The Princess and the Bear (13 page)

F
OR THE NEXT
two days, Richon and Chala traveled together silently. Richon felt that seeing the palace empty had cleansed him in some way from the ghosts of the past. He did not understand how Chala had healed Crown or how she had found a magic that he had thought was always reserved for a select group of humans, but his pain faded when he decided that it must be a gift from the wild man, like the coins he had found in his purse. To be used when necessary, but once used, gone.

They soon came to another village, not as devastated as was the last one, and Richon sighed with relief at the sight of the women and children working in the fields, and in the shops along the market streets. Chala watched them intently.

There was a bakery with heavy dark bread for sale.

Richon bought one loaf and paid for it with a copper
piece, but Chala insisted on buying two more loaves and paying a full silver for hers, though that was three times the price posted.

The woman who worked the shop stared at the coins, as if afraid, until Chala said, “For your children’s sake.”

The woman nodded but said nothing. Her eyes watched Chala suspiciously until she and Richon left the shop.

“Why did you give her so much?” asked Richon.

She waved an arm. “All of the men in town are gone. Only the women and children remain.”

“Oh,” said Richon, ashamed he had not noticed. His mind had not been trained to think of details like this about his own people. He had always thought of them as a group, not as having lives of their own.

Chala was better able to understand his people than he was!

They passed a blacksmith shop, and then Richon turned back as he realized there was a man inside. The only full-grown man in the village.

The blacksmith was hard at work pounding out a sword. But when the blacksmith turned to him, Richon saw the man was missing an arm.

“I haven’t finished yet,” the blacksmith said roughly.

“Finished what?” asked Richon.

The blacksmith paused a moment. “You are not a messenger from the royal steward?” he asked.

Richon shook his head. The royal steward? His mind
whirled. Was that who was in charge of his armies at the border?

Once Richon had thought the royal steward his loyal adviser, but in his years as a bear he had realized that the man had simply been interested in taking power for himself through a weak king.

“Ah, well. I have no time to spare to make orders for anyone else,” said the blacksmith. “The royal steward has paid for all the weapons I can make for the next month, and more than that besides. So even if you’ve broken a plow or have a horse in need of shoeing, I cannot help you.”

His eyes glanced over Chala, but he said nothing of her. Too much work made a man incurious, Richon thought.

“I see.” Richon thought to leave the shop then, but stopped to ask one more question. “The men of the village?” asked Richon. “Did they all join the army to go with the royal steward?”

“Join the army? I suppose you could put it like that,” said the blacksmith with a trace of bitterness.

Richon noticed how awkwardly he worked with his one arm. The flap of skin that covered his stump was not entirely healed. How recently had he been maimed? And how had it happened?

“How would you put it?” asked Richon.

“Forced to it,” said the blacksmith. “Threatened with the lives of their wives and children.”

Chala made a very human sound of distress as the blacksmith went on.

“Took some of them hostage, sent away to other villages. No one knows where. Most of them were left here, though. With the royal steward’s promise the men would be home by winter.”

Did the royal steward think the war would be over so quickly?

“And you?” asked Richon.

The man held up his stump. “I resisted,” he said. “The royal steward took the sword right from my own shop and cut off my arm with it. Said I was lucky, for he needed blacksmiths at home as much as he needed soldiers. Said I would live so long as I proved that I was useful. And he told me the number of swords I was to produce each month.” He named a figure that made Richon’s eyebrows rise.

“Indeed. I work night and day, and still I do not meet his quotas.”

“And what will happen to you if you do not?” asked Richon.

The blacksmith held up his other arm.

Richon swallowed.

He remembered the royal steward’s cruel sense of humor. It was no stretch to believe that he would do what he had said to the blacksmith and laugh over it. But it sickened Richon to realize that he himself had laughed with the royal steward for so many years, and in no better causes.

“I will take those swords to the royal steward if you like,” said Richon. “I am going to find the army myself, to join with them.”

“Why?” The blacksmith was surprised and looked more closely at him. “You look familiar.”

Richon stiffened, but could not think how a blacksmith would have met the king.

“Well, no matter,” said the man flatly. “If you’re going to the battlefield, I won’t be seeing you again. One way or another you’ll be dead, and the rest of us will be taken by Nolira.”

