The Princess and the Snowbird by Mette Ivie Harrison Read Free Book Online

the last moment. She told herself she was only making the battle more fair.
    Liva could feel her aur-magic slam into Torus and rip through him. It was moving too quickly for him to take it into himself, and it tore out some of his own tehr-magic with it.
    Torus took in a great, gasping breath of air. His mouth opened, but no words came out of it. He waved his arms, then slumped to the floor, his eyes rolling back in his head.
    None of the humans seemed to notice that aur-magic had been used. Liva was relieved—that danger occurred to her only after the fact.
    There was a brief silence, followed by “Jens! Jens! Jens!” shouted in precisely the way that those same humans had shouted “Torus!” a moment earlier.
    Jens’s father came forward and clapped him on the back. This made Jens stagger in pain. “I never thought I’d see the day, boy.” He pushed Jens’s head down, thenlet go of it suddenly. “Time to celebrate,” he said, heading to the corner—and the vats of ale. He didn’t take Jens with him, however.
    Jens gently let himself down onto the ground and crawled toward Torus.
    Liva wanted to shout at him to stop, that Torus deserved what he had gotten. But Jens proved himself kinder than she was. Liva could think of no animal who would have gone back to check on the health of the loser in a battle. As for the other humans, they had lost interest in the fight now that it was over, and they did not try to help Torus, either.
    As Jens leaned forward, Liva was able to raise her nose out of the pouch and sniff at Torus. There was something wrong with him more than just the loss of his tehr-magic.
    He was not breathing.
    The aur-magic Liva had forced into him had done more damage than she had thought. Humans were used to taking from animals, but Liva’s magic was far stronger.
    Jens put a hand out and touched Torus’s caved-in chest. “I did not mean to do this,” he said softly. And he looked down at Liva.
    She shrank back from his sight, not wanting to admit that it was her fault, not his. She did not want him to despise her.
    Gently Jens straightened Torus’s head and neck in line with the rest of his body. He pressed his lips ontoTorus’s and breathed into him.
    This time, Liva used the aur-magic more carefully. She let out only a little bit, and directed it to flow into Torus’s blood naturally, as if his heart were beating again. Then she pressed magic into his heart itself, to start it once more.
    Liva would never have done this to an animal that had died. Death was part of the natural cycle of the true magic. To fight against it would have been to damage the integrity of the aur-magic itself. But this was an unnatural death, so Liva felt that she needed to reverse what she had done.
    Suddenly Torus’s head yanked forward. He coughed, then took a breath. And another.
    Liva had not healed his chest wound, which bled again, but she had done enough. She hoped that Torus would not be able to tell easily that she had altered the magic in him. He was not full of tehr-magic now, but had a bit of the aur-magic that flowed in and out with the forest and the animals. Perhaps he would get used to it. Perhaps he would even come to like it.
    But at the moment he was angry.
    “Get away from me!” said Torus when his eyes flickered open to see Jens’s face. Jens pulled away, and Torus convulsed, his face red. He turned to the side and vomited up a great deal of pale-colored fluid. Finally he tottered to his feet and threw himself away from Jens and out of the building.
    So much for her one attempt to save humans from their own magic, Liva thought.
    Jens remained on the floor, staring at his knee.
    Liva watched him. He was the one who deserved her intervention. He was a human she would want to save. But her aur-magic didn’t touch him at all! It made no sense that there could be a human whom neither kind of magic could touch.
    She tried to send aur-magic to him again, thinking that she needed to send less and