The Princess and the Horse (The Princess and the Hound)

by Mette Ivie Harrison

  Fierce felt uncomfortable with so many humans. She could not even count them all. The estimate had been Red’s. Fierce tried to think of them as a pack, but they were too diverse. Lord Ahran might be ahead of the others, but Fierce did not think that he had as much control over them as a pack leader would, or as much as he thought he did.

  He stood tall, his head back, a cloak flowing behind him as he strode forward purposely. The humans behind him stood in smaller groups, turned away from him at times, or speaking amongst themselves with angry, sullen faces.

  “We have come to drive the princess and her wild magic out,” he called out. He held a sword directly before his face.

  Fierce thought how easily she could defeat him now. If she leaped and caught his sword again in her teeth—but human teeth were not as good as hound’s for that. She would have to take his sword with her hand, and the blade might slice her badly. She was willing to do it, however. She did not think that Lord Ahran was much of a swordsman, even compared to a hound newly turned human.

  The true danger was the man at his side, well-dressed, with swords still in scabbards.

  “They are his swordsmen. They do nothing but practice in the yard all day long,” Red whispered to her.

  Fierce decided she would wait and see before she leaped into action. It was a human thing, but she was a human now, and she wished to stay alive.

  “Will you not stand and fight?” Lord Ahran demanded of the princess.

  But Fierce suspected that Lord Ahran’s swordsmen would be the ones who fought the princess, not him, if it came to that.

  “I am a princess,” said the princess, who looked almost as young now as she had when Lord Ahran first met her. “I will not take orders from such as you.”

  “You cannot expect me to let such a criminal as you go free,” said Lord Ahran. He stared nervously about. “Though you are a woman.”

  Fierce did not understand why being a woman made a difference. In the forest, it was important to know in a battle if one faced a male or female, for they fought differently. A female would protect cubs more readily, while a male would fight for show. A female, once engaged, could not be stopped. A male, if he was wounded, would sometimes run. But there were no rules about a female of any kind being unfit for challenge. Meat was life itself, and there were no distinctions of privilege there.

  “You have brought the Xaon to us here,” said Lord Ahran, trying to speak with courage, though his lips twitched in fear.

  The princess stood at last, slowly, and looked at him. “What is it you request of me?” she said as if she were the leader of the pack and Lord Ahran had come to challenge her in her own den.

  “Take your wild magic and go. Promise you will never return,” said Lord Ahran.

  Did he think that if she left, the fissures would simply disappear? Or go with her?

  The princess nodded. “I promise never to use wild magic again. I promise to leave and never return,” speaking with a faint, superior smile on her face. “Is that enough for you?”

  Fierce wanted to shout at Lord Ahran that he was a fool, that asking the princess these things was the same as dooming his own kingdom. They needed her to stay her, to heal the fissures. Otherwise the Xaon would take control of everything.

  But Lord Ahran’s lips twisted. “How do I know that your promise is true?” he asked.

  “A good question,” said the princess. But she did not answer it.

  There were shouts from the humans for the princess’s death in various unpleasant ways. She did not seem to hear them. She stared in the direction of Lord Ahran, but did not seem focused on him.

  “You are not from the north,” said Lord Ahran. “You do not know our ways.”

  Fierce thought that he was likely speaking more for the sake of the mob behind him than for the princess.

  “I do not,” said the princess. “I am from the south, though I have not been there for many years.” For the first time, she showed a bit of emotion, a crack in her voice and a slight bobble of her head. As if she were thinking of her own kingdom, and the fact that it was gone, never to be seen again.

  “Here we make a promise on our honor and we keep it,” said Lord Ahran. “We hold our honor very highly. There is nothing more valuable to us than that. If you make a promise, it cannot be made lightly.”

  “Do you mean that you will watch over me to make sure that I follow it through?” asked the princess.

  “I will,” said Lord Ahran.

  “Ah. All of you will,” said the princess, nodding to the mob.

  “If necessary.”

  The princess took a breath. “Good,” she said.

  There was a long, uncomfortable moment.

  “You said that you would leave.”

  “And so I will. When it is time for me to go. When I have finished what I must do,” said the princess. “When I have sent the Xaon back where it belongs and restored the balance of magic in the Naon.”

  Fierce sighed relief at this.

  Lord Ahran did not feel the same. “You must go now,” he insisted.

  The princess strode closer to him.

  Lord Ahran could see her gown now, how ragged it had become since the horse had gone. “If you need a day to gather your supplies and your servants, of course,” he said, after he cleared his throat. “Of course I understand that. I will wait for you to escort you to the edge of this kingdom.”

  “I do not know how long it will take me to be ready to leave,” said the princess. “But when the time comes, you may escort me wherever you wish. I do not care. It is not you—or you—” she waved to the mob, “who have influence over me.”

  This was not received well.

  As Lord Ahran dithered, a group of humans behind him broke out and threw stones at the princess, with good accuracy. Four of the stones hit her, one in the face, and the others on the rest of her body, chest, abdomen, and leg. She lurched forward on one knee, then pulled herself back to standing.

