The Princess and the Bear

by Mette Ivie Harrison

  Even now he had come to save those with the magic, not to find his own.

  And besides, those who had magic needed no lessons in it. It simply came to them, like crawling or walking upright.

  Chala put a hand on his shoulder and turned him around to face her. “You must listen to me. The unmagic is here in this time as well. I have seen it, in the forests, and elsewhere.”

  “Elsewhere?” Richon echoed, turning to her.

  “The horse and the hound in the village. They were touched by unmagic.” She shuddered. “Made lifeless.”

  “Unmagic? And I did not sense it?” Was that not proof enough that he had no magic? “Should we go back?”

  “No. We must first save the kingdom. Then we can save its magic.”

  They walked on, and Richon thought of one day when he was a child and he had found his mother standing under a parasol outside the palace, dressed in her night-clothes, her hair still tied back in braids, though it was the middle of the day.

  “I am thinking,” she said when he asked her what she was doing.

  She did not look at him or turn toward him as she always had before. She did not give him her full attention.

  It seemed she was deeply herself in this moment, and not his mother. Or his father’s wife. Or Elolira’s queen.

  “What are you thinking of?”

  “I am not thinking of anything. I am thinking,” she had said.

  So he had tried to do the same. Think, but not of any particular thing. Just think.

  He had run away after trying it for just a moment or two. It had been like drowning. He could not breathe. He could not even tell where he ended and everything else began. There were no boundaries, and he needed boundaries.

  Now he found himself slipping away from his own sense of self. It was not so hard, nor so frightening, as it had been when he was young. He drifted in his mind and was no longer tethered to his body. He did not know if he was still walking with Chala or if he had stopped.

  It did not matter.

  He felt as if he were touching tender new skin to the world around him, and the sensations were exquisitely clear and sharp. Everything touched him.

  The forest. The sounds of the animals within, the tiny flutter of leaves, the burble of a stream nearby, the smell of life and death combined, of wildflowers and juniper bushes, the sight of color juxtaposed on color, green overwhelming all.

  He quickly became exhausted by the overwhelming sensation, but there was no escape. The magic, long put off, had come for him at last, and it pressed at him with demands such as he had never known.

  It was as if his ears had grown larger, for he could hear the scurry of the ants searching for food in the rotting limbs of a tree, and the beetles with them, the worms in the ground underneath, digging their way through dirt.

  His nose was overwhelmed with scents, as when he was a bear. The scent of berries. A dead mouse, rotting in the leaves. The fish in the stream. Overhead, the scent of an owl’s nest.

  He could see to the woodpecker’s marks on the oak tree there, and the lines left in the dirt by the crossing of a snake.

  His hands felt as if they were on fire from the feel of the air on them, telling him so many things. Speaking to him in a new language.

  And he tasted the whole world. Flowers yet to bloom. Pine trees far away in the mountains. The meat a mother wolf fed her cub.

  He choked and gasped.

  In his mind he heard a sound, soft and high-pitched as his mother’s voice, but something else altogether. It was inviting, and he stepped into a new place that was full of all the sensations he had felt before, only they did not overwhelm him. They were part of him, but not all of him.

  He felt his body again.

  He was slumped against a log, and Chala was next to him.

  He turned to her and now he could see the magic in her. The color was green, and it pulsed through her like blood.

  He could see the magic everywhere now, in all the animals around him. Even the trees had a portion of magic, though it was a cooler green. The air itself, it seemed, was made of life, for it, too, had a greenish tinge to it.

  What else could he see?

  He looked down at his own hands and saw the magic in them.

  If he had needed more proof, here it was. His hands were so bright that they were more white than green. He stared at them, feeling part of the forest as he had never felt before.

  It was like falling, and yet he fell into himself.

  He heard a sound from Chala.

  She pointed to his hand, on his knee.

  He glanced toward it and saw a bear paw on his knee rather than the human hand he had begun with. Only one bear paw, and it was fading quickly, becoming smaller and hairless, losing its claws.

  But still, there it had been.

  And he had changed it himself, not the wild man.

  “Your magic,” said Chala encouragingly.

  It made him immediately want to try again.

  But by then he had a terrible headache that seemed to block his vision entirely. The world was black again, with floating blobs of light in it, all color gone.

  He banged on the doors of his mind, but it was no use.

  The magic had suddenly fled him, like a fish avoiding his grasp as he leaned over a pool of water, eager for dinner.

  “It will return when you are ready,” Chala assured him as he held his head to his knees, afraid that if he did not he would fall to pieces.

  But he told himself that Chala was right as he held her in his arms, and for the first time he felt he might be worthy of her.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Chala

  THEY SPENT THE night in the forest. In the morning when Chala woke, she was next to the bear.

  She reached out a hand and touched him.

  He started, growled, and then sat up.

  She waved at his bear form.

  Richon—the bear—looked at himself and then closed his eyes.

  Chala watched then as he slowly transformed himself from bear into man. Slowly, without the ease the wild man might have used, but steadily and without doubt.

