The White Hart

by Nancy Springer

  We filled our water flasks at the stream and climbed the ravine, dragging our packs behind us. Then we silently shouldered them and set off eastward.

  Chapter Six

  Within a few days I had put away hope of reaching my mother’s dwelling before midsummer. There was the heat, to start with. We had not reckoned with such heat so early in the season, or at least I had not. It sapped us. I soon shed all possible clothing. Frain seemed more used to the heat than I, but he could not manage the terrain very well with only one usable arm. The land was rugged, always putting barriers in our way. I cut a staff for each of us, for use as a weapon as well as for help with the rough going. But Frain found his staff as much hindrance as help, and I often had to carry it for him.

  Our second day in Tokar we happened on a sort of trail, only the faintest of paths, it might have been made by deer. We followed it gratefully. But we had not been on it more than a quarter of an hour when I sensed danger. I got Frain by the arm and pushed him into a tangle of grapevines, where we crouched in silence. Soon three rough-looking men passed by us close enough to touch, towing some poor unfortunate behind them by a rope. They were slavers. We kept to our cover until they were well gone.

  “Thank you, Dair,” Frain whispered to me. He looked shaken. “How did you know?”

  I pointed to my nose.

  “The wolf caught their scent on the air, you say? Well, I am glad to have you with me. I wonder how much they would get for a crippled slave.” He studied the trail with a sigh. “I suppose we must go off in the woods again. As long as we keep to a track we are easy prey for them or for robbers.”

  It was very true. But the going was slow in the woods. I missed my four sure paws, my narrow body that could glide between the branches. Frain was even slower than I.

  Within a week after we landed, our provisions were low. There is a limit to how much food a human can carry, and we found it was not as much as was needed. The human body does not behave like the wolf body. It wants its food far more often, especially when it is on the move. So although our packs were lightening daily, our steps were heavier. There was not much forage in the forest. The wild grapevines which hung everywhere bore not even green fruit yet. We found a few mushrooms now and then which Frain ate. One day, after he had stripped the fungi off a rotting log, I turned it over and ate the grubs and earthworms I found underneath. When I had finished Frain handed me the mushrooms as well.

  “My appetite has left me,” he said wryly, and I felt worse than ever.

  I smelled game everywhere, but I had no idea how to catch it. If I had been a wolf again I could have provided for us, I often thought.… Frain must have had some human notion of hunting, but he would not or could not use it. He threw stones that missed, set snares that were clumsy and caught nothing. I suspected that he could do better—how would he have survived, otherwise? But I had no way of saying so. I think he was afraid of killing anything, afraid of what the flow of blood might release in him.

  We trudged on. We avoided slavers again, then robbers. Sometime in the second week we came to a burned place where the sun beat down on a dry meadow surrounded by the brushy forest. Tiny wild strawberries grew in the grass around the blackened stumps. We both picked them and ate them ravenously until our mouths and fingers were stained red. Frain ate more slowly than I because of his withered arm. He could only pluck one berry for my two. After a while I left the rest of them to him and tried to catch grasshoppers for myself in the taller weeds. It was hard, for the hands were stupid. I probably would have done better with my gaping mouth. But I caught a few and gulped them down. Frain looked at me oddly.

  “This is laughable,” he said. “We are starving faster than we can eat. Let us go on.”

  We walked until nightfall and then camped. There was no fire, for we did not dare make one. We ate our last scraps of hard shipsbread and then lay down to sleep. Frain drowsed off promptly—hunger made him tired. But I felt very restless, even more restless than usual, and the moon was at the full. I could see quite plainly Frain’s face beside me, too thin. My bond brother, how was I to help him? … I got up finally and moved off to the crest of the nearest ridge, snuffed the night air, smelled deer not too far away and rabbits everywhere, and we were likely to die of want in the midst of it all.… I could not speak, but I could sing—that is to say, I could howl. I flung up my head and howled out my sorrow to my mother moon.

