Free The Princess and the Snowbird by Mette Ivie Harrison Page 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, butthey 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 asLiva 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 back 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.

C HAPTER T WELVE
Jens
    D AY 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 thelast 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.
    He woke with a start a little