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

  THE PRINCESS AND THE WOLF

  by: Mette Ivie Harrison

  Prolog: The Tale of the Stolen Princess

  She was born Ina Dagmar, Princess of Sarrey and Kendel, daughter of King George and Queen Marit. In the first week of her life, she traveled more miles than most adults in either kingdom traveled in their entire lives. She was carted from the southern edges of the kingdom near the dark forests to the mountains in the north by the icy sea. She wore gowns that had been sewn for her by the most reputable seamstresses in either kingdom, each one more elaborate than the one before. At last, she and her exhausted parents returned to their home, the castle of Kendel, and she was taken by her nurse to her own room so that if she woke in the night, she would not disturb her parents.

  That night, as Queen Marit undressed, she heard a wolf howling in the distance. She went very still and listened carefully.

  “Do you recognize him?” asked King George.

  Queen Marit shook her head. “What is he saying?” she asked.

  King George pressed his lips together.

  “It is a call for battle, for blood, isn’t it?” said Marit.

  “A wolf is not a hound,” said George, putting a hand to her neck to help with the burden of the thick gold necklace with white stones she had been given as a gift from her father on her daughter’s birth. What he would have sent her if she had given birth to a son was not something either of them spoke of. Ina was Princess of Sarrey, but she had no right yet to inherit it as queen or to rule there when her grandfather had died. King Helm had grown old and he had changed for the better toward his daughter, but he had not changed so far as to wish to see a queen upon his own throne. Or George, the king of a country he still considered an enemy.

  “It has been so long since I have seen her. I worry for her.”

  “She is a hound. She must have her own life in the woods.”

  “Yes. I know what happened to her when I kept her to the castle to suit my own needs. It was not right. But I miss her.”

  George kissed her hand gently. “She will return. You cannot doubt that. She will always return to you, when she can.”

  “And the wolf?” asked Marit. “What does it want? What does it mean?”

  “The wolf is outside the walls of the castle, where it is meant to be.”

  The moon rose, and the forest was very quiet. If there was a battle for blood amongst the wolves, it had not lasted long.

  Then in the darkest part of the night, when clouds had been drawn in by a fierce wind and covered the moon, there was a dark shape at the edge of the forest, a human in a hooded cloak, staring at the castle and at the tiny room at the top of the eastern tower where the princess woke for a moment and burst out in a fit of wailing for no reason her nurse could decipher, before suddenly falling back asleep.

  A dream, the nurse told herself. But she shivered as she thought it.

  She pulled the blanket around her shoulders and sat upright by the princess, intending to remain awake.

  But she fell asleep soon afterward, dreaming her own dreams.

  The farmers near the castle woke early in the morning to find fences torn through, gates broken off at the hinges, and animals missing.

  The hooded human stood with arms outstretched as farm animals gathered around him: pigs, dogs, goats, cats, horses and cattle. They made noises that they had not made for most of their lives, the animal grunting sounds that had nothing to do with human language. They milled about anxiously, knocking into trunks of trees, digging at the ground with tusks and hooves, turning up stones and chewing on them.

  With a sound like a howling wolf, the human lifted a hand and drove the animals forward, to the castle. They sounded and acted like wild animals, never tamed by humans. More than one of the animals died and was left behind by the mass, unnoticed and unmourned.

  Two guards stood at the castle gate and tried to hold back the horde of animals. They were trampled over, their flesh picked over by each passing maw. The next set of guards, on the moat, died the same way.

  The human in the cloak turned the animals to the side, and led them into the castle kitchens near the garden. The cook was only just starting to build up the fire in the hearth for morning bread baking. She had hoped to go back to sleep for a little while, for she was getting old, and this business of a new princess had worn her very thin.

  The animals attacked her viciously, but so swiftly that she made no sound before she was dead.

  Then the animals went inside the castle itself, maneuvered through the halls and stairs until they came to the nursery tower. They pressed up, knocked open the door, and woke the terrified nurse.

  She, of all the humans who saw the rampaging animals, was close enough to touch them, to see their eyes and smell their breath and to hear their wild sounds. She reported all she knew to the king and queen when they arrived, too late, to find out what had caused the commotion.

  But in days following, her story was believed less and less. Surely it was more logical to believe that she was confused, that it was only some terrifying enemy of the king who had come to take his daughter. The poor woman left the castle soon afterward, and was not heard from again.

  There were those who argued that the nurse leaving the castle was proof of her complicity. She had been planted, paid off, and depended upon to tell a wild story of animal magic, when it was a purely political move. King George had many enemies, and the loudest of them were those who hated the way that he had made animal magic safe to use openly once more. And there were other enemies, from the kingdoms around Kendel, who hated King George for his lax taxation, which made their own people more restless and unhappy.

  By full daylight, King George and Queen Marit had searched the castle twice over again for their daughter and found no sign of her. The queen was said to have wept a single tear, and then no more, for she wished to show herself strong for her people.

