The Princess and the Snowbird, Page 3

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Jens

  JENS WAS SO distracted by thoughts of a girl who had also been a wolf and a felfrass that he did not notice the spring snow fall until he stumbled and fell forward onto his hands and face. He looked around to find the others in the hunting party, but they were nowhere to be seen. He had gotten lost, which was not like him at all. He hated to put himself into a situation where others might laugh at him or have any additional reasons to single him out. He usually did all that he could to make himself unnoticed. How they would mock him when he got back to the village! It was almost enough to make him think about not returning.

  But what would he do here? He could not survive alone.

  He looked around to check whether there was anything familiar, and that was when he glimpsed it. He had never seen anything like it before. It was magnificent and terrifying, both at once, and he walked slowly toward it.

  Standing in the muddy snow of spring, the bird spread out its glistening wings—clean and pure and white and shining with hints of silver, spread out as wide as three men together. A snowbird, Jens thought. For he almost thought that it was made of snow, perfectly carved.

  The snowbird folded its wings and stared at Jens with black, shiny eyes. As Jens approached, he could see its heart beating rapidly in its breast. Its head alone was bigger than any man Jens had ever seen. He caught his breath at the beauty and sheer size of the snowbird, then put out a hand to steady himself, touching the bird heavily, though it did not flinch.

  Was it wounded? He was surprised that it did not fly away from him.

  Jens could see the snowbird swallow and its eyes blink. He touched its huge beak, as big as his own leg, and then dared to step to the side and run a finger along its wing.

  The snowbird shivered at his touch, so he pulled away. But he could not stop staring. Nor could the snowbird.

  “What do you need?” Jens asked. “How can I help you?”

  The bird did not startle at his voice but kept to its feet steadily. In its presence, Jens felt the whole world seem different, as if his life in the village, with all its bitterness, was swept away clean. Dazed, he felt he could stay here forever and never think of any need but that of being next to the snowbird. He felt safe and secure, at home as he had never felt anywhere else.

  Suddenly the snowbird leaped into the air. Jens put up a hand to call it back, but was stopped at the realization of what the snowbird had left behind. Where there had been just the first hint of spring was now the green glory of summer. Wherever the snowbird had touched the forest floor, flowers bloomed; trees unfurled their leaves so that they were clothed in green; there were butterflies flying around him in bright colors of yellow and blue, bees humming around a beehive that smelled of sweet honey.

  Jens stumbled forward, past dark, until he heard at last the voices of the hunting party. He was sure that they mocked him, but he did not hear any of the words. They could not hurt him. Though he had missed his chance this year to prove himself a man in the hunt, he would not have traded meeting the wolf-girl or the snowbird for anything. But he had to be careful to give no hint of what he had seen, for he knew that if they believed him, all of them would be quick to hunt the snowbird for the value of its feathers. As for the wolf-girl—they would search for her until they found her and killed her, for she must have the forbidden aur-magic to transform herself into an animal.

  It was not until he had reached the outskirts of the village that Jens realized a huge white and silver feather had been tucked behind his neck. He pulled it out, and felt a sudden constriction in his throat, as though he had swallowed a fish whole.

  He put the feather to his face and let it fall gently across his nose. Then he tucked it in the pouch at his side, to be looked at only in private, to remind him of a girl and a magic that could bring summer.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Liva

  AFTER HER ENCOUNTER with the humans, Liva kept closer to home. She had not fully believed that humans were dangerous before, but now she did. And when he returned, her father seemed to feel the same fear, for he did not leave them for nearly four seasons. Liva told herself that perhaps he was finished leaving them now, that he had grown too old to save undeserving humans.

  Though the bear complained about his age, and the cold, and Liva’s vicious competitive streak, he raced with her in bear form and played hide-and-seek in the vastness of the forest, which took both time and a good nose.

  Then, when he was tired, he played language games with her that forced her to use the languages of all the animals she knew. If it was close to bedtime, he would tell her stories of his childhood beginning with “Once, when the magic was younger…”

  Liva paid rapt attention to every detail, though she was not always sure her father’s stories were absolutely true. When he claimed that he had put a bean in his ear and let it grow for two years, and it had to be pulled out by a dozen master woodsmen, all in a row, who fell over onto their backs when at last the great bean tree was pulled free of its roots in his bowels, her mother made dubious sounds.

  Some of his stories seemed too young for her, but she listened anyway. Some were meant to teach her lessons. When she bragged about how fast she could run, he told the story of the fish who learned to dance skimming on top of the water and boasted to the others of his kind until he was scooped into a net and carried away to feed a young farmer and his wife.

  “I don’t dance,” said Liva.

  “Of course not,” said her father.

  And he told her the next day the story of a little girl who would not go to bed at night when her mother called for her, and so became lost in the woods and was sadly devoured by a monster of the darkness.

  “I am not a little girl, Father,” Liva growled at him. “And I know that there are no monsters.”