  “I have often wondered why the wild man did not change me into something smaller and more disgusting, rather than a bear,” said Richon. “If I was to learn what it was like to be an animal, one who was hunted instead of the hunter, he could have made me a hare or a possum or some other creature that could not defend itself easily in a forest full of larger predators.”

  “Perhaps he did not want you to die quickly,” said Chala.

  Richon looked at Chala. “What if that was not the reason, either?”

  Chala did not understand.

  “What if it was my own magic, working unknown to me?” asked Richon.

  “And you chose to live for two hundred years as a bear?” asked Chala. “You were so miserable, were you not?” For all those years he had been utterly alone.

  “Yes, but I had not finished something. I could feel that. I thought it was the wild man, saying that I had not yet learned my lesson. But if it was my magic all along, then it was my sense of incompleteness, not his, that kept me living.”

  “Without knowing it,” said Chala.

  Richon nodded. “Do you remember,” he added. “When we went to the wild man, he said that I had to choose. He said that it was my choice if I went back as a king. What if he meant that it was my magic that would transform me, as it had at first?”

  “And mine?” asked Chala. “He said that it was my choice, that you could not stop me.”

  Richon stared at her wonderingly. “Do you think all animals have the magic, then?” he asked. “In this time as well as in the future?”

  “I think so, yes,” said Chala. All living things seemed to have it, though as the unmagic grew, it seemed to grow more faint, in both animals and humans.

  “But do they know it? Did you know it before you came here?”

  “No,” Chala admitted. She thought of the animals in her dre
am. Had they known they were using the magic?

  Certainly animals in her own time did not know they had magic. It was easier now, when the feel of it was all around, rich and sweet, to discover it inside.

  “So, the magic is there in us,” said Richon wonderingly, “whether we know of it or not. It is part of us.”

  “Or are we part of it?” asked Chala.

  “Yes,” said Richon, half smiling. “The closer you are to magic, the more difficult it is to draw the line between what is magic and what is not.”

  “But what does this have to do with you being made into a bear?” asked Chala.

  “I think when the wild man changed me, he drew from what was already inside of me to make me a bear. That was my natural shape, for some reason. I am at heart a bear.”

  Chala thought of the family of shape changers they had met before. All had chosen to be hounds. She had thought at the time that it was purely a matter of safety, for it was less conspicuous to travel as a pack of wild hounds than as five different animals.

  Perhaps they had all been hounds because that was simply the way they were.

  And the children in the animal race had each had his or her own form and seemed unable to change to another.

  She thought of humans she had known when she had been a princess. There had been Lord Sniff. At least that was what she had always called him in her mind. He was always sniffing his nose at things, as if that were the only way to make a judgment. It had been very like a cat, and she had told herself that was part of the reason she had disliked him, for hounds and cats can never live together happily.

  And King Helm. She had thought of him with a boar’s head on top of his large, muscled human body. He was as tough as a boar, and she had respected him for that, but he was also as difficult to reason with as a boar, as intent on only one thing: the battle.

  The woman with the long neck who had always looked at herself in mirrors like a swan was Lady Torus. She had had a long nose, and long fingers, almost like wings.

  And Prince George? A rabbit, perhaps. But a strong one, who was unexpectedly victorious against those far larger because of his great magic.

  “Last night I thought of the magic and whether I would ever be able to use it again,” said Richon. “Then, when I slept, I watched the eagles fly, and I envied them. But I could not transform myself into their shape. I watched the fish swim, and no matter how I concentrated I could not make myself into a fish. But when I tried to make myself into a bear, it came so easily.”

  “And the language of the bears? Why could you never speak that?” asked Chala.

  Richon sighed. “Perhaps I did not want to. That would be admitting the truth of all of this, which I could not face.” He made a wide gesture with his hands that took in the whole forest, the whole kingdom, and beyond. “The magic, and who I was.”

  “You must be a very stubborn man,” said Chala.

  Richon laughed. “I thank you,” he said with a short bow. “I will take that as a compliment, coming from a very stubborn woman—and hound.”

  Chala thought.

  “Can I change back into a hound, then, too?” she asked quietly.

  But she already knew the answer. She had been a hound in the dream that was not a dream.

  She looked at herself. Her human legs, under the long red skirt, her human feet, encased in boots. Human hands, roughened and callused as they had been from the first—because she was not a woman who looked for an easy life, any more than she was a hound who did the same. Human hair, black and thick, warm as her hound’s fur. Human hips, to keep her feet separated in a wide, strong stance that would not yield.

  “Close your eyes,” said Richon.

  Chala closed her eyes.

  “Do you feel the magic within you?” Richon asked.

  “Yes,” said Chala.

  Richon gave a short laugh. “Then you are already ahead of me. To feel the magic was most of the work for me. Now you must simply see yourself in the form you wish and the magic will make it come to be.”

  Chala thought of how she saw herself now as a hound and a woman. Not as only one or the other. But what made her feel most like a hound?

