The Princess and the Bear

by Mette Ivie Harrison

  She shook her head.

  “You are angry with me?” asked Richon. “Because I was too eager to feed myself first?”

  “No, of course not. Why should I be angry with that?” She thought of the first time the bear had taken her back to the cave and killed a rabbit for her, then refused to eat his share.

  There were ways in which she realized she preferred the boy. He had every right to eat what he had caught himself. And no reason to think of her while eating. Another hound certainly would not.

  “It was not…chivalrous,” said Richon.

  “You need not use those rules with me. I am not a human woman,” said Chala coolly.

  “But you are a human woman.” Richon nodded to her body. “Or at least the others will think you are. If I do not treat you well, they will take it as license to treat you badly. And they will not think well of me, either.”

  Chala considered this point. She did not wish to be badly treated, as she had been by the courtiers of King Helm, who had thought his daughter of no value to the kingdom.

  So she nodded. “I will take the meat, then,” she said reluctantly.

  Richon gave her a hunk of it, on a stick that he had crudely fashioned into a fork.

  She ate it. It tasted about as she had expected. She grimaced.

  “It wasn’t very good, was it?” said Richon, after he stamped down the fire and stared at the spit with the remains of the partridge on it.

  “I do not like cooked meat in any case,” said Chala.

  “No, of course you would not. But I thought it would taste like it tasted in the palace. I was looking forward to that. And it did not. Not a bit.”

  “Which should make you more kind to your cook when next you meet her,” said Chala.

  “The cook? Oh.” He wrinkled his brows. “I do not know if I would recognize her.”

  “And why is that?”

  “I sent my parents’ cook away. With a little coin,” he added, as if that made up for it. “I did not wish anyone to compare me to my father.”

  “And the new cook?”

  “The lord chamberlain chose her. She cooked well enough, but I never spoke to her myself. I suppose I should have. But at that time I never thought of giving compliments to those I paid to work for me.”

  “A hound does not compliment,” said Chala. “The task is done for the pack, not for an individual. So all benefit.”

  “Yes. Well, if only my kingdom truly worked like a pack, I could make that excuse,” said Richon. He looked up at the sunlight leaking through the heavy cover of trees.

  It was nearly midday already, and they had not begun to move any closer to Elolira.

  Chala wondered now if that was part of the reason that Richon had wanted to stop and cook his meal. Had he wanted to delay his approach to his kingdom?

  She stared at him and saw the tense line of his mouth, the set firmness of his jaw, and the way that he twitched all over, making the same movement of hand to knee over and over again.

  If a hound did this, she would think it had gone mad, and she would have to kill it to protect the pack.

  Richon turned an anguished eye to her. “I thought I was ready to return,” he said. “I thought I had learned so much. But now that I am back in this body I feel like I am starting over again.”

  “You will do better a second time,” she told him. He was thinking too much of past and future and too little of the present.

  “Will I?” asked Richon.

  She did not like his mood. She went over to tease him out of it, as she would another hound. She touched him gently on the arm, meaning to call out a challenge to chase her.

  Surely a race would return his spirits, and they had never tried it in human form. He would find she had not so much advantage now.

  But her hand on his arm made him jump, as if she had touched him with a sword and cut him open.

  He pulled back his arm and held it close to his side.

  Then he looked at her.

  She thought of her mate, so long dead. She did not think of him often now, though in an instant she could recall his scent and the sound of his growl, whether it was playful or angry.

  When she had been with child, he had groomed her night after night. It had been pleasant, but she had felt nothing more than that.

  He was part of the pack. He had done his duty to her. He had filled the role he should have filled.

  And Richon?

  He felt like her pack, but in a deeper way. She knew this was not the way any hound would feel. And yet she felt it anyway, part human, part hound.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Richon

  IT WAS LATE afternoon of the sixth day when they had found a dirt road at last, albeit one gouged by wagon wheels and split by torrential rain. Chala was ready for a rest and moved to the side of the road. Richon pulled her back.

  He put a finger to his lips to quiet her and together they watched as one wolf cub, one wild kitten, one young hawk, and one fawn all lined up in a row behind a line drawn into the dirt of the forest floor.

  The hawk gave out a wild cry and the animals all raced forward at the same time, in the same direction. Not one of them attacked another.

  They raced to a ring of huge stones, then stopped.

  The hawk had won the contest easily, and circled overhead, cawing victory to the skies.

  The wolf cub, the wild kitten, and the fawn had all seemed to come across the clearing at the same moment to Richon. He could not tell who had won, if it was indeed a race.

  Richon turned to Chala, but she seemed as puzzled by this as he was. Animals might have contests with their own kind, but not outside that sphere.

  Then, as Richon watched, the shape of the wolf cub began to waver. The snout shortened. The legs lengthened. And then there was a boy standing in the forest by the other animals.

  A human boy, perhaps seven or eight years old.

