East (16 page)

The white bear had watched me, letting me get my fill, then he had said, "Come," and I climbed onto his back. I was awkward again after so long. And it felt strange to me, riding on his back as if he were my pet horse, especially because I knew him so well. It was almost like climbing onto Neddy's back. But I was quickly distracted by the immediate need of finding my balance as the white bear began to run.

We stopped occasionally to eat and rest, though always well away from any town or people. He was very good at finding berries and other fruit, and even brought me fresh meat (seal, when we were by the sea, and badger or stoat inland), which I cooked over a fire. My appetite had returned.

Because I was not in such a daze that time, I was even able to enjoy the travel. I marveled all over again at the underwater sensations in my sealskin apparatus. It was the most extraordinary thing, to blindly float through water, carried like a tiny child.

He spoke to me several times during the journey, which may have been part of the reason we went slower. The talking always wore him out and he did not move as swiftly afterward.

During our first stop after crossing the sea, he said to me, "Only a visit ... If you do not return ... great harm."

The word "
harm
" was said forcefully, yet he did not seem to be threatening me, only telling me a fact; as if the possibility of harm was something he had no control over.

"A month ... one cycle of moon ... no longer," he said.

"I understand," I said.

"They ... family ... will want you to stay ... will do anything."

"I give you my word," I said a little shortly, annoyed by the suggestion that my family might behave less than honorably or trick me into staying.

He plowed on, with great effort. "Do not tell ... They will ask ... not tell." He was agitated, more upset than I'd ever seen him. His eyes were fixed on me, entreating.

"I promise," I said.

"Your mother ... Be most careful ... Do not tell ... about white bear." His humanness was wearing thin, I could see; he was struggling to form the words. "Do not ... alone with mother ... not listen." He gave a low growl, almost of pain, and turned, padding slowly away from me until he disappeared from view among a large cluster of trees.

He returned a short time later with two dead hares. We did not talk while I prepared and cooked them.

He left me several furlongs from the farm, by a brook with a willow tree bowed over it. "I ... go no farther ... In a month ... here ... I will wait." Again those eyes were fastened on me, devouring, as if the sight of me had to last him a very long time.

For some reason I wanted to reassure him. "I will be here. One month." Then I looked up at the blue sky and could just make out the sliver of the new moon. "When the moon is new again."

He lowered his head, then turned and bounded away. I watched him a moment, marveling as I had before at his grace, the enormous strength in that massive body. At that moment it was impossible to believe that such a great beast had anything to do with the invisible figure who had slept beside me every night. But then I remembered that the last night before we had left the castle, my visitor had shivered for the first time since I'd made the nightshirt.

"Rose?"

It was Mother. I had been home a little less than a fortnight and that afternoon had taken a walk by myself, saying I wanted to collect flowers for the dinner table. I was lost in thought when Mother found me by the creek we used to call Rosie's Creek. I started a little, dropping a few stems of oleander. She bent over to retrieve them.

"I'm sorry I startled you," Mother said, "but I wanted to see you, alone. We have barely had any time together since your return."

I took the flowers from her, saying, "It's nearly suppertime, isn't it? We'd better be getting back," and I began to walk briskly in the direction of the farmhouse.

Mother laid a hand on my arm and I was forced to slow my pace. "There is no hurry, Rose. I must talk with you. It is important."

Her voice was trembling a little and I looked at her sideways, surprised.

"Oh, Rose, I have been wanting to explain, about your birth."

I became alert.

"You left so suddenly, there was no chance..." Her voice was choked with emotion and she coughed to clear her throat. "I know that you were very angry. That you felt we had hidden the truth from you. I realize now it was I who had hidden the truth from myself. That was the real lie. I was so set on what I believed to be the truth, I could accept no other. Your father tried to reason with me, but I would not listen. I still do not understand, but I must acknowledge now that you have a streak of northernness in you."