  She bled from the cut on the face, though it was the bruise rising beneath that Fierce thought would be more dangerous. The other wounds she could not see, but the princess held one hand to her abdomen, as though that one hurt her the worst. She did not walk steadily, but as soon as she was standing again, it was hard to tell that she had been wounded at all.

  This was something that Fierce could admire in her.

  But the fight was not over. The humans were not satisfied with the stones. They surrounded the princess and began to thrust at her with sticks. She might have avoided half of the blows if she had tried to move swiftly. But she held herself regally, and seemed to pretend that she could not be hurt by such foolishness. The sticks were not as sharp as swords, but more than one penetrated her flesh and her gown was soon dotted with blood seeping from wounds beneath.

  Lord Ahran only stared, open-mouthed. He did not stop to act, and tried to edge away from the scene, as if he were afraid that he would be caught in the mob’s anger, as well.

  More humans came forward to join the attack.

  Fierce had no weapon, and would not have known how to use one if she had. But she was strong and unafraid. She leaped forward, past the princess and the few attackers, toward the others.

  “Get back!” she shouted, her voice ringing out in a sudden silence. “I will use my own wild magic on you!” she threatened, with a raised hand. She spoke with all the fierceness of her own name, with a hound’s strength in her voice.

  Most of the humans, terrified, began to move backward, running or scrambling. But some only stopped and stared, and others seemed to be emboldened by her words.

  Fierce threw herself forward at one of these humans, and pushed him down. Then she was on top of him, her hands on his chest. She was looking directly into his face and he was gibbering at her, incomprehensible sounds that animals make, too, when they have no mind for real speech.

  There was a pleasure in this power that Fierce had forgotten. She had not been as close to one of her prey as this sin
ce she had been a hound and she knew that this human could fight back at her, if he would. He might win.

  But he was cowed, and did not fight her. Perhaps he all truly believed she had the wild magic.

  She stood and moved on to another human, a woman who a moment before had been ready to attack the princess. Now she was begging for mercy, for help, for her life. Fierce did not truly hurt her. Fierce could smell the woman’s blood in the veins that throbbed at her throat, but Fierce felt no thirst for the taste of blood anymore.

  She was surprised by this. She enjoyed the thrill of running and leaping. She liked the taste of her own excitement in her throat. But she had no interest in feeding on fear. Perhaps she never had. As a hound, she had killed quickly when she could. An animal being hunted fled, but there were no long moments when the animal was captured, before it was killed.

  “Get off of her!” shouted a voice near Fierce.

  She thought it was merely another one of the mob. Then she felt herself lifted back, her whole weight easily manipulated. She was set down several feet away, without gentleness. Then she looked up and saw that it was Red who had stopped her.

  Her mouth gaped open and she felt as if her heart had worked its way into her throat. She swallowed hard, but that did not dislodge the feeling of pressure.

  He had seen her like this. Of course he had. She had not once thought of him. She had only thought of the mob and the princess.

  What must he think of her?

  There could be no doubt in his mind now about who—and what—she was. He could not believe any human would have acted like this, like an animal.

  She could not bear to look at him.

  She could hear him calling out to the mob to stand back, to keep away, to stay safe.

  They obeyed him far better than they had Lord Ahran. She could feel the footsteps in the ground beneath her fingertips.

  Then he came back to her. It was as if they were in the middle of a river, with the other humans standing on the banks. They could speak, and the other noise around them disguised their voices.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked.

  “I am not hurt,” she said, breathless.

  He bent down over her, but she cringed away from him, tucking herself into a ball so that if he attacked her, it would only be her limbs and bony back that were injured.

  “Feersha,” he said.

  “I am sorry,” she said. There were so many other words that wanted to come out. Human words now, not hound words at all. “You must be so ashamed of me. I should have told you the truth. It must be a terrible shock. You must hate me.”

  “Feersha—though I think that is not fully your true name. Listen to me. I knew. I think I always knew, from the first moment that I saw you. Certainly by the time that I heard you speak to the other hounds.”

  “You knew?”

  He shrugged. “I did not admit it to myself until a few days later. But you were so at home with the hounds. And when you came to the forest, you relied so much on your nose. You were so fast. You knew everything to look for. You were never afraid.”

  “The princess—”

  “She changed you with her wild magic. I see that now. Of course she did.”

  “I am not human,” said Fierce, only daring to look at the side of Red’s head.

  “You were not human,” said Red. “But now you are.”

  “Am I? I think I just proved the opposite.” She waved in the direction of the mob. “They would not say I was human.”

  “I would say it is they who have proved they are not human, not you,” said Red. “They are the ones who act purely on fear, rather than on better feelings.”

  “That is not what being human means,” said Fierce. “You know it isn’t.”

  “You mean because they are at home in their bodies and you are not? Ask how many humans wish that they were not as they are, Fierce. They are too tall or too short. They wish they were stouter or thinner. They wish they could run faster or farther or that they could remember facts more readily.”