  Some time later I walked softly back to camp. Frain was wide awake—I dare say my noise had roused him. As I approached his eyes fastened on me in startled fear. He jumped up and reached for his staff.

  It’s only me, I said, a woof. I stepped out of the brush so he could see me fully. He gave a long breath of relief and lay back down.

  “Your eyes,” he said, “they shine bright green in the moonlight, and you move so silently—I thought you were a panther.”

  The wild thing was on the prowl in me. I sensed it as surely as he did. I went to him and touched him lightly on the face—the first time I had done that, and he accepted it from me. Then I turned and left him, knowing quite surely and against all reason what I had to do for him. I had thought that my human form would be mine for life, but now I thought differently.…

  Before I had taken a dozen strides into the dark I went down on all fours, and in a moment I was a wolf again, and I whined and barked aloud with the joy of it. From a standing start I leaped away, rushed into the thicket of night, ran down a rabbit almost before I knew it was there. I beg your pardon, little sister, but I am famished, I gasped, and I ripped it up on the spot, bolted down the warm, sustaining meat, food and drink in one, so good! Then I thought of Frain and I was ashamed. I had eaten and had saved nothing for him. I would kill him a deer, I thought, all by myself. No, I would not be able to drag such a large carcass back to him.… I found the rabbit’s nest and absently bit down the little morsels it contained. I would have to find something I could take back to Frain. It was dawn by the time I returned to him, trotting along with a large hare in my mouth. Frain was awake, sitting and looking worried, waiting for me. I bounded up to him and laid the hare at his feet, and for a moment he looked as if he might faint. I had not considered how my new form would shock him, and I cringed in apology.

  “Dair?” he whispered.

  I swung my head up and down in an exaggerated nod.

  “Well. You make a lovely wolf.” He blinked and swallowed, recovering. He touched the hare. “Thank you. But how am I to cook it? All sorts of riffraff will see the smoke and come for breakfast.”

  I stood up, stretching, rippling my muscles, and gave him a meaningful look. He laughed a low laugh.

  “Just let them try, you say? All right, Dair.”

  He cooked and ate, and as it turned out no one disturbed us. By the time he was done morning was half spent, so we made short miles that day. But I caught him a coney for his supper, and I could see the strength returning to him. It made me glad. I felled a wild pig near our camp that night and feasted and showed him the carcass in the morning so that he could roast himself a haunch.

  We journeyed on. I kept to my wolf form, worrying fitfully that I might not be able to find my way out of it again but knowing in a deeper way that I would make a change when it was time. After several days we found ourselves in a slightly more settled country. Homesteads lay widely scattered between woodlots and overgrown meadows. I hoped Frain would ask some human for news of Maeve, for I had heard nothing of a haunt in the forest talk. It must have been because animals do not fear such things the way people do—I could not suggest a sortie to Frain, of course. I could scarcely tell him anything at all.

  He did his scouting on his own. The day after I killed a young deer he disappeared into a cottage with a slab of the venison. I waited in a thicket for him, and presently he returned to me with bread, blackberries, cheese and news.

  “The south road to Jabul runs only a few days from here,” he reported. “Once we find it, we should be able to follow it north to
the place Trevyn named.” He walked on cheerfully.

  But there was to be no walking in the days that followed. During the night, as bad luck would have it, Frain became ill. Some strange human ailment—something in the food had affected him. Pain bent him in knots, terrible pain, and by morning he was out of his mind, whether from the cramps or fever or fatigue I was not certain. He lay panting and did not recognize me when I sat beside him.

  “Why, hello, Father,” he said with a grim heartiness that chilled me.

  I stared. Soon he reached up and touched my fur and laughed, a strained, unhealthy laugh.

  “Fabron, the dog-king of Vaire! Scion of staghounds.” Grasping my neck, he pulled himself up, sitting and feeling at the points of my ears. He frowned in puzzlement, trying to smooth them down to lie flat as a staghound’s ought. “No, no, you are a usurper, I keep forgetting,” he murmured. “You will die for that someday, Father, you know you will. Destiny—”

  I whined in inquiry, and he lay back and wagged a finger at me, gravely reproachful.

