She was lifted off the ground and thrown backward in the air. The sound of her falling made Fierce wince, and then the princess let out a tiny cry of pain. For the first time Fierce felt sorry for her. The princess was not invincible, after all.
Before the white buck could charge her again, the horse was at the princess’s side. How it had managed to get there, Fierce could not tell. It had moved with extraordinary speed on only three legs. The cost to its body in pain must be enormous.
It did not try to draw the white buck away, nor to fight it. Instead, the horse turned so that its flank protected the princess. The white buck would have to get through that expanse of flesh before it could touch the princess again.
Indeed, the white buck rammed its antlers into the horse’s side. Blood spattered. The horse closed its eyes, but it was not yet dead. Fierce could see the tightness around its haunches.
The white buck struck again.
This time the horse gave out a low, whimpering sound.
“We must help it,” said Red, pulling on Fierce’s arm.
Red and Fierce were there to meet the white buck on its next attack against the horse. Fierce had a stick in her hand. Red had a huge stone in his. Fierce would have thought the stone far too heavy for Red to wield well, but he threw it at the buck’s side and the impact of stone on bone was loud enough to echo in the forest behind them.
The buck was as broken as the horse was now, but it did not stop. It was not a real animal, thought Fierce, or it would have gone away to lick its own wounds.
When the buck turned to her, Fierce felt a moment of terror, such as she had never felt as a hound. She had fought bucks before, but it had never been like this.
“The brain is behind the eyes,” Red called to her.
Fierce held the stick steady as the white buck leaped toward her. She had chosen a thick, straight stick as she had rushed forward and now the stick served her well. She held it in just the right position and it pierced the white buck’s left eye. It took all of Fierce’s strength in her new human body to hold the stick steady as the weight of the leaping white buck pushed the stick into his skull.
The white buck shuddered and then fell to the ground inches from Fierce’s now trembling hand.
Fierce slumped forward and thought only of breathing. She looked up again a few moments later.
“It’s dead, Feersha,” said Red, standing over the buck to check it for signs of breath.
Fierce did not take that for granted, not for a moment. She was somehow sure that it would rise to its feet and leap at her again.
She pulled the stick out of its left eye and struck it in the right eye, for certainty.
The white buck did not move this time, but its body disintegrated into white worms that squirmed on the ground and then disappeared into it. Fierce did not move quickly enough to catch even one of them.
Had she done anything to help? The white worms of the Xaon would simply find another animal form to take and come against them again. She had only slowed them down for a little while. And then what?
Fierce could feel something wet on her cheeks and put a hand up to touch them. Tears. She had never wept as a human before. It was different than as a hound. More painful. As a hound, it had only been a reaction of the moment. Now there were deep feelings that went with the wet drops on her face, feelings that were difficult to sort through.
“I’m going to see to the horse,” said Red, and he let go of her. “Can you help me?”
Fierce muttered an affirmative, but had to work hard to focus herself enough to turn and pull herself upright so that she could step toward him.
“Hold your hand here. The horse will bleed to death otherwise.” He pressed Fierce’s hand into the horse’s flank. It was wet and warm and sticky.
“Harder. Stop the blood flow,” said Red. “I have to go get more of that moss.” He was gone and back in a moment, or so it seemed to Fierce. Then she felt the cold, wet softness of the moss on her fingers and Red pushing her back.
The horse was still breathing.
It should be dead, she thought. It had suffered too much.
But it did not give up easily. The horse continued to breathe and in a few minutes, it opened its eyes. It croaked out something that sounded like “Princess,” the human word. It tried to move to the side, and Red helped it.
Then he was able to pull the princess out from underneath, unconscious. Her dark skin, normally colored with warmth, looked gray and green in turns. Red shook her, then sent Fierce for water to pour into her mouth.
At last, she woke. “Horse,” she said.
“He is here,” said Red.
She would not stop thrashing until she had her head on the horse’s flank. Then she slept, and Fierce watched her, thinking that she was their only hope. But what if she did not care about the rest of the world at all? What if she cared only about herself and the horse? What if she left the fissures and the forest and did not turn back to think of the danger she had brought with her?
Chapter Twelve:
The horse continued to need moss and the terrible wound on its flank did not seem to be getting better quickly. It oozed blood and pus and grew feverish shortly. It did not open its eyes. It began to thrash and neigh incomprehensibly and it was all Red could do to keep putting on moss.
As for the princess, she would not allow Red to use his moss on her. He tried to put it to her face, which was bruised badly and had begun to swell around her nose and left cheek. She pulled it off as soon as she could. “I do not need this,” she said. “I have my magic.”
Fierce found that her fear of the princess had disappeared in her fear for the white worms. “Your magic!” she shouted. “It is your magic that has created this problem. The fissures, the worms, the Xaon seeping through to us. It is all because of you!” She did not know how to prove this, but she felt it must be true. There had been no fissures in the forest until the princess had come with her wild magic.
