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

hold it for him until he took it in. If he had some injury to his magic, perhaps from when he was a child, then he might have forgotten how to hold it.
    But it was the same as before. She held it, but he never took it in, and when she let it go, it was gone into the world around him.
    Liva tried to think what else might have happened to his natural sense for magic. If he hated tehr-magic the way she did, perhaps he had pushed it away too often. In that case, she would need to give him a great deal of aur-magic, but pressed directly into his knee.
    Liva guided the aur-magic as precisely as she could this time, then held it in place, but it was no use. It went through Jens and was useless, as before. He had not even noticed that it was there.
    He must have been born without magic of any kind. Perhaps his mother lacked magic, too? Obviously, his father did not.
    Liva heard Jens sigh next to her. He had pulled both his legs close to himself and leaned against the wall of the building. He took Liva out of the pouch and placed her on his hand.
    “What do I do with you now?” he asked.
    “Take me back to the woods,” Liva eeped at him. “And you come with me, too. Don’t stay here. Not with humans.” Even lacking magic, Jens belonged more in the woods than in the human village.
    But Jens did not understand. “You make me doubt myself. Are you who I think you are or not?” he said.
    Before she could answer, Liva felt herself snatched up by an unfamiliar hand.

C HAPTER E IGHT
Jens
    “ A H, HERE IS that mouse!” said Jens’s father, holding Liva aloft. In his other hand he held a tankard of ale. “I wondered where it had gone.”
    “It is a pika,” said Jens quietly. He dared not show his true feelings for the creature, nor let his father suspect what he thought was hidden beneath the mouselike form. Any villager would feel terror and disgust at the thought of a human who had aur-magic or who could use it to become an animal, but Jens thought his father would be worse than most.
    “Torus was right. You don’t know how to have a little fun,” said his father. “You don’t think of animals in the right way at all. They are ours, just as this one is. Ours to do with as we please. As food—or fun.”
    “No, Father!” said Jens desperately.
    “It is only a pika. And you killed a lynx today already.What difference does one more death make?”
    Jens could not explain. It would only make things worse if he said that he had not killed the lynx. But at least the lynx had been smoked for its meat. This pika would be worth no effort for food or coat.
    “Killing for no reason is wrong,” he said urgently. “The animals may be ours, but if we kill too many of them, then what will become of us? There will be no animals left.”
    “This one animal will make no difference,” said his father. “Now show me you are my son!” He whistled, and then there were seven men around him, shouting and poking at the quivering pika whom Jens’s father flung on the floor. Liva leaped up just in time to avoid a booted foot coming for her. She darted this way and that, but the circle of feet was inescapable.
    “Stop!” said Jens, and tried to dive for the pika, but in that moment she changed shape, soaring into the air in the form of an owl, with strong wings to launch her away from Jens’s father and the others. A hoot filled the building as the owl rose into the smoke above the cooking fires, then flew up through the chimney and outside.
    Jens stared in awe, his mouth open, his ears ringing. He had seen such a transformation twice before, from wolf to human to felfrass, but there was no getting used to it. It was amazing.
    “Aur-magic!” shouted Jens’s father.
    “Aur-magic! After it!” shouted the other men.
    They ran out of the gathering place and toward the forest, chasing the owl, whose shape was a distant and fleeting one in the sky. Jens followed quickly. He did not think they had a chance against an owl that could change