The Princess and the Wolf (The Princess and the Hound)

by Mette Ivie Harrison

  “We go to find the king. And then to stop Lord Morlieb,” she said.

  True nodded.

  They left the boar where it was, though the queen took her sword out of it.

  True wished he had his hound senses, so that he could be sure that it was truly a boar, and not a human.

  They went into the forest, and True was astonished to discover how much the forest had changed since he had last been in it. It seemed smaller, and more mysterious. Darker.

  It was several minutes before he realized how many of the changes he felt were because of the human body he was now in. His eyes saw more, and that made the forest more frightening, because what he saw now were details he had not seen before, colors everywhere that changed with surprising rapidity.

  He was taller upright than he had been as a hound, but he moved with less assurance. Every branch that he stepped on, every stone under his feet, made him stumble and catch his breath. And the lack of smell was important, too. Smell had been his guiding sense as a hound. He had made his way through the forest paths through smell more than anything else. Now he could not smell where they went next. The touchstones of smell were gone, and so he felt lost.

  “You were with him when he changed, yes?” said the queen.

  True nodded.

  “Then you smelled him. Can you remember that smell? Follow it?” she asked.

  “I am no longer a hound,” said True. Had she forgotten that? For a moment, he was glad that she had. If only he could forget it himself.

  She stopped short. “I was a hound once,” she said.

  True stared at her. It made a great deal of sense suddenly. “And why did you choose to become human?”

  “I was born human, but a man used magic to make me a hound. Your grandmother lived as a human in my place. We tried to pretend that all was well, that we were in our right bodies. But George—Prince George at the time, King George now—he could see the truth. He knew who I was, even in my hound body. He loved me, even so.”

  True had met the king and had been impressed by his magic, but he would never have guessed this. “And did he already know he had the great magic that could transform you?” he asked.

  The queen shook her head. “I can’t imagine what would have happened to us if he had not found it. He was to marry me—but it was my hound who wore my skin.”

  “She would have had to pretend to be you for the rest of your days. And you would have had to live at her side, knowing the truth that he could never be fully yours,” said True. And what of his life? What had the king done now? And how would it be corrected?

  “I told you this so that you would believe me when I say that I understand what it is like to be in a familiar place and to find it unfamiliar, to be not yourself.”

  “Yes,” said True.

  “And to wish desperately for something that might never be.”

  “I will be a hound again,” said True. “I must be.”

  “But if you are not—” said the queen.

  “Then the king will never be a human again,” True pointed out.

  “No, but we know what it is like to live with that barrier between us. And we have a daughter who is our heir. She would take the kingdom, if necessary.”

  The daughter whom True had seen carrying out the instructions of Lord Morlieb? When he had first met her, he had been impressed with how strong she was. Like a lead female, he had told her. She had not seemed to think it a compliment.

  “How will we find him here?” said True. “I think I know where my pack would be, but they would not recognize me like this. They might attack us, if they were threatened.”

  “You cannot speak to your pack, then?”

  True shook his head. “I could understand them, I think.”

  “I do not have the animal magic to speak to animals, either.”

  But they heard barking nearby, and hurried to reach it. True fell and landed on his hands. The fragile human skin was torn and bloody and it distracted him as he moved. He had never felt pain so deeply before.

  He came into the clearing just after the queen did.

  The king—as a hound—was standing across from True’s own pack, baring his teeth and snarling at them. They, in turn, were preparing to attack him from all sides.

  The queen tried to catch True’s arm, but he leaped forward to stand between the two. True found himself on all fours like a hound, and he looked into the face of the king. “Back,” he said, in human words.

  The king looked startled, but his hackles were no longer raised. He recognized True.

  True turned to his own pack. He snarled at them without words, hoping that his intent would be clear in any case. The hounds stared past him, to the queen. The first one looked down and True knew he had won, though it seemed to him that they were more afraid of a human who believed he could speak to hounds when he could not than they were afraid of another hound.

  They did not seem to see anything familiar in him.

  Once the hounds were gone, the queen got on her hands and knees. She looked the king who was a hound in the eyes. “George,” she said. “And now we are like this.” She was smiling, though there were tears dripping down her face.

  Was she in pain? She should not be in that position. It did not look comfortable to her.

  “Will you come back to the castle? We have a war to fight there. Lord Morlieb has taken control of so many.”

  “He has been here, as well,” the king barked in return.

  It took a moment before the queen thought to look at True, but he translated.

  “And will you stop him as a hound? Or as a king?” asked the queen.

  There was a long silence. “I will try,” said the king. “But I am not as strong as I once was, and I have used the great magic very recently.”

  True drew closer to the king. They stood eye to eye, paw to hand. And True could see the king’s eyes—that was the one part of him that seemed unchanged. There was a strange tingling sensation, and True’s nose itched. He held as still as he could, waiting for the great magic to transform him completely, but whatever had touched his nose dissipated soon afterwards, and when he looked down at himself, he was a human still. And the king was still a hound.

