The Princess and the Snowbird (7 page)

“
D
O NOT GIVE
him your aur-magic!” the hound barked out harshly.

Liva was astonished. “He is dying,” she said. “Even so. He gave you the aur-magic for a reason. Do not undo what he gave up so much to accomplish.” The hound stood between Liva and the bear, as if guarding him against his daughter.

“You do not even care that he is dying!” Liva accused her mother. This was not what she wanted when she called out for help.

“We all die,” her mother said more gently. “That is the way of being mortal. Animals and humans, it makes us the same. Your father has never wished to escape from that. It is living this long that has been the most difficult for him. Think how he has outlived all others he has ever known, for the sake of saving the true magic. Will you make him sacrifice again, live longer again, despite his
desire for rest? Only because you are afraid?”

Liva sobbed.

“He knew this time would come,” her mother said.

“But he left without a word,” said Liva. “At night.”

“He thought it would be easier for you that way. It was only when I saw you leave the cave that I knew you had to make things difficult, and so I followed you for your own sake.”

At this, Liva threw herself at her mother, a nearly grown bear cub against the full-grown but failing wild hound. Liva changed into the form of a hound herself, not thinking of anything but this moment, this battle. But her mother was ready for her and kept her position, all four paws on Liva’s body, in just the right place to keep her immobile.

A wolf had no better effect, nor a moose, nor an elk.

Still furious, Liva tried to change into an eagle, with powerful talons to cut at her mother, but her claws caught only at the air. Her mother shifted position and tugged at her wings until Liva cried out at the pain and changed back into the bear cub she had been before.

That was when she felt the death of her father, in the sudden change of the magic all around her. His aur-magic had been draining out, but this last bit was palpable. It was like the last fall of a tree’s leaves or the final stilling of a river frozen at the beginning of a bitterly cold winter. It was the last moment of sunset before it was night, the last call of a bird as it flew north, never to be heard from
again. It was the smallest of changes, yet it was everything.

Liva sagged and found that she had no strength for weeping.

Her mother tried to snuggle next to her, but Liva would have none of it.

“Tell me,” she demanded, her voice harsh and bitter. “Why should he die for those with the aur-magic? When he had already given it up himself? Why should he go to help humans, when he had given up being human as well?”

“He would hear them call to him, those with the aur-magic who had been accused, who were sentenced to death,” said the hound. “He could not ignore them.”

“But he had given me his aur-magic.”

The hound shook her head. “But not his responsibility. I told him that he should let it go, that he had no more power to do the task. He should have waited for you to take up the burden, but he said he could not allow you to do so until you were ready, and that he was needed now. I cannot say I was ashamed of him for that.”

“And that night? Did he tell you who he was leaving us for?” asked Liva bitterly.

“He told me he had dreamed of the same family for weeks. A mother and a father and a young girl with an affinity for bees.

“She had promised her parents to keep her aur-magic a secret, for it was strong. They knew the risk of it, but
they had chosen not to send her away to protect themselves nor to give her up to the magic-hunters for their own safety. She showed her power trying to save the life of a friend who was attacked by a swarm of bees. She changed herself into a bee and led the swarm away. In the end, she saved her friend and condemned herself.

“Your father went at last when he heard them cry out that their daughter was condemned to be burned to force her to show her true shape as the aur-magic fled her body in death.”

Liva shuddered. She would find out who had killed the girl and then she would know who had killed her father.

Liva and her mother struggled together to drag her father’s body back home to the cave. Liva tried various different forms of large animals, but in the end, the shape of a hound was the most useful, because it was her mother’s form and they could balance her father’s weight between them. And so they went, back along the riverbanks, and then through the dense forest.

It took three days, and more than once Liva wondered why they were doing it. Her father was gone. This was only his body. Surely they could bury it where he had died just as well as by the cave.

“He will come home with us. His body will be fuel for the forest around us,” said Liva’s mother. She held her head straight when she spoke, and her voice cracked as
Liva had never heard it before.

It was dark when they reached the opening to the cave. Liva thought that morning would be soon enough to begin the impossible task of digging in the cold, hard-packed dirt to make a grave for her father.

She crawled into the cave, exhausted. When she awoke, she did not know how much later it was. Her mother was tucked next to her father at the back of the cave, and for a long moment, Liva could almost believe that everything had been a dream, that her father was still alive.

But then it all came back to her. The bear was dead, and her mother was only saying her farewell.

In the morning, Liva and her mother dug the grave together.

Before they covered the body, Liva’s mother spoke her last words to the bear: “I always thought I would die before you. A hound is meant to have a short life. Short and filled with adventure and pack. But with you, it was a long life filled with more than I thought possible.”

The words were human, or as close to human as they could be in a hound’s mouth.

D
AY BY DAY
, Jens traveled along the bank of the river up the craggy hills to the densest and most snow-packed part of the forest. The air was thick and wet. He listened to the calls of wolves and wondered whether he would soon think of them as his brothers, or whether they would be as vicious as the boys in his village had always been.

Each day he expected to die, but instead he continued to go, slowly but surely. His leg ached at first, but gradually grew stronger. No animals came near him unless he accidentally came upon them in the dense forest.

The branches overhead were so close together that the sun could only be seen in patches here and there. Jens’s eyes became used to semidarkness. He liked that the deep smell of the forest penetrated his coat, his hair, and even his skin.

He ate roots and looked for greens poking out of the
last of the snow. He wanted to survive on those things alone, for he did not wish to kill. But at last he grew too hungry. He determined that if he hunted only to feed his immediate need, and if he killed swiftly, then Liva would not think he had become what she hated.

