The Princess and the Snowbird

by Mette Ivie Harrison

  But his village and his own father treated him terribly, all because he had none of the tehr-magic. Liva was glad he did not, for she did not think she could love anyone who used magic selfishly like that.

  She dove down to a stream and changed into human form to drink and rest. She liked the form more now than ever, despite the cold. Jens had recognized her as the pika and as the owl, but they could only speak together when she was human, and she loved how she felt when they talked. She cupped her hands, splashed icy water over her face, then leaned back against the rocks to watch the clouds in the sky move by.

  It was then that Liva saw the great shadow of the bird.

  Liva stopped to look up at it, and then she could not move. It was beautiful, its white feathers glinting with silver underneath its wings, and its sheer size made her feel faint. Larger than any bird she had seen, it seemed to be coming just for her, for it flew directly overhead. Compared with the aur-magic in this snowbird, Liva’s was a drop of water against a storm. She felt like sobbing out her empty sorrow as the bird passed by, casting a huge shadow over her, but she could not speak at all.

  Liva flew through the night and stopped only when she heard a bellowing at the break of dawn. She felt blindly in her magic for the source.

  It was some distance away, but hot and familiar.

  Her father.

  She flew toward him, glad at last that the storm had gone and the sky was clear. She called out to tell her father that she was coming for him, but he did not answer her.

  When she was close enough to see the blood dripping from his neck, Liva could tell he was badly wounded. He staggered forward, making inarticulate sounds.

  Who had attacked him? Men from the village? But they could never have passed her. And for her father to be wounded so, with his experience and his size, there had to have been many humans involved.

  But the closer that Liva came to him, the stranger—and colder—the wound seemed.

  He did not seem to recognize her, even when she swooped down from the air and changed into bear form before his eyes.

  He moved jerkily and in circles, as if he had lost all sense of direction. He muttered to himself, and when Liva put a paw to him, she felt the same lack of magic she had felt in Jens.

  She had to give him back some of her inheritance of aur-magic. Her mother had refused to accept it when she was wounded, but the hound had not been in such danger of dying. The bear most definitely was.

  “Father!” she shouted at him to get his attention.

  She only succeeded in making him roar at her and swing a paw in her direction. It would have hit her in the face if she had not ducked. This massive, threatening bear was not anything like the gentle father she had always known.

  She could feel how the aur-magic had been cut from him at his neck. But when it poured out, it disappeared as if it had never been. It did not return to the forest. Liva could not understand how this could be.

  Blood still flowed from the bear’s wound. If she could bring the edges of the wound together—gently, so that her father’s system was not shocked, perhaps he could hold enough aur-magic inside him to heal the inner wounds.

  Liva let her aur-magic flow out of her like a breeze. She waited for it to make the bear calm, no more than that. Once he could stop threatening her, she could give him more.

  But the aur-magic moved right past him, not rejected as it had been with her mother—simply reabsorbed back into the woods behind him.

  Panicked, Liva shaped her aur-magic like an arrow that was aimed for the bear’s heart.

  Again, the magic simply went through him.

  Just as it had with Jens, no matter what she had tried.

  Liva’s face stung with tears. The effort she’d used made her feel sick. Her balance was gone, and she had to put a paw out to a nearby rock to hold herself steady.

  Trying to calm herself, Liva tried a third time.

  She blasted out all the aur-magic she could in one burst. But as soon as it was gone, she knew it had been in vain. She watched as the trees behind the bear grew buds on their branches, brief bits of spring that would not last.

  She felt as weak as a new cub. She had to breathe through her mouth to get in enough air to keep herself from blacking out.

  She ambled close to her father and put a paw on his leg.

  But he threw her off and fell to the ground, rolling from side to side, as any ordinary bear in a rage might. This could not be her father!

  Liva stood back and watched him with her magic senses acutely alert. The bear had bled off so much aur-magic that he tasted to her as empty as Jens had been, and the state was irreversible. But it made no sense, for Liva had become convinced by Jens that what had happened to him was a fluke of birth, like a snake born with two heads, or a moose calf born without its two hind legs. She had not thought there was any hand behind it.

  Now she knew better. Humans had changed aur-magic to tehr-magic. They must have done this as well.

  In a flash of heat, Liva knew she wanted revenge. She wanted to make whoever had done this moan as her father did. Not so long ago she had been proud to think herself grown up. Now she wanted to weep and to be held by her mother and comforted like a baby. This was too much for her.

  She was supposed to have great aur-magic for some grand purpose, but Liva could think of nothing that would make her father’s sacrifice worth anything.

  She called out in the language of magic for help, though she did not have any reason to believe she would be answered. But somehow it seemed only a few moments before she heard the bark of a hound.

  She looked up and felt hope once more.

  Her mother had come.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Jens

  EIGHT BOYS WERE made men in the celebration the day after the hunt. Torus and Harald were among them. Jens was not. And he did not argue, for he did not care anymore.