I opened my mouth to speak, but she stopped me. "Very well, perhaps you are even
all
north. I don't know—the circumstances of your birth were so muddled. But I will tell you that there were reasons, good reasons, other than the empty space on the compass rose, why I did not want you a north. Reasons that spring from love, not stubbornness. And I do love you, Rose, no matter what point of the compass you are."

Tears stung my eyes. I did not realize until that moment that those were words I had never thought to hear from my mother. And had longed for.

She saw the tears standing in my eyes and pulled me to her, stroking my hair gently. I felt like a small child again, being comforted for my freshest hurt.

"What reasons, Mother?" I said finally.

She hesitated before speaking. "The words of a
sJjebne-soke.
She prophesied that..."

"That what?" I pressed, pulling away from her.

"That any north child I had would die." She finished reluctantly, her words coming fast, "Crushed by an avalanche of snow and ice."

"I see."

"No, it is I who sees what utter foolishness it was to believe her words. Why, only last week I heard that Agneta Guthbjorg had a baby girl instead of the boy that same
skjebne-soke
foretold."

"Well, I'm certainly glad to hear it," I said dryly. We exchanged smiles.

We resumed our walk to the farmhouse. "I wish your father would return," Mother said wistfully. "Neddy may have told you that there is a distance between us of late. I think that seeing you home and safe would help heal that distance."

"I would like to see it healed," I said.

We walked for a few moments in silence.

"May I..." She paused. "...ask about your life these past months? Are you comfortable? Do you get enough to eat? You look so thin."

"Only because I grew homesick. But it is not so bad there, Mother. I do have plenty to eat."

"And the white bear? Does he live with you, where you are?"

"He does. Mother, I cannot talk about this. I made a promise."

She gazed at me closely, as if trying to read how safe I really was.

"The white bear is good to me," I said.

"What manner of place do you live in?"

"It is a comfortable place. I call it a castle, but it reminds me more of a large hunting lodge, like the ones the wealthy people in Andalsnes keep in the mountains."

"Are there servants?"

"Yes, of a sort. I rarely see them."

"How do you spend your time?"

"I weave. And sew. There is a loom there, a very nice one." The words were completely inadequate when I thought of that magnificent loom. "I made this dress," I added, gesturing at the gray dress I wore but thinking of the three gowns that were folded in the leather wallet, which I had left at the castle.

"It is very fine, Rose. I'm glad you have a loom," Mother said. "And the white bear, do you see him every day?"

"Usually," I said shortly. I tried to quicken my pace a little, but Mother's arm linked in mine made it difficult; she would not be hurried.

"What are your sleeping arrangements? Do you have a comfortable bed?"

I stiffened, hoping Mother had not noticed. "Very comfortable" was all I said.

I spotted Neddy coming from Father's new workshop and breathed a great sigh of relief. Pulling my arm from Mother's, I energetically waved at Neddy, calling out to him.

I thought I detected a little frown on my mother's face as Neddy joined us.
She wants to know more,
I thought.
The white bear was right.

And the white bear was right about something else as well. At dinner that night each member of the family, except Mother and Neddy, said a little piece about how my leaving with the white bear had had nothing to do with Sara's getting well and the reversal of the family's fortunes. It was Harald Soren who was responsible—as well as Father and his talent at mapmaking. The appearance of the white bear, his request and my departure with him, were nothing more than a coincidence. Even Sara said she thought it was nonsense that a white bear, albeit a talking one, could have cured her. It was the doctor and the medicine that had cured her. And therefore, they said unanimously, I must not think of going back. I must stay home, where I belonged.

I turned to Mother. "What do you think? Was it a coincidence?"

Mother set a pitcher of sweet cream on the table, for pouring over our bowls of fresh strawberries, then sat down. She looked me in the eye. "No, I for one do not believe it was a coincidence. I think our good fortune was in part because we granted the white bear's request. But, Rose, I also believe that by having done so, you may consider your obligation fulfilled."

