The Seventh Magpie

by Nancy Chase

  The others sprang to their feet, lips parted eagerly, eyes glowing. Even Hugh looked warrior-like now, no longer thin and shivering but lean and fierce as a hunting hound. Baldwin dropped his bundle of sticks and stepped forward, gripping his spear. “I will join the hunt. We will run with you beneath the stars, and when the sun rises, Barnabas can make us a song of how the Silver Boar fought valiantly but fell at last.”

  “Baldwin, no!” Catrin seized his arm, but he brushed her aside. “Hugh, wait. Barnabas! George?” They seemed not to hear. She was but a ghost to them. There was a silver light to their movements and a thrill in their voices, and when they were gone, with the wolves like shadows running behind them over the star-blue snow, then night well and truly fell, and never a night so cold and silent had Catrin ever known.

  The darkness closed around her like a curtain and the great oak stood black and menacing, shutting out the sky. Catrin didn’t dare huddle against it, nor stand out in the open under the pitiless moon, so she crouched forlornly against a stone and buried her face in her hands. Faithful George had left her, and frail Barnabas. And Hugh, with his soft velvet shoes ruined in the snow.

  All of these losses she could have borne, if only Baldwin had stood by her. Brave Baldwin, bright as the dawn, her true friend and protector. Yet he, too, had abandoned her. He had spoken no word of comfort or reassurance, just reached for his spear and followed the stranger on a hunt by starlight.

  A whisper of movement made her look up, a cry of glad welcome on her lips for true Baldwin’s return, but it was not Baldwin. It was the wolf.

  He sat on his haunches beneath a tree, his plump furry tail curled around his toes. “Night has fallen, and your fire is not yet lit. Your task is not complete.”

  She drooped back down, all hope exhausted. “What’s the use? They have deserted me. I can never beat the Magpie’s tricks all alone.”

  “I did not think you would fail, Princess,” he said. “You ran well, and spoke bravely, and bore your wound with strength. Your blood did not taste of failure.”

  “You!” She scrambled to her feet. “You were the one who attacked me?”

  His golden eyes blinked at her. “I take what is offered.”

  “Offered? I offered you nothing. You attacked me. You are a villain!”

  “You walked through the forest, unaware, like a sacrificial lamb. I thought there could be no clearer offering of life than that.”

  “You were wrong,” she said grimly.

  The wolf nodded. “Yes, and spilled my own blood for my mistake.”

  His calmness confused her. “Don’t you resent that? Does your wound not pain you, as mine does me?”

  “Of course it pains me. If I had not been wounded, I would be running with the hunt under the stars now.”

  “So instead you came here to gloat over my failure?”

  “No,” he said simply. “I am hungry. Since it seems you do not intend to build your fire, it is likely you will freeze to death by morning. I will wait and talk with you a while, and when you are dead, I will make myself strong with the life you have so foolishly wasted. Then you will run with me under the stars.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I will eat you.”

  “I will fight.” Catrin fumbled for her axe, seeking comfort in solid feel of its handle against her palm.

  The wolf nodded again. “Of course. It is right for you to defend yourself. But you will not need to. I will not attack you again while you live.”

  For some reason, this terrified Catrin more than if he had leaped upon her. “So you will sit there and wait for me to die? That’s the most horrible thing I have ever heard.”

  “Why? Why must you fill it with fear and hatred and horror?”

  “I could kill you with this axe!” Catrin brandished weapon.

  The wolf danced away and sat down again under a different tree. “Why is it horrible for me to wait for you to die and not horrible for you to kill me with an ax?”

  “This is in self-defense!”

  “Killing me will not keep you from freezing to death.” Then, seeing her throw down the axe and collapse, trembling with cold and fear, clutching her arms around her knees, he added kindly, “Do you think self-defense is the only reason?”

  “Of course. I am not a murderer.”

  “No?” His voice grew harsh. “How many roasts of venison have you eaten at your father’s table? And how many mutton stews at the abbey? How many flashing fish strangled in nets or proud young cockerels lost their heads upon the chopping block to fill your plate, all the years of your life?”

