Chapter One: Liva

Liva did not think of her age in years, for that was a human habit. She did not even think of her age in seasons, because she did not bother to count them—only humans counted. Liva enjoyed the bright sky of summer, the wet, verdant green of spring, the cooler sky of autumn, and the darker sky of winter, equally. She did not long for one while she had the other. Each season was its own. There were animals who lived through only one season, and those who lived through more, as she did. None of them grew as slowly as she did, no matter what shape she took, but she was content even so.

One day Liva sat in her cave, practicing bird calls as she changed from one form to the next: plover, eider, crake, dovekie, greve and dipper. She enjoyed the sensation of one form sliding into the next, and each time she went through the repetition, she sped it up. She was caught in the midst of a transformation when she heard the sound of ragged breathing at the mouth of the cave.

Her mother limped toward her, trailing blood, her hind leg torn so that it hung the wrong way.

“Mother!” Liva called out, taking her mother’s shape, a wild hound, rare in the north. She lunged forward and licked at her mother’s wound, but it was too deep to staunch with only her saliva.

“What happened?” Liva asked in the language of the hounds, for it was the only language her mother could now speak, since she had given the great gift of the wild man’s magic to Liva at birth.

“A white wolf,” gasped the hound. “Starving. I should have avoided him. But I have my pride.”

“I will kill him,” Liva threatened. She leaned forward and sniffed her mother’s flank, to get a sense of the white wolf. She was excellent at tracking, and she was certain she would find the wolf not long after she left the cave. If he was hungry, he would make mistakes, and though she was not full grown, she could defeat him. She had after all.

“No, Liva,” said her mother. And then she bit out a cry of pain.

Liva stared at her, frightened. She had never seen her mother unable to control herself this way. “I will!” Liva said. “You cannot stop me. I will do what I want.”

“Please,” her mother whispered, her head low to the ground, though she did not allow herself to fall to her side. “Stay with me, Liva. I need you with me now.”

Liva sighed and put her head under her mother’s. “I will go for Father, then,” she said. “He will kill the wolf instead, and then he will come and make you well again.”

She said this though her father had also given up his inheritance of magic from the wild man to his daughter. He had only enough magic to remain a bear, though he had been born a man. In the forest, a bear and a hound could protect a child better than humans could, for a hound was fast and had an acute sense of smell while a bear was the largest animal in the forest and had a roar loud enough to shake the very river from its banks.

“No,” her mother said again. “He is too far away for you to go to him. And he has more important things to do. There are lives that depend on him.”

“Your life depends on him,” whimpered Liva. She did not like to show her fear. An animal that showed its fear was weak. That was the law of the forest that Liva had learned since she had first begun to take animal shapes as a small child.

“Those will wild magic in the south are hunted down and put to death, if your father does not aid them. But here alone, I will recover,” said her mother. “All I need is time. And you.” She nuzzled Liva.

It distracted Liva for a little while. Then her mother quieted and closed her eyes. Her breathing was still sharp and uneven, but Liva thought the hound was asleep.

Liva examined the wound with her eyes, with her nose, and then with her magic. The leg was damaged beyond repair. There were veins that had been cut off, scar tissue forming around muscles that would stiffen them.

Ever since Liva could remember, her mother had refused to take Liva’s magic to shape herself into an animal for play. Liva did not understand why. She had plenty of wild magic for them both, so the only theory that made sense to Liva was that her mother preferred the shape of a hound.

Now Liva put a paw to her mother’s leg. The hound winced and tensed up the leg. In that moment, Liva pressed magic into the wound.

But it rebounded to her painfully, thrust back by her mother. “Liva, leave it be,” said the hound, opening her eyes for just a moment, as if she were too tired to do so for long.

Liva was confused. “I can fix your wound,” she said. “I can. I can see how to do it.” Could the hound be afraid that Liva would damage her leg?

“I do not doubt it,” said her mother. “But you must not use your magic on me.”

“It is not just for play,” Liva insisted.

“No, but I’ve had my chance with the wild magic already.” The hound’s words were slurred, and it seemed to Liva as though she was only partly herself. Surely that must be why she was not making any sense.

