The Princess and the Bear

by Mette Ivie Harrison

  She trembled, and tried to decide which way to go.

  Toward Richon. Or away from him?

  She knew which way she wanted to go. But she did not breathe until she reached his side.

  Then he put his hands in hers. “Would it help for you to know that I am dripping sweat?” he said.

  It did help. It made her grin and think that perhaps he sometimes felt as little suited to his role as king as she did to hers as queen.

  “Don’t look at them. Look at me,” he said, pulling her closer. “It’s not them you’re marrying.”

  Strangely, as soon as the ceremony was over, the noise of the cheering around her lifted her spirits. She did not mind the cannons firing at all, though dinner went on far too long, and the meat was overcooked.

  That night, when at last she went to Richon’s bedchamber rather than to her own, he asked her if she was nervous. Many women were, and she was so new to her body, he said.

  But she bit his ear and he did not ask any questions after that.

  In the morning she woke up with Richon’s breath on her shoulder and thought that all had been worth it. Even if she had no moment past this one.

  She did mention to him sometime afterward the rumors about her that she had heard whispered about the palace.

  Richon went rigid and white with anger. “Who would repeat such things?” he asked. His hands twitched, as if ready for a sword to be placed in them, to defend her honor.

  “It is true,” said Chala with a shrug. She was surprised that Richon had heard nothing of them himself. It meant something to her that those around him knew him well enough to see how he loved her and how it would hurt him to hear such things.

  “It is not true,” Richon said flatly. “You are not a bear. You never were one.”

  “But I was a hound, and I doubt that your people would see much distinction between the two. I was an animal.”

  “You are human now. As much as any of them,” Richon said fiercely. “Without you I do not know if the battle would have gone as it had. I do not know if I would have taken the magic from the animals even. You guided me. And then you ensured that the cat man would never touch us with the unmagic again. You deserve their thanks and their welcome. Not these foul stories.”

  “I think you must make an announcement of some sort,” said Chala.

  “And say it is truth? How will that help?”

  “It will help because your people will see you as strong enough to stand up against a threat.”

  “And what of you? If I do as you suggest, then there will be countless jokes told about you all over the kingdom.”

  “And there are not now?” asked Chala with an arched eyebrow.

  “At least they are not said in your hearing,” said Richon.

  “I think that you can trust me to be formidable enough that that will happen only once,” said Chala.

  And so it was.

  Richon did not make a public announcement, but he spoke openly of Chala’s years as a hound at his side and of her transformation.

  The week after, a lack-witted noblewoman sat at dinner and mentioned casually that she thought that Chala’s teeth were rather large for her face.

  Chala opened her mouth very wide and said, “And yet they are perfect for tearing flesh from bones. I always liked the taste of warm blood.”

  The noblewoman went very still, then left the dinner table after a few minutes and did not return. She left the palace the following day and was not seen again.

  Chala was not sorry for her.

  But it stopped the rumors.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Richon

  IN THE MONTHS following the wedding, peasants came to Richon from far and wide to ask for his wisdom. Others spoke to him of what reasonable taxes might be for the coming year. And many asked if they could send sons, daughters, or cousins to the palace to work.

  This was the pleasant side of being king.

  There was a far more unpleasant side.

  Richon reserved the extreme penalty of execution for those who spread unmagic. There had been death enough in his kingdom already, but he had to send a clear message about not tolerating unmagic if he were to save the future.

  Among the first to die was the man from the village with the alehouse who “trained” animals with unmagic. Chala had described him, and then made a positive identification at trial.

  Richon told her repeatedly she need not come to the execution, but she insisted upon it.

  “I have seen deaths before,” she told him.

  “But not like this,” Richon insisted.

  “No? King Helm executed five men while I was his daughter. And he made me come to see each of them. One was a man who did not know he was to be killed. His head was cut off in the midst of a polite conversation about music.” She held her lips tightly together when she was done speaking.

  Richon thought perhaps she was right. It was not as if she were a sheltered noblewoman. She had seen many things as a hound, and then again when she had been in the body of a princess. And she had been with him at the battle. He did not think this would be worse.

  The animal trainer went to his death quietly, and Richon wondered if he was too well acquainted with it by now to fight it. He seemed as empty of life and vigor as any of his animals.

  Chala watched it all without any sign of emotion.

  But afterward Richon found her weeping in their bedchamber.

  “Can I do anything for you?” he asked.

  She stared at him, her eyes red. “I understand now,” she said.

  “Understand what?”

  “Guilt,” said Chala. “Such a human thing.”

  Richon nodded soberly.

  “It does no good, for it changes nothing. But it is there all the same, reminding you that you might have done something different.”

  “Not you, Chala,” said Richon. “You did all you could.”

  Chala stared at him. “Are you trying to take away some of my humanness?” she asked.

  Richon blanched. “No,” he said.

  “Then leave me with my guilt.”

