FOUR DAYS AFTER leaving the palace, they were between two villages, on the edge of a forest, when Chala caught sight of a cage as large as a man standing upright on the ground. It was shaking and she could hear animal sounds coming from it. She thought immediately of the monkeys she had freed before.
Why did humans think they should be allowed to do such things to the animals they shared the world with? It was one thing to kill animals because of the need for food, and another entirely to imprison them like this.
Richon tried to hold her back. “You do not know what danger there may be in that cage,” he said.
But she shook him off and ran toward it. She recognized the language of the wolves, which was very close to her own language of the hounds, and she called out, “Be calm! I come!”
But it only made the creature in the cage more agitated. The cage swayed from side to side and then turned over. Instead of angry words of demand, Chala now heard calls for vengeance, for death, for blood against all humans.
She looked back at Richon, who could not understand the words at all, but must have gathered the general meaning from the tone in which they had been spoken. He did not look pleased, but neither did he suggest that they ignore the noises and simply walk past the cage.
He had been an animal recently himself, treated by humans as nothing more than meat to hunt for.
“I must do something for it,” Chala said to Richon.
He bit his lower lip, but then nodded.
Chala approached the shaking cage.
She kept thinking of the animal held inside as a “creature” rather than as a wolf, although it spoke the language of the wolves quite clearly. Why was that? Because the animal’s voice did not sound like a wolf. It was too high-pitched.
She knelt down. The cage was filthy and it stank, and she wrinkled her nose and nearly turned away from the terrible smell.
But then she saw the creature’s eyes, and they were blue.
A human blue.
She leaned into the cage. There was little hair on the creature except on its head, and the arms were long, with rough fingers. No claws, either. He stood on all fours like a wolf, and he was matted and filthy so that his color looked dark.
But it was a human boy, perhaps fourteen years of age, in the middle of that time between childhood and adulthood.
He showed his teeth to Chala and then tore at her face, which she had placed too close to the bars.
She drew back.
He growled and called out in the language of the wolves, “Mine—this one is mine.”
It was the traditional call at first sight of prey, and it meant that the other wolves, while they could help to corner the fleeing animal and would certainly share in the meat, would also give this wolf the opportunity to make the first killing strike against it.
Then all would converge and the pack would feed.
Richon came running up and put an arm around her. He turned her so that she was facing him. “Are you hurt?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“What happened?”
She pointed to the boy.
“It’s—” said Richon, then he paused. “Impossible,” he muttered.
But it was possible, obviously, since the boy was here.
“There is something gravely wrong here,” said Chala. How had this boy been made so animal-like, and who had placed him in this cage?
She turned to Richon, and he moved a little closer.
“Do you have a name?” Richon asked, pronouncing each word distinctly. He kept his hands and face away from the cage and stared intently at the boy.
There was no sign of understanding, as far as Chala could tell. Was it possible the boy had never learned the language of humans?
“The story of the boy raised by wolves,” said Richon, glancing at her.
Chala nodded. She remembered it as well. But the story had not spoken of how difficult it might have been for the boy to return to humans.
“You think he was raised by wolves but that humans tried to take him home and found he was too much animal?” She thought of herself and how much she was like this boy.
“It is all I can think of,” said Richon. “Perhaps he lived too long with the wolves to ever make the change.” He did not look at her. “In any case, they should have sent him back to the forest with the wolves once they discovered that he could not live as a human.”
“Unless they feared he could not survive,” said Chala.
She looked around now and saw evidence of bones that had been eaten clean and thrown outside the cage. The boy was being fed at intervals and brought water as well.
She could not tell how long he had been in the cage, but he would survive here. Animals from the forest could not hurt him, no matter how they might be attracted by his calls. In that sense the cage was for his protection. But it also kept him in one place so that the humans knew where he was and could come to him to keep him alive. The humans cared for him, though their way of expressing it might seem strange to Chala.
“He is also one of my subjects,” said Richon bitterly. “And I have failed him.”
“What do you think you should have done to help him, then?” asked Chala.
Richon thought for a long moment. Then he said, “If I had magic of my own, then I could tame him. Or if you had not already healed Crown with the magic the wild man gave you, perhaps you could do it.”
Chala stared.
He thought that she had healed Crown with magic from the wild man?
She did not have time to explain now. She had to help this boy with her magic if she could.
Before Richon could stop her, she reached the cage and put her hand through the bars, reaching for the boy.
He leaped toward her. She felt his teeth dig into the flesh of her arm.
“Chala, no!” shouted Richon.
But she was already gone, into the magic, and was far from him.
She went into herself first, feeling the thread of magic that connected her to the boy, pulling herself along it as if she were on a rope bridge crossing from one side of a river to another.
She could feel that he was sucking at her blood, and might do worse, but there was no pain as yet.
With her magic she could see his life growing up with wolves. Then the day that he had been discovered by humans, who had gone into the forest to seek for the source of the magic they felt from far away. They took him away in chains and they tried to teach him, to no avail. And so had come the cage, and their infrequent visits.
How he hated them!
How he hated everyone, even himself.
But only because of his human form.
His soul was a wolf’s.
Chala saw clearly that to be saved he must be allowed to become a wolf in truth.
She could only assume that the animals in the forest did not know how to use their magic for something like this, or that they did not have enough of it. Perhaps she did not have enough, either. But she had to try.
She pushed her magic toward him.
She did not know precisely what she was doing, but she had been next to Prince George as he had changed her back into her hound form, and the princess to her woman’s form.
Hairless skin turned to fur.
Ears peaked.
Nose turned to snout.
Teeth and limbs elongated.
And then it was done.
The boy was a wolf.
Chala fell back, breathing hard, blood streaming down her arm.
The wolf growled at her, still not sure of what she had done. But he did not seem as crazed as he had before. He was himself again, though with less magic now to draw humans to him. He only needed to be set free, and allowed to return to his pack.
Chala pulled on the lock to the cage but could not get it to come free. The use of magic was so unfamiliar to her.
At last Richon, hands trembling, came around her and put his knife in the keyhole. It sprung free and the wolf leaped out.
Chala watched him go, and felt a terrible wave of envy. He could return to the forest and be at home once more. He could be a wolf again, with a pack and a wolf’s life.
But with all her magic she did not know if she would ever be a hound again. She did not regret the choice she had made to be a human woman and take on the task of aiding Richon against the unmagic.
It was the simplicity of life as a hound that she missed. The physicality of it. Eating, the sun on her bare back, even the feel of rocks in her paws. And the sense of belonging, in the forest with other animals, of her kind and not.
She did not know if she would ever truly fit in with humans. She did not know if she wanted to.
“Chala,” said Richon.
She felt him close to her, his touch easing the sting of the wound on her arm. He tucked her head into the crook of his neck, and she knew that here, at least, she belonged. With him.
With surprise, she noticed there was something rolling down her face, stinging it. She put a hand up to feel it and discovered her face was wet.
Tears.
She was weeping, as a human woman would.
“I thought it was the wild man’s magic that you used with Crown,” said Richon after the tears had stopped and she had pulled away from him once more.
“No,” said Chala softly.
“You have it because you are human now?”
“I think it is because of this time and place. There is magic everywhere here and in adundance. Even the animals have it.”
Richon slapped his leg and swore darkly. “I am surrounded by magic and have not a drop of it myself, though I am supposed to be king. Truly I think I fit better in Prince George’s time than in my own.”