The Princess and the Snowbird (15 page)

J
ENS WAS NOT
afraid of the stone knife. He slammed into the Hunter and felt the knife slide away from him to the ground. The Hunter tried to reach it, but Jens kicked it away. Then he punched the Hunter in the face. It gave him great pleasure to see the Hunter’s arrogant smile crumple as one tooth flew out and his cheek began to bruise.

The Hunter stepped back. “Help me!” he called to his men.

But his men were still confused from what Liva had given to them. Jens did not know what, but she had done something to slow them down. He did not care now.

He circled the Hunter, defying him to move closer to Liva.

The Hunter tried to fight him with words. “Do you think she cares about you? You, who have no magic of any kind?”

Jens grunted, then threw his fist into the Hunter’s stomach.

The Hunter bent over double but pulled himself up and continued with his only weapon. “Well, perhaps she does. She is used to caring for small things. Animals and insects and birds. She sees the beauty in those things that are not truly human. And of course you are drawn to her, like a bear is drawn to honey.”

Jens knocked out another tooth.

The Hunter’s face dripped blood.

Now Jens could see that the Hunter was not as strong as he had first appeared. His arms and legs were muscled, but there was a softness to his torso, his stomach especially. He was used to easy living. In Tamberg-on-the-Coast he had his food brought to him. His men did what he asked. It had been some time since he had truly fought another with his own hands.

Jens did not expect to be given anything. This was his advantage.

The Hunter fumbled for the knife. “But what will you do afterward? If she wins and you remain at her side? Think, now. What will you do when all those around her have magic? When she goes to save those in danger, will you simply wait here in the cave for her? Killing food that does not hear you? Will you try to go with her and become a liability, another creature she must save?”

Jens swung at the Hunter, but this time the Hunter ducked and before Jens could recover his balance, the
Hunter had regained the knife and cut at Jens’s side. Jens hissed in pain, and inched away.

The Hunter waved at him to get to his feet, and even then, holding back, said, “Catch your breath. I would never attack a man who wasn’t ready for me.”

Jens was not fooled by the lie. This time he didn’t miss.

He struck at the Hunter’s eye and felt the cheekbone break beneath his blow.

The Hunter cried out in pain, and his perpetual smile turned into a grimace. “You will regret that,” he promised Jens. He gave Jens a series of kicks that left him retching on the leaf-strewn ground. Then he held out something under Jens’s nose.

A stone as big as two fists.

But it was not meant for Jens.

“I never leave winning to chance,” said the Hunter. “If one way is blocked, there is always another.” He moved toward Liva, who was holding on to a tree for support as the blood—and more—oozed from the wound on her chest.

Jens saw her go white around the lips, but then she looked at him and tried to put a brave face on.

With staggering effort, Jens got to his feet. He had never had to push through so much pain before. There was no ignoring it. There was only agreeing with his body that it was too much, and then remembering his old movements, focusing on this one, and that one.

He had reached the Hunter’s back when he heard a call overhead.

Jens looked up.

There was the snowbird, its great wingspan blocking out the sun.

The Hunter’s men had been stunned up until now. But they gaped at the snowbird, revealed to them at last, and then began to run away.

“There it is! You see it now!” said the Hunter in triumph.

But the snowbird’s flying was off-kilter, and it took a moment before Jens realized why. The snowbird was carrying something in its claws: a stone a thousand times as large as the one the Hunter had just used to threaten Liva.

What it must have cost the snowbird to carry it, Jens could only guess. But the creature had waited until now to use up all its strength.

“Watch out!” cried Liva weakly.

And the huge stone began to fall from the sky, crashing through trees as it approached.

Jens dived out of the way and just in time, for the stone shook the world when it fell and stirred up a dust that seemed to cover miles. When it had cleared, Jens could see that a great piece of the stone had remained unbroken, though other bits had turned to dust.

Jens stared at the snowbird, waiting for it to do more.

The snowbird did not fly away. Instead it landed near the stone. Jens could see that the snowbird was burned all along its underside, where its claws were. Where it must have held the stone as it flew. It could only have done something like this once, and this was the time for it.

The Hunter took out his stone knife and approached the snowbird.

“No!” shouted Liva. “Jens, stop him!” She staggered forward but could not get any closer to the stone.

Only Jens could.

