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.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Jens
THERE WAS A wild hound at the bottom of the tree when Jens climbed down one morning. The hound was black but had threads of gray running through her fur. She had a limp on one side, and she looked ferocious.
She stared at Jens, though he had not made a sound, and then bared her teeth. He put up his hands and tried to back away, to show her he meant no harm.
No animal had treated him this way since he had come to the forest. How had she noticed him? More than that, how had she known to track him here? For it seemed she had done that.
She was no ordinary hound.
She was not Liva. She was too old for that, for one thing. And the look in her eyes was not the same as in Liva’s, even when she had been a pika.
But the hound had a certain way of holding her head to the side that reminded him of Liva, and a way of waiting. It was not quite animal but not entirely human, either.
Liva’s mother? Liva had told him her mother was a hound.
The hound growled low and long, displeased but not threatening. Then she barked sharply and clearly. There were words in her barking, if only Jens could understand them. He had to guess at her meaning.
She barked again.
Jens put his hands out to her.
She sniffed at them, from the tips of his fingers up to his elbows. Then she barked again, with her head held straight out.
“I don’t understand,” said Jens sadly.
The hound nudged him with her head, pushing him forward.
He did not know which direction she meant him to go in, but he moved. She pressed him harder until he could not walk anymore. And suddenly they were both running, she behind him, making sure that he did not slow down.
Jens was so focused on keeping up the pace she demanded that he did not pay any attention to the forest around him. He saw only the rocks and the crevices beneath his feet so that he could move around them without pulling an ankle. He thought he would collapse and his heart would burst, but at that very moment the hound barked once more and stopped.
Jens slowed down, then turned and looked around. They had come to the foot of a sheer cliff, and the hound pressed him from behind until he put a hand up to a hold in the stone and lifted his feet off the ground. Then the hound continued to bark at him until he had climbed several times his own height and had come to a shelf.
The hound began to call out sharply then, in an urgent tone, and Jens looked around the shelf to see where else he could go. He could not climb higher or even stand up straight. He turned around—and as he did so, his hand brushed against a wooden box covered in leather. Picking it up, he saw that the leather was so old that it crumbled in his hands. He had to look closely at it to see the royal insignia tooled into the top. It was a bear and a hound joined together with a crown over their heads. He did not recognize the coat of arms, but in the north it had been centuries since any kings ruled.
He held out the box, and the hound barked once.
This must be what she had meant him to find, though how she had gotten it up here, he could only guess. Perhaps she had been stronger before? Or had talked another animal or a bird into taking it up for her?
He held the box under his chin, carefully climbed back down the cliff, and handed the box to the hound. Whatever was inside belonged to her. Liva had not said that her mother had been royalty, as well as human, but this made it clear to him. This belonged to her old life.
The hound used her teeth to pull open the box, and there was a flash of light on gold as she held up what was inside. It was a half circlet with a ruby in the center, such as a queen might wear on formal occasions. It showed some sign of scratches, but it was beautiful.
Jens gaped at the hound as she placed the half circlet in his hands.
“But—,” he protested. The metal was still warm from her mouth and felt heavy in his hands. “This can’t be for me.”
The hound barked at him, clearly in the negative.
“For Liva?” Jens asked.
The hound nodded once.
“Why don’t you give it to her directly, then?”
The hound stared at him.
“You want me to give it to her?” asked Jens. He felt a moment’s bewilderment and then he realized what it meant. A queen never crowned herself. She was given a crown by one who represented the people she was to rule.
“When do I know it is the right time to give it to her?” he asked, looking for the hound once more.
But she was gone.
He put the half circlet in his pouch with the owl feather and the snowbird feather, hoping that he would know the right time when it came.
He felt honored that the hound had chosen him to give the half circlet to. He thought she must have been watching him. Jens did not think Liva had told her mother about him, but if she had, it still meant something that the hound had come to him separately. In the village when a young man was interested in courting a young girl, first he had to make an offering to her mother. In this case it seemed the opposite.
Jens began walking south again, to the huge trees that he had become used to climbing and sleeping in. He heard human voices nearby and pulled himself up to a low branch nearby, then climbed soundlessly higher and looked down.
