The Princess and the Bear (9 page)

F
OLLOWING STREAMS AND
a few trails, they reached the forest at the bottom of the first foothill in three days’ time. Each morning Richon woke and followed Chala to get some meat for breakfast. Each morning he ate it raw as she did, and wished that he could show no distaste, as she did. Everything had changed between them.

His old insecurities had returned to haunt him. He was useless as a king, and no better as a man. He could not believe that she felt anything but contempt for him. As a bear, he at least had been self-sufficient. More than that, he had been able to protect the hound against other animals that might have threatened her.

But now he felt as awkward as he had at fourteen, when he had first been made king and realized that he had come to his father’s height without his father’s wisdom. He
had walked for many months with his shoulders rounded, trying to make himself less noticeable, less like his father, as small on the outside as he felt within.

But when his advisers, the lord chamberlain and the royal steward, told him that he looked like a criminal skulking through the palace, he had changed instantly. He had watched the wealthiest, vainest men at his court and copied the way they strutted.

He had felt no better about himself, but no one else had known.

Now he still did not know how to walk as a man. He could walk as a bear, but it was not at all the same.

In some way Richon felt as though the wild man had tricked him.

He had wanted to return to the past, yes. But not as the stupid boy who had pretended arrogance only because he had no other defense.

Two hundred years as a bear, and he had learned nothing that could be used in this other body?

Well, he was not here to make himself feel more like a man. He was here for the magic. And because he wanted to prove that he could be the king his father had meant for him to be, a man who thought of others before himself.

It had been a long time since Richon had allowed himself to think of his father. He had pushed unpleasant thoughts away, telling himself as a king that his father
had known nothing, and then as a bear that there was no purpose in raking through the past.

He knew he was not a man of books as his father had been.

Richon remembered that whenever he had gone to his father for advice, the answer had always to be found in a book.

When Richon came to complain about the plain porridge that was served to him at breakfast each morning, his father had held up a finger.

“A moment. Let me think a moment,” he said.

Richon waited. And waited.

Then his father leaped to his feet, and ran his fingers from shelf to shelf in the enormous royal library where he spent so much of his time. He climbed atop the ladder, mumbling to himself in words that young Richon could not understand. At last he reached the book he wanted. He opened it lovingly, then blew the dust from the pages.

“My father read this to me when I was—” He looked to Richon. “Yes, perhaps your age. Perhaps younger. I should have read it to you before now.”

Then he patted the place at his side on the sedan, and Richon slipped into it.

His father read:

“Once there was a man who ate the best foods at every meal. Sweets and pastries. The richest meats, of
every kind. Butters and oils for dipping, and to follow, unwatered wine.

“The man grew fatter each day, but what did he care? He was indulged at every meal and found pleasure in each moment that he ate. If a cook brought him a meal with vegetables or grains in it, he had her sent from the palace. Let her serve the peasants in the streets such fare, but not him.

“Soon the man was out of breath merely from reaching for his food and he demanded that his servants feed him. But they could not feed him fast enough.

“Then one of his servants, a wise old woman, spoke aloud the words that all had been thinking but had not dared to say. She had been his nurse since childhood, and his father’s nurse as well. Perhaps it was because she loved him more than the others or perhaps it was because she feared him less.

“‘There is no pleasure in wealth if poverty has never been felt,’ she said.

“And the man realized that she spoke the truth. He could not appreciate his rich food if he did not have the poor food, as well.”

Richon’s father held the book open and said, “Well? What is the lesson here?” For there was always a lesson in his books.

Richon creased his forehead and thought. “I must eat porridge so that I will enjoy rich food?” he asked.

His father nodded and closed the book.

Then, at last, he put an arm around Richon. “We love you. We want true happiness for you. That comes with self-discipline.”

“Yes, Father,” Richon had said. Because there was no other response.

Then King Seltar had let Richon go his way, which was most definitely out of the library.