  And he did, but never alone.

  What surprised Richon most about being king again was the forest animals that came to consult with him.

  A line of them, sometimes as long as the humans who came, would wait and speak to him and wait for him to translate for Chala, for it was her perspective they wished to know. They seemed to see her as their special queen.

  Before the wedding and afterward, Richon went out and saw a group of swordsmen practicing in the courtyard. A few of them were soldiers, who used the swords as weapons and thought of death as they wielded them. Others held the swords as if they were artists. All of them were better than he was, so he asked if they would teach him.

  He quickly grew stronger. He did not come to like the sword any better than before, however, and wondered if there were another battle, if he would do the same as before and simply turn into a bear.

  Chala, however, had no such choice. She practiced sword fighting with him in the courtyard of the palace and Richon loved to watch her. It was as if she had gained back some of what she had lost in losing her magic: the ferociousness and focus that she had as a hound and the sheer grace of her movements.

  Often there was quite a crowd to see Chala best Richon, as she did all too frequently. And Richon heard there were more than a few women who were asking to join his royal guard—or even the army. That was when he felt that his people had truly come to see Chala as he did, as one of them, but more.

  It was on one of those sword-fighting mornings when a man galloped forward on a horse, dressed finely in livery, and announced himself as a servant to Lord Kaylar, who had once been one of Richon’s companions in drinking and hunting.

  Richon had refused many other “friends” from the past who had written to ask for a return to the king’s favor. But when Richon opened Lord Kaylar’s letter, it was a challenge to a battle to the death, to prove who sho
uld be rightful king of Elolira.

  “What shall I say to my lord, Kaylar?” asked the messenger.

  Richon could not see how he could refuse a challenge from one of his own noblemen. “I accept,” he said.

  “It is for you to choose the place and time,” said the messenger.

  Richon nodded. “One week hence. In this courtyard. At noon.” The men around him cheered.

  The messenger held himself very still.

  “And the weapons?” asked Richon. That was Lord Kaylar’s choice.

  “Magic,” said the messenger.

  “Very well, then, magic it is,” said Richon. He had never seen a battle of magic before, though he had read of them in books that Jonner had recently shown him. It was an ancient tradition.

  The messenger promptly mounted his horse and went galloping back in the direction from which he had come.

  “Lord Kaylar?” asked Chala later, when the two of them were alone together.

  “Yes,” said Richon. “Why?” She couldn’t know of the man, could she?

  “He is the one,” said Chala.

  “Which one?”

  She only had to say one word. “Crown.”

  Richon hissed, as the invitation suddenly made sense to him. Lord Kaylar had been the sort of man who attacked where he knew he would win. If he had been angry at Richon, he would attack him through his horse.

  Poor Crown.

  What did Lord Kaylar intend to do now? Richon suspected the man must have magic himself, but perhaps not much. In order to maim a horse as he did Crown, he could not feel much of the animal’s pain.

  So why would he choose to battle with magic?

  Did he think to prove that Richon did not have much of it, either? Or prove that Richon was a coward if he refused to kill a man with it?

  Doubts tumbling in his mind, Richon did not sleep well for the next week. But when the day came, he was waiting in the courtyard as Lord Kaylar arrived, complete with his entourage. There was a banner-carrying young page at the front, in the bright colors of blue and gold that were Lord Kaylar’s. Then came the men-at-arms, who rode on warhorses. There were six of them.

  Then Lord Kaylar himself, astride the largest horse of all. And after that, two carriages full of his wife and her ladies-in-waiting, who had come to watch the “sport” of seeing Lord Kaylar attempt to kill the king with his magic.

  “My lord,” said Richon with a nod.

  Lord Kaylar stared ahead coldly.

  Then Richon put out his hands so that his own people would step back and give them space. When they were far enough away, he began to change into a bear.

  He looked at Lord Kaylar. It seemed his magic was taking him much longer to use. Well, the bear would wait for it, then. He would not wish to be called unfair.

  He stepped back.

  And saw the man reach for a sword thrown toward him by one of his men.

  The bear had no chance to see how an animal without a weapon would fare in a battle against a man with one. Chala raced between Lord Kaylar and Richon and struck Lord Kaylar through the heart with her own sword.

  When he lay dead at Richon’s feet, she turned up to look at him.

  “I think King Helm would be proud of his princess,” Richon said.

  Chala stared at her bloodstained hands. “I think not. It is not what a princess would do.”

  “Perhaps not. But shouldn’t a queen do all she can to defend her king—and her people?” Richon asked.

  “I would never have done it as a hound,” Chala said. “I would have thought my strength would show your weakness.”

  “Your strength is my strength,” said Richon. “And it always will be.”

  “Thank you,” said Chala.

  Lord Kaylar’s entourage left swiftly.

  Afterward, the others in the courtyard lifted Chala to their shoulders and sang warrior songs to her.

  They howled to the skies and Chala did not join in. She seemed very thoughtful.

