The Princess and the Snowbird (8 page)

I
T WAS EARLY
spring. After putting the dried meat for the coming week up in the branches of the trees, where animals could not easily get at it, Jens heard human voices on the forest floor below and stopped still. He looked around below and saw three of them, two smaller than the one in the center, who had graying hair and a long, stone hunting knife in his hand.

One of the smaller humans held a struggling polecat. A polecat was not a tasty animal. Even the people in his own village had not grown hungry enough in Jens’s memory to eat its gamy, tough meat. But it was one thing to kill an animal for food. It was something else again to torture a frightened creature like this one. It seemed very wrong, and Jens felt a splash of cold anger spread through his body.

He moved down three more branches and listened to the gray-haired man with the knife speak: “The stone in
this knife cuts through the animal’s aur-magic and makes it flow away.” The man held out a knife that looked very much like the one that Jens’s father had used before it had broken. It was a layered white stone, touched with gray.

With a swift movement, the man cut into the polecat’s abdomen. Jens watched very quietly from the lowest branch as the polecat went still, just as the ram had when his father had used the stone knife on it.

“Do you feel it, Peer, Karl?” asked the older man. “If you close your eyes, you may sense the aur-magic flowing away out of the wound, never to be returned.”

The smaller one—Peer?—said, too quickly, “Yes. I can feel it.”

Apparently the man did not believe him. He took the knife and held it over the boy’s head.

Peer cried out in terror and tried to retreat.

The man grabbed Peer’s hand and brought it close to the knife. At the last moment, he let go of the wrist and held only to the smallest finger, twisting it on the blade. Peer went white, and his eyes rolled back in his head. He fell to the ground.

The other boy stepped back from him as if to separate himself from the misdeed.

The man wiped the blood off the knife onto his trousers, then tucked it away, though the hilt was clearly visible. “Never lie to me about the magics. You may think I will not know it, but I always do. A man who is deaf can
feel the beat of the music in his bones. A blind man can see another’s face with his fingertips. In fact, I believe that I understand the two magics better than those who feel them from within. A man who is trapped in a cage may be the last one who can tell the dimensions of the cage, the material it is made of, and the height from which it is hung from a tree.”

“Yes, sir,” said Karl, staring at the captive polecat, and then at the fallen boy, Peer.

“Now—what do you feel? Think carefully and only then speak,” said the man—the Hunter, Jens thought him, for he had a knife that seemed to cut aur-magic, and he was cold and cruel as in the stories Jens had heard as a child.

Karl was cautious. With open eyes, he held still. Jens was careful that he could not be seen.

“I feel it,” said Karl at last. He chewed at his fingernails between words.

The Hunter said, “Tell me what you feel.”

Karl looked at Peer, who was still unmoving, and turned back to the Hunter. “I feel the aur-magic flowing away, like a stream.”

“Can you press it back into the cat?” asked the Hunter.

Karl hesitated, then made a face of concentration. After a moment he spoke softly, fearfully. “I cannot.”

The Hunter nodded. He reached out and touched the boy’s head, tousling his long, curling hair. “Good. You speak the truth. Now, think, why should that be the case?
The polecat held the aur-magic once. Is it the aur-magic that has changed or the cat?”

Karl licked his lips. “The cat,” he said, more as if it were a question than an answer.

“Are you certain?” asked the Hunter.

Karl looked at the polecat.

“Look into the polecat with your tehr-magic. It is not the same, but it should show you what you need to see.”

“The polecat,” Karl said again, this time with a little more confidence.

Jens was fascinated by the discussion despite himself. He hated what the Hunter had done to the polecat, but he had never heard anyone speak of the two magics so clearly and openly before. In the village the aur-magic was never spoken of at all without being cursed or spat at. And the tehr-magic was simply expected.

“Tell me,” said the Hunter.

“The knife cut into its—shell, you might call it. The part that holds the aur-magic,” said Karl. “Because it can’t hold it anymore, the aur-magic spills out.”

“And what becomes of it?”

“It dissipates.”

“It does not become part of the forest magic again?”

“No. I don’t know why.” Karl had his eyes closed.

The Hunter nodded. “You are right. The knife takes the aur-magic, absorbs it, locks it in.”

“So the aur-magic is lost entirely?” said Karl.

“Yes; that is why the knife is so valuable. For thousands
of years humans have thought they were proving their strength against the forest and its animals by changing aur-magic into tehr-magic when they could. But this was only the beginning, the first step away from the connection between animal and human. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” said Karl.

“And what will be the final step?” asked the Hunter.

Karl stared at the Hunter a moment. “No magic at all,” he said softly.

“Yes. And that is why I had to bring you here. So that you could understand the beginning, the middle, and the end that will come to be. I am the first of those born without any magic, but I will not be the last. The more there are of us, the further we will be from the forests and the animals. We will build greater towns. We will forget the magic entirely. It will be a wonderful day.”

“Wonderful,” echoed Karl.

Jens’s heart clenched. Yes, it was tempting to believe that having no magic made him superior to others. And if one had had the chance to take the magic away from other humans, to make them like he was, he thought there was a time in his life when he might have chosen to do exactly that. But that was before he had met Liva. Before he had seen the snowbird. Before he had come to make the forest his home.