Now Richon wished dearly that he had spent more time in his father’s library. Perhaps if he had he would have saved himself a great deal of sorrow.

But when he became king, the only thing he had seen the library useful for was to sell off its books for money to support his other habits, when the peasants had been taxed beyond their ability to pay more.

All those precious books of his father’s were dispersed to other places, perhaps to other kingdoms entirely.

And yet his father’s lessons were not the only ones he had ignored. He remembered his mother, Queen Nureen, beautiful on one side of her face but covered with a birth scar on the other. Yet she had never seemed self-conscious about it, had never turned her better side when speaking to others.

His mother had told him once, as she pointed to her scarred side, that it was her obligation to show to others her true face. And her true face had both sides.

“As all people have two sides,” she had said.
“Even you, my little one.”

Now Richon was startled into wondering if she had had some magical foresight that had shown her that he would become a bear. He had not understood what she meant then. He was only a boy who loved his parents, who loved to be loved and petted and pampered.

But the tantrums—yes, his mother had had to deal with those. That had been the other side to her sunny boy.

Richon could still be embarrassed at the thought of those. Whenever he did not get what he wanted, he had thrown himself to the floor and shouted out threats against anyone in sight: servants, nobles, his own mother and father. He would tell them what he would do to them when he was king.

But his mother would put a finger to her lips and shake her head. And when that did not work, she would turn her back to him. She would motion to all others in the room that they should do the same.

Servants, all.

And no matter what he said or asked for, they would not respond to him until his mother had motioned that they could turn to face him once more. Which only happened when he had finished his screaming, and then his crying, and had turned at last to whispered pleas of forgiveness.

Then his mother would turn around and point to each person whom he had hurt, and he would hang his head
and offer apology after apology, then wait humbly until each was accepted.

If only she had lived.

Perhaps she might have made something of him.

But she and his father had died in a carriage accident far from the palace. They had gone out to visit villages at the edges of the kingdom, a tour they took each year so that even those far villagers would feel a sense of belonging to the kingdom, and know that their king and queen thought of them.

He had been told of it by the lord chamberlain and the royal steward, and had never thought to ask them deeper questions about the incident—where his parents had been traveling, who their driver had been, if others had died. He had believed the two advisers his friends then and thought they would tell him all he needed to know.

Now he could see that they had never been his friends. They had told him whatever made him comfortable, even when he deserved no praise. They had never pointed out missteps or shortcomings, as Chala did, that he might better himself.

During the day, he and Chala marched on, sometimes with her in the lead, sometimes with him taking it. But not side by side, and the pace was always so fast that he did not have energy to spare for talking.

What would he talk about, anyway?

Did she want to know how he worried about his
weaknesses? Did she care about the trials that lay ahead for him as king?

No, she expected him to go forward and face whatever came to him with courage and strength—two things that he had always lacked.

Except as a bear.

A
FTER FIVE DAYS
following Richon’s fallible sense of direction through forests and fields and over streams, they had at last come in sight of the border of Elolira, the kingdom that would become Kendel, though its borders were not quite the same and there had been many parts of the journey where Chala saw no signs of human civilization at all.

Chala also noticed that animals seemed to give themselves freely to humans here. It unnerved her to see a rabbit pause in its tracks, then turn and look at her, waiting for a moment before it went on its way.

As for Richon, she watched him one morning as he killed his own breakfast. His hand trembled as he stared into the eyes of a partridge, which had gone utterly still as he approached. No hint of ruffled feathers, no attempt to escape.

Do it quickly
, thought Chala.

But it was not afraid.

It waited patiently for death at Richon’s hands.

He twisted its neck and there was a snapping sound.

Chala let out her breath.

“I hate this,” said Richon, nodding to the dead bird in his hand.

“You hate eating?” asked Chala, confused.

“No, I hate it that they die so readily. I do not deserve it.”

“You do not deserve to be alive?” asked Chala patiently. She was truly trying to follow his logic.

But he only rolled his eyes. “I don’t mean that, either. You know very well that I don’t.”

