Fierce could almost see the man the horse had once been, in the lines the princess made around him. He would have been taller than she was by half a head, with a thick crown of black hair springing around his scalp. His nose long and his mouth tender, his chin with a defined point.
All her extended life, the princess had been chasing after this man, hoping for him to come back to her as he had been, and afraid that he would not. Whatever had separated them to begin with, Fierce could only guess at.
The man inside the horse that Fierce saw was a king of men, but perhaps not in the eyes of humans. Or perhaps the princess herself did not see him as her equal. He might not have owned cattle as she did, or declared that a certain extent of land was his. Even before he had become a horse, Fierce suspected that the man had had a respect for the land and for its creatures that the princess did not.
But in the princess’s lines, Fierce thought she could also see the young woman she had once been, vulnerable, uncertain, with a joy of life ahead of her, and hope in her love. As well as fear and trembling. Her beloved might die and her wild magic could not save him.
Fierce turned back to the squawking, thrashing sea beast and Red, who was tiring quickly as the sea beast forced him into more and more acrobatic escapes.
She ran to his side and soon found Hunter and Loyal and Unbroken with her. They all took sticks and rubbed them together until their shoulders ached with the effort. Then they spread out around the sea beast in a circle and touched it with fire alternately. The sea beast batted at Hunter with its flippers not long after, and he fell, calling out angry words for as long as he had strength. Then Loyal and Unbroken fell, as well.
The fissure was only a few lengths of the sea beast away. But the closer they came to it, the more the sea beast resisted their attempts to draw it there. It seemed to have a sense for the gaping hole and for what would happen to it if it fell in there, for even when its back was turned, it would keep a certain distance.
Red looked toward the princess and the horse. His lips pressed into a long straight line. Then he led the sea beast purposely away from the Hunter and the other hounds-turned-human, and toward the horse. The sea beast dipped toward the princess.
She looked up and for a moment Fierce was sure that she would simply let herself and the horse die. But she was too human for that.
“No!” the princess shouted. “You cannot take him!” She stood and gently let the horse slip to the ground. Then she strode toward the sea beast.
Its fangs pierced her multiple times, in the chest, in the shoulders, in the neck. But it was as if she did not feel pain, for the princess continued to move forward.
Red jabbed at the sea beast with his burning stick, pressing it in until more white worms began to sizzle out of it, but it did not force the sea beast to fall. It only weakened it by degrees. Still, it was something, and Fierce decided to join him.
She picked up the sticks that the others had dropped and used them together, puncturing the snake as it had punctured her, holding the stick in until she could smell the burning flesh begin to fall away, and then she lunged again.
The princess put out a hand and touched the sea beast’s head. It thrashed, but she would not let it go. Fierce did not understand for a moment what the princess was doing. She should not use her wild magic on it. She had already learned that did not work.
But then Fierce saw the sea beast’s skin begin to lose its tautness, its eyes going dull, its flippers gnarled. She realized that the princess was sharing her age and infirmity with the sea beast, as she had shared her wild magic with the white buck. The sea beast did not know how to stop taking in what she offered, for it had learned from the moment it left the Xaon for the Naon, to take all that life offered. And now, life also offered death.
Red rushed at the sea beast and toppled it into the fissure.
In that moment, he looked up at her in triumph. His face was covered with dirt. His body was riddled with puncture wounds. He was limping heavily on his right side now, and his stump looked red and sore. But he still moved with a liveliness that Fierce could not help but admire. There was energy in him, and a sense of pride in living his own life, but also a connection to the forest around him. It was a rare thing in humans, and even in the horse or the princess Fierce did not think it was so strong.
The earth trembled beneath her feet and Red grabbed hold of her as the fissure finally closed. Fierce felt dizzy and exhausted. She could not remember the last time she had eaten. She was not sure she had drunk anything, even water, in the last day. She struggled not to black out. She had never pressed herself this hard before as a hound.
“We are not what we were,” said Red. “Either of us.”
“No,” said Fierce.
It was dark and they slept by the princess and the horse and the other humans and animals, all together as if a pack.
Chapter Twenty-five:
Fierce dreamed that she had been sucked into the fissure herself and that she had lost both her legs. She woke in the morning and looked down first of all to see if she had legs. They were working the air above her in circles.
Hound’s legs.
She looked at her hands.
They were paws.
She tried to stand up, and fell over onto all fours.
She was a hound again.
The fissure had been closed and the threat of the Xaon ended. With the return of balance to the Naon, it must be that all the princess’s wild magic had been undone. Or the princess had undone it herself, in her final proof of the change in her heart.
The sun was bright already and the dew had been burned away.
Fierce danced in the patterns of the leaves and then sniffed her way to Sanna. The woman was still asleep. At her side was a man, stretched out away from her, but her hand was on his leg. The man snored loudly and the sound of it made Fierce’s heart light.
She touched Sanna first to wake her slowly.