  “I never thought of it like that,” Catrin said. “Must I feed only on vegetables like a penitent, and never taste meat again?”

  “Are not plants living things too? Might they not prefer to spend their days with their roots in the cool soil, drinking in the warm sunlight upon their leaves? How is it more right to rip them from their soil, tear off their roots or fruits or leaves? Is not the sickle that cuts the wheat as sharp as the knife that fells the ox?”

  “But a farmer doesn’t have to kill the plant to harvest from it,” she countered.

  “No, and I could gnaw off your arm, perhaps, without killing you, if I did it carefully, but I don’t think you would thank me. That is a poor argument, Princess.”

  “But I must eat!” she protested.

  “Precisely. That is my point. One must kill in order to live. Life feeds off other life. There is no denying it. But did you not, once at least, tear off a blooming rose from its bush, not in self-defense, or for food, but merely to give to a pretty, dark-haired boy?”

  “Don’t talk about Geoffrey!” she snapped. “I loved him, and now he’s dead.”

  “I’m sorry,” said the wolf. “Take comfort. It is all the Way. The living, the dying, the grieving, the joy. It is all woven into a dance like that of the stars and the seasons. But if you won’t build your fire tonight, at least lie down beside me. Perhaps you will see more clearly in your dreams.”

  “You are not trying to trick me?”

  “Lie down and rest against my fur. You will be warmer, and perhaps you will not freeze this night, if you are very strong.”

  “What about you?”

  “I will wait. There will always be another hunt tomorrow.”

  Catrin was so cold and confused and forlorn that she wrapped her arms around the wolf, lay down beside him, and went to sleep. Her last vision was of his noble profile against the starlit sky as he lay looking into the night, panting a little with the pain of his wound, with his yellow eyes glowing.

  “Good night, wolf. If I don’t wake up, I hope you enjoy your breakfast.”

  “You will run with me under the stars.”

  She woke, confused, to crashing and shouts and shadows trampling past her in the darkness. The wolf yelped and scrambled out of the way. A great silver shape thundered out of the woods, leaped over her, and was gone. She thought at first it was her father’s stallion. Then someone tripped and fell over her. She sat up quickly.

  “Baldwin! What happened? Where are all the others?”

  “Coming,” he panted. “Off through the woods there. We cornered the boar, but at the last it charged us. It is as big as a horse! It ran right over us, Ambrose first of all. They are carrying him back. He is badly wounded. He may not live.”

  Hugh and Barnabas stumbled out of the bushes, then mighty George, carrying Ambrose in his arms as if he were a sleeping child. Even in the dark, Catrin could see the blood dripping down his arm onto the snow.

  She sprang up and helped George lay Ambrose onto the snow-covered ground. His blood-soaked shirt was torn open, and the wound in his chest gaped and fluttered with each feeble breath he took.

  She drew back, hand cupped to her mouth. She looked to the others, but they just stood there, dazed. She had to do something, snap them out of it, or the huntsman would die.

  “Hugh, in all your studying you must have learned how to bind a wound. Tear of
f some of that fine silk of yours to make a bandage. Barnabas, Ambrose will listen to you: hold his head and talk to him. Baldwin, George, come with me. We’re going to build a fire.”

  As she snatched up her ax and strode toward the tree, the wolf caught her eye. “So things became clearer to you in your dreams, Princess?”

  “I dreamt nothing,” she said. “I slept like the dead.”

  The ax flashed as she cut the final branch from the oak. Once Baldwin and George helped her arrange the other ninety-nine branches into a pile, she reached into her pocket and pulled out the last of Kae’s gifts: the tinder and flint. She struck a spark onto a bed of dry tinder. Down on her knees as if in prayer, she cupped her hands around the spark and blew on it. It brightened and faded with her breath, flickering on the brink existence for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, the tinder blackened, and the spark sputtered into a tiny flame. Catrin sat back on her heels and breathed a sigh of relief. Behind her, Ambrose muttered and shifted, but did not wake.

