The Princess and the Bear - Mette Ivie Harrison [1]
He nodded to the cat man and told himself that soon the wild cat would learn to speak as humans did. Then the student went on his way, proud of his success with such great and powerful magic.
But the cat man was not happy. He could not remain in the forest, for a man’s hands were too soft for the kill and a man’s teeth could not tear and rend flesh. He could not speak the language of the wild cats, for he no longer had the right shape to his tongue, teeth, and mouth. He tried to make the same sounds, but they came out tuneless and wrong.
He had no choice but to do as the student had bid him and leave the forest where he had felt himself the most magnificent of all animals. The journey through the forest was painful and slow, for the student had left him no boots, and his tender man’s feet were badly blistered in a few hours’ time. His uncovered legs stung from too much sun and scrapes from the tree branches that seemed to grab at him.
At last the cat man arrived at an inn in the nearest town. Here, once he showed his coins, he was cared for, despite his lack of speech. He was given clothing and as much food and drink as he wished. Also a warm bed, soft blankets, and music far more beautiful than he had ever produced himself.
For a time he stopped longing for the forest and the life that had been his. He simply enjoyed each moment, for that is the way that a cat is, and every animal. Men might think of the future or the past, but for animals there is only this moment, and then the next one.
But it was not long before the few coins that the student of magic had given the cat man were gone. Evicted from the inn, he was thrown into the streets of the town and began to live as a beggar and a thief. He attacked passersby without compunction, combining a man’s clever hands with a cat’s vicious speed, and soon he was proud of having killed as many in the town as in the forest.
So it was that the student, returning to the town with his masters in his carriage, showed the proof of his talents, but not in the way he had expected.
The cat man leaped at the carriage with all aboard, growling and clawing and gnashing his teeth. The young man trembled, realizing he had transformed the wild cat into a man without respect for what he had been or understanding of what he would become.
He tried to pretend that he knew nothing of the creature, but the tawny hair and striped face gave the cat man’s identity away. The masters were horrified at what the student had done and told him they would not teach him another day.
Angry, the young man turned on the fleeing cat man and caught his legs with magic. They changed back into their animal form, though he left the rest of the cat man as he was.
“What has become of you? How can you have done this with the great gift that I offered you?” he complained.
The cat man spat and bit and scratched, but could not answer in any language.
The student stared at the cat man and saw in him the cause of his failure.
He lifted his hands and gathered his power, intending to reverse his magic. But the student had another idea for revenge. He used his magic to make the cat man look wholely human once more. Then he bound the cat man with ropes and took him home to be his servant. For many years they lived together, until, one day, the man was found dead in his own chambers.
The ropes he had used to keep his servant tethered to him had been broken, and of the servant himself there was no sign. But the man had been old, and there was no reason to suspect that there was anything to fear in the poor servant.
If some saw the strange servant roaming the forests and beyond, they said nothing of it. Nor did they connect the change in the forest itself, or in the other animals that lived within it, to the servant who had once been a cat man.
CHAPTER ONE
The Hound
THE SMELL OF the forest hit her first. Pine and moss and sweat-touched fur.
It was right again.
And so was she.
Her paws were on the ground. She