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

by Mette Ivie Harrison

  Chapter Twenty-nine: Ina

  Ina pulled away from Hans, awake again. Where was the Olde Wolf?

  “Be still. Be careful,” Hans told her.

  She watched as Princess Dagmar stood before the army of animals and whispered peace magic to them. They melted slowly away.

  Once they were gone, Queen Marit was able to prevail upon two of the humans who got to their feet after the death of the Olde Wolf to help get Captain Henry into the castle so that a physician could be called. He woke up while being carried, groaned in pain, and then demanded to be set down.

  “Don’t listen to him,” said Queen Marit.

  But the humans were too easy to sway in their opinions after the Olde Wolf’s magic, and they did what Captain Henry told them to do.

  “The king first,” said the captain. “He must be taken within before me. Or it would be a terrible scandal.”

  “The king is dead,” said Queen Marit soberly. “There is nothing that can be done for him now by carrying him to the castle. But if you are not helped soon, your wound will go putrid and fill with pus and you will die.”

  “It is not your fault. None of this is your fault,” said Hans.

  “Isn’t it?” She had been fooled by the Olde Wolf into helping him. Without stealing her magic, he would never have been able to do so much against her father and his kingdom. If she had seen the truth—if she had turned against him herself—she might have returned home happily, and lived with both of her parents as a princess.

  And now others were dying, as well. So many. Not only animals, but humans.

  “He found you. You came back with him. That was all he wanted, his whole life,” said Hans.

  She knew he meant Captain Henry, but she still could not bear to see the pain in the man’s eyes. All his effort seemed for naught. The king had never had her as his daughter again.

  Captain Henry’s eyes closed and his face went blank, as if he had given up a great deal of pain suddenly. “And would my death be such a terrible thing?” he asked the queen.

  “Yes,” she said firmly. She held tightly to his arm and shook it. “Yes. Do not dishonor his memory by letting yourself die for no reason. You know that he would chastise you for it. He stood for life, of all kinds. “

  “And I killed him.”

  Ina felt a jolt at that. It was for her that the king had died, surely.

  “You did not kill him,” insisted the queen. “The Olde Wolf killed him. You did everything to help him live, and more importantly, Henry you brought him the daughter that he had given up hope looking for. That would have mattered to him more than anything else.”

  “He never saw her,” said Captain Henry in a hoarse whisper.

  He would not look at her. Ina wished he would only look at her and tell her who she was again. She felt as if she might easily forget. It was all so new to her. Was this really her mother, this woman who had not touched her or sniffed at her? Was this castle supposed to be her home?

  The queen twisted her lips. “You are right,” she said to the captain. “If you had found her a day before, he would have seen her first and then died for her. But the result would have been the same for him. The only difference is that now you must live with that burden on your head. And if I know you, Henry, you will live well. You will make sure that she is treated as her father would have wanted it. If you die, then who will protect her as a princess, eh?”

  Captain Henry’s eyes at last strayed to Ina.

  She refused to allow herself to look away. Hans was holding her hand in his, and it was all that kept her upright, she thought. She wished she was still unconscious. Or dead. It would be so much easier.

  The captain swallowed his pain and his pride and submitted at last to being taken into the castle.

  Ina felt a pang of loss as the queen followed the captain inside, but she came back out in only a few moments. Still, she did not come to Ina.

  She went back to the king, touched him once on the forehead with a kiss from her hand, and then stood tall again.

  “Princess Ina,” she said, finally speaking to her daughter for the first time.

  Ina stared at her with wide eyes. She had rather face the Olde Wolf again a hundred times than do this. What did this woman expect of her? What would she have to change about herself? She knew nothing about being a princess. She was only just learning that she as human.

  “She will not hurt you. She loves you,” said Hans softly at her side. He was encouraging, but he did not push her forward.

  “She does not know me. She does not know all that I have done.”

  “All that he forced you to do,” Hans reminded her.

  “But I did it. I did not know what he was, but I thought I loved him. I did what I did willingly.”

  “If you did it without full knowledge, then it was not willingly,” said Hans.

  She looked at him once, her eyes full of pain.

  “And you have the great magic. Your father’s magic. You have tried to fix what mistakes you have made. Surely she will see how good you are, as I do.”

  “Will she?” said Ina, and looked at Hans. How could he see anything good in her, after all this?

  But his expression was more than kind. He looked at her as if she were a new creature completely, never seen before. As if she was worth all the darkness he had taken into himself.

  It was still there. Ina could sense it, though not as clearly as he did. He twisted and jerked frequently, but he stayed at her side.

  Chapter Thirty: Hans

  Hans tried to press the darkness smaller and smaller as Ina moved toward the queen and he followed. There was no more grace in her step, nothing of the golden she-wolf left in her. He wondered if she did that consciously, to put that part of her life away from her, or if it would come back when she was over this difficulty.