Now he knew that having no magic was an emptiness he would have to live with all his life, but it was not something he would wish on anyone else. He loved the
forest and wanted to protect it and its aur-magic. The Hunter, it seemed, had different, more terrifying plans.

If the Hunter’s future came to be, then every man would be like Jens’s father, with a knife like the Hunter’s. How his father had gotten the knife, Jens still did not know. But it had to have been from the Hunter.

The Hunter handed the knife to Karl. “It is the stone in this knife that helps us humans along the path. Some think that a knife made of stone rather than metal is a crude weapon. But it is not so. Try using it yourself. It is easy to use, but it works cleanly, without pressure or strength.” He motioned at a plant stalk, and Karl bent over it with the knife.

The stalk split evenly, then began to wilt quickly. It was unnatural, for normally it would take hours before the green would turn to brown.

The Hunter nodded. “What have you learned, then, Karl?”

“That this stone knife destroys the aur-magic of a plant or animal.”

“But not a human?” asked the Hunter.

Karl’s eyes went wide. “No. It would take the aur-magic from a human as well.” It looked to Jens as if Karl did not much like the knife after all.

“And tehr-magic? Would it do the same to it?”

Karl hesitated a moment and licked his lips. “Aur-magic and tehr-magic are but parts of the same thing. Two sides of a coin. Or two states of water, steam and
ice. And so, the knife would be as deadly to tehr-magic, I think.”

“You see clearly, Karl. This is a great work. We will do it step by step,” said the Hunter, holding the knife. “But it begins here.”

Jens’s legs ached from staying in the same position so long. He wanted desperately to jump from the tree and attack the Hunter. But he had no weapon of his own. He did not fear the magic-killing properties of the knife, but it was still a knife.

He told himself that he would make a plan. He would find a way to defeat the Hunter, to destroy his terrible stone knives, and to protect the forest and the aur-magic.

The polecat twitched once and Jens realized it was not yet dead.

The Hunter let it drop to the ground next to the waking Peer, who started and gasped.

“That could have been you, if I were less forgiving,” said the Hunter. “Remember that when we return to Tamberg-on-the-Coast. Remember and tell the others who serve me.”

“Thank you,” said Peer breathlessly. “Thank you.”

As the Hunter and Karl began walking, Peer staggered after them like a blind man being led, touching his wounded finger over and over again, as if that would make it come back to life.

When Jens could hear no more of them, he dropped down from his perch and stood looking at the polecat,
which had been left behind.

Its eyes darted this way and that. The Hunter had not cleanly killed it with the stone knife as his father had the ram–whether it was on purpose or not, Jens did not know.

Jens bent over and picked up the polecat as gently as he could, one arm under either part of its body. Jens felt the irregular beat of its heart, directly under his fingertips, the warmth and the shudders of its body. The polecat was white on its belly and around both eyes.

“You can survive,” Jens said. “Being without magic, that is. I’ve been like that all my life.” But he knew it was dying.

He petted the cat around one ear, and then the other. He did not know where this polecat’s home was, or how to contact another of its kind. He had no way of letting it die in familiar territory.

He was afraid he would have to smother the animal for the sake of mercy. But soon the polecat died without his assistance. Its eyes began to move separately, turning in circles in panic. Jens felt its heart gallop ahead. And then it frothed at the mouth like an animal gone mad.

“I am sorry,” said Jens, as he felt the polecat’s heart stop.

Jens found himself weeping, for the polecat had been part of his new, true village, and now he felt alone again. He wished he knew how to find Liva, but she was part of his life only in his dreams.

S
PRING HAD FULLY
come. Liva went out alone in the dusky hours of the morning while her mother slept inside the cave. She intended only to slip out, take in some sharp, fresh air. Since her father’s death, she hadn’t slept well. Nightmares had begun to plague her, dreams of those with the aur-magic who were being hunted.

That night she had dreamed of a little girl, no more than three years of age, who had enough aur-magic to allow her to change into a bird and fly around her mother’s head. The family lived in a remote southern village, and the mother had no idea that the aur-magic was hunted, that it might need to be kept hidden. In Liva’s dream a group of men took the family by surprise. They took a knife to the girl that made her scream, and though she lived, she did not change into a bird again. There was nothing familiar in the dream of the girl or her village,
and so Liva had no idea how far away she was, but in any case, there was no way she could reach her in time to stop what had already happened.

She wondered how her father had borne the burden of this gift. How often had he dreamed of those who were already beyond his help? Every night? Every week? And how few must have been those he could help. No wonder he had not been able to stay at home. No wonder he had left without a word or a chance to be talked out of it.

Liva took in deep breaths of air, fresh with the scent of rising life. She lifted her arms and let her head fall back. The sky was turning blue, and there were birds flying overhead. Liva could have changed her form to join them, but she wanted to be herself now.

She wore the golden hide of an elk she had killed by herself, at the end of its natural life, and she ran, arms pumping, legs lifting, through the familiar forest.

She had no particular destination in mind. She ran until she could run no more. Then she leaned against a tree to catch her breath. The sound of her blood rushing in her ears was almost as wonderful as the running had been.