  “Just because you have not met any does not mean they do not exist,” he replied with a wry bear smile. “Who knows what you might discover when you leave this forest and make a life for yourself away from your mother and me.”

  It was difficult for Liva to think about leaving her parents and the forest. She did not want to leave, and yet she did not want to be a child in their eyes forever.

  “I think I have aur-magic enough to go wherever I please,” said Liva with a touch of bravado.

  Her mother made a low sound of disapproval, and her father’s expression turned grim. He father looked at Liva sternly, and shook a paw at her. “You underestimate the power of humans. You are only one, and they are many, with or without the aur-magic.”

  Liva thought of the hunting party of humans she had met before. She had not told her parents about them because she thought they would overreact and perhaps forbid her to return to that part of the forest. “But they have no claws, no fur. They cannot run on four legs. They do not even know how to smell their way through the world.”

  “Even so,” said her father. “They are more fierce than a bear and more bloodthirsty than a mountain cat. Keep away from them if you can, Liva. Promise me that.”

  “I will, Father,” said Liva. And she meant it at the time. She was not even interested in humans, except perhaps for that one. And what chance was there that she would ever meet him again?

  Then her father was tired and had to rest. After his nap, his stomach rumbled, but he made no move to find food for himself. So Liva dug with her claws to bring him his roots from the river, which was south of the cave, that evening, and the next and the next. She used her teeth to make sure that the beetles were cleaned out from his fur each morning, before they began to bore into his skin. In the following months, as she grew to near full bear height, he began to depend upon her more and more for help, and Liva began to depend upon her own knowledge of the world. Her father might once have known more of magic than she would ever learn, but that was all done now, and he belonged at home in their safe cave in the forest.

  Then came the morning in deep winter when Liva woke in bear form to find the hound at the ent
rance to the cave, staring into the morning light. The bear was nowhere to be seen.

  “Is he gone to the river?” asked Liva, surprised because it had been weeks since he had gone that far from the cave. He must have been feeling very well indeed.

  “No,” said her mother.

  “Then where?”

  Her mother did not answer.

  Liva felt a sick twist in her stomach, and her throat was so dry that her words cracked. “He will be back soon,” she said, her voice as plaintive as it had been when she was very young. “Won’t he?”

  Her mother turned around, and Liva could see the truth in her red-rimmed hound’s eyes.

  No, it could not be. Liva began to rock back and forth, keening.

  Her mother leaned over and whispered, “It is well.”

  But it was not well!

  “He is old,” said Liva. “It is dangerous. There are humans.” Was that not what her father had told her? To stay away from humans and be safe?

  But the hound said only, “Whatever the dangers are, they are his to face. This is his choice. He has ignored the calls of those in need for many months.”

  “But I do not want him to go. I need him,” said Liva, though she would never have admitted such a thing if he had remained behind.

  Her mother limped closer to Liva, but Liva threw herself back against the rock walls of the cave, heedless of the bruises that rose up under her bear hide. Then she ran out past her mother, into the forest and the bitter wind that took away all scent of her father’s trail.

  She looked toward the stream by the cave for marks in the ground. Downstream or up? She looked for broken branches from trees that her father had passed under lately. There—was that one? Or was that one there? She could not see with the wind and the tears in her eyes. She began to howl.

  Then she took a breath and forced herself to hold it until her chest burned. When she let it out, she felt her claws, one at a time, each gust of wind as it hit her square in the chest, each tear as it froze on her fur. She had to think. She had to give up being a child. Her father needed her. She was old enough now. She had to be.

  She turned to the right. The bear must have gone south. There was nothing to the north, no humans, no danger. She began to run, moving as quickly as possible. Though her father had left hours before, he could not travel as swiftly as she could. She held out hope that she might yet catch up to him.

  She ran into the darkest part of the forest, heading due south toward the human village she had never been to. When the trees thinned, she began to walk along the river that led out of the mountains, into a blinding snow. Liva used her magic to quest out for any hint of her father. It was difficult to track his aur-magic, since he had no more than any other animal, but his pattern was as familiar to her as the smell of her mother.

  There it was! A shape that glowed like a fluorescent moss, with a core of pain and exhaustion surrounded by flickers of intense determination. She could tell that he was south of her, by the river, traveling fast. He must be pushing himself very hard, beyond his own strength, and he did not stop.

  The next moment she lost him in the storm. But she did not turn back. She wrapped herself in the warmth of her magic, pulling it around her shoulders, hips, and knees like a blanket of wool. For an hour or two, it worked. She could hear the river and smell it, and she picked her way over the shoreline, sometimes rock, sometimes sand.

  When she became so cold that her legs went numb, she used her magic to bring sensation back to them. Her paws, too, needed magic to keep warm and moving. Liva was not stinting in her use of it. She spread it all over, until the ground around her was wet and muddy with bits of plant shoots showing above the ground, though nearby it was still covered in snow.

  When the storm broke, she settled in for the night next to a boulder, and let herself drift to sleep. She woke only when she was shivering, and then just long enough to pour more magic around herself.