  Queen Marit was a few hairs taller than her daughter, when they stood side by side. Ina looked more like her father than her mother, though there was something in the way that she held her head, and the swiftness of her movements that was all wolf, in Hans’s estimation.

  The queen did not try to touch her. She looked at her straight in the eye. “It is good to meet you at last.”

  Hans had thought that she would throw herself on her daughter in weeping and exultation, and that is likely what Ina thought, as well. When it did not happen, the newly rediscovered princess relaxed and looked at the queen differently.

  Now she is wondering if the queen loves her, thought Hans.

  But Hans could see she did. It was in the way the queen arched toward her daughter, and the way that she hid the king’s dead body with her own, so that the princess did not have to stare at it. It was in the way that she paid full attention to her daughter, though they were on a battlefield with a thousand animals that could kill any of them if they broke through the other princess’s wall of magic.

  “I never knew that you existed,” said Ina.

  “Of course you didn’t.”

  “He told me that he was my father.”

  “And you believed him all this time, and tried to be like him, as a girl will try to please her father.”

  “But he did terrible things. I should have seen. I should have known.”

  “You know now. You can begin again,” said the queen.

  Hans admired the way that she met the truth squarely, refusing to pretend that Ina had done everything well, or that she would be forgiven immediately. She would have to prove herself, to the queen in part, but most especially to the rest of the kingdom.

  “I don’t know what to do. It seems too much.”

  Now the queen did touch her, but only on one shoulder, and with the gentlest of brushes with her hand. “It is always that way. We always feel too small, and sometimes we are. But other times we rise to become larger than we thought possible. That is why we live, for those moments, though we never know if they will be the one or the other.”

  “You are very wise,” said Ina.

 
The queen laughed at this. “I think that is only another way of saying that you have no idea what I mean.”

  Ina grew red-faced, and turned to Hans.

  “Now is the time for bravery,” he whispered to her, still struggling with the darkness that he dared not let out. Not now that the Olde Wolf had been defeated. But he did not know how much longer he could stay here, among these people, without infecting them. The darkness might burst out of him at any moment. He should kill himself. There was no longer any hope of simply cutting off a hand to get rid of it.

  Ina clenched her jaw and then faced her mother again. “I have always lived as a wolf,” she said.

  The queen waved at her human shape. “But you must have spent some time as a human.”

  “In secret. And never with other humans. I know nothing about humans. And even less about royal humans,” Ina admitted softly.

  “You know more than you think. We are not so different from the animals you have met. There are men who are as evil as the Olde Wolf there, though they may not have as much magic as he does and their plans are not as grand.”

  Ina sighed.

  “Speak to her,” Hans encouraged. “Tell her the truth.” The queen seemed to wish for it, though it was not a common trait in humans.

  He would see this one last thing done properly, and then he would go.

  “I could not live in a castle. I love the forest, the wild, the scent of water in the air, the feel of thunder in the ground beneath my feet,” said Ina.

  “I know that world, as well. You could leave the castle and go out into the forest as often as you want. Your father did. Less as he grew older, but he had the animal magic, as well. He had to go out into the woods from time to time, to keep himself safe.”

  “You do not understand,” said Ina, making a sound of frustration that was more wolf than human. Hans felt a prickle of unease for her.

  She had to stay here. She could not go back to the forest. This was where she belonged. Returning her here had to be the recompense for all he had lost. Whatever happened to him now, he would have the satisfaction of knowing that Ina was happy, and home again.

  “I can be human for a few hours in a day. But to be human all the time, to be only a wolf a few hours in a day. Or in a week. I could not do that. I am too changed. I am not the princess you thought I would be, when you give birth to me,” she said.

  The queen looked stricken.

  Ina shook her head. “I am sorry,” she added.

  “Perhaps you could try,” the queen offered.

  “Yes,” said Hans. “Please try.”

  But Ina was immune to their words. She shook her head. “Not yet. I may find I wish to come back here and see you frequently. But I cannot stay now. It would feel like a prison. A punishment. I have seen the Olde Wolf punish animals, and that is how he did it. He forced them to do what was unnatural, and kept them from the wild.”

  “But you are not an animal,” Hans insisted.

  “Am I not?” said Ina. “Then I am not entirely human, either. Not anymore.”

  “I would not wish to punish you,” said the queen softly.

  The two women were hurting each other.

  “Please, let me go,” said Ina. “Hans will take care of me.” She nodded to him.

  And suddenly Hans knew what he would do. He would not go back to the Order. He would stay with Ina. And if the darkness came out of him, she would know what to do with it. She would protect the world from him, as she wished she had done with the Olde Wolf. And he would be with her.

  “You have another daughter,” Hans said, nodding to the princess who stood near the animals. “She is deserving. She is used to the life of a princess. She is ready to rule in her father’s place, I think. You would not want to take that from her.”

  “Yes, but—” said the queen. Then she stopped and looked at her daughter. There was love in her eyes. She looked back at Ina. “You were born Ina Dagmar.”

  “But now I am only Ina.”