“Doesn’t it matter to you if our kingdom is taken by another?” Richon asked.

The blacksmith shrugged. “One king or another—they take our taxes just the same.”

“Is that the way you truly thought of your king?” Richon asked.

The blacksmith thought a long moment. “I suppose—I felt sorry for him,” he said at last.

“Sorry? Why?” This was the last thing he had expected. Anger or jealousy, yes. But pity?

“He did not see how little he ruled the kingdom, I think. He believed he made the laws and the people listened to him. Perhaps those who lived in more far-reaching places believed that, too. But those of us who were near enough the palace—we saw the truth. He was a boy being pulled by a nose ring, like a pig to the
slaughter. And he had not the least idea of it.”

“He should have known it. He should have been stronger,” said Richon darkly. “That was his duty, as king.”

The blacksmith sighed. “Yes. We all have our duties and we all fail in them at one time or another. Some fail more than others, I suppose.” He held up his one hand. “And some are given more obstacles to overcome. But I do not blame him. He was used as much as any of us were.”

Richon walked away from the blacksmith’s shop with a heavy burlap sack containing five well-crafted though hastily made and undecorated swords, all wrapped together. He carried them on his shoulder, and in his mind he carried the blacksmith’s evaluation of himself.

It was like being told that all his mistakes were, in fact, a great deal smaller than he had thought they were. Because no one had expected more of him.

After a long moment, he felt Chala’s hand on his shoulder. It was light but warm, and he looked up at her in surprise.

“I do not know what to do,” she said. “You are a human. You deserve to have a human response, but I do not know what it should be. If you would tell me, then I would do what would comfort you. If that is what you would like.”

It was a strange speech, but Richon could see it was entirely serious.

“It is not my place to tell you what you should do,” he said. “Not even a king can order another to give him comfort. If it is commanded, there is no true power in it.”

“But what if it is offered the wrong way, or if it goes on too long, or if there are others watching—” Chala stumbled over the words.

“It is your choice,” said Richon. “You must do what you wish to do.”

“And if it is not what you would wish?” asked Chala.

Richon wanted to sigh. “I will always appreciate your touch, Chala,” said Richon.

Her eyes widened. “Are you sure?”

He nodded. “I am sure.”

“Oh. That is not so difficult, then.”

Richon used her hand to pull her closer to him so that her face was only inches from his. He could smell her breath, and thought how it had smelled when she had been a hound and he was a bear.

“Do not be afraid of me,” Richon said. That she thought she needed to be more for him! When he could see so clearly that it was he who needed to be more for her. For all of them.

“I may do the wrong thing. I may embarrass you among your own people,” said Chala.

“Never,” said Richon fiercely.

“I am a hound,” she said.

It was not an apology, simply a statement of fact. And
for Richon to deny it would only make Chala think him a liar.

“You are a hound,” Richon agreed. “But you are more than that.”

“Am I?”

“You are.”

“I am not human. I will never be—fully human,” said Chala.

Richon swallowed and thought of Chala paying her silver for two loaves of bread they did not need. “You say that, and yet there are times when I think you are more human than I.”

Chala tilted her head to one side, as a hound might who was listening for a distant sound in the forest. But she did not argue with him.

He let her hand go, then they walked away from the village together. Once, later that day, as they moved into the southern hills, he thought again of the village children waiting for fathers to come home. He felt Chala’s hand on his stiff back muscles, rubbing at them ineptly but with kindness.

Long past dark, when he was drenched in sweat and so exhausted that he was stepping over Chala’s feet, as well as his own, he stopped at last and let himself rest.

He did not think he would sleep, but he did. He woke in the middle of the night, breathing hard from a dream in which he had seen soldiers dressed in his own colors being slaughtered by the hundreds. Chala woke with
him, and put a hand on his arm.

He pulled himself closer to her, then let her go with a curse at himself.

He had said he believed she was human in many ways, but he still did not know what name to give his feelings for her, and it seemed wrong to offer less than his whole self.

He did not sleep again, but he woke Chala at dawn with a rough shake to her shoulder.

Partly because he could no longer stand his own stench and partly because he wanted to punish himself, he took a very cold bath in a stream nearby. Chala waited until he was finished scrubbing himself and his clothes and had gotten out to shiver in the dying sunlight before she did the same.

