mirror.

21. FIRST HUNT.

"The window?" I asked, staring two stories down.

I'd never really been afraid of heights per se, but being able to see all the details with such clarity made the prospect less appealing. The angles of the rocks below were sharper than I would have imagined them.

Edward smiled. "It's the most convenient exit. If you're frightened, I can carry you."

"We have all eternity, and you're worried about the time it would take to walk to the back door?"

He frowned slightly. "Renesmee and Jacob are downstairs..."

"Oh."

Right. I was the monster now. I had to keep away from scents that might trigger my wild side. From the people that I loved in particular. Even the ones I didn't really know yet."Is Renesmee... okay... with Jacob there?" I whispered. I realized belatedly that it must have been Jacob's heart I'd heard below. I listened hard again, but I could only hear the one steady pulse. "He doesn't like her much."

Edward's lips tightened in an odd way. "Trust me, she is perfectly safe. I know exactly what Jacob is thinking."

"Of course," I murmured, and looked at the ground again.

"Stalling?" he challenged.

"A little. I don't know how..."

And I was very conscious of my family behind me, watching silently. Mostly silently.

Emmett had already chuckled under his breath once. One mistake, and he'd be rolling on the floor. Then the jokes about the world's only clumsy vampire would start....

Also, this dress-that Alice must have put me in sometime when I was too lost in the burning to notice-was not what I would have picked out for either jumping or hunting.

Tightly fitted ice-blue silk? What did she think I would need it for? Was there a c.o.c.ktail party later?

"Watch me," Edward said. And then, very casually, he stepped out of the tall, open window and fell.

I watched carefully, a.n.a.lyzing the angle at which he bent his knees to absorb the impact.

The sound of his landing was very low-a muted thud that could have been a door softly closed, or a book gently laid on a table.

It didn't look hard.

Clenching my teeth as I concentrated, I tried to copy his casual step into empty air.

Ha! The ground seemed to move toward me so slowly that it was nothing at all to place my feet-what shoes had Alice put me in? Stilettos? She'd lost her mind-to place my silly shoes exactly right so that landing was no different than stepping one foot forward on a flat surface.

I absorbed the impact in the b.a.l.l.s of my feet, not wanting to snap off the thin heels. My landing seemed just as quiet as his. I grinned at him.

"Right. Easy."

He smiled back. "Bella?"

"Yes?"

"That was quite graceful-even for a vampire."I considered that for a moment, and then I beamed. If he'd just been saying that, then Emmett would have laughed. No one found his remark humorous, so it must have been true. It was the first time anyone had ever applied the word graceful to me in my entire life... or, well, existence anyway.

"Thank you," I told him.

And then I hooked the silver satin shoes off my feet one by one and lobbed them together back through the open window. A little too hard, maybe, but I heard someone catch them before they could damage the paneling.

Alice grumbled, "Her fashion sense hasn't improved as much as her balance."

Edward took my hand-I couldn't stop marveling at the smoothness, the comfortable temperature of his skin-and darted through the backyard to the edge of the river. I went along with him effortlessly.

Everything physical seemed very simple.

"Are we swimming?" I asked him when we stopped beside the water.

"And ruin your pretty dress? No. We're jumping."

I pursed my lips, considering. The river was about fifty yards wide here.

"You first," I said.

He touched my cheek, took two quick backward strides, and then ran back those two steps, launching himself from a flat stone firmly embedded in the riverbank. I studied the flash of movement as he arced over the water, finally turning a somersault just before he disappeared into the thick trees on the other side of the river.

"Show-off," I muttered, and heard his invisible laugh.

I backed up five paces, just in case, and took a deep breath.

Suddenly, I was anxious again. Not about falling or getting hurt-I was more worried about the forest getting hurt.

It had come on slowly, but I could feel it now-the raw, ma.s.sive strength thrilling in my limbs. I was suddenly sure that if I wanted to tunnel under the river, to claw or beat my way straight through the bedrock, it wouldn't take me very long. The objects around me -the trees, the shrubs, the rocks... the house-had all begun to look very fragile.

Hoping very much that Esme was not particularly fond of any specific trees across the river, I began my first stride. And then stopped when the tight satin split six inches up my thigh. Alice!

Well, Alice always seemed to treat clothes as if they were disposable and meant for one- time usage, so she shouldn't mind this. I bent to carefully grasp the hem at the undamaged right seam between my fingers and, exerting the tiniest amount of pressure possible, I ripped the dress open to the top of my thigh. Then I fixed the other side to match.

Much better.

I could hear the m.u.f.fled laughter in the house, and even the sound of someone gritting her teeth. The laughter came from upstairs and down, and I very easily recognized the much different, rough, throaty chuckle from the first floor.

