The Princess and the Snowbird (14 page)

F
LEEING
, J
ENS SAW
the shape of the snowbird high overhead. He thought it might swoop down to see him, but it did not even seem to notice him. And why should it? He continued on his way to the forest, which he reached while it was still morning.

He sighed relief at the familiar place. The town’s scent of so many humans together, and of the fear that seemed to grow like reeds along a river because of the Hunter—all were gone. Here was the scent of cool and green life, and of death, too, but not of terror and mistrust.

Then he heard dogs behind him. The Hunter’s dogs! Jens could not think he was worth the Hunter’s trouble. They must be after Liva, who still had aur-magic enough to threaten the Hunter. Jens ran ahead as fast as he could, ducking and circling obstacles. He must reach Liva before the Hunter did.

Hours later, Jens dragged himself forward, limping, with a hand to his side. He felt like his insides might fall out. As if in reward, he caught his first glimpse of Liva in a copse where the sun glinted on her in human form.

He called out to warn her.

But he was so exhausted that he lost his balance and went down, the shirt sling with the hound in it slipping to the side.

Liva came for him.

He lay on the ground, staring up at the branches above his head—until her face was over his, her hand under his chin.

Her face was streaked with dirt and sweat. Her hair was long and dark and wild with burrs and tangles. She wore scraps of a shift she must have gotten in the port town, decorated with holes and greenish stains.

His mouth opened and a croaking sound came out, as though she thought he could speak in the language of frogs.

She put a finger to his lips. “Hush, Jens,” she said.

He obeyed her.

In a moment she was pressing the juice of spring grass into his mouth to quench his thirst.

“The Hunter is not far behind,” he got out in strangled bursts. “He has his dogs chasing us.”

“I know,” she said. “I have heard them now and again. I can feel them as well, with my aur-magic. I have that much of it left.”

“So, the Hunter used his knife on you?” said Jens.

“He began, but he did not finish. My mother stopped him,” Liva said.

“Hunter,” whispered the boy next to her, and he began to tremble.

She turned to him. “Tern, don’t worry. I will protect you.”

“You two go ahead of me,” said Jens. “Find shelter and hide yourselves deep in the forest. I will slow them down and distract them for as long as I can.” The young boy with Liva was so young and fragile, Jens could see why she had brought him so far, though it endangered her life. He was what the Hunter meant to eradicate, in his search to cleanse the earth of aur-magic. Jens would do whatever he could to help her in this.

But Liva would not listen to him. “I won’t leave you here. You’ve got to come with us.”

Jens closed his eyes, exhausted, and shook his head.

“If you don’t get up, the Hunter will catch me all the sooner,” she whispered in his ear. “For if you are here, I will be, too. He will catch us all together.”

And Jens knew she was speaking the truth. She never lied. It was part of the way of life in the forest she had grown up with. She had never learned deceit as other humans did. If she said that she would not leave without him, she meant it.

“Listen, Jens,” she said urgently. “If he is coming to me, I want to face him on my own terms, in the land I
know well. Let him come to me there, and see what he discovers about the true aur-magic—and the world around it. He only knows the tehr-magic of the port, of the people who have given up the forest. But my kin are there. And so is my magic.” She pointed to the forest in the north.

“Ready?” she asked, after a moment.

He got up.

Tern hovered nearby, overburdened by the shirt sling that he had taken up, which held the remains of the hound.

Liva did not know what was in it, Jens thought. He would tell her when he had a moment. And then he would give her the half circlet. She surely deserved it now. She had proven that she was the protector of the aur-magic, and she deserved the symbol of the authority her mother had left behind for her. As soon as he had a moment to explain—that was all he was waiting for.

Jens carried the sling when he could, then sometimes allowed Tern to do it. The boy was eager to do his part, though he did not speak and did not look Jens in the eye. He sometimes mumbled to himself and sometimes sang songs, lullabies as if to a baby, but to himself. Jens recognized some of them as songs he had heard other mothers in the village sing. They had always made him feel a pang of jealousy, because his mother had never been able to sing them to him.

But Tern had had a mother and lost her, too. Jens felt that they had a connection. For both of them the songs
were a reminder of loss, not an expression of privilege.

Through the singing, Liva pressed them both onward. She seemed to know Jens better than he knew himself. She stopped when he would have taken a few more steps, and she forced him on when he wanted to give up and lie down. But he never collapsed.

Jens still heard the belling of the Hunter’s dogs echoing behind them, though sometimes they seemed to grow more distant. The dogs had to cross the river more than once to follow them, and Liva knew this terrain.