  “This taking of thrones, Fabron, greed for power and lust for gold and sell—sell—selling of your own child, you will die! Die! The hounds of hell rend you—” He sobbed, then struggled upright in rage. “Never mind!” he shouted wildly. “You’re a dog anyway, and a son of a bitch, and that makes me a dog too, a pup, Shamarra said so—”

  Silence took hold of him and he stood half bent over, staring fearfully. I went to him and pressed against his unsteady knees, trying to support and comfort him, but he did not notice. He was seeing things that were not there. “Hands,” he hissed, “hands of doom,” and he inched back, taut. “Damn—lake,” he panted. “Hates—me. The—face!”

  He turned, stumbling, and tried to run, but pain staggered him and he fell—I bore the brunt of it, making a cushion for him until I scrambled out from under his thrashing weight. He was still running, legs beating the air madly, going nowhere, in the sort of fit that puppies suffer sometimes when they are about to die. Frightened, I tried to make him stop by lying on him, but he pummeled me with his one good hand, shouting, and drove me away. At last exhaustion quieted him and he lay in the dirt, covered with the leaf mold he had kicked up, panting again.

  I went to fetch water—I in my wolf form, too dismayed and too unpracticed to find my way out of it—taking the flask in my mouth and finding a stream and dropping it in until it was full, padding back with it, spilling it over him. Again and again I did that until he was lucid enough to grasp it and drink. Then with my teeth I tugged blankets over him, and he dozed.

  Before midday he awoke again and lay gazing fixedly at a straight and slender gray-barked sapling that stood nearby.

  “Shamarra,” he addressed it, “I have never been able to understand what he did to you. How he could make that mystic tool into a hurtful, thrusting thing, a weapon of his hatred, no better than a broomstick—”

  The thought seemed to both inflame and alarm him. He started struggling and shouting again. “I know what I would do to him if I were you, Shamarra! I would wind his guts around a stake. I would flay him alive. I would—no, oh, no—”

  He started clawing at himself, his chest. Coming closer, I saw that his skin had gone as red as if it had been seared. “Shamarra, not me!” he shouted fiercely. “Hag, why do you despise me? You know I am doomed to—oh, Tirell, my brother.…” He started to weep. He was raising great welts and bloody gashes on his body, tearing at himself, and I took his wrist in my jaws, struggling with him and trying to calm him. I knew now what ailed him, and I felt a cold chill thinking of it. The rye plague, the holy fire. Seed of it had come to him in the bread. Very likely it would leave him either insane or dead. “Shamarra, please!” he groaned. “Let go!” I could have cried for despair. But slowly, after some moments, a sense of hope came to me, for little as he seemed to know me he was speaking to me still in the language I understood, the Traderstongue. It must have become second nature to him in all the years of wandering. And how could he feel, I wondered, speaking always that mongrel tongue, a thing of mismatched parts and fragments as he himself—

  “Let me die and have it over with,” he whispered. I suppose if it had not been for that matter of bathing in a forbidden lake he might have died. He was grievously ill for some days, unable to eat. At first he ranted and flailed, and I had to try to control him—luckily he had only the one arm and I was able to keep him from hurting himself too much. Later the fire left his skin but he lay like a corpse, nearly senseless, wasting away until his fair skin was stretched taut over the bones of his face and they showed through whitely. Once again I felt that I was failing him, I in my wolf form. I brought him meat, but it was of no use to him. All I could do was lick his face and lie close beside him. The warmth of my furry body seemed to ease the pain in his belly. In the night he would stir and moan and whisper of Tirell and Shamarra and Fabron the doomed dog his father until I pressed my muzzle against his face, and then he would throw his arm around my neck, hug me and sleep for a little while.