  “I will not give up on you,” said the queen fiercely. “You will find a way to be human again.”

  “Perhaps it is better this way. If Lord Morlieb is the wolf that these animals have seen here, he will see me as his equal more in this form,” said the king.

  “And you intend to fight him to the death?” asked the queen. “Have you not passed the age of that? You have guards to fight for you now. All younger men.”

  “I will never be too old to protect my wife and my daughter,” said the king who was a hound. He barked this last loudly, and there was something very hound-like in him. An aging hound was sometimes allowed one last fight before death, and the hound chosen to stand against him was honored in the choice. It could not be a quick end. It had to be done properly.

  “I think you have always wanted this. You were jealous of me, that I was the hound,” said the queen. There was sadness and teasing in her voice, and True had never heard the combination before.

  “All those adventures,” said George.

  “Well, you will not have them alone. I will be with you every step of the way. Beware, if you plan to take yourself into danger, I will be there at your side. We will die together, protecting the kingdom and our daughter.”

  “Our daughter,” said the kind. There was a faint hesitation in his voice.

  The king and queen together walked back through the forest, through the village, and toward the castle.

  What made them think that the two of them could fight against Lord Morlieb now? The king as a hound might have protection against the old magic, and the queen might be protected since she still had half the mind of a hound. But they were two—three with True—against the rest of the kingdom.

  True expected that they would be stopped at the very g
ate, but to his surprise, the gate guards recognized the queen and seemed genuinely relieved to see her.

  “Where is Lord Morlieb?” she asked first and foremost.

  “He left some hours ago,” was the answer. “He took many of his own men with him.”

  “Where did he go?” asked True, though he was afraid he knew the answer already.

  The guards pointed toward the forest from which they had come.

  This was why the hounds of his own pack had not paid attention to King George when he had tried to bark to them in their own language. They had been corrupted already by the Olde Wolf. He must be gathering everyone to him who would come.

  How many of the humans here would be among those, True wondered.

  The king who was a hound barked and said, “We will be ready for him when he comes.”

  The queen put a hand on his back and patted him gently. “We will,” she said, and looked at True.

  True did not know how they would be ready, but he had no pack to go back to now. The king and queen were his pack, and he would give them strength as only those in a pack can do. And if his pack lost, then he would not fear death.

  Chapter Twenty: The Olde Wolf

  The Olde Wolf saw the humans gathering just outside the gate of the castle. It is time, he thought. He felt a smile spread across his face. He had waited long for this. It would not be the last battle, but it would be the first of the last. This was the beginning of the end of humans, and he had brought this moment to pass.

  He went to the stones first and whispered to the animals in the old language, reminding them how horrible the humans were, and how much they deserved to die. To them he added the animals who had followed him through the forest, and he reminded them of all the sins the humans had committed against them.

  He called to animals in the villages in the kingdom. There were few left, close to the castle, and only a small portion of those in the farthest reaches could hear him, but there were hundreds of bulls, and pigs, and goats and dogs and cats and even some trained birds who came to him.

  Finally, he strode toward the castle itself, the animals at his back. There were nearly a thousand of them altogether. All as it should be, he thought. Animals should be the ones in power, and humans should be the ones in ignorance and fear.

  Those out working in the fields near the castle saw the army of animals and reacted predictably. Most ran away, screaming, as far away as they could get. The Olde Wolf would have to get them later. But fearful humans running would be easy to track. And they would be tired and alone. Easy for an animal or two to kill in a single stroke. The humans would be happy to die. Or they should be. To bring the world back to the way it had once been, before it had all gone wrong.

  Another dozen humans ran for the castle itself. The Olde Wolf called to them using old words. One stopped, and the Olde Wolf sent an eagle after it. The human screamed and its end was rather messy. This made the other humans, who had hesitated at the sound of the Olde Wolf’s voice, make up their minds to run faster. The Olde Wolf let them go, as well.

  Two of those in the field lifted their hoes and began to attack the animals who were moving toward them like a dark storm cloud filling the sky. They did not seem to have any particular targets, and wildly threw themselves at whichever creature was nearest. Several smaller animals died, a beaver and a vole, but as soon as the Olde Wolf noticed them and came close enough to speak to them, they dropped their weapons and held out their hands.

  The Olde Wolf spoke again and the animals attacked the helpless humans. They made no sound of pain as they were killed. The expression on their faces—what was left of them—was peaceful. As it should be. Their pain was finished. Their disruption of the true order of life was ended. Now all would go back to the beginning.

  With the Olde Wolf, the animals continued to march forward, killing more humans on their way, humans who lay down and died almost eagerly. And so it would be in the castle, as well. The humans here who believed they had magic over animals would die and then there would be none left in the world who would think they could stop the Olde Wolf returning the world to the first, pure order with all animals equal, and all living without magic.

