The Princess and the Wolf (The Princess and the Hound)

by Mette Ivie Harrison

  Golda shook her head. That was absurd. She changed back into a wolf. This was her proper form, surely. Then she changed again. She was only making herself more confused. She looked down at her hands, at her feet, at her hairless skin.

  “King George has the animal magic, and he has shown signs of the great magic, as well, though he has not used it often, and he does not change his own form,” said the older man. “It must have passed to you in greater strength. Or perhaps it is only because you have practiced with it more at a young age, and when he was a prince, King George was forbidden the use of his magic.”

  “I am a wolf,” said Golda. Her jaw was clenched and she tried to change herself back into that form yet again, to prove to them that it was the right one. She only played at being human. It was no more than that. It was forbidden disobedience, the same that all young wolves did when their parents told them what was good for them.

  But she could not change herself. Not even a finger.

  She had never experienced this before. Oh, perhaps when she was younger, she had not known how to change herself from wolf to human and she could not take any other forms. But she growled and tried again. And again.

  She leaped forward and tried to change herself in midair, and landed on all fours—human fours. Her human hands were bruised and bloody, but she did not feel the pain. She only felt the frustration.

  “What did you do to me?” she demanded of Hans. “You have used some magic to keep me human.”

  He held up his hands. “I swear to you, I did nothing.”

  She turned to the older man. “Then it is you. You speak in the language of wolves. You have other magic, as well. Give me back my wolf skin and let me go. Or I will use my teeth on you.” She grimaced to show her teeth, only realizing as she did so that it was not as effective when she was a human. Human teeth were blunt and dull, and not meant to tear flesh.

  “I cannot,” said the older man. He stared at her more closely, and there was a strange smile on his face, as if he would be happy even if she did kill him, happy at that moment because he had seen her.

  “I am no princess,” she said again.

  “That is what he taught you. But there is another life waiting for you. Where you may take human shape without fear, and wolf shape without embarrassment.”

  It was enough for Golda to consider. Then she remembered what her father had told her of humans. “Humans lie,” she said. “You are lying to me now.”

  “I am not. Smell me.” He stepped closer and bent his head in submission. “You will smell a lie on me, as you can smell it on any other animal.”

  Golda approached him. She had smelled him before. He had smelled well enough, for a human. Not of fire and scorched meat, nor of mold and death. She took note of him now, and thought he smelled of forest, of running water, and fresh grass and sweat. And something more, something that was familiar to her, though she could not place where it came from.

  He held out his hand. There was a little piece of cloth on it. Human clothing of some kind.

  She leaned closer to it, allowing it to touch her nose.

  She remembered walls, and glass windows. A bed and a blanket. A human voice, singing to her lullabies in a rough voice, off-key but with love. A woman’s voice.

  And she remembered animals all around her.

  The sound of the singing woman bursting into tears.

  The touch of a pig snout on her arm. The sensation of teeth against the skin of her neck. The feeling of being lifted, and carried away. Out into the woods.

  She belonged in the woods. The blue wolf told her she did. He told her that he was her father, as well.

  She was a wolf.

  She forgot about the woman, and the human things.

  But now they were back with her, in a way that she could not deny them.

  “What is that?” she asked, pointing at the cloth.

  “It is a stocking. A human baby’s stocking. Your stocking, saved from when you were stolen, so long ago.”

  She wanted to throw it down, to run from it, to forget the pain that came with memory and loss.

  But she could not bear to see it on the forest floor, to see the white of the human cloth marred with dirt.

  “Princess Ina, that was your name,” said the older man.

  “Ina,” she said, testing out the name. It felt wrong. It felt too grand for her, even without the title.

  “Let me take you home,” said the older man. His face was red with hope.

  She felt wet tears on her face. She had not wept often, as a wolf. Father did not like weeping. He would not speak to her if she wept. He said it was a human thing to do, that wolves did not weep. Though she had seen it happen, even in the wild, when they were in great pain.

  “You look so much like him. The roundness of your face. The set of your nose and mouth. But your eyes, those are your mother’s. The eyes of a woman who knows what it is like to be a wild creature.”

  “He lied to me,” she said. “Like a human lied. All this time, he was lying. And I did not smell it.”

  “He is very good at it. He has spent years learning to be like humans, so that he could defeat them,” said Hans.

  “I should have known.” She thought of the story he had told her, of the other memories he had taken from her, simply by telling her that they were not so. “I should have questioned him. I should have done something against him.” Suddenly, the thought of her father’s plans against humans made her sick. But should it not have happened before? Should she not have cared about the deaths of so many creatures, whatever their form?

  “He has a power to speak,” said Hans.

  She stomped her foot in frustration. “I have seen him do it to others. To animals and humans. I should have known he did it to me. I should have known he did not love me.” That was the most humiliating of all, that she had believed she was special to him. But she was not. He had used her. No doubt he had his own plans for her in the end, when all the other humans were gone. He could not possibly think of her as his daughter, or even as a wolf. To him, she must be the last human who would die.

  “Your whole life has been spent with him,” said Hans.

