The Princess and the Snowbird (9 page)

T
HERE WAS A
wild hound at the bottom of the tree when Jens climbed down one morning. The hound was black but had threads of gray running through her fur. She had a limp on one side, and she looked ferocious.

She stared at Jens, though he had not made a sound, and then bared her teeth. He put up his hands and tried to back away, to show her he meant no harm.

No animal had treated him this way since he had come to the forest. How had she noticed him? More than that, how had she known to track him here? For it seemed she had done that.

She was no ordinary hound.

She was not Liva. She was too old for that, for one thing. And the look in her eyes was not the same as in Liva’s, even when she had been a pika.

But the hound had a certain way of holding her head
to the side that reminded him of Liva, and a way of waiting. It was not quite animal but not entirely human, either.

Liva’s mother? Liva had told him her mother was a hound.

The hound growled low and long, displeased but not threatening. Then she barked sharply and clearly. There were words in her barking, if only Jens could understand them. He had to guess at her meaning.

She barked again.

Jens put his hands out to her.

She sniffed at them, from the tips of his fingers up to his elbows. Then she barked again, with her head held straight out.

“I don’t understand,” said Jens sadly.

The hound nudged him with her head, pushing him forward.

He did not know which direction she meant him to go in, but he moved. She pressed him harder until he could not walk anymore. And suddenly they were both running, she behind him, making sure that he did not slow down.

Jens was so focused on keeping up the pace she demanded that he did not pay any attention to the forest around him. He saw only the rocks and the crevices beneath his feet so that he could move around them without pulling an ankle. He thought he would collapse and his heart would burst, but at that very moment the hound
barked once more and stopped.

Jens slowed down, then turned and looked around. They had come to the foot of a sheer cliff, and the hound pressed him from behind until he put a hand up to a hold in the stone and lifted his feet off the ground. Then the hound continued to bark at him until he had climbed several times his own height and had come to a shelf.

The hound began to call out sharply then, in an urgent tone, and Jens looked around the shelf to see where else he could go. He could not climb higher or even stand up straight. He turned around—and as he did so, his hand brushed against a wooden box covered in leather. Picking it up, he saw that the leather was so old that it crumbled in his hands. He had to look closely at it to see the royal insignia tooled into the top. It was a bear and a hound joined together with a crown over their heads. He did not recognize the coat of arms, but in the north it had been centuries since any kings ruled.

He held out the box, and the hound barked once.

This must be what she had meant him to find, though how she had gotten it up here, he could only guess. Perhaps she had been stronger before? Or had talked another animal or a bird into taking it up for her?

He held the box under his chin, carefully climbed back down the cliff, and handed the box to the hound. Whatever was inside belonged to her. Liva had not said that her mother had been royalty, as well as human, but this made it clear to him. This belonged to her old life.

The hound used her teeth to pull open the box, and there was a flash of light on gold as she held up what was inside. It was a half circlet with a ruby in the center, such as a queen might wear on formal occasions. It showed some sign of scratches, but it was beautiful.

Jens gaped at the hound as she placed the half circlet in his hands.

“But—,” he protested. The metal was still warm from her mouth and felt heavy in his hands. “This can’t be for me.”

The hound barked at him, clearly in the negative.

“For Liva?” Jens asked.

The hound nodded once.

“Why don’t you give it to her directly, then?”

The hound stared at him.

“You want me to give it to her?” asked Jens. He felt a moment’s bewilderment and then he realized what it meant. A queen never crowned herself. She was given a crown by one who represented the people she was to rule.

“When do I know it is the right time to give it to her?” he asked, looking for the hound once more.

But she was gone.

He put the half circlet in his pouch with the owl feather and the snowbird feather, hoping that he would know the right time when it came.

He felt honored that the hound had chosen him to give the half circlet to. He thought she must have been
watching him. Jens did not think Liva had told her mother about him, but if she had, it still meant something that the hound had come to him separately. In the village when a young man was interested in courting a young girl, first he had to make an offering to her mother. In this case it seemed the opposite.