  Whether the queen was cold or stoic was a matter for bards to argue as they told their differing stories of the night’s events. The one most commonly told is as follows:

  Queen Marit was the first into the baby’s chambers. She ran up the steps as fast as if she had still had the form of a hound that was once so comfortable to her. She threw open the window and looked out at the forest, but there was no sign of any passage, human or animal. No trampled grass, no footprints, no marks. The animals in the farms were missing, and so was the princess.

  But there was no blood on the bedsheets or on the stone. Though the nurse was white and trembling, she had not been harmed. The guards and the cook were not as fortunate.

  King George saw to their bodies, and made sure they were buried in the castle cemetery and that their families received appropriate compensation for their fearless courage in defending the castle and kingdom. There was never a hint from him that the men had not done their jobs well enough.

  It was King George who seemed to be the one in mourning in the days following. He did not go to the village for his weekly meetings with his people, to ask them for suggestions or advice, to listen to their words of wisdom. He had begun this tradition after his father’s death, in lieu of his father’s judgment days, when the people came to the king to ask for his opinion. George felt that he needed more wisdom from his people than they needed from him.

  Rumors from the castle were that George did not sleep at night, that he roamed the castle with a candle in hand, and that he would not have animals near him of any kind. He was not seen riding, nor in the stables, nor going to the forest. Those who knew the legends of animal magic watched for signs of the fever in him, and he gre
w gradually more frail and thin.

  It was left to Queen Marit to rule the kingdom on a daily basis. She was stern and did not speak a word beyond what was required of her. No one accused her of being unfair, but she was not seen as a warm ruler and she was not beloved. A mother who could live through the death of a daughter so easily—she was not natural.

  It was three months later that the queen insisted that the king come in the carriage with her to the castle village. His eyes were ringed with dark exhaustion, but he stepped out into the sunlight and raised a hand. A ragged cheer rang out.

  The queen led him through the village. She ensured that he stopped at each house, hut, or hovel. She nodded to him to encourage him to hold out his hand in greeting, to say a kind word, to nod to those who were too fearful to come closer to the king.

  And at last they came to the farthest hut in the village, well-kept inside and out, small though it and the land surrounding were. There were wildflowers near the steps in the same shade of blue as the summer sun that had broken through the clouds of spring for the first time only the week before. Small stones that shimmered with quartz and silver threads were organized in a beautifully abstract design. Someone within had an eye for beauty.

  There was the sound of a baby’s cry.

  The queen stopped, head bowed, and one of the peasant women behind her moved forward to stop the painful reminder. For anyone who had believed the queen felt nothing could see clearly now the pain written on her face in splotches of red and in the set of her shoulders, straight but forlorn.

  But the king held up a hand and went into the hut himself.

  When he came out, it was with the peasant’s babe in his arms. She was wrapped in a soiled cloth and her face was shining with happiness at the king’s song. She was blowing a bubble of saliva with her rounded lips. But the king, though his song was merry, looked closer to death than ever.

  “What is it?” asked Marit.

  He shook his head, and held more tightly to the baby than ever. He took a step toward the carriage.

  Marit put a hand to his arm. “It is tempting, but you cannot take her away from them. No matter how poor the conditions are here, they love her. And she is theirs.”

  King George murmured a negative.

  “George,” said Marit in a more personal tone, lowering her voice so that only he could hear her. “She is not ours. She is not Ina.”

  “There is no one else for her. She is meant to be mine,” said George.

  Queen Marit raised a hand and sent a servant into the house. The man came out with an expression of despair on his face.

  Then the queen went in herself.

  She saw a dead man and a woman, dressed in peasants’ clothes, covered in filth, their hands reaching out to touch each other’s fingers, and between them, the tiny cradle of their daughter, who had lived.

  She went back out again.

  “There was a plague,” said one of the villagers. “Many were struck dead.”

  This baby’s parents were obviously among them. And if the king and queen had not chosen that day to visit the village, there was no knowing what would have become of her, for her cries had not been loud enough to reach to the next hut.

  Queen Marit wrapped her arms around herself. “We will take her back to the castle,” she said to the king. “And search for other relatives. She may have grandparents or an aunt or an uncle who wish to take her.”

  “She is ours now,” the king said defiantly. “Dagmar.” He would not hear her called anything else, and he would not speak of the other daughter he had lost. There was only this one, Dagmar.

  So she was raised in the castle’s own nursery, and became Princess Dagmar, the peasant girl who was raised in the palace as the king’s own child.

  What happened to the true princess was never discovered, though the king had sent hounds out to search for her and offered a reward of nearly half the kingdom for her safe return. Gradually, the kingdom ceased to speak of it, for it caused the king only pain. And the new princess was a beautiful, bright thing who seemed to only lack her father’s animal magic. But there were plenty in Kendel who thought this a good thing.