  She let out a snarl, a hound’s sound, and thought of how it had felt before, when she had thought it was the wild man changing her.

  She snarled again, and then leaped—

  Before she landed she was in the form of a hound once more.

  It felt so good. She put her head to the ground and chased after the smell of a badger.

  Richon ran with her as a bear, and ate what she ate. She shared with him what she could share with no other: the joy of being human and being animal. If she could change from one to the other, perhaps she would not feel such a loss as she had feared. She could be a hound when it was right to be a hound and a human when that was necessary. She might not fit with others, but she would always fit with Richon.

  When they were finished eating, the hound became Chala once more, and the bear Richon.

  “I think it is just as well that I did not know of the magic before,” said Richon. “I shudder to think how I would have used it when I was a boy.”

  “Perhaps if you had had it, it would have made you different,” said Chala.

  Richon shrugged. “Well, that is neither here nor there. What matters is who I am now, and how I can use this magic to save my people and the generations to come.”

  It was such a houndlike thing to say that for a moment Chala was speechless. Then she laughed.

  She and Richon changed forms as it was useful to them over the next few days, cutting across fields, over rocky barriers, moving ever closer to the battlefield ahead.

  They both returned to human form at the entrance to a large forest. There was something wrong about it. It smelled of decay—and worse.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Richon

  THE FOREST WAS darker than any Richon had ever been in, and older. The trees were enormous, their canopies high overhead, and their leaves were so thick that little light trickled below. This forest was near the edge of Elolira. The greenery here was more like that of the southern kingdom of Nolira, so he knew he was close to the battlefield. He heard no sounds, however—no calling of birds overhead, no chittering of possums under the tree boughs, no hopping of rabbits underfoot. It was unearthly still.

  Yet there was something calling to him, almost a physical force pulling him forward, tugging at his chest so that the swords moved uncomfortably against his shoulder bones.

  He turned to look at the hound and saw that she was unsettled, too.

  They went deeper into the forest and slowly smelled the stench of the cat man’s unmagic ahead, worse than ever before.

  With each step Richon was sure that he could go no farther, that this had to be the worst of it. But always he could feel more of the unmagic ahead, and so he went on and on. They came at last to the center of it.

  It was at the top of a small hill, in a clearing about the size of Richon’s own palace courtyard. There was no green here at all, and when Richon looked inside of himself to see with his other eyes, he could see no light, no color—nothing.

  But it was not empty of form, though it was empty of magic.

  There were animals here, hundreds, perhaps thousands of them, all lying together, stretched out, dead, their bodies blackened as if burned. They had not sunk into the earth as the animals had in the future, when the unmagic had spread into the forest and the bear had only just had time to save the fawn. Somehow the bodies were untouched by the unmagic all around them. And Richon could touch the ground around them without being sucked into the unmagic himself. In their death they had left behind protection.

  Though the bodies did not stink, Richon was sure they had been dead for some time. There was no vegetation around them, no insects crawling over them, no flies overhead, no buzzards coming toward the smell of death—because there was no smell. Except for the smell of the unmagic itself.

  Richon bent do
wn, then fell to his knees, unable to stay upright, unable to stop his weeping.

  All of these creatures, dead.

  Just as in the future, he had failed to save them from the unmagic.

  Richon rose. He took deep, gasping breaths and forced himself to walk through the clearing. He looked at each carcass, hoping to find some clue as to what had happened to them and how the unmagic had not completely dissolved their forms.

  They were with their own kind. The shrews with shrews, the foxes with foxes, the bears with other bears. The crows had all fallen together, and next to them were other birds: eagles, hawks, sparrows, finches, robins, and jays.

  Richon moved back out to stand at the edge of the clearing. Chala stood by him, as silent as the ancient forest itself.

  Richon closed his eyes, as if to use his magic to help him, but he could sense nothing. Whatever life the animals had once had, it was gone now, erased as if it had never been. Yet all had been together, called for a united purpose.

  Richon groaned as the truth struck him.

  It had only been weeks since the wild man had called to the animals in Richon’s kingdom to fight against him. Richon had never thought what might have happened to those animals once the battle was over and he had been turned into a bear.

  It seemed they were here, many of them.

  They had been caught together by one who wielded unmagic and turned the strength of their combined magic against them.

  And this, too, was Richon’s fault.

  The only question that remained in his mind was why their bodies had not yet decayed. Richon could feel no magic around them, but he could not see why the unmagic would not have turned them to gray dust.

  He looked for Chala, and then saw her as a hound, walking through the ranks of the fallen wild hounds. She stopped in front of each carcass and gave out a howl of mourning.

  Richon had never known a human woman who could have faced something like this. And she did not stop with the hounds. She moved to the other animals, body by body, and howled for them as well. She seemed to go through them in order of those most like the hounds. Wolves, then porcupines, sables, wolverines, and stoats, and, last of all, the birds. Richon followed after her, looking at each animal, fixing the image of their forms in his mind, holding them there with magic and giving them names in his mind. Not their own names, perhaps, but names nonetheless.