The Princess and the Snowbird Read Online Free PDF

the dangers are, they are his to face. This is his choice. He has ignored the calls of those in need for many months.”
    “But I do not want him to go. I need him,” said Liva, though she would never have admitted such a thing if he had remained behind.
    Her mother limped closer to Liva, but Liva threw herself back against the rock walls of the cave, heedless of the bruises that rose up under her bear hide. Then she ran out past her mother, into the forest and the bitter wind that took away all scent of her father’s trail.
    She looked toward the stream by the cave for marks in the ground. Downstream or up? She looked for broken branches from trees that her father had passed under lately. There—was that one? Or was that one there? She could not see with the wind and the tears in her eyes. She began to howl.
    Then she took a breath and forced herself to hold it until her chest burned. When she let it out, she felt her claws, one at a time, each gust of wind as it hit her square in the chest, each tear as it froze on her fur. She had to think. She had to give up being a child. Her father needed her. She was old enough now. She had to be.
    She turned to the right. The bear must have gone south. There was nothing to the north, no humans, no danger. She began to run, moving as quickly as possible. Though her father had left hours before, he could not travel as swiftly as she could. She held out hope that she might yet catch up to him.
    She ran into the darkest part of the forest, heading due south toward the human village she had never been to. When the trees thinned, she began to walk along the river that led out of the mountains, into a blinding snow. Liva used her magic to quest out for any hint of her father. It was difficult to track his aur-magic, since he had no more than any other animal, but his pattern was as familiar to her as the smell of her mother.
    There it was! A shape that glowed like a fluorescent moss, with a core of pain and exhaustion surrounded by flickers of intense determination. She could tell that he was south of her, by the river, traveling fast. He must be pushing himself very hard, beyond his own strength, and he did not stop.
    The next moment she lost him in the storm. But she did not turn back. She wrapped herself in the warmth of her magic, pulling it around her shoulders, hips, and knees like a blanket of wool. For an hour or two, it worked. She could hear the river and smell it, and she picked her way over the shoreline, sometimes rock, sometimes sand.
    When she became so cold that her legs went numb, she used her magic to bring sensation back to them. Herpaws, too, needed magic to keep warm and moving. Liva was not stinting in her use of it. She spread it all over, until the ground around her was wet and muddy with bits of plant shoots showing above the ground, though nearby it was still covered in snow.
    When the storm broke, she settled in for the night next to a boulder, and let herself drift to sleep. She woke only when she was shivering, and then just long enough to pour more magic around herself.
    In the morning she woke comfortable and very warm.
    But there was a snuffling sound close by.
    Dozens of animals were snuggled in around her: dormice, a mink, a mole, three ferrets, a handful of shrews, several badgers, a lynx, a fawn, a newborn hare—still blind—several foxes, twin wolves, and a felfrass, among others.
    She could feel how the animals pressed against her, not only with their bodies, but with their magic, trying to match her brightness with their own. They had come to her, despite her bear’s shape, drawn by the wild aur-magic that pooled around her, attracted as though to water in a dry spell.
    The more magic she pressed at them, urging them to retreat, the more they crowded her. They jostled one another for position closest to her, and one of the dormice was killed by a ferret, teeth against teeth.
    Liva could do nothing to stop them from followingher, short of killing