Read The Princess and the Snowbird for Free Online Page B

the humans hushed.
    But not for long. Soon Liva could hear whispers growing. “Torus, Torus, Torus!” they called.
    No one rooted for Jens.
    He was the lone wolf here. The one who had lost his pack and his home but was still ready to fight. It was in the way he lifted his head against the odds, and how he held his shoulders high and let his eyes dart about.
    In one swift movement, he tucked Liva into a pouch wrapped around his middle. It was dark and warm, and in it was a large white feather threaded with silver. Liva put her nose against it and felt thrilled by the burst of aur-magic. It rarely happened that birds let their feathers fall without taking back the magic in them first. But a bird with a great deal of the aur-magic might not notice.
    Torus taunted Jens.
    Jens seemed to dance back and forth.
    Torus threw a punch at Jens. Then another.
    Inside the pouch, Liva was jostled as Jens staggered backward.
    Liva tried to send magic to him, to heal him more quickly. She dared not send too much, for it would be too obvious to the other humans that it was not a natural healing. But the magic she sent to him seemed to slideright through him and was taken up by other humans. Made into more tehr-magic, never to be returned. As if there were not already too much inside this building.
    Jens got to his feet and put up his hands in fists.
    Liva braced herself.
    “Jens!” shouted one loud voice. “Jens, smash him! Make him sorry he ever touched you!”
    Jens tried to swing at Torus’s face, but the other boy slipped underneath the blow, then came back with a kick at Jens’s knee.
    Liva heard a cracking sound, and Jens went down hard.
    “Get up, boy!” came the same voice from the crowd. “Don’t let him beat you!”
    Torus was already circling the center of the building, his hands held high above his head, a picture of victory.
    “Torus! Torus!” the crowd cheered relentlessly.
    Jens got up on one foot. He made a loud heaving sound, and with each breath, there was a whimper of pain.
    “Move!” shouted the voice. “Show yourself a man now!”
    Liva focused her senses on the voice. Whoever he was had a great deal of the tehr-magic, gleaned from countless animal deaths.
    Then Jens hopped forward, bouncing Liva in the pouch, drawing her attention back to the fight.
    “Try it. You know I’m stronger than you are, andI always will be,” Torus said, arms across his chest in invitation.
    Torus was no more than a shrieking magpie, Liva thought in fury. If only Liva could have shown him her bear form. Then they would see who was afraid and who was not. Jens would stand firm and Torus would be cowering in fear.
    “I do not want to hurt you,” said Jens.
    “Then that is the difference between us. You will never be a hunter if you do not learn to be ruthless.”
    “And you will never have any true friends. They will all be waiting to hurt you when you are weak.” Jens tried to put weight on his injured leg and grimaced in pain.
    Torus stepped forward. “Here, let me help you, friend,” he said with a sly grin. Quickly, he tugged Jens off balance.
    There was applause from the other humans in the audience.
    “Useless!” shouted the voice. At last Liva got a glimpse of the face of the man with dark tehr-magic. She was startled to see that he had white-blond hair, just like Jens did. In fact, his face was similar to Jens’s in many ways. The same jutting chin, the same light eyes, the same flushed cheeks.
    His father.
    But there was none of the love in his eyes that Liva had seen in both her mother’s black hound eyes and herfather’s bear eyes. How could there be with such poison held inside of him?
    Jens winced at his father’s voice, then took a breath and steadied himself.
    He breathed out and in.
    Then he clenched his fist, drew it back, and flung it forward with all the force he had, striking Torus in the chest. The punch would have done damage on its own, but Liva added aur-magic to it. Only a little, and only at