The princess stared at her for a long moment, and then waved an arm. “You are confused,” she said. “You know nothing of the Xaon. It has nothing to do with the wild magic.”
“Then what was that white buck that came at you? And why did your magic do nothing to it if it is not Xaon?” demanded Fierce, unwilling to retreat.
“I—there are many strange things that are to be met on a long journey of this sort,” said the princess, but Fierce could see the princess was breathing heavily and sweating. She had never shown such signs of fear before.
“I am from this forest,” said Fierce. “And I know that there have never been such white bucks before. They have only appeared with your wild magic.”
“You have lived a short life,” said the princess. “You do not know everything about this forest, even if it is your home.”
She was not listening. She was too stubborn.
Fierce came very close to her and put her face in the princess’s. “You will die if you do not see the truth here,” she said. “We will all die. Is that what you want? You have lived so long a life that you are tired of living? You have found your horse and you wish now to die with him?”
The princess’s eyes flickered to the wounded horse. “He will live,” she said stubbornly, her jaw set. “And so will I.”
“You will not, unless you see the way to defeat the Xaon. There will be more creatures like this white buck coming, and they will not wait for you to believe they are a threat.” Fierce wished she could wriggle out of her human skin and face the princess as a hound to another hound. Then she would know how to make her listen. She would snarl and leap, baring her teeth, using her claws to demand attention. Or she would kill her, and not think of the future, for that was a human thing to do.
“You say the wild magic caused these fissures into the Xaon,” said the princess quietly. “But how can that be when I have used the wild magic all my life and never seen such things until I came here? I think that it is this place that is the problem, not me.”
Fierce beckoned and began to walk toward the fissure itself.
The princess reluctantly followed.
Fierce looked down as she walked, to see if there were more white creatures beneath her feet. There were only a few worms crawling out of this new fissure. The white buck must have come from an earlier fissure, after the worms had learned more shapes to take, as they had when she and Red had touched them there.
“What are those things?” asked the princess, her voice quavering.
Fierce did not answer. She allowed the princess to discover the worms for herself.
They crawled on her hands and then, as she made a face, moved up her arm. Fierce watched as one set began to merge together and grow into a human elbow. The princess started at the sight of it, and brushed the worms off. They scattered.
“You see?” said Fierce.
“But I do not see how I could have done this. They have nothing to do with wild magic,” said the princess. “You saw that when the buck changed color as I tried to use my wild magic on it.”
“Do you find yourself using the wild magic differently now than before?” Fierce thought of the times when the princess had not been able to use the wild magic at all. What if she was drawing on the Xaon in some way to power her wild magic, even now?
“Perhaps this is how I am meant to end,” said the princess, defeated. “As a recompense for all my past misdeeds.”
Fierce took a breath. This was a beginning, she thought. “But not a recompense for the rest of us,” she added. “We are innocent.”
The princess walked away from the fissure and left Fierce standing there. When Fierce saw her again, she was with the horse.
“Give her time,” Red recommended, as he stood back from the two.
“We may not have time,” said Fierce.
The two golden, long-haired humans had seen Fierce walk away with the princess and wanted to know what result had come of it.
“Nothing,” said Fierce in despair.
“Let us put her in a cage,” suggested the male. “We will not feed her unless she does what we demand. We can hurt her with rocks and sticks if she will not bow her head.”
Suddenly, Fierce had a very clear picture of what the experience of early captivity had been like for the two long-haired hounds, before they had made it to Lord Ahran’s kennels.
“She is ill,” said Fierce. “We must give her a little time to think, and then she will be able to see the truth. And help us fix this.”
But the two humans pushed past her and made their way to the princess, who lay sleeping at the side of the horse. They yanked her up to her feet and pinned her arms behind her back.
As soon as the princess was fully awake, she had only to reach for the vines on a nearby tree and they danced through the air toward the two long-haired humans, tying them tightly as a moth’s cocoon. Even their mouths were covered, so that they could no longer speak.
“Please.” Red stood up from his place by the horse and moved to the princess. “Let them go.”
“And why should I?” the princess answered tightly, her eyes on the struggling humans rather than on Red.
“Because you are powerful enough to keep them at your side without force,” said Red.
She hesitated a long moment, and then with a wave of her hand the vines began to slip away from the two humans. They fell to the ground on all fours and for a moment, they tried to run away that way. But the different lengths of human legs and arms confounded them and they ended up in a heap.
“I made them what they are,” she said softly.
“Yes,” said Red.
Without another word, the princess moved back to her position at the horse’s side. She smoothed the undamaged parts of his flank, and put her head next to his. She whispered into his ear. It seemed she had lost interest in any other creature.
Red moved to help the two long-haired humans.
“No.” The princess stopped him with a hand held up. “You stay with the horse. He needs you.”
“He is resting now. He will not need more moss for several hours. The best thing for him is quiet.”
