The Princess and the Snowbird (13 page)

Liva spat at the Hunter and tried to reach him again with her hands, but he slapped her down. At least Tern
was hidden, she thought. She clung to that hope.

“Don’t think I won’t find that little boy. I will search the whole of Tamberg-on-the-Coast. He will not thank you for making him believe that he could get away from me,” said the Hunter.

Dimly Liva heard the sound of another bark, coming from a distance. It did not strike her that this hound spoke in the language of wild hounds until she saw her mother’s black form streak past her.

“Go!” Liva’s mother barked at Liva.

“But—,” she protested.

“Go now! Obey me and live!” her mother commanded.

The stone made it very difficult for Liva to move.

She watched as her mother leaped at the Hunter’s throat and pushed him back. There were marks on his chest, and his head banged into the stones of the street hard. He spat up a little blood. But then the dogs began to attack the hound, and the Hunter had a chance to gather himself.

Her mother was lame but fought fiercely, and Liva wondered whether the white stone affected her the way it did Liva. Yet the hound would not retreat.

The Hunter called back the dogs when Liva’s mother had fallen and did not try to get up.

He kicked her in the abdomen, and she made a terrible, soft sound.

With a huge effort, Liva crawled forward and put a hand to her mother’s face. The eyes were still open, the
gaze steady. Her mother coughed, her body wracked with the movement.

“Told you,” she whispered. “Go.” She bared her teeth and snapped them, as if to nip at Liva.

Despite all, Liva smiled briefly. This was her mother, protecting her daughter to the end.

The Hunter kicked the stone, and it came rolling closer to Liva until it touched her on one side. She went numb there: arm, leg, chest, face. It was as if the Hunter had cut her in half, and he had not even taken out his knife.

The Hunter sneered at her, but he turned toward the hound.

“Please,” Liva begged. “Please!”

Her mother called to her, in the language of the wild hounds, “My daughter!”

The Hunter laughed.

He took out his stone knife and plunged it into the heart of the hound.

Liva felt her mother’s death like a burning sensation. It was worse than the feeling of the white stone that stole her magic. This stole something deeper in her.

Suddenly there was a shadow over her, and Liva looked up. “Snowbird,” she murmured.

The Hunter followed Liva’s gaze. “What is that?” he demanded.

“Can you not feel its aur-magic?” Liva asked weakly. “More than mine. More than anyone’s you have ever seen.” Liva had not meant it as a challenge. It had been pure awe speaking.

But now the Hunter was incensed, his eyes bright and angry. “I will get it,” he said. “I will conquer its aur-magic. And then there will be none left.”

He ran, leaving Liva behind, chasing after the snowbird, calling at the top of his lungs for his men to get out their bows and stone-tipped arrows and begin shooting.

Liva was afraid for the snowbird but was not in a position to help it. Surely not even the Hunter could do anything against a power so elemental and enormous as that one.

Her heart torn with grief, she turned back to her mother’s body, but Karl was approaching rapidly. Liva remembered what her mother had told her. She had to run.

She tried to change into a wolf, but she could only get her right half to change, and there was no use in half a wolf’s body. She thought of Tern, who could only change his hand. Had she become like him, or was there still hope that she might recover from the touch of the stone?

For now all that mattered was getting Tern and getting away from here. Later she could think. Later she could plan what to do to help Jens, to stop the Hunter. Later she could regain her strength.

J
ENS SLEPT FITFULLY
during the night, dreaming of his mother and the Hunter’s knife, though in his dreams it was his father who held the blade. He woke with a terrible thirst. The eye where the Hunter had slid the blade under the skin was throbbing and itched so badly that Jens pulled himself forward so that his face touched the ground, and the pressure of that was nearly as good as scratching it.

But it was not long before the itch became a burning pain and Jens could hardly see at all. He called out for help again and again, but no one came.

A few hours later, Karl returned to the docks, dragging the body of a black hound with him. He threw it close to Jens.

“That’s what happens to the Hunter’s enemies,” he said, and left without another word.

It was not long before the rats were running over the
hound’s body, so many that they nearly hid the dark color of the hide. The only reminder of the creature beneath was the shape the rats made.