  I knew I should wish for my human form again and nurse him properly, but I could not. Wishes are like dreams—they will not be directed. Without true desire I could not make the change, and I felt sure that Frain would never have put his arm around Dair the man or let me warm and comfort him in the night. Guiltily, foolishly, I kept bringing him meat and the touch of warm fur, until one morning after a restless night he turned his head and looked at me.

  “Dair,” he murmured.

  I sat up, ears pricked at attention, scarcely daring to breathe.

  “What … I have been sick.”

  I nodded.

  “I—how long?”

  I had lost count of the days, but with a forepaw I made many scratches in the dirt. Frain gazed back at me in amazement.

  “But I do not remember anything,” he said softly, and I think my eyes narrowed somewhat as I looked back at him. For perhaps he could not remember, did not want to remember the things he had seen and the things he had said, but I felt certain that a part of him had always been aware, like the watcher in a dream, the one who whispers in the ear of the mind, “this is a dream,” even as the mind is screaming. I felt sure he would not have been awake and speaking to me if it were not so. For the first time then I guessed at the hidden strength of Frain. And I guessed as well that the hidden fears, the darkness he did not want to face, lay closer at hand than he was willing to admit.

  Chapter Seven

  All his strength of body had left him. He could scarcely stand or walk. Nevertheless, with my help, he crawled to the wood I had gathered for him and made himself a fire, and he managed in a crude fashion to boil meat for broth. He lapsed into a sitting stupor while it was cooking, but as soon as it was ready I roused him, and after it had cooled he drank it down. He nibbled at shreds of the meat, and then he slept, quite soundly.

  For several days thereafter he ate as often as he was able, a little at a time. I brought him every sort of food that I could forage. As I saw that he would be well, and as my fear for him lessened somewhat, I became moody and fearful on my own account, though I felt I should be glad. Sense of failure was strong in me—I had been so long a wolf, I wondered if I would ever again make a human companion for him. If only we had reached my mother’s abode, perhaps she would have been able to help me.… I became impatient with the slowness of Frain’s healing. My muddle of feeling came to a head one evening as I studied the flames of the campfire, restless and ashamed by turns, and fervently eager to have the journey over with—Maeve’s home lay only a few days’ travel away. I wished we had a horse for Frain to ride. I wished that I could carry him myself. He was so helpless still—I pictured him lying hacked by robbers. Unease and the image moved me to a woeful howl.

  Frain was startled. “Dair, whatever is the matter?” he asked. Then he walked over to me unsteadily and caressed me, patting my head and the thick fur of my neck. “Everything will be all right,” he assured me.

  Feeling foolish and ab
ashed, I skulked off to hunt myself some supper. Later, when I came back to camp, he was asleep. I lay beside him and dozed, and in my doze I dreamed of the horse. It was strong and slate gray, and in the dream I wanted to be that horse, to carry Frain swiftly to Maeve and safety. I would never have thought of it in daylight, I had never considered that I could be anything except a wolf and a man. But the dream bore me up.… My paws were hooves, my body a massive thing on absurdly thin legs, my neck lithe and long. I snorted and awoke myself to discover that I had strayed some distance from Frain. I was the gray horse, and I was eating twigs. The green taste of them shocked me more than anything else about the change. I had never been fond of greens.

  Well, I told myself, it is only for a few days. I hoped that was so.

  When Frain awoke in the morning, his eyes lit on me with a look of startled joy and he came gently over and caught me by the forelock. “Good horse,” he whispered. “I am glad you are amenable.” Then he called, “Dair!” and looked all around him eagerly.

  This was a problem—he did not recognize me. I nudged him in the ribs with my sizable nose.

  “Oof!” he protested. “Dair! Come see this!” he called more loudly, beginning to look worried. I did not often leave him for long or roam far away for fear that slavers or something might harm him. “Where the bloody flood can he have got to?” Frain muttered.

  I could not change back to wolf or man again to show him. At least I did not think I could without losing the horse.

  “Dair!” he shouted, forgetting all caution.

  Here I am! I growled, butting him hard with my head. I am sure he had never heard a horse growl before. He whirled and let go of my forelock, stepping back to stare at me.