The Princess and the Hound (4 page)

G
EORGE WAS SEVEN
years old when his mother died. He was not told when she was found missing from the castle. He was too young to know that the searchers had gone south to the great forest on command of the king, who feared she had been stolen by King Helm of Sarrey in some plot of vengeance following the war.

All day he kept busy playing with his “friends,” tiny creatures he had made, to whom he spoke in their own languages, quietly and privately so that no one could hear. And yet he must have a chance to practice, or the animals would laugh at him when he went back to the woods with his mother. When would he go back? He didn’t know.

His mother had been spending more time with the new woman in her court, Lady Fittle, whom George had disliked on first meeting. The other women who were
part of his mother’s court had always given her distance and time to spend on her own. But Lady Fittle was everywhere, at the queen’s side at every dinner, bringing breakfast to her bedchamber, helping her dress, meeting her for lunch in the gardens.

George remembered Lady Fittle’s staring pointedly at him when he raced by after a stray mouse Cook Elin had screeched at. George had cornered the mouse, tucked her into the pocket of his vest, and smiled broadly at his mother. He knew her name was Cheep and that she liked bread better than cheese. He had known he could not speak to his mother aloud of what he had done, but he had thought she would see the bulge and be proud.

Not only was she not proud, but her eyes were bright with terror that George could not understand. She was queen. How could she be afraid in her own castle?

Then George saw Lady Fittle, and he knew that he must not give the mouse any reason to show herself. He held himself very still.

“And this is Prince George?” said Lady Fittle in a tart tone.

“Yes. This is my son,” said his mother. In her voice was a trace of herself, but only that much.

“He is very…active, is he not?”

“He is a dear boy,” said George’s mother.

“So much like you there is hardly a breath of his
father in him. Do you not agree?” asked Lady Fittle.

“Oh, there is enough of each of us in him. Neither the king nor I would wish for more.”

“Come, let me touch his fine hair,” said Lady Fittle, reaching.

“No!” the queen stepped in her way.

Lady Fittle answered in a pinched voice. “So protective of him. If he is to be king one day, you must let him go a bit more, my queen.”

I never want to be king,
thought George.
Never.

“I only meant that you would get yourself dirty, Lady Fittle,” said George’s mother, apparently calm, but George could see how her lips twitched at the edges.

“Ah. Well, then, I must thank you for your concern, must I not?” asked Lady Fittle with false gratitude and a slight inclination of the head.

George thought the encounter was over and waited for Lady Fittle to leave.

But Lady Fittle had one more comment, as much a threat as any George had ever heard. “Another time, my prince,” she said, then nodded and went on her way.

George breathed deeply and looked to his mother to offer him comfort, but she sighed and moved a step away without another word.

“Mother.” George called her back.

“Not now, George,” she said.

“I only wanted to know—what is that lady’s name?” said George.

His mother told him as she walked away. “Lady Fittle of the south.”

George had to hear the rest of it later, from the gossip that was passed in the kitchens and by the hearth fire among the guards. Lady Fittle was from the southernmost reaches of the kingdom, and she had been sent as a spy. But no one said a spy for whom. Sarrey? The war was over now.

Nonetheless George was careful to watch his mother as often as he could, to make sure that Lady Fittle did not poison her or stab her in the heart with a dagger, as he had heard in stories that spies sometimes did.

Lady Fittle never so much as grazed his mother’s arm. The queen was very careful about that, George noticed. Though they were often together, the queen held herself apart. George was puzzled. If Lady Fittle was a dangerous woman, then why would his mother allow her in the castle at all?

George began to think that it was his father’s fault, in part because the king seemed utterly oblivious of Lady Fittle’s role in his mother’s discomfort. Could the king not see the way the queen hated to be with Lady Fittle? Could he not see that she needed to be alone? And why did he not allow her time anymore to visit the stables, to be with the animals…and her son?

