The Princess and the Snowbird by Mette Ivie Harrison

and had come to a shelf.
    The hound began to call out sharply then, in an urgent tone, and Jens looked around the shelf to see where else he could go. He could not climb higher or even stand up straight. He turned around—and as he did so, his hand brushed against a wooden box covered in leather. Picking it up, he saw that the leather was so old that it crumbled in his hands. He had to look closely at it to see the royal insignia tooled into the top. It was a bear and a hound joined together with a crown over their heads. He did not recognize the coat of arms, but in the north it had been centuries since any kings ruled.
    He held out the box, and the hound barked once.
    This must be what she had meant him to find, though how she had gotten it up here, he could only guess. Perhaps she had been stronger before? Or had talked another animal or a bird into taking it up for her?
    He held the box under his chin, carefully climbed back down the cliff, and handed the box to the hound. Whatever was inside belonged to her. Liva had not said that her mother had been royalty, as well as human, but this made it clear to him. This belonged to her old life.
    The hound used her teeth to pull open the box, and there was a flash of light on gold as she held up what was inside. It was a half circlet with a ruby in the center, such as a queen might wear on formal occasions. It showed some sign of scratches, but it was beautiful.
    Jens gaped at the hound as she placed the half circlet in his hands.
    “But—,” he protested. The metal was still warm from her mouth and felt heavy in his hands. “This can’t be for me.”
    The hound barked at him, clearly in the negative.
    “For Liva?” Jens asked.
    The hound nodded once.
    “Why don’t you give it to her directly, then?”
    The hound stared at him.
    “You want me to give it to her?” asked Jens. He felt a moment’s bewilderment and then he realized what it meant. A queen never crowned herself. She was given a crown by one who represented the people she was to rule.
    “When do I know it is the right time to give it to her?” he asked, looking for the hound once more.
    But she was gone.
    He put the half circlet in his pouch with the owl feather and the snowbird feather, hoping that he would know the right time when it came.
    He felt honored that the hound had chosen him to give the half circlet to. He thought she must have beenwatching him. Jens did not think Liva had told her mother about him, but if she had, it still meant something that the hound had come to him separately. In the village when a young man was interested in courting a young girl, first he had to make an offering to her mother. In this case it seemed the opposite.
    Jens began walking south again, to the huge trees that he had become used to climbing and sleeping in. He heard human voices nearby and pulled himself up to a low branch nearby, then climbed soundlessly higher and looked down.
    Karl had returned to the forest. It was perhaps a week or two since he had come with the Hunter, but this time he was with another boy, who shuffled along and had a face swollen with bruises. Whenever the boy slowed down, Karl kicked at him or shoved him down. Jens had been bullied too often in his life not to feel for the victim. But the boy never cried out or begged to be spared. He had a strange dignity, and Jens thought the boy must be used to such treatment.
    “You think my father, the Hunter, will reward you for this?” asked the boy, his head raised high enough for him to look straight into Karl’s eyes.
    Karl slapped the boy’s face soundly in reply. “Perhaps he will reward me for it. You have too much magic for his plans, Dofin, and one of these days he will take a knife to you to improve you and make you more like himself. We are all to give up our magic in time, if we are to truly follow him.”
    Dofin spoke defiantly, his eyes on the ground: “And is that what you want? To give up your magic to him, because he has