The hound pointed to the stream and pantomimed the cat man reaching for the fish and knocking it against the rock. But that did not truly explain what she had seen. Frustrated, she tried once more to think.
But the bear did not wait for her. He moved a hind leg into the line of gray that marked the cold, then tottered and fell into it.
CHAPTER SIX
The Bear
THE BEAR COULD feel the cold seeping into his body, making his nose go numb at the tip as if there were snow falling outside and a wind howling deepest winter. But in a true change of seasons, he could still feel his heart beating, and the warmth at the core of his body. This unnatural cold made him disconnected from himself, as if his mind were no longer part of his bear’s body but rising above it and watching with no feeling at all as it lay down and began to die.
The hound tugged at him from her place outside the line of full gray, but his body was a useless weight. At last she went into the stream and pulled at his bulk from there.
Immediately the water warmed him, chill as it was.
There was a deeper warmth, of nature, that the water drew from other parts of the forest.
He and the hound rode the stream past all hint of gray on the forest floor. About half the distance back to the cave, they fell on a bank and lay there, side by side, panting.
It was some time before the bear noticed the quiet. The animals were afraid of the cold death. But fear alone would not protect them if the cold death spread farther into the forest.
And he had no idea how it could be fought.
Perhaps there was one who did, but the thought of the wild man made the bear’s jaw clench. He would not seek out that one willingly a second time.
Slowly he and the hound made their way back to the cave. He thought of how the death of that one section of the forest would affect it all. What of the insects that fed on the plants? The birds that fed on the insects? And those creatures that ate the birds?
It was almost too much to hold in his mind. He wished he weren’t the least bit human, that he could not imagine how much worse things might become. But then he saw how the hound walked, slumped to one side, with no hope in her. She seemed to feel it exactly as he did.
So perhaps it had nothing to do with being human, after all.
They reached the crossover to the cave, and the bear stopped short. It was the scent of cold death that stopped him first, and then he realized there was something else. A figure standing in front of the cave.
A man, but not a man.
The bear remembered how the hound had tried to describe a man and a cat to him, and her shivering.
She tensed now and the bear could feel her ready to spring, to attack.
He roared and went forward himself, the hound close on his heels.
But the man-creature ran with a wild cat’s speed and grace, leaping from stone to tree, and then from tree to tree without stopping.
The bear lost track long before he gave up the chase. The dark had aided the cat man, and the bear could see no farther than a paw in front of his eyes.
The hound whined at him, but he pushed her back toward the cave, toward home. Until they both felt the cold again.
Where the cat man had walked from the cave to the stream there was another barrier of gray and cold.
The cat man must have followed the hound’s trail from the day before, but it was too dark to do anything now. They would have to wait until morning, near home but not in it. Perhaps never in it again.
He felt the hound quiver and moved closer to her. There was only the shelter of a small, budding tree nearby.
It was the longest night in the bear’s memory, longer even than the first night he had spent as a bear.
He counted each heartbeat.
He had always thought he had found courage as a bear. He had not realized that it was in part that he had had nothing to lose.
Suddenly he was struck with a flash of memory from when he was very young, when he ran too early into his parents’ bedroom one morning, before his nursemaid could catch him.
He had caught them asleep, one of his father’s arms wrapped around his mother’s chest. His mother with one arm held up to catch his father’s arm, as if to pull it closer to herself. Their legs entwined, the blankets thrown off, as if they did not need any warmth but what they shared with each other.
He had run away, out into the castle gardens. He had pouted there for most of the morning, missing breakfast. Then he had been dragged back to his bedroom for a nap that he was determined not to take.
He could only think about his parents and how they had been complete. Without him.
The first light of dawn stretched like fingers through the trees of the forest.
The hound woke and pulled away from him, then stood on all fours and watched as the sun reached the cave and its surroundings. What the cat man had done was starkly visible.
Just above the stream was the shelf of rock where the bear often came out during the spring or fall to let the gentle evening light fall on him as he dozed and thought of the past and what might have been. It had once had tiny fronds of fern growing up through cracks. These were gone, as if they had never been.
The bear swallowed hard before turning his gaze to the cave itself.
The cave was destroyed, the rocks collapsed, as if some living part deep inside had been torn away.
The bear felt his own legs fall out from under him. As he fell, he cut his face on a prickle bush by the stream, a bush he had always hated.
But now he wanted to sing to it, to praise it.
The prickle bush was still alive. It was green. It might yet survive. If so, it was the only thing that remained of his home that was as it had been for two hundred years.
He felt as wounded as if he had been cut through by a sword, and worse, for a physical wound could be healed. This—never.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Hound
THE HOUND THOUGHT that they must go to Prince George. If there was any hope of fighting the cat man and his cold death, it would have to be with the prince. Yet he had used his great magic only once. Could he learn to control it? How much of the forest would be destroyed by that time?