“Just a little,” said Liva, persisting. Her father had tried that on her, when she was ill, and he wanted her to take in some broth. She had taken a single sip, just to stop the noise of his pleading. But then she had found that it tasted wonderful, that the warmth that struck her stomach was just what she could have wished for, so she had taken more and more.

“None,” said her mother, growling at her..

So Liva left the cave. She hunted for dinner, and brought back some of the carcass for her mother. Her mother would not touch the meat . She was too weak, and turned to her other side, sleeping heavily. The hound would not stir even when Liva tried to wake her to move closer to the far side of the cave.

Instead, Liva pulled the furs over from the far side of the cave. She draped them around her mother’s shoulders, changing into human form briefly because human hands were the most useful for this one task, though perhaps not for much else.

If Liva could have found a way to move the bed of pine needles from the cave to underneath her mother, she would have done it, but instead she changed back into a hound and pulled her body close to her mother’s, her back to her mother’s front. She fell asleep for a time that way, until she was woken in the middle of the night by the sound of her mother’s weeping.

The hound was not awake, but she was weeping in pain, tears streaming down her cheeks and into the dark fur around her neck. Liva feared for her mother. She went out and got water, filling her mouth with it and then returning to put it into her mother’s mouth. After several trips, her mother even swallowed a few of the berries that Liva gathered. The berries her father liked to eat.

Liva thought of her father urgently. He had been gone two months now. Liva hoped that he would return soon. Surely there could not be so many humans with the wild magic in the south as to keep him away longer. The human village she had approached had no wild magic at all, only the tame magic that the humans used to kill and enslave the animals.

The next morning, Liva realized that her mother was getting worse. Her wounded leg had become inflamed and filled with pus, and the hound thrashed with fever or was so still that Liva had to put a hand out to see if she yet breathed. And still, she would not take any magic.

Liva considered going out to find her father, though that would mean leaving her mother alone. She did not know what to do. She was out getting a grouse to eat the next day when her father appeared at the river’s edge.

“Oh, Father,” she wept in the language of bears. She told him what had happened.

Her father put a hand on her and lifted her to his shoulder.

Liva spoke as clearly as she could. “You must make her take the magic. If I give it to you first, then she will take it. It will not taste like me.” Liva tried to send her magic into her father, for surely he would be sensible.

But she instantly sensed himpushing it away from him fiercely, and he put her down. “No magic,” he said.

He went back to the cave at a loping run, and there Liva watched as he pressed his mouth to the hound’s in a moment of greeting and love. She opened her eyes for just a moment and gave him a small smile. Then the bear lifted the hound awkwardly to his chest and carried her to the bed of pine needles in the back of the cave. Over the next several days, he petted the hound when she shivered, and soothed her when she cried out at night.

Her mother’s fever came down slowly and then the wound on her leg healed, after a fashion. She did not let Liva help it along, not once, no matter how frustrated she was at the slow recovery that dragged into winter.

Liva was certain the limp would be permanent. “You should have taken my magic,” she said bitterly one day, after her mother let Liva go ahead for the kill in their hunt. “You needed it.”

“Yes, but others will need it more,” said her mother.

“Others—who?” asked Liva.

“You will know when the time has come. Humans have learned to take all the magic that they can, and to use it selfishly, without thought for returning it when they have finished with it. They are destroying the wild world, taking more of it day by day. You must restore the balance of wild magic and human magic, and you will need every bit of the wild man’s magic to do it. That is why I cannot take you see.”

Liva did not care about such larger concerns. She cared about her mother, and about this moment.

So she changed into the shape of a wolf like the one that had attacked her mother and tried to frighten her mother by nipping at her newly healed wounds.

Her mother did not try to stop her, but only looked at her with a steady gaze. “I will be with you as long as I can. I will remember that your magic has a purpose, until you can remember it for yourself.”

“If you could not stop the humans from taking the magic for themselves, then how will I do it?” asked Liva plaintively.

“Ah, you are stronger than you know, little one,” said her mother.

Not strong enough to make her mother take her magic, however. And what use was it then?