Jens forgot about his own pain at the sight of the hound he had met in the forest before, the hound who was Liva’s mother. Did Liva know her mother was here? Did Liva know her mother was dead? She must have come yet again to try to protect her daughter.

And what of Liva? Frantically Jens began to pull on the ropes that held him until his hands were so raw, they looked like bulging sausages. The only reason he could keep at it was that there was no feeling remaining in them, for the rope had been tied too well.

After half an hour of pain, Jens had one hand out, though it was badly torn and bruised. He was working on the second when he heard a voice behind him.

Jens turned and saw the Hunter’s son, Dofin.

Jens looked around to see what other of the Hunter’s men had come, but Dofin was alone and was missing two fingers on his left hand.

“Ah, you noticed this,” said Dofin, holding up the three remaining fingers. He wiggled them. “A lesson from my father. To remind me who and what he truly is and how little I matter to him.”

Jens did not know why it should make him sicker to think that the Hunter used his stone knife on his own son than on all the others he had already hurt with it, but it did.

Dofin held up a steel knife then and moved to Jens’s back. In a moment his other hand was free, and he sagged forward. Jens was overcome with the sudden return of circulation to his hands. Then he got to his feet, ready to run.

But he hesitated at the sight of the hound’s bones. He could not leave them behind, for Liva’s sake.

“My father thinks he has cowed me. In fact he has given me more power,” said Dofin.

“How can that be true?” asked Jens, distracted for a moment.

Dofin waved his mutilated hand. “This gives me more sympathy from those who hate my father secretly. And it makes it clear from first sight that I stand against him. There can be no fear that I am his spy. They will speak openly with me now, and I can begin planning against him.”

“Why have you come to me, then?” Jens asked. “Do you think I can kill your father for you?”

“I came because you saved me once,” said Dofin. “And because I see that I will need allies in places other than this town when I have defeated him.”

Dofin held out the jeweled half circlet that the hound had given Jens, and which he had thought lost forever. Jens was speechless as it was dropped into his hand. “Thank you,” he stammered out at last. He put the half circlet back in his pouch.

“When my father discovers that you are gone, as well
as the two from the jail, he will be very angry,” Dofin continued with a smirk. “Anger makes him vulnerable. He does not see it, but it is so. He will bring out his dogs and spend time and energy chasing after you. And while he is gone, I will be working against him.”

So Liva and the boy from the jail had already escaped from the town. Jens did not have to think about how to rescue them. He could find them in the forest and protect them from the Hunter.

“I brought you this, as well. To make sure you are not easy for him to recapture.” Dofin handed him a bag.

Jens glanced inside. It held dried fruit and nuts, a curved hunting knife, some coin, and a fresh loaf of bread that had to have been baked this very day.

“I must go,” said Jens. His focus was on Liva now. He threw the sack over his shoulder.

“You have a little time,” said Dofin. “My father sent all his men to chase after a great white snowbird that no one else can see. He says it has great magic, but I think his hatred for magic has made him unstable at last.”

“You cannot see the snowbird?” asked Jens.

“What do you mean?” Dofin’s eyes narrowed. “Of course I cannot see it. It is not real.”

Jens shrugged.

“You have seen it?”

“In the forest,” said Jens.

“But how can that be? He says that it has great aur-magic, but he has no aur-magic, nor do you. So you should not see it at all, and I should.”

“Perhaps it knows how to disguise itself when it wishes to go unseen,” said Jens.

“But I would not hurt it,” said Dofin.

“Perhaps not. But you are not all humans,” said Jens. And he wondered whether Dofin might try to think of ways to use the snowbird for his own purposes, if he could, to stop his father. The snowbird was not a creature that would wish to be used.

But for now, Jens had responsibility to Liva—and the body of the hound. He looked around for a sack to carry the hound in.

“Is that so important to you?” asked Dofin, staring at the remains in confusion.

“Yes,” said Jens.

“Will it help you fight my father?” Again, Dofin showed that he thought of his own battle before the aur-magic itself.