At night they stopped to rest, but Jens jerked awake what seemed like only moments after drifting off. There was a dog before him.

He thought it must be one of the Hunter’s dogs, here already.

He threw himself between it and Liva. The dog leaped over him, and he fell onto the forest floor, knocking his mouth on a nasty stone.

But he turned back to see that it was not a dog at all, for its ears were too pointed and its body too thin to be a creature raised in a town by humans who fed it to keep it going strong. It was a wolf.

Liva was speaking to the wolf intently, with yelps and barks that Jens could only marvel at. The wolf gave one last word and leaped away.

“What is it?” asked Jens. “What did it say to you?”

“I told him of the Hunter and his threat to the forest, to the aur-magic, and to me. The wolf agreed to face the
Hunter’s dogs in my place. The pack will go with him.”

“How many?” asked Jens.

“Not enough,” said Liva. She took a deep breath and held it.

“We must keep going,” said Jens, trying to get to his feet.

“Yes,” said Liva.

He tottered and she stabilized him. Then she bent down to give Tern a hand. He looked as bad as Jens felt. His face was dirty and bleeding; his shoulders sagged, and his cheeks, and his eyes.

But then Liva put a hand on Tern’s shoulder, and the gray pallor of his face pinked and his mouth curled into a smile.

Aur-magic, Jens realized. She could give the boy a little, but not Jens. He had to keep going on his own.

At last, sometime between dusk and dark—Jens did not know anymore—they reached a large cave. Liva’s home. The floor was swept clean, and there were wool blankets inside, as well as what might once have been a red velvet gown—to go with the red jewel in the half circlet, perhaps—now old and worn and wrapped into a ball like a pillow. Tern fell asleep next to it.

Jens wearily sat with his back against the wall while Liva went outside again. She returned later with some cold, wet leaves, to press to his aching muscles. He winced, then murmured his thanks. The pain became a little duller, and he slept drowsily until he heard her cry out.

He knew immediately what had happened.

She had opened the shirt-sling just outside the cave.

For once, Jens could do something for her that no one else could. He got up and stepped quietly out of the cave, placing a gentle hand on her back. Then he crouched beside her as she sobbed, giving her comfort.

When she could speak again, it was in a hoarse whisper. “My mother,” she said.

“I brought her from the Hunter. For you.”

Liva looked at him as if he were some miracle that had never been seen before, love shining in her eyes. “She fought him and I knew she had died. But I never thought to see her again.”

“He treated her body as a prize, but when I had a chance, I knew you would want me to return her to you. I know there is no aur-magic left in her—”

“No,” said Liva, shaking her head. “No, I did not expect that.”

“But she belongs here. With you.”

Liva opened her mouth, but she could not speak.

Jens opened the pouch and took out the half circlet.

Her eyes widened. “What is that?”

“It is from your mother,” he said. “She showed me where it was hidden when she came to me this spring. I was afraid that I had lost it, but it came back to me, and now I know it is meant for you to have.”

“I am no princess, no queen,” said Liva. “My mother and father lived in a castle, ruled a kingdom. They had
fine clothes and horses and servants. But I am only a girl in the forest.”

“You have servants,” said Jens. He pointed to himself and then to Tern. “And all of the forest serves you. All of the animals are yours to command. Think of that wolf and his pack. They went where you told them to go, never questioning your judgment.”

“But—”

“You know the aur-magic as no one else does. You have sacrificed for it. I am not saying you have to leave the forest to wear this. But your mother meant for you to have it. She believed that you would grow into it. That you would become for those with aur-magic what she and your father once were, though in a different form. You can call yourself a mentor or a teacher, a guide if you wish. You may never step into another human-built dwelling. But that does not change who you are,” said Jens.

Liva ran a finger along the gold line, around the ruby and then back along the gold to the end.

“Try it on,” Jens urged her.

“Another day, perhaps,” she said. “When I have finished with the Hunter. Then it will be mine.” She handed it back to Jens and gestured to the hound’s remains. “For now, I must bury her here, near my father.”

Standing, she went to a section of ground that was soft and mounded, just outside the cave. She began to dig at it with her bare hands, throwing it out between her legs. Jens moved to her side and dug at the dirt with
her, thinking he had never seen her look so regal as now, when she was covered with dirt and dripping sweat with fatigue. She glistened and she glowed with the richness of her kingdom, which was the forest.

W
HILE SHE DUG
, Liva could hear the sounds of baying in the distance, and she knew the moment that each of the wolves died. She discarded the idea of calling more animals and sending them to fight the Hunter and his men. If Jens was right and the animals were her servants, she had no right to use them up so freely.

