The Princess and the Hound (3 page)

The queen did not answer the houndmaster, but she went to George, took his hand in hers once more, and led him not to the stables this time but out to the forest that lay beyond the castle. It was a long walk for a five-year-old’s short legs, but she did not offer to carry him, and she did not coax him to hurry. They went at his pace, and he walked faster when he smelled the forest and had the first taste of its sounds.

The animals of the forest were even louder than the horses in their anticipation, and each group had a language of its own that George could learn easily. His mother went from one to the next, teaching George a few words at a time. It was so exhilarating that he did not think of anything else until she said it was time for them to go home.

She promised him that they would come back many times and speak with these animals. She also promised him that there was a deeper, darker forest with animals in it he could not imagine, of such great power and beauty that he would weep when he saw them. She would take him there someday soon, when he was ready.

But by then it was cold and almost dark, and George shivered against her as they headed away from the forest.

“Can I come back here alone?” George asked. He did not know of this forest his mother spoke of, and the way she looked when she thought of it made him unsure he wanted to go at all.

“When you are older,” said his mother.

George began to grow tired and stumbled over his feet. Finally, his mother picked him up in her arms and carried him flung over her shoulder as if he were much, much younger. He did not wake until he was snug in his own bed once more and his mother was kissing him good night.

“Wait,” he said sleepily.

She put her hand to his cheek. “Yes?”

“Why do the hounds stop speaking?” he asked.

“Because they are with us so much, I suppose,” said his mother. “They lose themselves.”

“But not the horses,” said George, struggling to make sense of it. After all, the horses were with humans just as much as hounds, weren’t they?

But his mother shook her head and sighed. “I don’t know.” Then her eyes twinkled. “Perhaps it is because horses are simply more obstinate than any other creature.”

George could believe that. He had never met a horse that could be made into a pet. But—

“What if I brought home a rabbit?” he asked, thinking back to the feel of the little creatures against his chest, the way they nibbled at each other and chided
him without restraint. They did not know he was a prince, and they did not care.

He could love them for that alone.

His mother shook her head, and George had the sense that there were a great many stories she could tell on the subject. But for now all she said was: “You would not want to do that.”

George thought of poor Teeth, who had become only what he had thought his master wanted. Then he shook his head in fervent agreement.

“No,” he said. “I wouldn’t want that.” And after a long while, his mother standing by the door to watch him, he went to sleep.

He dreamed of pup words and woke crying, to find he was alone.

O
NE NIGHT, WHEN
his mother came to tuck him into bed, as she often did, George demanded a story. She often told him stories about the kingdom of Kendel, such as the tale of King Richon and the wild man. Or stories from even farther back in time, about the founding of Kendel, how it had been torn from Sarrey by the great hero Alan, King Richon’s great-great-great-grandfather. Other fiefdoms or principalities had come and gone with good or bad leaders. But Sarrey had remained because of the ruthlessness of Sarrey’s kings. And Kendel had its kind ones.

For this night the queen told about George’s father’s father, King Taran, who had been known as such a great warrior that no one had dared challenge him. Even when he was seventy years old and near blind, he had struck a man through the heart when on judgment day
the man’s case had gone against him.

“Was my father there?” asked George, remembering how his father had told him that when he was older, he would come to judgment day as well.

“He was indeed,” said his mother.

George could only imagine his father’s watching with no expression on his face, as stalwart as he was now. “Was he afraid?” he asked, knowing that he himself would have been.

“He was afraid of being afraid,” said his mother.

When George’s face twisted in confusion, she laughed gently. “With a warrior for a father, he knew that he had much to live up to. He thought he must be like his father.”

George nodded.

“But your father has had to find his own way, and it has been a difficult path for him.”

George saw his mother’s face soften, as it always did when she talked about his father. He never understood it. How could she feel like that about a man George found as terrifying as any soldier he had ever seen?

