The Princess and the Bear - Mette Ivie Harrison [43]
She nodded, and he put a hand to his side to get his purse of coins.
But she stopped him with a motion.
“Are there more?” she asked the animal trainer.
“Oh, yes, several. Of course, a lady such as yourself is used to a selection. Come, I will show you the others. There are some variations in color, and perhaps you would prefer an animal that is less—active.”
Chala wondered why any human would wish for an animal that had given up its wildness. But then she remembered the many domesticated animals she had seen that had no more of their own language remaining. Cows, goats, dogs, pigs—all had lost half their wildness and half themselves, in her opinion. But at least they had given it up willingly, in exchange for the ease of life with humans.
These monkeys were not the same. They had had no choice in this matter at all, and were given no recompense. She would not have it!
She gripped Richon tightly, and he made a small hiss of pain. Another hound would have nipped her in return, but Richon walked on.
The animal trainer led the way into a stall that stank of animal feces. It was dark and hot inside, and the monkeys in the cages were so weak and without hope that they did not even look up when Richon and Chala walked in. Chala could see old bruises on them and dried blood from wounds that had never been treated, but it was the blank stares that told her how often they had been beaten.
These animals thought there was nothing left in life but that, and they waited for the end. It made her sick to see them.
“This one is young and female,” the animal trainer said, pointing to a white-skinned monkey with a crown of white fur on the top of her head.
The monkey did not even look at Chala.
Chala leaned toward it. “Yes, yes, I see,” she murmured.
“And this one is a beautiful black male,” the animal trainer said, pointing to the one that looked as if it had been beaten worst of all.
“Black, yes,” said Chala, pretending interest in something other than the cage and its lock.
The animal trainer seemed to catch no hint of the undertone of anger in her voice. “Perhaps you would like to hold one,” he offered.
Chala gave out a long breath, as if she had been holding it for some time. “That would be best, I think. Don’t you?” She turned to Richon and let him see the anger in her eyes.
She wanted to kill the animal trainer, to feel his blood in her mouth, to feel his last kicking breath flow out of him.
But that was a hound’s desire, and it was not one she could indulge here.
When she had first been forced into the body of the princess, Chala remembered, she had attacked one of the coal boys who had come into her room at night to stoke her fire. She had not been used to being a human and had been angry at the change and at the magic that had been used against her. She had stayed in the castle before, but it had never felt as confining as it did then. Her every breath was a reminder of the prison she was in.
She’d told herself that she would get through this terrible time by thinking of the princess’s room as her own den, as she had had in her days with a pack. But the coal boy had violated her territory, had come in without warning, without permission. He had seen her sleeping on the rug near the fire, with the hound at her side, and in his surprise had fallen over her.
The pain had reminded her of other pain, and suddenly it had all come shooting out of her. She leaped on the coal boy and tore into his face with her fingernails, far less effective than claws but enough to draw blood. The coal boy had screamed for help, and it was the princess—in the body of the hound—who had come to his aid. She leaped on the hound and tore her off.
The coal boy ran away and left the castle. Afterward, orders were given for coal to be left outside the princess’s room for her to serve herself when she wished it. Slowly the hound had learned to restrain her violent impulses. It seemed this man had never done the same, though he thought of himself as far above animals.
The trainer got out his keys