The very next morning George arrived in his mother’s bedchamber to save her. He had decided to throw a fit and demand that she go with him to the stables again.
Then they could go off together and laugh at how clever he had been to get her free to spend time with the horses.

But it did not work that way.

The king was in the bedchamber already, as was Lady Fittle. They were discussing the case of a man in the northern part of the country whose eyes had been burned out because he had been judged to have the power of transforming himself into an eagle.

“But why?” asked George, his curiosity overcoming his distaste for Lady Fittle.

“Because no man should have an advantage like that over another. And because it is unclean for a man to become what he is not,” said Lady Fittle. And then she said, beckoning with both hands, “Come here, dear boy.”

The king pushed George forward to Lady Fittle.

His mother stepped between them, nearly colliding with Lady Fittle as she did so. “George, this is no place for a little boy,” she said roughly.

George struggled not to let his eyes fill with tears. His mother had never spoken to him so before.

He stared at her once, to give her a chance to take back what she had said or to explain it. But she only pointed to the door.

George ran out, all the way down the stairs, past the kennels, and into the stables. He wrapped his arms around Honey, who asked after the queen, but George
would say nothing. He would not speak a word of the horse’s language. That belonged to his mother, and he wanted nothing to do with her then.

That night, still hiding in the stables, George heard two of the king’s messengers speaking as they brushed down their horses and readied them for the night.

“There are some who are known to have a gift of touching those with the animal magic, of knowing with that touch if they have it or not,” said one man. “They say Lady Fittle is one of them, that she has been sent to make sure the king’s court is free of such evil. Of course the king welcomed her. What else could he do? He cannot allow anyone to see that he is easy on the magic.”

The other man shivered. “Well, I hate the sight of her. And I’m no lover of the animal magic myself.”

They went by, and George was left to puzzle out their meanings. How much longer could his mother keep herself from Lady Fittle’s touch? How much longer until the queen was known to have animal magic—and her son as well?

George went numb at the thought. It was too terrible to dwell on, so he pressed it out of his mind. He kept away from both his mother and Lady Fittle, and he kept away from all animals as well. He played with his hand-made creatures and kept to himself until that night, when the king entered without the customary knock, his face utterly changed.

Stricken. Panicked. Unsure.

Whose face was this? Not the king George had always known before. Another time it might have frightened him. But at the moment George was too afraid of his own guilt in speaking to animal friends, even pretend ones, to feel anything but fear.

The king must never know. His mother would never forgive George.

So as quickly as he could, George hid his creatures behind his back, the tiny bear made of a fluffy bit of dark lamb’s wool, the fish made of a polished black rock, the robin made of maple wood, and the vole made of an old sock.

His father nodded to him, then held out his hands.

George was unsure for a moment what that meant. Was he to clasp his father’s hand? He saw that his father’s eyes were red. Was he ill? That was when George began to think of death, but not of his mother’s. Never his mother’s.

“We get along well enough, do we not, you and I?” asked the king.

George sat gingerly on his father’s lap and craned his head away from him. His smell was so strongly…human.

“I was once a boy, and you will be a man one day. The king, as I am.” The king went on.

George shrugged.

The king took in a breath, then seemed to choke on it. George did not understand until later that this
was his way of weeping.

“I have come—I have come to tell you—”

George waited.

At last the king’s mouth stopped opening and closing and got the words out. They were strange and formal. “The queen is dead.” It sounded as though he had practiced the words, as if he were saying them before some crowd of citizens, a solemn proclamation to the kingdom of Kendel.

It was a long moment until George recalled that the queen was also his mother. Even then he could hardly take it in.

He stared at his father, hoping that this must be some joke, though his father never joked, or some misunderstanding, though father always spoke too clearly to be misunderstood.

“She died in the forest where she had gone to…meditate. Attacked by a bear,” said the king, each word added reluctantly, as if he wanted to keep the details to himself.