"The white bear asked me to return. And I gave my promise."

"I don't understand ... Sikram Ralatt expressly said..." Mother looked puzzled. "In that case, though it pains me beyond words to say so, I believe you must return."

"Oh, Mother!" cried Sara.

"How could you, Mother?!" Sonja said.

I listened to the chorus of protest and disappointment from my family, then said, as brightly as I could, "There's still heaps of time. Let's not worry about partings now. Are there any more strawberries, Mother?"

I
SENSED THAT
M
OTHER'S
words caused Rose pain. Or maybe it was that they caused me pain. I could not believe that once again Mother was choosing superstition over her daughter. Ironically, Rose and Mother were of the same opinion—that she must return with the white bear—but they came to it from very different directions. For Rose it was a matter of keeping a promise. For Mother ... Well, she did not want to transgress on any of her foolish superstitions. If only Father had been there....

Every day we watched for him and every day he did not return. We tried to excuse Rose from doing any chores around the farm, but she insisted on doing her share. In private she told me that she actually missed doing chores, and described her makeshift laundry room as providing the only chance she had to do her own work. She actually let slip many little details of this nature, and gradually I felt I'd gained a piecemeal, sketchy picture of her life at the castle.

"You, sound almost as if you are fond of the bear," I said one day, after Rose had described a typical afternoon spent weaving and telling stories.

She looked a little startled. "I don't know. Yes, I guess I am, in a way. Sometimes I feel sorry for him. Not pity—he would hate that—but when I see in his eyes the nonanimal part of him trying so hard to hang on, to keep a tiny grasp ... Oh, it probably doesn't make any sense to you."

"You feel compassion for him."

"Yes." She got a faraway look in her eyes. "Like when he shivers—" She stopped with a guilty look.

"Shivers?"

"At night. You see—" She stopped again. "You must promise to tell no one," she said, very serious. "Especially Mother."

I promised.

"I have this feeling I should not speak of what happens in the castle at night, though he never told me not to, not specifically ... But I find it so confusing, and strange. Talking it over with you might help me." And then she told me of her nightly visitor, of the darkness that couldn't be lit. Of the nightshirt she had made for him. And lastly of her suspicions that it was actually the white bear that slept beside her.

"Sometimes I can hardly stand not knowing. I want to reach over and feel his face. Or
its
face. But I daren't. I tried different lamps, even making my own flint. But nothing worked. I think it must be an enchantment of some kind, Neddy. What do you think?"

I didn't know what to say. Her tale sounded fantastic, like one of the stories I used to tell Rose when she was little. I shook my head. Then I was struck by a thought.

"Is that why you're going back, Rose? To break the spell?" I asked.

Rose laughed. "It sounds so ridiculous when you say it like that. Anyway, it's not that. It's more like I feel there's something I ought to be doing that I'm not. And if I did whatever it is, I could help the white bear."

"Perhaps just being there is enough. Maybe he is lonely. And having you there keeps that little spark of humanness alive in him."

Rose smiled at me. "You are so wise, Neddy. Well, I'd better get these in some water." She stooped to gather up an armful of oxeye daisies she had picked earlier.

Just then, out of the corner of one eye, I glimpsed a flicker of green, the same color green as Mother's cloak. I instantly guessed that Mother had been eavesdropping on our conversation and wondered uneasily how much she had overheard. I decided not to mention it to Rose, not wanting her to be angry with Mother.

It was a foolish, foolish decision.

I
T IS WELL TO BE PREPARED
, to look ahead and set events in motion that will bring about the desired result at the desired time. If there are to be conditions—and what a confounded waste of time that there should be—then you use your wits and your arts to ensure the outcome is as you will it to be.

It was no difficult matter to set up a potion maker in a softskin village—to disguise a young troll, with a desire to please his queen. And then to give him the words and goods to entice a pair of foolish softskin women.

Even if she defies her own nature and returns with him, I will prevail. As I must.