  That night she said to Richon, “I thought I had lost my pack. But I have found it again.”

  Epilogue

  KING RICHON AND Queen Chala ruled happily for many years, though they were not blessed with a child to rule after them. Some said it was because the king’s magic was too strong for any child to hold. Others said that it was part of the curse that had made the king into a bear.

  But it was the queen who seemed most hurt by her childlessness. She was often seen among the children of the palace, playing games with them, throwing a ball in the air and catching it with her teeth, or teaching them the foolish rules of being human that their parents expected them to learn without speaking of them.

  When the king grew older, he went on a journey to the far reaches of the kingdom and brought back with him a young woman named Halee, who had as much of the magic as the king himself did, though it seemed to have come to her late in life. She had compassion as well, which the king thought far more important to being a good ruler. In time the king named her his heir.

  The king and queen stayed for several months to help her learn all she needed, and then they disappeared one night and were never seen again in that land or that time. It is said that they returned to their animal forms and that they are still to be seen on the darkest of nights in the forest, where the magic is strong.

  But the truth is that they returned to the wild man in the mountains.

  He was waiting for them, lying on a blanket, his head tilted to one side and his eyes closed.

  At first Chala thought he was dead. The smell of death was in the air. It was part of the reason that she and Richon had come to him now. Richon had noticed it as far away as the palace, and even Chala had begun to get a sense of it, despite her utter lack of magic after all these years.

  But the wild man was still breathing. She could see the rise and fall of his chest.

  “Ah,” he said, opening his eyes and struggling to sit up.

  Richon moved to help him.

  How frail the wild man had grown, thought Chala. He looked more wolf than man now, with those huge teeth and the skin sunken around his eyes making them look brighter than ever before.

  “You have come,” he whispered.

  “We could not have done otherwise,” said Richon. “Not when I heard your call.”

  “Your kingdom?” asked the wild man.

  “In the care of one who loves the magic as only one who thought she did not have it can,” said Richon.

  The wild man nodded. “Good.”

  “I cannot thank you enough,” said Richon.

  The wild man smiled widely, like a wolf. “You will not say that when you hear what it is I have brought you here to do,” he said.

  Richon waited.

  But Chala thought she already knew.

  “The magic needs protecting, and I can no longer do it, but you can,” said the wild man to Richon.

  “But I—I could not possibly take your place. You have so much magic—” Richon sputtered.

  “You have as much magic as I did when I began,” said the wild man. “But that is not why I ask you to take my place. There are others who are strong enough, but they do not understand how important it is, how horrible the unmagic will be. You do.”

  Richon stopped protesting. “I do,” he said.

  “And she will stay with you,” said the wild man, gesturing to Chala.

  “Without magic?” asked Richon. He was as pale as he had been when he first realized what Chala had given up to destroy the cat man.

  Chala put a hand to the back of his neck to reassure him. She did not mind.

  “Here, alone, for years on end?” said Richon.

  “Ah, but she will not be without magic,” said the wild man.

  Richon stared.

  And Chala, for the first time, felt hope in her heart.

  “I will give her my magic,” said the wild man. “Mine alone is old enough to work past the scar of the unmagic in her. And to enable her to have a child again, when the
time comes.”

  “A child?” said Richon, eyes wide.

  It was then that Chala saw the pain he had concealed for so long, so as to avoid adding to hers. How much he had wanted the child that she could not give him. The scar in her had not only walled off her magic, but had made her unable to engender any life, for magic is life.

  “Come to me,” said the wild man.

  Chala approached him. She had never felt so light, and so afraid. She had had a child before and Richon had not. She knew the love a child would bring into their lives as well as the pain.

  The wild man put his hands on her.

  She felt the rush of magic into her, sweet and hot, like love itself.

  Then the magic was hers and the wild man was falling away from her.

  Richon’s smile—when she touched him and he felt her magic—was all the reward she could have asked for.

  Together they found rocks under which to bury the wild man’s body. He would be remembered, in legends and in their own minds.

  But life went on, and so did magic.

  About the Author

  METTE IVIE HARRISON has a PhD in Germanic literature and is the author of THE PRINCESS AND THE HOUND; MIRA, MIRROR; and THE MONSTER IN ME.

  Of THE PRINCESS AND THE BEAR, she says, “I never thought there would be a sequel to THE PRINCESS AND THE HOUND, but when I read through the galleys, I realized that there was another book waiting in the story of the bear and the hound. In some ways, you might think of it more as a parallel novel than as a sequel, because it stands on its own as a new story. But who knows? Maybe I’ll look at these galleys and find another story demanding to be told.”

  She lives with her family in Utah.

  You can visit her online at www.metteivieharrison.com.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  Also by Mette Ivie Harrison

  The Princess and the Hound

  Credits

  Jacket art © 2009 by Larry Rostant

  Jacket design by Amy Ryan