“She had a fever. She was ill.” He continued. “I do not know why the queen would go so far in such a state. And yet she went. Not one of her women stopped her.”

She wasn’t the queen,
thought George.
She was my mother. Mine. I know things of her that you will never know,
he wanted to say.

“You will be a brave boy, won’t you?” asked the king. “And come stand with me while I light her fire?”
He smiled a false smile.

And George could think only of his mother’s father, who had also been burned, for his animal magic. “Not burning,” he said.

But the king seemed to think he was simply refusing the reality of his mother’s death. “It is a hard truth,” he said. “But she is gone.” He thought for a moment, then added, “She will be cleaned for the burning. You may see her then if you wish.”

If that was the only way he would see his mother again, George realized he could not refuse it. So he nodded, and said, “Yes, Father.” That, and no more.

The king stood, but he remained a moment longer, his hands twisting in each other.

If George had said something then, the right thing, perhaps things might have been different between them ever afterward. But he only wanted his father to be gone, so that he could grieve in his own way. After all, a boy could not cry in front of his king. Even if the man was also his father.

A
T THE LIGHTING
ceremony, George felt a great resentment that he had to share this most private moment with all of the kingdom. That he had to hold his head steady and keep his eyes dry and speak clearly when it was his chance to offer the leaf of his mother’s favorite tree.

In the end George chose the maple leaf simply because the true gift for his mother’s pyre that he had tucked into his sleeve, unbeknownst to anyone, was the maple wood robin from his own collection. He liked to think that his mother was flying above the ruined body that was atop the wood, that would soon be lit and burned to ashes.

It was easier too if he looked up as much as he could, and not down, at what was left of the hands, the hair, the gentleness, and all of her that he had known.

King Davit came and held his hand as he put the leaf
up on the pyre. Then the king himself lit the fire with a word of benediction, standing back afterward and watching it burn down. For hours and hours he stood. And so George too had to stand, even when the king asked if he would not rather go in with the others when it began to rain lightly or when it grew dark.

How could George go inside if the king remained?

How could George allow the king to prove that he had loved her more than George had?

Later, George went back to his chamber, stumbling in the new light of dawn, alone. A brave servant woman named Shay, who had lost all four of her sons in the war, came in eventually and took pity on him.

“Now, come along. Time for you to rest,” Shay said in a thick accent from the south. But when she touched George’s arm, she jerked back.

“Great animals above,” she whispered, then reached for his forehead. “Like a pyre, it is.”

George could feel how cold her hands were.

Of course. He was sick.

That must be why everything was wrong.

He clutched his remaining animals, but the servant woman tried to pull them away from him and push him into his bed.

He didn’t want bed. He wanted his mother.

His mother.

A flash of memory.

“She had a fever.” His father’s voice. His mother had
gone into the forest alone and had been attacked by a bear.

Why hadn’t she been able to speak to it? Because she had a fever?

But George soon stopped thinking at all logically. He was sure that the only thing that could possibly make him feel better was the cool quiet of the forest, the sound of animal voices, real animal voices, in his ears, and the smell of animals all around the ground. In the dirt, in the water, in the air above.

He needed animals.

“I must—” he said, struggling against Shay.

At last she gave up the fight, telling George that she was going to fetch the physician.

George knew the physician would make him drink something strong and foul tasting, something that would make him sleep. It would not help him at all. George had to get to the little woods outside the castle, where his mother had taken him.

He waited until Shay was out of sight, then ran headlong down the stairs.

Who followed him, if anyone did, George did not know. He did not care.

The woods, the woods,
was all he thought.

The fever grew worse with every passing moment.

As he ran past the moat, out onto the cleared field that lay before the wood, George fought flashes of burning heat combined with shudders of chill. His throat hurt. His chest ached. His head whirled, and he could hardly think.

His mother must have felt the same. Not ill as his father thought. But ill with the magic of animals calling to him.