  It was worse than Fierce thought it would be. If he had shouted at her, that would have been more bearable. She would have expected that. She had been mocked before, in a pack. It only lasted a little while, and then it was over. Then she could have gone away and been by herself, to lick her wounds, whether they were visible or not.

  But this—kindness—made it so that she had to continue to speak to him, to explain to him what he was not willing to admit to himself. “You love hounds. I know that you do. But they are still hounds to you.”

  “Hunter and Loyal and Unbroken—they were hounds to me, yes. They are still hounds. But you are different.”

  “I am not different. It is only that you see me as a human still. You have never seen me as a hound. You saw them first as hounds and so you continue to see them that way, in your heart. Once you see me as a hound, I think that you will change your mind, as well,” said Fierce.

  Red shook his head. He put his hand to hers, but she would not take it. She let it slide away.

  “What if you are never a hound again, then?” he asked harshly, as harsh as he had been when he had thrown her off the human she had attacked wildly.

  “That may be,” said Fierce.

  “You will live the rest of your life as a human, always feeling that you are not one of us?”

  “If that is the way that it is,” said Fierce.

  “How can you say that? Do you feel nothing for me? Will you not even try?” asked Red.

  “That is the difference between us,” said Fierce. “You are a human, and so you fight for that which cannot be. That is the essence of what is human. Perhaps that is why humans found the wild magic. Perhaps that is why it is only humans who can use it. And only humans who can misuse it. But I am still a hound. I see still what is. And I see that you and I are hound and human. No more and no less than that.”

  “If you were a hound again, then, would you come back with me, and live in my kennels? With Hunter and Loyal and Unbroken?” he asked.

  Fierce felt very cold at this suggestion. How could he even ask it? “I would go back to the forest to live.”

  “With all its dangers? I could keep you safe,” said Red.

  “Safe, but not free,” said Fierce. She thought of the horse and began to understand why he had gone, at last, despite how he felt for the princess. Whatever he had been, he had become something else. He could not go back, but he could not remain her horse, either.

  Fierce stared into Red’s eyes and did not flinch away from the pain she saw in them. She mirrored it back fully. It was always the sign of two hounds in the same pack that they shared a pain this way. Acknowledging it, not trying to soothe it. Not trying to hide it, but allowing it to be seen.

  Chapter Twenty-one:

  But the humans were quiet again, and the princess had moved to stand by Red and Fierce, drawing attention to them.

  “You!” said Lord Ahran. “Kennel boy.” He hesitated a moment, searching for a name. “Red.” He spat in the dirt. “I should have known when you were missing that you had come to this woman with her wild magic.”

  “I came to help those whom you would not,” said Red.

  “Did you? I think you could not stay away from the wild magic. After all this time, it drew you back. They say it leaves a mark on all those it touches. That they are never the same afterward.”

  Fierce thought of Red’s parents who had died because of the man with the wild magic who had lived then. How could it not have marked him?

  “I think it is not wild magic you should blame for my presence here,” said Red.

  “I was good to you. Do you not remember that? I treated you well,” said Lord Ahran.

  He was still afraid, thought Fierce, for all he pretended to be angry.

  “I remember,” said Red. “I remember exactly how you treated me as your kennel boy. I was in awe of you and you hardly spoke three words to me. I thought I did not deserve more than that, until now. You taugh
t me all my life to fear those with wild magic, but I feel more myself here than I ever did with you.”

  “What are you saying?” asked Lord Ahran, eyes wide.

  “I am saying that the wild magic is not what you think it is. It is not to be feared.”

  How could he say that when he had seen what the princess had done with her wild magic? How she had brought the Xaon from behind its seal? Fierce did not understand Red at all.

  “The wild magic is what killed your parents,” said Lord Ahran.

  “You have always told me that the wild magic killed my parents. And perhaps it did. One man’s wild magic. Or perhaps there was more to the story than you have told me,” said Red.

  “So you disbelieve me now, after all these years?” asked Lord Ahran. “Who has told you something else?”

  “What else was there to tell me?” asked Red.

  “N—nothing,” stuttered Lord Ahran. He stepped back from Red, as afraid of him as it seemed he was of the princess.

  Fierce could not understand it.

  “You have not told me the full truth. Tell it now!” demanded Red.

  “You want the truth,” said Lord Ahran, suddenly full of angry energy. “I will show you the truth of wild magic.” He turned to one of his men, and whispered for a moment.

  The man stepped away and brought back a child in his arms who had been terribly injured. One side of her face looked as if it had been chewed off. She had no ear, and there was blood still oozing from the bite marks on her cheeks. Her eyes were so swollen, Fierce wondered if she would ever see again. She trembled and mewed like a cat.

  “Do you see this girl?”

  Red swallowed and looked to Fierce.

  Fierce had to turn away from both the pain on his face and the pain on the girl’s.

  “She was attacked by her own hound. A hound she has had since her own birth and has never hurt her.”

  “I do not see what this has to do with the wild—” said Red.

  “It was not her hound,” Lord Ahran interrupted. “It was a creature of the wild magic. Created by your princess out of the Xaon that is where all those with wild magic get their power.”