  The other animals also made their transformation back into human shape. The fawn was a young girl, taller than all the others, and with thin shoulders and hips that would make her a fast runner even in her human shape.

  The young hawk was the last to change, floating down from his victory flight and turning into a boy of three or four years of age.

  “I won! I won!” he chortled.

  “You won,” said the girl, patting the boy—her younger brother?—on the head.

  “He always wins,” complained the boy who had been a wild kitten.

  “Not always. When we do an obstacle course, he has to swoop back down and up, and then you best him,” said the girl.

  “Then let’s do that kind of race, right now,” said the boy.

  The girl made a face. “Not now. We’re too tired now. And it’s my turn to choose next.”

  “What are you going to choose, then?”

  “We’ve never done a race in the water.”

  “Water?” asked the boy kitten, shuddering. “I hate water. You know that.”

  “I know.” The girl smiled broadly. “We’re none of us really water creatures. That’s why it will be fun!”

  But the boy was not satisfied. He sulked and said, “Why do I have to be a wild kitten all the time, anyway? Why can’t I be a fish sometimes, or a bear, or a bird, like him?”

  “If you were a bird,” said the girl, “you’d still find a way to complain. Honestly, you take all the fun out of it. We might as well be humans and be done with it.” She stood up, brushed herself off, and walked away, her brother following behind, a little jump in his steps as if he thought he could fly.

  Richon stared at them.

  “They have magic like Frant and Sharla and their children,” said Chala.

  More magic than Prince George. Magic like that told in the old stories.

  Yet Richon had never heard of it before.

  “They live here, on the edge of the kingdom,” said Richon.

  “Yes,” said Chala. “To keep safe from your laws.”

  Richon took in a shar
p breath. This was precisely what he had feared, that Chala would see all his mistakes up close and be unable to separate them from who he had become.

  “The ones in the past,” Chala went on. “Before you met the wild man and learned of the good of magic.” She seemed to think it had nothing to do with him now.

  Gradually Richon relaxed. “In the future those who are like Frant and Sharla, like these children, will have to live in hiding,” he said. “Because of those same laws.”

  “I do not think that can be all of it,” said Chala. “There must be another reason that magic has faded.”

  “Unmagic,” said Richon slowly. He had not seen it so clearly from the future. The unmagic must indeed be part of why so much had changed, so quickly. If the cat man spread it in the forests, it would affect animals and humans alike, and their connection with each other.

  That was what he must stop, though he had no idea how one man could do any such thing. Especially a man who had no magic of his own.

  Richon’s thoughts were interrupted by a whimpering sound in the distance. It sounded like a human child. He beckoned to Chala to follow him, then went back to the edge of the forest and found a small girl with brown hair and clear blue eyes that were filled with tears beside a tree, arms wrapped around her legs.

  Richon approached her cautiously, his hands held out to show he meant no harm.

  “All is well,” he murmured. “All is well.”

  At the first sound of his voice, the girl startled and froze, her eyes darting back and forth between Richon and Chala. As Richon came closer, she leaped to her feet, clearly terrified.

  “I only wish to speak with you,” he said. “Please.”

  The girl stared at him.

  Richon half expected her to run away. He knew he did not look his best, in his grimy clothes, with a five-day beard that itched. “My name is Richon,” he told her kindly. “And this is Chala.”

  Chala nodded.

  The girl looked away, as if embarrassed.

  She could not know him as the king, Richon thought. He was too well disguised and she lived too remotely.

  “What is your name?” Richon asked her.

  “Halee,” she said. Her eyes narrowed. “You haven’t any magic, either, do you?” she asked.

  “No,” said Richon, surprised she guessed the truth so easily. But he was discovering just how little about magic he did understand.

  He had always believed magic was unusual and unnatural, something no member of the royal family would ever touch. But here with this girl, hidden in a forest far from other humans, he began to wonder.

  He remembered many a time when his father had left the palace without any men to accompany him. No guards, no hunting party. When he came back, Richon had noticed the scent of animals strong on him.

  And his mother? She had gone “south to visit relatives” on more than one occasion, and yet she had been born an only child. When she returned, she had a gleam in her eye that made him jealous. Why should she enjoy herself so much without him?

  He looked at this girl, the only one without magic among her friends. How alone she must feel, knowing the truth about them and about herself.

  He had always sensed there was something not quite good enough about himself. Had his parents lied to him to spare him that?

  “I dream sometimes about what animal I would change into,” the girl said. “I think it would be a fish. Because I don’t belong with them.” Her face was pinched around the lips. “What do you think I would be?” she asked.

  “Oh, you would make a fine fish,” said Richon sincerely.

  “And you—what would you be if you had magic?”

  “A bear,” said Richon without hesitation.

  The girl looked him up and down again, and giggled.

  Richon struggled to look affronted.

  “You don’t look much like a bear,” she said.

  Richon rubbed at his beard. He supposed he didn’t look very big or ferocious.

