The Princess and the Hound (2 page)

P
RINCE
G
EORGE COULD
not remember seeing his father without the crown on his head, except perhaps in bed, and even then the imprint on his temples was clear enough. But the crown could have been melted down or stolen away, and it would not have mattered. George could see kingship in every movement his father made.

When King Davit spoke to Cook Elin, he always complimented her on how well suited her cheese was to her tart, how her salad reflected the colors of the autumn mountains in the distance. George had no idea if his father liked the flavor of the salad or the tart. He did not know if his father knew either. He knew only that the king had a duty to offer approval to his subjects who strove to please him. And the king always did his duty.

When speaking to the scarred and muscular lord
general of the mounted army, King Davit nodded and talked wisely of the best way to deal with the effects of the war. George had no sense of what the war had been like for his father, whether he had been afraid of the sound of the enemy’s war cry, as had the guardsman at the gate. The war was the kingdom’s war, and so it had been fought.

Even when George was alone with his father, it seemed there was no difference. The king told George the story of the baker who had made too many loaves but at the end of the day would give none of them to the poor and then found in the morning they had been eaten by mice instead.

The king told George of the seamstress who left an unfinished seam in a fancy ball gown, thinking it would never be noticed, then went to the ball herself—only to watch the gown gradually spin away from the wearer until she stood in nothing but her undergarments and wrath at her betrayal.

In the stories there was always a message for George to remember. For the prince of Kendel, from the king. Never a story for fun, with magic and wildness, with adventures and threatenings and the promise of more to come. Never a story that made George want to cry, or to laugh, or to dance. Only a story to make him think.

And though George had seen the king’s servants take off their uniforms and play like children outside in throwing or wrestling games, he never saw his father
play. His father smiled when it was right for the king to smile. He frowned to show the king’s displeasure. He was always right and good, but he never felt like a father.

Yet George’s mother, for all she wore long gowns with glittering jewels and even the fragile, ruby-encrusted crown on her head when she had to, seemed to be his mother no matter what else she was. For when she looked at George, whether she had come to his own chamber to play with him or held out her hand for him to meet her in the throne room, she had a way of making him feel complete in himself. And as though there were nothing he could do that would make her turn away.

That look was the most wonderful thing in the world.

She started taking George to the stables before he was old enough to speak his own name. That was where he learned to recognize the smell on her hands and sometimes even the dirt beneath her nails. She seemed most alive there, and the smell of the stables fit her as the crown fit his father’s head.

The horses perked up when she came close to them, before they could possibly have heard or even seen her. They began to stamp their feet, and their heads came up, all turned in the right direction. George used to think this was a delightful trick and would clap his little hands in delight.

“This is Sugar,” his mother said, introducing George to the new foal that stood shakily in a stall with his mother, Honey.

George held out his hand. The little foal came and licked at it, and George laughed at the delicious, gentle sensation.

His mother then bent over and gave Sugar the full attention that she often reserved for George.

He might have been jealous, but she kept her hand warm in his the whole time.

Then she brushed Honey until she shone, and Sugar too, talking with every stroke. Nonsense words, it seemed at first to George, but gradually he began to understand them. They weren’t human words at all; they were horse words.

Words for things that had no names in his human language, except the words that George made up for them.

Sweet-green, for the smell of his mother’s hands.

Warm-red, for the touch of her brush.

Purple-light, for the sunrise in spring.

Summer-burn, for the hot light that made them blink.

They were private words, George learned quickly. For if there were others in the stables who might cross their paths or if the stablemaster had come with her, she wouldn’t speak the horse words at all.

She would sing or let out a stream of syllables that
had the cadence of the horse words, but left their meaning up to George to fill in. He had grown very good at it by the time he was four years old, and now and again he tried to say a word aloud himself.

His mother smiled at him if they were alone, but if someone else was present, she put a hand on his shoulder and shook her head very gravely. Never with fear in her eyes, but with enough darkness that he stopped instantly.

It was only three or four times before he learned that lesson, and likely those who heard him speak to horses in the animals’ own language thought simply that they did not understand his babyish pronunciation or that he was speaking nonsense words as babies sometimes will, even when they are too old to be babies anymore.

George and his mother knew better.

The horses were dear to his mother’s heart, but now and again she took George to the kennels as well. George liked how the hounds danced and barked at him, and he was sure that if only he listened long and hard enough, he would begin to understand them. But it did not happen.

Stranger still, he never heard his mother talk to the hounds as she did to the horses. She let them lick her hand, and she patted their heads or scratched behind their ears when they seemed to want it. She knew words to speak to a passing sparrow, but not to the hounds.

Yet she nonetheless seemed to understand them, for
when the great white hound that was one of the king’s favorites had a tick burrowing behind his left leg that not even the houndmaster had seen, she knew it was there. And she understood when Solomon, the old, drooping hound that had ruled over the kennels for as long as George could remember, was entering the long illness that led to his death. She knew he could not be saved, that the best the houndmaster could manage was to offer comfort.

George could see that his mother did not love the hounds as she loved the horses, but he did not understand why. He thought it was no more than a matter of taste. George knew that his favorite sweet, made light and fluffy with egg and then colored brightly, made his mother shake her head and hold a hand to her mouth, while her favorite, a dark, hard licorice, was no more than passable to him. So it must be with hounds and horses and his mother.

