IT WAS LATE afternoon of the sixth day when they had found a dirt road at last, albeit one gouged by wagon wheels and split by torrential rain. Chala was ready for a rest and moved to the side of the road. Richon pulled her back.
He put a finger to his lips to quiet her and together they watched as one wolf cub, one wild kitten, one young hawk, and one fawn all lined up in a row behind a line drawn into the dirt of the forest floor.
The hawk gave out a wild cry and the animals all raced forward at the same time, in the same direction. Not one of them attacked another.
They raced to a ring of huge stones, then stopped.
The hawk had won the contest easily, and circled overhead, cawing victory to the skies.
The wolf cub, the wild kitten, and the fawn had all seemed to come across the clearing at the same moment to Richon. He could not tell who had won, if it was indeed a race.
Richon turned to Chala, but she seemed as puzzled by this as he was. Animals might have contests with their own kind, but not outside that sphere.
Then, as Richon watched, the shape of the wolf cub began to waver. The snout shortened. The legs lengthened. And then there was a boy standing in the forest by the other animals.
A human boy, perhaps seven or eight years old.
The other animals also made their transformation back into human shape. The fawn was a young girl, taller than all the others, and with thin shoulders and hips that would make her a fast runner even in her human shape.
The young hawk was the last to change, floating down from his victory flight and turning into a boy of three or four years of age.
“I won! I won!” he chortled.
“You won,” said the girl, patting the boy—her younger brother?—on the head.
“He always wins,” complained the boy who had been a wild kitten.
“Not always. When we do an obstacle course, he has to swoop back down and up, and then you best him,” said the girl.
“Then let’s do that kind of race, right now,” said the boy.
The girl made a face. “Not now. We’re too tired now. And it’s my turn to choose next.”
“What are you going to choose, then?”
“We’ve never done a race in the water.”
“Water?” asked the boy kitten, shuddering. “I hate water. You know that.”
“I know.” The girl smiled broadly. “We’re none of us really water creatures. That’s why it will be fun!”
But the boy was not satisfied. He sulked and said, “Why do I have to be a wild kitten all the time, anyway? Why can’t I be a fish sometimes, or a bear, or a bird, like him?”
“If you were a bird,” said the girl, “you’d still find a way to complain. Honestly, you take all the fun out of it. We might as well be humans and be done with it.” She stood up, brushed herself off, and walked away, her brother following behind, a little jump in his steps as if he thought he could fly.
Richon stared at them.
“They have magic like Frant and Sharla and their children,” said Chala.
More magic than Prince George. Magic like that told in the old stories.
Yet Richon had never heard of it before.
“They live here, on the edge of the kingdom,” said Richon.
“Yes,” said Chala. “To keep safe from your laws.”
Richon took in a sharp breath. This was precisely what he had feared, that Chala would see all his mistakes up close and be unable to separate them from who he had become.
“The ones in the past,” Chala went on. “Before you met the wild man and learned of the good of magic.” She seemed to think it had nothing to do with him now.
Gradually Richon relaxed. “In the future those who are like Frant and Sharla, like these children, will have to live in hiding,” he said. “Because of those same laws.”
“I do not think that can be all of it,” said Chala. “There must be another reason that magic has faded.”
“Unmagic,” said Richon slowly. He had not seen it so clearly from the future. The unmagic must indeed be part of why so much had changed, so quickly. If the cat man spread it in the forests, it would affect animals and humans alike, and their connection with each other.
That was what he must stop, though he had no idea how one man could do any such thing. Especially a man who had no magic of his own.
Richon’s thoughts were interrupted by a whimpering sound in the distance. It sounded like a human child. He beckoned to Chala to follow him, then went back to the edge of the forest and found a small girl with brown hair and clear blue eyes that were filled with tears beside a tree, arms wrapped around her legs.
Richon approached her cautiously, his hands held out to show he meant no harm.
“All is well,” he murmured. “All is well.”
At the first sound of his voice, the girl startled and froze, her eyes darting back and forth between Richon and Chala. As Richon came closer, she leaped to her feet, clearly terrified.
“I only wish to speak with you,” he said. “Please.”
The girl stared at him.
Richon half expected her to run away. He knew he did not look his best, in his grimy clothes, with a five-day beard that itched. “My name is Richon,” he told her kindly. “And this is Chala.”
Chala nodded.
The girl looked away, as if embarrassed.