It was not animals who had created the Hunter and his stone knife. It was not animals who had given up their aur-magic to live in towns and away from the life and death of the forest. It was humans—her own kind—and she had aur-magic of her own to fight with, given to her for this very purpose: to save humans, even if it was from themselves.

At last, she finished pressing the dirt on the top of her mother’s grave. In the distance Liva could hear the Hunter’s dogs as they approached the cave. From the different
barks, she estimated there were a total of twenty, from three different breeds: Ancient King, True Teeth, and Giant. Liva tried to use her magic to alter their course, but their human handlers were too vicious and had trained them too well. The dogs were slaves.

“I have this,” said Jens, taking out a curved knife from his sack. “How many do you think you can kill with your aur-magic before they reach us?”

“None,” said Liva stubbornly. The Hunter’s dogs had been stripped of their aur-magic, but that did not mean she was free to kill them. The same was true of humans. She was responsible for them all.

Jens stared at her. “Then I will go meet them first and kill as many as I can before they come to you.”

“No,” said Liva.

“Why not?” he asked, his face hard and turned toward the forest.

“I’d rather calm the dogs, to offer the forest and freedom. And even offer the Hunter’s men the same.” She would save the Hunter himself, if she could, though she did not say this aloud to Jens.

“What?” Jens asked in astonishment.

“Stand at my side,” she said. “That is all I ask of you.”

“I am not afraid to die for you,” said Jens. He stared out at the open forest, the cave at his back.

And Liva was not afraid to die for the aur-magic, so long as it lived on after her. That was the true cost of
her parents’ inheritance. They had been preparing her for this all her life, and she only just now felt the weight of it, far more than the weight of the gold in the circlet itself.

“You could leave this to me,” said Liva. “Take care of yourself. Go far from here. I would be happy to know you were safe.”

“I cannot do that, you know,” said Jens. “If you are gone, there is no life for me.”

“But—,” said Liva. She could not look him in the eyes for more than a moment. Like coals, they burned her.

“If you want to keep me safe, keep yourself safe,” said Jens. “Because I won’t go on without you.”

Liva felt a bursting sense of joy, and at the same time, a terrible, crushing fear. This was what it was like to be in love.

She had met him for the first time so young, but a part of her had known even then that he was her destiny. She had been working her way back to him since that day, and there had only been chance crossings. Now they were together again, and even the threat of the Hunter seemed nothing compared to that. They belonged to each other, as her mother and father had, through all of time, no matter what happened.

She put a hand out to him, and he snatched it to his face. Then he pulled her closer and she could feel his breath on her face. It was the wrong moment, and the right moment at the same time.

Liva pulled away painfully, her heart thumping in
her chest as if it belonged to Jens and wanted to leap to him.

“I must fight for the aur-magic,” she said.

“I will fight for what you fight for,” said Jens. “And for no other reason than that you wish me to. I know the aur-magic is part of you, and I will fight for it as I would fight for your eyes or your ears or the breath that fills your lungs.”

Liva felt her eyes well up. She took a deep breath to regain control. “I think you know more about magic than you think,” she said.

“Even a blind man can feel a fire,” said Jens. “When it is burning so close to him that his eyebrows are singed and his teeth ache from the heat.”

“I will do all I can,” said Liva. “To make sure life goes on for as many as possible.”

Jens turned back to her, his joy fading. “You mean the Hunter, too, don’t you?” he asked.

Liva opened her mouth to answer, then shook her head. She did not want to argue with Jens about this. She should not have said anything at all.

“Leave him alive to come back at you? Surely you know better than that. You’ve lived in the forest too long. You never leave a wounded animal to follow your trail. It’s dangerous. They can fight with new fervor if they have time to build up their anger. And humans are worse than most.”

Liva knew he was right, and she knew that all animals
had the right to protect themselves if their lives were threatened. But she had never killed a human before. That was what the Hunter had done, killing humans to kill the aur-magic, and she did not want to become like him in any way. That would be letting him win, even if he was dead. He had said that aur-magic made humans animals, but he was wrong. The aur-magic made the world whole, animals more animal, and humans more human, and all of them more together than they were apart.

“Well, if you insist you will not kill them with your magic, why not use it in some other way?” said Jens, his eyes flashing with desperation. “You could turn them all into animals. Or fish, flopping around on the forest floor, unable to breathe air instead of water.”

Liva shook her head. The aur-magic was not meant to be used that way. Humans should not be forced into animal form. And the animals in the forest did not deserve to have violent, angry humans forced among them, either.