“I think that I admire him most for his fairness. At the beginning of his reign some saw him as weak, but he has never been that.” Her voice was fierce. “He is so deep I sometimes wonder if I will ever come to the end of him.”

But George did not like to hear about how much his mother loved his father. He wanted her to love only him. And perhaps horses and other animals, as he did, but no more than that.

So he said, “Tell me a story about animals. Please!”

His mother thought for a few moments. “Once there was a young girl,” she said, winking at George so he understood it was a story about her.

“And she loved animals. Her father was a traveling man, who did odd jobs here and there. He never stayed in any place more than a week or two, and he never spoke a word about her mother. She knew she must have had one once. All children had mothers, living or dead. Even the animals had mothers. But where hers was, what she had looked like, and what had happened to her, the girl could only guess at.”

Thinking of the little girl his mother had been, George felt sorry for her. To have no mother, to have only a father? That would be the worst life he could imagine.

“Sometimes her father was asked to shoe a horse or to see to an ailing dog. He was so good at everything else he did, seeming to find as much ease in cutting wood for a new table as he did in making a dinner of stone soup or opening the neck of a dammed stream, that the girl believed he could do anything. Yet he would always refuse.

“‘Why?’ the girl asked when she had been given the pick of the litter among a sow’s piglets by a boy she had befriended, a boy with a wild eye whom others shunned.

“Her father would not let her take it, nor would he give her any reason for his response.

“She wept. She pouted. She begged and pleaded. All
to no avail. He would have nothing to do with animals.

“After that, the girl watched her father carefully. She noticed that whenever there was a horse nearby, he held his shoulders straighter and kept his head turned to the side. Yet he did this before the girl had any knowledge of the horse. Before it could be seen or heard.

“And once, when the girl came across a dying otter by the bank of a deep, cold stream, she saw her father weeping. His hands twitched, and he made a strange sound in his throat, one that seemed to match the sound the otter made in return.

“‘Come away from there,’ he said then.

“But when the girl was poking at the fire that night, her father told her the story of a male otter that had died saving the lives of his mate and children from a wolf. There was no question in the girl’s mind that her father was telling the story of the otter they had seen, that he knew the story just from the sight of him or perhaps from the one word that had gone between them.

“She had always thought that her father hated animals, but now she began to see the ways in which he made sure that any ailing animal he had been asked to cure got the treatment it needed. He would talk in a roundabout way to the owner or to another, or he would sneak off himself at darkest night, when he thought the girl was asleep.

“The girl followed him when she could, and she began to learn to speak to animals as he did. Never
when he could hear her. Never when she could be seen by others, but always in secret.”

As she had taught him to speak to animals, George thought.

“The girl had never thought that there were any others like her or her father. Until the day came that they found a man in the woods who was speaking to his horse. They had come upon him so quietly that he had not heard them. But he started at the first sight of the girl and went very pale at seeing her father.

“The girl watched as her father put a hand on the horse and spoke a single word of peace to him. Then he nodded and went on.

“The girl asked her father if he had met any others like them. Her father, as always, would say nothing to her on the subject.

“Or he tried to. But she bothered him so much that at last he told the tale of King Richon and the wild man.”

George knew that tale. His mother had told it to him long before.

“‘Can you do that too?’ she asked, in surprise and with a little fear.

“Her father shuddered and said only, ‘That is the great gift that very few have. And certainly not I.’

“‘And me?’ she asked.

“He looked at her and only shook his head. ‘I do not know. I do not believe so.’ After that he was silent on the matter.

“The next day, when she came back from picking berries, her father was gone. She hurried to the village and found him tied to a stake. His body had been burned badly, but she recognized the clothing he had been wearing.

“Weeping with horror, she turned around and saw the man her father and she had seen, the one talking to his horse. With his eyes the man seemed to beg forgiveness. His tongue had been cut out, but he could speak with something like the words of an owl by moving his lips like a beak. She made out at last: ‘My life if I gave up another of my kind. That is always the trade. But your father would not give you up. Not even for his life.’