He threw himself onto the stone between the Hunter and the snowbird, and only then did the snowbird come close enough to spread its wings over him. Protected from the stone by Jens, it was able to do its work. Jens could see the stone smoking as it was burned—he assumed by the snowbird’s aur-magic. The smell was horrible, and there was a hissing sound. Jens could feel the stone melting like slag all around him. But he was untouched by all magic.

The snowbird sagged and fell on Jens’s leg.

“No,” gasped Liva, crawling forward. “The snowbird can’t die.” She was still bleeding from her wound.

“But it has already,” cried the Hunter, gloating. “I’ve beaten it and the aur-magic at last!”

Jens pulled his leg from under the snowbird and moved to help its tottering figure off the stone. He looked back for one moment and saw that the stone had his shape imprinted into it. It was clearly not the same as it had been
before, and its new color showed this more than anything else. The stone was no longer white, but pure black.

The snowbird gave out a strange and beautiful cry as it saw the stone’s destruction.

And the Hunter began to tremble. “No!” he exclaimed.

Jens began to feel something as well. It was a wonderful experience, like flying above the forest and seeing each creature below him, from the tiniest insect to the great moose. Not only could he see them, but he could feel them. He could know them and speak to them and feel as if he were a part of them.

It was the aur-magic, streaming out of the snowbird. Now that the stone had been destroyed, the aur-magic of the snowbird was everywhere—and unbelievably, thrillingly, Jens could feel it like a mist of heat. He luxuriated in it.

He thought that his aur-magic had been completely destroyed by the Hunter’s knife at his birth. But with this much magic, he could feel a very small portion of it, despite his old wounds.

Even the Hunter could feel something, though it was no pleasure for him. He began to scream out in agony. He shook and then simply fell forward, dead, away from the snowbird and the stone.

The aur-magic had killed him. Jens thought he could not bear the glory of it. Whether it was his heart that stopped or something else, Jens did not know. But in the
end he looked strangely at peace.

Jens stepped back from it all and felt as if he could not yet touch the ground. Was any of this real? Or was it part of a grand dream?

“You did it!” said Liva, smiling and putting one arm around his shoulder.

He picked her up in his arms and sat down with her a little bit away, caressing her hair. “But what did I do?” asked Jens. “I do not understand how I helped the snowbird. I have no magic.”

“Your lack of magic shielded the snowbird from the stone, allowing it to conserve its strength and pour its magic out, destroying the stone.”

Jens thought of the first moment the snowbird had seen him, in the forest those years ago. He thought of the way the snowbird had searched his face, as if looking for something.

Perhaps it had seen something that Jens had never known was inside of himself.

It had defeated the Hunter and the stone with their help, but now it was paying the price. The snowbird was losing its feathers. Like the stone, it had changed color. It was grayish, and its eyes were dull.

It had given so much aur-magic. Could it survive that much loss?

Jens still felt warm with the aur-magic, but he had the feeling that it would soon dissipate. He had felt the aur-magic brush against him. That was enough for him.

Jens turned to Liva. She, too, looked gray and dull, though the bleeding from her chest had, at last, stopped. He had not realized how much she had suffered for this until now.

“Have you given up your magic, too? Like the snowbird?” he asked.

“Most of it,” Liva admitted. “I think I have only as much left as anyone else now.”

“I am so sorry,” said Jens. “I know that the aur-magic was your whole life. I cannot imagine how it must feel to be without it.” As soon as he said it, he realized he did know. He had always known.

Liva took his hand in hers. “It feels right,” she said. “That much aur-magic was never meant to belong to one person. It’s gone back to where it belongs, to the forest, to be shared. And I have no regrets.”

He took out the half circlet once more and offered it to her. This time she did not refuse it, but she did not put it on her head. She took it into the cave with her and left it there, hidden in the midst of the debris.

Jens tried to tell her that her loss of aur-magic made her even more worthy to wear it, but she would not listen to him. It seemed that she had inherited more than the half circlet from her mother. She had inherited stubbornness as well.

T
HE
H
UNTER WAS
dead.

The stone was destroyed.

The aur-magic was safe once more.

Liva had done all that she had hoped to do.

But still, Liva felt empty.

She had lost her parents. She had lost her place in the world, and so much of her aur-magic. She felt as though she were a stranger in her own forest, and a stranger to herself. And she hated the thought of the half circlet that Jens had given her from her mother. It seemed to say to her that she had still not done enough, that there was work for her yet to do in the future.

She could not bear to look at it and avoided the part of the cave it was in.

