THE HOUND SAW the wild man standing behind the bear and gaped.
He was wild indeed, with hair down to his chest in front, dark in spots but gray in others, and a grizzled beard. He wore nothing at all, as a wolf would, but somehow he wore it with a human confidence. He was not large, certainly not when compared to the bear. He was a little taller than the princess, but wiry thin. There were many old scars on his body.
She had heard of the wild man in the human stories of the bear’s transformation.
She thought she would fear him, but she felt for him much as she did for the strange tree he stood beside, which seemed to open its branches to invite them in.
Such a tree could not have grown without magic, and the magic seemed to add to it rather than make it less than it was. So it was with the wild man.
He gestured for them to move into the shelter of the tree. It was not warm inside, but it was not cold, either.
“Well come,” said the wild man, holding out his hand. He spoke to the hound first, and she trembled a little at the way his voice penetrated directly to her mind rather than through her ears.
He turned to the bear. “And you, well come. It has been some years, has it not?”
The bear was careful to step inside the tree and move to the side, all without touching the wild man.
The hound, however, held out her front right paw and shook the wild man’s hand. She had not done it with another human before because she had felt it would make her less of a hound. But with the wild man that didn’t seem possible.
He spoke in a language that was pure magic, not hound and not bear and not human.
“You must eat with me,” said the wild man, and he gestured to a short table with flat pillows around it, perfectly situated for a hound or another creature who came to eat with the wild man. Or a human.
The bear lumbered forward and sniffed at the bread he was offered. He seemed to eat it only reluctantly—as if afraid of what the wild man might have put in it.
As for the hound, she ate the bread without hesitation, but was surprised to discover that it tasted exactly like the best killing she had ever made. It was fresh and salty, and she felt as though somehow the bread were dripping blood down the back of her throat.
After they had filled their starving bellies, the hound looked up at the wild man and spoke to him in the bear’s place, for she knew he could only speak in groans and growls.
“We come to ask about a creature we have seen, a cat man,” she said, intending to speak in the language of the hounds, though when it came out it sounded different than before, and she could see from the bear’s attitude that he could understand her.
The wild man’s magic must have made it possible, just as it made it possible for him to be understood by all.
The wild man nodded, as if not truly surprised. He would know the tale of the cat man, of course. “And what does it do, this cat man that you have seen?” he asked cautiously.
“It destroys life. It sucks it from the earth and leaves nothing behind. It is not even like death,” said the hound, struggling with the limitations of a hound’s language even here. “It is a coldness that the forest has never seen before, for death there always brings forth another life. And this brings nothing.”
The wild man nodded. “Unmagic,” he said.
“Yes,” said the hound softly. She prepared herself to receive some terrible magic once more, to help the forest.
But the wild man sighed. “There are many stories of the beginning of magic, but not so many of its end. Some say that the beginning is the birth of the first twin and the ending the birth of a second. All that happens between the two is the agony of a mother waiting for relief.
“Others tell that time itself is a lover’s chase that seems long to those who are running but to others is but a moment that is drawn out until the anticipation is over and the lovers united. When the lovers, who are magic and unmagic, fully embrace, they will cause a conflagration that will destroy each other and all other living things.
“It has been my task to hold off this final destruction. It is an eternal battle, without hope for peace. For the end of magic cannot be bargained with or bribed. It presses forward, relentless and unendingly powerful. But still I fight it.
“Because while I cannot stop it entirely, I can delay it. With each victory I hold back the power of the unmagic to allow magic for another year, or another century, or two centuries to allow more children to find the happiness that only comes from the play of magic in the forest, more animals to see humans not as enemy but as kin.
“Yet I find myself growing weak.”
The hound could not believe it. The wild man held more strength than she had ever felt. She thought of what he might have been before now and had a glimpse of why the bear had feared him so.
But if he could not help them, then this journey had been useless.
“It is not time for the magic to end,” the wild man continued. “So while I no longer have the strength to leave this place and go to do the work of magic out there”—the wild man waved behind them, down the mountain—“I can still bring those who are necessary to me and use them to help me gain another decade—or more.” He stared hard at the hound.
The hound was frozen, but the bear moved between her and the wild man. She was grateful for his attempt at protection, though she doubted he could stop the wild man from doing what he wished to her.
The wild man’s voice spun out like steam under the boughs of an oak. “I once worked within the fabric of time, moving forward, always forward, as it does. But I do so no longer. To save magic, I shift between times. I tinker here and there, then step back and see what else must be done. Always to save the magic.
“So it was that when I came to you, King Richon—”
The bear stiffened at the mention of his old name, as if touched by old wounds.
The wild man took a breath. “To stave off the power of the unmagic, I had to make you live another life. You had to cease being a king and become instead one of the creatures that suffered by your mistreatment. You had to feel the need for the magic that holds humans and animals together, and that took many years.
“Yet your kingdom needs you to return, so I held time open for you to go back and be king once more. If you so choose.”
The hound’s head ached.
So the bear was to return to his kingdom in the past, to find the unmagic and stop it there. But what of her?
The bear moved to her side, but it seemed she needed no protection from the wild man’s magic, after all.
“I can send you back in the form of the man you were,” said the wild man. “Once there, you must choose again to aid the magic. If you fail, I will be forced to find others who may mend the damage, but I cannot force you to do what you do not wish to.”
The bear twitched, and the hound thought of all he had lost. The wild man was asking him to go back to that, to care again for it. After two hundred years, it seemed an impossible request. But the wild man was all that was impossible.
The hound began to fear for herself then. She had worried that she would have no role. But the wild man offered no part without pain.
The wild man continued, his voice soft and smooth. “Has the magic done badly for you before this? I think if you look back, you will see it has not. Trust that the magic will teach you the lessons you would wish to know. Trust that if you suffer pain through the magic, it is pain you will look back on and be glad of. Trust that you will be glad to be part of extending the reign of magic from your time long into the future.”
The wild man shone brighter and brighter as he spoke, as if he were the sun and there was no need for any other, at least not on this part of the mountain.
Yet the bear held back, a rumble in his throat.
And the hound could feel tiny shivers in her legs that were no reaction to cold.
The wild man put his hands together with a clap. He held them there tightly. His eyes showed concentration. He began to sweat.
The hound could not see what he was doing.
Suddenly the wild man ripped his hands apart, and the hound could feel the sound of it, like an earthquake or a tornado as it tore trees from the ground and tossed them in the wind.
Between the wild man’s hands, there was an image of this same place, but at a different time. There was less snow there, and the mountain itself seemed different. The stone shelf was smaller, less distinct, the plants on it higher and more vigorous. Below, the mountains seemed younger.
“There is the past. A time of abundant magic compared to now. A time of less magic than before. A time that is yours as no other time has been.”