  The others painted themselves with the blood of the animal they had killed, then swallowed the vital organs raw. Liver, heart, lungs, and eyes. The tongue was reserved for last.

  Afterward the newly made men linked arms and danced in front of the villagers. Then the girls and women were asked to leave, and it was time for a night of swaggering battles.

  The youngest boys who remained were only four or five years old. It was meant to be a night of wildness and violence, a night meant to prove that next year’s hunting season would be as successful as this year’s. But Jens could feel no pride in this.

  Instead he watched morosely as two brothers bloodied each other while their father encouraged more and more violence.

  Another young boy, no more than ten years old, swung at Jens and took him by surprise.

  He ducked.

  In an instant he realized it was the wrong thing to do, but there was no taking it back. The boy had expected Jens to engage him. When Jens refused, it was taken as an insult.

  Jens gritted his teeth against the lingering pain in his leg and tried to join another battle with Harald, as he was closer to Jens in age and more likely to give him a fair fight. But Harald ignored him completely. After all, he was a man in the village now. Jens was not.

  Jens told himself he should walk away, go home and go to sleep. It was what only the old men did, and it would invite others to call him a woman. But how much worse could his reputation in the village become?

  Liva. She would not admire him for fighting with other humans. He would think of her tonight, and her beautiful strength.

  As he walked away, he heard laughter behind him. And then his mother’s name, Gudrun, and a guttural spit and a curse on her for bearing such a son. Harald, who had just refused a fight, was taunting him.

  He could not bear it. It was one thing for him to suffer, but his mother was defenseless. She had given her life for him, and he would not hear her memory maligned.

  Frustrated, he turned and swung as hard as he could, taking Harald off guard and knocking him to the ground. He would no longer be ignored. Ha
rald’s face was already purpling with the mark of Jens’s hand. As Harald got to his feet and maneuvered closer, a group of men began to form a circle around them.

  “Coward!” Jens heard, as he ducked one of Harald’s blows. Harald was faster than Jens—except after a night of feasting and drinking like this one.

  It was quiet in the building. Jens had seen fights before, and there were always onlookers calling out encouragement or disgust to both sides. Not now.

  They did not think he was one of them.

  Then came a blinding moment of realization: Jens was as alone here as he ever would be out in the forest. More alone, for in the village the animals were against him as well. Smoke stung his eyes. Harald was waiting for him to continue the fight, hands clenched into fists, stance ready for battle.

  But Jens knew what he wanted, and it was not this life. Not another moment of it.

  He took a step toward the open door. Harald was happy to see him go, raising his hand and shouting out his triumph to roars of approval.

  Jens decided that he would leave without another word, the building, the village, this life.

  Then his father stepped in front of him, large and reeking. He had come to Jens’s side at last.

  “Do you wish to have your man’s gift from me?” he asked.

  Jens felt his breath catch in his throat, as thick as a piece of meat that he had not chewed well enough. A gift from his father? The tradition was that a father gave his son a gift at the ceremony of his manhood, to help him on his way in life, now that he would care for himself. Not having gone through the ceremony, Jens was not technically a man, and he was surprised that his father would make this offer. But for a moment, Jens believed it was true and relaxed, waiting.

  Then out of the corner of his eye he saw his father’s hand clench into a fist. It flew at him and connected with his jaw. Jens fell to the floor, and his head was filled with the sound of his father’s laughter.

  “That’s the only gift you’ll ever get from me.”

  Afterward, the carousing began again. Or had it ever stopped? Jens’s father entered a wrestling match with another man without a glance back.

  No one looked at Jens at all.

  Painfully he got up and tottered outside. He welcomed the cold of the night on his cheeks, going as fast as he could to the edge of the village, limping a little on the side where his knee hurt still.

  He stared up at the stars and marked out a northern constellation that could have been a snowbird with one wing folded.

  Those are the edges of my new village, he told himself. He crossed the river when it grew light, and heard the sound of wolves crying out in the distance, as if they could already smell his blood. But he felt no fear, for he was going home at last.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Liva

  “DO NOT GIVE him your aur-magic!” the hound barked out harshly.

  Liva was astonished. “He is dying,” she said. “Even so. He gave you the aur-magic for a reason. Do not undo what he gave up so much to accomplish.” The hound stood between Liva and the bear, as if guarding him against his daughter.

  “You do not even care that he is dying!” Liva accused her mother. This was not what she wanted when she called out for help.

  “We all die,” her mother said more gently. “That is the way of being mortal. Animals and humans, it makes us the same. Your father has never wished to escape from that. It is living this long that has been the most difficult for him. Think how he has outlived all others he has ever known, for the sake of saving the true magic. Will you make him sacrifice again, live longer again, despite his desire for rest? Only because you are afraid?”

  Liva sobbed.

  “He knew this time would come,” her mother said.

  “But he left without a word,” said Liva. “At night.”

  “He thought it would be easier for you that way. It was only when I saw you leave the cave that I knew you had to make things difficult, and so I followed you for your own sake.”

