With a wrench, she launched herself back up into the clean sky.
Nightfall found her halfway between the first village and the second, and when she found herself tiring, found it becoming too dark to fly, she had to drop down again to skid across the surface of a frozen lake, scuttling into hiding in the shelter of frozen bushes. There she sat, eating grasses that were still green, though frozen stiff, until the moon came up. She was glad there was no one to see her as she slipped and slid clumsily across the ice until she could get herself airborne.
She passed over the second village without stopping, flying on through the night. Whatever was there, she could not help it now. And there would be no clues here as to what had happened to the missing men. When dawn broke, she reached the third village and set down in the midst of it.
She was starving; the frozen grasses had not been enough to sustain her, and since this village, like the others, had been destroyed without warning in the night, there was no way that she, in Swan form, could get at grain that had been locked up in homes and barns. But there was something she could do.
Reaching around with her beak, she picked open the single buckle that held her harness together, and carefully began working her way out of it. Once it was on a heap on the ground, she hunched herself down on the ground to preserve heat, tucked her head under her wing and began to concentrate.
The Bear form was easier; she had, over the years, spent some little time in it with the Bear, who enjoyed a bit of company now and again. It took a great deal less time to remember what being a Bear felt like, the weight of the limbs, the way the head hung low on the shoulders, the roll of the walk and the vividness of scents. This time, she was acutely circumspect; she cast all around herself for any hint of another magician before she hunted for magic power to augment her own.
She was not at all surprised to find Traditional magic swirling around her in little eddies and whirls. After all, she was part of this story now, and as such, she was going to attract it. The magic seemed — well — confused, however. As if it couldn't quite understand what she was doing here, nor why.
Good. That at least meant that, for a while, she wasn't going to get any pressure to conform to a particular story-path.
She gathered up all the rags and tags of the magic she could find, wove it into her own power, and again, concentrated on the new form she wanted until it felt as if she was going to snap under the burden. Then she let it go.
The Bear uncoiled herself from the sleeping position she had been in, stretched forequarters, then hindquarters, then gave herself a good shake. Raising her nose to the faint breeze, she went hunting for food.
She didn't have to hunt far; her nose told her that a nearby building was a chicken-roost, and a single blow of her powerful forepaw destroyed the door. Under any other circumstance, she would have felt guilty about such destruction of property, but there wasn't anyone left here alive to use those buildings anymore, and probably no one anywhere near to inherit them, either. This village was dead now. When Winter passed, people would be afraid to live here, afraid of ghosts, or that there might be a lingering curse on the place. The buildings would be destroyed, the frozen animals eaten, if not by herself, then by real Bears and other predators, and by wind and weather. There was nothing to feel guilt over.
Her heavy jaws made short work even of chickens frozen hard, and feathers were an irrelevant gustatory detail to a Bear. She ate them, feathers, beaks and scrawny legs, and all. Appetite sated, she prowled the village, looking for signs that the men had been here.
Signs there were, in plenty; the most notable was that the houses were open and lying empty, just as at the first village, all but one. That one, the stoutest in the village, was locked, barred, and the door sealed. She could smell nothing, which meant no other predator could, either. She guessed that the men had gathered up the bodies of all the villagers and sealed them in here, presumably as they had in the first village.
She paused for a moment to consider whether she should take her human form, and finally decided against it. If there was anything spying on her right now, nothing she had done so far was out of character for a real Bear. But she could do some things as the Bear that would make it easier for her in Swan form, and still look and act like a normal Bear while doing them.
She hunted through the village until she found the paddocks for the reindeer, and broke into the barn building, and then into the bins that held their Winter grain. There were only a few dead deer in the paddock; most of them had been out with the village herder. Probably this was who had brought the news of the Icehart out to Ilmari and Lemminkal. And naturally, he would not want to stay anywhere near; he must have taken the herds far, far south by now. If she had been in his place, that is what she would have done. With the herds of the whole village — even if it was a small one — he would be welcome wherever he chose to settle.
Poor herder! He would likely have nightmares for the rest of his life. And guilt, for having survived when his village did not.
Of course, other wildlife would be at the grain as soon as fear was overcome by hunger. She didn't begrudge sharing the grain with the creatures of woods and fields. With this unnatural Winter holding the countryside fast, life was going to be hard on the wild things.
With that accomplished, she stood in the middle of the building, swaying on her feet in a kind of daze until she came to herself and realized that she was exhausted. With a shake of her massive head, she considered her surroundings, decided that it was as good a place to den up as any, and lumbered over to a straw-filled corner to curl up for a nap.
When she woke, the sun shining at an angle in through the wrecked door; it was late afternoon. She made a good meal on a frozen goat, and lumbered out to the edge of the village. She ate snow to clear her nose and mouth and cleanse them of any other scent, then stood very, very still, breathing slow, deep breaths with her eyes closed.
There. Human. But fresher scent than the rest. She opened her eyes to discover her head had swung to the right. Still taking the scent in, she followed it until she found what she was looking for.
A human would never have seen it, not unless he was an expert tracker. Beneath the cover of new-fallen snow, the faintest of depressions. Footprints. She snuffled, and concluded with satisfaction that there were three different scents there. It could only be the men that she hunted.
She went back to where she had left her harness and pouch, and pawed and wriggled until she got the harness around her head and over her shoulders. Then she returned to where she had found the scent. With her head down, she began to track it.
She was, of course, not as good as a dog would be. But a Bear was not at all bad at following scent, and this was a Bear's nose with a human mind behind it.
She followed the trail, shuffling along with the Bear's clumsy, and deceptively slow-looking gait, past sunset, past moonrise and on into the night. She felt good — well-rested, with a full belly — and there was absolutely no reason to stop now. A Bear's eyes were not very good, so traveling at night was not exactly the problem it would have been for a creature that depended more upon sight. And as for the danger of attackers — there wasn't much that would be foolhardy enough to attack something as large and powerful as she was, not this early in the Winter. Later, perhaps, when wildlife began to starve, she would have been in danger from wolf packs. But not now, and not as long as there were frozen dead things back in that village. The only danger she was in would be from human hunters, and the only human hunters there would have been out here were all back in that village — dead. Well, there was the possible danger from this Icehart, whatever it was…but so far, its chosen victims all seemed to be humans; the animals it had slain were simply the unfortunate creatures that shared space with its intended victims.