The Princess and the Bear - Mette Ivie Harrison [58]
He had been an animal recently himself, treated by humans as nothing more than meat to hunt for.
“I must do something for it,” Chala said to Richon.
He bit his lower lip, but then nodded.
Chala approached the shaking cage.
She kept thinking of the animal held inside as a “creature” rather than as a wolf, although it spoke the language of the wolves quite clearly. Why was that? Because the animal’s voice did not sound like a wolf. It was too high-pitched.
She knelt down. The cage was filthy and it stank, and she wrinkled her nose and nearly turned away from the terrible smell.
But then she saw the creature’s eyes, and they were blue.
A human blue.
She leaned into the cage. There was little hair on the creature except on its head, and the arms were long, with rough fingers. No claws, either. He stood on all fours like a wolf, and he was matted and filthy so that his color looked dark.
But it was a human boy, perhaps fourteen years of age, in the middle of that time between childhood and adulthood.
He showed his teeth to Chala and then tore at her face, which she had placed too close to the bars.
She drew back.
He growled and called out in the language of the wolves, “Mine—this one is mine.”
It was the traditional call at first sight of prey, and it meant that the other wolves, while they could help to corner the fleeing animal and would certainly share in the meat, would also give this wolf the opportunity to make the first killing strike against it.
Then all would converge and the pack would feed.
Richon came running up and put an arm around her. He turned her so that she was facing him. “Are you hurt?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“What happened?”
She pointed to the boy.
“It’s—” said Richon, then he paused. “Impossible,” he muttered.
But it was possible, obviously, since the boy was here.
“There is something gravely wrong here,” said Chala. How had this boy been made so animal-like, and who had placed him in this cage?
She turned to Richon, and he moved a little closer.
“Do you have a name?” Richon asked, pronouncing each word distinctly. He kept his hands and face away from the cage and stared intently at the boy.
There was no sign of understanding, as far as Chala could tell. Was it possible the boy had never learned the language of humans?
“The story of the boy raised by wolves,” said Richon, glancing at her.
Chala nodded. She remembered it as well. But the story had not spoken of how difficult it might have been for the boy to return to humans.
“You think he was raised by wolves but that humans tried to take him home and found he was too much animal?” She thought of herself and how much she was like this boy.
“It is all I can think of,” said Richon. “Perhaps he lived too long with the wolves to ever make the change.” He did not look at her. “In any case, they should have sent him back to the forest with the wolves once they discovered that he could not live as a human.”
“Unless they feared he could not survive,” said Chala.
She looked around now and saw evidence of bones that had been eaten clean and thrown outside the cage. The boy was being fed at intervals and brought water as well.
She could not tell how long he had been in the cage, but he would survive here. Animals from the forest could not hurt him, no matter how they might be attracted by his calls. In that sense the cage was for his protection. But it also kept him in one place so that the humans knew where he was and could come to him to keep him alive. The humans cared for him, though their way of expressing it might seem strange to Chala.
“He is also one of my subjects,” said Richon bitterly. “And I have failed him.”
“What do you think you should have done to help him, then?” asked Chala.
Richon thought for a long moment. Then he said, “If I had magic of my own, then I could