  “How is he?” she asked.

  Barnabas stroked Ambrose’s face and gazed upon the fire. “He will live.”

  Hugh, pressing wads of blood-soaked silk to staunch the wounds, shook his head grimly. “He will die.” He had peeled back the huntsman’s shirt, and Catrin saw that Ambrose’s torso was laced with scars from many wounds.

  “If he survived all those, he can survive this one,” she said.

  Hugh did not look up. “What I learned, I learned from books. I fear such knowledge is of little use tonight.”

  They did what they could, which was little enough, to make Ambrose comfortable. After that, they waited—for what, they did not know. Barnabas held the huntsman’s head and sang softly all the old heroic songs. The wolves prowled around the clearing, then one by one slunk off and disappeared into the forest, all except the wounded leader who sat beneath a tree just outside the ring of firelight, his gaze never leaving the fallen huntsman.

  The fire burned, the weaver sang, and the stars revolved overhead. The hours crawled by while the companions sat clustered around their fallen comrade, watching the shallow rise and fall of his chest and watching the bandages darken with blood.

  “He is strong to live this long,” said Baldwin.

  Barnabas replied, “He is strong.”

  Occasionally, as the night wore on, they heard the yelping of wolves in the forest, and twice the crashing of some larger animal. Baldwin paced and stared out into the darkness. Ambrose moaned and writhed under Hugh’s hands. Even Barnabas’s voice cracked and faltered. George poked at the fire to make it burn brighter.

  Catrin’s face felt scorched with the fire’s heat, though her feet were still numb with cold. All of their cloaks had gone to Ambrose to keep him warm. Her own wound throbbed every time she moved, but she ignored it. Hugh’s face was gray with cold, his lips blue. His shirt was torn up for bandages, but he had lost the will to complain.

  Catrin knelt beside him. “Go and warm yourself closer to the fire. I will watch him for a while.” He said nothing, but obeyed.

  The shadowed spaces between the trees paled to gray at the slow approach of dawn. Catrin saw the wolf sitting there, as it had all night, its gaze still fastened upon the body of its master. Catrin looked down. Ambrose was perfectly still, pale as snow and quiet as the morning star. “Ambrose?” She felt his face. It was cold. “Ambrose?” The others turned blank, haunted, faces toward her. They were only surprised it had taken this long. The wolf pointed its nose toward the sky and howled.

  “He will live,” Barnabas insisted.

  “Come and warm yourself, old man,” said Hugh. “There is nothing more you can do.”

  On all the distant hillsides, the other wolves echoed their leader’s howl. Despite all of George’s coaxing, the fire at last guttered out. One by one, the wolves grew silent.

  Catrin looked up. Where the wounded wolf had been, a massive shape now loomed, silvery gray, with tusks a foot long and small sullen eyes. A half-healed injury, crusted with dried, blackened blood, stained its flank. When it took a step forward, Catrin could see the broken-off shaft of a spear still jutting from the ancient wound.

  Catrin made a tiny, terrified sound in her throat. The boar’s small, piggy eyes turned toward her. It shifted its weight on its hard, cloven hooves and its ears twitched.

  “Princess.” Baldwin edged closer to her, gripping his spear and never taking his eyes from the boar, “Stand up very slowly, and step away from the fire.” He kept his voice low, and his movements unhurried. “Walk backward into the forest and hide yourself among the trees.”

  “What?” she demanded, astonished. Baldwin the brave was urging retreat?

  “We cannot fight it. If we try, we will end up dead as the huntsman.”

  “He lives!” insisted Barnabas in a thin, petulant voice.

  “You’re mad, old man,” Hugh whispered furiously. “He has been dying all night. Let him go in peace, and let us save ourselves.”

  “Does he live?” Catrin strained forward, but Baldwin pulled her back.

  “Let it be, Princess, there is nothing you can do. Save yourself.”

  “Not while he lives. We can’t abandon him. George, can’t you carry him?”

  “It would kill him,” Hugh said.

  “You said he was already dead.”