“He needs you,” said the princess through clenched teeth.
Red fell back, his eyes catching Fierce’s.
She tried to do what he wished, moving forward jerkily toward the two fallen humans. She had no experience with this sort of thing. She had never been one to tend the ill as a hound. That had belonged to other females in the pack who had more status than she, the ones who had had pups, as well, to care for in the den.
She sniffed at the humans. They smelled like forest and fear and the sweet, hairless skin of humans. Their eyes were open, but they clutched each other.
“Are you in pain?” asked Fierce. “Is there blood?”
The two humans began to look at each other. Brother and sister, they were more used to examining each other than themselves.
“She is well,” said the male.
“He is well,” said the female.
“Then move!” said Fierce sharply. They were too close to the princess for her tastes. “For your own safety,” Fierce added urgently.
The two lumbered to the side, skirting around the princess in a wide arc.
The female began to weep, tears falling down her face unchecked.
“What is it? What is wrong with her?” asked the male.
“Being human is wrong with her,” said Fierce, who knew more about weeping as a human than she would ever have wished to learn. “No more than that.”
“Worse than death,” said the male.
Fierce did not know if she agreed with him or not, now. “What would you do, if you were a hound? Right this moment? Tell it to me.”
“Right this moment?” He looked around the forest.
Fierce was impatient. “Would you sleep under wet leaves to cool yourself? Would you catch fish in the stream, with only your head above water? Would you tease the gulls by jumping at them? Or steal berries to stain your paws and coat your mouth with sweet juice? Would you dance with your sister until you could dance no more?”
“How did you know?” asked the male, looking at her strangely. “I would not think a human could possibly understand . . .”
“Perhaps humans are not so bad as you think,” said Fierce. She was not yet ready to reveal herself to these two. She licked her own wounds. She always had. And she could see no reason to tell them a truth that would make things worse rather than better. They believed that at least she was comfortable in her human skin.
“My sister and I were born on the same day. We have always been closer to each other than to any other hounds in our pack. When we were captured we thought that it would not matter, so long as we were together.”
The female gave a low throated rumble in agreement, more hound than human.
“Do you have names you would share with me?” asked Fierce. “Hound names?”
The two looked at each other. It was the female who nodded first. “I am Unbroken,” she said.
Fierce nodded, loving the name. Despite all that she had been through, the female golden hound’s spirit still shone through. If only she could learn how to show it as a human, as well.
“And I am Loyal,” said the male.
It was just as fitting a name for him, thought Fierce.
“Keep your names,” Fierce suggested. “Hold tight to them, and to all that is part of your past.” She held to her own name in her mind and wondered if she would ever reveal the truth about herself to anyone who mattered to her.
“You truly believe my sister and I will be hounds again?” said Loyal eagerly.
“I believe that you can be hounds in your hearts and minds, no matter what shape you wear.” Fierce had to believe this. It was all she clung to.
That night, after they had eaten a rough dinner of roots and berries, and Red sat next to Fierce as she stared at the fire, Red began to sing softly. It was a strange lullaby, but one he said he had sung to his hounds before. He did not remem
ber where he had learned it, but it was a mix of human words and hound words, and it had barks and growls and yelps in it, combined with very human cries and whispers. There was something strange and wonderful in it, calming beyond what Fierce had expected.
She slept deeply and dreamed of riding the princess’s horse. Which was ridiculous, of course, because the princess would never allow such a thing.
It was dawn of the next day when Fierce was the only one awake, that the next attack came. It was not one creature that was white and shone with an unnatural light this time. It was a pack of hounds. And the faces were familiar to her.
Chapter Thirteen:
She thought at first they were her own pack, though they did not bark or yelp. There was Fire, with the scar down his side, just as she remembered him. And Cut-nose and White-Tail, side by side as they always were. Arrow, in the front, bounding as if he were half bird. Cruel in the back, nipping at the heels of others, Tongue and Teeth and Sings.
Then she saw their sleek shining, white bodies and the red eyes that looked at her without serious intent. And she knew that they were white creatures from the fissures. Not her pack, come to bring her home with them, after all.
“Princess, wake!” shouted Fierce. “Red! Unbroken! Loyal!”
The hounds burst into the copse then and went straight for the princess, who was tucked into the side of the horse.
Once again, the horse tried to stand to save her, despite its own weakened state. It stood and blood dripped all around it as it broke open whatever had healed inside of it. It snorted and threw his head and stepped backward unsteadily toward the princess.
Then it fell headlong at her feet and did not rise.
Fierce thought it was surely dead this time.
The princess screamed out and she ran to the first of the hounds, the one that looked like Sly with a twitching tail. She put a hand to it as it snarled at her. Its teeth connected with her throat and held tightly.
Before Fierce could shout out the danger, the princess was using wild magic to turn the white hound into a mouse.
The Princess and the Horse (The Princess and the Hound) Page 8
