The Princess and the Bear - Mette Ivie Harrison [67]
The woman with the long neck who had always looked at herself in mirrors like a swan was Lady Torus. She had had a long nose, and long fingers, almost like wings.
And Prince George? A rabbit, perhaps. But a strong one, who was unexpectedly victorious against those far larger because of his great magic.
“Last night I thought of the magic and whether I would ever be able to use it again,” said Richon. “Then, when I slept, I watched the eagles fly, and I envied them. But I could not transform myself into their shape. I watched the fish swim, and no matter how I concentrated I could not make myself into a fish. But when I tried to make myself into a bear, it came so easily.”
“And the language of the bears? Why could you never speak that?” asked Chala.
Richon sighed. “Perhaps I did not want to. That would be admitting the truth of all of this, which I could not face.” He made a wide gesture with his hands that took in the whole forest, the whole kingdom, and beyond. “The magic, and who I was.”
“You must be a very stubborn man,” said Chala.
Richon laughed. “I thank you,” he said with a short bow. “I will take that as a compliment, coming from a very stubborn woman—and hound.”
Chala thought.
“Can I change back into a hound, then, too?” she asked quietly.
But she already knew the answer. She had been a hound in the dream that was not a dream.
She looked at herself. Her human legs, under the long red skirt, her human feet, encased in boots. Human hands, roughened and callused as they had been from the first—because she was not a woman who looked for an easy life, any more than she was a hound who did the same. Human hair, black and thick, warm as her hound’s fur. Human hips, to keep her feet separated in a wide, strong stance that would not yield.
“Close your eyes,” said Richon.
Chala closed her eyes.
“Do you feel the magic within you?” Richon asked.
“Yes,” said Chala.
Richon gave a short laugh. “Then you are already ahead of me. To feel the magic was most of the work for me. Now you must simply see yourself in the form you wish and the magic will make it come to be.”
Chala thought of how she saw herself now as a hound and a woman. Not as only one or the other. But what made her feel most like a hound?
She let out a snarl, a hound’s sound, and thought of how it had felt before, when she had thought it was the wild man changing her.
She snarled again, and then leaped—
Before she landed she was in the form of a hound once more.
It felt so good. She put her head to the ground and chased after the smell of a badger.
Richon ran with her as a bear, and ate what she ate. She shared with him what she could share with no other: the joy of being human and being animal. If she could change from one to the other, perhaps she would not feel such a loss as she had feared. She could be a hound when it was right to be a hound and a human when that was necessary. She might not fit with others, but she would always fit with Richon.
When they were finished eating, the hound became Chala once more, and the bear Richon.
“I think it is just as well that I did not know of the magic before,” said Richon. “I shudder to think how I would have used it when I was a boy.”
“Perhaps if you had had it, it would have made you different,” said Chala.
Richon shrugged. “Well, that is neither here nor there. What matters is who I am now, and how I can use this magic to save my people and the generations to come.”
It was such a houndlike thing to say that for a moment Chala was speechless. Then she laughed.
She and Richon changed forms as it was useful to them over the next few days, cutting across fields, over rocky barriers, moving ever closer to the battlefield ahead.
They both returned to human form at the entrance to a large forest. There was something wrong about it. It smelled of decay—and worse.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Richon
THE FOREST WAS darker than any Richon had ever been in, and older. The trees were enormous, their canopies high overhead, and their leaves were so thick that little light