  Hugh flushed. “I don’t know. He seems dead, but the old man keeps saying—Anyway, if he isn’t, picking him up and carrying him would kill him.”

  “Then we stay. There is no place we can run to anyway.”

  “No,” agreed George quietly. “No place.”

  The boar squinted at them across the fire and shifted positions, snorting as it caught their scents more strongly. It did not see well, and it was tired and angry.

  Baldwin tightened his grip on his spear. “George, you distract it, while I slip around to the side and attack.”

  “Are you out of your mind?” Catrin said. “Do you want to kill yourself, too?”

  “We can’t just stand here!” Baldwin snapped.

  The boar charged, plunging over the bloodstained snow straight at Ambrose’s body. Spear in hand, Baldwin hurled himself forward, only to be knocked down and trampled underfoot, his weapon snapped like a twig. George tried to seize the beast barehanded, but it slipped from his grasp. Hugh flung himself aside, but Barnabas held firm. The little old man shrieked gibberish and gestured so wildly that at the last moment the bewildered boar swerved toward Catrin instead.

  “Stop!” she commanded. “Magpie, I know you now. Stay and speak to me. Let the fallen lie.” The boar stopped, so close she felt its breath on her face, saw her reflection in its eyes. Her tongue froze to the roof of her mouth, and her breath stopped in her throat. The world paled, and she knew she was about to faint. With the last of her mind, she heard Barnabas call her name; she sucked in a ragged breath and steeled herself to face the Silver Boar. “I have completed the task. I will answer your riddle.”

  “You have failed,” the boar rumbled in a voice like an avalanche of boulders. “Your fire is out, and it is not yet dawn.” She could see the fresh blood staining its tusks. She could smell its dank, cold odor.

  “The fire is not dead.”

  “Cold as ash,” the boar said, “and soon you will be, too. You cannot escape me. It is foolish to try, for I will defeat you in the end.”

  “Ask the riddle.”

  “You cannot stall for time.”

  “It is you who stalls for time, waiting for my fire to die. But it’s no use. I know the answer. So ask the riddle already.”

  The beast snorted and shook its tusks, dancing from side to side with the force of its fury, but in the end it obeyed, saying:

  “What is the beast that feeds on flesh

  And sleeps beneath the clay?

  What flame ignites cold winter’s blight

  To keep that beast at bay?”

  Catrin looked down at Ambrose, lying so still on the ground, then lifted her face to the ri
sing sun and replied:

  “Death is the beast that feeds on flesh

  And sleeps beneath the clay.

  But Life ignites cold winter’s blight

  To drive that beast away.”

  The beast let out an ear-splitting bellow. “I will not yield to you. The fire is dead, and I have won.” It charged, straight and deadly as a flashing sword.

  Catrin stumbled back and fell against Ambrose’s body. As the boar’s tusks drove at her heart, she plunged her hand into the ashes of her dead fire, and closed her bare fingers around a single glowing coal. Though her flesh seared and sizzled, she shouted in triumph, “It is not dead!” and flung the coal straight into the beast’s eye.

  With a squeal and the stench of burning hair, the boar became a Magpie. As Catrin seized it, she heard Barnabas’s gleeful cry: “He lives, he lives!” She had one fleeting instant to see the huntsman’s eyes flutter open before the world fell away and she found herself once more in her own bed, tangled in a snarl of quilts.

  That night the king sent up three maids and a dressmaker to fit Catrin for her wedding gown. She pleaded weariness, she pleaded fever, but the wedding was in two days, and a gown must be made. They came into her room with armloads of satin and velvet, silk ribbons and lace. “Please go away,” she said. “I’m ill.”

  The dressmaker clicked her tongue disapprovingly. “The king should think more about his daughter’s health than her wardrobe. You don’t look well, that’s certain. But orders are orders. Now try to get out of bed so we can measure you.”

  “No.”

  “Don’t be silly, it won’t take a minute.” One of the maids threw back Catrin’s covers. “By the Seven! Send for a healer, Princess Catrin’s got the plague!”