  At this, Liva threw herself at her mother, a nearly grown bear cub against the full-grown but failing wild hound. Liva changed into the form of a hound herself, not thinking of anything but this moment, this battle. But her mother was ready for her and kept her position, all four paws on Liva’s body, in just the right place to keep her immobile.

  A wolf had no better effect, nor a moose, nor an elk.

  Still furious, Liva tried to change into an eagle, with powerful talons to cut at her mother, but her claws caught only at the air. Her mother shifted position and tugged at her wings until Liva cried out at the pain and changed back into the bear cub she had been before.

  That was when she felt the death of her father, in the sudden change of the magic all around her. His aur-magic had been draining out, but this last bit was palpable. It was like the last fall of a tree’s leaves or the final stilling of a river frozen at the beginning of a bitterly cold winter. It was the last moment of sunset before it was night, the last call of a bird as it flew north, never to be heard from again. It was the smallest of changes, yet it was everything.

  Liva sagged and found that she had no strength for weeping.

  Her mother tried to snuggle next to her, but Liva would have none of it.

  “Tell me,” she demanded, her voice harsh and bitter. “Why should he die for those with the aur-magic? When he had already given it up himself? Why should he go to help humans, when he had given up being human as well?”

  “He would hear them call to him, those with the aur-magic who had been accused, who were sentenced to death,” said the hound. “He could not ignore them.”

  “But he had given me his aur-magic.”

  The hound shook her head. “But not his responsibility. I told him that he should let it go, that he had no more power to do the task. He should have waited for you to take up the burden, but he said he could not allow you to do so until you were ready, and that he was needed now. I cannot say I was ashamed of him for that.”

  “And that night? Did he tell you who he was leaving us for?” asked Liva bitterly.

  “He told me he had dreamed of the same family for weeks. A mother and a father and a young girl with an affinity for bees.

  “She had promised her parents to keep her aur-magic a secret, for it was strong. They knew the risk of it, but they had chosen not to send her away to protect themselves nor to give her up to the magic-hunters for their own safety. She showed her power trying to save the life of a friend who was attacked by a swarm of bees. She changed herself into a bee and led the swarm away. In the end, she saved her friend and condemned herself.

  “Your father went at last when he heard them cry out that their daughter was condemned to be burned to force her to show her true shape as the aur-magic fled her body in death.”

  Liva shuddered. She would find out who had killed the girl and then she would know who had killed her father.

  Liva and her mother struggled together to drag her father’s body back home to the cave. Liva tried various different forms of large animals, but in the end, the shape of a hound was the most useful, because it was her mother’s form and they could balance her father’s weight between them. And so they went, back along the riverbanks, and then through the dense forest.

  It took three days, and more than once Liva wondered why they were doing it. Her father was gone. This was only his body. Surely they could bury it where he had died just as well as by the cave.

  “He will come home with us. His body will be fuel for the forest around us,” said Liva’s mother. She held her head straight when she spoke, and her voice cracked as Liva had never heard it before.

  It was dark when they reached the opening to the cave. Liva thought that morning would be soon enough to begin the impossible task of digging in the cold, hard-packed dirt to make a grave for her father.

  She crawled into the cave, exhausted. When she awoke, she did not know how much later it was. Her mother was tucked next to her father at the ba
ck of the cave, and for a long moment, Liva could almost believe that everything had been a dream, that her father was still alive.

  But then it all came back to her. The bear was dead, and her mother was only saying her farewell.

  In the morning, Liva and her mother dug the grave together.

  Before they covered the body, Liva’s mother spoke her last words to the bear: “I always thought I would die before you. A hound is meant to have a short life. Short and filled with adventure and pack. But with you, it was a long life filled with more than I thought possible.”

  The words were human, or as close to human as they could be in a hound’s mouth.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Jens

  DAY BY DAY, Jens traveled along the bank of the river up the craggy hills to the densest and most snow-packed part of the forest. The air was thick and wet. He listened to the calls of wolves and wondered whether he would soon think of them as his brothers, or whether they would be as vicious as the boys in his village had always been.

  Each day he expected to die, but instead he continued to go, slowly but surely. His leg ached at first, but gradually grew stronger. No animals came near him unless he accidentally came upon them in the dense forest.

  The branches overhead were so close together that the sun could only be seen in patches here and there. Jens’s eyes became used to semidarkness. He liked that the deep smell of the forest penetrated his coat, his hair, and even his skin.

  He ate roots and looked for greens poking out of the last of the snow. He wanted to survive on those things alone, for he did not wish to kill. But at last he grew too hungry. He determined that if he hunted only to feed his immediate need, and if he killed swiftly, then Liva would not think he had become what she hated.

  He began using a knife he fashioned from a sharp stone. When he caught his first snow rabbit, he was so hungry that his hands shook. He could not wait long enough to cook it, and took greedy bites. After the raw feast, he fell immediately asleep.