Then, on the day of George’s fifth birthday, his mother took him to the houndmaster, a great big man with a red face and a broken nose who laughed too loud. He stood up when George and his mother entered, and at his feet George saw one of the bitch hounds and a litter of newborn pups. They were slick and wet yet, and the houndmaster shook his head at the queen’s ability to know that the bitch had been delivered of them just this minute.

The houndmaster turned to George. “Happy birthday,
Your Highness. I had planned to bring news of these to the castle tonight as a gift. But as long as you’re here, you may choose which one you like the best right now. You can’t take it with you, but you can come back and visit until it’s ready to be weaned. Then it will be your very own hound.”

George had never before felt so excited. He knelt down and watched the pups for a long while, unmoving. The bitch had a shaggy red coat and long ears that flopped around her face. Two of the pups looked just like her. The other two were more golden colored, and their ears were not as long. They had sharp noses, though, and seemed perfect to George.

He pointed to the smaller of the two, the one that whined less for its mother’s milk. “That one.”

“If you’re sure?” asked the houndmaster, his eyes turning to the queen.

“The choice is my son’s entirely,” she said in a grave tone that made George look at her, but only for a moment. Then his attention went back to the pup.

“You’ll want to think of a name for it,” said the houndmaster.

A name? The horses always named themselves.

George moved closer and put his hands to the tiny pup. It nudged at him, then tried to suck at his fingers but was soon disgusted at the lack of milk and pushed him away.

“I’ll think about it,” George said.

He thought about nothing else during his party or in the days that followed. He dragged his mother with him to the hounds every day, hurrying her through the stables, and then he sat and watched, intent on every sound of the pups. He waited for a name. He knew there must be a name.

But not yet.

Three weeks later the houndmaster said it was time for George’s pup to be weaned. He lifted it away from its mother and its littermates in a small blanket, then wrapped it up in it and handed it to George.

George went to his bedchamber with the squirming, wiggling package, his mother at his side. There was something she wanted to say to him. George could tell that, and he waited for her to say it when they were alone again.

But as he teased the pup, she did not speak. And when a bit of meat was brought from the kitchen, George put it in front of his pup and watched him tear at it.

“This pup is a pet,” his mother said at last. “Do you understand that, George?”

Of course George understood that. His mother went away for the night, and George waited until it was too late for anyone to check on him again, then got out of bed and curled up with the pup by the fire. There they slept together until morning.

George was sure then that he knew the pup’s name.
Teeth, he called it, because that was the word the pup used most when they were playing together.

The pup spoke a simple and incomplete language, but George didn’t think about that or about the fact that the older hounds did not speak words at all. He accepted it as easily as he accepted the wounded war veterans in his father’s guard and the girl in the kitchen who had been born without an arm.

If he did not speak to Teeth as his mother spoke to the horses, well, he was pleased that he had learned to communicate with his pup in his own way. That seemed to be more than his mother had ever done with the hounds. And George was proud of himself for that.

Of course for the next few weeks George took Teeth with him wherever he went. He showed him to any of the castle servants who were willing to take a moment to admire the prince’s pup. There was no detail of his pup’s life that George would not share, if one was willing to listen long enough.

George’s mother came as she always did and asked if George wanted to visit the stables with her. But now George said no more often than not, and she would sigh and go alone. Now and again she would stay with George and his pup. Yet there was a sadness about her. A look in her eye when she watched Teeth, something like the look that she had given Solomon, the old, dying hound.

Then came the day that George used a word he had learned from Teeth, the pup’s own sound for water. But
Teeth would not respond. The pup stared up at George as if he had never heard the word in his short life.

George shrugged it off, thinking that the pup was tired or that he himself was tired.

But the next day it happened again. With the word for jump.

And it kept happening, over and over, every day.

Until Teeth knew none of the words that George knew, the words that Teeth himself had taught George. But when George would say a short human word, Teeth knew it.

Teeth had forgotten his own language and learned the language of humans.

George had never seen it happen before, not with any animal. And yet why should that be so bad? Why should George mourn over it? He told himself that it was the pup’s way of showing love for him.

But George could not bear it.

Day after day he watched as his pup began to sound like no more than any of the other hounds that George had heard in the stables, barks meaningless and empty. There was no more communication between them. George spoke. Teeth understood. But he could not speak back. He could only obey.

George remembered then what his mother had said.

“This pup is a pet.”

George had not understood then what she meant. Now he did.

And it seemed to him that there was only one thing left for him to do.

He wrapped Teeth once more in the small blanket the houndmaster had given him and, tears streaming down his face, he took the much larger package back where it had come from.

“What’s wrong?” asked the houndmaster, utterly bewildered at the prince’s return of the birthday gift and of the stubborn and hurt expression on the prince’s face.

“I don’t want it anymore,” said George.

“Why not? What’s wrong with it?” the houndmaster asked. “Is it sick? Did it bite you? Young pups will do that sometimes. It doesn’t mean anything. A little nip like that doesn’t really hurt, anyway, does it? Take it back; take care of it and train it. It will be a fine hound, you’ll see.”

George shook his head. “No, I don’t want it,” he said. And he turned his back on the whining pup and did not look back, though nothing he had ever done before was so difficult.

The houndmaster took the pup back to his littermates, and though the pup moped about for a time, eventually he seemed to forget that he had ever been chosen by the prince and became quite a good hunter.

The houndmaster did not think well of George, however. The queen went to him later and told him that he should not mind a young prince’s whimsy, but it was not whimsy that bothered him. It was the way the prince
had given up on the hound. Without a second chance, without mercy. What kind of prince does that? What kind of prince can feel nothing for a pup that has lived with him for weeks?