She and the bear went to the edge of the forest near the castle. It had been months since their transformation, but still the hound was stung at the thought of how easily Marit had gone to a new life without her. Only at the wedding had she been acknowledged, and then with a tiny bow from Marit. Since then neither George nor Marit had come to visit in the forest.
The hound waited for some sign of a friendly face. She could not simply walk up to the castle door and scratch on it, howling for attention. She would be sent away.
At last she caught sight of a group of humans moving toward the forest. The hound recognized George and Marit, along with a handful of others, most young and dressed as little more than peasants.
The hound noticed with some satisfaction that Marit wore practical trousers and a short jacket rather than the floating, gauzy thing she had worn at the wedding. But her face looked troubled.
From her bearing, the hound could see that Marit was bound to her prince and to those around him. These were her pack now.
The bear began to move toward the humans. The hound had to run to catch up with him.
The humans stopped at the edge of the forest, though the hound did not know why. There was no hint of the cold death here. Yet.
Then Prince George saw the bear. He started, then stretched out a hand.
“Bear, it has been too long,” he said, and waved at the bear to come closer.
The other humans were wide-eyed at the sight of a huge bear approaching them, with the exception of one boy, who had very blond hair and a pinched face. He was utterly blank when he looked at the bear, as if he had never felt fear. Or had felt it too much and could feel it no longer.
“Where is—” said Marit suddenly.
And then the hound moved so that she could be seen.
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Marit threw her arms up and raced toward the hound, throwing herself to her knees and giving her a fierce embrace.
The hound stared at Marit, so tall and thin. Her red hair, once worn in the long style that her father and his kingdom expected of a noblewoman, was now cut very short. It stuck up all around her ears, but somehow it suited her. It made her look younger, and it fit the freckles that still dominated her face.
“We could not come. The danger of those who hate the animal magic is still so strong—we feared for you if we were seen to seek you,” said Marit in a jumble of words. “We only dare to come into the forest here, at the very edge, and always we are careful to speak to different animals, so there is no pattern that can be seen by our enemies. Even so—” She stopped and turned to Prince George.
Gravely he said, “There has been more than one of those innocents we spoke to who have died. The burned body of one was left at the castle gate, as a clear warning to us. This has been the first chance we have had to come out into the forest in safety.”
“Mar—” Marit started to say to the hound, then checked herself. “I don’t know what to call you now.”
The hound stared blankly. It had been the princess who had insisted on giving her a name. And after George loved her as a hound, she had taken that name for her own. It was confusing, if one cared about names. The hound did not.
Marit sighed. “‘Hound’ will have to do for now, I suppose. But how good it is to see you, truly. You look well.”
The hound supposed it was true. She had more fresh meat now than she had had with the princess. And living in the forest gave her plenty of exercise.
“Ah, Bear,” said Marit, stepping back. “It is good to see you, too.” She put out a hand and touched the bear’s back, then turned back to the hound.
“I must admit, being with you here makes me feel at home in a way that nothing else has.” She took a breath and smiled ruefully. “Not even my own pillow, which George rode all the way to Sarrey to get for me when I mentioned to him once that I missed the smell of it. Three days he was gone, and used up two horses on the way. Just to get me a pillow. Can you imagine?” She shook her head and there was a hint of blush in her cheeks.
The hound remembered the possum the bear had brought to her when she was wounded and unable to move away from the cave herself. For her, too, it was a strange thing to be taken care of.
“Well, let’s introduce them, shall we, George?” she said.
George bowed to her. He looked older and more self-assured, as much a man as a boy. As much a king as a prince, if only of this small part of his kingdom. His shirt was ragged and stained on the cuffs, and he seemed completely unaware of it. He had also put on some pounds around his chest and stomach—not all of it muscle.
“Sometimes I still do not believe my memories of that day, and my magic,” said George. “It is good to see the truth before my face again.”
The bear made a strange low sound.
Prince George moved gingerly closer to him. The bear’s mouth gaped open, showing his huge, sharp teeth. George stared straight at them, then put his arms around the bear’s shoulders and let his head rest there. Suddenly he seemed young again, hardly more than a boy.
He took a deep breath and pulled himself away.
“This is the bear and the hound I have told you about,” he said, turning back to the others in the group.
Turning to the bear, George waved at the humans. “This is the school of magic.”
The hound remembered George’s enthusiasm for the school. But there were only a handful here. Was that all the success he had had?
Along with the blond-haired boy, there was a man with the tattoos on his face of a murderer from the southern kingdom of Thurat. One of the women was missing an eye and a hand, and her face had been burned terribly.
