THE HOUND’S PRESENCE bothered the bear in small, petty ways, though he knew it should not. She slept noisily, and sometimes her legs moved in the night as if she were running. She ate constantly and moved so quickly that it made his head ache.
He wished that she would simply sit beside him at the stream. Or nuzzle next to him in the cave at night until they both fell asleep together.
He had not thought it possible to feel even lonelier than he had before Prince George had worked his magic to make the hound a hound again, and the princess a woman. But he did.
It was worse still when he and the hound were called for the wedding a few weeks later, and they saw the joy in the eyes of Princess Marit and Prince George. The way that each seemed to see only the other, the whispers they shared with each other, the gentle laughter and instinctively coordinated steps.
Why could the bear not have the love that the prince had?
He had never been one to settle for second best. Over the last two hundred years, more than one she-bear had signaled with a rooting call and a turn of her flank that she had need of a mate and he would be a fine choice.
Had he been tempted? Perhaps a little. Having a warm body next to his, if nothing else, would have kept the cold of the winter nights away. Still, he had known it would have been a second best for both of them. A she-bear would be disappointed that he could not even speak as a bear and he wanted more than a warm body.
But the hound was not just a warm body. She was life and exuberance, freedom and grace. She was as fine a companion as he could have imagined having in the forest.
And yet…he could not say he loved her. There was something missing between them, something that George and Marit had. Something that the bear had never known but had always longed for.
One night, as the hound slept and he could see the spill of moonlight against her black form, the bear thought of the women whom he had believed he loved, when he was a king, and a man, and very young.
Lady Finick.
She had had the most beautiful blond hair. Her mouth had been wide and very red, and when she was not smiling, she was laughing. And touching him. Leaning over him with her ample breasts, letting him smell the flowers in her hair, letting him feel her body against his.
Lady Trinner. She had been so petite that on first sight she had seemed a child. Then he had seen her bright eyes and the teasing flounce of her long black hair and gowns designed to make her tiny waist seem tinier still. She had been easy to dance with. One could hardly make a mistake as her partner.
Richon had been unable to choose between them. And why should he? He was king, was he not? Compromises and sacrifices were for others to make, not for him.
Then, one day, the royal steward had come to him with letters to prove Lady Finick was in a conspiracy with another man to steal from the royal treasury. When he confronted her, she did not try to deny it. She told him it was his own fault, for not marrying her soon enough, for not giving her access to the treasury himself.
Did she expect him to apologize for that? To offer to marry her then?
He listened to her screech at him, felt her spittle land on his cheeks, and told himself that he still had Lady Trinner.
But by then Lady Trinner had engaged herself to a duke from another kingdom, a man she had never met.
Fine, let her go, he thought. He did not care. He would find another, better, brighter, prettier than she.
He said good-bye to Lady Trinner with cold formality, the lord chamberlain and royal steward at his side, looking on with approval at his restraint.
Hours later, he had given up his pride and leaped onto his fastest horse to chase after her. He caught her at the border of his country and begged her to stay with him.
She had looked him in the eyes and said, “But I could never love you. You are too shallow and selfish. You are a boy still, and I will not marry a boy.”
Then she had climbed back into her carriage and gone on her way.
When he returned to his palace alone, Richon had tried frantically to prove to himself that she was wrong. He called for sad songs from minstrels and listened to the deep philosophers of the kingdom. He even gave offerings to a few beggars outside the palace, where before he had set the royal hounds on them to chase them out.
But he soon tired of such pursuits and sought an easier way to blot out Lady Trinner’s memory: more ale and a series of days that ran into other days, indistinct and unending.
He began to believe he simply had no heart to give, and when the wild man had come with his army, he had thought that he would be given relief in death.
But the wild man had not taken his life. He had given him more life instead, an enchanted life as a bear that went on and on.
Now he understood poverty, hunger, desperation. He knew how selfish and thoughtlessly cruel he had been.
But love?
He had still not learned that.