The Princess and the Bear - Mette Ivie Harrison [29]
So the bear was to return to his kingdom in the past, to find the unmagic and stop it there. But what of her?
The bear moved to her side, but it seemed she needed no protection from the wild man’s magic, after all.
“I can send you back in the form of the man you were,” said the wild man. “Once there, you must choose again to aid the magic. If you fail, I will be forced to find others who may mend the damage, but I cannot force you to do what you do not wish to.”
The bear twitched, and the hound thought of all he had lost. The wild man was asking him to go back to that, to care again for it. After two hundred years, it seemed an impossible request. But the wild man was all that was impossible.
The hound began to fear for herself then. She had worried that she would have no role. But the wild man offered no part without pain.
The wild man continued, his voice soft and smooth. “Has the magic done badly for you before this? I think if you look back, you will see it has not. Trust that the magic will teach you the lessons you would wish to know. Trust that if you suffer pain through the magic, it is pain you will look back on and be glad of. Trust that you will be glad to be part of extending the reign of magic from your time long into the future.”
The wild man shone brighter and brighter as he spoke, as if he were the sun and there was no need for any other, at least not on this part of the mountain.
Yet the bear held back, a rumble in his throat.
And the hound could feel tiny shivers in her legs that were no reaction to cold.
The wild man put his hands together with a clap. He held them there tightly. His eyes showed concentration. He began to sweat.
The hound could not see what he was doing.
Suddenly the wild man ripped his hands apart, and the hound could feel the sound of it, like an earthquake or a tornado as it tore trees from the ground and tossed them in the wind.
Between the wild man’s hands, there was an image of this same place, but at a different time. There was less snow there, and the mountain itself seemed different. The stone shelf was smaller, less distinct, the plants on it higher and more vigorous. Below, the mountains seemed younger.
“There is the past. A time of abundant magic compared to now. A time of less magic than before. A time that is yours as no other time has been.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Bear
“I WON’T GO!”
The bear had let his growls rise to a shaking pitch, then found that he was able to make words, though what language they were in he was not sure.
He had not thought of how it was possible for him to understand the hound’s language, but now he realized it was the wild man’s magic at work. No doubt he could have spoken earlier if he had wished to. Perhaps he should have been grateful to the wild man for this gift, but it seemed only a reminder of all that the wild man had taken from him.
Did the wild man think he could simply send the bear back in time and all would be well? The bear thought of the young king he had been, for only a few years, and how badly he had done. No!
“You say I have a choice. Then I choose this—to stay here and return to our forest with the hound, both of us untouched by magic,” said the bear.
“Untouched by magic?” said the wild man, his eyes boring into the bear’s.
But the bear did not flinch away. “By more magic,” he added softly.
And the wild man looked away. When he turned back, his face looked ravaged. Suddenly the bear could see hundreds of years of time, of desperation and battling, in that face. Scars, puckered skin around his mouth, sagging black circles around his eyes—this was his own suffering, mirrored back to him and multiplied many times over. For the wild man had lived perhaps since the very beginning of time and magic.
The wild man bowed his head in defeat. “Yes. Yes, you may go. The magic cannot force you back. There would be no purpose in it if you are not a willing warrior for its sake.”
How much longer would the wild man live? The bear had never thought to feel sympathy for the wild man, yet there it was. He had fought