  The queen nodded. “You must do what you must,” she said. “But please, come to me when you can. I would like to get to know you better. As you are now, not as I had imagined you would be. I think that there are always surprises for a parent. But some surprises are larger than others, and a good parent must learn to embrace them.”

  Ina hesitated, but without Hans’s prompting, she stepped forward and leaned into her mother’s chest. It was an uncomfortable embrace, with neither fully touching the other, and a stiffness in both. But it was a beginning.

  Hans thought he would take Ina away then, but she bent down to look at her father’s body. Strangely, she seemed more able to touch him, dead, than she had been with her mother, living. She was not afraid of death as humans were taught to be, though. Living in the forest, she had become used to it, and was used to seeing animals after they had passed their magic onto the forest.

  “He was a good man, and a good father,” said the queen.

  But Ina was making her own investigation. She sniffed at him. “He has both human and animal on him,” she said. “But more human. And his hands are still callused. He must have worked outside often.”

  “He was never afraid of laboring with his people.”

  “There is no trace of a crown on his forehead.”

  The queen smiled at this. “He hated that crown of his father’s and took it off every chance he got. He said he did not want it imprinted on his head so that he was known as king wherever he went.”

  “So he was used to disguise,” said Ina.

  “He did not think of it as a disguise. He thought of it as truth. Being king was not something inside of him. It was a role he filled, to help others. But he was George, simply George, to the heart.”

  “He must have known he could not kill the Olde Wolf,” said Ina.

  “He did many impossible things,” said the queen. “And found out more than once that they were not impossible, after all.”

  Ina rose, but kept her eyes on the king.

  Hans thought of the kingdoms he had already seen, and could show her. But perhaps they would discover new kingdoms together.

  “That one is human, I think,” said True, the hound. He pointed out into the sea of animals. “Look at the way that he lifts his hooves, as if they were hands.”

  Hans started in surprise to realize he was quite correct, though it had been only a guess. One of the animals there was human, and was trapped in the form by the Olde Wolf’s death. He should have been the one to notice such things himself. That was what he had been born to do.

  “Can she change him” asked True.

  “Ina?” asked Hans. He led the way, and after that, he took charge of finding those humans the Olde Wolf had transformed into animals. Ina seemed to have no trouble changing them back to themselves, though they did not always thank her. Some were angry and spat at her in the language of the animals they had been, and fled to the forest.

  Others were dazed and stumbled about among the animals, unsure where to go. True came forward and helped these to the queen, who sent them into the castle. She promised she would care for them until they remembered their names and places, or if not, that they would have work in the castle so long as they lived.

  When all of the humans had been changed, Hans and Ina were both exhausted. They slept outside the castle, despite the queen’s protests, and Hans told Ina quietly about the darkness he was no longer sure he could hold within him.

  “I know. I can feel it, too. I will make sure that it does not harm anyone, animal or human. Trust me,” she said.

  Hans could think of no one he could trust more.

  Chapter Thirty-one: Dagmar

  In the morning, Ina went into the castle for breakfast, though Hans remained outside. Across the table in the dining hall, the two princesses eyed each other warily.

  True sat by Dagmar as she ate. Her hands trembled.

  “When did you discover this magic?” asked the queen.

  “Peace magic,” murmured
True.

  “Yes, that is a good name for it,” said Dagmar, staring at True.

  He blushed at the stare, and turned away.

  “As to when, Mother, it was only this morning,” said Dagmar. “In the dark of night, in the stables.”

  “Ah. It is our fault you did not know of it earlier. We should have thought to test you. We should have had animals around you more often.”

  “Mother,” Dagmar said, stopping her with a hand. “You and Father were the best parents I could have hoped for. I found my magic on my own, and that is as it should be. Please do not ruin my memory of him by giving me regrets I never had.”

  That made the queen turn white and go silent.

  “I love you. I loved him. I was happy with my life here, as a princess. But a part of me always wondered if I belonged. I will not hold it against you if you wish for her to be the princess now. I will step aside, and gladly go back to the village, if that is what you wish.”

  “But—” sad the queen.

  Dagmar was weeping, and True stood at her side, a hand on her back. “Please do not tell me I can stay here as her lady. I do not think I could do that. To see her in my life, with you.”

  “You would never be anything but my daughter,” said the queen. “And a princess. How could two princesses be bad for a kingdom that has just lost its king?”

  Dagmar looked up at her, her lips trembling. “Then she is planning to stay here in the castle? To take up her role as princess?”

  The queen shook her head. “I would like her to, but she says she is too used to being a wolf and she will go into the forest and live there. She will only come back to visit us now and again.” She was in pain, as well.

  “But who will rule, then?” asked Dagmar. Now that her father was dead, it needed to be clear who would take his place.

  The queen looked at Dagmar. “You have always been the true princess,” she said. “However you came into our lives.”

  Dagmar and the queen embraced then, and there was no hesitation. They wept and laughed and told stories of the king.