“It does not have aur-magic left in it, does it?” asked Jens. He could not tell for himself.

Dofin’s eyes went wide. Then he seemed to concentrate for a moment, and shrugged. “No aur-magic.”

“Then I cannot see what use it will be against him.”

“But you want it still?” asked Dofin.

“I cannot leave without it,” said Jens.

With a shrug Dofin took off his shirt and handed it to Jens, rebuttoning his jacket over his bare chest. Jens tied the ends of the sleeves together and made a kind of sling out of it.

Gently he moved the bones of the hound into the
shirt and then cinched the shirt together with the string around the neck. He lifted it to see how it would fare, and everything seemed to hold together.

“Now, hurry and leave this place, for your own sake and for mine. There will soon be a battle here for power over the city, and I intend to be the one who wins it,” said Dofin.

“I wish you luck,” said Jens.

L
IVA WAS RELIEVED
that the Hunter had chased after the snowbird, leaving her and Tern as if they no longer mattered.

Now they were nearly at the top of the hill above the town, for she had zigzagged to elude any traps. They went slowly for that reason, but also because Tern could not move swiftly and Liva was hardly any faster, after the draining touch of the Hunter’s huge stone. She was no longer numb on her left side, but she could change only a little more than one arm now, an arm and a shoulder, no more. She told herself it was an improvement and she should be happy for it, but it was difficult.

She and Tern rested behind a great pine tree, one side of its needles gone yellow with disease or human pollution. They sat there in the darkness, as the termites and other insects rose up from the ground and marched around them toward the tree. It was being eaten away.

Liva put her hand out and let the termites march up her arm, then down her back. It tickled, but the sensation of other lives tied to hers was enough to make her think of her mother. In the rush of escaping from the Hunter and the excitement of seeing the snowbird once more, she had hardly thought of the hound’s death. Now the loss struck her fully. It was like swallowing a stone whole, for it sat heavily in her stomach, and it made her feel that she could not move without feeling pain. She went over and over her last sight of her mother still living. Her mother’s last leap, her last breath, her last sound.

She did not know how long she spent like this, but she had grown cold by the time she felt Tern’s touch on her shoulder, and she looked at him long enough to realize that her head hurt and her cheeks stung from the salt of the tears and her rubbing.

Tern beckoned her toward something, and Liva had to come closer to him to see it.

It was a crab, white-shelled with black specks, smaller than Liva’s hand. Liva bent down and stared at it, surprised to see it so far from the ocean. She had never been a crab before. She had never been any creature from the ocean. There were things she had left to do with the aur-magic.

It was a comforting thought.

She let Tern rest then, and tried to rest herself. She had not slept since she had entered the town two days before, and it was already turning cool in the dusk. Liva
had no fear of moving at night, and thought it might be an advantage against the Hunter.

It began to rain. She could not sleep except in bits and pieces.

She thought it was a dream when she saw the white wings of the snowbird approach again in the dim light of the dawn.

The snowbird swooped closer, and then its wings enfolded her, healing her completely where the stone had cut her. The snowbird let off aur-magic as simply as it breathed, and all around it benefited.

Liva thought of Tern and hoped fervently that he was feeling the magic too, even if he could not take it all in.

The snowbird sang out. “Destroy.” It might have been a threatening word, but the snowbird sang it with such beauty that Liva could only listen as the long, deep, drawn-out notes poured toward her.

Then the snowbird snatched her up in its beak and flew her into the air. It happened so suddenly and with such speed that Liva’s head whirled, and she had to close her eyes for a few moments before she could orient herself. She opened them to see Tamberg-on-the-Coast below her.

The snowbird was circling around the edges of the port town, but Liva didn’t know why. It had not spoken—or sung—to her since that first word, which might have meant almost anything.

Destroy what?

Destroy the town?

Destroy the Hunter?

The snowbird was very careful to hold her gently, but Liva thought that riding on its back would have been more pleasant. Perhaps someday she could fly with the feel of feathers beneath her fingers.

Then they were descending again, and the world seemed to blur around Liva. She could see nothing but streaks of color and had to hold her breath.

The snowbird let go of her before it touched the ground.