Karl had returned to the forest. It was perhaps a week or two since he had come with the Hunter, but this time he was with another boy, who shuffled along and had a face swollen with bruises. Whenever the boy slowed down, Karl kicked at him or shoved him down. Jens had been bullied too often in his life not to feel for the victim. But the boy never cried out or begged to be spared. He had a strange dignity, and Jens thought the boy must be used to such treatment.
“You think my father, the Hunter, will reward you for this?” asked the boy, his head raised high enough for him to look straight into Karl’s eyes.
Karl slapped the boy’s face soundly in reply. “Perhaps he will reward me for it. You have too much magic for his plans, Dofin, and one of these days he will take a knife to you to improve you and make you more like himself. We are all to give up our magic in time, if we are to truly follow him.”
Dofin spoke defiantly, his eyes on the ground: “And is that what you want? To give up your magic to him, because he has none of his own?”
“What I want is to show him I am a better heir than you. He will need someone to take his place eventually,” said Karl.
Dofin shook his head. “My father does not spend time thinking of his own death, I assure you. He is far too busy planning the deaths of others for that.”
“He hates you.”
“And I hate him. I hate everything he stands for. You think he has a noble campaign to make humans better and stronger by taking all magic from them? He cares nothing about that. He only wants to make sure no one has a pleasure that he lacks. Do you see how he treats his animals? Kicks them and spits at them and kills them with overwork. It is the same with all those around him. He does not want humans to be higher than animals. He wants everyone to be as low as he feels himself to be, and as alone.”
“If you despise him so much, then why do you do everything he tells you to do?” Karl sneered. “You are a coward, or you would leave him. You would let another take your place. But you are afraid. You do not know what you would do without him, who you would be. You take what he gives you because you cannot get any better and you do not care if it costs you your magic in the end.”
Dofin gritted his teeth. “I stay because I can best work against my father when I am closest to him.”
“Shall we test your theory?” Karl kicked at Dofin’s leg, right behind the kneecap.
The boy went down hard. He did not even try to fight back.
Jens scrambled down through the branches, intending to intervene. He had not fought against the Hunter before because there had been no hope of him winning. But here he could help Dofin, and in doing so, work against the Hunter.
With a piercing sound like a wild hawk on the attack, Jens leaped from the tree and landed to Karl’s side. Karl was already spooked at the sound and the sudden fall. But Jens lifted his arms, covered his head in his skins, and then pushed at Karl.
The boy stumbled and fell.
Jens jumped on top of him while keeping his face hidden, and Karl cried out in terror.
Then Jens heard a roar behind him. He turned to see a smallish bear with an intelligent look on its face. He stepped back from Karl, and the bear charged at him.
Karl ran blindly into the forest, the bear behind him.
Jens let the skins fall from his
face and looked back to Dofin, who was gaping at the empty spot where the bear and Karl had been.
“Did you call that bear?” he asked. “Did you use your aur-magic to save me?”
“No, that was not aur-magic. I have none.”
“But why would a bear chase one and not all of us?” asked Dofin.
“Perhaps the bear wanted a game,” said Jens with a smile. “Or perhaps she thought Karl smelled tastier than you or I.”
“She?” said Dofin.
“Indeed. That was a female bear. Could you not tell the difference?”
Dofin shook his head. “I am from Tamberg-on-the-Coast. I have never seen a bear before, male or female. You are from a village near here?”
“I have left my village. I live alone in the forest now,” said Jens.
Dofin stared up and down at him, apparently believing Jens’s story considering his wild and disheveled appearance. “You do not have the aur-magic, yet you live alone with the animals?”
“I do.”
“You tame them with the tehr-magic, then. Make them do your bidding.”
Jens felt flushed. “No. Certainly not. I would not do it even if I had the tehr-magic, which I do not.”
“You have neither magic?”
“Have I not just said so?”
“I am sorry. It is only that I have never met anyone but my father who had no magic at all. And he—he does not live among the animals. He hates them all.”
“I am not like your father, the Hunter,” said Jens.
“Clearly,” said Dofin, nodding. “Well, what reward can I offer you for saving me from that dangerous idiot Karl? Come back to Tamberg-on-the-Coast with me. You can work against my father with me, in secret.”
“No,” said Jens. It was not that he did not want to work against the Hunter. It was only that he did not wish to do so from within the walls of a town.
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