The Princess and the Hound Read Online Free PDF Page B

last the king’s mouth stopped opening and closing and got the words out. They were strange and formal. “The queen is dead.” It sounded as though he had practiced the words, as if he were saying them before some crowd of citizens, a solemn proclamation to the kingdom of Kendel.
    It was a long moment until George recalled that the queen was also his mother. Even then he could hardly take it in.
    He stared at his father, hoping that this must be some joke, though his father never joked, or some misunderstanding, though father always spoke too clearly to be misunderstood.
    “She died in the forest where she had gone to…meditate. Attacked by a bear,” said the king, each word added reluctantly, as if he wanted to keep the details to himself.
    “She had a fever. She was ill.” He continued. “I do not know why the queen would go so far in such a state. And yet she went. Not one of her women stopped her.”
    She wasn’t the queen, thought George. She was my mother. Mine. I know things of her that you will never know, he wanted to say.
    “You will be a brave boy, won’t you?” asked the king. “And come stand with me while I light her fire?”He smiled a false smile.
    And George could think only of his mother’s father, who had also been burned, for his animal magic. “Not burning,” he said.
    But the king seemed to think he was simply refusing the reality of his mother’s death. “It is a hard truth,” he said. “But she is gone.” He thought for a moment, then added, “She will be cleaned for the burning. You may see her then if you wish.”
    If that was the only way he would see his mother again, George realized he could not refuse it. So he nodded, and said, “Yes, Father.” That, and no more.
    The king stood, but he remained a moment longer, his hands twisting in each other.
    If George had said something then, the right thing, perhaps things might have been different between them ever afterward. But he only wanted his father to be gone, so that he could grieve in his own way. After all, a boy could not cry in front of his king. Even if the man was also his father.

C HAPTER F OUR
    A T THE LIGHTING ceremony, George felt a great resentment that he had to share this most private moment with all of the kingdom. That he had to hold his head steady and keep his eyes dry and speak clearly when it was his chance to offer the leaf of his mother’s favorite tree.
    In the end George chose the maple leaf simply because the true gift for his mother’s pyre that he had tucked into his sleeve, unbeknownst to anyone, was the maple wood robin from his own collection. He liked to think that his mother was flying above the ruined body that was atop the wood, that would soon be lit and burned to ashes.
    It was easier too if he looked up as much as he could, and not down, at what was left of the hands, the hair, the gentleness, and all of her that he had known.
    King Davit came and held his hand as he put the leafup on the pyre. Then the king himself lit the fire with a word of benediction, standing back afterward and watching it burn down. For hours and hours he stood. And so George too had to stand, even when the king asked if he would not rather go in with the others when it began to rain lightly or when it grew dark.
    How could George go inside if the king remained?
    How could George allow the king to prove that he had loved her more than George had?
    Later, George went back to his chamber, stumbling in the new light of dawn, alone. A brave servant woman named Shay, who had lost all four of her sons in the war, came in eventually and took pity on him.
    “Now, come along. Time for you to rest,” Shay said in a thick accent from the south. But when she touched George’s arm, she jerked back.
    “Great animals above,” she whispered, then reached for his forehead. “Like a pyre, it is.”
    George could feel how cold her hands were.
    Of course. He was sick.
    That must be why everything was wrong.
    He clutched his