Liva screamed in terror, and then felt the ground a moment later. She had fallen perhaps her own height, no more than that. She found her feet and then took in her surroundings, feeling suddenly weakened. The snowbird tucked in its wings and nudged Liva forward.

They were in the street where she’d been left by the old woman in the cart. The street where her mother had died, fighting the Hunter. The street where the stone had stolen her magic. And the stone was right in front of her.

No wonder she felt so weak.

The street was nearly empty, for it seemed that no one wished to go where the Hunter might reappear with his men at any moment.

The snowbird was moving toward the stone but did not touch it. Instead it sang out “stone” to Liva. There was so much expressed in the tone of the music. Fear and disgust, wrongness, evil, and a future that was empty and without magic.

“Yes, I know,” said Liva. “It’s a terrible thing.” Could the snowbird destroy it simply with aur-magic? But the snowbird pressed Liva toward the stone.

“No, please,” said Liva.

“Carry,” sang the snowbird.

“But my magic,” said Liva. “It will hurt me.” She was only just beginning to recover. The snowbird had so much more magic than she did. Surely it made more sense for the snowbird to take the stone in its claws.

But if the snowbird were to pick up the stone without any protection, how much of its magic would be numbed and taken away? Far more than hers, for it had more to give.

And how could she refuse anything the snowbird asked?

“Destroy stone,” sang the snowbird.

Liva bent down and lifted the stone with all her strength. She inched it closer to her chest and then forced herself to wrap her arms more tightly around it. It took all her will not to thrust it away. The feeling as her aur-magic went numb again was like freezing slowly, being filled with ice from her breath to her bones.

Then the snowbird picked her up in its beak once more. She felt a moment’s pinch, and she was flying. With a few flaps of its wings the snowbird was gliding over the currents above the ocean. Liva could hardly see a hint of the town on the shore, but ahead was an island. A tiny island, hardly more than a mound, really. The snowbird
headed steadily for it. As they drew closer, Liva could see that there was a hill on the island topped with an enormous stone of the same whitish gray as the one in her hand.

The snowbird jiggled her a little, and Liva was afraid that she’d be dropped with the stone onto the island.

“Destroy stone, destroy stone,” the snowbird sang, with more urgency.

At last Liva understood. She must drop the stone. From this height, the thinly layered stone would shatter and be destroyed. Liva wished she could shatter all the stone on the island as well, but she could not see how to do it. Which meant that the Hunter would always have a place to come back to, to get more stones and more blades for his knife.

This stone, however, would be gone. Liva had to feel satisfaction at that.

She counted to three, then let it go.

She watched as the stone fell, growing smaller and smaller. She listened to the sound of the impact of stone on stone, and saw the tiny cloud of dust that rose from the island and then was gone.

There was little immediate relief in the release of the stone, though Liva’s arms and chest ached afterward with the strain of lifting the stone’s weight so long. Worse than that, as the snowbird flew back to the shore, Liva could still not feel her own aur-magic. The wind rushing into her face and the sound of the ocean distracted her from all else.

But as the snowbird flew, its magic slowly suffused her. The snowbird left her near the tree where Tern still slept. It called out a song, one with no word that Liva could find to match in her own mind. Something about promises and magic and the shining of the sun.

“Home,” it said.

“Yes,” Liva promised it. “We’ll go home.” Home to the cave. Her home, and now perhaps it would be Tern’s as well. If they could get there without the Hunter stopping them.

The snowbird stepped back, preparing to fly away.

Liva thought of asking it to take her and Tern all the way back home, but she had tried to speak in the language of snowbirds herself before and could not. With the loss to her aur-magic now, she was sure she could not. And perhaps the snowbird had more important matters to attend to, things to do with the aur-magic that she could not understand.

When the snowbird was gone, she woke the boy, and they set out into the forest.

As Liva walked, she realized anew that her mother would not be waiting for her. That the black hound would never nip at and scold her again. That the cave would be empty when she arrived in it, as it had never been empty before.

Liva gasped air in, then sobbed and sobbed. In her ears there was nothing but the sound of grief.