East (29 page)

Perhaps because of my ancestors, I had always been drawn to accounts of journeys of exploration. Unlike my grandfather and great-grandfather, however, my interest had never been in the actual exploring, and unlike my father, I had only a passing interest in charting the world. Instead I was interested in the history of exploration—who went where, when they went, and why they had gone at all. And I had always been particularly intrigued by tales of northern exploration, because of that time in my life when I had taken it upon myself to learn all I could of white bears.

As I sat in the reading room that morning, poring over the long-ago Viking foray into the frozen waters well beyond the northern tip of Njord, I turned a page to find a drawing that made me catch my breath. It was a simple line drawing, apparently done by the monk from a description by Orm the Viking. The drawing depicted a large white bear standing on its four paws facing a man (or I suppose it could have been a woman—the figure was too swathed in fur-skins to tell anything about it but that it was human). The two figures were virtually nose-to-nose, with only a hand's length between them, and they looked, for all the world, as if they were conversing.

My eyes eagerly sought the text that explained the drawing:

Driven off course, in a northwesterly direction me-thinks, we are pressed on all sides by ice. My men clamor to turn south. They fear being trapped in ice for the long winter. Nevertheless, I press onward.

The ice comes and we are hemmed in. My men are afraid. It is the full moon and one night, unable to sleep, I wake and walk the deck. The moon is bright and there before me, on the land, is an extraordinary sight. As clear as if it were day, I see them. A small man in fur and a white bear. They stand on the ice facing each other. I felt a thrill of terror; the bear was surely about to devour the man. I have hunted white bear and there is no fiercer foe. But, most strange and awesome, the white bear did
not
eat the man. Indeed, they seemed to be gazing into each other's eyes, with the look of blood brothers, or father and child. The hair on my neck stood up and I called to my men so that I should not be the only one to see such a sight. But the sound of my voice must have carried over the sea and ice, for bear and man turned toward me, as one, and then they turned back, as though annoyed at the interruption, and moved
quickly away over the ice, side by side. By the time any of my men were awake enough to heed my words, the man and bear were lost to sight.

The narrative ended abruptly, with a sentence stating that only Orm and two of his men survived the voyage.

I stared down at a band of blue across the parchment, caused by the sun shining through the stained glass. My heart thudded in my chest, and I was suddenly aware of someone standing beside me. Except that when I turned my head to see who it was, there was no one there. And yet there was.
Rose.
I felt as sure of this as of my own name. I could smell her. And I could even feel the soft touch of her hand on my arm. She was wearing fur mittens.

I closed my eyes.

"Rose?" I whispered.

And, clearly, I heard Rose say, "Neddy."

I was not sure of her tone. It might have held fear, but I did not know. And then I could "see" her, with my eyes closed, though her features were indistinct and blurred.

"Rose?" I said again. I wanted her to tell me where she was, that she was safe and had done as she wanted, but most of all, when she was coming home. I closed my eyes, concentrating all my thoughts on the soft feel of her hand on my arm, willing her to speak.

"Neddy," she said again, and that time I was sure there was fear in her voice. And then I felt the touch of her hand leave me.

"Rose!" I shouted, leaping to my feet. The few other people in the room looked up, startled. They must have thought me mad, watching as I groped like a blind man at the space beside me.

But it was no use. She was gone.

E
VERYTHING WENT VERY
still as I lay there, staring up at the animal. I thought of Neddy. I thought of my white bear.

Then I heard Malmo's voice. She was singing, and I sensed rather than saw her step around my prone body until she was behind me, facing the bear.

Distracted, the white bear looked up, and Malmo's eyes caught his and held them. Still murmuring her song, she began moving sideways, away from me. The bear dropped to all fours and, eyes fixed on Malmo, followed her.

I watched them, too dazed to move. When they were a stone's throw from me, Malmo stopped and the pair stood quite still, facing each other, continuing to look into each other's eyes. If their mouths had been moving, I would have thought them to be conversing.

Finally Malmo gave a nod and the white bear turned and padded away, going in the direction from which we had just come.

Malmo crossed to me then and knelt beside me. She reached into her pack and pulled out something that she pressed against the pain in the side of my face.

I looked again at the splash of red, so vivid on the ice. I saw that the blood was already starting to freeze.

"There may be a small scar. Hold this," she said calmly, indicating the cloth. She drew an ivory box from her pack and, taking off her mittens, dipped a finger in the cream inside. She rubbed the cream across the wound. It hurt, but then a warmth spread and the pain eased somewhat. "Can you travel?" asked Malmo.

"Yes," I said, sitting up, though a wave of dizziness passed through me.

Malmo sat beside me. "Let us wait a few moments," she said.

"How..." I began. "I mean, what did you do?"

"The white bear was hungry," Malmo said. "I told him about the seal's breathing hole we found. Perhaps he will be lucky."

"You spoke to him?" I asked in wonder.

"We do not use words," she replied. "I asked if he knew anything about your white bear."

My heart thudded unevenly. "And did he?"

Malmo nodded. "He knew of the man-bear. That is what they call him."

"Did ... did he know where the bear' is?"

Malmo shook her head. "But he told me that he has heard that the man-bear came from the land across the ice bridge. That at some time the man-bear has traveled over the ice bridge from Toakoro. He did not know in which direction or when.
Toakoro
is their word for Niflheim. They do not go there. No animals do."

"Why not?"

"They consider it unsafe." Then Malmo stood, breathing in and testing the wind. "We must travel on. It is still a long way to the ice bridge and I must return to my people soon."

Shakily I got to my feet. The bleeding had lessened, and Malmo fashioned a bandage out of the clump of cloth she had pressed to my face. And then we resumed our journey.

We came to the end of the ice forest, and I stepped onto the shore with an immense sense of relief.

