The Princess and the Bear (10 page)

I
T 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 sharp 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.

T
HEY 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 of 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.

“Oh, yes, several. Of course, a lady such as yourself is used to a selection. Come, I will show you the others. There are some variations in color, and perhaps you would prefer an animal that is less—active.”

Chala wondered why any human would wish for an animal that had given up its wildness. But then she remembered the many domesticated animals she had seen that had no more of their own language remaining. Cows, goats, dogs, pigs—all had lost half their wildness and half themselves, in her opinion. But at least they had given it up willingly, in exchange for the ease of life with humans.

These monkeys were not the same. They had had no choice in this matter at all, and were given no recompense. She would not have it!

She gripped Richon tightly, and he made a small hiss of pain. Another hound would have nipped her in return, but Richon walked on.

The animal trainer led the way into a stall that stank of animal feces. It was dark and hot inside, and the monkeys in the cages were so weak and without hope that they did not even look up when Richon and Chala
walked in. Chala could see old bruises on them and dried blood from wounds that had never been treated, but it was the blank stares that told her how often they had been beaten.

These animals thought there was nothing left in life but that, and they waited for the end. It made her sick to see them.

“This one is young and female,” the animal trainer said, pointing to a white-skinned monkey with a crown of white fur on the top of her head.

The monkey did not even look at Chala.

Chala leaned toward it. “Yes, yes, I see,” she murmured.

“And this one is a beautiful black male,” the animal trainer said, pointing to the one that looked as if it had been beaten worst of all.

“Black, yes,” said Chala, pretending interest in something other than the cage and its lock.

The animal trainer seemed to catch no hint of the undertone of anger in her voice. “Perhaps you would like to hold one,” he offered.

Chala gave out a long breath, as if she had been holding it for some time. “That would be best, I think. Don’t you?” She turned to Richon and let him see the anger in her eyes.

She wanted to kill the animal trainer, to feel his blood in her mouth, to feel his last kicking breath flow out of him.

But that was a hound’s desire, and it was not one she could indulge here.

When she had first been forced into the body of the princess, Chala remembered, she had attacked one of the coal boys who had come into her room at night to stoke her fire. She had not been used to being a human and had been angry at the change and at the magic that had been used against her. She had stayed in the castle before, but it had never felt as confining as it did then. Her every breath was a reminder of the prison she was in.

She’d told herself that she would get through this terrible time by thinking of the princess’s room as her own den, as she had had in her days with a pack. But the coal boy had violated her territory, had come in without warning, without permission. He had seen her sleeping on the rug near the fire, with the hound at her side, and in his surprise had fallen over her.

The pain had reminded her of other pain, and suddenly it had all come shooting out of her. She leaped on the coal boy and tore into his face with her fingernails, far less effective than claws but enough to draw blood. The coal boy had screamed for help, and it was the princess—in the body of the hound—who had come to his aid. She leaped on the hound and tore her off.

The coal boy ran away and left the castle. Afterward, orders were given for coal to be left outside the princess’s room for her to serve herself when she wished it. Slowly the hound had learned to restrain her violent impulses.
It seemed this man had never done the same, though he thought of himself as far above animals.

The trainer got out his keys and whistled tunelessly as he approached one of the cages.

A monkey spit on him as he crossed its path, not out of anger, but because it was ill and wasting away.

The animal trainer threw the cage to the floor and cursed the creature, yanking on its tail.

Chala had had enough. She moved forward, kicked the man’s stomach, and snatched the keys out of his hands.

The sound of his howling filled the room, and the animals stared at him, and then at Chala.

She focused on the moment, something easy for a hound to do. She put aside fear and anger, and thought only of what must be done next, so her hands did not shake nor her eyes waver. After trying six keys, she found the right one to open the first cage.

Then she helped the white monkey with the crown of fur out and it scampered away. She moved next to the black-skinned monkey.

Richon stepped between her and the animal trainer.

The animal trainer kicked Richon in the stomach.

Chala heard Richon’s gasp, stifled.

It seemed wrong to her that he would have to hide pain even in these circumstances, but she could not spare thoughts for him. She moved to the next cage, opened it, and set the monkey on the ground. But this
time the monkey did not move.

“Go, go!” Chala encouraged it in humans words that could have no meaning for the monkey. If only she had some of Prince George’s magic, she could speak to the monkey in its own tongue. She had never wished such a human thing for herself before, but she wished it now, for the monkey’s sake.

Richon and the animal trainer continued to fight. The animal trainer put his hands around Richon’s throat, and Chala heard Richon’s choking sounds, his feet and hands scrabbling at the floor.

She went to help, lunging at the animal trainer’s back and kicking at the backs of his knees. He turned, surprised.

But the animal trainer’s human reluctance to hurt a female doomed him. He did not throw her off fast enough, nor with enough force. And by the time that Chala was on the ground again, Richon was pounding the animal trainer’s body and pushing him back, and back again.

Chala took a moment to catch her breath and turned back to the cages. She tried to coax the unmoving monkey to leave once more, but it was no use. A human might have kept at such a fruitless task, but she did not. She could not spend all her time on one animal. There were others who needed her. She felt no guilt. An animal has a right to choose to live or die.

The third monkey that Chala freed wandered away, if not quickly, at least without question. Then she moved down the row of cages.

Richon and the animal trainer fell behind her in a heap.

She told herself that she should let Richon battle alone. No hound would thank her for interference with another hound. But she had to look to him, to make sure that he would survive even if she went on without him.

He was breathing heavily, had a streaming cut above one eye, and would likely have some terrible bruises in the morning, but he was winning. And he was smiling, not at her, but in his own joy at his fight.

Did he know how much that look was like a hound’s?

She hurried to the last monkey, picked it out of its cage, then shooed it back toward the forest beyond the town.

Then she waited for Richon to finish.

He seemed to take a long time about it, but she supposed that as a king he had not been taught how to fight.

When the animal trainer lay on his back, eyes closed, blood streaming out of his mouth, Richon brushed himself off and came to her side.

“I think I have never looked less like a king,” said Richon, his mouth twisting as he stared down at his clothes.

“And I think you have never looked more like one,” said Chala.

Richon’s cheeks reddened. “My princess,” he said to her, smiling.

Chala knew he meant it as a compliment, but she was not sure if she wanted to be thought of as a princess.

She turned back to look at the man’s chest, rising and falling. “Is it wise to leave an enemy alive?” she asked, genuinely wondering if humans had different rules for this than animals. A hound would never leave a threat alive.

“He is one of my people,” said Richon. “If I make an enemy of him, whose fault is it, his or mine?”

Chala thought there was a simple answer to that question, but Richon apparently did not agree.

“He lives,” he said, with finality in his voice.

They left the animal trainer where he was and moved to other stalls, near the edge of the forest.

Richon stared out into the trees. “Will other animals hurt the monkeys?” he asked Chala. “Out there, I mean. The monkeys are from the south and not used to the animals here. Perhaps we should go after them and make sure they are safe.”

Chala was confused. “Go after them and make sure they are safe? You mean cage them again and make them into pets for humans?”

“No, no,” said Richon.

“They will die in the forest when it is winter again,”
explained Chala. She had known this when she had unlocked the cages and coaxed them to go. She thought the monkeys must know it, too.

“But then…why?” asked Richon.

“Because any animal would rather die free than live in a cage,” she said.

Richon breathed out slowly. “And any human,” he added.