She looked around to find that she had run south and was halfway to the human village where Jens lived. Without a storm to slow her, she could go all the way there in a single day. And then what? Walk into the village? She knew she would look wild to them. Though she could speak as they spoke, that did not make her one of them.

And what did she want, anyway? To see Jens again, but she did not want to endanger him. Perhaps she should simply take the form of an animal and pass through his village unnoticed by any but him. Could she be content with that? No, she knew she could not.

She was used to being with animals. She had spent most of her life in the body of one animal or another. But what she wanted from Jens was humanity. Seeing him was not enough. She wanted to talk to him, to feel human with him. She wanted—too much.

Instead of going forward, she turned slowly back toward the cave. She tried to enjoy the rise of the sun, the sweat that trickled down her neck and onto her back. She used her hands and caught a fish. Then she made a fire to cook it, a very human thing. But the fire was too hot, and the fish burned, and the taste of it in her throat made her gag.

Stubbornly she remained human.

She practiced speaking human words, though there was no one to listen to her and understand.

“Good day.”

“How are you?”

“I am well. I am human. So are you.” She knew that was wrong, though it was what animals said to each other all the time. They agreed they were alike, and sized each other up, then decided whether or not to fight for the territory each wanted. Or they merely acknowledged each other in passing and went on their way.

She tried again.

“Would you like to race me? I can beat you because I am faster and better and stronger.”

That did not sound right, either.

“Do you want to touch me? I will let you if you dance for me first. And sing.”

Liva shook her head at herself. This was surely wrong for humans.

Then she thought of her mother and father. How had they treated each other? A hound and a bear, but they had been human once.

Liva could not remember much talking between them. They did not share the same language. And though Liva could have translated for them, they had never asked her to. They had become so used to each other, it seemed they never needed to use words to communicate with each other. Her mother had known that her father liked to have his back rubbed at night. Her father had known that her mother wanted to wake late in the morning to quiet.

She could not ask her mother directly, either. It seemed cruel to make her mother face in yet another way all that she had lost. Also, the hound would want to know why Liva was asking, and Liva would have to explain about the human village and when she had been there. Besides, Liva was not sure that her mother knew any better than she did how to be human these days. Her mother had begun as a hound, and though she had lived as a human for many years, she spoke of it as a strain, as if it had
never made much sense to her.

And her father—well, he was gone now. Liva’s grief was still fresh. He would have teased her about Jens, but she could have borne that. He would have told her stories that would make no sense to her, and then he would have pretended that he had answered everything.

“I know a story,” Liva said out loud. “It is about a girl and a boy. Humans. And one day they saw each other and they—”

She swallowed. “They saw each other and they felt as if they had known each other forever. They touched each other and then there were other humans around them, shouting and forcing them apart. They screamed and fought to get free, but they were dragged away and never saw each other again. Still, each night they dreamed of touching again, of a kiss—”

Liva felt warmth spread through her face. She put her hands up to feel it. She did not like the feeling, as if she were ill, but she did not know how to make it go away.

She stopped by the river and sat by the water’s edge, leaning back and closing her eyes. She breathed deeply and thought of Jens’s face, and the smell of him, and the way he had looked at her.

Then she heard something and looked up in surprised awe to see the snowbird again. All around her the animals stilled, as if to offer themselves to the creature of great magic. But the snowbird flew by without a glance back.

She stared into the blue sky, then tried to change her form to that of a snowbird, which she had never thought to do before. She could not. It was frustrating. She could not remember ever having trouble transforming into any animal before, but her arms changed into an eagle’s, though a white one. Her head changed into the shape of a hawk’s, and her torso and legs were a black hound’s.

She had spent too long being human that day. She had
thought
about being human.

She tried to think of the forest, of magic. She tried another form as a test. With ease she shifted from hound to hare to muskrat to mole, and then from skunk to badger to deer and bear. Then grebe and harrier, tern and dove, ant and earwig and stone fly. She had only to think of any of them, and she changed instantly.

But she thought again of the snowbird—and looked down to find herself half albino bat and half white goose.

The snowbird had almost disappeared. She could see a bit of one wing as it flew over the dense section of the forest in the south. She tried to call it back, at least. But when she opened her mouth, no sound came out, not even the croak of another bird’s speech.

The hound, following after Liva yet again, found her there by the river, some time later. “Liva, what is it? You are shaking.”

Liva explained about the snowbird, its white wings.

Her mother’s response was harsh and cold: “The
snowbirds all died many years ago. It must have been another bird. In the dim light, you were deceived.”

“I know what I saw,” Liva said, annoyed. “It was a snowbird. What else could it be? Father told me a story about a snowbird. The last of its kind.”

“Not every story your father told you was true,” said her mother.

“But this one was. I know it was. He told me as if it mattered. But why? What can the snowbird do?”

Her mother refused to meet her eyes. “It is said that the snowbird has a gift of aur-magic for one who fights at the end of time. It should have come for your father. Now it comes too late,” she said bitterly.

Liva thought of Jens and of the snowbird’s feather in his pouch. Now she had something to tell him about the creature, if only she could find him again.