But Sanna started at the sight of Fierce’s hound face. “What?” she said.
Fierce barked at her in the language of hounds that there was a surprise ahead of her, a happy one.
Sanna did not understand her barking.
Fierce tried to remember the human words for the same meaning. But her sound was sharp and harsh.
Sanna cowered.
At last, Fierce simply stepped away and let Sanna see the human at her side for herself.
He was not yet awake. Somehow, the man had managed to sleep through all of her noise. Perhaps he had not slept well as a long-nosed pig, thought Fierce. Or perhaps he had always slept so soundly, and Sanna was used to the pleasure of waking him.
“Oh,” said Sanna at the sight of her husband. She put out a hand to touch his face, then pulled it back, as if she was afraid she would be burned.
The man still did not wake.
Sanna’s shoulders began to shake. Fierce could not tell if she was laughing or crying or perhaps it was both together. She bent over and nudged her husband.
His eyes opened for a moment. Then he made a snorting sound, turned to his side and fell asleep once more. Snoring as loudly as ever.
Sanna looked down at his toes. He had no clothing on, but in the course of the night had covered himself in leaves and moss. His feet, however, were completely bare. Sanna picked one up and began to tickle the palm of it.
Her husband jerked upright. “Stop!” he said.
Sanna continued to tickle him mercilessly, until he tackled her and tickled her in return.
Fierce watched them tumble over each other, laughing and biting at each other. It reminded her of nothing so much as her own pack and the way that the males and females had treated each other when they were well and unafraid.
After a few minutes of this, Sanna’s husband suddenly stopped and looked down at himself. He held very still for a moment, taking stock of his new condition. Then he looked back at Sanna, eyes shining. “I’m a man again,” he said.
“I wondered when you woul
d realize that,” said Sanna.
“I am a man again,” he whispered. He put his arms out and Sanna fell into them. He wrapped her tight against his chest and held her there, neither of them speaking a word.
It seemed there were some things that needed no words, even for humans, who liked to speak about everything, Fierce thought.
“You stayed with me, even through all of this,” said her husband.
“I did.”
“You believed I would be yours again.”
Sanna hung her head. “I hoped,” she said. “But I did not know.”
“And if I had not? If I had been a beast forever?”
“I would have stayed with you,” said Sanna.
Her husband looked at her as if she had been the one transformed, instead of him. “I believe it is so.” He put a hand to his chest and rubbed at his heart.
“Tira,” said Sanna suddenly, her body gone rigid.
“Tira,” her husband echoed. “But I thought she was with you. I thought she was safe at home.”
Sanna shook her head. “She followed after you. You must not have seen her. But when you were changed, she was also.”
Sanna’s husband turned around in a circle, taking in the forest around him, and yet seeing nothing. For his daughter was not there. “If she was a beast also, then why has she not come back to herself?” he said.
Fierce sniffed the air, but there were so many dead. Perhaps it was not Sanna’s daughter.
She and her husband seemed to find her directly, however. Her body had fallen some distance from the fissure. She was missing part of one leg. It had not been torn off by the sea beast, and Fierce suspected she had not died in the attack of the Xaon at all, but afterward, when the wild magic had slipped from her.
Some of her bees must have died, and when she came back to her human self, she could not survive the loss of those parts.
Sanna and her husband held each other and wept.
Fierce turned and looked at the other animals that had been part of the princess’s entourage. She was sure that one had been the curled horn beast. Now it was a middle-aged man who looked around, bewildered.
Fierce turned away and looked at the others. There was Hunter, now a wolf-hound once more. She ran to him and barked at him. He looked up at her and nodded. He seemed more sober, less sure of himself.
Loyal and Unbroken were sleeping next to each other, and Fierce woke them by jumping on them and making them cry out in surprise. She chased after them and they all ran through the forest. It still felt special to her heart, but no longer the only place that she could belong.
And somehow, she was able to enjoy it all the more because of that.
The beauty of the sun as it hung in the blue sky above. The heat of the late morning across her shoulders. The sound of water trickling nearby. The taste of the coming summer.
She could survive without them.
For she had been a human, and she had lived through it. She was stronger than she had known she was.
Fierce turned back and found the princess herself.
She lay on the forest floor, exhausted and time worn. Fierce did not know if she had any wild magic left in her. The smell of it was still on her, but that might be from the past and not from the present.
Near the princess was a man whose body was battered. He lay face forward in the dirt and so Fierce could see every one of the poisoned sea beast bites he had endured. Those had not disappeared with the transformation of his body from a horse into a human again, as he had always been meant to be. She stared at him, wondering if he was dead.
Then she used her nose. Her hound’s nose, so useful.
He was alive, though badly injured. There was no guarantee that he would remain alive for long.
He had not aged as the princess had, but his body looked badly used. He had muscles underneath the wounds on his back, but there was nothing else on his lean frame. He was taller than the princess. Fierce could not see his face, however. She thought that humans relied too much on the face in any case. She could read a great deal in his body.