So Jacob was watching, too? I couldn't imagine what he was thinking now, or what he was still doing here. I'd envisioned our reunion-if he could ever forgive me-taking place far in the future, when I was more stable, and time had healed the wounds I'd inflicted in his heart.

I didn't turn to look at him now, wary of my mood swings. It wouldn't be good to let any emotion take too strong a hold on my frame of mind. Jasper's fears had me on edge, too. I had to hunt before I dealt with anything else. I tried to forget everything else so I could concentrate.

"Bella?" Edward called from the woods, his voice moving closer. "Do you want to watch again?"

But I remembered everything perfectly, of course, and I didn't want to give Emmett a reason to find more humor in my education. This was physical-it should be instinctive.

So I took a deep breath and ran for the river.

Unhindered by my skirt, it took only one long bound to reach the water's edge. Just an eighty-fourth of a second, and yet it was plenty of time-my eyes and my mind moved so quickly that one step was enough. It was simple to position my right foot just so against the flat stone and exert the adequate pressure to send my body wheeling up into the air. I was paying more attention to aim than force, and I erred on the amount of power necessary-but at least I didn't err on the side that would have gotten me wet.

The fifty yard width was slightly too easy a distance...

It was a strange, giddy, electrifying thing, but a short thing. An entire second had yet to pa.s.s, and I was across.

I was expecting the close-packed trees to be a problem, but they were surprisingly helpful. It was a simple matter to reach out with one sure hand as I fell back toward the earth again deep inside the forest and catch myself on a convenient branch; I swung lightly from the limb and landed on my toes, still fifteen feet from the ground on the wide bough of a Sitka spruce.

It was fabulous.

Over the sound of my peals of delighted laughter, I could hear Edward racing to find me. My jump had been twice as long as his. When he reached my tree, his eyes were wide. I leaped nimbly from the branch to his side, soundlessly landing again on the b.a.l.l.s of my feet."Was that good?" I wondered, my breathing accelerated with excitement.

"Very good." He smiled approvingly, but his casual tone didn't match the surprised expression in his eyes.

"Can we do it again?"

"Focus, Bella-we're on a hunting trip."

"Oh, right." I nodded. "Hunting."

"Follow me... if you can." He grinned, his expression suddenly taunting, and broke into a run.

He was faster than me. I couldn't imagine how he moved his legs with such blinding speed, but it was beyond me. However, I was stronger, and every stride of mine matched the length of three of his. And so I flew with him through the living green web, by his side, not following at all. As I ran, I couldn't help laughing quietly at the thrill of it; the laughter neither slowed me nor upset my focus.

I could finally understand why Edward never hit the trees when he ran-a question that had always been a mystery to me. It was a peculiar sensation, the balance between the speed and the clarity. For, while I rocketed over, under, and through the thick jade maze at a rate that should have reduced everything around me to a streaky green blur, I could plainly see each tiny leaf on all the small branches of every insignificant shrub that I pa.s.sed.

The wind of my speed blew my hair and my torn dress out behind me, and, though I knew it shouldn't, it felt warm against my skin. Just as the rough forest floor shouldn't feel like velvet beneath my bare soles, and the limbs that whipped against my skin shouldn't feel like caressing feathers.

The forest was much more alive than I'd ever known-small creatures whose existence I'd never guessed at teemed in the leaves around me. They all grew silent after we pa.s.sed, their breath quickening in fear. The animals had a much wiser reaction to our scent than humans seemed to. Certainly, it'd had the opposite effect on me.

I kept waiting to feel winded, but my breath came effortlessly. I waited for the burn to begin in my muscles, but my strength only seemed to increase as I grew accustomed to my stride. My leaping bounds stretched longer, and soon he was trying to keep up with me. I laughed again, exultant, when I heard him falling behind. My naked feet touched the ground so infrequently now it felt more like flying than running.

"Bella," he called dryly, his voice even, lazy. I could hear nothing else; he had stopped.

I briefly considered mutiny.

But, with a sigh, I whirled and skipped lightly to his side, some hundred yards back. I looked at him expectantly. He was smiling, with one eyebrow raised. He was so beautiful that I could only stare."Did you want to stay in the country?" he asked, amused. "Or were you planning to continue on to Canada this afternoon?"

"This is fine," I agreed, concentrating less on what he was saying and more on the mesmerizing way his lips moved when he spoke. It was hard not to become sidetracked with everything fresh in my strong new eyes. "What are we hunting?"

"Elk. I thought something easy for your first time ..." He trailed off when my eyes narrowed at the word easy.