  “My whole life—useless,” she spat out. “A waste. I am nothing.”

  “No. You are a princess,” said the older man. “And I have spent my whole life looking for you.”

  “How disappointed you must be,” said Golda—no, it was Ina now. “Now that you see me.”

  “I am not disappointed,” said the older man. “And I never will be.”

  Ina snorted. She tried to make it sound as wolf-like as possible, but without a wolf’s nose, it came out very human indeed. She hated the sound.

  “Ina. It is a better name for you,” said Hans. “Princess Ina.”

  She shook her head. “How can I be a princess? I know nothing about castles or kingdoms. I could not even sit and eat at a table like other humans. I have never worn anything but some leaves woven together in mockery of human clothing. I do not know how to speak or what words to say.”

  “You speak very well,” said the older man. “And if you are afraid of being a princess, I can only tell you that you are very like your father in that. He did not want to be a prince and he did not want to be a king. Not wanting it was part of what made him good at it, in fact.”

  It was not what Ina wanted to hear. “I am not like him. How can I be? I don’t even know what he looks like. I have never spent a moment in his presence.” She had heard a woman’s voice, but never a man’s. What kind of father was that, who had never bothered to see her? It made her angry to think of it, that the Olde Wolf had been a better father than her true one, this king. If he was a good king, then it had made him a bad father.

  “He loves you, even so. He has always loved you. You cannot know how it hurt him—how it hurt all of us, but especially him—for you to be gone. It was my duty to search for you, as a servant of the king. But it was because I loved him that I loved you.” The older man
looked away from her as he said this, as if he had revealed a vulnerable side of himself and was now trying to hide it from a creature who might attack there.

  “I will be a human, but I will not be a princess. Not unless I decide that is what I wish to be,” said Ina.

  The older man took a breath and let it out noisily. “I would not want anything else. Nor would he. Only what you wish for, nothing more or less.”

  Ina nodded; she had won this battle. She felt heavy at heart, and empty at the same time. If she did not trust the Olde Wolf anymore, how much less should she trust herself and her own feelings?

  “There are worse things to be than a princess,” said Hans.

  “Such as what?” asked Ina, who did not think that Hans had anything to teach her.

  He spoke slowly then, each word forced out of his mouth one at a time, like a fish freed from a hook, and not without wounds. “You could be a coward who has spent his whole life in search of the creature who frightens him beyond words. Like me.”

  It was said so baldly that Ina’s well of self-pity seemed to suddenly dry up. She stared at Hans. She felt foolishly short-sighted. Her own pain was not the only thing in the world that mattered. There were others who had been hurt here. She had a responsibility to them.

  And also—to Father, to the Olde Wolf, or whatever name he chose to go by. He had deceived her and hurt her. Would she simply let him get away with it? No, a true wolf would never do that. A true wolf would turn and fight back.

  So would she.

  “I am sorry,” she said softly. “Tell me what you wish me to do now.” She needed help to see every step of the way. If they had asked her to chase down a rabbit or sniff out a grouse’s tracks, she could have done that easily. If they had asked her to spy on humans in a village or on a trail near the forest, she would have needed no instruction.

  “Come with us to the castle,” said the older man.

  “But he is there. My father. Lord Morlieb. The Olde Wolf, I mean,” she said.

  “And your true father and mother, as well. King George and Queen Marit.”

  So, she would have to face them all at once. She lifted the stocking gently to her face and sniffed it again. That would be her reminder of who she was, and what was real.

  “First, I think she will need a gown. I did not think to bring her one,” said the older man.

  “Nor I,” said Hans, and blushed. Now he was ashamed of her body, though before he had not seemed even to notice it. No more than he would notice that a wolf did not wear a gown.

  Ina turned herself into a wolf without hesitation now. But it was different, the feeling of wearing a wolf form. Now she knew that it was not her true form. She could take it so long as she admitted that. She wondered if a part of her had done that every time she had changed back from human to wolf.

  She barked, “It will be faster this way.”

  The older man turned back to pick up the fallen stocking, and placed it in a pocket in his coat.

  Chapter Seventeen: Dagmar

  Dagmar followed True out to the stables when she had a chance. She had to wait until Lord Morlieb had left her, then went wrapped in a cloak to disguise herself.

  “True?” she called when there were no other guards or humans about. She had been to the stables before, but the smell of them had changed now. The sounds within were foreign to her. The horses reacted to her differently, the smell of her making them snort and whinny at her in warning.

  Lord Morlieb had been here, as well. Whatever he had done to the horses, it had made them angry at humans. She could see that in the flare of nostrils as she passed by. They did not look at her eagerly, hoping for hay or a bit of a treat from the kitchens. They did not seem to even recognize her as a friend.

  She went to her own horse, the one her father had given to her when she reached her full height. “Pakira,” she said, approaching slowly.

  The blood-red mare held back in the darkness, only her eyes showing white light.

  “Pakira. It is Dagmar. Tell me you know me,” she said. She had thought the castle was bad, where there was no knowing if one face or another was loyal or not. Here, it was worse because she had expected more.