In the following week they passed more villages and heard more stories of the royal steward.

He had insisted that ten women from one village be sent to the army at night, to offer “companionship” to the soldiers. The women who remained to tell the story would not meet Richon’s eyes.

Another village told of the royal steward’s demand that all their sheep be slaughtered and sent to the army for a night of feasting. Ten of the men from the village had agreed to join the army then, for there was nothing left for them at home, now that their flocks were gone.

Richon could even imagine the royal steward explaining that it was all for the best, that the villagers would be
grateful for their part in the great victory of the kingdom, and would be able to tell tales to the next generation of bravery and fighting at the side of the royal steward himself.

Richon thought of the wild man and wondered if he had even begun to discover what it was the wild man had sent him here to do. He wanted desperately to save his kingdom, but the wild man had been concerned about the unmagic and Richon had seen nothing of that.

F
OUR DAYS AFTER
leaving the palace, they were between two villages, on the edge of a forest, when Chala caught sight of a cage as large as a man standing upright on the ground. It was shaking and she could hear animal sounds coming from it. She thought immediately of the monkeys she had freed before.

Why did humans think they should be allowed to do such things to the animals they shared the world with? It was one thing to kill animals because of the need for food, and another entirely to imprison them like this.

Richon tried to hold her back. “You do not know what danger there may be in that cage,” he said.

But she shook him off and ran toward it. She recognized the language of the wolves, which was very close to her own language of the hounds, and she called out, “Be calm! I come!”

But it only made the creature in the cage more agitated. The cage swayed from side to side and then turned over. Instead of angry words of demand, Chala now heard calls for vengeance, for death, for blood against all humans.

She looked back at Richon, who could not understand the words at all, but must have gathered the general meaning from the tone in which they had been spoken. He did not look pleased, but neither did he suggest that they ignore the noises and simply walk past the cage.

He had been an animal recently himself, treated by humans as nothing more than meat to hunt for.

“I must do something for it,” Chala said to Richon.

He bit his lower lip, but then nodded.

Chala approached the shaking cage.

She kept thinking of the animal held inside as a “creature” rather than as a wolf, although it spoke the language of the wolves quite clearly. Why was that? Because the animal’s voice did not sound like a wolf. It was too high-pitched.

She knelt down. The cage was filthy and it stank, and she wrinkled her nose and nearly turned away from the terrible smell.

But then she saw the creature’s eyes, and they were blue.

A human blue.

She leaned into the cage. There was little hair on the
creature except on its head, and the arms were long, with rough fingers. No claws, either. He stood on all fours like a wolf, and he was matted and filthy so that his color looked dark.

But it was a human boy, perhaps fourteen years of age, in the middle of that time between childhood and adulthood.

He showed his teeth to Chala and then tore at her face, which she had placed too close to the bars.

She drew back.

He growled and called out in the language of the wolves, “Mine—this one is mine.”

It was the traditional call at first sight of prey, and it meant that the other wolves, while they could help to corner the fleeing animal and would certainly share in the meat, would also give this wolf the opportunity to make the first killing strike against it.

Then all would converge and the pack would feed.

Richon came running up and put an arm around her. He turned her so that she was facing him. “Are you hurt?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“What happened?”

She pointed to the boy.

“It’s—” said Richon, then he paused. “Impossible,” he muttered.

But it was possible, obviously, since the boy was here.

“There is something gravely wrong here,” said Chala. How had this boy been made so animal-like, and who had placed him in this cage?

She turned to Richon, and he moved a little closer.

“Do you have a name?” Richon asked, pronouncing each word distinctly. He kept his hands and face away from the cage and stared intently at the boy.

There was no sign of understanding, as far as Chala could tell. Was it possible the boy had never learned the language of humans?

“The story of the boy raised by wolves,” said Richon, glancing at her.

Chala nodded. She remembered it as well. But the story had not spoken of how difficult it might have been for the boy to return to humans.

“You think he was raised by wolves but that humans tried to take him home and found he was too much animal?” She thought of herself and how much she was like this boy.