Jens began walking south again, to the huge trees that he had become used to climbing and sleeping in. He heard human voices nearby and pulled himself up to a low branch nearby, then climbed soundlessly higher and looked down.

Karl had returned to the forest. It was perhaps a week or two since he had come with the Hunter, but this time he was with another boy, who shuffled along and had a face swollen with bruises. Whenever the boy slowed down, Karl kicked at him or shoved him down. Jens had been bullied too often in his life not to feel for the victim. But the boy never cried out or begged to be spared. He had a strange dignity, and Jens thought the boy must be used to such treatment.

“You think my father, the Hunter, will reward you for this?” asked the boy, his head raised high enough for him to look straight into Karl’s eyes.

Karl slapped the boy’s face soundly in reply. “Perhaps he will reward me for it. You have too much magic for his plans, Dofin, and one of these days he will take a knife to you to improve you and make you more like himself. We are all to give up our magic in time, if we are to truly follow him.”

Dofin spoke defiantly, his eyes on the ground: “And is that what you want? To give up your magic to him, because he has none of his own?”

“What I want is to show him I am a better heir than you. He will need someone to take his place eventually,” said Karl.

Dofin shook his head. “My father does not spend time thinking of his own death, I assure you. He is far too busy planning the deaths of others for that.”

“He hates you.”

“And I hate him. I hate everything he stands for. You think he has a noble campaign to make humans better and stronger by taking all magic from them? He cares nothing about that. He only wants to make sure no one has a pleasure that he lacks. Do you see how he treats his animals? Kicks them and spits at them and kills them with overwork. It is the same with all those around him. He does not want humans to be higher than animals. He wants everyone to be as low as he feels himself to be, and as alone.”

“If you despise him so much, then why do you do everything he tells you to do?” Karl sneered. “You are a coward, or you would leave him. You would let another take your place. But you are afraid. You do not know what you would do without him, who you would be. You take what he gives you because you cannot get any better and you do not care if it costs you your magic in the end.”

Dofin gritted his teeth. “I stay because I can best
work against my father when I am closest to him.”

“Shall we test your theory?” Karl kicked at Dofin’s leg, right behind the kneecap.

The boy went down hard. He did not even try to fight back.

Jens scrambled down through the branches, intending to intervene. He had not fought against the Hunter before because there had been no hope of him winning. But here he could help Dofin, and in doing so, work against the Hunter.

With a piercing sound like a wild hawk on the attack, Jens leaped from the tree and landed to Karl’s side. Karl was already spooked at the sound and the sudden fall. But Jens lifted his arms, covered his head in his skins, and then pushed at Karl.

The boy stumbled and fell.

Jens jumped on top of him while keeping his face hidden, and Karl cried out in terror.

Then Jens heard a roar behind him. He turned to see a smallish bear with an intelligent look on its face. He stepped back from Karl, and the bear charged at him.

Karl ran blindly into the forest, the bear behind him.

Jens let the skins fall from his face and looked back to Dofin, who was gaping at the empty spot where the bear and Karl had been.

“Did you call that bear?” he asked. “Did you use your aur-magic to save me?”

“No, that was not aur-magic. I have none.”

“But why would a bear chase one and not all of us?” asked Dofin.

“Perhaps the bear wanted a game,” said Jens with a smile. “Or perhaps she thought Karl smelled tastier than you or I.”

“She?” said Dofin.

“Indeed. That was a female bear. Could you not tell the difference?”

Dofin shook his head. “I am from Tamberg-on-the-Coast. I have never seen a bear before, male or female. You are from a village near here?”

“I have left my village. I live alone in the forest now,” said Jens.

Dofin stared up and down at him, apparently believing Jens’s story considering his wild and disheveled appearance. “You do not have the aur-magic, yet you live alone with the animals?”

“I do.”

“You tame them with the tehr-magic, then. Make them do your bidding.”