“The girl went away and made her own life. She knew the danger of loving animals, but her only compromise was caution, especially of those who might hear her and betray her, as her father had been betrayed.

“As she grew, she discovered other dangers. There were people who came into villages and promised they would find those with animal magic. And the promise always came true, whether the girl had heard animal language spoken by the accused or not. When the promise maker left, it was always with the stench of a great bonfire following behind.

“She told herself to look away, and to go on. But she grew in her ability with horses, her favorite of all the tame animals, for they were as stubborn as she was in her heart.

“One day she was asked to come to the king’s stables,
to take care of his fine horses. And there she stayed.” She looked at George.

He thought how strange it was that she had told her life history without ever speaking of herself. Always “the girl.”

“But what of the magic?” he asked in a whisper. He wanted to know more about it, and wasn’t his mother the one to tell him?

Her eyes went a little distant, more like his father’s than he liked. Was she angry with him?

Then she said, “Now and again I have heard bits and pieces. But I have never known for certain if it came from those who knew the truth.”

“Knew the truth” instead of “had the magic.” She had said his father was deep, but it was true of her too. Did his father even know she had the magic?

“There is the tale of the turtle and the snake,” she said. “It begins with the turtle challenging the snake to a race in the water. And ends with the turtle snapping the snake into his jaws and holding tight even as the snake thrashes about and transforms from fish to shark to human.”

George swallowed hard.

“There is the tale of the worm’s egg, in which an eagle discovers in her nest a large and unround egg, speckled and throbbing. She sits on it with the others, but when it hatches, she discovers a wormlike creature, without any feathers and with little fur, with eyes large and blinking. She thinks to feed it to her children for
lunch, for the creature seems little good for anything else. But then the strange pale thing speaks in the eagle’s language. She still cannot bear to see it in her nest, but instead of feeding it to her younglings, she pushes it out of the nest, then watches to see it fall to the ground. It falls indeed, but just near the ground it is transformed into the shape of a hawk and sails away.”

“But—” said George. He could not finish. He had never seen his mother transform herself. Could she become a horse herself? Could he? It made him feel heady with excitement.

“There is also the tale of the man who could not be made happy,” his mother said. “This man was fed well as a babe. He was rocked to sleep and sung songs. He was shown how to make a living raising and shearing sheep. But he was not happy. And so he began to try to understand the language of his sheep, to hear how to make them fatter and more woolly. He was soon wealthier than all the other sheep farmers in his village. But he was not happy.

“He next wished to speak the language of his sheep, to command them to become fatter and make more wool. Soon they did, and he was the richest man in the entire district. But he was not happy.

“So he began to learn to become a sheep, so that he could make his own wool, as much as he wanted, and his own meat. He learned the secret of becoming a sheep, but he had not first learned the secret of becoming a
man once again. He roamed his own hills, baaing for help, but no one else understood the language of the sheep, so people did not know what he was saying.

“And soon, because there was no one to shepherd the sheep, his neighbors began to take them one by one into their own flocks. Then he was taken into a flock, sheared as a sheep is sheared, and sent to the slaughter. And still he was not happy.” His mother made a grim face. “Not much of a story for a little boy for bedtime. I am sorry.”

“But what does it mean?” asked George.

“It means that there are times when one should be happy with what one has and not ask for more.” His mother sighed.

“I am happy, Mother,” George said. He reached for her hand.

She brushed his hair back from his forehead. “I am happy too, George,” she said.

“There is another story,” she added. “About a bear in the great dark forest who can speak in a way that only those with the animal magic can understand.”

George yawned. “And what does he say?” he asked.

“He asks for hope and for the fulfillment of a promise.”

“Promise,” echoed George, trying to stay awake.

His mother smoothed his hair behind his ear. “Someday, perhaps…” she said softly.

But George did not hear the rest of it, for he fell asleep.