The huntsmen fled through the tumbledown slabs of stone, clambering over the rafters and throwing apologies over their shoulders to the knight. “My prince,” they called him.
Interesting.
The hounds were more faithful. They crept to the prince’s feet and whined in their throats.
I stomped on the floor, up and down, until the walls shook. “Give me meat!” I thundered.
Refuse me, I thought. Let us end this quickly.
“As you wish,” said the prince, taking the deer from the spit — a spit made of my sapling — and tossing it down in front of me. “This is your hall, and I have trespassed.”
I ate the deer. It took five or six bites. It was the first time I had eaten cooked meat since the hermit died.
“More meat,” roared the magic.
“You have eaten it all,” said the prince.
“Kill your horse then,” said the magic. Please, say no. Your life is forfeit already, prince. Please refuse me. I do not want to choke down your horse’s flesh.
“As you wish,” he said again, and went outside to kill his horse.
None of the other knights had brought hawks with them. I ate them next. They died with hoods on, their necks wrung, and they were not even a mouthful each.
I wept for the hounds. So did he. That was the moment that I remember most clearly. He sobbed as he killed them — one hoarse dry sob apiece — and I sobbed as I ate them. The last one whimpered piteously as its fellows died, and looked up at the prince with terrible trusting eyes to the last.
I prayed to fall down dead, but the gods had abandoned me long ago. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to kill myself. I wanted the world to be unmade, so that it never came to this moment at all. He looked at me, and I saw that I had made him choose between his own life and something that had loved him, and the knowledge of his choice fell between us like a blade.
I ate the hounds. He has never forgiven me for that.
“Lie down beside me,” I said that night, in a voice choked with wine and misery. The prince nodded jerkily and laid his mantle across the floor. “As you wish,” he said aloud, and then, in a whisper, “God have mercy!”
My hearing was very good. I shuddered and lay down.
The prince was as good as his word. He lay down beside me, on stones slicked with the blood of hawk and horse and hounds, and we touched. I could not feel him — my hide is far too thick for that — but I could smell him, and hear his heart beating against the stones. I stared into the darkness. I was sure that beside me, he was staring into the darkness as well.
He was revolted to lie down beside a monster. I was revolted to lie down beside a man who would kill his own hounds to appease a forest beast. Our mutual loathing was a strange and unwelcome intimacy. I felt as if I could smell his thoughts.
The sleep that came upon me was the magic’s doing. I slept as one dead.
When I woke the next morning, I felt small. I went to sleep larger than a bear and woke as a woman. My hands were tiny clawless things. My hide, that could turn swords and spears, had dwindled to skin as thin as paper. There was a naked man beside me, and he was awake as well.
He did what men do with women. I did not fight him. I was too small in my new skin, and my bones felt as fragile as a goshawk’s. If I had put my hands against his chest and pushed, surely they must have snapped, and gained me nothing.
Regardless, I do not think he took much joy of it. It was all of a piece with the terrible night that had passed, with the dead hounds and the dead hawks and the dead horse. It hurt, but not as much as a boar spear in the back, and I did not make any sounds at all.
There is little enough left to tell of the story. He was a younger prince, and could marry a mysterious woman of questionable origins without stirring too much outrage. The magic may have laid itself on him, or perhaps he felt that it was only just, after having lain with me in the hall. He is always an honorable man, my husband.
Well.
I am not, it must be said, quite as I was. I can still see in the dark better than a mortal woman should. When the light flares up, my eyes reflect it back green, like an animal’s. My fingernails are very sharp, and I take care to keep them blunted.
We have had no children. It is, I think, for the best.
I still have a hard time with mirrors.
I am not aging quite as I should either. They have had priests in to bless me, but it does neither the priest or my husband any good. He is growing old and I am not. This is another thing that he cannot forgive me for.
Before too long, he will be dead. He has taken a cough that will kill him soon, I think. His people do not love me, and I am very tired of them, of all their voices that never stop chattering, and of this closed-in place, and this brittle skin that keeps me bound.
On that day, when he has died, I will leave this place. The forest is still there, and the tumbledown hall. The magic is there, too, in rags and tatters. I hope that enough is left.
I will walk through the open doorway, framed by the trees that used to be my saplings. When I set foot on the stone floor, on the stain left by the blood of men and dogs, my hide will grow thick again, and the ground will shake under my