  In the morning she woke comfortable and very warm.

  But there was a snuffling sound close by.

  Dozens of animals were snuggled in around her: dormice, a mink, a mole, three ferrets, a handful of shrews, several badgers, a lynx, a fawn, a newborn hare—still blind—several foxes, twin wolves, and a felfrass, among others.

  She could feel how the animals pressed against her, not only with their bodies, but with their magic, trying to match her brightness with their own. They had come to her, despite her bear’s shape, drawn by the wild aur-magic that pooled around her, attracted as though to water in a dry spell.

  The more magic she pressed at them, urging them to retreat, the more they crowded her. They jostled one another for position closest to her, and one of the dormice was killed by a ferret, teeth against teeth.

  Liva could do nothing to stop them from following her, short of killing them.

  She sighed, then let them come to her, making as much space for them as she could by the boulder, where her magic had melted snow and wakened grass and flowers underneath. The plants would die when she left, frozen by the winter’s return.

  Liva did not know what to do. When she reached her father, perhaps he would know how to undo what she had done with the aur-magic, how to detach these animals and send them back where they belonged. She felt humbled now, not as sure of herself as she had been.

  After several efforts, Liva found her feet and began walking again along the river as it tumbled down small hills, making waterfalls and rapids of white water that she stopped to stare at, in awe of the beauty of a part of the forest she had never seen before.

  As she moved south, the storm grew less fierce, but she was joined by more animals. She had to cross over the river at a narrowing, to skirt by the crumbling shelf on the other side. She took the form of an elk and stepped into the water.

  The animals jumped in with her, all of them.

  Liva gasped as the cold swallowed her up to her knees. The river water felt like liquid snow. Even her aur-magic could not protect her from the bite.

  A shrew was swept away beside her, and then a badger. They simply stopped fighting the current and went floating downstream. Liva could feel the smallest hint of their magic as they bobbed furiously on the surface, and then they were gone.

  Disgusted, she threw herself out of the river as soon as she could do so without magic, in the form of a pika, a creature like a mouse.

  Lying facedown on the bank, she stirred to the sound of human voices.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Jens

  “WHAT IN THE name of life and death are these doing here?” shouted Torus, waving his arm at a strange grouping of animals, all in a circle at the edge of the river.

  Jens stared at the animals and could think of no explanation. He had never seen such a group all together.

  Were the flesh eaters and the plant eaters at peace? Perhaps the snowstorm had made them all confused? But their eyes were wide and bright.

  “I don’t care why they’re here. Think of it as a gift.

  We’ll kill them and take their skins back. Then we’ll be men,” said Harald, stroking his scraggly, red beard. He was two years younger than Jens, only fourteen, but he liked to pretend he was older.

  “What if it’s a trap?” asked Jens. “To be safe, we should leave these here and go after others.”

  “Safe? We’ve been hunting for four days in this storm, with not a sight nor sound of animals. Now it’s clear and we have a chance. If we don’t bring something back now, we’ll all go hungry,” said Torus. This year the winter had been long and harsh, and more than half of the animals in the village had already been slaughtered. The land had grown less and less productive in recent years, and there were no stores of grain left in the village. If the hunters of the village did not find food in the forest, the village would be doomed.

  “There’s something wrong with these animals. They are not acting as they should,” said Jens.

  “When they’re dead, they will taste just like any other animals,” s
aid Harald.

  “And so many at once,” said Torus. “Think how many days we will be able to eat. And what a celebration the village will throw for us!”

  “I am not sure,” said Jens. He was the oldest of them all and had been on the most hunts. But he was not surprised that they did not listen to him.

  “What do you know?” Torus taunted Jens, for his lack of the tehr-magic was no secret. “The animals feel fine to me.”

  “No,” Jens muttered distractedly. He was staring intently at the animals. He had no magic, but he felt something that was different. At the center of all the animals Jens could see a small creature almost like a mouse. No, it was a pika, black and white with shining eyes that turned and stared back at Jens as if pleading for its life.

  I can’t speak to you, Jens thought. I can’t hear you, either. I’m useless to help you.

  But then the pika disappeared in the flurrying snow around the river. The other animals moved sluggishly, as if to follow, but they did not move quickly enough.

  “Leave them be!” Jens tried one more time.

  But Harald cried out, “Kill! Hunt! Kill! The animals are ours.”

  The other boys whooped in excitement. “Ours! Ours!”

  “If we die, we die as men. We die with honor!” shouted Torus, who was always trying to prove that he was no coward. In his effort to make sure of it, he sometimes brought danger to those around him.

  Torus took out his sword and began to bellow.

  The others took out their weapons—daggers and knives—for they did not have the coin that Torus’s family did. Jens had only a slingshot. His father had refused to give Jens a knife after what had happened to his stone blade years ago.

  The others began to shout to frighten the animals.

  “I will cut you to pieces!”

  “You can’t run from me!”

  “Dead! You will be dead!”

  They charged forward.