Over the next several weeks, Jens tended Liva’s chest wound until it had begun to physically scar over. She found she did not speak to him except a word now
and then. She knew she should have been kinder to him. It was not that she did not love him anymore. She did. But she did not know who she was, and she felt bursts of anger she could not control.

After a few weeks, Jens took Tern to his old village in hopes of finding someone there who had lost a child and would care for a child who had lost his parents. Liva hugged Tern good-bye and felt an ache at missing him, but she knew that she was too young to truly be a mother to him. Perhaps she would visit him, but for now he needed to move on and forget.

In midsummer Liva stood in the forest by the cave with Jens, and she did not know what to do. She felt as though she had been put back in the jail with Tern, only the walls were smaller, and with each breath that she took, they closed in farther and farther.

She told herself that it was not as though she had no aur-magic left at all. She had a little, though it was very small in comparison to what she had had before. And besides, this was the way that other humans lived all the time. She knew this was the way her parents had lived since her birth, and that Jens had felt this much aur-magic for only a few short moments. But her sense of the animals around her was so restricted. She could remember only a few words of any animal language, and she could not change her form at all. Not even one hand.

She could sense the animals within a stone’s throw, but she could not see them from the inside. She saw the
shape of them vaguely, like a cloud in the sky, and she was not even sure of that.

“Do you think the snowbird lived?” asked Jens. It had limped once, then surged to the sky. They had watched together as the snowbird had faded into the distance, but they had not seen it since then.

“I don’t know,” said Liva. “It carried the stone so far, and then gave up so much aur-magic. But perhaps it might go on with less, like I do.”

“It is the last of its kind,” said Jens. “And now the snowbird has done what it was meant to do. It would be easier for it to die. I don’t know how such a creature would live like that, in a world so changed.”

Liva wondered whether Jens was also speaking of her.

“Now that you are well again, I think we have things to talk about,” said Jens.

“What things?” asked Liva suspiciously.

“You know, it is not the aur-magic that makes you who you are,” said Jens quietly. “Or the half circlet, either.”

Liva’s head jerked up. “What do you know about it?” she asked, knowing she was rude.

Jens did not take offense. “You can talk to me about anything,” he said. “I hope you know that.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” said Liva. It would only bring back all the things that she could never have again.

“I never said you had to talk to me now,” said Jens. “It can be in a week, a month, a year, or at the end of your
life, when you are dying. I will be there for you, whatever you need.”

Liva took a breath and held it. Jens, with her, for the rest of her life. She hadn’t thought of it that way before. “I do not know—” She didn’t want to hurt his feelings. She loved him still, but she just felt too small for that love now. As if it could burn her up if she wasn’t careful. She needed time to find herself again before she could give herself to him.

“I thought I would stay close by,” said Jens. “In the treetops, as I did before. I could come to see you now and again, when you wished it. I would not come without your invitation.”

“Oh,” said Liva. She slowly unfurled the fists that she had made and tried to unknot the other places in her body that were tense with trying to hold the last bit of magic she had left. “That will be fine.”

“Good.” Jens kissed her on the top of her nose, just a light brush of his lips.

Liva looked at his lips for a long moment after he pulled away from her, but she did not press herself to him.

Jens whispered, “I could see you in the eyes of a felfrass and a pika, and in the eyes of any animal form you took. I saw the kindness in you and the determination.”

“I was kind because the magic showed me the heart of all living things,” said Liva. “And I was determined because my whole life, I have known that my purpose was magical.”

“Listen,” said Jens. “Do you think I am nothing because I have no magic?”

Liva was silent.

“Do you look at me and see all that I do not have?” he asked. There was real anger in his voice, and Liva could see the jump of the vein at the base of his throat.

“You know I don’t,” said Liva.

“Then why do you think I would do that to you?”

“I—”

“Why would you do it to yourself?”

Now both fell silent.

Jens stared at the stone that still held his imprint. “I felt the aur-magic,” he said, his voice rough. “Through the snowbird. Don’t think I have no idea of what it means. You had years more than I did with the magic. Can’t it be enough?”

Liva thought of her mother then, with her lame leg. She had never complained about it. It limited her movements frequently and caused her pain always. But it was simply a part of life for her. She had accepted it and gone on.

Why couldn’t Liva do the same?

There was the river.

And the oak tree with the broken limb.

The craggy rocks that stood like a sentinel on the mountains above.

What else did she need? She had her home, if only she could be herself in it.