We donned our skis, and after that our journey took on a wearying sameness. Day followed day, although you could not call it day at all. It had been a long time since we had seen the sun in the land of endless night. There was no way of keeping track of time passing, though Malmo had an innate sense of when it was time to eat and sleep.

But the endless night in the frozen land at the top of the world wasn't like night back in Njord. Because of the unending whiteness that surrounded us, there was not the same kind of darkness. There was always a dim gray light; the closest thing I could compare it to was twilight back home—the twilight just a few moments before the complete black of night takes over. Yet you could still see a billion dazzling specks of light in the night sky. And when the moon shone, especially the full moon, an eerie pearly-blue light washed the white landscape.

We fell into a rhythm, Malmo and I, working together almost as a husband and wife who had been together for many years. I became nearly as adept as Malmo at skinning a seal, making a snowhouse, telling tales with the story knife. There was an immense satisfaction in doing the jobs well, although satisfaction was beside the point in a place where doing the job well meant surviving another day.

Living in the frozen world became second nature, and I grew to love the breathtaking beauty of the vast white landscape. And yet a part of me longed for the sight of a green blade of grass, or the smell of rain and wet earth. The only colors in the land were white, gray, and pale blue, with the occasional burst of red from the spilled blood of a seal, and even then there was no smell at all.

We traveled a long time, long enough for the sun to make an appearance in the form of a thin band of light on the horizon. And each day I could see Malmo becoming more restless. Finally, as we crested an icy summit, she said, "I need to return to my people. If we do not reach the ice bridge soon, I will have to turn back."

I began to worry that there was no ice bridge at all, that it would turn out to be nothing but a fragment of an old myth. But, I reminded myself, the white bear we had met up with "spoke" of the ice bridge.

It was during this time that I began to think about the man-bear I was seeking. The man, not the white bear, kept entering my thoughts. I had seen his face only briefly, and sometimes I could not remember it, but once in a while it would come clear in my mind, complete with that expression of desolation that ate at my insides. Even when his face was a blur to me, the one thing I never forgot about the man was the color of his hair in the candlelight as I had leaned over him.

I realized I knew nothing about him. Not even his name. To me he was "white bear" or "the white bear who had been a man." But the man with the golden hair had had a name—as well as a life—before the pale queen took it from him. A father, a mother, brothers and sisters perhaps. Friends.

Was he a craftsman? A farmer? A prince? How long ago had the pale queen taken him from his life? If by some miracle he got free of her, would his old life still be there? Would his family be long dead and buried? It seemed likely, from the few words he had spoken of his long captivity. Would there be even a building that once had been home waiting for him, or would it be occupied by strangers? My stomach twisted. And I felt a white-hot surge of anger at the pale queen. Her cruelty.

Why had she done it? He was a handsome man—I had seen that as he slept and when he gazed at me with such anguish. Perhaps that comeliness had been the beginning of her wish to possess him. But the source of her obsession would have to be more than that, to account for such a monstrous act of thievery.

I thought then of the castle. Had that been his home once, transported into the mountain? Parts of it had certainly had the feel of a young man's quarters. Or had the pale queen merely furnished and decorated it in the manner she thought he would prefer?

Then I remembered the room with the musical instruments, and the flauto that I had learned to play. And the sheets of music. I felt sure that those were from the life the white bear, the man, had once known.

That was one thing I knew about him at least. His love of music.

I
AM GLAD
I
DECIDED
not to hurry the ceremony after all. I have had the inspired notion that Myk shall play his flauto at the wedding feast. This will please him. It will slow even further my preparations, for it will take time to get the instrument made and time for Myk to choose and practice what he will perform. But it will be well worth the extra time.

My people know little of music. I have tried to introduce it to them, but when they attempt to play, it does not sound as it does in the green lands. I believe that when they hear music as it should be played, their hearts will be won.

Myk is feeling more and more at home. His memories of a life before this have faded away to almost nothing. I relaxed the rule about not having softskins wait on the royal court, thinking that it would make him less homesick to have those of his kind around him. But it may have been a mistake. Occasionally one of the softskin servants will say something that seems to trigger some dim memory—I have come to recognize that puzzled, wistful look in his eyes—but then it passes. And I make sure that the softskin is taken away to
kentta murha.
Myk has asked where they go. I tell him they were moved to another position in the palace. He looks uneasy for just a moment, then that passes, too.

I have sometimes thought about doing away with the tradition of softskin slaves altogether, for then there would be nothing to trigger his memories, and it gets more and more difficult every year, the expeditions into the green lands. But I think my people would be unhappy. Who will do the work then? they would say. And if I replaced the softskin servants with trolls, there would be resistance. It could easily be done—my power is absolute—but it would be a difficult transition, messy. No, too much change is not prudent. Perhaps one day in the future, after they have gotten used to having a softskin king.

A
T LAST WE CAME
to the ice bridge.

We first spied it as we ascended a high snowy peak. The sun was peering over the line of the horizon and its light caused the ice bridge to glitter, hurting our eyes, even with snow goggles. We stood still, staring down at the bridge. Through my icicle-rimmed eyelashes, with the light dancing on it, I thought I could see all the colors of the rainbow. And it was a perfect arc, like a rainbow of molten light. The bridge was long, very long, but I could dimly see where it ended. The white icy land on the other side of the river looked much like the land we stood on.

I heard Malmo say something in Inuit under her breath.

As we skied down the slope toward the bridge, I thought of Bifrost, the rainbow bridge that connected the world of man to Asgard, the home of the gods.

At the bottom of the slope, we took off our skis and Malmo led me to the edge of the river that the bridge spanned. She held up one hand, indicating I should approach with caution.

"This river is Tawktoak Imuk," she said. A silvery gray, almost black, ribbon of water moved restlessly below us.