She could not know him as the king, Richon thought. He was too well disguised and she lived too remotely.
“What is your name?” Richon asked her.
“Halee,” she said. Her eyes narrowed. “You haven’t any magic, either, do you?” she asked.
“No,” said Richon, surprised she guessed the truth so easily. But he was discovering just how little about magic he did understand.
He had always believed magic was unusual and unnatural, something no member of the royal family would ever touch. But here with this girl, hidden in a forest far from other humans, he began to wonder.
He remembered many a time when his father had left the palace without any men to accompany him. No guards, no hunting party. When he came back, Richon had noticed the scent of animals strong on him.
And his mother? She had gone “south to visit relatives” on more than one occasion, and yet she had been born an only child. When she returned, she had a gleam in her eye that made him jealous. Why should she enjoy herself so much without him?
He looked at this girl, the only one without magic among her friends. How alone she must feel, knowing the truth about them and about herself.
He had always sensed there was something not quite good enough about himself. Had his parents lied to him to spare him that?
“I dream sometimes about what animal I would change into,” the girl said. “I think it would be a fish. Because I don’t belong with them.” Her face was pinched around the lips. “What do you think I would be?” she asked.
“Oh, you would make a fine fish,” said Richon sincerely.
“And you—what would you be if you had magic?”
“A bear,” said Richon without hesitation.
The girl looked him up and down again, and giggled.
Richon struggled to look affronted.
“You don’t look much like a bear,” she said.
Richon rubbed at his beard. He supposed he didn’t look very big or ferocious.
“And her?” Halee asked, pointing to Chala. “She has magic, doesn’t she?”
Richon sighed. “After a fashion,” he said. She must still smell of the wild man’s magic, though why it wasn’t on him Richon couldn’t guess.
“I think she would be a hound,” said Halee.
Richon started at this, then said, “Why do you think that?”
The girl shrugged. “It just seems right,” she said.
Richon looked at Chala, but he could see very little of the hound remaining in her, and only because he knew her so well. The alertness of her eyes, the way her body moved, the sensitivity of her nose.
“Do you hate them, then, the ones who have magic? Like I do?” she asked.
“Sometimes,” he admitted.
“And you’re afraid of them, too?”
He nodded. “Or at least I used to be. Now it is not as bad as it was.”
“Because you’re grown and don’t care anymore,” said the girl.
“Perhaps,” Richon admitted.
“They used to offer to turn me into an animal so I could play with them,” the girl said.
“But you wouldn’t let them,” Richon guessed.
She shook her head. “’Course not. How could I? That’s like when you’re little and they give you a head start. It’s not a real race then.” She thought a moment, then bit her lip and added, “I never knew, either, if they could do it. What if they were teasing and I told them I cared?”
Richon could understand that fear.
“I didn’t want to play their stupid game, anyway,” she said, sticking out her tongue in the general direction of the other children. Then she turned back to Richon. “Only I do, you see? Sometimes I wish I had magic so much I think I might explode.” She held her hands tightly together, pressing them against each other until they turned white for lack of blood. She was hurting herself on purpose, Richon thought, to make the other pain go away.
Chala moved closer to the girl and pulled her hands apart, then smoothed them out.
It was the first time Richon had seen her interact with another human. She was gentle, almost like a mother would have been.
There was a voice in the distance calling out a name. “Halee! Halee!”
The girl pulled away from Chala when she heard it. “My brother,” she said.
“He has magic?” asked Richon.
She shrugged. “All in my family do. Nearly all in the village as well.”
She might have said more, but she was interrupted by a voice from behind them. “There you are, Halee!”
The girl stiffened and it was as if, from Richon’s perspective, she had been drained of herself. The pain disappeared from her features, for she would give no sign of it to this brother of hers. But neither could he see her rapt attention and innate intelligence, for she hid that as well. Did none of her family see Halee as she really was?
“Come home now. Mother wants you to help with the washing,” said the brother.
“I will come,” said Halee. She was holding herself purposely so as to block her brother’s view of Richon and Chala.
“Now!” said the brother impatiently. Then he added, “You’ll never get your magic unless you learn to obey.”
It seemed a cruel thing to Richon to promise the girl something that would never come to her.
Richon watched until Halee and her brother, who had turned into an young eaglet, were out of sight.
Then he turned back to Chala. She took one of his hands, and he felt her warmth spread to him.