Did he think she was playing a game with him? “Then what do you mean?”

“I would rather chase them, I suppose.”

“Ah. The thrill of the hunt.” That Chala could understand. That was one thing they had in common. Humans and hounds both loved the hunt.

But then Richon confused her again, shaking his head vehemently. “No, I want no thrill from them. But when they give themselves to me, they remind me of my people. So vulnerable, expecting so much, and yet I know I must disappoint them.”

“Ah,” said Chala. He felt fear, but not as a hound experiences it, in the moment. He felt fear from the past rolling larger into the future.

“I used my own subjects so abominably,” Richon said.
“Taxes ever higher, so that I could live in greater style. Laws to make them honor me. Laws to suppress their magic, simply because I had none and did not wish to be shown inferior to the rest.”

“But they called for the wild man,” said Chala. “So they were not entirely helpless.”

“There is that, I suppose,” said Richon. He gave her a twisted half smile. “But the animals have no recourse at all.”

“You do not know that,” said Chala. “If you misused them, they might call for the wild man as well. Or simply stop giving themselves to you. Spread the word among the rest. That is likely why fewer and fewer animals give themselves in Prince George’s time. They do not trust the humans to care for the well-being of the whole forest and conserve for the future.”

“And that is my fault as well,” said Richon grimly. Then he set himself to pluck the bird. He had a hunting knife in the clothing the wild man had returned to him with his form, and he cut off the head. Finally he took the carcass to the stream and washed out the innards.

“I’d prefer to make a fire and cook it,” he said when he came back, then waited, as if expecting Chala to tell him no.

She shrugged. “If you wish.” She was in favor of anything that made Richon eat more eagerly.

Richon gathered wood, though he seemed to have no idea what wood would burn well and what would
not. Chala had watched humans build fires before and remembered which trees were too pungent and which would burn more cleanly, but he must never have paid attention.

Chala did not try to tell him what to do. After all, what better lesson was there than doing it wrong the first time?

She knew that from her own experience as a hound, when she had first attacked a snake and thought it dead. While she had been crouched over it, trying to decide which end to eat first, it had revived enough to rise up and bite her in the face.

She had stomped on it thoroughly afterward, decapitating it with the claws on her hind legs. Only then had she tried to eat it, though the taste was not what she might have wished for, and she could hardly open her mouth by then to chew. She had stayed away from the pack for a few days, until her face looked normal again in a stream, and refused to tell any of the other pups of her encounter with the snake.

She knew at least two other wild hounds that had done the same thing she had and learned the same lesson, for they had stayed away from the pack for nearly the same length of time and come back as quiet and sobered as she had been. None of them made the same mistake again, with a snake or any other kill. And it was her opinion that they became the best fighters in the pack. Later, when she became lead female, she made sure that she always
had them flanking her in a fight, for they were the most vicious and the most sure.

Richon would have to learn the same way.

Someone had been protecting him from seeing the consequences of his mistakes. Not a parent, Chala thought. For a parent wishes a child to live long and healthy and to make other children, to continue the line. Those who wish a child to die early because they did not care about the future of the pack might choose otherwise, however.

Chala would have to watch carefully when they returned to Richon’s people to discover who it was who had treated Richon in this way. There were advantages in having a hound at his side who looked like a woman. Chala could see that Richon needed her here.

Richon had gathered a pile of sticks and started to build his fire with the smaller ones. He had found a rock to strike against his knife. It took him some twenty minutes until he had a spark large enough to catch his sticks on fire. He had not thought to get anything that would catch fire better than a stick, like bark or cattail.

Even so, the fire smoldered, and he looked up at her, his face alight with triumph.

She smiled back at him.

He built the fire up too fast and nearly smothered it, but took some of the top branches off and blew on it to get it going once more. Then he added fuel more slowly the second time.

Good.

But Chala continued to hold back because he did not wait long enough for coals to form and instead put the partridge on a spit above the flames, so that the skin turned black and the partridge itself fell into the fire when the supporting beams to the spit were burned through.

