The Princess and the Bear - Mette Ivie Harrison [45]
“He is one of my people,” said Richon. “If I make an enemy of him, whose fault is it, his or mine?”
Chala thought there was a simple answer to that question, but Richon apparently did not agree.
“He lives,” he said, with finality in his voice.
They left the animal trainer where he was and moved to other stalls, near the edge of the forest.
Richon stared out into the trees. “Will other animals hurt the monkeys?” he asked Chala. “Out there, I mean. The monkeys are from the south and not used to the animals here. Perhaps we should go after them and make sure they are safe.”
Chala was confused. “Go after them and make sure they are safe? You mean cage them again and make them into pets for humans?”
“No, no,” said Richon.
“They will die in the forest when it is winter again,” explained Chala. She had known this when she had unlocked the cages and coaxed them to go. She thought the monkeys must know it, too.
“But then…why?” asked Richon.
“Because any animal would rather die free than live in a cage,” she said.
Richon breathed out slowly. “And any human,” he added.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Richon
BEFORE THEY LEFT the market, Richon saw a woman who sat behind a table on which many carvings were displayed. Most of them were mundane likenesses of children or grown men and women, some of animals. One showed a man kneeling beside a hound that he seemed to love, another a girl on a horse, her hair flowing behind her in the wind, an expression of joy on her face.
After Richon had stared at the carvings for some time, the woman looked around, then reached below the table and took out a new set of carvings. These were entirely different from the first. The animals and humans were entwined.
One was a bear’s head on a man’s body. Another was a woman on her hands and knees with a hound’s tail.
Another was a hound with a woman’s head.
The merchant woman touched a figure of a woman with the claws and eyes of a cat, and the same feral expression on her face.
It was not just any woman, either. There were distinct similarities between the wooden figure and the merchant woman herself.
Richon had no idea why she was revealing herself to him. She might not know that he was the king, but could she not tell, as Halee had, that he had no animal magic? Apparently not.
Last of all, the woman pointed out a figure of a woman connected to a hound, as twins are sometimes connected at birth. The woman did not have a left arm, and the hound was missing limbs entirely on its right side.
Neither could stand alone.
Richon felt guilty at the sight and turned away, thinking of how much of her hound self Chala had already given up.
But Chala leaned forward and touched the figure. “Sometimes two halves are more than one whole,” she said.
The woman in the stall nodded. “She understands,” she said to Richon. “Perhaps better than you.”
Richon pulled Chala a discreet distance away.
“Do you not sometimes wish you were a bear, even now?” she asked him.
“Of course,” he said immediately.
“Why?”
“Because a bear can do things a man cannot,” said Richon.
“And a woman can do things a hound cannot,” said Chala.
“Then you are saying—” Richon began. She could not be saying that she wanted only to be a woman now, could she?
“I am hound and woman,” said Chala. “Just as you are bear and man.”
“And king,” Richon muttered to himself.
“Perhaps the woman there has a triple figure,” said Chala. “Shall we ask her?”
Richon was surprised to see the gleam of humor in her eyes. He had seen humor in the hound many times, though it was rarer in the woman Chala.
But her eyes were bright indeed, and when he smiled at her she let her lips spread widely over her teeth.
“Another day we will come back here,” Richon suggested. Until this moment, he had not allowed himself to think beyond getting his kingdom back. But now he realized that his kingdom was not enough. He needed Chala, as well, to feel whole.
“Another day?” said Chala blankly. “What need for another day when we have this one?” she asked.
He smiled at her. In a way, he supposed, she was still