“It is all I can think of,” said Richon. “Perhaps he lived too long with the wolves to ever make the change.” He did not look at her. “In any case, they should have sent him back to the forest with the wolves once they discovered that he could not live as a human.”

“Unless they feared he could not survive,” said Chala.

She looked around now and saw evidence of bones that had been eaten clean and thrown outside the cage.
The boy was being fed at intervals and brought water as well.

She could not tell how long he had been in the cage, but he would survive here. Animals from the forest could not hurt him, no matter how they might be attracted by his calls. In that sense the cage was for his protection. But it also kept him in one place so that the humans knew where he was and could come to him to keep him alive. The humans cared for him, though their way of expressing it might seem strange to Chala.

“He is also one of my subjects,” said Richon bitterly. “And I have failed him.”

“What do you think you should have done to help him, then?” asked Chala.

Richon thought for a long moment. Then he said, “If I had magic of my own, then I could tame him. Or if you had not already healed Crown with the magic the wild man gave you, perhaps you could do it.”

Chala stared.

He thought that she had healed Crown with magic from the wild man?

She did not have time to explain now. She had to help this boy with her magic if she could.

Before Richon could stop her, she reached the cage and put her hand through the bars, reaching for the boy.

He leaped toward her. She felt his teeth dig into the flesh of her arm.

“Chala, no!” shouted Richon.

But she was already gone, into the magic, and was far from him.

She went into herself first, feeling the thread of magic that connected her to the boy, pulling herself along it as if she were on a rope bridge crossing from one side of a river to another.

She could feel that he was sucking at her blood, and might do worse, but there was no pain as yet.

With her magic she could see his life growing up with wolves. Then the day that he had been discovered by humans, who had gone into the forest to seek for the source of the magic they felt from far away. They took him away in chains and they tried to teach him, to no avail. And so had come the cage, and their infrequent visits.

How he hated them!

How he hated everyone, even himself.

But only because of his human form.

His soul was a wolf’s.

Chala saw clearly that to be saved he must be allowed to become a wolf in truth.

She could only assume that the animals in the forest did not know how to use their magic for something like this, or that they did not have enough of it. Perhaps she did not have enough, either. But she had to try.

She pushed her magic toward him.

She did not know precisely what she was doing, but she had been next to Prince George as he had changed
her back into her hound form, and the princess to her woman’s form.

Hairless skin turned to fur.

Ears peaked.

Nose turned to snout.

Teeth and limbs elongated.

And then it was done.

The boy was a wolf.

Chala fell back, breathing hard, blood streaming down her arm.

The wolf growled at her, still not sure of what she had done. But he did not seem as crazed as he had before. He was himself again, though with less magic now to draw humans to him. He only needed to be set free, and allowed to return to his pack.

Chala pulled on the lock to the cage but could not get it to come free. The use of magic was so unfamiliar to her.

At last Richon, hands trembling, came around her and put his knife in the keyhole. It sprung free and the wolf leaped out.

Chala watched him go, and felt a terrible wave of envy. He could return to the forest and be at home once more. He could be a wolf again, with a pack and a wolf’s life.

But with all her magic she did not know if she would ever be a hound again. She did not regret the choice she
had made to be a human woman and take on the task of aiding Richon against the unmagic.

It was the simplicity of life as a hound that she missed. The physicality of it. Eating, the sun on her bare back, even the feel of rocks in her paws. And the sense of belonging, in the forest with other animals, of her kind and not.

She did not know if she would ever truly fit in with humans. She did not know if she wanted to.

“Chala,” said Richon.

She felt him close to her, his touch easing the sting of the wound on her arm. He tucked her head into the crook of his neck, and she knew that here, at least, she belonged. With him.

With surprise, she noticed there was something rolling down her face, stinging it. She put a hand up to feel it and discovered her face was wet.

Tears.

She was weeping, as a human woman would.

“I thought it was the wild man’s magic that you used with Crown,” said Richon after the tears had stopped and she had pulled away from him once more.

“No,” said Chala softly.

“You have it because you are human now?”

“I think it is because of this time and place. There is magic everywhere here and in adundance. Even the animals have it.”

Richon slapped his leg and swore darkly. “I am surrounded by magic and have not a drop of it myself, though I am supposed to be king. Truly I think I fit better in Prince George’s time than in my own.”