  “And her?” Halee asked, pointing to Chala. “She has magic, doesn’t she?”

  Richon sighed. “After a fashion,” he said. She must still smell of the wild man’s magic, though why it wasn’t on him Richon couldn’t guess.

  “I think she would be a hound,” said Halee.

  Richon started at this, then said, “Why do you think that?”

  The girl shrugged. “It just seems right,” she said.

  Richon looked at Chala, but he could see very little of the hound remaining in her, and only because he knew her so well. The alertness of her eyes, the way her body moved, the sensitivity of her nose.

  “Do you hate them, then, the ones who have magic? Like I do?” she asked.

  “Sometimes,” he admitted.

  “And you’re afraid of them, too?”

  He nodded. “Or at least I used to be. Now it is not as bad as it was.”

  “Because you’re grown and don’t care anymore,” said the girl.

  “Perhaps,” Richon admitted.

  “They used to offer to turn me into an animal so I could play with them,” the girl said.

  “But you wouldn’t let them,” Richon guessed.

  She shook her head. “’Course not. How could I? That’s like when you’re little and they give you a head start. It’s not a real race then.” She thought a moment, then bit her lip and added, “I never knew, either, if they could do it. What if they were teasing and I told them I cared?”

  Richon could understand that fear.

  “I didn’t want to play their stupid game, anyway,” she said, sticking out her tongue in the general direction of the other children. Then she turned back to Richon. “Only I do, you see? Sometimes I wish I had magic so much I think I might explode.” She held her hands tightly together, pressing them against each other until they turned white for lack of blood. She was hurting herself on purpose, Richon thought, to make the other pain go away.

  Chala moved closer to the girl and pulled her hands apart, then smoothed them out.

  It was the first time Richon had seen her interact with another human. She was gentle, almost like a mother would have been.

  There was a voice in the distance calling out a name. “Halee! Halee!”

  The girl pulled away from Chala when she heard it. “My brother,” she said.

  “He has magic?” asked Richon.

  She shrugged. “All in my family do. Nearly all in the village as well.”

  She might have said more, but she was interrupted by a voice from behind them. “There you are, Halee!”

  The girl stiffened and it was as if, from Richon’s perspective, she had been drained of herself. The pain disappeared from her features, for she would give no sign of it to this brother of hers. But neither could he see her rapt attention and innate intelligence, for she hid that as well. Did none of her family see Halee as she really was?

  “Come home now. Mother wants you to help with the washing,” said the brother.

  “I will come,” said Halee. She was holding herself purposely so as to block her brother’s view of Richon and Chala.

  “Now!” said the brother impatiently. Then he added, “You’ll never get your magic unless you learn to obey.”

  It seemed a cruel thing to Richon to promise the girl something that would never come to her.

  Richon watched until Halee and her brother, who had turned into an young eaglet, were out of sight.

  Then he turned back to Chala. She took one of his hands, and he felt her warmth spread to him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Chala

  THEY REACHED A town the next day, on wide, well-maintained roads at last, a full week after they had passed through the wild man’s gap in time. Richon said it was called Kirten, and it had a grand marketplace. There were voices calling out everywhere, merchants hawking their wares, people bargaining for the best price, and children running and laughing underfoot.

  Chala saw ahead of her a man standing near cages that smelled o
f animal. When she got closer, she could see that inside one was a small creature with a long tail and a face like a small child’s. She had never seen its like before and was intrigued, though the sight of it caged and forlorn made her heart ache.

  “Sir, come. Lady, too. See this fine creature. The perfect exotic pet for nobles such as yourselves.” The animal trainer held a whip and a rope. He wore a long mustache and no shirt.

  “No, thank you,” said Richon, backing away, his hands held up.

  But Chala, behind him, did not move.

  “Ah, the lady has had a long journey, has she not?” He gestured at her dirty gown, which Chala herself had not noticed. She had simply not bothered with it, though she kept her face and hands as clean as she had as a hound.

  “Give her something to hold on to, eh? A pet would make her very happy, make her grateful to the man who gives her such pleasure,” the animal trainer suggested to Richon with his eyebrows raised and his hands making a rude motion.

  Richon tried to pull her away. She knew he was trying to protect her. But she felt a responsibility to protect this animal, and she would not let Richon take that from her.

  “What is it called?” she asked the man, trying to buy time.

  “It is a monkey,” said the man. “And I never give ’em names. Don’t want to make ’em answer to something that the new owner will change all over again. What would you want to name it, then? Anything you want, and it will come, I swear to it.”

  The man was obviously a liar, and not a good one.

  “Do you want the monkey?” asked Richon. He did not argue with her, or tell her that this was a whim, as the men she had known as a princess would have done. What a woman wanted was always a whim to them. But Richon, bear or man, had always done what she asked of him.

  She nodded, and he put a hand to his side to get his purse of coins.

  But she stopped him with a motion.

  “Are there more?” she asked the animal trainer.