The Princess and the Snowbird (6 page)

She shook her head. “Not what you deserve. Not at all. You should be far away from them.”

“I do not know if I am strong enough to live alone.” There. He had admitted it. She made him feel stronger, but not strong enough.

Liva smiled. “But in the forest, one is never alone.
There are always creatures around. Ants, worms, gnats, beetles, if nothing else. And the sun itself, the clouds, the wind, the trees that sigh, the trickle of the water as it flows, the taste of the changing seasons.”

“And all of them apart from me. Perhaps I do not belong anywhere.”

She laughed, without a hint of sadness. “Neither do I. I like it that way. I go where I please. I am free.”

How Jens envied her. “Well, I thank you for your attempt to help me with your aur-magic,” he said. He could not bring himself to tell her to leave, however it would be to her benefit. He wanted her to stay with him through the night and into the morning, and listen to her for long hours. It was not just the information that he craved, but the way she acted toward him. He had never been treated so well before in his life.

Liva tilted her head to one side, just like an owl.

“You should keep the knee cold, to keep it from swelling,” Liva said.

His knee? Oh, yes. He had almost forgotten about it. Now the pain came back, and with it, the sense of his own limitations.

“I think I am already cold enough.” Jens had goose bumps up and down his limbs, though he was not yet shaking, thanks to the lean-to.

She bent down and tried to pack some snow around his knee, gathered from the outside edge of the lean-to.

He yelped in pain. He had seen men die from such
wounds before. It was the swelling that did it, for it ran through their whole bodies.

Then she let go of the ball of snow and stared at the ground with the same look of concentration she had shown before, when she had tried to give him her aur-magic. In a moment, Jens felt a strange sensation. It was cold, but not freezing.

He pulled himself upright in surprise, but slowly relaxed into it as the pain drifted away and he could breathe again without thinking of it.

“What did you do?” he asked, staring back and forth at her and his own knee. It could not heal so quickly, surely!

“I can’t send magic into you, for some reason, but I can send it into the snow to warm it. The energy that is released is not magical, but physical. And your leg will take that.”

“Oh,” said Jens, as if he understood what she meant. The pain left him and he felt light-headed, as if he could float away. “Thank you,” he said, or thought he said, though he could not be sure. His lips had moved, but he could not seem to hear any sounds that came out of them. Or sounds anywhere.

It was wonderful.

Liva kept doing whatever she did with the magic until she could touch his knee without him noticing. It was still slightly swollen, but he found that he could walk on it normally. “You won’t regret it, now, will you? That I
healed you and you’ll have no mark to remember the fight with another human?”

Jens glanced up quickly, but saw her mouth was twisted, teasing. “No,” he said. “No regrets at all.” He felt hot now, rather than cold, and was about to turn away when Liva leaned forward. He tried to turn to her to meet her kiss, but she ended up planting her kiss on his ear.

She laughed then. “I’ve heard of human kisses. My father tells stories. But they seem easier in my imagination.”

Jens was too flustered to speak for a long moment.

“Thank you for saving me when those men tried to kill me,” said Liva, with a step backward.

“You saved yourself,” Jens whispered.

“I think not entirely. If I had, then those men would still be in the forest, chasing after me. And they are not. You are one who gives life rather than taking it. Do you see how you stand above the others?”

Jens shrugged.

“And you did not kill any of those animals who followed me by the river, did you? I think I would be able to smell the death on you, if you had.”

“I should have tried to save them as well,” said Jens. “But I could not think how.”

“Animals die,” she said.

“In that, we are the same,” said Jens.

“In more than that.”

Jens wondered whether she would kiss him again, but
she changed back into an owl and the blanket dropped to the floor. He watched as the owl flew toward the south without turning back or making a sound. But she had been there. The improvement in his leg proved that.

He watched her fly away and turned to enter the hut. Seeing something fluttering on the ground, he bent down and picked it up. An owl feather, speckled with black and white in as distinct a pattern as the snowbird’s white threaded with silver. He turned it over in his fingers with a smile before adding it to his pouch and returning to his hut. His father would be home soon, but for now he could think of her and imagine that she was still with him.

When he woke in the morning, his father was shouting at him to get up and go to the stream for water to boil for breakfast. Jens went for it, his leg much better, and he thought of the girl who had done it and how nothing else mattered.

L
IVA FLEW FAST
, making her way south back over the river. She saw no bear tracks and felt no trace of her father’s magic. She might have to be closer to him to sense him. She hoped that he was well. She had not meant to stay that long with Jens, but time had slipped so quickly away. She could not stop thinking about the boy even now.