  Except for the Olde Wolf, of course. His magic he would keep, because there must always be one who stood before all others, to keep the order. The Olde Wolf was the last of his kind, but he would never die. He could not. It was his place, and his responsibility. Really, he could not let himself rest, even if he wished to. It was resting that had first created the humans who thought themselves different to begin with.

  Standing in front of the castle, the Olde Wolf paced back and forth, with no need now for words of any kind. The animals were cowed and they did not speak in their own fragmented languages. They were listening for him to speak in the true language, and they were all one in this.

  The only thing that could have made his triumph more complete would be to have other old wolves with him. His old pack, dead these thousands of years—how they all would have loved to kill humans with him. How they would have gloried in the way that he made humans bow down and accept their own deaths.

  He cupped his hand around his lips and shouted out a call in the old language to the humans in the castle, as well.

  They came out in tens and dozens, their faces alight with the joy of hearing the old language. They approached him, though they did not recognize his wolf face as belonging to Lord Morlieb, who had spoken to them before. It was the voice that mattered to them now.

  Some of them Lord Morlieb recognized. There were servants, but also lords and ladies. He did not see the king and queen, nor the princess. But soon enough, they would come. They would all come. They could not resist him.

  He had spent two weeks with them already, and made sure that he had practiced his voice on every one of them. He had learned to change it a little, to speak more directly to them, to let words flow out and fly free. But it was still the old language. It was still going to be a proper way to return to what had always been.

  The animals snarled, and leaped behind the Olde Wolf in fury. His arms, outstretched, were the bars to their cage. He did not wish the end to begin. Not yet. The humans were not yet assembled properly. It was not about a fair battle. Only about a complete one. The humans would all lie down and be slaughtered, every one.

  They would show that he had mastered them with only his words, only the weapon which he had brought from the past. He did not need their swords or spears, their bows and arrows. He was an animal, and he could send all his animals away and it would not matter.

  He only needed his voice to kill them all. If he wished it, he could have demanded they strangle themselves. He could have told them to throw themselves off the castle walls. He could have made them drown themselves in the moat or simply stop breathing. He could have had them kill each other until there was only one left, who would stab himself to the heart.

  The end of humans would begin here, and then it would spread from land to land. All humans everywhere would greet him and his animals with obeisance, and falling to the ground to be killed.

  “Stop,” said the Olde Wolf in the whispered language.

  The humans stopped all together.

  “Hold there. Wait for my signal,” said the Olde Wolf.

  The humans showed no sign of fear of the animals gathered against them. But why should they fear this? Even they hated the world they had created, the separation between animals and humans. If they could see the world that he was bringing about, they would thank him. They would lie down gladly and become food for the new trees and bushes that would grow up in their bones and bones, and feed new animals of the old kind.

  But for now, the humans waited.

  And the animals waited.

  The Olde Wolf stood between them and breathed in triumph like a bee taking in nectar.

  Chapter Twenty-one: Dagmar

  Dagmar watched as the animals streamed out of the castle. They were blank-faced and did not see her,
even when she was in their way. They walked into it, pressing her until she moved to the side, but not trying to hurt her, only to move past. She heard not a sound from any of them, except the sound of breathing and of hooves on wood. The hounds tore open their door, though many of them lost the use of a paw.

  In the stables, Dagmar hoped to find her own horse, but the stall was empty.

  She hurried outside. “Pakira!” she called out, trying to see a glimpse of her in the other animals. It was midmorning, but the sun would get brighter soon, as it was the middle of summer. Her eyes stung with the sudden light, and she could not see for a moment. When she blinked them clear, she gasped as she saw Pakira’s bloody face. What had become of the animal she had once loved?

  There were humans pushing in around her. She recognized some from the castle. One was her own maid, Tia. But when Dagmar called to her, the girl did not seem to hear. And when Dagmar went to her side and tried to speak to her, she would not turn her head. Dagmar put her hands on the girl’s cheeks and tried to pull her head down, the girl shook her off violently, and then turned back to face the large, blue wolf standing at the head of a group of animals in the field.

  Not just a group of animals, Dagmar realized. An army of them.

  And she knew that wolf, whether he was in human guise or not. It was Lord Morlieb. It was confirmed when he spoke to the humans and told them to prepare for death. He spoke in human language, despite his wolf form. What other animal could do that?

  Dagmar took out her dagger and stared at it. But she put it away. If the blue wolf wanted the humans to fight, then that was surely the wrong thing to do. Dagmar looked around and saw many humans holding weapons, moving forward eagerly.

  Dagmar tried shouting at them, slapping their faces, and kicking at them do that they fell down. But nothing worked. They simply stood back up, blocked her arm, or ignored her. They were caught entirely by his old magic.

  Then Dagmar remember her own magic. She had been able to do something with the hounds in the kennels. Perhaps she could use that same calming voice on the humans around her.