Jens felt flushed. “No. Certainly not. I would not do it even if I had the tehr-magic, which I do not.”

“You have neither magic?”

“Have I not just said so?”

“I am sorry. It is only that I have never met anyone but my father who had no magic at all. And he—he does not live among the animals. He hates them all.”

“I am not like your father, the Hunter,” said Jens.

“Clearly,” said Dofin, nodding. “Well, what reward can I offer you for saving me from that dangerous idiot Karl? Come back to Tamberg-on-the-Coast with me. You can work against my father with me, in secret.”

“No,” said Jens. It was not that he did not want to work against the Hunter. It was only that he did not wish to do so from within the walls of a town.

“Stay here and safe? You are a coward, then.”

“I am the coward? When I live with the animals that you say you wish to save? When I live in the forest you say you will protect from your father?”

Dofin flushed. “If you wish to protect the forest and the animals, you must come with me and work against my father.”

“I will do what I choose to do,” said Jens.

“Alone?” said Dofin. “You are a fool.”

“A fool to whom you owe your life,” said Jens.

Dofin lowered his head. “I will give you a reward if you come into town. Coin from my father’s treasury.”

“What use would those be to me here, in the forest?” Jens said, thinking they would be stolen in any case.

“I must give you something,” said Dofin.

“Then go on your way and tell no one about me,” said Jens through clenched teeth. “That is surely one gift you can offer me.”

“As you wish,” said Dofin, and he seemed to bow and step away. But in one swift movement, he had turned back and flung himself behind Jens, grabbing his arms
and pushing him to his knees.

Jens did not struggle. “Do you plan to carry me all the way back to the town?” he asked. “I do not think you will get very far.”

“I will do whatever it takes to defeat my father,” said Dofin, angrily. “And I think that you are necessary for that. You have no magic of your own, but you do not hate it. If I can show to the others in the town that they do not have to be afraid of the forest nor of the aur-magic—I can take away his power. Please,” he added grudgingly.

Jens sighed. He found himself admiring Dofin. And yet he still did not want to go back to Tamberg-on-the-Coast with him. It seemed the wrong way to fight one who killed aur-magic, by giving up the forest and all that aur-magic was about.

With one breath, he threw all his weight forward, so that Dofin flipped over his back and landed on the ground, stunned and groaning in pain.

“Coward,” he whispered again, lifting his head to meet Jens’s eyes.

“I will fight my way. You fight yours,” said Jens.

Then the she-bear that had been chasing after Karl came rushing back to the tree. It sniffed the air between the two, then growled and stepped toward Dofin, threatening him with a low rumble.

The bear’s claws caught Dofin on one side, but they did not dig deeply into him.

Dofin yelled and retreated, throwing his hands up as
if trying to ward her off. Liva growled once more, and that was all Dofin needed to flee back to the south.

The bear turned back to Jens.

He had never seen Liva like this before, but he was not afraid. “Thank you,” he said. It seemed ridiculous that he was standing here, speaking to a bear. But he did not feel he had any right to demand that she should change her form to human. If she wished it, she would have to choose it on her own.

Her face shimmered and shifted. For a moment Jens went absolutely still. Then he saw her bear features change into the fine human features. The small nose he loved, the stark cheekbones, the shining eyes that were the part of her that he could see most clearly, no matter what form she wore.

“Ha!” he said, out of pure joy. “Liva.”

She looked down at herself and blushed, and he turned away, offering her one of his outer skins.

“I thought I heard someone who needed help. There was a change in the aur-magic, and I followed it here.”

“Oh,” said Jens. He wanted to put a hand out to her, to touch her face, to feel the softness of her human skin. But then what? He did not know what to do. The rules of his village did not work here.

Would he offend her if he came too close? Was she interested in him at all?

“I left my village,” he said, as though she had not figured that out already. He had to fill the uncomfortable
silence somehow. “I didn’t belong there anymore. Never did belong there, I think.”