The Princess and the Bear - Mette Ivie Harrison [27]
He stepped to the opening in the tree and bent down to enter, but the tree rose up to accommodate his height. The whole thing moved, as if it were alive.
The bear swallowed hard and concentrated on the scrapes and cuts on his body. It took away a bit of the fear of seeing the wild man again.
This was what he had come for, but it was like becoming the boy king again, with so little experience, too much pride, and no magic at all.
Then he heard movement behind him and turned to see—
The hound.
She was covered in snow and blood and dirt, hardly recognizable from the graceful creature she had once been.
She stared at him, as if waiting to see if he would attack her again.
But it was too late now. She was here. There was no protecting her from the magic of the wild man or anything else.
He thought for a moment about what the journey might have been like if they had been together, helping each other, comforting each other. It was a painful thought, and he pushed it away.
The hound barked once roughly, and the bear could hear her pain in it.
He opened his mouth and let out a sound in return, one that expressed his grief and his sudden, overwhelming happiness at seeing her alive.
He had always tried not to speak in front of the hound before, because it was embarrassing to him to make sounds that had no meaning. Now his pride was stripped away.
He stared at her wounds. He could still see the streaks of red where he had cut into her belly, a wound that might have been healed by now if she had not come after him.
He could see the way she limped on her left hind leg. He could tell by the way she shifted her weight that there were bruises beneath her dark skin.
All his fault.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Hound
THE HOUND SAW the wild man standing behind the bear and gaped.
He was wild indeed, with hair down to his chest in front, dark in spots but gray in others, and a grizzled beard. He wore nothing at all, as a wolf would, but somehow he wore it with a human confidence. He was not large, certainly not when compared to the bear. He was a little taller than the princess, but wiry thin. There were many old scars on his body.
She had heard of the wild man in the human stories of the bear’s transformation.
She thought she would fear him, but she felt for him much as she did for the strange tree he stood beside, which seemed to open its branches to invite them in.
Such a tree could not have grown without magic, and the magic seemed to add to it rather than make it less than it was. So it was with the wild man.
He gestured for them to move into the shelter of the tree. It was not warm inside, but it was not cold, either.
“Well come,” said the wild man, holding out his hand. He spoke to the hound first, and she trembled a little at the way his voice penetrated directly to her mind rather than through her ears.
He turned to the bear. “And you, well come. It has been some years, has it not?”
The bear was careful to step inside the tree and move to the side, all without touching the wild man.
The hound, however, held out her front right paw and shook the wild man’s hand. She had not done it with another human before because she had felt it would make her less of a hound. But with the wild man that didn’t seem possible.
He spoke in a language that was pure magic, not hound and not bear and not human.
“You must eat with me,” said the wild man, and he gestured to a short table with flat pillows around it, perfectly situated for a hound or another creature who came to eat with the wild man. Or a human.
The bear lumbered forward and sniffed at the bread he was offered. He seemed to eat it only reluctantly—as if afraid of what the wild man might have put in it.
As for the hound, she ate the bread without hesitation, but was surprised to discover that it tasted exactly like the best killing she had ever made. It was fresh and salty, and she felt as though somehow the bread were dripping blood down the back of her throat.
After they had filled their starving