She tried to think of an animal form for Jens that would be fitting. He was as protective as a bear, as tender as a doe, and as smart as an eagle. He should be in a form that could soar—and he should sing, for his voice fell on her ears like music.

But his village and his own father treated him terribly, all because he had none of the tehr-magic. Liva was glad he did not, for she did not think she could love anyone who used magic selfishly like that.

She dove down to a stream and changed into human
form to drink and rest. She liked the form more now than ever, despite the cold. Jens had recognized her as the pika and as the owl, but they could only speak together when she was human, and she loved how she felt when they talked. She cupped her hands, splashed icy water over her face, then leaned back against the rocks to watch the clouds in the sky move by.

It was then that Liva saw the great shadow of the bird.

Liva stopped to look up at it, and then she could not move. It was beautiful, its white feathers glinting with silver underneath its wings, and its sheer size made her feel faint. Larger than any bird she had seen, it seemed to be coming just for her, for it flew directly overhead. Compared with the aur-magic in this snowbird, Liva’s was a drop of water against a storm. She felt like sobbing out her empty sorrow as the bird passed by, casting a huge shadow over her, but she could not speak at all.

Liva flew through the night and stopped only when she heard a bellowing at the break of dawn. She felt blindly in her magic for the source.

It was some distance away, but hot and familiar.

Her father.

She flew toward him, glad at last that the storm had gone and the sky was clear. She called out to tell her father that she was coming for him, but he did not answer her.

When she was close enough to see the blood dripping
from his neck, Liva could tell he was badly wounded. He staggered forward, making inarticulate sounds.

Who had attacked him? Men from the village? But they could never have passed her. And for her father to be wounded so, with his experience and his size, there had to have been many humans involved.

But the closer that Liva came to him, the stranger—and colder—the wound seemed.

He did not seem to recognize her, even when she swooped down from the air and changed into bear form before his eyes.

He moved jerkily and in circles, as if he had lost all sense of direction. He muttered to himself, and when Liva put a paw to him, she felt the same lack of magic she had felt in Jens.

She had to give him back some of her inheritance of aur-magic. Her mother had refused to accept it when she was wounded, but the hound had not been in such danger of dying. The bear most definitely was.

“Father!” she shouted at him to get his attention.

She only succeeded in making him roar at her and swing a paw in her direction. It would have hit her in the face if she had not ducked. This massive, threatening bear was not anything like the gentle father she had always known.

She could feel how the aur-magic had been cut from him at his neck. But when it poured out, it disappeared as if it had never been. It did not return to the forest. Liva
could not understand how this could be.

Blood still flowed from the bear’s wound. If she could bring the edges of the wound together—gently, so that her father’s system was not shocked, perhaps he could hold enough aur-magic inside him to heal the inner wounds.

Liva let her aur-magic flow out of her like a breeze. She waited for it to make the bear calm, no more than that. Once he could stop threatening her, she could give him more.

But the aur-magic moved right past him, not rejected as it had been with her mother—simply reabsorbed back into the woods behind him.

Panicked, Liva shaped her aur-magic like an arrow that was aimed for the bear’s heart.

Again, the magic simply went through him.

Just as it had with Jens, no matter what she had tried.

Liva’s face stung with tears. The effort she’d used made her feel sick. Her balance was gone, and she had to put a paw out to a nearby rock to hold herself steady.

Trying to calm herself, Liva tried a third time.

She blasted out all the aur-magic she could in one burst. But as soon as it was gone, she knew it had been in vain. She watched as the trees behind the bear grew buds on their branches, brief bits of spring that would not last.

She felt as weak as a new cub. She had to breathe
through her mouth to get in enough air to keep herself from blacking out.

She ambled close to her father and put a paw on his leg.

But he threw her off and fell to the ground, rolling from side to side, as any ordinary bear in a rage might. This could not be her father!

Liva stood back and watched him with her magic senses acutely alert. The bear had bled off so much aur-magic that he tasted to her as empty as Jens had been, and the state was irreversible. But it made no sense, for Liva had become convinced by Jens that what had happened to him was a fluke of birth, like a snake born with two heads, or a moose calf born without its two hind legs. She had not thought there was any hand behind it.

Now she knew better. Humans had changed aur-magic to tehr-magic. They must have done this as well.

In a flash of heat, Liva knew she wanted revenge. She wanted to make whoever had done this moan as her father did. Not so long ago she had been proud to think herself grown up. Now she wanted to weep and to be held by her mother and comforted like a baby. This was too much for her.