  Chapter One: Dagmar

  Dagmar never felt at ease in a full gown, with her hair twisted into braids on top of her head, her feet pressed into shoes. She loved her parents and would do anything they asked of her. She knew she owed them very much indeed. But she was conscious at every moment of the eyes that lingered on her, and the looks shared that said—she does not belong. She is no princess. She is only a peasant’s daughter without an ounce of magic in her blood.

  “I can leave your hair loose, if you like,” said her maid Anafried. “Is it pinching you or feeling too heavy in that style?”

  “It’s fine,” said Dagmar. She did not want to put Anafried to any more trouble. She appreciated her maid and if they were not exactly friends, they were as close to it as Dagmar had. She knew that at a ball like this one, for her sixteenth birthday celebration, Anafried would sleep only a few minutes at a time, in snatches between the dancing.

  And afterward, when Dagmar lay in bed, Anafried would be smoothing out velvet cloaks, repairing tiny rips, freshening the scent under the arm, and washing what pieces could be washed, all before morning when it would all begin again.

  So it was when the castle had important visitors from throughout the kingdom and beyond. The festivities lasted for days on end, until even King George and Queen Marit began to droop with exhaustion and plead for time to themselves.

  “And your shoes? Do you prefer the lower heels? I could shine them for you. Or if these are too big, I could put some cotton into the toe,” said Anafried.

  “The shoes are fine.” Dagmar’s toes wiggled inside them and wished to be free. She went barefoot when she could, which was less often now that she was considered of age for attractive young noblemen of the kingdom to come and gawk at her and make her wonder if they thought her worth asking to marry.

  Anafried pinched Dagmar’s cheeks and smiled at her widely. “Come, Princess. Smile back at me. Your smile is the most beautiful feature you have to use on men.”

  Dagmar thought this only a commentary on her less the beautiful other features. Her nose was too wide. Her complexion was marred by the pox she had suffered ten years ago, as a small child. Her parents had not suffered from it, nor any of the nobility in the castle. Only the servants. And the princess.

  Dagmar had fine teeth, however, and she opened her lips enough to show them when she smiled. She wondered if it looked like a cow’s smile, or the smile of a wild hound. But no one would say such a thing to her.

  She allowed Anafried to lead the way down the stairs, watching to be sure that she did not catch a heel on the hem of her gown. It was a new one, made of silk overlay with an itchy underskirt to give added fullness to her figure. Dagmar was quite thin and if not for such a gown, might easily have passed for younger than her true age.

  The music was already beginning. Dagmar stopped a moment, her hands picking at the lace around her waist.

  Anafried pulled them away and tucked them flat to her sides, then held them there calmly with her own cool fingers. “Nothing to worry about, Princess. Everyone always says how you are the perfect princess, kind and thoughtful, strong and beautiful, the perfect combination of all your parents’ virtues.”

  More words to disguise the truth.

  I will speak clearly tonight, Dagmar promised herself. I will not let my words be tangled up in fear.

  She nodded to Anafried, and they moved close enough to the doors that the uniformed guards, in the green and black full dress uniforms that were newly designed for elegance, stood at attention and then led her in.

  Anafried patted her on the back, and then Dagmar was moving forward into the grand ballroom. There were candles lit everywhere and the falling red sun was caught in the glass of the windows ahead of her, like a painting.

  Everything was so perfect.

  Dagmar looked back a
moment, but Anafried was gone.

  She felt her heart beat against her ribs and there was a catch in the base of her throat with every breath she took. She was not dizzy, but she almost wished she were, so that she would have an excuse to sit down, to not move forward, to do nothing at all.

  But there was her father, King George, motioning to her with an elegant hand. His hair had begun to go white at the temples in the last year and his groom had tried to darken it with a mixture of sap and tree bark seeped in horse urine. The king had declined the offer, insisting that he finally felt as if he looked a king, and had no wish to seem the puppy who had inherited the throne seventeen years before, at his father’s untimely death.

  The king was dressed in layers of velvet and ermine, far more than could be comfortable for him. And he wore the crown on his head as if he were not at all afraid that it would fall off if he bent the wrong way.

  Dagmar thought her mother’s choice, however unpopular, was eminently more practical. Instead of wearing a crown, she had golden ink dabbed across her forehead in the style of a crown. She did not change it depending on what she was wearing, though there were women who copied her style and painted their faces in a circle at the temple in a way that was not quite an insult to the throne. Her gown was simple, without a stiff skirt underneath. Her strong arms were covered by long sleeves, but any movement she made showed that she was no ordinary queen.

  “Dagmar,” she said, and crooked her arm around her daughter’s. “We have been waiting for you.”

  “Oh?” Dagmar swallowed hard.

  “Yes, there is someone who has been looking forward to meeting you.”

  Dagmar stumbled, but her mother kept her moving steadily to her father’s right hand side.

  The king touched her hair gently, smoothing it down as if it had come out of the tight knots that Anafriend had put into it. “You light up my heart,” he said softly. It was what he had said to her since she was very small.

  Dagmar sometimes wondered if he had said the same thing to the other princess, the one who had been stolen from him when she was only a week old, right from the castle itself.