Even when George thought of his mother’s death, of the bear, of the dangers of the woods alone, he could not stop. Fear was no antidote to this need. It pressed him and pressed him, and there was no relief from it until he could at last smell the sharp scent of the pines, could feel the tempting cool shadows, could hear the crackle of branches beneath his feet.

Then the fever abated, and George breathed deeply. How free he felt here, not the king’s son at all. Only George.

He sat with his arms wrapped around his knees and his eyes wide open. He let the peace and quiet of the woods sink into him. This was how he had always felt with his mother, a contentment that seemed to run as deep as his bones and his blood.

His mother. Who was dead.

George thought of Lady Fittle. She had suspected the truth about the queen’s animal magic, and the prince’s. She was the reason his mother had not taken him to the woods for so long, why she had not dared go herself. Until the fever was terrible upon her, and there was no choice.

She had died for her magic. Or died trying to deny her magic. Which was it?

George had felt only the magic’s wonder before.
Now he realized that there was a danger in the magic itself. The fever was the demand of the magic that it be used. It could not be locked away, not completely. Even his mother’s father had not been able to do that, however much he had tried.

George could run away from the castle, but he could not run away from his magic.

The magic that had seemed so wonderful when he had first discovered it was different now. It had killed his mother. The magic, and the animals she had loved. The anger so consumed George that he did not notice the passing of the smaller beasts or their signals of fear. All he noticed was the sudden sound at his left.

He turned to see running toward him a boar with tusks so long they might have been made into curved swords.

What could he do? He had come without a weapon, without anything at all to protect himself. Frozen in terror, George just stared.

For a moment he was sure that he would die as his mother had. The beast lumbered headlong toward George.

No,
he thought. And then he shouted it. “No!” Somehow, the word came out in the language of the boar.

Nonetheless the boar kept coming.

“No! I command you!” George tried again, adding to what his mother had taught him by guesses of his
own, gathered from the boar’s heaves and snorts.

This time it seemed to have some effect, for in the end the boar rushed by him, the left tusk so close it ripped his leggings. A line of blood welled out and dripped to the forest floor.

George was not dead.

Not yet.

He breathed again, a quick, shallow, grateful breath.

The boar turned and came back to George, but slowly this time. It snorted around George in a circle, once, twice. Then it tested its tusks once more against his leg, pressing, digging.

“Hello.” George tried more calmly, again in the language of the boar. It was a cross between a snuffle and a grunt.

Now the boar stared, eyes narrowed in confusion, to hear its own language in the mouth of this human creature.

“It is hot.” George babbled anxiously. “Too hot to kill. Better to find cool water or a stream.”

Would the boar listen to him? His mother had taught him that being able to speak to animals did not mean they would obey.

But this boar snuffled and seemed inquisitive rather than angry. Perhaps it was not really hungry. Or perhaps it was a young boar and, like George himself, curious about the world.

Trying to control his trembling, George tried again.
“I know stream. I show you.”

“You…who are?” demanded the boar.

“One to help,” said George.

“Don’t need your help, I don’t,” said the boar.

But it turned away. And sauntered away from George, in the direction of the stream.

George would not have followed, would have been glad to sit against an old tree trunk and rest, but then he saw that the ridge the boar had gone toward was very close to his favorite rabbit hole. He told himself the rabbits would surely smell the boar and know to stay hidden.

But still he got up and tried to lead the boar away from the hole. It was no use. The boar was stubborn and, now that it had been set on a new course, persistent. It knew the fastest way to the stream, and George could think of no way to divert it.

He tried to call out to the rabbits in their language, but rabbit words were very hard to shout. Rabbits nibbled and sniffed and twitched their noses. Their language was a quiet one.

George saw the small gray rabbit born with a short hind leg, the one George had played with more than any of the others the last time he had come to the forest with his mother.

Perhaps the rabbit could not move fast enough or was distracted by the smell of some sweet flower. All George saw was the brief change in direction by the
boar, a widening of its nostrils as it took up pursuit. And then the lame gray rabbit was in the boar’s mouth, never to be seen again.