For one thing, when he had fallen asleep, it had been with his back to the outside world and his belly to the princess. He trusted her. But he also placed himself between her and the world. Even when he was injured, he did that instinctively. Fierce could not have expected anything else from the horse she had come to know who was so courageous.
Fierce moved to wake the princess, putting her cold nose into the princess’s warm neck.
She started.
“You have done well,” Fierce barked into her ear in the language of the hounds.
The princess put a hand on Fierce’s head and looked into her eyes. “So. You are a hound again, are you? Is there nothing that you will miss about being human?”
Fierce could think of several things, Red being the foremost of them. But that was so painful for her to think of that she had not even looked for him yet.
Now she did.
Her throat was so tight that she could not breathe.
But there was no sign of Red.
He had already gone, she thought. Gone back to the human world where he had come from, back to Lord Ahran and his kennels perhaps. He could not be happy there for long, could he? He had been so changed.
But he would find his way. She could not doubt him. He was strong.
She turned back to the princess and saw her take her first look at the man at her side. There was nothing of fear in her response to him, nothing of hesitation. Only joy.
“Faird,” said the princess and touched his face gently.
He murmured something in his sleep, then opened his eyes and saw her there. A wide smile spread across his face. He, too, was relaxed. “You are not angry with me anymore,” he said. “I can see it in the way you hold your head.”
She made a sound like a horse and laughed at herself. “It has been many years,” she said, more soberly. “I think I forgave you long ago, though I did not know it.”
“It was much to forgive, my betrayal,” he said.
“Did you betray me?” said the princess. “I think I began to wonder, later.”
The man had the most expressive eyes that Fierce had ever seen on a human. They were a dark brown like the forest floor, but there was a ring of gold in the center that seemed to grow with strong emotion. His face was long like a horse’s and he had a strong nose, one good for smelling, even if he was human, thought Fierce.
“I did not betray except with my words. But it was so foolish. I did not love her. I never loved anyone but you,” said Faird. “She was beautiful, but I have always loved you more than life itself.”
The princess moved closer to the man. He gasped as she lifted one arm too high, and then she dropped it immediately. “I am sorry. Did I hurt you?”
He let out a breath through his teeth. “I will live,” he said, and tried to smile through the pain again. “Come here.” He beckoned her and she found a place beneath one of his shoulders where she could nestle into his side and not hurt him.
“I was angry,” she said. “I was so full of anger. I had never been so ruled by emotion before. I did not think twice about what I did to you. I only thought that you did not deserve to be a man anymore, and so in the next moment, you were not.”
“You once told me you thought I had a good sense for horses,” he said.
“Yes. Your face—well, it happened without thought. I made you what I thought you were meant for.”
“And then you demanded that I serve you.”
“And you left me. That was when I began to see that all my life had been worthless.” The princess’s words were choked. “If you were not part of it, then I had no reason to live. I had to find you and make you mine again. I only thought of myself and my pain.”
“Until you found me again.” He kissed her cheek. And then her nose. And then her eyelid and her forehead and her ear. And at last he kissed her mouth.
Fierce turned away to give them privacy. It w
as something no hound had, but she understood now why humans might want it.
She understood much about humans now, much good it did her.
She was glad that the princess and the man who had been a horse were together once more. It was meant to be that way. Just as she and Red were not meant to be.
But it hurt still.
One day, it might not hurt any longer. Or it might until the day she died. She would live with it. She was used to pain. All animals were. They lived with hunger and with festering wounds. They lived with the knowledge that they might die the next moment or that the pack might send them away. They lived with loneliness, as well.
Fierce turned her head and moved toward the forest.
She had almost gotten free when the princess called her back. “Fierce. Hound,” she called. “Wait!”
Fierce turned back.
The princess stood, her long hair nearly all white now, her face lined but somehow more defined, with the character in it that she had cheated herself of in all her years of trying to remain beautiful and young for the man she chased as a horse.
“I have a little wild magic left,” she said.
Fierce breathed deeply.
“A very little.”
“What is that to me?” asked Fierce.
“I could turn you back into a human for a few hours, I think. If you wish it.”
Faird put a hand on her arm and looked at her in surprise.
She would not face him directly.
There was something going on between them, but Fierce did not have the energy to discover what it was. She was trembling, thinking of one last chance to see Red, to say goodbye as a human said goodbye.
“Yes,” she said.
The princess beckoned to her and Fierce knelt below her. The princess put smooth, hairless human hands on her head. Fierce could feel her breath pounding out of her ribs, making her belly jump.
Then there was a flash of pain, a stretching of her shape, and she was human again. It was not as difficult as it had been the first time. It was as if her body had learned the way it might go, and this time went there more smoothly. But Fierce felt achy all over when the transformation was done, and she itched in her extremities. They felt wrong.
The Princess and the Horse (The Princess and the Hound) Page 17