She was supposed to have great aur-magic for some grand purpose, but Liva could think of nothing that would make her father’s sacrifice worth anything.

She called out in the language of magic for help,
though she did not have any reason to believe she would be answered. But somehow it seemed only a few moments before she heard the bark of a hound.

She looked up and felt hope once more.

Her mother had come.

E
IGHT BOYS WERE
made men in the celebration the day after the hunt. Torus and Harald were among them. Jens was not. And he did not argue, for he did not care anymore.

The others painted themselves with the blood of the animal they had killed, then swallowed the vital organs raw. Liver, heart, lungs, and eyes. The tongue was reserved for last.

Afterward the newly made men linked arms and danced in front of the villagers. Then the girls and women were asked to leave, and it was time for a night of swaggering battles.

The youngest boys who remained were only four or five years old. It was meant to be a night of wildness and violence, a night meant to prove that next year’s hunting season would be as successful as this year’s. But Jens could feel no pride in this.

Instead he watched morosely as two brothers bloodied each other while their father encouraged more and more violence.

Another young boy, no more than ten years old, swung at Jens and took him by surprise.

He ducked.

In an instant he realized it was the wrong thing to do, but there was no taking it back. The boy had expected Jens to engage him. When Jens refused, it was taken as an insult.

Jens gritted his teeth against the lingering pain in his leg and tried to join another battle with Harald, as he was closer to Jens in age and more likely to give him a fair fight. But Harald ignored him completely. After all, he was a man in the village now. Jens was not.

Jens told himself he should walk away, go home and go to sleep. It was what only the old men did, and it would invite others to call him a woman. But how much worse could his reputation in the village become?

Liva. She would not admire him for fighting with other humans. He would think of her tonight, and her beautiful strength.

As he walked away, he heard laughter behind him. And then his mother’s name, Gudrun, and a guttural spit and a curse on her for bearing such a son. Harald, who had just refused a fight, was taunting him.

He could not bear it. It was one thing for him to suffer, but his mother was defenseless. She had given her life
for him, and he would not hear her memory maligned.

Frustrated, he turned and swung as hard as he could, taking Harald off guard and knocking him to the ground. He would no longer be ignored. Harald’s face was already purpling with the mark of Jens’s hand. As Harald got to his feet and maneuvered closer, a group of men began to form a circle around them.

“Coward!” Jens heard, as he ducked one of Harald’s blows. Harald was faster than Jens—except after a night of feasting and drinking like this one.

It was quiet in the building. Jens had seen fights before, and there were always onlookers calling out encouragement or disgust to both sides. Not now.

They did not think he was one of them.

Then came a blinding moment of realization: Jens was as alone here as he ever would be out in the forest. More alone, for in the village the animals were against him as well. Smoke stung his eyes. Harald was waiting for him to continue the fight, hands clenched into fists, stance ready for battle.

But Jens knew what he wanted, and it was not this life. Not another moment of it.

He took a step toward the open door. Harald was happy to see him go, raising his hand and shouting out his triumph to roars of approval.

Jens decided that he would leave without another word, the building, the village, this life.

Then his father stepped in front of him, large and
reeking. He had come to Jens’s side at last.

“Do you wish to have your man’s gift from me?” he asked.

Jens felt his breath catch in his throat, as thick as a piece of meat that he had not chewed well enough. A gift from his father? The tradition was that a father gave his son a gift at the ceremony of his manhood, to help him on his way in life, now that he would care for himself. Not having gone through the ceremony, Jens was not technically a man, and he was surprised that his father would make this offer. But for a moment, Jens believed it was true and relaxed, waiting.

Then out of the corner of his eye he saw his father’s hand clench into a fist. It flew at him and connected with his jaw. Jens fell to the floor, and his head was filled with the sound of his father’s laughter.

“That’s the only gift you’ll ever get from me.”

Afterward, the carousing began again. Or had it ever stopped? Jens’s father entered a wrestling match with another man without a glance back.

No one looked at Jens at all.

Painfully he got up and tottered outside. He welcomed the cold of the night on his cheeks, going as fast as he could to the edge of the village, limping a little on the side where his knee hurt still.

He stared up at the stars and marked out a northern constellation that could have been a snowbird with one wing folded.

Those are the edges of my new village, he told himself. He crossed the river when it grew light, and heard the sound of wolves crying out in the distance, as if they could already smell his blood. But he felt no fear, for he was going home at last.