George now let out the tears that he had held in at his mother’s funeral pyre, in the shadow of his father’s silence. He sobbed, fell to the ground, and rolled in the dirt in paroxysms of grief.

Why could he not save those he loved? Why was he so powerless? He might have magic, but it was of no use.

The boar was long gone when George was worn out by his weeping. He wiped at his face with dirty hands, then brushed his hands on his filthy tunic. He tried to be brave again.

He went to the stream to quench his fiery thirst and then to cool his feet. And perhaps simply to forget himself.

Though the boar was long gone, the streambed showed signs of its clumsy passing, and the water was a little dark from raised mud. George wanted his mother back with a rage as loud as the boar’s. He wanted the magic’s burden gone as well. He did not know how she had survived it, how she had found happiness.

He was by turns angry with her and desperate for her to come back. Guilty for not having been with her to save her from the bear and bitter that she had not loved him enough to take him with her.

Some time later he looked up, trying to tell how long
he had been gone from the castle. The trees were so thick that he could see only patches of sky here and there. He squinted and tried to find the sun. Well, did it matter? Here in the forest there seemed no time. It was only in the castle that people worried about such things, and he was glad, very glad, to be away from the castle right now.

He dozed off, curled under a huge fallen oak, and when he woke, he was quiet enough that he could hear the tiny movements of the grubs and beetles. Their language was not one to be spoken aloud. His mother had taught him to read it, however, in the paths their bodies left across the crumbling wood. They spoke to one another, showed where the best places for digging were, and warned against the open places, where birds might come and peck them out.

In his concentration, he did not notice the shadow of the beast moving toward him or hear the low, rumbling growl that came with it.

It was suddenly at his side, looming over him, its smell blotting out all else. An enormous black bear, one that surely did not belong in a small woods so close to human villages as this one. It stared at George as if waiting for him to speak. As if it had been called.

George unwrapped his arms from around his legs and pulled his head away from the ball he had made of himself. Then he looked up into the bear’s face, towering above him as it stood on its hind legs. A great black
bear with a face that seemed very old and very patient.

George’s voice was hoarse, but he forced out a few words in the language of the bears. He had learned them from his mother, though she had not explained why, when it was unlikely they would ever meet a bear here in these woods.

“Hungry? Honey?” George sputtered. But his mother had taught him more than that. Something about hope and a promise. It made no sense.

The bear’s mouth opened, then closed. A paw lifted, swiped to one side, then the other.

George realized the bear was trying to speak to him. But not in the language of the bears.

Why did it not speak in the language of the bears? What was it trying to say?

The bear made the same motion a second time, and George realized it was pointing to him and then to itself. Insistently.

The bear was so pitiful. So towering and huge…and so helpless.

He put his hand out to the bear.

The bear leaned forward eagerly.

With a shock, George smelled the bear’s foul stench. He felt the pulse of blood under his fingertips. He felt matted fur and life and—more.

His head whirled, and he felt as though something inside himself, something vital and dangerous, were being pulled out. He pushed it back, gasping.

When he at last recovered himself, sweat drenched and exhausted, he turned back to the bear. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, in his own human tongue.

The bear made the gesture again, from George to itself. But jerkily, as if it had given up already.

George shook his head. He would not look into that part of himself again. He did not dare.

Slowly the bear fell onto four paws and lumbered away, not looking back.

He had failed something here, George thought. His mother had spoken of a bear and a promise. But what had she wanted George to do?

No. He had done the right thing. He had protected himself.

It was dark by the time George made his way out of the forest.

But the fever was gone now. He wanted only to be away from the bear and the feeling of wrongness that dogged him. He would return to the castle and be the prince his father asked him to be. He would not fail, for he knew how to be silent, never to speak of his mother or the magic they had shared, and to keep himself from animals. To be safe from whatever it was the bear had touched inside him.