Richon swore, then leaped into the fire to pull the partridge carcass out. His eyebrows singed, he pulled off one of the legs. It was still raw inside, but he shrugged and ate it anyway. It was only halfway through that he seemed to remember that Chala was there. Sheepishly he offered her the last of the feast.

She shook her head.

“You are angry with me?” asked Richon. “Because I was too eager to feed myself first?”

“No, of course not. Why should I be angry with that?” She thought of the first time the bear had taken her back to the cave and killed a rabbit for her, then refused to eat his share.

There were ways in which she realized she preferred the boy. He had every right to eat what he had caught himself. And no reason to think of her while eating. Another hound certainly would not.

“It was not…chivalrous,” said Richon.

“You need not use those rules with me. I am not a human woman,” said Chala coolly.

“But you are a human woman.” Richon nodded to her body. “Or at least the others will think you are. If I do not treat you well, they will take it as license to treat you
badly. And they will not think well of me, either.”

Chala considered this point. She did not wish to be badly treated, as she had been by the courtiers of King Helm, who had thought his daughter of no value to the kingdom.

So she nodded. “I will take the meat, then,” she said reluctantly.

Richon gave her a hunk of it, on a stick that he had crudely fashioned into a fork.

She ate it. It tasted about as she had expected. She grimaced.

“It wasn’t very good, was it?” said Richon, after he stamped down the fire and stared at the spit with the remains of the partridge on it.

“I do not like cooked meat in any case,” said Chala.

“No, of course you would not. But I thought it would taste like it tasted in the palace. I was looking forward to that. And it did not. Not a bit.”

“Which should make you more kind to your cook when next you meet her,” said Chala.

“The cook? Oh.” He wrinkled his brows. “I do not know if I would recognize her.”

“And why is that?”

“I sent my parents’ cook away. With a little coin,” he added, as if that made up for it. “I did not wish anyone to compare me to my father.”

“And the new cook?”

“The lord chamberlain chose her. She cooked well
enough, but I never spoke to her myself. I suppose I should have. But at that time I never thought of giving compliments to those I paid to work for me.”

“A hound does not compliment,” said Chala. “The task is done for the pack, not for an individual. So all benefit.”

“Yes. Well, if only my kingdom truly worked like a pack, I could make that excuse,” said Richon. He looked up at the sunlight leaking through the heavy cover of trees.

It was nearly midday already, and they had not begun to move any closer to Elolira.

Chala wondered now if that was part of the reason that Richon had wanted to stop and cook his meal. Had he wanted to delay his approach to his kingdom?

She stared at him and saw the tense line of his mouth, the set firmness of his jaw, and the way that he twitched all over, making the same movement of hand to knee over and over again.

If a hound did this, she would think it had gone mad, and she would have to kill it to protect the pack.

Richon turned an anguished eye to her. “I thought I was ready to return,” he said. “I thought I had learned so much. But now that I am back in this body I feel like I am starting over again.”

“You will do better a second time,” she told him. He was thinking too much of past and future and too little of the present.

“Will I?” asked Richon.

She did not like his mood. She went over to tease him out of it, as she would another hound. She touched him gently on the arm, meaning to call out a challenge to chase her.

Surely a race would return his spirits, and they had never tried it in human form. He would find she had not so much advantage now.

But her hand on his arm made him jump, as if she had touched him with a sword and cut him open.

He pulled back his arm and held it close to his side.

Then he looked at her.

She thought of her mate, so long dead. She did not think of him often now, though in an instant she could recall his scent and the sound of his growl, whether it was playful or angry.

When she had been with child, he had groomed her night after night. It had been pleasant, but she had felt nothing more than that.

He was part of the pack. He had done his duty to her. He had filled the role he should have filled.

And Richon?

He felt like her pack, but in a deeper way. She knew this was not the way any hound would feel. And yet she felt it anyway, part human, part hound.