He began using a knife he fashioned from a sharp stone. When he caught his first snow rabbit, he was so hungry that his hands shook. He could not wait long enough to cook it, and took greedy bites. After the raw feast, he fell immediately asleep.

He woke with a start a little later, and then felt sick at the sticky blood that covered him. He made his way to the river and dipped his head in all the way, then plunged in fully, not bothering to drink, but just using it to scrub himself clean.

When he came out of the water again, though, he was as hungry as he had been before.

After he caught the next rabbit, he made a fire to cook it on, forcing himself to wait as it roasted on a stick. It will taste better, he told himself. But more importantly, it would prove that he was still human.

Satiated, he fell asleep as the fire turned to coals and ash.

In the morning he woke to the sound of snorting.

When he opened his eyes, he found himself staring into the face of a felfrass, its black snout gleaming, its sharp teeth darting in and out of view.

Jens kept very still. This was not Liva. There was no
hint of humanity in those eyes.

The felfrass was smaller than he was, but it was a born predator and could make Jens bleed to death with one blow of its sharp claws or swipe of its mouth. In sleep, he had rolled away from his knife.

Jens tried to pull his hand farther from the felfrass.

It moved one foot forward, then nudged its head closer to Jens’s hand and began to lick it.

It was the hand Jens had used to hold the branch over the fire. The meat had sizzled and dripped juices down the branch and onto his hand.

The tongue of the felfrass felt rough on his skin. Jens had to grimace to keep himself from jerking his hand away. What happened if the felfrass rubbed his skin raw and tasted Jens’s blood?

But the felfrass became bored soon enough, and sniffed once more at Jens’s hand, then turned to the branch itself. Its teeth crunched through the wood as it ate the stringy remains of the hare. When it was finished, it sauntered off without a glance back at Jens.

Jens’s vision swirled with black. He steadied himself with a hand and bit back any sound.

As the felfrass disappeared in the distance, Jens got to his feet.

He put his arms around one of the smallest of the large trees and shimmied up its trunk. When he reached the first of the huge branches, he hung over it, his arms dangling, and thought of how many ways he
could have died in the night.

Then he climbed several more branches, until he looked up and realized that the tree was so tall, he could not tell how close he was to its top.

His fear was transformed into curiosity.

He climbed branch after branch.

As he got closer to the canopy of the forest, the branches were so close together that he had to push several out of the way before he could move any farther.

He looked down and his vision swam. Now he could see how far up he was, and the world was very small below. His hands clutched tightly to the branches, and he had to breathe deeply to keep himself from fainting.

Then he looked up.

The sun bathed his face, and he could hear insects humming. He could see birds circling overhead. He could feel the sway of the tree with the rhythm of the forest. And he was no longer afraid.

No doubt the felfrass was below him somewhere. And there could be bears and wolves and any number of other creatures who would devour him at a moment’s notice, just as he would devour others, in his turn.

There was a hierarchy of life:

Wolves, lynx, bears, hounds, foxes.

Ermines, weasels, martens.

Moose, deer, chamois.

Falcons, kites, ospreys.

Quail, plovers, curlews, gulls.

Beetles, newts, wasps, midges.

Moss, rivers, stones.

He stood in the tree and felt a part of something larger than himself. He reached into his pouch and felt for the two feathers, the snowbird’s and the owl’s—Liva’s. It was a long time before he was ready to descend.

On the ground again, he put his hands to the dirt and ran them through the texture of it, taking pleasure in the feel of bark, bits of bones and teeth, droppings, fibrous roots, and thorns.

He lost himself in the feeling of oneness that had come without any magic at all. He was alone, yet not alone.

When he noticed he was hungry again, he followed the scent of a nearby stream that ran to the river. He waited there as stealthily as he could until he saw a pair of frogs making a meal out of a swarm of dragonflies.

He tried to make himself as small and inconspicuous as possible, crouching down and shuffling forward, his knees close to his chest, his hands in the dirt for balance. He fully expected the frogs to catch sight of him before he put out a hand to grab them.

He had seen boys from the village try to catch frogs before. They had rarely been successful. He had never tried.

But now Jens caught both frogs, one in each hand. One made a low noise, the other simply breathed quietly, and did not try to jump away. Jens killed them quickly.

He went back to the fire pit and stirred up the old
embers, adding more wood. Then he roasted the frogs whole.

How was it possible that he had escaped the felfrass? And that he had so easily hunted with his bare hands? It must be as Liva said: His lack of magic made him invisible.

He could kill as many animals as he wanted to. It was a terrible kind of power.

In the morning Jens tested his theory. He hunted a mole, a hare, and a fox.

Silent, he did not exist to any of them until he held them for death, and then they struggled.

He had only to be speedy, or to set out a trap.

If only he had known it before! He could have gone out hunting alone and brought back a prize that would have astonished the whole village: a bear, a moose, a great buck. He would only have had to kill swiftly and with confidence. Surely that would have been enough to make the village call him a man.

But would that have
made
him a man? He did not think so anymore.

They might have made use of him, but he would not have been one of them.

By the end of his day’s experiment, Jens had enough meat to last for a week. He dragged the carcasses back to the fire pit, promising himself that he would not let the meat go unused. He would not kill again until he had to.

He enlarged the fire circle and managed to drag the
log he had cut at several times to sit between the rocks. He lit it and while it smoked, he set up strips of meat to cure.

He scraped the fat off the skins with a sharp stick, then took off his old coat and trousers and wrapped himself in the skin of the moose.

He no longer saw a need to build a shelter. He did not need protection from these animals. If anything, they needed protection from him.