“Then you could make it so that they all speak a different animal language and they run around in circles, attacking each other because they misunderstand each other so badly.” Jens was gesticulating wildly with his hands. Liva could sense the tension in him. She thought he wanted to hold her as much as she wanted to hold him. Just feel each other safe and live in that moment.

But it could not be. “I cannot do those things, either. That is not what the aur-magic is. Or not what it should be, at its best. And I want it best.”

Jens turned away from her, his shoulders hunched. “You must think me a fool. I say I am here to save you, but how can I help you? Without any magic, I am a man without a limb, a cripple you must feel no more than pity for, because you can do nothing for me, and must still watch my pitiful fumblings about.”

Liva could see the beat of his pulse in the base of his neck, a line of vessel there that ran straight to his heart, and it throbbed. “I do not see you that way, Jens,” she said.

He made a sound that was something between a laugh and a cough. “How could you not? You are a princess. A queen. And I am nothing. A boy from a village, who was turned out even from there. From the first time we met, you have seen only my worst, all my mistakes and weaknesses. Even my own father hated me.” He stopped himself with a sudden hand lifted to his mouth.

“I never saw your father,” said Liva steadily.

He tried to say she had, but Liva held up a hand. She had not meant it literally.

“I think I never saw anyone in your village except for you. Is that not the way it is during the day? The stars are still in the sky, but who sees them when the sun is so bright?”

“You cannot think of me as the sun,” said Jens, snorting softly.

But she did. “With or without magic, you are the best human I know.”

Jens reached for her. He held both of her hands with his own, and then he leaned forward. His lips met hers, and then Liva did forget about everything else. The forest, the magic, the Hunter, the end of the world.

There was only Jens and her and the air they shared and the feeling of two hearts beating together.

It did not last long enough.

They were still caught up in their embrace when the hounds, the Hunter, and his men crashed through the trees. Jens stepped away from her and watched as she put out a hand and one by one, each of the hounds lowered its head, whined, and walked away. Jens stood at her side and Liva thought of how often her parents, now buried next to each other, must have done the same.

“A fine trick, for animals,” said the Hunter with a snarl. He took out his stone knife, flipping it over and over in his hands.

Liva forced her gaze away from the knife. She would not let herself be afraid of it. She knew what she had to do. “You don’t have to follow him,” she said, looking at the men who flanked the Hunter, one by one.

Their gazes slid past her.

“You think you will turn them away from me?” asked the Hunter. “They have seen aur-magic, and they know how terrible it is. You should not have gotten away from me in the first place. But I will take care of that now.”

“You say they know how terrible the aur-magic is. Do they really?” Liva divided her magic into eleven different
sprays, one for each of the men. It was something she had never done before, and she did not know how well she would do it, or whether she could continue for long. She used all the knowledge that her parents had given to her. She held nothing back.

The aur-magic flowed out of her in cold and hot, with bits of history attached. The stories her father had told—they were in this. Liva saw the first man who had merged into a wolf. She saw a woman who had given birth to twin sons, one a calf and one a boy. She felt the love of a woman for the man she waited for, but he never returned, because he did not know the way back from his magical change into a falcon. And she saw her mother and her father. She sent out her magic in waves.

The Hunter’s men jerked and bobbed as they felt the pulse. They moaned and wept and cheered and danced.

She was winning! Liva was certain that these men could not stand against her now.

Then the Hunter took out his stone knife and flung it at her.

Liva saw it flying through the air.

She had one moment to decide whether she would try to evade it, and in doing so, give up the Hunter’s men. It was what he must have intended, surely.

But she didn’t do it.

She let the stone blade cut her in the chest, and for a moment she felt the aur-magic come out of her even more swiftly than before.

But then the aur-magic was absorbed by the knife. Liva gasped and felt the pain of the wound.

She was blind and deaf and dumb.

She reached out as if to the aur-magic, and she fell to the dirt in front of the cave.

She could feel a roaring in her ears as if she were falling quickly and wind was whirling all around her, but she did not land. The pain went on and grew worse.

The only sound that came from her throat was the soft sound of a human whisper. “Please,” she said. “Please.”

The Hunter’s men stood, a few of them with dazed expressions on their faces, the others staring at her with wonder or horror.

She could give them no more. She had to hope that what she had done was enough.

But the Hunter did not seem daunted in the least.

He came toward her and ripped the stone knife out of her chest. He held it out as if to cut her again, perhaps the tiny cuts that he had used with Tern, to keep him alive, but dead to magic.

That was when Jens flew at him.