  The horse threw its head back and flashed its eyes at her.

  “Pakira, please,” she said. She put a hand out.

  She felt the twitch of the mare’s muscles under her hand, and then the horse went back on two legs and kicked at Dagmar’s face.

  Dagmar cried out in pain, then fell to the wooden floor. She could feel something dripping down her cheeks, but she was more hurt by Pakira’s change than she was by the wound. She touched her face and could feel the cut across her cheek, but the bones itself was undamaged. She wiped at the blood and looked back to Pakira.

  The horse had fallen backward against the stall and had broken her left hind leg. She was making a terrible noise, a sound of fear and pain that Dagmar had never heard before and hoped never to hear again.

  Of all the animals used by humans, horses were the animals who were least tame, according to her father. King George had told her that horses never lost their own language, nor spoke in the language of humans, though they learned to understand it. But this did not protect them from Lord Morlieb’s power. Clearly, it worked on both wild and domesticated animals.

  Dagmar could not speak in the language of horses, but she began to whisper calming sounds to Pakira. She knelt down and inched forward, as Pakira stopped thrashing because she had lost her strength.

  She touched Pakira’s muzzle and the horse bit her hand. She drew back, no longer sure if the wet on her face was tears or blood, or the throb in her head from pain or sorrow. She did not think about what she was saying. It was nothing she had studied, but came out of a deep place in herself where her love of the horse lived. She wanted only to help it, but could not unless they were both calm.

  The sounds were nonsense, but the more she said them, the heavier the lids of Pakira’s eyes seemed, until at last they were closed. Her breath came as rapidly as before, and her sides still heaved, but when Dagmar put a hand on her a third time, the horse did not flinch.

  Dagmar rubbed her up and down, from withers to flanks, softly at first, and then massaging the muscles more deeply. She did not stop her sounds throughout, but found they were almost like a song. There was a rhythm to them, and a poetry, even if there was no music.

  At last, Dagmar dared to touch the broken leg. It was bad, and Dagmar had no magic to heal the wound. She did not think even King George himself could do that with his magic. The horse would have to stay in a splint, like a human in a cast, until it healed naturally, for weeks. Or it would have to be put down.

  Dagmar could not bear the thought of her horse being killed.

  “You will listen to me,” she said. “You can do what is necessary to be healed. And then we will go out riding again. Everything will be well then. Lord Morlieb will be gone. It will all be as it was before.”

  Pakira’s eyes opened as Dagmar spoke, and the longer she went on, the more frantic the horse’s movements became. She snorted and pulled away from Dagmar’s touch, then tried to stand on the leg.

  It was only when Dagmar stopped trying to speak in words and went back to the soft utterances of calm that the horse settled again. This time, it seemed to sleep for a short time, despite the pain that it must have felt in its leg. Dagmar was surprised, but pleased.

  She pulled away slowly, waiting after every step to make sure that Pakira had not woken and begun to fret once more.

  When she reached the stall door, she closed it without making a sound, then locked it. She leaned against the wood and closed her eyes, breathing deeply. She felt the strain of kneeling so close to Pakira all up and down her legs. She had never been so tired in her life.

  I’ve been a spoiled princess, she thought. All her life, other people had done these things for her. Now at last, she was learning what it might have been like for if she had not been made into a princess, if she had live
d the life she had been born to live.

  She wandered through the stables and found two other horses who had not yet fled. The first one, a gelding, was her mother’s horse, when she rode, which was not often. She preferred to hunt on her own legs, and to eat the meat she caught fresh, in the forest, cooked over a fire. The horses did not like this, and so the only time Queen Marit rode a horse was when she was on parade.

  The gelding was in the corner of its stall, whinnying to itself. When Dagmar approached it, it shivered but did not rear up. She saw a few moments later that it had a terrible gash on its side, which appeared to have come from another horse. She put a hand out and began to murmur the same nonsense words, and this horse, too, fell asleep.

  The other horse Dagmar calmed was an old mare that was kept around because she was useful in training younger horses. She had given birth to some ten of the horses who were currently in the stables, but was too old for that now. In fact, if Dagmar remember correctly, she was Pakira’s mother, though Pakira took more after her father in looks and size.

  This small mare was knocking her head against the door of the stall again and again, as if she could not stop. It was only when Dagmar had whispered to her for several minutes on end that she stopped and looked into Dagmar’s eyes.

  Dagmar saw that there was a hint of madness there and she did not think she could cure that. But the soothing sounds she made at least put it at bay.

  In the morning, someone would have to come and put the mare down, but Dagmar could not bear to do it herself. Dagmar stayed with Pakira through the long night, but when dawn came, she heard the sounds of hounds barking nearby and went to quiet them, as well.

  They were all held together in one room, and Dagmar was tired enough that she opened the door without thinking of the consequences. The hounds leaped at her and when they had knocked her down, they began by licking at the crusted blood on her face. She did not know how much more they would have done to her because she began to murmur to herself. She did it more for her own sake than for theirs, but the reaction in the hounds was immediate and startling.