The Princess and the Bear - Mette Ivie Harrison [59]
Chala stared.
He thought that she had healed Crown with magic from the wild man?
She did not have time to explain now. She had to help this boy with her magic if she could.
Before Richon could stop her, she reached the cage and put her hand through the bars, reaching for the boy.
He leaped toward her. She felt his teeth dig into the flesh of her arm.
“Chala, no!” shouted Richon.
But she was already gone, into the magic, and was far from him.
She went into herself first, feeling the thread of magic that connected her to the boy, pulling herself along it as if she were on a rope bridge crossing from one side of a river to another.
She could feel that he was sucking at her blood, and might do worse, but there was no pain as yet.
With her magic she could see his life growing up with wolves. Then the day that he had been discovered by humans, who had gone into the forest to seek for the source of the magic they felt from far away. They took him away in chains and they tried to teach him, to no avail. And so had come the cage, and their infrequent visits.
How he hated them!
How he hated everyone, even himself.
But only because of his human form.
His soul was a wolf’s.
Chala saw clearly that to be saved he must be allowed to become a wolf in truth.
She could only assume that the animals in the forest did not know how to use their magic for something like this, or that they did not have enough of it. Perhaps she did not have enough, either. But she had to try.
She pushed her magic toward him.
She did not know precisely what she was doing, but she had been next to Prince George as he had changed her back into her hound form, and the princess to her woman’s form.
Hairless skin turned to fur.
Ears peaked.
Nose turned to snout.
Teeth and limbs elongated.
And then it was done.
The boy was a wolf.
Chala fell back, breathing hard, blood streaming down her arm.
The wolf growled at her, still not sure of what she had done. But he did not seem as crazed as he had before. He was himself again, though with less magic now to draw humans to him. He only needed to be set free, and allowed to return to his pack.
Chala pulled on the lock to the cage but could not get it to come free. The use of magic was so unfamiliar to her.
At last Richon, hands trembling, came around her and put his knife in the keyhole. It sprung free and the wolf leaped out.
Chala watched him go, and felt a terrible wave of envy. He could return to the forest and be at home once more. He could be a wolf again, with a pack and a wolf’s life.
But with all her magic she did not know if she would ever be a hound again. She did not regret the choice she had made to be a human woman and take on the task of aiding Richon against the unmagic.
It was the simplicity of life as a hound that she missed. The physicality of it. Eating, the sun on her bare back, even the feel of rocks in her paws. And the sense of belonging, in the forest with other animals, of her kind and not.
She did not know if she would ever truly fit in with humans. She did not know if she wanted to.
“Chala,” said Richon.
She felt him close to her, his touch easing the sting of the wound on her arm. He tucked her head into the crook of his neck, and she knew that here, at least, she belonged. With him.
With surprise, she noticed there was something rolling down her face, stinging it. She put a hand up to feel it and discovered her face was wet.
Tears.
She was weeping, as a human woman would.
“I thought it was the wild man’s magic that you used with Crown,” said Richon after the tears had stopped and she had pulled away from him once more.
“No,” said Chala softly.
“You have it because you are human now?”
“I think it is because of this time and place. There is magic everywhere here and in adundance. Even the animals have it.”
Richon slapped his leg and swore darkly. “I am surrounded by magic and have not a drop of it myself, though I am supposed to be king. Truly I