The hound wished she believed more in Marit’s new pack’s strength and loyalty. They did not hold close to her as they should, if the danger Marit and George spoke of was so constant.
“Well,” said George awkwardly.
But the hound had no time to make him comfortable again. George might think his place threatened, but there was much worse to come, as he would know when she told him of the cold death.
“Our home is destroyed,” she began, speaking in the language of the hounds.
“What?” said George, starting.
How many of the others understood her? Not the princess, nor from the looks of them the others. And the blond-haired boy seemed utterly uninterested. His whole body was turned away.
“The bear’s cave, where we have lived since—since the transformation,” she continued.
“But how was it done?” asked George. “There have been no earth rumblings, no lightning strikes. Other animals?”
Of a sort, thought the hound.
She looked toward the bear. She wished that he could tell his part of the story. The bear was far more experienced in magic than she was, and had more of the prince’s trust. But the communication was left to her.
“It is a cat man,” said the hound. She waited a moment to see how the prince would react.
“Cat man,” he echoed.
The hound thought she saw a bit of movement from one of the other humans, but she was focused on the prince. “I think it is a cat, but it has been changed into a man. It brings a cold death with it that spreads through the forest,” she said. It was the best she could do to explain.
“A cat man? I believe I have read an old, old tale of such a creature in this area. But it could not possibly be the same one after all this time, and so long away…” The prince trailed off.
“I do not know about your tale, but I know that this cat man takes life with pleasure. Soon the forest will be consumed.”
George nodded. “I will do what I can with my magic. You have but to show me the way.”
He turned back to Marit and the others. “You should go back to the castle. All of you. There is danger in this.”
Marit grinned, a grin of defiance, of challenge. A hound’s toothy grin, learned from her days in another form. “Is it to do with animal magic?” she asked.
“Yes,” said George.
“Then we should go with you. What are we here for if not to learn about magic, dangerous or not?”
George shook his head. “No,” he said, looking at her belly. “Not now.”
And then the hound stared at Marit again. Her balance was different. And her smell. She should have noticed from the first. The princess was with child. Early still, not enough to show on her tall, thin frame, but it was there.
Yes, the prince would want to protect her.
But the princess would have none of it. “We are a school. If you protect us, we learn nothing.”
The hound thought how a male hound would have reacted to his mate who refused to obey him. A cuff to the ear or a slash at the belly. More, if necessary.
But George was human, and so was the princess.
Far easier to be a hound, she thought. Unless one is not a hound.
George nodded slowly, almost imperceptibly. “You will come, then.” He turned back to the hound and spoke to her quietly, under his breath. “The cat man—it is gone now, is it not? You only mean to show us what it left behind with its magic, yes?”
He was asking for the sake of the princess and the unborn child, not for himself.
“I think it has done its work here already,” said the hound.
“Then take us,” said the prince roughly.
The hound turned and led them, the bear following behind.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Bear
COMING THIS WAY through the forest, they found further evidence of the harm done by the cat man. The bear could hear the voices of sick and dying animals calling out to him. He did not need to understand their languages to hear their pain and bewilderment.
But he watched Prince George and saw his pain. Each cry was like an arrow to his side. Princess Marit moved clos
er and then put an arm around him.
They reached the cave, and George tried to step past the stream into the area of cold death. Over and over again, George tried to force himself forward until he was retching on his hands and knees, his face pale and his breathing shallow and fast.
“Is there more?” he asked hoarsely.
The hound led George on to the place where the gray edge was seeping outward.
The humans moved slowly. The bear could hear their feet dragging through the dirt, and he and the hound had to stop many times to let the humans rest.
There seemed to be a taste of death in the air even some distance away, and the bear could see fallen animals scattered ahead, touched by enough of the cold to succumb to it, though the plants were not fully gray here.
The bear’s breath came shallow and quick. This was his home. He had no kingdom anymore but this one, no castle but his cave. And for so long he had watched over this place, in his own way.
Now it was all disintegrating. Soon the remaining animals would be fleeing this forest and it would be deserted. The humans would encroach yet further here, and it would be as if this place, his place, never was.
“Oh,” Prince George groaned, before they had even come within eyesight of the stream where the hound had seen the cat man, where the bear had first tasted the cold death, and where it was now fully black as ashes.
Princess Marit touched the prince’s arm. “No need to go farther,” she warned him.
George shook his head. Sweat streamed down his face. He struggled away from her and, bent over, moved forward.
The bear realized now that Marit might have known better than anyone why she would be needed here, though she had no magic of her own.
“Please!” she called after the prince. “Come back!”
George nearly tripped over a carcass.
Then, in horror, the bear saw it melting into the ground. Before his eyes, he could see the disintegration of one tiny squirrel’s body as it became indistinguishable from the other bodies around it, falling into the gray deadness all around.
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