SOMETIMES SHE HAD nightmares that she was human again.
She dreamed of the moment more than a year ago when Dr. Gharn had snarled at the princess, his face too close, his voice too loud.
She had growled at him, and then she had no longer been at the princess’s side. She had had no idea where the princess was at all, but Dr. Gharn was in her face.
He smiled at her. She tried to leap at him but fell over. He laughed.
She could not get up. There was something wrong. Everything was wrong.
She made a strange yelping noise. And then there had been a hound next to her. A familiar hound, one she could smell and recognize. But the hound did not lick her. It stared at her and made its own sound of distress.
She had spent days in the princess’s bedchamber, alone, cowering under blankets whenever a maid entered with a tray of food that she could not bear to eat.
The hound prodded her to look at herself in a glass, see her human form. Together, using sign language, they had worked out the magic that Dr. Gharn had wreaked on them. She had accepted that it might never be undone, that she might remain in the body of a princess the rest of her life.
Prince George had saved her from that.
Now she was a hound once more—in body. But in mind?
If she still dreamed of being human, was there some part of her that had not returned to being a hound?
She dreamed of songs.
Stories.
Letters.
Even words carved into the stone of the palace.
And when she woke, there was silence with the bear.
The bear could not learn the sign language she had perfected with the princess. He was too old, perhaps. Or too used to living alone.
When winter came, she gave up trying to teach him. It frustrated them both, so they began to avoid each other. But they always returned to the cave at night.
The hound thought of some things that she missed about being human.
Music.
Lights.
The feel of thrice-carded wool against her nose.
And she was disgusted with herself. Those were soft things. She did not need them. She was a hound.
She did not need the bear, either. And she meant to prove it to herself.
The winter was long and killing cold. There was little to eat, and both the bear and hound grew thin.
The first night of spring, the hound went deep into the forest, to paths she remembered from her days with her own pack. She felt as if she had gone back in time to be that other hound. As if all her time with humans was washed from her.
It was a marvelous, free feeling.
She chased and chased, the heat of the run as glorious as the taste of fresh meat in her mouth.
When night struck, she crouched near a log and closed her eyes, ready to sleep. It was what she would have done before she met the princess, when she had been sent away from her pack and roamed the forest alone.
But she was not content.
She thought of the bear in the cave and how warm it was to sleep with him, how safe she felt with the sound of his breathing in her ears.
She dozed in fits and starts until the middle of the night, when she could sleep no more. She had to go back to the bear, to the cave. Home.
But it hurt to move. She ached all over from sore muscles.
It had been too long since she had spent so much time in a chase. And, she admitted to herself, she was getting older. She was no longer a young bitch hound, able to run all day without feeling ill effects.
In human years she was not old. She remembered eight full years of seasons.
But as a hound, she would at her age have had only one place remaining in a pack: to care for the pups of the lead mates. And even then, she would be given very little food indeed, for there were always more aging hounds than there was food to offer them.
To the bear, however, age and time were different than they were for any other creature, human or man. The bear had lived more than two hundred years, many times the lifetime of either a normal bear or a man. To him her age meant nothing.
Perhaps she did not need the bear, but that did not mean she did not miss him.
In the dark she struggled to make her way back through the forest. A few steps at a time, then resting as her sore paws found soft leaves. She was not lost, but she was glad when she found the familiar scent of the stream that ran near the cave. She was still some distance away, but now all she had to do was put her head down and follow the stream.
The cool water on her paws felt good, and even better when she let herself lie back on her haunches and cool the swollen muscles in her hind legs.
It was almost dawn when she caught sight of the cave. She stopped a long moment, then saw the bear at the mouth of the cave, standing upright and trembling.
She stepped back at the sight of him.
Was he angry?
She moved closer and he fell onto all fours and drew his face very close to hers.
She could feel his breath, and it might have been comforting but for the look of fierceness on his face.
She was sorry.
It was a strangely human thing to feel.